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dated September 25, 1957: Nehru on self-reliance

Prime Minister Nehru said in Hyderabad on July 24 that while India would welcome foreign aid for the development of the country, the people should realise that they alone could and should build India. He warned them against the fallacy of depending on someone else’s generosity for building the nation. Mr. Nehru, who was inaugurating the five-day national seminar of the World University Service at the Osmania University, emphasised the need to develop an international outlook and deprecated “everything that separates us – provincialism, casteism, linguism and communalism.” Referring to the powerful influence of Gandhiji on the people of his generation, he said: “I wonder often how many of you, how many students of the younger generation of India to-day, think in such close and intense way as Gandhiji used to do. Obviously, you do not feel that way but you read about it perhaps. You may not have the same emotional experience which changed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people of my generation and convulsed India. I cannot convey that to you, that powerful impression that we had. Gradually, Gandhiji’s name becomes a story-book about which you have heard. I suppose that of the many lessons that Gandhiji taught, perhaps the most important was that means are more important than ends. If in the process of achieving the ends, the means are bad or twisted, we will not reach the ends. If our aim in life is a good life, how can we reach it by unworthy means? In international affairs, our aim is peace. How can we achieve it by constantly talking of war and preparing for war? How can you get rid of war by always indulging in talk of cold war? ”

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