In his address at Columbia University, New York, in October 1949, Nehru had given a concise definition of the objectives of India’s foreign policy: The pursuit of peace, not through alignment with any major power or group of powers, but through an independent approach to each controversial or disputed issue; the liberation of subject peoples; the maintenance of freedom, both national and individual; the elimination of racial discrimination; and the elimination of want, disease and ignorance which afflict the greater part of the world’s population.
