Delivered Extempore

ADDRESS BY SHRI K.R.  NARAYANAN, VICE PRESIDENT OF INDIA, AT THE P.C. LAL MEMORIAL LECTURE

JANUARY 31, 1995

Air Chief Marshal Suri, Mrs.  Lal, Chief of Air Staff and distinguished former chiefs, friends,   

I am honoured to have been asked to give this prestigious lecture, the P.C.  Lal, Memorial Lecture.  I did not know what I should talk about and the Air Force Association was not very helpful in suggesting a subject.  So, finally I chose a subject which I thought combines, the qualities and achievements of Air Chief Marshal P.C.  Lal.  As one who distinguished in the field of aviation, civil aviation, as well as military aviation, one would say that Air Chief Marshal P.C.Lal was both an internationalist and a nationalist. Civil aviation or aviation as a whole has brought the world close together, almost extinguished distances on the globe and he has rendered significant service in the development of civil aviation.  In the military field as Chief of Air Staff he has personified the role of aviation as a nationalist force, as the one which protects the national interest of the country.  You are all aware how he emerged as a hero, as a great airman and how much he has contributed to India's defence and the protection of our national interest.

He was really a unique personality to have contributed to these two important aspects of modern life.  I believe that it is as a great defender of our nation, for the security of our nation and as a great internationalist who has played a very important role in the development of our links with the world that P.C.  Lal emerges as a significant personality.  By bringing India closer together to itself through the network of civil aviation also he has contributed to our national interest as well as to our link with the world.  I hope to develop very briefly these two themes which dominated the life and carreer of Air Chief Marshal P.C.  Lal.   

As you know the world from the very beginning, humanity from the very beginning has been evolving from small groups, tribal groups to larger groupings, then to nation states, then to regional groupings, all along working towards a global society and to a one world.  These various efforts of mankind at the local level, at the national level, at the regional level and the international level have been going along almost simultaneously over the centuries. 

Today, we find internationalism expressed in what one can call a global society with global connections of a very extensive scale and at the same time we find the emergence of a parochialism in a very persistent almost, emotional manner and what we call the nation state in which is represented nationalism stands in between the two.  On the one hand overwhelmed by the impact of international thinking, international developments and on the other hand pulled apart to some extent by the emergence of powerful parochialism and other narrow minded yearnings of the human being. 

Between these two tendencies in the world, one can say that, on the one hand nationalism is overwhelmed by a larger loyalty and on the other hand it is being pulled apart and between these twin pressures the nation state and nationalism seem to be emerging in one sense stronger and having a new rationale.  We know that as far as our own country is concerned from the very beginning we had entertained a universal vision and conceived the entire human race as a single family. This still runs through our thinking in the creative period of modern India that is our nationalists period.  Mahatma Gandhi said, "my service of India includes the service of humanity.  Isolated independence is not the goal of the world states.  It is voluntary inter‑dependence.  The better mind of the world desires today not absolutely independent states, but a federation of friendly independent states.  I desire the ability to be totally independent without asserting the independence."

It was a remarkable statement of healthy nationalism and healthy internationalism, specially his remark that he wants for India independence but not necessarily assert always that independence. Jawaharlal Nehru whose internationalism is well known said, before we became free " having attained our freedom, I have no doubt that India will welcome all attempts at world cooperation and federation and will even agree to give up part of her independence to a large group of which she is an equal member." This was a proviso that we will give up part of our independence only if we are an equal a member of a world order.  While making this statement both Gandhi and Nehru were impassioned fighters for the independence of India, for India's nationhood and for India's natioanlism.  Once when the Atlantee Charter was signed and President Roosevelt and Churchill pronounced the four freedoms, Gandhiji asked very estringedly, "do the four freedoms include the freedom to be free?" So he had this freedom of the country in his mind, freedom of India as a nation. 

In 1942, Nehru himself once said after expounding all his aspirations for a one world, " but ultimately, naturally I have judge any question from the Indian point of view.  If India perishes, I must say selfishly if you like to call it, it does not do me any good, if other nations survived" and at another time in Parliament explaining his non‑aligned policy, he said, "We are not going to join a war, if we can help it and we are going to join the side which is to our interest when the time comes to make the choice.  There the matter ends".  So all these great leaders, while they looked up or looked towards an international order, towards one world were uncompromising in their devotion to the protection of India as an independent nation.  But today, as I said earlier, this movement have got a momentum, the movement for a one world, to a one globe.  But at the same time, we find movements in the opposite direction; nations, sub‑nations, smaller groups asserting their independence from larger groups.  The dream of a one world has been always with us.  President Wilson said, after the end of the first world war, "We are no longer provincials." Vanderville brought fore his famous book 'One World'. 

I should like to go back here and quote to you one rather longish statement which I find in an old book on the same subject. It goes as follows:"the need for a constantly expanding market for his products chases man over the whole surface of the globe.  It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.  It is through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country.  It has drawn from under the feet of industry, the national ground on which it stood. 

All old national industries have been destroyed.  They are dislodged by new industries, by industries that no longer work on indigenous raw‑material, but raw‑material drawn from the remotest zones, industries whose products are consumed not only at home but in every quarter of the world.  In place of all old wants satisfied by the production of the country we find new wants requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climates.  In place old local and national seclusion and self‑sufficiency we have intercourse in every direction, universal independence of nations and as in imaterial, so also in intellectual production intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. 

