May I, in this connection recall to this House the very categorical declaration which Mahatma Gandhi made at the time of the Round Table Conference which he attended. He said that if he got Swaraj, if the Congress was master in this country, one of the first things he would advise it to do would be to disband the army and the police, and anything else which savoured of violence in the organization of the Indian State. I do not know whether you would be prepared at this time, and living under the circumstances in which we are living, to carry out literally such a desire as that. But I know this, that unless we make a beginning, and pledge ourselves to the maintenance of peace, and to ensure security to all countries, we shall be making these professions sound too hollow to be believed. We would then indeed be in the good company of people who make loud professions for the maintenance of peace, but at the same time go on arming themselves to the teeth, making up piles of atomic bombs and threatening each other at every crisis, which is of their own creation, so that peace seems to be as distant as ever and certainly not as permanently established as one would desire it to be.
