Message to American from India's Prime Minister Indira Gandhi

As part of our Bicentennial observance, TIME asked leaders of nations round the world to address the American people through the pages of TIME on how they view the U.S. and what they hope--and expect--from the nation in the years ahead. This message from Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of India is the seventh in the series.

On its Bicentennial I greet the United States of America on behalf of the 600 million people of India. The United States evokes three dominant physical images: its sheer vastness and natural endowment, the vitality and outgoing friendliness of its people, and its immense achievements as a civilization, measured by the profusion of its industrial and agricultural production and the dynamism of its scientific institutions and technological laboratories, symbolized by its space program.

There is a fourth, and inner, dimension that has given the U.S. its place in human history: its dreams and ideals.

Your founding fathers proclaimed the people's liberty and their right to mold their own destiny. Their vision and eloquence inspired Americans and influenced the freedom movements of many countries.

When Jefferson and his co-revolutionaries declared that all men are created equal, they knew that years and miles had to be traversed before the dream could become reality. Some of the greatest Americans --Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Martin Luther King--are world figures principally because they strove for the realization of this dream and the extension of the privilege of equality to millions.

America has been the land of opportunity. During the upswing of the industrial revolution, virtually limitless natural resources, security from military vulnerability, access to capital and to the manpower of Europe and Africa helped to expand its wealth. The opening of the West spurred the pioneering spirit of adventure, assertion and toughness. Would America be what it is without the caliber of its women--not only the work they did but the manner in which they sustained the family? Now they have lit the flame of equal rights, which must be a part of the desire of all weaker groups to establish their own identity, a prerequisite for a better humanity. Black Americans have steered through years of humiliation and sufferings with a sense of personal dignity and a rhythm that has contributed much to American development and culture.

Outstanding scientists from numerous countries have significantly added to American creativity. Countless trained technologists continue to be drawn from many parts of the world, advanced as well as developing. Their contribution, no less than the native obsession with short-term results, has enhanced America's power and selfesteem.

Today the U.S. is the top country, with a high opinion of its global responsibilities. There is no part of the world that does not sense American influence. Even societies built on other ideals wish to emulate American standards in material consumption. Not the least contagious of American products are its mass art forms.

All in all, it has been a sustained success story, with few setbacks. This has bred the conviction that what works for America must necessarily be best for others. However, some of its influential thinkers have challenged prevalent assumptions. Poets and playwrights are curiously tentative, if not pessimistic. Young Americans roam in search of new values. Public self-questioning and a capacity for self-correction are indeed among the graces of the American temper.

One must also record America's generous impulse, which has made its people responsive to the troubles of others. Hence many nations expect America to play its part in the building of an equitable economic order and to view with sympathy the efforts of other nations to achieve self-reliance.

Yet the preponderance of political and military power, the national habit of debating issues in a rather fundamentalist way, and the quick fluctuations of mood that characterize American life have made it difficult for American policy formulators and leaders of opinion to be patient with smaller and weaker nations and to appreciate their problems. Jawaharlal Nehru once said to Adlai Stevenson: "There is no difficulty in choosing between right and wrong if the question appears in that sense. It does not always appear clearly in that way. Between white and black there are many shades of gray." Perhaps noticing grays comes easier to countries that have gone through long periods of deprivation than to those accustomed to prosperity.

Technology seems to have created an illusion that it is an end in itself and not merely a means. Yet the human spirit and will have prevailed over military and material strength. American rationalization of its own global interests has led to misconceptions about the hold of nationalism in Asia and elsewhere. Even the idea of nonalignment is castigated as unethical, although recent efforts at accord with other countries are recognition of the inescapability of coexistence. In the founding of the United Nations, America knew that world peace and world stability could emerge only through the cooperative endeavor of all of the nations of the earth.

Basically, America's problems are the problems of all mankind: the taming of technology, the containing of violence, the control of bigness, tolerance and respect for human values, and the rediscovery of the ability to live spontaneously in partnership with nature. This is a cooperative quest of all peoples. To this great quest the United States of America will no doubt bring its enormous idealism, its tremendous exuberance and its experience in building institutions that make for social coherence while allowing plenty of room for individual advance. In trying to shape a new order in which all peoples and all nations are truly equal, we need the gift of seeing ourselves as others see us and also the gift of seeing others as they see themselves.

The historic founding of America 200 years ago was, to use a recent but nevertheless famous American phrase, a giant step for mankind. As this great American nation, whose friendship we truly value, now enters its third century, I give it my good wishes.

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