Nelson Mandela, then serving life imprisonment in the Robben Island prison, was chosen by the jury of the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding for the year 1979. At a colourful and solemn function held at Vigyan Bhavan, New Delhi, on 14 November 1980, the birth anniversary of Jawaharlal Nehru, the Award was received on behalf of Nelson Mandela, by Mr. Oliver R. Tambo, President of the African National Congress.
While presenting the Speeches made on the occasion, we are also happy to present Nelson Mandela's letter of appreciation, smuggled out of the Robben Island Prison.
(i) Extracts from the Welcome Address by Mr. P. V. Narasimha Rao, Minister of External Affairs and President of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations:
We regard Nelson Mandela as a front ranking leader of the oppressed people of South Africa. We have admired his unfailing courage in waging a relentless struggle against social injustice and racial discrimination. The ideals of liberty, equality and justice cherished by the man in whose memory this Award has been instituted and, even earlier, by his sage and mentor, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, have inspired Nelson Mandela. With Jawaharlal Nehru he shares a love of freedom and a vision of a society free of prejudices and intolerance. Like Jawaharlal Nehru, Nelson Mandela is a man of peace who is fighting against oppression. For him (and I quote from his own words):
To overthrow oppression is the highest aspiration of every free man.
In dedicating himself to constructing a society in which all men may live in harmony, he has recognised the supremacy of the moral law that underlies national and international relations and without which there can be no enduring peace. In declaring his total commitment to this cause, in the following words:
It is an ideal which I hope to live and to achieve. But, if need be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die...
Nelson Mandela reaches out and imparts to humanity at large a sense of faith and a spirit of dedication in their every day lives.
Nelson Mandela is languishing in notorious Robben Island prison, but prison wall cannot daunt a spirit like his. Wherever human freedom and dignity is valued, Mandela will be present. We share his conviction that the thirst for freedom cannot be quenched and the profound urge for a just peace that inspires the overwhelming majority of his country-men, cannot be overcome by the domination of an unjust and racist system that seeks to condemn them to everlasting servitude. He has been in the vanguard of the struggle of his people and by imprisoning him, none can succeed in destroying either the will of Mandela or of the people he leads. History has proved time and again that such brutish constraint can only heighten the struggle against bondage. Ultimately the world will unite against the oppressors to overcome and succeed. We have gathered here to honour this great son of Africa, whose message of freedom is not confined to a particular country but is for all the world.
(ii) Excerpts from the Speech of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi:
"Apartheid cannot Survive"
I am not really supposed to address this gathering and you will have noticed that my name is not on the programme but sometimes I feel that the occasion demands that I say at least a few words and this is one of those occasions because I do want to pay my own tribute to Nelson Mandela and to all the valiant groups of people who have been struggling through the years for what is man' s acknowledged and undeniable right, to live in freedom and to shape his future. Wherever people care for freedom and human dignity, Nelson Mandela' s name is known and respected. But he himself is today being denied both freedom and dignity in his own home. He is confined to Robben Island, locked in a cell, facing the loneliness and frustration, missing his loved ones and above all impatient at not being able to get on with the fight outside. Yet wherever he is, there too is the struggle. Thoreau said that in an oppressive regime, a free man' s place is in prison. Many of us here, as Indians who are here, have personal experience of this.
The white man's burden has too long been carried on the shoulders of the black and the brown. A struggle for freedom can be suppressed, its soldiers killed, imprisoned, humiliated, but the idea of freedom cannot be stamped out. Some spark will persist to burst into flame somewhere some time to light the way and illumine hearts and ultimately lead to success. Neither colour nor caste nor sex makes one person superior or inferior. No matter what laws South Africa devises for itself, history cannot be denied nor will the inexorable march of the future be halted. Apartheid cannot survive.
(ii) Excerpts from the Speech of Mr. Oliver R. Tambo who received the Award on behalf of Nelson Mandela:
Today, as Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela moves around the restricted confines of his prison cell on Robben Island, his mind is tuned in to the proceedings in Delhi. He shares this preoccupation not only with his beloved wife, Winnie Mandela, herself the subject of heartless restrictions and bans, but also with Walter Sisulu, Ahmed Kathrada, James April, Toivo ja Toivo and other national leaders and fighters for liberation, for democracy and justice - fellow inmates of the notorious Robben Island prison. The thoughts of the entire membership of the ANC and of its allies and friends converge today on Delhi. The vast majority of the people of South Africa, from all walks of life and all strata and race origins - the young no less than the old - regard this day in New Delhi as a national occasion for them.
