Congressman Donald Payne (D-NJ), center, addressing the audience. Payne said India being the largest democracy in the world had a lot to teach other nations.

It is good to see all of you out this evening. I know that many of you are really benefiting from this outstanding program. I would like to commend you for having the foresight to understand the importance of having young people being collocated with a system in this country that we are very proud of, but I might also say that as we all know India is the largest democracy in the world and has successfully conducted democratic elections for over half a century ever since independence. So we can learn from each other.

I also think that many of us in the African-American community are appreciative of the spiritual leadership of Mahatma Gandhi because as you know Martin Luther King was a very strong follower of the practice of Gandhi and took the non-violence resistance path and brought that into the civil rights movement and so American is much more forward because of the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi and the disciples of Dr. Martin Luther King following those teachings.

I have a very outstanding intern, Shayak, who does excellent work and I’ve gotten a number of comments about his professionalism and seriousness. We are very pleased to be working with him. I certainly wish you all well and I certainly think we are going to have a lot of problems in the futures and we are going to have to work together towards solving those problems.

My colleague, Frank Pallone, is the greatest supporter of India in Congress, second to me but he does an excellent job with the India Caucus. He is a very important person in our government on the Committee on

Commerce that he sits on. Once again, it is a pleasure to have you and you leave a very positive impression with us and we look forward to continuing with the program.