A few days ago, my delegation had the honour and privilege of offering its felicitations to Sir Leslie Munro on his election to the high office of President of the General Assembly and to Mr. Hammarskjold for having accepted the onerous duties of Secretary-General of the United Nations for a period of another five years. Repetition is not always welcome, but I think this is a good thing that will bear repetition. Therefore I wish, now, to repeat those felicitations.
70. I should also like to take this opportunity of expressing our appreciation of the President of the last session, Prince Wan Waithayakon of Thailand, under whose presidency we had very difficult issues to deal with in this Assembly over a long period. His patience and his courtesy were to a very considerable extent responsible for our overcoming certain procedural and debating difficulties at that stage, even apart from his good offices for reconciliation.
71. This is also the proper opportunity for my delegation to express a word of appreciation to those large numbers of people whose names are not printed in the books of delegations or who do not come in for public approval, namely, the large staff of the Secretary-General, at all levels, who make our life and our work here possible and whose research, diligence and thoroughness of organization contributes so much to the success of this Assembly.
72. During the last three weeks, sixty-nine speakers, representing the legitimate Governments of their countries and duly accredited by them, have spoken from this platform. I am the seventieth. This large number of delegations which have considered it necessary and proper, and indeed essential, to participate in this general debate is in the view of my delegation a great tribute to the trust and esteem in which the United Nations is held in all our countries.
73. This general debate, while cynics may speak of it as a long run of speeches, has a significance which should not be overlooked. This is perhaps the occasion when representatives are somewhat disanchored from the necessity of voting according to political alignments, but are free to express themselves. There are delegations like mine who sometimes think that if the votes were all like the speeches, the Assembly would be rather different. But at any rate, there is this idea that we all come here with different points of view, we tolerate each other, we try to understand each other.
74. While sometimes the language used may not be all that would have been correct in the Victorian age, we still conduct our procedures in this Assembly in, such a way that the views of different delegations, and the approach that is made by nations and by large regional continental areas of the world, make their impact upon our common desires. We are not a world parliament nor are we a world government of any kind. Any decision that is made here is by way of recommendation, which goes back to our sovereign Governments, to our parliaments, or otherwise. But the impact of public opinion and the speakers who represent here the millions of people all over the world — with significant omissions though, to which I shall refer later — have a tremendous influence upon the progress of humanity as a whole.
75. My country is one of those which shares very much the view the Secretary-General expresses in the introduction to his annual report [A/3594/Add.1]. that the United Nations should neither be romantically regarded as a panacea, as the centre for resolving every dispute, or as having the answers to every problem, nor should it be regarded as an institution that has failed to perform its functions. Each year the United Nations blossoms out in a different way. Opportunities for different ways of solution come about. We are particularly happy to note that the Secretary-General refers to the functions of the United Nations as a realm of open diplomacy. I wish the time would come when the Secretary-General could make the physical conveniences and facilities of this place more conducive to conference and not merely to speaking and counter-speaking.
76. My delegation appears on this rostrum today in the context of twelve years of United Nations existence and, so far as our country is concerned, ten years as an independent nation. We are an old country but a new nation. Against that background, one approaches the United Nations not as from a vacuum but in terms of the successes and the failures of its predecessors, going back to the Middle Ages and, more recently, to the failure of the League of Nations. The United Nations was founded, while war was raging, by those who could see further than the events of that time in order that peace might reign in this world and that this comity of nations might not be a holy alliance of good nations and of bad nations, but a universal society where the differences between sovereign countries, with their different historical backgrounds and civilizations, might be expressed in such a way that their diversities would make them a common richness.
77. Some of those expectations, as must be the case in all new organizations, especially those based partly on idealism and partly on the imperative necessity of survival, have suffered some setbacks. But still, our position is one which, while we may not be complacent, gives us hope and certainly calls for greater endeavour.
78. In the last two years, the area of freedom has widened in the world and so has the membership of the United Nations. We have here now eighty-two countries of the world, and while either representation or membership is significant in certain omissions, we still represent a very considerable part of the world and, what is more, a great many of us are conscious of our omissions. The United Nations, if its purposes had to be recited in simple terms — which may not always be accurate — is the Organization for world peace and co-operation. The very words of the Charter open with the exhortation to rid the world of the scourge of war so that this planet may not be again plunged into confusion, as has been the case twice in this century. It also uses in the beginning, the words "We the peoples of the United Nations".
79. While it is true that Lie Credentials Committee must examine our credentials, and while there maybe differences between the economic and political composition of our various States and in our procedures, the fact does remain that today, irrespective of the forms of government all over the world, the people are the significant and ultimate factor in decision. It is the view of my delegation that, while there is an increasing realization of the impact of world public opinion on all our Governments and on us collectively, there is not enough profit. One of the main distinctions between the predecessor of the United Nations and the United Nations itself is that the countries of the world do not regard the United Nations as just an organization outside themselves, to whom some specialists are sent in order to sit in session, after which they can forget about it.
80. As the Secretary-General well knows, and as I said the other day [690th meeting], when he came to our country and wandered in a village where he was net supposed to be going, he was asked all about the United Nations, including his salary. There is so much desire on the part of the people to know about it, and there is great expectation, and this great expectation is one that we, who represent Governments either singly or collectively, may not ignore, because ultimately it is the voice of the peoples of the world that must decide. Whether we call them by one name or another, so far as our forms of government are concerned, there never can be any authority established anywhere in the world which ultimately would not yield to the impact of the people.
81. It will be my task, in so far as I have time, to refer back to the achievements of the United Nations. I take the liberty, but I make no apology at this time, of referring to the ten years of our own life as an independent nation. This is not to blot out the period of history that has gone before us, whether it be from the time of 1919 when we became an original member of the League of Nations, or the 7,000 years that preceded that date. But these ten years are the only period that we as a people have known as a democratic, independent national State; and if we refer to this, it is not because this rostrum should be used for the propaganda of national Governments, but in order that attention may be drawn to the vast experiments, or projects, that have taken place in the amelioration of the conditions of people in under-developed areas and the bridging of the gap resulting from the recession, or rather stagnation of development, existing during the period of imperial rule.
82. Therefore what happens in countries like ours, not India alone, is of world significance, because we have come today to a state of affairs where it is not possible to have prosperity in one place and misery somewhere else. Just as we say that war somewhere would become var everywhere, similarly, epidemics, famines and lower standards of life, bad conditions of labour and social unrest, are as infectious as the rest of the epidemics in the world.
83. When we became an independent country, without being addicted to any ideology, we took over in our own minds the political and the economic consequences of independence. There is so much said in these halls about, colonial rule, national independence, the sovereignty of nations, the much abused words "self-determination of peoples" and so on. But none of these has any meaning to the masses of the people of any country unless they are translated into terms of political facilities to express themselves, autonomy — swaraj, as we could call it in our country — satisfaction of hunger, provision of shelter, proper sanitation and organization of leisure. These are the social minima that must obtain in our civilized age.
84. We in our country took the plunge six or seven years ago when we not only accepted but proclaimed and embodied in our Constitution and political life the idea that the independence of our country must be the independence of all the peoples. What the West then regarded as an experiment is now part of our national life.
85. A few months ago, 121 million people registered their opinion as to who should constitute the Parliament of India. On our electoral rolls today are 193,429,004 people. That number is larger than the population of the United States. I am quite prepared to admit that one Indian may be far inferior to one American. But just as we are larger in quantity, our electorate is larger than the population of any country that is represented here.