It is, therefore my pleasant duty, on behalf of the National Executive Committee of the African National Congress, to express the deep appreciation and gratitude of all the national leaders and patriots incarcerated in the prisons of Apartheid all the members, allies and friends of the ANC and the great masses of the people engaged in the liberation struggle of our country, for the great honour bestowed on Nelson Mandela in nominating him for the 1979 Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding.
It is equally and especially my pleasant duty, although a much more onerous one to convey to Your Excellency, Mr. President, to your Government and people, the heart-felt thanks of our colleague, brother and comrade, Nelson Mandela.
He received the news of the Jawaharlal Nehru Award with a mixture of disbelief, surprise, profound gratitude and excitement. But the excitement quickly mellowed into a deep sense of humility. For, he understands the full meaning of the Award, its enormous significance and its challenging implications for him and his people.
He understands, because he knows Pandit Nehru's imposing stature as a world statesman, he knows his revered place in the hearts, minds and lives of the 650 million people of India; he knows, too, the esteem and deep respect Par~dit Nehru enjoyed among the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Nelson Mandela, therefore, accepts the Award with full awareness of its historic message. He accepts it as a supreme challenge to him personally and to the leadership of the ANC and the people of South Africa of all races. He accepts it as an honour less for him than for the people of Africa.
* * *
It is fitting that on this day, I should recall the long and glorious struggle of those South Africans who came to our shores from India 120 years ago. Within two years of entering the bondage of indentured labour, Indian workers staged their first strike against the working conditions in Natal. This was possibly the first general strike in South African history. Their descendants, working and fighting for the future of their country, South Africa, have retained the tradition of militant struggle and are today an integral part of the mass-based liberation movement In South Africa.
But the striking role of India in the development of the struggle for national and social liberation in South Africa has its firm roots in the early campaigns led by Mahatma Gandhi in that country, coupled with the continuing and active interest he took in the South African situation. All South Africans have particular cause to honour and remember the man who was in our midst for 21 years and went on to enter the history books as the father of free India. His imprint on the course of the South African struggle is indelible.
In the 1940's, in South Africa and India our people voiced the same sentiments; to wage a war in the name of freedom and democracy, they said, was a hollow mockery as long as the colonial peoples were not free. We applauded the "Quit India" demand against the British, for, as the Congress resolution in August 1942 so correctly said: "India, the classic land of modern imperialism, has become the crux of the question, for by the freedom of India will Britain and the United Nations be judged, and the peoples of Asia and Africa be filled with hope and enthusiasm". And so we were filled with hope and enthusiasm as we watched events unfold in India.
If Mahatma Gandhi started and fought his heroic struggle in South Africa and India, Jawaharlal Nehru was to continue it in Asia, Africa and internationally. In 1946, India broke trade relations with South Africa - the first country to do so. In the same year, at the first Session of the UN General Assembly, the Indian Government sharply raised the question of racial discrimination in South Africa - again the first country to take this action. Speaking at the Bandung Conference in April 1955, Jawaharlal Nehru declared:
there is nothing more terrible than the infinite tragedy of Africa in the past few hundred years.
Referring to "the days when million of Africans were carried away as galley slaves to America and elsewhere, half of them dying in the galleys", he urged:
We must accept responsibility for it, all of us, even though we ourselves were not directly involved.
He continued,
But unfortunately, in a different sense, even now the tragedy of Africa is greater than that of any other continent, whether it is racial or political. It is up to Asia to help Africa to the best of her ability because we are sister continents.
To her great honour, India has consistently lived up to this historic declaration, which constitutes one of the cornerstones of the Non-Aligned Movement. The tragedy of Africa, in racial and political terms, is now concentrated in the Southern tip of the continent...in South Africa, Namibia, and in a special sense, Robben Island.
(iv) Excerpts from Nelson Mandela's Letter dated 3 August 1980 expressing appreciation of the decision to confer on him the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding:
I am writing to express my sincere thanks and appreciation to the Indian Council for Cultural Relations for honouring me with the 1979 "Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding". Although I have been singled out for this Award, I am mindful that I am the mere medium for an honour that rightly belongs to the people of our country.
