INDEPENDANCE DAY REMEMBRANCE

[Guest guest]

LOYALTY TO THE WHOLE COUNTRY

-Jawaharlal Nehru

 

THE ENEMIES OF OUR FREEDOM ARE WITHIN OURSELVES, NOT OUTSIDE. IF WE

KEEP OUR MINDS AND HEARTS CLEAR AND WORK TOGETHER, NO EXTERNAL DANGER

CAN COME TO US.

 

We must remember the great sacrifices, which we made for nearly half

a century to achieve freedom. We must remember how, under Gandhiji's

leadership, our people shaped and strengthened this country with the

aid of the unique weapon of peaceful `satyagraha'.

 

To achieve freedom was no big task; freedom would have come to us in

any case. It is our unity and determination and hard work that

brought us freedom. The enemies of our freedom are within ourselves,

not outside. If we keep our minds and hearts clear and work together,

no external danger can come to us. It was always due to our internal

weaknesses, disunity and pettiness that in the past people could come

from outside and conquer the country. They conquered us not by their

own strength but because of our internal weakness. It is our own

folly that brought them here.

 

Now we again see signs of the same weakness and folly. We seem to be

too preoccupied with a language or a province, forgetting that our

loyalty belongs to the country as a whole. The time has surely come

when every Indian must took within and asks for himself whether he is

with the nation or with a particular group. This is the challenge of

our time that every man, woman and child must face.

 

We are oblivious of the world around us and the dangers facing us

from all sides. The Big Powers are even now forging weapons of mass

destruction and preparing for war. Nobody can say when the

conflagration will envelop us. But we are oblivious of all these

dangers to our unity and are entangled in small and petty quarrels.

 

What will the historians of the future write about our times? They

will write about the great leader who was born in India and how he

taught her subject people to cooperate and work together, to demolish

the walls that divided them and to raise their less fortunate harijan

brothers. They will write about how the people of India, from the

Himalayas to Cape Comorin, awoke from their long slumber and held

their heads high, and how under Gandhiji's leadership they attained

their freedom and promoted freedom elsewhere; how after hundreds of

years India shone forth and raised her ancient voice and how the

whole world heard it and was impressed.

 

What will the world think of us if we cease aside our great

inheritance and stop to quarreling among ourselves in the name of

religion and caste and community and province? Will not the world

feel that it had sadly misjudged us?