86. We take legitimate pride in the fact that this democratic exercise has proceeded peacefully. Whether our political parties be of one type or another, whether they be Liberal, Constitutional, Congress, Communist, Socialist or all the other things there are — and we have fourteen parties in opposition to the Government, and what opposition! — not one of them has complained about the stifling of opinion or the rigging of elections. It is quite true that a great number of my colleagues have had their elections challenged by petitions, which is part of the constitutional process, and so long as there are clever lawyers in many countries there will be long procedures in this direction.
87. So for the second time in the last ten years millions and millions of people — men and women — without distinction of class, creed or colour, have gone to the polls and elected the government of the day in peaceful circumstances without having to call in the troops or the police or anything of that kind and, what is more, with the issues being fully explained. I know the issues had to be explained. I myself had to campaign for election for only a short period of time because the United Nations takes a great deal of one's time.
88. It is not possible in a country like ours to get away by saying, "I am a good man". You have to say why you are, and the people decide for themselves. This is a political aspect of our country. If it were confined to our national Parliament, where the representatives sit far away in our central metropolis in New Delhi, that in itself would not be a great advance in democracy. For the first time since the death of the village republics some 2,000 or 1,500 years ago, our country has gone back again to the conception of village democracy. So whether it be on the executive or the judicial side or even in respect to financial powers, today 200,000 villages in India are covered by our community project schemes, where six years ago there were only fifty. By 1960, all India, with 600,000 villages, will give an example regarding the majority of the ordinary people who live on the fruits of the soil — they are mainly engaged in agriculture. These areas today are organized not so much by government officials as, to a very large extent, by voluntary organizations. Even the expenditure funds of up to 65 per cent come from the people themselves.
89. I refer to this because, as the Secretary-General well knows, the United Nations has taken an interest in this project and is trying to discover how much it would suit other countries similarly placed, and not in an identical set of circumstances. We are always willing to offer such assistance and to derive such information and inspiration as we can from other people.
90. In a few years time, therefore, democracy will not be confined to our parliaments or our State legislatures. It will not be confined to those whose names figure in the headlines of newspapers, but will go down to every village in India where men and women even today are in tens of thousands of organizations which are fully democratic, where they express their views and, what is more, govern the area. We have some village communities in our part of India where the whole of the village assembly is composed of women. It may not be a good thing, but there it is.
91. We come now to our economic planning. We realize that no form of independence has any meaning unless it can bring to the populations freedom from starvation, from hunger or the threat of hunger, and such conditions as are required for a reasonable way of life. Of course, these conditions change. The better they become, the better people want them. There are some outstanding differences between countries like ours and those Western countries, including the United States, which have accomplished vast industrial achievements. We started with a political revolution and our industrial revolution follows. In Western communities, the industrial revolution came in and the people who became part of the industrial development demanded more political power. Therefore we have less time. We have more people who make calls upon us — that is, on the country.
92. The satisfaction of the aspirations of the people in terms of what they need cannot be put off on grounds of dearth of foreign exchange or inflation or this or that. Populations are impatient, and rightly so. Impatience is one of the concomitants of democracy. A democracy that is not impatient will soon cease to be and deteriorate into a very rigid society.
93. Therefore, having had this political revolution beforehand — whether in the village, the State, the municipality, the parliament, the chambers of commerce or the trade unions — everyone was making demands on the resources of the country, and it was essential that attention should be paid to economic planning. In 1950, we started in a very modest way. It was certainly modest when you compare it to the astronomical figures that you hear in the United States. The total outlay for our economic projects in the first five years came to $5,325 million. Of course, we did not pay it out in dollars, but this is the calculation. Of that sum, I am happy to think that we spent 23 per cent — over $1,200 million — on social services.
94. But it is not enough to spend money whether we have it or not. We must also look at the results. The results are not as good as we would like them to be. But the national income of India increased by 17.5 per cent during that period and the per capita income increased by 10.5 per cent.
95. Our main problem has always been the problem of food. We are a very densely populated country. We are not. like Australia, a whole continent inhabited by 10 million people. The average density of our population, taking the mountains and the seas and the rivers and everything else into account, is about 350 per square mile. There are 376 million people in 1,200,000 square miles of our territory. What is more, we are beset by the problem of refugees flowing from a neighbouring country into ours.
96. Food is our most important problem because, if we do not have it, then it must be imported. And for some strange reason, foreign food is always paid for in dollars, and dollars are a rare commodity. But so far, we are short of food grains. However, we have made progress to the extent of increasing their production by about 20 per cent in the last six years. So if our people work hard enough and if nature is kind, which it is not, the condition will greatly improve.
97. Not a year passes in our country, however, without either a flood or an earthquake or a cyclone or a drought of some kind. There is too much water in one place and too little in another. There are friends of ours, like the Foreign Minister of Australia, who says that we ought to learn soon to break the clouds and pour the water out. But I do not know what one part of India would think if we burst the clouds there and the other part did not have it. That is to be seen. At any rate, these natural calamities visit us year after year. This year, for example, in Kashmir, 747,000 people saw their villages go under water as the result of sudden flood.
98. Food production, however, has gone up, but people are eating more. Are we to say that they should not eat more? There have been produced 11 million tons of food. Similarly, our industrial production has gone up in a meagre way by about 22 per cent or so, and the production of capital goods has increased by 70 per cent. Consumer goods, which should be kept down for various reasons, have also gone up by one third.
99. India today produces — and most people regard this as a very strange surprise — a large quantity of electric power, but it is not as much as we require. In five years the quantity of electric power has doubled. We have brought under cultivation, owing to the scarcity of food, 16 million additional acres of land, which is watered by the rivers that normally flow into the sea. That is why we sometimes feel very sad that on this particular problem political considerations should come in and that we should have difficulties.
100. I am relating these points not in order to be complacent or to take the time of the meeting with what are, after all, national projects and national achievements. However, we consider that these are of very great importance in the area, particularly in South-East Asia and in other parts of Western Asia.
101. At the same time, social services have been developed. Owing to the existence of democratic institutions, a great deal of our social services, while they do not compare to social security measures either in Western Europe, in the United States or in other parts of the world, are largely met by voluntary contributions, with the Government, which represents the community, providing the initiative and the inspiration in many cases.
102. This is the balance sheet as it was at the beginning of last year. Then we went into what is called the second five-year plan. These plans do not mean that individuals are not allowed to develop private enterprise in India. In fact, we could not hope to achieve progress unless the development of every section of the population could take place. During the next five-year plan, our objective is to increase our national income, to expand industrialization, to increase employment opportunities and to reduce inequalities. For all this, our people must bear heavy burdens.
103. India today is the most heavily taxed country in the world. If you earn money, you pay income taxes; if you spend money, you pay expenditure taxes; if you save money, you pay taxes on wealth; if you leave money, you pay a State duty on inheritance. By the time everything is over, the people realize that the burdens on them are very great, but they have to carry these burdens in order that the future may be better than the present.
104. I do not want to go into any great detail about this, except to point out that this is a positive side. But we are also beset with problems, problems to which the Secretary-General makes reference in the economic section of his annual report [A/3594]. So far as the highly advanced industrial countries are concerned, adverse balances of trade do not affect them so much. But if the under-developed countries are really to get out of the rut of colonialism, then it is necessary that they should not be merely the producers of the raw materials supplied to the advanced industrial countries, taking in return what they can ill afford — the capital goods and the consumer goods of those countries. That is our big problem. We are faced today with an expanding economy; and our difficulties arise from our having to find the resources, particularly in the way of exports to the highly developed countries, for a higher standard of life, for which we have to pay by the produce that comes out of agriculture.
