| শিরোনাম | সূত্র | তারিখ |
|---|---|---|
| লণ্ডনস্থ “ইণ্ডিয়া লীগ”-এ প্রধানমন্ত্রীর ভাষণের সারাংশ | ভারত সরকারের পররাষ্ট্র মন্ত্রণালয় | ৩১অক্টোবর, ১৯৭১ |
PRIME MINISTER INDIRA GANDHI'S ADDRESS TO THE INDIA
LEAGUE, LONDON, OCTOBER 31, 1971
Following are extracts from the speech:
........ You all know that just before the elections, before the split in the Party even, India had gone through a very bad period of drought. It was a period when foreign newspapers started printing headlines such as “Will India Survive? Will Democracy Survive in India?” We in India are used to a great deal of misunderstanding and criticism. When we were fighting for freedom, the question raised was: “Can freedom be won with non-violence?” We stuck to our path and we proved it could be won by non-violence. Then the question was raised; “Can such a large country with so much illiteracy be democratic?” We proved in our five elections that democracy can work and that democracy has taken deep root in India. Democracy has been an educative process, because with every election we see a greater maturity amongst the Indian people. I can’t say that everybody votes wisely, but if there are people who are misled by propaganda or who consider irrelevant factors in their choice, their number is certainly not larger than similar people in countries where there is much more education and much more affluence.
So this was the situation in India when we gathered together for our new Parliament. We came with high hopes and having raised the hopes of the entire people of India, we had hardly begun thinking of all the programmes that had to be initiated when, after a week, a very big burden fell on us and a very big event took place across our borders. It has disrupted our lives, but it is something very much more than that. I find that there in England and in other countries which I had visited, this border situation tends to be considered as a very limited problem, as a problem of refugees. I do not want to say that the refugee problem is a small one-9,000,000 people can never be small, no matter where they are-and certainly to have 9,000,000 extra people at a time when you can ill afford to look after your own people is not an easy task. But the problem of Bangladesh is not merely the problem of the refugees in India. It is a far deeper problem and one which affects us in many ways. The refugees have highlighted the problem for us in India because they have posed not only a tremendous economic burden, they have created social problems, political problems and, above all, the question of the security, the stability and the integrity of India. We are equally concerned with the tragedy which is taking place outside of our country. Rarely has the world witnessed the sort of atrocities and barbarities which we hear described by the refugees who are daily pouring in.
At the time when I was working for the India League, our main concern was freedom for India, but we were no less concerned about what was happening in Europe, because that was the time when there was the Spanish Civil War, it was a time when Fascism and
