Sonia Gandhi picked Manmohan Singh as PM since he posed no threat to Rahul, says Barack Obama in memoir

Barack Obama hit the headlines in India recently over his remarks about Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in his memoir. They were not really charitable and caused quite a flutter. Now, his various other comments are under the spotlight, especially about what he wrote about Congress President Sonia Gandhi and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Barack Obama memoir "A Promised Land" says that India became a more market-based economy in the 1990s, which led to major growth and a rising middle class in the country. "As a chief architect of India's economic transformation, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh seemed like a fitting emblem of this progress: a member of the tiny, often persecuted Sikh religious minority who'd risen to the highest office in the land, and a self-effacing technocrat who'd won people's trust not by appealing to their passions but by bringing about higher living standards and maintaining a well-earned reputation for not being corrupt".

That is mostly in public space and Obama adds more punch to the memoir by outing his personal views on what he thought about Manmohan Singh being picked to be India's PM. Obama commented on a number of events too and how the Congress led UPA handled some really serious crises that enveloped India, especially while dealing with Pakistan.

Obama said Manmohan resisted calls to launch attacks against Pakistan after the horrific 26/11 Mumbai attacks, but the decision went on to cause him great political damage. "He feared that rising anti-Muslim sentiment had strengthened the influence of India's main opposition party, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Obama had a chat with Manmohan and this is how he recalled what the Indian PM said, 'In uncertain times, Mr. President,' the prime minister said, 'the call of religious and ethnic solidarity can be intoxicating. And it's not so hard for politicians to exploit that, in India or anywhere else'."

Obama then made an explosive statement writing that Dr Singh's elevation as prime minister, which was also called as a hallmark of the country's progress in overcoming sectarian divides, was not actually true.

On how Manmohan Singh got the Sonia nod to be PM, Obama wrote, "... More than one political observer believed that she'd (Sonia Gandhi) had chosen Singh precisely because as an elderly Sikh with no national political base, he posed no threat to her forty year-old son, Rahul, whom she was grooming to take over the Congress Party."

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On one instance Obama went to a dinner at former PM Singh's home that was also attended by Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi. The former US president said this about Sonia, she "listened more than she spoke, careful to defer to Singh when policy matters came up, and often steered the conversation toward her son".

Obama added: "It became clear to me, though, that her power was attributable to a shrewd and forceful intelligence. As for Rahul, he seemed smart and earnest, his good looks resembling his mother's. He offered up his thoughts on the future of progressive politics, occasionally pausing to probe me on the details of my 2008 campaign. But there was a nervous, unformed quality about him, as if he were a student who'd done the coursework and was eager to impress the teacher but deep down lacked either the aptitude or the passion to master the subject."