Speeches (Vol. IV)

India is trying to build up good relations with our neighbours and this is the basic plank of our policy. We want to develop friendly relations with Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, with Sri Lanka, Pakistan, West Asia, Afghanistan, Iran, -with everybody. What some of the big countries aim at is to plant the seeds of suspicion in the minds of small neighbouring countries. This is their strategy. India is big and we cannot shrink because somebody wants us to shrink. We are what we are. What are our objectives? We do not want to impose our will on anybody. We do not want to invade any country. If at all our army was used, it was used for the liberation of a country. If at all we had made use of our army, it has been used for peaceful missions in some countries. We sent our army to places like the Gaza and some other countries where there were wars. They functioned there as peace-keeping forces. This is our objective. We are certainly a nationalist country believing in our own independent foreign policy. We certainly have our own social and economic objectives. We are determined to achieve them whatever may be the difficulties in our way and I am sure we will succeed in this matter. So far as Bangladesh is concerned, we were shocked by the brutal murder of their leadership there. But even so, we said, it is their internal matter. But a malicious campaign was started saying that India was interested in military intervention in Bangladesh. I would just give this as an illustration. This malicious propaganda was done to create suspicion in the minds of neighbours, among the non-aligned countries, because most of our neighbouring countries are non-aligned countries. The Delegation of Bangladesh had come here and we have had discussions with them. We want all good to Bangladesh. We welcome their independence. We want their sovereignty. We want them to have progressive, economic and foreign policies. We want them to be non-aligned. We want them to be their own masters. That is all that we want. We want them to remain peaceful with no-communalism, no-sectarian attitude. Their delegation is in India today and in the course of this week, we are discussing the problems of economic co-operation and trade co-operation. This is our basic policy. But how the other countries are looking at it is the most important thing now. This is a very complicated world and you can face this complicated world by your clear thinking, your clear judgment of the world situation and the internal situation, with determination, with faith in the programmes and the policies which we have accepted. This is the only way to get what we want to get. When I said, I was going to mention basic foreign policy issues, these are the foreign policy issues which I meant. But they are so organically linked with internal policies that sometimes I wonder how one can differentiate between foreign policy and internal policy. They are practically the same thing. It is an indivisible entity. It is said conventionally that they are the two sides of the same coin. I would say that is rather incorrect. It is the same coin and the same side. It is so together that you cannot take one position in international relations and another position in internal matters.