Mr. President, Mr. Prime Minister, Your Excellencies, and Ladies and Gentlemen:
As I set foot on the soil of India I am fulfilling a cherished wish held for many years. And since the day that your Prime Minister came to visit me in Washington, and came with me to my home where we had talks about India, the work that India is trying now to do, I made up my mind that come what may, the Lord willing, I would come back to India while I was still President of the United States.
Your Prime Minister wrote a very great book about discovering India. I was intrigued with the book, but I am here to do what I can do in 4 short days, to do a little bit of personal discovery about India.
But some of the things I know. India won its freedom and its independence through peaceful means. This in itself was a great accomplishment, and one that has challenged the admiration of the entire world.
But more than that, India, determined to live in peace, has devoted her entire efforts, all her treasure, all her talent, all her brains to raising the standards of her own people, to give them a better chance for a better life.
My friends, these efforts are going to succeed if the world can have peace. All of us know it: the only alternative to global war is peace, or the other alternative is too horrible even to mention.
So I think that I can best explain that the deepest purpose that I have in coming here is this: to symbolize if I can, and if I may so presume, the fact that the United States stands with India, with the leaders of the United States standing with the leaders of India, in our common quest for peace. And the Lord permitting, nations and people so inspired will yet be successful to the complete freeing of men from the fears and tensions that have so long plagued humanity.
So let us all pray that even this little step may have some useful purpose in furthering that great hope.
Thank you--thank you particularly for your welcome and coming here. And I am sorry I was late, I couldn't help it.
Note: The President was met by President Prasad, Prime Minister Nehru, other Indian Government officials, members of the diplomatic corps, and U.S. Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, Remarks Upon Arrival at Palam Airport, New Delhi Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/234868
