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The President
His Highness The Aga Khan, first delegate of India, will address the Assembly.

Historic occasion

The Aga Khan (India): They are no conventional feelings that have prompted me to address you, and it is no conventional speech that I wish to deliver. No representative of India, no Muslim, no Asiatic could play his part on this historic occasion unmoved. Times have been when the rulers of Afghanistan were content - were determined - to keep their nation aloof from the hurly-burly of the world; when even her historic and picturesque capital of Kabul was one of the world's forbidden cities. To-day Afghanistan has set her seal on a momentous change. Times indeed have changed in all parts of the globe. There have been developments everywhere which none could have foreseen thirty, twenty years back.

Expanding of Afghanistan

Nor has Afghanistan remained unaffected by the evolution of things within, or by the march of events outside. Today, she formally and finally enters into the great comity of nations - no stranger indeed, for she has been playing her part in session after session of the Disarmament Conference. Nor does she enter into a strange Assembly, for not only can she claim the goodwill of all, she can claim that all her next-door neighbours are today - and we could not say this when the session began - Members like her of the League.

A citizen of the world

It is not without emotion that I play my part on this memorable occasion. Throughout all my associations with the League I have felt - you will pardon the frankness of a man who is perhaps all the more a true representative of India because he is also a citizen of the world - I have long felt that the League was in danger of becoming too occidental and too representative of one creed to be truly catholic and universal.

Entering of Islamic nation
To a Muslim like myself, it is no small thing that another Islamic nation is today entering the League. For I am convinced that her entry will strengthen the League in far greater measure than the number of her subjects or even the extent of her realm might suggest,and will invigorate it in the pursuit of our common ideals with fresh ideas and a fresh outlook.

Glorious brotherhood of Islam
No Indian will read unmoved the proceedings of today. For India, however much she may seek from the West her political institutions, remains a true daughter of the East, proud of her Eastern blood, her Eastern languages, her Eastern cultures. These she shares with Afghanistan, and seventy millions of are, with Afghanistan in the glorious brotherhood of Islam.