Before 1920, in this country, all the great men that our modern history produced were young. I can mention a few names of those whom Gandhiji collected around himself; Rajendra Babu, Desh Bandhu Das, Motilal Nehru, Satyendra Nath Das, Vallabhbhai Patel and Maulana Azad. They were men who were not only capable of leading their states and their country, but if I can speak in terms of capabilities, they were capable of leading continents in their own rights. They could have become anything they liked. But they decided to sacrifice their lives for the country. That was the feeling among the younger generation then. Why is it that we do not have it now? We have to create that feeling amongst ourselves and then instill it in the young men. The concept of one India, Bharat Mata, really speaking, attracted the people then and made them think above caste, language and religion. If that happened then, it can happen now also. Whenever I go to different parts of the country today, I see the younger generation still thinking in terms of narrow loyalties. It is an unfortunate thing. These are the lesser appeals that are working on us because we are yet to make an impact and challenge the conventional influences which have been working on us for generations. We are yet to take the people out of the old ruts and make them think in terms of the modern world, the modern forces and a modern India. Such a renaissance, though it has come about politically, is yet to be experienced in the social field. I am not under-estimating the modern way of living as evident in the form of better dresses, modern facilities like television, radio, film, etc. But the basic thing is that unless we bring about a revolutionary change in the outlook of our people, we are not going to take the country out of the old ruts. This is the sociological challenge.
Then, there is the external challenge. I think this is a very well-known subject. You know the external challenges, whatever they are — the Chinese challenge, Pakistani challenge, etc. I hope our younger people will get accustomed to this feeling, because these challenges are going to remain for a considerable time. It is not something like a storm that has come and is going to blow over in a short time. Possibly, we shall have to learn to live with this challenge and to fight with it. I am not thinking of fighting in a military sense. When there is a challenge, we must learn to fight in terms of increasing our own strength, qualities, character and our overall national strength. This is another field where the challenge can be taken up only by the young people. The elder people can possibly dream about it or write about it. But if anybody can do anything about these matters, it is the younger people. I am not thinking in terms of merely asking youngmen to go and join the armed forces. What I want is that the younger people should think about these problems in all their aspects and educate themselves, so that the nation's strategy in the field of defence grows out of experience and understanding of the men, material, geography and other interests. A nation's defence strategy does not fall from the sky. It is only when the younger people think about these challenges and realise that the challenges have to be met with their own strength and imagination, that they can evolve a strategy.
