I have briefly placed before this House this document. It is a simple document and yet the House is fully aware that it is a highly important document or rather what it contains is of great and historical significance. I went some weeks ago as the representative of India to this Conference. I had consulted my colleagues here, of course previously, because it was a great responsibility and no man is big enough to shoulder that responsibility by himself when the future of India is at stake. During the past many months we had often consulted each other, consulted great and representative organizations, consulted many Members of this House. Nevertheless when I went, I carried this great responsibility and I felt the burden of it. I had able colleagues to advice me, but I was the sole representative of India and in a sense that future of India for the moment was in my keeping. I was alone in that sense and yet not quite alone because, as I travelled through the air and as I sat there at that Conference table the ghosts of many yesterdays of my life surrounded me and brought up picture after picture before me, sentinels and guardians keeping watch over me telling me perhaps not to trip and not to forget them. I remembered, as many honourable Members might remember, that day nineteen years ago when we took a pledge on a bank of the River Ravi, at the midnight hour, and I remembered the 26th of January the first time and that oft-repeated Pledge year after year in spite of difficulty and obstruction, and finally, I remembered that day when standing at this very place, I placed a resolution before this House. That was one of the earliest resolutions placed before this honourable House, a Resolution that is known as the Objectives Resolution. Two years and five months have elapsed since that happened. In that Resolution we defined more or less the type of free Government or Republic that we were going to have. Later in another place and on a famous occasion, this subject also came up, that was at the Jaipur Session of the Congress, because not only my mind, but many minds were struggling with this problem, trying to find a way out that was in keeping with the honour and dignity and independence of India, and yet also in keeping with the changing world and with the facts as they were, something that would advance the cause of India, would help us, something that would be strictly and absolutely true to every single pledge that we have taken. It was clear to me that what ever the advantages might be of any association with the Commonwealth or with any other group, no single advantage, however great, could be purchased by a single iota of our pledges being given up, because no country can make progress by playing fast and loose with the principles which it has declared. So, during these months we have thought and we had discussed amongst ourselves and I carried all this advice with me. May I read to you, perhaps just to refresh your minds the Resolution passed at the Jaipur Session of the Congress? It might be of interest to you and I would beg of you to consider the very wording of this Resolution:
“In view of the attainment of complete independence and the establishment of the Republic of India which will symbolise with Independence and give to India the status among the nations of the world that is her rightful due, her present association with the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth of Nations will necessarily have to change. India, however, desires to maintain all such links with other countries as do not come in the way of her freedom of action and independence and the Congress would welcome her free association with the independent nations of the Commonwealth for their common weal and the promotion of world peace.”