Hyderabad: "To get to the top of any ladder, you have to climb rung by rung," former prime minister Indira Gandhi wrote to a schoolgirl in Ludhiana in January 1984, responding to the girl's wish to become prime minister one day.
The handwritten exchange, preserved at the Pradhanmantri Sangrahalaya (Prime Ministers' Museum) in New Delhi, offers a glimpse into Gandhi's personal correspondence during the final months of her life. Her death anniversary is observed on October 31, marking 42 years since her assassination in 1984.
The correspondence began on December 28, 1983, when Deepkiran, a student of Saint Joseph Heart Convent School in Ludhiana, wrote to Gandhi. She told the then prime minister that she was impressed by her speeches on television and asked which school Gandhi had attended in Switzerland. Deepkiran also shared her ambition of becoming India's prime minister and sought guidance on how to achieve it.
In her reply dated January 10, 1984, Gandhi did not offer a political roadmap. Instead, she compared success to climbing a ladder, saying that reaching the top required sincerity, hard work and service.
Gandhi also urged the young girl to think about what she could do for others and the country rather than what she could get for herself.
"Personally, I would say that it is important not to ask things for yourself but to think what you can do for others and for your country," she wrote. She ended the letter by asking Deepkiran whether she liked her school.
The two letters, exchanged less than a year before Gandhi's assassination, have been preserved at the museum as a record of the interaction between the former prime minister and the schoolgirl.
Gandhi was assassinated on October 31, 1984, at her residence on Safdarjung Road in New Delhi by two of her bodyguards. She was 66.
Her assassination followed Operation Blue Star, carried out at the Golden Temple in Amritsar in June 1984, and was followed by widespread anti-Sikh violence across the country.
As India marks her 42nd death anniversary, the letters recall a personal exchange in which Gandhi advised a young girl that ambition required sustained effort, sincerity and a commitment to serving others. (with inputs from PTI)