Part One
IN RETROSPECT
If one looks at the world as a whole, as Gandhiji and Nehru did, one has a permanent interest in improving the living standards of the poor all over the world. One should look at the world as a whole, with India only as a part of it.... The erosion of liberty anywhere and the impoverishment of people in any part of the world will have its repercussions in the other parts in some form or other.....
The compulsion of political events in international affairs should be such that they help to attain an ever-increasing level of understanding and friendship with other countries. We have to work towards the birth of a new economic order ...within the framework of a harmonious and peaceful one world.
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1.
A world view for the eighties: an interview.
Q.
To begin with I should like to request you to give your personal analysis of the holographic epigraphs you have recorded from Gandhiji's and Nehru's writings. What, in your view, is the meaning of Gandhiji's humanism? What are its ingredients, and to which of these would you give priority in the emerging 1980s?
A.
As you will notice from the Gandhian epigraph humanism is a unique combination of individual freedom and freedom of the human family. These two freedoms are the two faces of the same picture and they are in my opinion indivisible. As Gandhiji had pointed out, erosion of individual liberty will have immediate repercussions on national liberty and vice versa. In democratic and socialist systems of government, with its variations which a people might choose, humanism acquires many forms. In the field of foreign policy, it implies collective self-reliance for nations. There are so many ways in which we can enrich one another—our thought processes, our life-style and our economy. If we aggregated the resources of the developing world, it will be noticed that we have enough among ourselves to improve the living standards of our respective people within the framework of our national characteristics of governance and administration.
To paraphrase Gandhiji, I might say that humanism is a synonym for the ideal of progress towards universal brotherhood. From collective self-reliance we can gradually reach out towards developed World. This I believe is the interpretation of Gandhiji's humanism applicable for the coming years of the present decade.
In the eighties we should have to see that the content of individual and national liberty is enlarged quantitatively and qualitatively, and such weaknesses in the world system as apartheid exploitation, racism and discriminatory attitudes which are the black spots on humanity are erased.
