One of the members who made a very good speech in Hindi this morning said— and I would like to use his words— that with some countries we should have khas maitri* and with others aam maitri†. I do not like to make this type of distinction in friendship. I am reminded of a similar type of thing the other day in the other House when one of the leading members of the Communist Party asked me: Select your friends. Really speaking, it means, on the other side: Choose your enemies also. I told him at that time that this was not our way. Because of some historical reasons, sometimes friendship can become more warm. But that is a different matter. We ourselves should not try to make such a distinction as khas maitri and aam maitri.
We do not want to become a power in the sense the word "Power" is used. We certainly want India to be strong. We certainly want India to live in peace and work for co-operation. But this can be done only through our participation in the technological revolution.
I think as human beings we all have talents and capacities as peoples of the developed countries have. But it is a question of time. They have got the advantage of an early start of 200 years. That is our initial disadvantage. I am sure that if we work hard towards that end and we gear up our economic, commercial policy and foreign policies, we will succeed ultimately.
I have said many times before and would like to repeat that ultimately the success and strength of our foreign policy depends upon the strength of our internal political, economic and scientific policies. Therefore, just as we take care of our foreign policy postures and our relations with the different countries, we have to take care of our internal policies as well, for these are the basic forces of strength for India. If we strengthen them, we will be strengthening India and the Indian people. And it is the strength of the Indian people that would make India's foreign policy strong and successful.
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[*An Indian terminology, "khas" (a Persian- or Urdu term) implies "Special", and "maitri", (a Sanskrit or Hindi term) "friendship".
† Another Urdu or Persian term meaning "common".]
