N.Z. AND INDIA

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30396, 21 March 1964, Page 16

N.Z. AND INDIA

More Links Urged More trade, and greater cultural and educational exchanges are needed if the peoples of India and New Zealand are to learn more about each other, said Dr. B. Ahmad, press attache at the Sydney office of the Indian High Commissioner. Speaking In Christchurch, he said it was important that the two peoples learn to grow closer, because “what happens in Asia today is very much your concern. The stability and prosperity of India is a guarantee for your safe future.”

Dr. Ahmad said there was an overwhelming feeling that people in Australia and New Zealand were quite safe from events taking place in Asia. He said India was still the most stable and largest democracy in the whole of Asia. If this experiment in democracy failed then all the ideas for which Western civilisation stood—human dignity and liberty—would come to nothing. The only alternative would be communism, he said. Common to Australia, New Zealand and India was the fact that they enjoyed the same type of democracy and shared the common inheritance of the Anglo-Saxon tradition, said Dr. Ahmad. He said China, the greatest country in Asia seeking leadership, had failed to fulfil its targets and had attacked India. These attacks were not for territorial gain but to humiliate India. In the past, China had no better friend in Asia than India, which annually had asked for China’s recognition in the United Nations. These border attacks had made their impact on the nation’s economy. In the past, India had concentrated on the welfare of its people, but since the border war, more money was having to be set aside for arms production and military expenditure. The problem between China and India was really one between China and all the democracies. The struggle was being closely followed by Asia’s under - developed nations, he said. Dr. Ahmad has spent a week in New Zealand visiting his country’s High Commissioner in Wellington. In Christchurch yesterday he paid a handsome compliment to the city’s airport terminal which he described as the most attractive in the South Pacific—“in fact it’s the nicest one I’ve been in except that at Terehan.”