105. Until we are able to correct this balance, we shall not get out of the relationship of economic imperialism; that is to say, until our countries are able to balance their economies to a considerable extent, we cannot hope to make much progress.
106. In the advancement which we have made, there has also been the feature of international co-operation. While we have friendly relations with every country in the world, it is true that we are in the unhappy position in which our relations with our nearest neighbour could be better. But we would not say that so far as we are concerned either the desire or the anxiety to make them better is lacking. With every country in the world we have friendly relations, economic and political, and, more particularly, countries like the United States, the Soviet Union, New Zealand, Canada, Australia, Japan and Norway have come to our aid in various forms, whether through the United Nations or through bilateral agreements. A large amount of assistance, both in kind and in money, has come into India.
107. It would be a mistake to think that the economic development of our country, or of any country, should not depend mainly upon the efforts of its own people. In such a case it would have no real foundations and it would wither away. Therefore, when we speak in tills Assembly about assistance to under-developed countries, it must be on the basis of the economy of those countries and it must not be tied in with political relations. What is more, aid that goes to a country which does not make its own efforts, will not, in the long run, produce fruitful results.
108. I should like to take this opportunity, in case I do not get any other, of offering our thanks and expressing our gratitude to all the countries which I have mentioned, large and small. Even a country like the President’s, which I hope he will not mind my saying is a small one, has come to the assistance of India in a measure much larger than its resources would indicate and in a much larger proportion than other countries. We are immensely grateful for that.
109. Our greatest problem, however, is the problem of time. Unless we are able to make progress in the given time, the conflict between social aspirations and social satisfactions will become an even bigger problem, and this is a situation which a democracy has to face. We are determined to carry out our political and economic development on the basis of the sovereignty of our people. We intend to cultivate and maintain relations with all peoples, adhering firmly to the idea that friendship with one does not exclude friendship with another; in fact, it only extends the area of friendship.
110. With regard to foreign relations, more particularly with our neighbours, Burma, Ceylon, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand — I hope I have not omitted any — are not only good but have become closer each day. Australia to us becomes more and more a part of the Australasian continent. This has many significant aspects; it may be a contributory and a remedial factor in the racial conflicts which exist in the world. In many senses countries like ours are partly western and partly eastern by historic and economic circumstances, and we hope that in this way it will contribute in some measure to the purposes of the United Nations.
111. We have two problems in our area. One is part of an unfinished job, namely, the complete liquidation of colonialism in our country. Thanks to the wisdom of the British and French statesmen, two of the Western Powers which had been in occupation of our country have either fully or mostly relinquished the whole of that. We believe that, with the patience which we have shown in this matter, the completion of our negotiations with France, which have been based upon mutual respect and understanding, will soon come about in every respect. But there is still apart of our country under colonial rule under the Portuguese empire. But here as elsewhere, as in the whole of India, if we decided to have our liberation from one of the most powerful empires of modern times, that of Great Britain, by peaceful methods, we shall continue to do that in other places also. But until the whole of our motherland is free from foreign occupation, we could not regard our independence as complete.
112. We have not brought these matters before the United Nations because it is not our purpose to load the agenda with more subjects and merely to bring here problems which might perhaps be resolved in other ways. We have little doubt that the peoples who are interested in these territories will assert their freedom in the same way as we have done.
113. With our nearest neighbour we try as hard as we can to build up closer economic, political and cultural relations. There are large numbers of people flowing into India from our dear neighbouring country. Some come for a holiday, and they do not return, so that this leaves us a problem of refugees in which, I would point out, our country has had no assistance from anybody else. Since independence, 500,000 people, very nearly, have come into West Bengal, and the Government of India has been responsible for expenditures of up to $630 million in housing and in the provision of relief for the vast numbers of refugees that have flowed into India. West Bengal is such a crowded part of the world, and into our populations come those who are pushed out for various reasons, so that this refugee problem is really of international concern. It would be a very wrong thing to say that one country must have the land and that the other must have the people.
114. This continuing exodus from the other side does not make for friendly relations but strains our economy, and, what is more, we do not see the end of it. As I have said, it has cost us $630 million in the last six years, and for a country like ours, where the per capita income is 225 rupees a year — between $50 and $60 — that is a vast amount of money to spend. In Calcutta one can see any day human beings who have been driven out of their homelands and cut from their roots and their moorings, with nowhere to go and nowhere to look. And while we are an independent and free Government, and while we do the best we can, there are limits to our capacity and to our resources. Having regard to the vast burdens that already rest on the international community in connexion with refugees from different parts of the world, we have not yet invoked aid, but the time will come when this will become a very vast international problem.
115. At the same time, we are happy to think that the area of freedom is growing in the world, and only the other day we had the opportunity of welcoming a sister State of ours from the Commonwealth to the United Nations as an independent nation. I would be failing in my duty if I did not express — as, indeed, it is a privilege and a pleasure to do — our gratification and sense of pride at the fact that in all those areas which were the colonial empires of Britain there has been a rapid advance towards independence since we became independent. We used to say in those days that Britain really wanted freedom from its empire, and we started the march to freedom. Today in Malaya, as the result of wisdom and patience on both sides, there has been a reconciliation.
116. Whatever may be the difficulties of the future or of different communities, there has been an adjustment of monarchy to a republic and a quick march forward to the assumption of power. We hope that the remaining vestiges of empire in Asia will disappear, whether it be in India, far oil in the Pacific or in that vast continent of Africa where millions of people still live in conditions that are inhuman and where forced labour is the order of the day. It is a disgrace to all of us that human beings in any part of the world should live in those conditions, and they should come to an end.
117. We look to the time when, the wisdom of France will resolve the problems that are attendant on some of its vast possessions in Africa, and there are many signs that French public opinion reacts favourably in these matters.
118. In this connexion, it is my duty to state on behalf of my Government that, irrespective of the irritations we may create and irrespective of the fact that some may argue that the presence of such a large number of ex-colonial countries upsets the balance of this Assembly, we shall for ever, like our friends from Ghana, stand four-square and solidly by the side of those peoples who have been left on the road in the march towards independence. That is a duty we shall not forswear at any time. But that does not mean that we shall ever try to interfere with other Governments or have recourse to methods which were not our own in securing our own liberation.
119. There have come before us two or three great colonial problems — that of Algeria, that of Cyprus and that of West Irian. Since we shall have the occasion to do so in the First Committee, this is not the time to deal with those problems in detail, but I should like to say a few words here and now with regard to the one which is the most crucial in that it is attended by violence and a great deal of loss of life and slaughter all round, namely, the problem of Algeria.
120. We have great sympathy for the difficulties of France in this matter, derived largely from historical circumstances, but great nations must rise above difficulties and no difficulties can be pleaded in bar of human freedom. The Government of India stands firmly upon the conception that every person in the territory of Algeria — whatever the colour of his skin, whatever his racial stock and whatever his religion — is an Algerian, and that therefore there cannot be an independence that excludes those vast numbers of Frenchmen who have made Algeria their home.
121. Nationalism is territorial, and — if I may be pardoned and if I am not regarded as taking any liberties- I would like to say particularly to the Western countries that the force of nationalism today is, perhaps, the strongest force in the world, with the exception in many countries of religion. It would be a great mistake to ignore the power of nationalism because it is not directed into the channels of constructive endeavour. Where the peoples who hunger to be free are soon liberated and are faced with the grave economic problems of their own countries, so that they are preoccupied with them, then we would have unrest in the world. We would promote racial quarrels; we would promote divisions, even among friends, as happens in the case of Greece and the United Kingdom just now.
