NEW DELHI: Walking barefoot, US President Barack Obama laid a wreath at Mahatma Gandhi’s memorial at Rajghat and planted a sapling in the complex around fours after he landed here. He left the venue saying he would return again to pay tribute to the great spirit. “Gandhi is alive in India today,” he said.
Secretary at Rajghat Samadhi Rajnish Kumar told Express that the US President reached there at 12.30 pm and placed a wreath and showered rose petals at the memorial. He planted a peepal sapling in the Rajghat’s garden and left at 12.50 pm. “We call it knowledge tree,” said Kumar. Obama was accompanied by Union Power Minister Piyush Goyal.
In the visitor’s book, he wrote: “What Dr Martin Luther King Jr. said then remains true today - the spirit of Gandhi is very much alive in India today. And it remains a great gift to the world. May we always live in his spirit of love and peace - among all people and nations.”
Describing Gandhi as an ‘inspirational figure’, he also observed a moment of silence and went around the black granite platform, which has Gandhi’s last words ‘Hey Ram’ inscribed on it.
Before he left, he was presented three books of Gandhi, — My Experiment with Truth, The Mind of Mahatma Gandhi and Mahatma Gandhi 100 years — apart from a replica of Gandhi’s famous ‘charkha’, a Gandhi bust and a scroll made of khadi which has the seven social sins printed on it.
When he said ‘bye’ to the officials accompanying him, one of them said: “We never say bye. We always say will come again,” to which he replied: “Of course, Will come again.”