Prime Minister Vajpayee's New Year message

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http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=202401276

 

Full text of Vajpayee's New Year message

 

 

My dear fellow countrymen, joyous new year greetings to all of you.

 

To our brave jawans, security forces, and policemen guarding our

borders and vital installations; to our hard-working kisans who have

ensured our food security; to our workers and managers who, with

their sweat and toil, are making India an economic power; to our

talented software professionals who have burnished India's image

abroad; to our children and youth, who are the future of our nation;

indeed, to every Indian who in his or her own way is contributing to

nation-building, I wish happiness and prosperity in the New Year.

 

I also send my felicitations to all Non-Resident Indians and Persons

of Indian Origin, who, despite the distance in space and time that

separates them from us, have maintained unbreakable social, cultural,

spiritual, and emotional ties with India.

 

We leave an eventful year behind us, a year of many trials and

tribulations -- amongst them the earthquake in Gujarat at the

beginning of the year and the terrorist attack on our Parliament at

the end of the year.

 

We faced all of them with courage and self-confidence. As we begin

our journey in 2002, it is time for all of us together to resolve

that we shall grow further in fortitude; that our belief in ourselves

shall be further steeled to take on even stiffer challenges that may

confront us in the New Year.

 

Today, let us pledge that our motherland shall emerge stronger - in

national security, which is of supreme importance, and in development

that betters the life of those of our brethren who continue to be

victims of poverty and neglect.

 

It is said that time's ways are inscrutable. This may be true in the

life of individuals, not in a nation's life. True, we cannot predict

what may happen to our individual destinies. But, in my mind, there

is no uncertainty whatsoever about India's destiny.

 

India is marching towards a bright future. We have our share of

problems. But these cannot hide the brightness on the horizon. It

will be a future free of poverty and all other vestiges of

underdevelopment.

 

Indeed, the level of poverty is coming down; and the day is not far

when every region, every community, and every citizen in our country

shall enjoy the fruits of India's prosperity and progress.

 

If we want, and if we act unitedly to get what we want, then this

energising goal can be achieved within the span of a generation.

 

But the future I see is not only one of a prosperous India, free of

fear and free of want. In recent years, the world has come to look at

India with renewed respect, recognising a strong and prosperous

global power in the making.

 

I have no doubt that India in the foreseeable future will begin to

play a decisive role in global affairs, not to advance any partisan

agenda at the expense of others but to protect and promote mankind's

most cherished universal ideals.

 

It is also a future when the fabled richness of India's culture,

arts, intellectual exploration, and spiritual pursuit will begin to

show its full radiance, bringing much succour to the troubled spirit

of the modern man.

 

Is this a dream? Yes. Is it an impossible dream? No, it is not.

 

Nations achieve greatness when their people learn to dream lofty

dreams and to strive hard - and make sacrifices, when necessary - to

realise those dreams, without getting disheartened by the

difficulties along the way and without ever letting their faith in

their nation's destiny falter.

 

I am reminded here of the inspiring vision of Maharshi Aurobindo,

which he set out in his historic radio broadcast for August 15, 1947.

 

"I have always held and said that India was arising, not to serve her

own material interests only, to achieve expansion, greatness, power,

and prosperity -- though these too she must not neglect -- and

certainly not like others to acquire domination of other peoples, but

to live also for god and the world as a helper and leader of the

whole human race."

 

This, I believe, is the quintessence of India's work, now and in the

future. Different leaders of modern India have presented the same

vision in different words.

 

In the five and a half decades since independence, we have made

definite progress in realising a part of this vision, although there

is a need to introspect on why our achievement has not been greater,

faster, and more egalitarian.

 

But let us not get bogged down in the issues and debates of

yesterday. Now we must hasten our march forward, correcting the

mistakes of the past but always keeping our eyes fixed firmly on

where we want India to be in the future.

 

It often happens that the road to the future is rendered difficult by

roadblocks placed by the past. One such roadblock for us, indeed the

biggest, is Pakistan's consistent and continuing anti-India policy,

beginning with its refusal to accept the constitutionally validated

and democratically endorsed accession of Jammu & Kashmir to India.