122. This era of colonialism no more belongs to us than does the paleolithic age; it belongs to an age that has passed behind. This is not to argue against the beneficence, the wisdom and the hard labour put in by administrators in the past. It is not to minimize the difficulties of metropolitan countries. But none of those difficulties can sta.id in the way of the natural aspirations of the peoples not to be foreigners in their own countries. We have lived through this, and we not only understand it but feel it every time.
123. We believe that the extension of these areas of freedom is an asset to the community. Who would say that the new countries, fifteen or twenty of them, that have joined this United Nations, with their millions of people who but a generation ago were under bondage, are not an asset to the international community? Every time we disenfranchise a people, every time we make a people non-functional, we are depriving the world community of what they could contribute. It is quite true that they bring problems, but they bring their contributions also.
124. So, under the President’s wise guidance, I hope that this Assembly — without rancour but with a sense of the practical, an appreciation of the fundamental rights of peoples and, what is more, an admission and recognition of the territorial character of nationalist movements — will realize that countries are not problems to their peoples. Countries are their homelands; they are the places where they are born and where their bodies are buried or burned when they die. Unless we look at this question in this way we shall not make much progress. Our own country, within the ways that are open to it, makes its own contribution.
125. In this connexion, reference has been made by one or two delegations to a fact which I might us well mention here. It concerns the existence of groups within the United Nations. I believe that it was the Secretary-General who said that it was not the United Nations that had created the renaissance of Asia. The United Nations simply reflects the renaissance of Asia. The United Nations did not perform a creative act in bringing about the independence of those countries. Only those countries that have become independent are here. I entirely agree with the representative of France in thinking that "groupism" is a very bad thing in community life, whether in a country or in the world as a whole. It would develop the disease which the Greeks used to call stasis — in this case a rancorous, prejudicial form of war. We on our side have no desire to cut this Assembly into groups.
126. I hope that the representative of France, with the logical mind of his people, will carry this further and not form, military groups in the world. After all, if groups are bad for the United Nations, groups are equally bad for the world, and if we want a free and united world and a world of peoples it is better that we do not divide it into compartments by harrow domestic walls, where it is the impediment of the flow of knowledge and information, and of the contact of man with man or mind with mind, that creates the impediments to traffic between nations.
127. I suppose the reference here is largely to the groups of countries that have been here. For years, ever since the Organization was formed, there have been meetings of groups. They are not blocs in any sense; their policies are different, their military alignments are different, they do not all vote together; but when it comes to a question of an attack on the national liberty of a country they, in common with other countries like the United States or the Soviet Union, which do not belong to these groups, as was seen last year, band together. It is true that it is a good thing for countries which are near to each other or like-minded or have similar backgrounds or histories to be able to get together, and it may contribute to those factors to which the Secretary-General refers in his report of the United Nations as a scene of diplomacy or of mutual understanding as between nations.
128. Our Government and our country will never be a party to creating continental regionalisms. In this connexion, I will particularly say to the President, who come from that part of the world, that at the Bandung Conference one of the main insistences was that, while it represented a resurgence of Asia and Africa, we should not subscribe in any form to a continental regionalism. Therefore, with great respect, I should like to agree with the representatives of the Netherlands and of France who referred to these groups and who are as one with us in re cognizing their good functioning and being against the bad in it. I take the liberty of asking both of them — nations that are characterized by their sense of logic— to pursue this a little further and to say that this groupism is a bad thing whether it be in our national parliaments — where you do not get any stable government if there are too many groups, as some countries know to their cost — or whether it is applied to the whole world, so this Assembly does not become a gathering of good nations and bad nations; it does not become a collection of one Holy Alliance against another Holy Alliance, but makes something of the Charter where it becomes a centre for harmonizing interests.
129. In this twelfth year of the United Nations, while there are still many unfinished tasks, we may congratulate ourselves on the resolving of, or at least on the developments that have taken place in regard to the problem we discussed arising from the invasion of Egypt last year. We are happy to think that the Government of Egypt, of its own free will, has made itself a party to international commitments whereby it reiterates and fully accepts the Constantinople Convention of 1888 and, what is more, subjects itself, in so far as the Convention is concerned, to the authority of the International Court of Justice to which it is not a party, not having signed the optional clause. I believe that one of the historic documents of the year is what is called the unilateral declaration by the Government of Egypt where, with great ingenuity, it has created a situation where it has made itself part of an international commitment and introduced the sanctity and authority of the United Nations in the enforcement of laws.
130. I am also happy to feel and my Government is happy to feel that, while some problems, like paying for the various expenses incurred in connexion with the Suez Canal, the maintenance of the United Nations Emergency Force, the settling of various accounts with regard to the nationalization or other incidents arising from the events that took place last year, still remain, progress is being made in this direction without in any way trespassing upon the free will of Egypt or of the other countries concerned.
131. It is our view that there is an enormous desire on the part of the peoples concerned to let the past be buried and to proceed in an era of co-operation. It is not our experience that there is a nursing of grievances in these lands but that there is a stretching forward to the new. It is not because we poorer peoples are any more high-minded or idealistic; our interests lead that way. We could not live in the nursing of past grievances; neither individuals nor countries can look in two directions at the same time. Either you look forward and march on or you look backward and nurse your glories and grievances, and this leads to a deterioration. Thus we are happy to think that in all these matters, both financial and other, some progress is being made.
132. The great Powers, the United States, the Soviet Union, France, the United Kingdom and others would do well to recognize quite fully the changes that are taking place, taking into account the national aspirations of peoples and, what is more, the pride of peoples in doing things themselves — the Egyptians are very proud of running the Suez Canal and at no time has it been mechanically run as well as it is now, carrying heavier traffic than at any time before. Once more I should like to pay my tribute to the Egyptian Government for the great patience and wisdom it has shown in not saying, "The Canal is ours; you can pay and go", but making a free, open-handed declaration to the peoples of the world which, by the announcement of its international instrument and by registration with the United Nations, under the procedures of the Court, has created a bond which is very different, so far as we are concerned, from what was expressed by the representative of New Zealand [683rd meeting]. We think it is a good settlement which will lead to further settlements. I am convinced that, given good will, the cooperation between the users of the Canal and the Suez Canal Authority will grow. I feel sure that the income from the Canal will largely go into the development of the Canal, because not only the countries that use it, but also Egypt, through whose land the Canal flows and whose waters belong to it, need it more than anything else.
133. Our main concern in this twelfth year of our existence in the United Nations is with regard to those problems to which the Secretary-General has again referred in the section of his report dealing with economic and social questions, that is, the problem of the development of the under-developed countries. This is not a question of providing charity for those who are helpless, but a common-sense question of establishing a world equilibrium. You cannot have a political equilibrium if there is not economic equilibrium. There has been a considerable amount of aid from other countries to under-developed countries. After all, this is a new idea. It is only since the Second World War that countries have come forward and given out of their hard-earned wealth, having to fight their national legislatures and to convince them — and after all, no one pays income taxes cheerfully, I am told; I do not pay any, they collect it before I get any money. So much of this aid has flowed into these places and the various countries concerned in this matter are to be congratulated.
134. In this connexion, I should like to congratulate the President's country — and in fact all the countries of the United Nations, bar one or two which I hope will soon join the rest — which has been engaged in promoting the Special United Nations Fund for Economic Development. We have had discussions about this year after year, and we are in the happy position that the Economic and Social Council has recommended the inauguration of this Fund.
