Jawaharlal Nehru Quotes
I have long believed that the only way peace can be achieved is through world government.
Nehru, Jawaharlal. Independence and After: A Collection of Speeches, 1946-1949. Publications Division, Government of India, 1949, p. 300.
When he made this statement, the United States was the only nation that had the atomic bomb, but he and other leading nuclear scientists realized that it would not be long before the Russians would also have nuclear weapons, and other countries would so follow suit. He and some others saw a world government as the best way to cope with the nuclear proliferation problems. However, there was too much diversity of values and political ideology in the world to be accommodated in a single government, and the United Nations was the only thing that was practical and that was far from a government and had virtually no sovereignty. However, during the Cold War, Russia and the United States agreed on a Nuclear Proliferation Treaty and most nations of the world, agreed, so that for the issue of nuclear proliferation, the world had a type or world government—an international treaty. However, India and Pakistan did not adhere to it and developed nuclear weapons and North Korea was never a signatory. Other countries like Iran began to evade the treaty and since there was no real world government it was difficult to enforce the treaty throughout the world.
Andrew Carnegie was then President of the New York Peace Society.
Jawaharlal Nehru was an Indian independence activist and, subsequently, the first Prime Minister of India, as well as a central figure in Indian politics both before and after independence. He emerged as an eminent leader of the Indian independence movement, serving India as Prime Minister from its establishment in 1947 as an independent nation, until his death in 1964. He was also known as Pandit Nehru due to his roots with the Kashmiri Pandit community, while Indian children knew him better as Chacha Nehru (Hindi: Uncle Nehru).
