In 1980 we have had the honour to bestow the Jawaharlal Nehru Award on Dr. Nelson Mandela which was received on his behalf by Mr. Oliver Tambo as Dr. Mandela was still in jail at the Robben Island in South Africa.  The Indira Gandhi Prize now being conferred upon Archbishop Huddleston is a prestigious companion award.  The distinguished recipients of the two awards are spiritual companions in the struggle against colonialism and racialism and two happy warriors in the fight for freedom, human dignity and the rights of man.  If it is a co-incidence that these two separate awards have gone to these two great personalities and if both of them are present in our midst to-day, it is indeed a most significant coincidence.  The Nehru Award to Dr. Nelson Mandela and now the Indira Gandhi Prize to Father Huddleston are a declaration of India's opposition to colonialism and racism, and solidarity with the cause of African liberation.  In apartheid the world witnessed the merging together, almost a chemical fusion of the two evils of colonialism and racialism.  No honour is adequate enough to those who fought against it and won in the bitter fight.

 I had occasion to meet Father Huddleston in India in 1971 during the Bangladesh crisis when he visited the sub-continent, together with my friend, the late Mr. Donald Chersworth, Warden of Toynbee Hall in London, for relief work among the millions of refugees pouring across the border into India.  Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was involved as a saviour in that situation of infinite tragedy.  Observing Father Huddleston's humanitarian work at that time and his previous and later work against colonialism and apartheid in Africa I thought of Thomas Paine the great champion of the rights of man and fighter against tyranny everywhere.  Thomas Paine used to say that "where there is no freedom there is my place."  Archbishop Trevor Huddleston could well have said "where there are no human rights and there is racial oppression there is my place."

 It has been the tradition of India from Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru to Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and Narasimha Rao right now to fight against colonialism and racialism in all their manifestations.  Indeed no country had considered so ardently and with such intimate identification as India, its struggle for freedom and independence as an integral part of the struggle against imperialism, colonialism and racialism in the world as a whole.  Indira Gandhi had visited almost by chance South Africa during 1940-41 and she was moved by what she saw of the humiliation and insults heaped upon Africans and Indians in Durban.  Nurtured in the school of Gandhi and Nehru she harboured since then a passionate hatred against apartheid and all forms of racism.  Much later at the Nonalignment Conference at Lusaka saying that "the heart beats of Africa were sounding like drums", she declared: "There can be no compromise with apartheid.  In fighting it, every nation, in whatever continent, should regard itself as a frontline state . . . the resurgent vigour and genius of this great continent cannot be suppressed and will prevail."

Indira Gandhi treated heroes of freedom struggle everywhere as India's own heroes.  She said that "whenever people care for freedom and human dignity, Nelson Mandela's name is known and respected", and again that "the spark kept alive so courageously by warriors like Nelson Mandela cannot be extinguished".  She also talked of the final victory of "the unfinished revolution" that will liberate mankind from oppression and thraldom and herald peace for all.  Indira Gandhi, while referring to the operation of reactionary forces in Asia and Africa pointed out how those forces exploited religion for domination and for narrow political and economic advantages.

Father Huddleston in his book "Naught for Your Comfort" exposed the use of religion during the industrial revolution in support of colonial oppression, and in White South Africa as a buttress to its apartheid policy.  As Vice President and later as President of the Anti-apartheid Movement based in London Father Huddleston conducted an international crusade against apartheid, organized demonstrations in Britain against the anti-sanctions policy of his Government, against the visit of P.W. Botha to London, for the "Nelson Mandela Freedom at 70" campaign and appeared before the United Nations repeatedly pleading for action against apartheid.  In 1982 he told the U.N. General Assembly:  "We were appealing to the world community to recognize that apartheid was not as many at that time liked to believe, a matter of South African political practice, a matter of purely local and internal concern, but an issue of world-wide significance and as much a challenge to the future of mankind as the Nazi ideology that had brought about the Second World War . . . ."

I referred earlier to the misuse of religion for oppressive purposes.  Mahatma Gandhi once said : "The most heinous and the most cruel crimes of which history has record have been committed under the cover of religion or equally other noble motives."  Father Huddleston exposed the use of religion to sustain apartheid.  At the same time he used religion, true religion, as a weapon to fight against it.  It is from Father Huddleston that Bishop Tutu got the idea of the Church as both a compassionate and militant institution.  He used it as a powerful instrument to rouse public opinion against discrimination and injustice, and the Bible as a revolutionary instrument.  Bishop Tutu observed:  "It was a tremendous idea, to be partner of God in the dusty streets of the townships."  Father Huddleston had influenced Bishop Tutu, Oliver Tambo and, of course, Nelson Mandela, and he had carried out their noble mission in his role as a progressive and militant priest in South Africa and in the international arena.  The cause that Father Huddleston espoused was dear to India, dear to Indira Gandhi.  Indira Gandhi once said "the total abolition of colonialism and racialism in every form is a pre-requisite of a new world order."  Now that classical colonialism has ended and apartheid has been dismantled, we have the opportunity to work for the new world order of which Indira Gandhi spoke.  The Indira Gandhi Prize to Father Huddleston is a recognition of and tribute to one of the noble, compassionate and courageous individuals who has contributed to this historical process.

Thank you.