Obama says he would like to have dinner with Mahatma Gandhi

Lalit K Jha

Washington, Sept 9 (PTI) US President Barack Obama has
said given a chance he would like to have dinner with
Mahatma Gandhi, whom he considered a real hero.

Obama expressed his desire in response to a question
from a student Lilly during his discussion with 9th graders at
Wakefield High School in Arlington Virginia where he
accompanied with the Education Secretary gave a national
speech welcoming students back to school.

Obama called for students to take responsibility and to
learn from their failures so that they succeed in the end.

"Hi. I'm Lilly. And if you could have dinner with
anyone, dead or alive, who would it be?," Obama was asked by
one of the students.

"Dinner with anyone dead or alive? Well, you know, dead
or alive, that's a pretty big list," Obama responded amidst
laughter. The next moment he was serious.

"You know, I think that it might be Gandhi, who is a
real hero of mine," Obama said. "Now, it would probably be a
really small meal because he didn't eat a lot," he said amidst
laughter. But Mahatma Gandhi is someone who has inspire people
across the world for the past several generations, he said.

Terming the iconic figure as the source of inspiration
for many, Obama said "he (Mahatma Gandhi) is somebody whom I
find a lot of inspiration in. He inspired Dr King (Martin
Luther), so if it hadn't been for the non-violent movement in
India, you might not have seen the same non-violent movement
for civil rights here in the United States." said.

"What was interesting was that he ended up doing so much
and changing the world just by the power of his ethics, by his
ability to change how people saw each other and saw themselves
-- and help people who thought they had no power realise that
they had power, and then help people who had a lot of power
realise that if all they're doing is oppressing people, then
that's not a really good exercise of power," Obama said.

Expressing his belief in the way of change proposed by
Gandhi, the President said, "I am always interested in people
who are able to bring about change, not through violence, not
through money, but through the force of their personality and
their ethical and moral stances. That is somebody that I would
love to sit down and talk to," said Obama.

Mahatma Gandhi has always been a source of inspiration
for this first African-American President of the United States
of America.

"In my life, I have always looked to Mahatma Gandhi as
an inspiration, because he embodies the kind of
transformational change that can be made when ordinary people
come together to do extraordinary things," he wrote in the
ethnic India Abroad newspaper last year.

"That is why his portrait hangs in my Senate office; to
remind me that real results will not just come from
Washington, they will come from the people," Obama said. PTI
LKJ