Winds of Peace
Our best wishes are with the Soviet Union and all the other countries in Europe in their dedication to the cause of making the process of detente irreversible.
It is at the same time our fervent hope that the winds of peace that are blowing in Europe will spread to other regions of the world and the beneficial impact of detente will be felt by all the countries — developed and developing, big and small. Detente, to be meaningful and effective, needs to be made universal. It is in a climate of stable peace alone that we can usher in a new international economic and social order, which the world community has been striving for. Peace, progress and prosperity are indivisible and all go together. It is this principled approach which has inspired the evolution of Indo-Soviet relations and their co-operation in the cause of consolidating world peace and eliminating the last vestiges of racialism and colonialism.
As believers in peace, co-operation and understanding, we in our own way are making efforts in this part of the world to remove suspicions in the minds of any neighbour and trying to remove barriers to understanding. Our policy has been to build up relationship on foundations of confidence and trust and create areas of co-operation.
The emphasis on "friendship" in the Treaty is also significant. Indo-Soviet friendship has not only survived many stresses and strains but has come out stronger from them. We are aware of the sympathy of the Soviet Union in our struggle for freedom from colonial rule. The Great Revolution of 1917 in the Soviet Union was a source of inspiration to the freedom fighters in India who were deeply influenced and moved by the heroic efforts of the Soviet people to build a new social and economic order on the ruins of the Czarist tyranny. Thus, the friendship is not a recent or a transitory phenomenon. It has already become traditional and has acquired a solid base.
