During my tenure of office as foreign minister. I attempted to express India's perceptions and sensibilities within this framework of policy, not rigidly or statically but with resilience and flexibility, never losing sight even for a moment of what Nehru would have felt in the context of the emerging challenges to our hopes about world peace, universal fraternity and global socioeconomic equality. India's attitude to bilateral and international questions was shaped through consensus and with the realisation that India's problems are ultimately the problems of the developing world in general.
Each chapter of this book opens with appropriate excerpts from my speeches or articles which represent the totality of my views and form what might be called the "preambles" to India's foreign policy. The excerpts embody my hopes and aspirations for the future of man and for his fast-shrinking universe. These "preambles" acquaint us with the philosophy of our foreign policy and subserve the purpose of connecting the scattered pieces, imparting a measure of homogeneity to the material and pinpointing the dominant Indian strands in the tapestry of international events.
I like to claim that without deviating from the basic policies laid down by Nehru, India reached during the period between 1974 and 1977 a higher peak in the perilous and rarefied terrain of international relations. Not only did India continue the ascent but also consolidated its achievements and broadened its understanding with those who were geographically further away from India. Indeed, India's relations transcended changes in leadership or adverse developments in some of these countries.
From the lofty heights that India was able to reach in its relationship with other countries, a wider vista of co-operative endeavour on an international scale came into view. One of the planks of India's foreign policy was the assertion of the collective strength of the developing nations with enlightened self-interest. Some of the developments unfolding before us at the present time, as I shall point out elsewhere in these pages, could be traced to the stirrings in the mid-70s when we were able to stabilise our gains and set a course for further progress. Although ours was a steady progress, the path was not free from hurdles.