135. We hope that the United States with its characteristic generosity and foresight will come forward and speed up this process and be able to appreciate the fact more fully that multilateral aid of this kind does not displace bilateral aid, any more than our membership of the United Nations in any way vitiates our ties, shall we say, with the Commonwealth or our friendly relations with the Soviet Union, the United States,, Nepal or whatever country it may be. We hope that in the years before us this development of cooperative enterprises between nations, where nations both large and small, rich and poor, will contribute to each other's development, will receive the implementation of the General Assembly and that a beginning will be made.
136. We are also glad to notice in the introduction to the Secretary-General's annual report a reference to an international administrative service. I think no greater contribution could be made than by drawing from various nations the talents of their people to the services of the countries which want them. We are one of those countries where, in a haphazard way or by bilateral arrangements, large numbers of people in our area come in, expert professional people of various kinds. But the time has come, it appears to me, for the Secretary-General's idea to afford permanent recruitment facilities of this character where people will be hallmarked as being fit for this purpose. While they would still be nationals of their countries, they may serve others in the interests of humanity. That will take place and side by side with it the more international character of our Organization and its servants will also emerge.
137. Having said this, it would be wrong for us to sit back and think that everything is going well and that there are no problems. When we met last time, we were faced with two of the biggest problems that we had ever had, and the Assembly was very much preoccupied by them.
138. In the course of the speeches before the Assembly, reference has been made to the problems of the Middle East. In this connexion, I should like to say that my country carries a heavy responsibility, both financial and otherwise, in affording on the armistice line the kind of facilities and services which the United Nations called upon it to provide.
139. We are, as I said, a new nation with a very small armed force entirely conditioned and conceived for the defence of our frontiers, without any apparatus for operations abroad. But, as a result of the call of the United Nations and also because we knew that it would be a contribution towards bringing about peace, a battalion of the Indian army stands guard on this armistice line in order to prevent any skirmishes and to further the cause of peace. While it is a great sacrifice for the countries concerned, particularly countries like ourselves and the small Scandinavian countries whose resources are not commensurate with the tasks they have to perform, I feel that we are doing something which is very much in furtherance of the Charter.
140. We do not subscribe to the view that this Emergency Force should be regarded as a pilot project or an embryonic international force of the future. That is a problem by itself, and some development can come about, should come about and will come about when the great Powers have resolved their problems among themselves. This Force was conceived and improvised for a specific purpose. It is not working according to the plan of the Charter, it is not responsible to the Security Council — it is very difficult to find out to whom it is responsible — but at any rate the troops are there, they stopped the fighting. I hope the Secretary-General will not ask me to send more troops; we do not have any.
141. The Emergency Force has not merely kept the peace in that part of the world, but its members have performed a very great international operation in bringing about friendship between the peoples where they are and themselves. We have not had one single incident of an anti-social character in regard to our troops in the Gaza area.
142. It has been said that the Middle East is a problem with possibilities of tumult, of catastrophe and of conflict. I have no desire to venture into this problem because much talking about it does not get it very far. But, committed as we are in many ways. It is necessary for us to express our position so _that neither the United Nations nor our Arab friends will have any misunderstanding of our position. We do not regard the Middle East as a problem. It is composed of the countries and of the peoples that inhabit them. We do not believe in countries being backward in various ways. That is to look at it from the point of view of another country. What the Middle East requires is economic development and comparative peace.
143. If the nations of the world would agree not to strew their arms everywhere, especially without the recipients having to pay for them, then I think we should have greater peace in the world.
144. It is our conviction that Syria, for instance, has no intention whatsoever of becoming involved in the "cold war". The Syrians, like ourselves, are a people who want to be left free to build their own lives; we hope that, if they are allowed to do so, they will make a greater contribution to the extension of peace areas in the world, where countries are not committed beforehand and are not standing as seconds in a duel. Our position with regard to these areas is that their sovereignty should be respected and that there should be no interference by other people. A degree of neighbourliness should be shown, so that if they require defence materials for their own defences they, as national sovereign countries, may make their own choice; but we hope that none of them will so starve their peoples as to load themselves with arms while the population suffers. But, of course, it is an internal matter.
145. Therefore our position is: respect for the sovereignty of these countries, non-interference in their affairs, a degree of reciprocity in their relationship, and, what is more, recognition that a small country is as conscious of its dignity and of its position and independence as the mightiest country in the world. In fact, smaller countries are even more conscious of their positions than powerful countries which can afford to forget them.
146. Then we have the outstanding problem which, though we come from Asia, is as much our problem as anyone else’s, because it is a world problem — that of Germany. The Government of India hopes that peaceful and diplomatic solutions will enable the world to close the chapter of the war and enable the German people to take their place in this Assembly.
147. Those solutions have to be peaceful and they have to be democratic. We have to give up the idea of victor and vanquished in this matter. What is more, any solution of that kind should carry with itself the removal of any fears that may be entertained by either side, in view of the last seventy years of German history. If it were possible for those people who are most concerned, namely, the German people, if it were possible for the countries of the Soviet Union which have diplomatic representation in both East and West Germany to make contributions to their unity, if it were possible for the United States with its great idealism and great economic power to realize, even more than it has done, that the present continuance of the state of war — because there is no peace — is preventing that great country with its vast industrial potential, a country which now has trade relations with almost every country in the world, including China, that would be a move in the right direction.
148. In our opinion, it is a great mistake to be wedded to doctrines that have been recited so often instead of seeking the path of peaceful and democratic solutions. No solution is possible where opinions strongly held, either by majorities or by minorities, can be totally ignored. In other words, solutions have to be agreed solutions and not imposed ones.
149. This takes us to the other big problem that confronts us, and that is the projection of the "cold war" apparatus in our areas. We have always recognized the right of any sovereign country to do what it likes with its riches, with its arms, or whatever it is, but equally we claim the right to express our opinions about them. We cannot say: "this should not be done; it cannot be done". We can only say what its consequences are. The distribution of arms all over the world without the recipients having to pay for them is one of the main causes of friction in the world.
150. In the old days, in the inter-war years particularly, people who were in public affairs used to refer to those dealing in the arms traffic in the world as "merchants of death". At least, in those days, countries that wanted arms had to pay for them. But nowadays, with political alignments of various kinds, these military alignments stand in the way of the United Nations. This should be the great pact of nations. As a result of the events of last year, thanks to the initiative taken by the United States, which we all joined, we proved to the world that aggression cannot pay and will not work. What is more, it proved negatively that no pacts of any kind have any value.
151. With respect to the Middle East, it would be unrealistic for us not to recognize the force of Arab nationalism. Therefore, while we have no desire to make any further protest about these pact areas — we are a people who believe that the extension of the peace areas in the world of nations which are comparatively backward, whose arms are not adequate even for their own defence, simply bringing them into a scheme where they, in the long run, will become hewers of wood and drawers of water, and their territory would be theatres of war — we believe that is not the way to promote peace. We are not at the present moment saying anything about the alliances between military countries. But the drawing in of vast areas where economic progress should take place unhindered by this business — and what is more, where economic aid, as I shall point out in a short time, is tied to other things — is not at all a helpful factor.
152. I have made reference to the assistance given by various countries in regard to the financing of economic development. In this connexion I would refer to a document which has just come into my hands on this subject [E/3047]. In this document there is no reference to any particular country. All the countries are given, whether it be the United States, the Soviet Union, Belgium or Norway. But it is interesting to notice, for example, table XXVII contained in this document, in which the aggregate amounts of money, in kind or otherwise, that have gone into the various countries, are listed.