 

For a long time, the rulers in Islamabad relied on military

confrontation, as exemplified by the wars they waged in 1948, 1965,

and 1971, to settle this issue in their favour.

 

After failing abjectly in their endeavour, the anti-India forces in

Pakistan decided to foment terrorism and religious extremism as the

principal means to instigate separatism in our country.

 

I must say that they are nursing a dangerous delusion. What they

could not achieve through open military aggression, they never will

achieve through cross-border terrorism.

 

They failed miserably in their evil designs in Punjab. Terrorism bled

Punjab; but, in the end, it fled Punjab. It could not dent Hindu-Sikh

unity. Similarly, the terrorists and their mentors are doomed to fail

in Jammu & Kashmir, too.

 

However, the very certainty of failure is driving them, in

desperation, to embrace a more dangerous agenda. The terrorist attack

on our Parliament on December 13 has shown beyond a shadow of doubt

that the anti-India forces in Pakistan are prepared to wreak any

havoc on our soil.

 

It was an attack on our sovereignty, on our national self- respect,

and it was a challenge to our democratic system.

 

Although India has been a victim of cross-border terrorism for the

past nearly two decades and has lost tens of thousands of innocent

men and women and security forces, the outrage of December 13 has

breached the limit of the nation's endurance.

 

That the terrorists who stormed the precincts of Parliament failed in

their core objective, thanks to the exemplary alertness and bravery

of our security forces, some of who laid down their lives in the call

of their duty, cannot diminish the diabolical nature of the

conspiracy hatched by their mentors across the border.

 

It is useful to presume that more such terrorist strikes can take

place. The only way to defend ourselves against such attacks is by

forcing Pakistan to stop cross-border terrorism. And this precisely

is the objective we have set ourselves in our current multi-pronged

strategy.

 

The many political and diplomatic steps we have taken after December

13 are a part of this strategy. As I have said earlier, India does

not want war. India has never been an aggressor in her long history.

 

But we have a sovereign right to defend ourselves against

cross-border terrorism, which is a proxy war that is already thrust

on us. Pakistan will be solely responsible for the consequences of

encouraging terrorism against India and, when expedient, turning a

blind eye to terrorist groups with trans-national linkages operating

from its soil.

 

Today, I also wish to share a thought with the people of Pakistan

and, indeed, with all the right-thinking persons in its ruling

establishment.

 

It is unfortunate that anti-India forces in Pakistan have been

allowed to play with fire, apparently with no thought given to what

this fire can do to Pakistan itself.

 

I have heard and read many perceptive Pakistanis express serious

concern over their government's appeasement of terrorism fuelled by

religious extremism.

 

They have voiced alarm over how Pakistan's social fabric and its

institutions have been grievously affected by its government's policy

of creating and systematically promoting the Taliban, ostensibly to

gain 'strategic depth' in Afghanistan and a 'force multiplier' for

its anti-India campaign in Jammu & Kashmir.

 

The fate of the first game plan has already been sealed. The fate of

the second will be no different.

 

Taliban and Al Qaeda are not merely the names of organisations. They

stand for an aberrant mental outlook and a highly regressive

socio-political agenda, which rejects the ideals of pluralism,

secularism, freedom, and democracy and has no respect even for

national boundaries.

 

For the pursuit of its goal to establish global hegemony, it

considers the use of terrorism domestically as well as its aggressive

export to countries near and far entirely legitimate.

 

Like you, I too often wonder: Why do some people choose the path of

terrorism? Why do they kill, and are ready to be killed? How are they

able to create a religious frenzy in support of terrorism, when no

religion sanctions terrorism?

 

One can understand if some persons, dissatisfied with the prevailing

state of affairs or angered by a sense of injustice or deprivation,

want to establish a different social order that they consider is more

just and would benefit more people.

 

There is nothing wrong with such striving. Indeed, humanity has

progressed through the struggles of such idealists.

 

But where the path of the terrorist diverges sharply from that of the

idealist and the revolutionary is in the choice of the means he

employs. Because of his murderous ways, his intolerance, and his

extremism, he expels himself from the pale of humanity and descends

to barbarism. To allow such barbarians to succeed even partially, even

in a single corner of the world, is to invite danger for the whole

civilised humanity.

