Question: I have a ton of questions I wanted to ask you, but I have to reduce it to one. I wanted to know of your influence by Gandhi when you were in India, in the region... if you were influenced by the works of Gandhi, Mohandas Gandhi, and in terms of leadership and strategy, and if this could be used, and how it could be used, with our youth movement now.

LaRouche: Well, not too much, actually. But a couple of important things.

Naturally, I was very interested in Gandhi. I thought that most people's appreciation of him, as I knew it at the time, was wrong. But Gandhi was a contradictory character, who went through a development. And when he... his key development was influenced by another person, Tilak. And you can't understand what Gandhi did, or what the Congress Party did later, without the impact of Tilak on the Congress Party, and on Gandhi himself.

Gandhi came out of that experience realizing that, he had a problem: how could the Indian people, especially the Indian poor people, struggle effectively against the British raj. That was his problem. Therefore he recognized that there was a limitation [...] So he recognized that his tactic of struggle, and leadership of the average Indian people, person, in this struggle, had to be adapted to the capabilities of the people he was leading. And therefore he did things, which from one standpoint, would seem ridiculous, but from another standpoint, were not.

Therefore, he became more and more effective in understanding the Indian people, especially the poor, and understanding their limitations, and their ability to struggle. And therefore utilize their ability to struggle, optimally. And he almost won. And he did in one sense win. So, in observing the Indian people, and coming to understand them better, particularly when I was in India after the war, when I came back from Burma into the Contrapara-Calcutta area, and dealing with the movement at that time, in Bengal, and trying to get to meet Gandhi on one occasion there -- actually two occasions.

Once when I was going over, I was going over in a train from Bombay to Calcutta, on my way into Burma, and Gandhi was in a train on the other side, and I was a U.S. soldier in this crazy train, with poor tracks. I mean, these were very poor living conditions. We would say in Germany "holzklappe." Really tough. And I wanted to get across there to meet with Gandhi, and I was [...] to get the whole train of GIs with me. "Hey, you want to meet Gandhi! There's Gandhi. Let's go talk to him about this, what he's doing."

And then again, when I was in Calcutta, at the end of the war, I tried to get up -- he was up in Dumdum outside of Calcutta and I wanted to meet with him, because I was very seriously considering doing some funny things at that time. [queries] You know, what I do all the time. And so, therefore, at that point, I was in a period of meeting the Indian people, seeing the Indian poor and so forth, to get a keener appreciation of what Gandhi was faced with, as a leader, in trying to lead the very poor people, against the British raj, which is a very cruel set of bastards. The Nazis had nothing to learn... the British had nothing to learn form the Nazis; they'd already developed it themselves.

But that's what I learned from him, essentially that. It's a keener appreciation of.. look at the weaknesses of the people you're trying to lead out of the desert, and to understand what they're capable of doing, and not to overestimate their capability, but to try to find way that will work within their capabilities for struggle.

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