Our people cannot but feel humble, at the same time proud that one of their number has been selected to join the distinguished men and women who have been similarly honoured in the past.
I recall these names because to my mind they symbolise not only the scope and nature of the Award, but they in turn constitute a fitting tribute to the great man after whom it has been named - Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. The lives and varied contribution of each one of them reflect in some measure the rich and many-sided life of Panditji: selfless humanitarian Mother Teresa, international statesman Josip Broz Tito, notable political leaders, Julius Nyerere and Kenneth Kaunda, medical benefactor Jonas Salk and civil rights leader Martin Luther King. Truly, Jawaharlal Nehru was an outstanding man. A combination of many men into one - freedom fighter, politician, world
statesman, prison graduate, master of the English language, lawyer and historian. As one of the pioneers of the Non-Aligned Movement, he has made a lasting contribution to world peace and the brotherhood of man.
* * *
It would be a grave omission on our part if we failed to mention the close bonds that have existed between our people and the people of India, and to acknowledge the encouragement, the inspiration and the practical assistance we have received as a result of the international outlook of the All India Congress.
The oldest existing political organisation in South Africa, the Natal Indian Congress, was founded by Mahatma Gandhi in 1894. He became its first secretary and in 21 years of his stay in South Africa, we were to witness the birth of ideas and methods of struggle that have exerted an incalculable influence on the history of the peoples of India and South Africa. Indeed it was on South African soil that Mahatmaji founded and embraced the philosophy of Satyagraha.
After his return to India, Mahatmaji's South African endeavours were to become the cause of the All-India Congress and the people of India as a whole. On the eve of India's independence Pandit Nehru said:
Long years ago, we made a tryst with destiny and now the time comes when we should redeem our pledge.. At the stroke of the midnight hour when the world sleeps India will awaken to life and freedom... It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take a pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity.
Our people did not have to wait long to witness how uppermost our cause was in Panditji's mind when he made this pledge. The determination with which his gifted sister, Mrs Vijayalakshmi Pandit as free India's Ambassador to the United Nations, won universal solidarity with our plight made her the beloved spokesman of the voiceless masses not only of our country and Namibia but of people like ours throughout the world.
We were gratified to see that the pronouncements and efforts of the Congress during the independence struggle were now being actively pursued as the policy of the Government of India.
At the Asian People's Conference in Bombay in 1947, at Bandung in 1955, at the Commonwealth deliberations, in the Non-Aligned Movement, everywhere and at all times, Panditji and free India espoused our cause consistently.
Today, we are deeply inspired to witness his equally illustrious daughter, Mrs. Indira Gandhi, continue along the same path with undiminished vitality and determination. Her activities, her interest, her pronouncements, remain for us a constant source of hope and encouragement.
India's championing of our cause assumes all the more significance, when we consider that ours is but one of the 153 countries which constitutes the family of nations, and our over 21 million people, a mere fraction of the world's population. Moreover, our hardships, though great, become small in the context of a turbulent world enveloped by conflict, wars, famine, malnutrition, disease, poverty, illiteracy and hatred.
However, it is precisely India's exemplary role in world affairs that also serves to remind us that our problems, acute as they are, are part of humanity's problems and no part of the world can dare consider itself free of them unless and until the day the last vestige of man-made suffering is eradicated from every corner of the world.
This knowledge of shared suffering, though formidable in dimension, at the same time keeps alive in us our oneness with mankind and our own global responsibilities that accrue therefrom. It also helps to strengthen our faith and belief in our future. To invoke once more the words of Panditji:
In a world which is full of conflict and hatred and violence, it becomes more necessary than at any other time to have faith in human destiny. If the future we work for is full of hope for humanity, then the ills of the present do not matter much and we have justification for working for that future.
In this knowledge we forge ahead firm in our beliefs, strengthened by the devotion and solidarity of our friends; above all, by an underlying faith in our own resources and determination, and in the invincibility of our cause. We join with you, the people of India, and with the people all over the world in our striving towards a new tomorrow, tomorrow making a reality for all mankind the sort of universe that the great Rabindranath Tagore dreamed of in Gitanjali:
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
where knowledge is free;
where the world has not been broken into
fragments by narrow domestic walls;
where words come out from the depths of truth;
where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
where the clear stream of reason has not lost
its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
where the mind is led forward by these into
ever widening thought and action
into that heaven of Freedom, My Father, let my country awake.