The National Integration Council represents all the State Governments in our country. It represents also the political parties and groups in our Parliament, except for two, and I hope that these two will also join in this great co-operative endeavour to take up one of the most important problems in our country today. We have also representatives of trade unions, business and industry, educationists and those who work voluntarily in the field of national integration.
When the first National Integration Council was called in 1962, certain decisions were taken. It is unfortunate that we were lulled into a sense of complacency by the tremendous national solidarity evinced at the time of the Chinese invasion of our frontier, and at that time the Council was wound up. This revived Council, I hope, will function and become a durable institution.
All of you must have noticed that some people have reservations about this conference and scepticism regarding the revival of this Council. But a wide section of people have welcomed this move, specially those who think deeply and feel deeply about the future development of our country. I would like to assure you all that in calling this meeting we are not actuated by any partisan purpose. We hope that throughout our debate and discussions we shall maintain a high standard and not allow ourselves to be side-tracked by apportioning blame or scoring any kind of a debating point.
The great menace which our country faces today is that of communalism. After twenty years of Independence and at a time when we had thought that this problem was more or less solved, once again communal clashes are occurring in different parts of the country.
The second menace is that of provincialism or regionalism or parochialism. I believe this is evoked by the same sentiments that are behind communalism. In fact, it is an extension of the same sort of feeling. Another serious danger to national integration and perhaps one of the causes of other menaces which I mentioned is the persistence of inequalities. In law and theory, the ancient discriminations have been abolished but opportunities have not been growing as fast as the aspirations of backward classes and tribes and minorities and other such groups. Another factor which can unite us or create barriers is that of language.
The purpose of this Council, as I see it, is to focus attention on national integration, to create a forum which would guide and keep in touch with the action taken for integration in different parts of the country, to unite various groups to apply their minds to this question—of course political parties are included in this but it is just as important to involve voluntary organisations and people like industrial labour, students and intellectuals—and lastly to implement with a feeling of urgency the suggestions or decisions taken in this forum.
Divisive forces and tendencies have existed in all societies and at all times. Certainly these forces existed in India even during the years of the struggle for freedom, but the mainstream of nationalism was powerful enough to sidetrack them and also to fight them, and thus we were able to march ahead. During the twenty years since Independence, we have had constantly to combat these forces in one form or another. In fact, the struggle for national integration, the struggle for national solidarity, the struggle for safeguarding the ideals and aspirations embodied in our Constitution, has to be waged ceaselessly and tenaciously. I do not think a time can ever come when these forces will not want to raise their head. But it should be our endeavour to create an atmosphere and to create conditions in which this will not be possible and in which the whole of society will react against them.
As we survey the national scene, we feel there is indeed cause for anxiety and also cause for shame that lives of Indian nationals should be threatened in their own homes and in their places of business because of their community or religion. No Indian citizen from one part of the country should be made to feel insecure in another part. The great industrial complexes like Calcutta, Bombay and Madras are a result of the investment of the capital and the skills of the country as a whole. Therefore, every citizen of India has a right to work and to live without fear in any part of the country. Killing or attacking fellow human beings solves no problem, and those who indulge in such anti-social and anti-national acts are rather like the monkey in our old fable which, in trying to squash the fly, injured his own face. Similarly they, in the long run, injure themselves.
The need for national integration, therefore, does not arise merely from a moral purpose. Certainly the moral purpose is there but in the world as it exists today, as it is evolving today, national integration is the very condition of our national survival. It is a practical necessity if we are to go forward with our development plans and to progress in unity and strength. It is only in the measure that we recognise this fact that we can create the right climate in the country for solving the various problems that we face. At times these problems seem insuperable but the entire story of modern India is one of overcoming the seemingly insurmountable obstacles. No thinking person should wish to weaken the unity of the country. I am convinced that the forces of integration are strong but they do need to be united and to be given some guidance. I think this Council will provide the means for doing so. We must find a way of harnessing the basic decency, the basic commonsense of the average citizen in order to overcome these forces which threaten his future and the future of his children.
The effort needs to be made not merely at the governmental level, although the Government’s responsibility is a heavy one, but at a wider level, involving not merely the political parties and the administrators but also students, writers, artists, educationists, different types of cultural and other organisations and all those who work and can work in and through the media of mass communication. We are gathered here to give thought as to how we can achieve this. We have to create some machinery which is adequate for the purpose. We have to think in terms of a concrete national programme involving every significant section of our society in purposeful action to combat in every town, and indeed in every village and every street, the dark forces which seek to disintegrate the very fabric of our social and political existence. I think this Council should be able to give a call to all those who have national integration at heart to come forward and to rally together. Only such a mass movement dedicated to the cause of national integration and secularism and sustained over a long period can help to find an adequate solution of this very grave problem.
Our people must be made to understand the virus of communalism and of regionalism, which seems to corrode our national will and purpose. We must also study and expose to public gaze the poisoning of the young mind through misguided educational processes and ill-conceived textbooks. We shall study in depth and propose solutions to the disruptive effects of economic imbalances and disparities. But I think that, while these studies and deep analyses are necessary, they will take time and we should not waste any time.
What we need is a many-pronged attack on the forces of disintegration. Merely to say that if we overcome economic disparities and attain a degree of affluence, we shall solve our problems is not enough. And since every problem ultimately has its origin in the mind of man, we have to ensure that our educational processes, the books we read, the radio we hear, the films we see, do not distort the Indian mind but lead it towards integration and solidarity.
There will perhaps be different analyses of the problem and different diagnoses of the disease because we are a mixed group, but I certainly hope that as a result of this Council’s meeting, there would emerge an agreed approach to what needs to be done to start the process that will help our society and body-politic to become healthy, strong and self-confident.
This is part of ThePrint’s Great Speeches series. It features speeches and debates that shaped modern India.