153. What do we find? India has a population of 376 million, and the total amount of aid that went into India during the three years of 1954, 1955 and 1956 was $245 million. That works out at 70 cents per head of the population. As compared with that, the aggregate amount of loans that went into Pakistan, shall we say, was $309 million, making $3.9 per head of the population. Or we can take a country like Jordan, where the assistance given amounted to $80 per head of the population, or South Korea, where the amount was $31 per head of the population.
154. I do not grudge these peoples this money; all I am saying is that, when we tie up economic questions with political considerations, we get that kind of distorted result. On the other hand, it is a good thing for countries that the amount of foreign aid they receive, while it must be adequate for getting them over certain humps, should not be such as to take away from them their sense of self-reliance.
155. I should like to draw the attention of the General Assembly to this document because it contains an enormous amount of information about the way that assistance is given to under-developed areas, and it contains all the facts and figures. It was prepared by the Economic and Social Council as a result of the request made last year by the General Assembly.
156. The other outstanding problems are the problems of the Far East. My country, together with Canada and Poland, is engaged in Indo-China. This, again, is not a task we sought, but we found ourselves there. In 1954, thanks largely to the initiative of the United Kingdom Prime Minister of that time, large-scale war was averted in that area, and on 11 August 1954, for the first time since the invasion of China by Japan twenty-five years earlier, the guns were silenced. Since then, attempts have been made to try to settle the problem. A representative of India is chairman of die Commission that deals with the matter. The best we can say about it is that no further conflicts are taking place, but I believe that, given good will on all sides and the recognition that these countries must be allowed to live under their own conditions of sovereignty, it is possible to obtain solutions.
157. Over there in the last eighteen months our people have been trained diplomatically and otherwise in order to carry out their tasks. While this is not directly and organizationally a United Nations problem, we think that a settlement of the problem of Indo-China, in which three countries in conditions of unity will settle down as democratic nations, would be to our advantage. So far as the Government of India is concerned, so long as it can perform any duties and it is wanted, or, at least, it is not pushed out, it will continue to do so.
158. Korea still remains sundered. Thanks to the initiative of the United Nations in 1952, war came to an end, but Korea is still an unhappy land awaiting its freedom. Our views on this question have been expressed in the First Committee; they remain the same.
159. A few days ago, in asking the General Assembly to inscribe the item concerning Chinese representation on the agenda, we referred to the problems of the Far East [686th meeting]. It would not be doing a service to the General Assembly if we did not point out that it is not possible for this Assembly to perform its functions and that it could never become a United Nations when 600 million people who have a constituted government are excluded from its competence and its purview. In addition, there are many outstanding problems of disarmament and the development of nuclear energy for industrial purposes which cannot be solved without the co-operation of these vast numbers of people.
160. I have no desire to go into this question of representation, but I should say that we have found that the industrial and economic advances that have taken place there are of some value to us from the lessons they give. In a similar way, the Chinese come to see how we control floods or run factories, or whatever it may be. So this mutual exchange takes place, and we are happy that in spite of political disabilities, some sixty-eight countries, including the Federal Republic of Germany, have entered into trade relations with China. We hope again that world public opinion will soon develop to the extent where we will be able to take a realistic view of the situation and, while in no way subscribing to the form of government or affording approval, we can do what is necessary under the terms of the Charter.
161. These are the main problems that confront us regionally. But really the problem that is before the United Nations is the problem of human survival, and if this Assembly did nothing beyond making some small advance to halt the race in armaments, if it did something to reverse the engines of war, we would have deserved well of ourselves and of humanity. In this connexion, I do not share the view of the representative of New Zealand, who said: "The Assembly is now faced with a choice. It is a choice between deceptively simple proposals whose purpose is propaganda, and more complex proposals genuinely intended to bring about a solution." [683rd meeting, para. 152.]
162. Our task is not to allot blame or praise. Our task is to find ways of reconciliation. The world cannot be destroyed by halves; if it is going to be destroyed, it will be destroyed as a whole. War somewhere means war everywhere. It is necessary for us to approach this problem with a degree of independence of mind and also taking into account the consequences of our lack of action in this matter. I make no apology for appealing to the delegations concerned to remember that this disarmament question, whether it be suspension of test explosions or making an advance on the main issue or on the other issue of the machinery, is a matter which concerns each nation individually. It is not a question of alignments or commitments; it is a question of world survival.
163. In addition, we have as a human race a great legacy going back, as far as we know, to the paleolithic ages. Are we to see all this destroyed because we cannot get over our small prejudices, or are we to make our lives so onerous and difficult by leading to inflations in various countries, by creating this kind of war neurosis in which every country lives under the threat of an explosion somewhere else? Even more, are we to resort to these engines of destruction, the consequences of which, as I shall point out In a moment, are not even known to the people, though they are known to be very bad, and therefore take upon ourselves the responsibility of making a holocaust not only for the present time, but of making this world into a barren desert, or, rather, not a barren desert, since no one knows what it would be? It may be that one of the reasons people wish to travel to the moon is because they think they cannot live here.
164. Therefore, in our submission, the problem of disarmament should be approached more from the point of view stated by the representative of Japan, who said: "It is equally the problem of all Member States, and indeed the unending concern of all mankind. Measures to solve this problem cannot and should not be dictated by the tactical and strategic considerations of the great Powers concerned." [680th meeting, para. 81.]
165. We are happy to have this emphatic declaration from a sister country in Asia, which has come under the direct impact of radiation. The people and Government of Japan, from their own experience and from a humanitarian motivation, attach great importance to the suspension of nuclear test explosions. I shall deal with these matters a little later, but I should like to say, on this problem of disarmament, which is the problem before us, that it would be entirely wrong for any one of us to be greatly burdened by the difficulties that have arisen, by the deadlocks that face us, or even by party and political alignments, because here, more than anywhere else, we speak for the present and future generations. We speak in the name of the human legacy of the past, and therefore we as a country look to every single nation here, not in order to be against anybody, not in order to be in any other group, not to secure a voting victory, or anything of that kind.
166. We all know, as the Secretary-General points out in the introduction to his report, that voting victories are of a limited value. The only true agreements are those that have behind them the enormous volume of public opinion in the world, and, what is more, as I said in the case of South Africa, the one vote we want is the vote of South Africa.
167. Therefore it is necessary that the smaller countries, so-called, should rise to the fulness of their sovereign stature and proclaim the conscience of mankind. It is not that other people do not respond, but they are weighted down by their own difficulties and responsibilities. Those of us who have no bombs to destroy, those of us who have no bases in other countries, those of us who have no concern lest someone should attack us, whether in the name of the Warsaw Pact or of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the opportunity is presented to us to add our moral strength, so that the voice of the small man may be a collective and effective voice. We are accountable to ourselves, and we should all ask ourselves whether we have voted on the right side and for the right cause, and I am sure that there can be no two answers to that question.
168. There are three aspects of this proposal, the details of which I do not propose to deal with because it will come up before the First Committee. The first deals with the cessation of thermonuclear tests. I am sure the General Assembly will not look upon this as a hardy annual. In 1954, in the Parliament of India, we appealed to the world for the suspension of those tests. Our proposals were well received at that time; indeed, we thought we had very wide support, including the support of the United Kingdom during some six months. In June of last year the Government of India presented its views before the Disarmament Commission, and I am happy to say that the views we presented appeared to be welcomed and we were told that they would be considered. What happened afterwards is not known.