National one‑sidedness and narrow‑mindedness become more and more impossible and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.  By the rapid movement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communications draws all, even the most barbarian nations into civilisation.  The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls." This looks like a statement of our own times, some of which may be relevant even for the future.  It is a statement from Karl Marx from his Communist Manifesto.  It does not look like that when you read it without saying his name.  We are today, talking about such a world which has been brought closer together, where material production, consumption, where culture, literature, all have become merged into some kind of a single connected phenomenon.  We talk about new international economic order, about a new international information order, political order, an order in the space, order in trade and environmental order.  In fact, the world is being intertwined into one unity by these various efforts.  But in spite of all this, at the core of it still lies a nation state. 

It is the nation state that indulges in all these multi‑farious, complicated international arrangements.  The active element in this world order, in various fields that I have mentioned in fact, is the nation state itself.  One can say that we have arrived at a stage when never before were the developments in individual countries affected the world as a whole and never before have developments in the world affected the individual countries.  This is the inter‑relationship, inter‑connection that has taken place in the world as a whole and hence the relevance of nationalism may be with a transformed character. 

I am emphasising this because of late, there has been theories propounded that the nation state has become outdated and it is being superseded specially because of regional cooperation and also of the all comprehensive role of international institutions.  Let us have a look at this phenomenon of regional cooperation.  The most advanced and the most integrated regional cooperation set up is the European Union in Europe.  But even there we do not find an extinguishment of national identities.  Only the other day I read an article by the former British Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe. 

He said that the European Union has not been formed by ceding of sovereignty but by transcending sovereignty.  It is, he said by a re‑combination of national sovereignty for a more effective partnership under modern conditions.  He quoted a famous phrase of Churchill's when he was talking about the unity between England and the rest of the Europe.  During the war that what the Europeans have achieved is a larger sovereignty not giving up of our sovereignty which strengthened them in maintaining their unique characteristics and unique relations. 

We do not know, of course there are very serious experiments going on in other parts of the world for regional cooperation compared to the European Union.  They are very undeveloped.  I have no doubt they all have a future.  But all these are all woven around nation states which have given consent and which are active partners who control as partners the regional set up.  One does not know quite even about this most advanced experiments in regional cooperation in Europe will evolve in the future.  Someone said jocularly that the new Europe may represent the moral strength of the French, courage of the Italian the work ethic of the British and the sense of humour of the German. 

One can think of may be combination of different characteristics also in this new union.  One does not know which would predominate ultimately.  There is still a question mark how this and other regional experiments will evolve.  Another thing which comes to my mind is that we all thought after the end end of the cold war when the bipolar world has been more or less discarded that we will move on to a larger international order.  Instead of it what we find today is a new strengthening of regional organisation and regional loyalties.  Is this process going to be a kind of diversion from the main theme of world organisations retarding the growth of a world organisations which will be for all, under which everybody will function or is it a distraction from it. 

I do hope that ultimately regional organisations, however powerful they may be will emerge into the stream of world unity, the stream of a one world?  But there is the question mark always and there is also the possibility of nationalism asserting itself and nation states again playing independent and important role.  Now, we find that those who advance the theme that the nation state is outmoded and nationalism has ended have introduced into their thinking another element, that is of imposing order by impinging upon the weaker nations of the world. In other words, the phenomenon is appearing again where the most developed and the powerful nations acquire a new nationalism of their own which nationalism under the guise of an international order tried to restrict the national interests and aspirations of the weaker nations of the world. 

Of course in history we find that the dream of world unity had been approached from different ways.  Great conquerors have emerged and they wanted to unify the world under them.  Great powers have arisen and wanted to control the rest of the world, groupings of powers and blocks had emerged and they wanted to control the whole world but none of these have succeeded so far because, I think the strength of nationalism asserting itself from time to time. 

It may be lying quiescent it may be concealing itself for its own interest to larger loyalties.  But the moment external forces try to limit or control their aspirations and their free play you find nationalism popping up its head again and again.  So in this new thinking you find political scientists, thinkers in international relations propounding the idea of the right of intervention.  A lot of literature has been written about this subject ‑ the right to intervention.  Some have called it the duty to intervene, may be in the name of human rights, may in the name of environmental protection or in various guises, the right to intervene, the duty to intervene is being propounded by philosophers, political thinkers and statesman belonging to countries which are powerful and highly developed.  I think this is something we have to think seriously about. 

The right to intervene in a very ugly manner reminds me of the claim that Mr.Leonid Brezhnev advanced of limited sovereignty.  It is in a way the same concept put forward in a more attractive and civilised terms when great countries say that they have a right to intervene when in some country which is not very strong otherwise they will not try to intervene, where human rights go wrong or something else goes wrong they have a duty to intervene. To my mind this philosophy of the right to intervene in the face of flagrant, atrocious situations of human rights' violations one would go along with this idea because in the modern civilised world nobody should have freedom to persecute its own people or a section of its own people with impunity.  But then who has the right to intervene.  Is it one power which should decide that it would have the right to intervene?  Such intervention to my mind should take place with an international consensus, by an international body where the nations of the world are fairly represented. 

It could be the role of the United Nations which reflects the interests and aspirations of the entire human race and which also reflects the role of each nation in that United Nations.  If it is structured according to the realities of the modern world, if it is structured with fair representation and with voice for every section of the international community then that body should have the right on the basis of a consensus to intervene in the situations of atrocious human right violations or disregard of environment altogether which might bring about a calamity to the globe as a whole.  These rights should rest with some such organisation.  When a particular country or a particular group of countries which take upon themselves this role then what you get is not very different from what you got previously in history, of dominations on one guise or another by countries.