If we, really speaking, want to achieve what we really want to achieve, we must have that cool, stubborn, stout confidence in our hearts. Unless we have great confidence in our minds, I do not think we will be able to reach the great destiny that we are destined to reach. I know that the road to that destiny is rather long, rather hazardous. There are perilous precipices on the way. But unless with smiling face and with head high, and with courage, we walk that difficult road, we shall never reach that destiny. I have no doubt in my mind that whatever the difficulties, whatever the deficiencies, we will be able to do so. Deficiencies are there. Even today, there will be some deficiencies. Let us not think that because we have made efforts, the deficiencies have been removed. Now we are expanding our Army and our Air Force. There will be deficiencies. But certainly, we should see that those deficiencies do not reach the people on the front but that they are taken by people at the back or at the training centres.
Unless we are prepared to face this problem with courage, we cannot do it. I have no doubt in my mind- I do not think there is anyone who has any doubt in his mind: all of us are determined in that respect—that we can do it. The way our country has lived for the last 5,000 years is such that this country must remain an independent country, and will remain an independent country.
So if we continue with these efforts that we are beginning in the form of a defence effort that we have started, the time will come when any potential aggressor will think twice, ten times, a hundred times, before thinking of any aggressive intentions against India.
I have done.