 

Which is why India stood firmly behind the international coalition's

support to the United States' war on terror in Afghanistan following

the horrendous terrorist attacks of September 11 in New York and

Washington.

 

The leadership of Pakistan took a commendable decision to join the

international coalition against terrorism in Afghanistan, although it

meant a drastic U-turn in their policy of support to the Taliban

regime.

 

But what was their real intention? If it was the same as that of the

international community - namely, to root out terrorism and extremism

- then I extend my hand of alliance to them.

 

I wish to tell them: "Shed your anti-India mentality and take

effective steps to stop cross-border terrorism, and you will find

India willing to walk more than half the distance to work closely

with Pakistan to resolve, through dialogue, any issue, including the

contentious issue of Jammu & Kashmir."

 

In my musings from Kumarakom last year, I had affirmed: "In our

search for a lasting solution to the Kashmir problem, both in its

external and internal dimensions, we shall not traverse solely on the

beaten track of the past. Rather, we shall be bold and innovative

designers of a future architecture of peace and prosperity for the

entire South Asian region."

 

I continue to remain wedded to this commitment. My bus journey to

Lahore earlier in February 1999, my invitation to President Pervez

Musharraf to come to Agra in July for summit talks, and our

oft-extended 'ceasefire' in Jammu & Kashmir are a testimony to

India's sincere, bold, and innovative search for peace.

 

This search continued even after the betrayal in Kargil. Our efforts

will be further intensified if Pakistan demonstrates its matching

sincerity to have peace with India.

 

Together, let us leave the past of futile hostilities behind us and

embrace a future free of tension and full of mutually beneficial

possibilities. The common enemy that both our countries face is

poverty, illiteracy, disease, and unemployment. Terrorism and

extremism cannot solve any of these problems. They can only further

delay their solution.

 

Therefore, let us join hands to fight this enemy and, along with

other countries in South Asia, make our region a land of peace,

plenty, and all-round progress. This is the challenge of the new year

and of the new century. let us accept it in a spirit of cooperation.

 

However, if the intention of Pakistan's leadership is to continue to

promote, or condone, cross-border terrorism in Jammu & Kashmir as a

matter of state policy, while maintaining that they are one with the

world in rooting out terrorism in Afghanistan, then the international

community will judge this position to be opportunistic. It will

conclude that Pakistan, far from being a part of the solution, will

remain a part of the problem itself.

 

It is for Pakistan to make the right choice. After what happened on

December 13, we have made certain legitimate demands of the

government of Pakistan. Its sincerity to fight terrorism will be

determined by its positive response to these demands.

 

We also hope that our friends in the international community will

bring requisite pressure on Pakistan to give up its double standards

on terrorism.

 

Dear fellow countrymen, the situation we are facing is unprecedented.

I would like you to be prepared for any eventuality. I would also

like you to realise that the battle against terrorism will

necessarily be a long one. One should neither expect a quick and

painless victory nor despair if more terrorist strikes take place.

 

Today, my heart goes out to our jawans (soldiers), security forces

and police personnel who are doing their duty in difficult

conditions, so that all of us can sleep soundly and go about our

normal lives.

 

But let us also recognise that, in some ways, every citizen is a

soldier in this war against terrorism. Like them, let us be

disciplined and ever vigilant.

 

Like them, let us also be prepared to make sacrifices - sacrifice of

our leisure, sacrifice of our comforts, sacrifice of our riches, and,

if necessary, sacrifice of our lives.

 

I am sure that all of us will work harder than before to keep our

economy and our civic services fighting fit. I know that, as during

the previous wars, our citizens will gladly bear hardships if the

government has to take certain temporary measures to support our

effort.

 

Our people have shown the fist of unity at the time of every crisis

in the past. I am confident that you will do it again, and not allow

any other issue to come between us and our goal.

 

And that goal is India's victory - a decisive victory - in our

supremely just struggle. We shall triumph against terrorism - to

defend India, to defend humanity. Let this be every Indian's New Year

resolve. May the Almighty give us strength to redeem this resolve.