I am one of those who feel that India cannot, that India dare not, live in an international vacuum. It is all very well for some of our public men to talk in vacuo, to talk of neutrality, which is something absolutely unrelated to realities in the international sphere. Absolute neutrality is not only an academic, it is today an unreal, an unattainable ideal. India trying to live in an international vacuum would have discovered, as Burma perhaps has already discovered, that theoretical independence may mean vacuous inanity. Theoretical independence, in disregard of realities, may well mean in a period of stress and need, helpless and hopeless isolation.
