And lest my Friends should complain that I quote a shloka and do not translate it, let me, Sir with your permission give the gist of this shloka. Shri Krishna here asks Arjuna not to give way to weakness or cowardice. He says, “it does not befit you, Arjun. This weakness of heart is shameful. Give it up at this moment. Stand up and fight.” This should be our outlook, and I hope that at least in future it will guide our policy. We are a nation of at least 300 millions and more and we can fight any evil in the world, alone if need be. I would rather stand alone than surrender my ideals of democracy, and of equality and liberty for which we have stood and fought and sacrificed all these years. If the Commonwealth stands in the way of these ideals, if it stands in the way of these ideas being implemented, I would rather stand alone. Mahatma Gandhi taught us to do so. Lokamanya Tilak taught us this. Mahayogi Arabindo taught us this. Netaji Subhas taught us this. You, Sir have always advised us so. We must be strong in our hearts and rely on our own strength, and our leaders Pandit Nehru and Sardar Patel have ever told us that the world can do us no harm. It is only our own inner weakness that can crush us, not any external danger. If we are strong in our own inner strength, nobody can prevail against us. I hope this fact will guide us in the future in our relations with the Commonwealth of Nations. I am not at all happy over the formula, and over the declaration placed before the House. I think it might have been more happily worded. I feel we could have had a better deal. But it is a fait accompli with which we are faced. As Pandit Nehru says, it is a treaty which has been concluded. At any rate, I will only say this much, that I accept the Declaration in the hope that the policies of the Commonwealth of Nations will be guided by human considerations in future, and that racialism, colonialism, and imperialism will all be shed and abandoned, and that the Commonwealth of Nations will lead the world on these right lines. I fear it is a distant ideal, but with God all things are possible; and I hope God will guide us aright so that we shall have a real human brotherhood–not a brotherhood of Commonwealth nations only–but a real human brotherhood in this world, in one free world, ere long.