169. These nuclear tests have gone on from 1945 to 1957; I will deal with their history later, but during this twelve-year period there have been 127 nuclear explosions in the world, 86 by the United States, 22 by the Soviet Union and 19 by the United Kingdom. These already constitute a serious danger to humanity.
170. The representative of the United Kingdom, Mr. Lloyd, told us [685th meeting] that the suspension of nuclear tests was not disarmament. I fully subscribe to that. It is true that just because we suspend the tests we do not get disarmament, but I shall ask Mr. Lloyd to bear that in mind, so that when the tests have been suspended he will proceed to the next step. However, you cannot on that basis argue that there should be no suspension, which we say would be an initial step in the process of disarmament. It would be a step away from nuclear weapons and from the idea of mass destruction, a step towards the laying aside of arms.
171. There are various other reasons. It was said some years ago that there were only two countries in the world which had those weapons and that therefore it would probably be easier to come to some arrangement. Now there are three countries, and next year there may be four, five or six. The area of potential destruction is being extended, and the problems of control are becoming more and more difficult.
172. Therefore we want to submit to this General Assembly that there should be some method of suspending these tests, because after all, if after a period of suspension no progress at all was made in the lowering of tensions — and we agree with the representative of Ireland [682nd meeting] that what is required is a change of outlook and feeling in the world — it would be possible to resume them. We cannot, of course, deal merely with sentiment; we have to go into operational matters which have a bearing upon it.
173. There is a vast degree of agreement on these matters, and I think it would be wrong of the General Assembly not to pay its tribute to the Sub-Committee of the Disarmament Commission which has worked laboriously for some time, though without much success as far as results are concerned. As the representative of Lebanon has said, not a gun, not a bomb nor any other instrument has been thrown away. But the Sub-Committee did make very great progress; the very fact that the countries which have unfortunately divided themselves into two camps were able to sit down together and discuss these matters was in itself a great progress.
174. I propose to deal briefly with three aspects of this question. It is the intention of my delegation to submit to the General Assembly a suggestion to the effect that each of the countries now capable of carrying out test explosions should inform the Secretary-General of its willingness to suspend them. No time limit should be specified, because that would amount to licensing them.
175. We recognize the apprehension that is felt in some quarters about non-detectability and about evasion, and we are willing to admit that there is an arguable case on those grounds, though we do not accept it ourselves. Our advice leads us to the conclusion that it is possible to detect explosions and to avoid evasions; scientific advance is so great today that it would be very wrong for anyone to say that science cannot do this or that if it is faced with the task.
176. It is our view, since such doubts are entertained, that the whole problem of the suspension of nuclear tests and the prevention of evasions is closely linked with the subject of inspection and control, which should be carried out by a body of people who would be selected in equal numbers from those holding differing points of view, who should then invite other countries which are not nearly so committed on this matter, so that the whole problem could be looked at technically in that way.
177. We do not see how a suggestion of this kind can be regarded as anything but reasonable. The time has come, if disarmament is to be achieved at all, in view of the present state of distrust in the world, to realize that it is not possible to achieve it without the machinery of inspection and control. If we are to go on continually arguing whether we should disarm first and inspect afterwards or inspect first and disarm afterwards we are not likely to get anywhere, but if it is possible to throw the whole of this matter and the purely practical proposals connected with it into the hands of competent people, experts in this case or perhaps political leaders in other cases, for there are those who have not taken sides in this matter, it is possible that other ideas will be produced which will make inspection possible.
178. This was the way we found successful in other matters, in Korea, in Indo-China, even in Egypt; therefore if there were some sort of machinery for opening a middle way we might eventually achieve the suspension of nuclear explosions. On the other hand, if you are going to go on saying that because one side proposes suspension and the other does not, and therefore the matter should not be pursued, we shall not get anywhere.
179. I have referred to the number of explosions. I also wish to take this opportunity, even though it may be slightly anticipating the discussion in the First Committee, to say that nations and peoples should be careful about being led astray by What we regard as fallacious arguments about the kinds of bombs that will humanely kill people or will not kill them at all.
180. We are told about clean bombs. This is not the time to argue it scientifically, but what are these clean bombs? Clean bombs are fusion weapons detonated in the air, in the stratosphere or somewhere, at very great heights, and therefore they do not make for secondary radiation because they do not churn up the earth. But how are they triggered? By fission bombs of the Hiroshima type, and even those triggering bombs are four-and-a-half times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb. Where does this radiation go? Any idea of a clean bomb is like the idea of humane slaughter — it does not exist. There can be no kind of clean destruction — it is like telling someone "I would like to slit your honourable throat”. While this idea may be honestly put forward, it is something that will lead us into a plain lie. A clean bomb is a bomb that still releases radiation four-and-a-half times greater than the Hiroshima bomb. (I think I am right about it, that was a 10-megaton bomb, and therefore there is no question of its being harmless.)
181. Here I think the best authorities are the scientists of the United States; in no country has there been so much study about these matters, and fortunately for us there is freedom of information which makes the results available.
182. Before the United States Congress, in June of this year, evidence was given by geneticists. What did they say? Here is a quotation from the report: "Their general conclusion was that any amount of radiation could damage reproductive cells, thus causing mutations in the hereditary pattern. In genetics, they warned, there is no such thing as a 'safe dose' of radiation. They suggested that they might have underestimated previously the genetic damage caused by radiation."
183. Professor Crow of the University of Wisconsin, who was the first witness, said: "We can be sure that several hundreds of thousands, or tens of thousands, or perhaps more persons will be diseased or deformed or will die prematurely or be otherwise impaired as a consequence of fall-out if the present rates of testing continue."
184. I am not going to read all this material because it can be read somewhere else. But it is important for us to realize that an appeal was made in this country by no fewer than 2,173 atomic scientists, who have told us the following: "We, the American scientists whose names are signed below, urge that an international agreement to stop the testing of nuclear bombs be made now. "Each nuclear bomb test spreads an added burden of radioactive elements over every part of the world. Each added amount of radiation causes damage to the health of human beings all over the world and causes damage to the pool of human germ plasm such as to lead to an increase in the number of seriously defective children that will be born in future generations. "So long as these weapons are in the hands of only three Powers, an agreement for their control is feasible. If testing continues, and the possession of these weapons spreads to additional Governments, the danger of outbreak of a cataclysmic nuclear war through the reckless action of some irresponsible national leader will be greatly increased. “An international agreement to stop the testing of nuclear bombs now could serve as a first step toward a more general disarmament and the ultimate effective abolition of nuclear weapons, averting the possibility of a nuclear war that would be a catastrophe to all humanity...”
185. There is a great deal of evidence in this way. We fully subscribe to the idea behind the Belgian suggestion [685th meeting] that more information should be made available through the Assembly channels, provided this idea of affording information does not act as a measure of delay in finding solutions. There is no doubt that we have now enough information, whether it be from the Federation of American Scientists or from any other part of the world. The scientists say that "rapid advances in international political arrangements are necessary if disaster is to be avoided". The test ban could be monitored by a United Nations monitoring agency.
186. Here I would like to state — and I shall elaborate on this in the First Committee — that in our country, while we do not make and have no intention of making destructive weapons, there has been a considerable advance in atomic science. Hundreds of scientists are working in this field; there are reactors made in India with Canadian assistance, and various uranium metal processing plants, and so on. Our feeling is that unless there is control now, unless this thing is given up now, the time will come when materials that exist in ordinary plants will, irrespective of all agreements, be used for other purposes. The scientists go on to say: "The long record of failure in disarmament negotiations has left the world weary of pious talk on this subject and sceptical of the possibility of ultimate control. We now need this positive and constructive step of arms limitation...".
