Our challenges in India have not been less. We have charted our own course, fortunate in leaders who took sustenance from our timeless philosophy, as well as modern concepts, putting them to work as instruments of action. Our national movement reinforced the age-old unity which had held our country together through the ups and downs of history, across the shifting borders of hundreds of kingdoms, and bridging succeeding dynasties. After independence it was our task to usher in a more egalitarian society which would ensure social and economic justice to all regardless of religion, caste, language, or sex. For us economic progress means not only material well-being but moving nearly 500 million from one age to another, with the minimum dislocation or alienation from their roots.
Few things are good or bad in themselves.
Their effect and importance lies in what one makes of them. Tradition, especially ours, which has been a factor for unity, for tolerance, and harmony, and for our people's cultural literacy, can be used as a tool, paradoxical though it may sound, for change and modernity. Life for a person or a country is a series of choices, not between the correct and the incorrect, which a computer can make, but in terms of opting for a course which will be consistent with our ethos and individuality, our past history and future aspirations. Our struggle for independence was nonviolent. We chose democracy based on the British system but with some modifications, and the American Constitution influenced the shaping of our own Constitution.