If you try to discover what common ideal or objective brings Pakistan, a Muslim theocratic state, and China, an atheistic Communist state, together, you will find that their antipathy to India is the sole meeting ground for these countries. They have not realised that politics of hatred does not succeed. Whatever it may be, we will have to be vigilant and alert, we will have to view the attitudes of our neighbours in proper perspective and also assess their foreign policy in a realistic manner. One conclusion that emerges from such a study is that the level of defence burden that we accepted during the emergency will have to continue. It will have to be so, as long as China continues its politics of military expansionsm. Any complacency in this respect will cost us dearly.
One of the immediate consequences of sustained build-up of our defence effort would be that the annual maintenance expenditure of the defence machine will stabilise at a high level. Once you raise our armed forces to a particular level, it would not be possible nor advisable to bring them down in terms of maintenance cost. This only means that we should be prepared to carry both the burdens on our shoulders; the burden of economic development which we have been carrying since independence and the burden of defence effort which has been thrust upon us by hostile neighbours. It means a lone journey along a difficult path under trying conditions and with excessive burdens. But there is no escape from this.
Another point that we must try to understand and which is more important in the context of the developments in the recent past, is about what our hostile neighbours think about us as a nation. It is necessary that we understand their viewpoint so that the tendencies which are viewed by them as our weakness could be curbed. From the statements that the leading personalities of Pakistan and China have made in the recent past, only one conclusion emerges, and it is that in their opinion India is rent with divisive tendencies and that they do not expect it to continue as one nation in the face of serious problems that confront it. Their adventurism naturally arises out of this assessment about our country. Therefore even while we remain alert and maintain our defence machine in high order, the prime task will be to increase the inner strength of the nation, to bring about the integration of the country in the real sense of the term. It is only when we achieve this goal that we would be able to move forward as one nation.
