Respected Rashtrapatiji, Your Excellency Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Pradhan Mantriji, Members of the Jury, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
 
I have great pleasure to welcome you to the presentation ceremony of the 1990 Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding. We are particularly happy that His Excellency Chancellor Helmut Kohl is present in our midst to-day personally to receive this prestigious Award. International understanding and co-operation was the master-desire of Jawaharlal Nehru's life, and you, Mr. Chancellor, have in our own time, contributed to it in a significant and solid manner both in Europe and in the world.
 
Jawaharlal Nehru was one of the first statesmen to have foreseen vividly that mankind, in the midst of all the cold war hatreds, rivalries and divisions, was, slowly and painfully but inevitably, moving towards a world commonwealth. He had declared, even before we became independent, that it was for "this One World that free India will work, a world in which there is free co-operation of free peoples, and no class or group exploits another". He conceived the movement of nonaligned nations as "a workshop of peace" and believed that ultimately the big nations of Europe, and the United States and the Soviet Union would become part of "the area of peaceful co-existence".
 
With the end of the cold war it is now evident that the evolution of world developments have, in fact, been in that direction. However, the task of building a new world order out of the ruins of the cold war is yet to be undertaken -- a world order that is pluralist and democratic and overinformed with the spirit of peace, equality and justice. The basic principles and methods that Nehru propounded in international relations remain relevant in shaping this new order that is struggling to be born. Peace, development, democracy and humanism should form the four pillars of the edifice of any new international order. These are ideas and values which India and Germany share in common.
 
Nehru, in his time, was a crusader for peace. He waged a campaign for nuclear disarmament. We have welcomed, Mr. Chancellor, the bold steps taken by the United States and Russia for reduction of nuclear weapons with the active support of Germany and other nations. The fact, however, is that we have still a long way to travel to get the world rid of nuclear weapons. There are even now enough in the arsenals of the powers to destroy the world several times over. That is why India has stood, in the spirit of Nehru, for the complete elimination of all nuclear weapons and for "a nuclear weapon free and non-violent world." We are encouraged that under your leadership Germany is committed strongly to peace and disarmament.
 
Without disarmament and the resources of the so-called "peace dividend" the prospects for development on a world-scale will be severely constricted. While economic problems are afflicting poor as well as prosperous countries what is alarming is the division between the North and South, and the widening of the gap between them. Nehru had observed that "The existence of under-developed and poverty-stricken nations or peoples is in itself an abiding danger to maintenance of peace." In this context we appreciate, Excellency, your consistent efforts to promote meaningful North-South relations and your view that the objectives of peace and development are inextricably linked.

The role of Germany as a major economic power, in this era of the primacy of the economic factor in international politics, is of vital importance to development as well as world peace. In the co-operation between Germany which represents the peak of economic development, and India, which is the paragon of a developing country, is telescoped some of the crucial problems of the relationship between the North and the South. Substantial co-operation between our two countries can well point the way to a larger and harmonious adjustment between the developed and developing countries, certainly between India and Europe.
 
You have been, Mr. Chancellor, at the head of the movement for the economic and political integration of Europe. The European Community, in the perspective of history, marks the crest of the evolutionary wave of mankind towards world unity. Reunified Germany, with its economic dynamism and political maturity, stands at the centre of this historic European process. In regard to both -reunification of Germany and the move towards European unity -- you have, Mr. Chancellor, played an outstanding role and shown the highest statesmanship. You and the great German people have worked hard and with patience to realise this dream of unity. You have, to use the famous words of Bismarck, waited until you heard "the step of God sounding through events" and then dared "to spring forward and seize the hem of his garment." It has been a feat of national decisiveness and international understanding of the highest order.
 
Years ago Jawaharlal Nehru and Konrad Adenauer foresaw the significance of friendship and co-operation between India and Germany in the post-war world. You, Mr. Chancellor, has taken a leading role in promoting co-operation between our two countries adding a new political and economic dimension of strategic importance to what is now called the Indo-German partnership. To-day our co-operation encompasses a variety of fields, political, economic, scientific-technological and cultural. The long history of the philosophical, literary and scholarly relationship between our two countries have invested this partnership with a meaning and fascination that has a touch of the romantic about it. If in that early period German scholars had opened up the treasures of Indian philosophy and literature to the European public, to-day German industrialists and business men are opening up the rich potentialities of an economically liberalising India to the European Community.
 
In the new partnership that we have been building up we are united by our common dedication to the values of humanism and democracy. Mahatma Gandhi used to say that man is superior to the system that he has built up as a corporation. And Nehru believed that "in the final analysis, it is the quality of the human beings that counts. It is man that builds up the wealth of a nation, as well as its cultural progress." This humanistic approach and the respect for the individual irrespective of his religion or caste is central to our secular democracy notwithstanding the aberrations from this tradition that might have occurred in our history from time to time. Democracy in India has performed roles that are in many ways unique and difficult, as custodian of the liberal freedoms and human rights of the people, as an instrument of and a framework for development and, to some extent, as an agent of social and political therapy in the face of tensions and conflicts that arise in a vast and complex pluralist society in the process of rapid change. Excellency, the Award that is being conferred upon you to-day is in memory of the man who was the principal architect of democracy in India in all its secular, liberal, developmental, social and international aspects.
 
Excellency, through your clear vision and pungent pragmatism, your dedication to democracy and peaceful change, you have made a historic contribution in bringing people together not only in your own country but in Europe. You have worked tirelessly for broader international co-operation and for fashioning a new and just world order. You have promoted harmonious relations between the North and the South. You have perceived with clarity the apocalyptic danger facing humanity and the planet itself as a result of global warming and ozone depletion and lent your influence in tackling the great environmental issues of our time in your own country and at the international level. Above all, you have given a new dimension and new impetus to relations between India and Germany in a manner that is beneficial to both our countries and to the world in general. Excellency, we greatly appreciate your contributions to the cause of world peace and international understanding, and wish that you may continue to serve mankind for years to come. May I now request the President of India to make the presentation of the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding to Chancellor Dr. Helmut Kohl, after the Citation has been read.

Thank you