New Delhi | Jagran New Desks: Former India Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's birth anniversary is observed every year as 'Sadbhavana Diwas', which literally means Harmony Day. Born on August 20 in 1944, Rajiv Gandhi was India's sixth Prime Minister and also the youngest to take the office of the Indian Prime Minister at the age of 40. Rajiv Gandhi took office after the assassination of his mother and then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, in 1984.
Rajiv Gandhi was just three when India became independent and his grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru, became Prime Minister. Born to Feroz and Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated on 21 May 1991, during a public rally in Sriperumbudur, near Chennai. He was posthumously awarded India's highest civilian award - Bharat Ratna.
Here are the top 10 inspirational quotes by Rajiv Gandhi:
-“India is an old country, but young nation; and like the young everywhere we are impatient. I am young, and I too have a dream. I dream of an India strong, independent and self-reliant and in the front rank of the nations of the world in the service of mankind.’’
-“For some days, people thought that India was shaking. But there are always tremors when a great tree falls.”
-“Women are the social conscience of a country. They hold our societies together.”
-“Every person should take a lesson from history. We should understand that wherever there have been internal fights and conflicts in the country, the country has been weakened. Due to this, the danger from outside increases. The country has to pay a big price due to this type of weakness.”
-“Development is not about factories, dams and roads. Development is about people. The goal is material, cultural and spiritual fulfilment for the people. The human factor is of supreme value in development.”
-“Education must be a great equaliser in our society. It must be the tool to level the differences that our various social systems have created over the past thousands of years.”
-“Thinking of this University [Ambedkar University] today, we are reminded of Mahatma Gandhi because if there was anyone who fought for the weak in India, the first one to raise his voice for Scheduled Castes, that was Gandhiji. There were social workers before him but not any people who raised this matter in the political arena as he did.”
-“Our task today is to bring India to the threshold of the twenty-first century, free of burden of poverty, legacy of our colonial past, and capable of meeting the rising aspirations of our people.”
-“We must see that regional imbalances in the growth of various parties of the country are removed and all the states progress evenly. We shall ensure that all citizens of the country get full opportunity to contribute their might towards India’s progress.”
-“If farmers become weak the country loses self-reliance but if they are strong, freedom also becomes strong. If we do not maintain our progress in agriculture, poverty cannot be eliminated from India.But our biggest poverty alleviation programme is to improve the living standard of our farmers. The thrust of our poverty alleviation programmes is on the uplift of the farmers.”