Miscellaneous - This Day That Age   

dated July 6, 1956: An approach of tolerance

Prime Minister Nehru said in London on July 4 that the Indian approach in international affairs was an approach of tolerance, "call it the approach of co-existence if you want." Speaking at a reception organised by the India League, he said India had an essentially tolerant approach to the problems of the world, what he would call a pagan approach. It accepted that people could have differing opinions and yet live together. The message of Indian culture was the message of tolerance. That approach "becomes essential in the age of atomic and hydrogen bombs because, otherwise, we go rapidly to mutual extermination and extinction." Sometimes the criticism was made of the Indian attitude that it was "a holier than thou" attitude. "I am not taking up the position that we are better than others. In many ways we are worse." Mr. Nehru said that he often found people in other countries, to some extent in England and perhaps more so in the US, constantly thinking of India in terms of "who is Nehru. I have never thought of myself as a complicated, a mysterious individual. I have no doubt some virtues and some failings, but the approach is often made on what Nehru is. This business of imagining that the present and future of India depends or can only be understood in terms of some mysterious probing of my life or the inner working of my mind is rather extraordinary. It really comes down to the fact that some people find it difficult to understand a person who does not agree with them hundred per cent." Mr. Nehru was replying to an all-party welcome, accorded to him by Mr. Selwyn Lloyd, Britain's Foreign Secretary, Mr. Clement Davies, leader of the Liberal Party, and Mr. Hugh Gaitskell, leader of the Labour Party.

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