187. Therefore, the first thing that we would like to ask for is that there should be a suspension of nuclear tests, and we offer as a constructive suggestion the idea that there must be some provision against the misuse of such suspension by others. If this can be discussed, even in the Disarmament Commission, we are bound to advance towards solutions. And if this Assembly did nothing else except decide on or recommend the suspension of these tests, it would have taken a remarkable step towards reversing the course of armaments.
188. The second thing that we ask is this. At the present time, there is a conflict between those who say that no more nuclear fuel should be used for making arms, and others who say: yes, no more nuclear fuel, but no more use of arms. As far as the United Nations is concerned, as early as 1946 it was laid down that our aim was the prohibition of these arms [resolution 41 (I)]. There is only one thing to do with weapons of mass destruction and that is not to have them. I think it is possible, given the freedom of coming together, given a plateau of agreement — on which the parties seem to meet, but again they have teen torn asunder by clouds of suspicion — given a very large area of agreement, to set up a scientific and technical commission to recommend to the Disarmament Commission an adequate system of inspection arrangements in all the territories where this is necessary.
189. From our study of this problem, we think it is possible. We will never get anywhere by what President Eisenhower has called the two atomic colossi speaking against each other and glaring at one another. But if it were possible to have common inspection, neither of these great and powerful countries could be expected to submit to an inspection in which they did not take part. No one suggests that. They should take part as the principal parties, but there would be something to keep them together.
180. I think that a great many problems can be solved by arrangements of this kind. Therefore we would suggest, when the time comes, the setting up of a commission for this purpose, composed of equal numbers of representatives of the two differing views, and the representatives of other States. We do not subscribe to the idea of appointing an arbiter in this matter; one might be chosen by agreement between the two sides. The commission could deal with questions such as the time from which the future production of fissionable material in all countries would be available only for peaceful purposes; an undertaking to refrain from the use of thermonuclear bombs; the dismantling of stocks for other purposes.
191. The third aspect of disarmament, on which we have submitted a draft resolution before the First Committee, is that there should be some change in the composition of the Disarmament Commission and its Sub-Committee. That Sub-Committee was setup on the initiative of the Indian delegation in 1953, and the hope at that time was that the five countries composing it, all competent and capable and since re in their devotion to peace, would be able to work round the table and not in two camps. But as it happened — and it has received much publicity — if has become largely the reflection of two points of view. Nevertheless, the progress they have made is a very considerable contribution which can be utilized hereafter.
192. We would like at this point to say that on 16 July 1945, the Americans exploded at Alamogordo in New Mexico the first nuclear bomb, before the Hiroshima bomb. The atomic age had begun. On 4 October 1957, the Soviet scientists sent out a satellite into what is called interspace. Now the interplanetary age has begun.
193. From 1945 to 1957, humanity, the nations, and the Governments, while they struggled with these matters, made no progress and gave no recognition that we were dealing with a different problem from what we faced before. Great as suspicions may be, there can be no more pregnant danger than the actual consequences themselves. It is for us to reconcile these two matters. Humanity's intelligence, its inventiveness, its capacity for adaptation, all of this has advanced, but human wisdom has not kept pace. The imaginativeness of mankind, the consideration of the future of posterity, or the value of our inheritance, this is the conflict that faces us. Unless mankind is able to reconcile technical advance with humanity and wisdom, then there will be people who have no vision, and those who have no vision must perish.
194. We think that we should take account of what has happened, not in terms of fear, not in terms of saving face, not in terms of national pride, but recognizing that we have begun a new interplanetary epoch. Just as we threw away the opportunities of control because of our difficulties in eliminating the consequences of atomic discoveries, there is no doubt that science, while it is beneficial to mankind, on the one hand, is equally capable of doing much harm,
195. This is the time, then, to come to an agreement so that there will be a sharing of knowledge where knowledge is free and where humanity is not divided by domestic walls. That is the only reasoning that we can follow and we, as a small, weak, and, if you like, an inexperienced nation, appeal to the atomic colossi, as they are called by President Eisenhower, to deal with this matter in this way. The time has come to recognize the changes that are taking place and to move towards each other on this plateau of agreement that has already been reached.
196. Those of you who have carefully read the debates of the Sub-Committee of the Disarmament Commission will find that there has been considerable agreement. I think it is only right to pay a tribute to the great contribution made by Mr. Harold Stassen, not by any formula, but by the atmosphere of optimism he has brought with him. Nothing can be done without faith in the objective, and at present, if you think you are not likely to get agreement, then there will be no agreement. On the other hand, we cannot ignore the difficulties that exist, and that is why we have made this practical suggestion.
197. Speaking before this Assembly four years ago, the President of the United States said in regard to surprise attacks and consequences: "But for me to say that the defence capabilities of the United States are such that they could inflict terrible losses upon an aggressor, for me to say that the retaliation capabilities of the United States are so great that such an aggressor's land would be laid waste, all this, while fact, is not the true expression of the purpose and the hopes of the United States." — and I would add, the United Nations. "To pause there would be to confirm the hopeless finality of a belief that two atomic colossi are doomed malevolently to eye each other indefinitely across a trembling world." (That is what has happened in the Disarmament Commission up to now.) "To stop there would be to accept helplessly the probability of civilization destroyed, the annihilation of the irreplaceable heritage of mankind handed down to us from generation to generation, and the condemnation of mankind to begin all over again the age-old struggle upward from savagery towards decency, and right, and justice. Surely no sane member of the human race could discover victory in such desolation. Could anyone wish his name to be coupled by history with such human degradation and destruction? Occasional pages of history do record the faces of the 'great destroyers', but the whole book of history reveals mankind's never ending quest for peace and mankind’s God-given capacity to build." [470th meeting, paras. 95 and 96.]
198. If I may say so with respect, this is an excellent contribution to human knowledge, which could not have been better phrased.
199. Before I leave this rostrum, I wish to repeat once again that when the time comes to take some step towards disarmament, we appeal for consideration for any proposal irrespective of the source from which it may come or of the fact that it does not come from the great Powers, with which we constantly keep in consultation and for whose wisdom and experience we have great respect. We think that this is not a matter that concerns only a small group; it concerns the whole of humanity.
200. Today, it is possible to stop these explosions. We may be told that some explosions have taken place inside a mountain and there is no way of detecting them. The answer is that in every country some burglars escape, but we do not abolish policemen for that reason. There may be an evasion somewhere. By and large, we would stop this evil. We would proclaim to the world that we no longer believe in the thermo-nuclear gospel. We believe in co-operation. Once there is suspension of these explosions, co-operation becomes inevitable and the knowledge that is at the disposal of any one nation should be at the disposal of the other. The barriers that we have built not only in trade but in science and understanding between races and peoples will begin to disappear.
201. I make a fervent appeal to the representatives here that we should not depart from this Assembly without proclaiming to the world that the nations of the world, large and small, are conscious of a rising feeling in the world, and let us not forget this. Parliament after parliament and people after people all the world over are faced with the same situation. We have been told that millions of human beings to be born and other forms of life will undergo mutations. Unknown diseases will creep over the earth. The civilization we know will be destroyed. But no Government, no people, will take the right decision merely because of the fear of the consequences. We have a duty by our legacy. We have a duty by the present generation. The Foreign Minister of Belgium said that the present generation was not responsible for the evils around the world. Nobody says it is. But the present generation will be responsible for the destruction that will be wrought in the world if it does not cry halt.