Published Mar 16, 2026 | 10:38 AM ⚊ Updated Mar 16, 2026 | 10:43 AM
Najeeb Jung.
Recently, on 11 March, former Delhi Lieutenant Governor and veteran bureaucrat Najeeb Jung delivered a speech on the ongoing war in Iran and the standpoints of other nations regarding the war at the People’s Conference for Peace: Condemning the Assassination of Ayatullah Syed Ali Khamenei, organised by Indian Muslim for Civil Rights (IMCR) and Association for Protection of Civil Rights (APCR).
Here is a transcript of the speech.
I will begin with a verse. I start with a couplet by Faiz Ahmed Faiz:
‘How many crosses stand in my doorway,
each carrying the colour of its own messiah’s blood.’
I stand here today with my head bowed, ashamed. I am ashamed of living in this world. I am ashamed when I look at the powers of the world that have crossed all limits of humanity.
I stand ashamed of humanity itself, which has forgotten the meaning of humanity. The attack on Iran has blown to Simidrin’s many, many concepts of political thought and political science that have existed in this world. Number one, there is nothing known as the Islamic world.
Our Arab friends have proven that the concept of pan-Islamism does not exist. It is the Arab world. It is not the Islamic world.
They have driven the deepest shaft in our hands for a few dollars that they get. And what will they get? What security will the Americans provide them at the cost of humanity, at the cost of the lives of children who are dying? Let us not just forget the 125 or 160 girls who died, and the hundreds and hundreds of children who have died in Palestine over two years without water. We remember Karbala, Sayyida Abba.
There was a Karbala (sacrifice) every day in Palestine for two years, and the world kept quiet. And there will be a Karbala repeated in Iran every day of the next few months or years that this world lasts because of the mistake that has been made by our friends in America, and the satanic forces in Israel. They forget the concept of sacrifice, the concept of bearing pain that the Iranians have. The Iranians, a 7,000-year-old civilisation, have known the force of pain.
And let me tell you a small story. When Alexander the Great came to Persia, Persia was the greatest empire in the world in those days. He was so impressed by the culture that he decided to stay back. It was only much later that he decided to move on to India, and when he came to Persia, and he stayed there, the queen mother, the mother of Darius, treated him like a son, and Alexander wished that he could, as a great Greek, the great Greek culture could be even a seminal part of the great Persian culture.
You want to destroy that, and the world sits quietly. So I stand here ashamed at what’s happening in my own country. I stand here ashamed, as people have said that we are scared to sign a condolence book.
I remember I was still in the office in those days when there was a blast in France, in Paris, and I was in the office, and several ministers of the Indian government went to the French embassy to sign the condolence message. It was just one blast. Here, there is a blast every minute of the day, if not every second.
There are bombs in thousands. You cannot imagine how a child can sleep in Tehran or Isfahan. It’s impossible to even conceptualise what is happening in Iran, or, of course, what has happened in Palestine.
What is the mental state of the people living there, and therefore, I stand ashamed at the behaviour of all the Arab nations that stand as their neighbours without batting an eyelid and conniving with powers in the West. I stand ashamed today that the world doesn’t have a Gandhi. I stand ashamed today that there is no Mandela to speak for anyone.
I stand ashamed that there is no Martin Luther King to speak. Who will speak for these people? It is not India. It cannot be any other nation that stands for this place.
The Chinese are playing their own games. Perhaps Russia at some point in time. But you have left a very major nation of the world, a major civilisation of the world, to prove its bravery.
Sheer bravery every day in the face of a barbaric onslaught that nobody speaks of. We watch television news all the time. The less we speak of the Indian media, the better.
I think we are all proud of what the YouTubers do. But the less we speak of the Indian media and the less we speak of the CNNs and the BBCs and the Al Jazeeras who have sold their conscience for 30 pieces of silver. There is no voice to speak of the Iranians. So will the world stay silent? Will nobody rise up?
Will thousands of our young people, old people, politicians and members of parliament not come out in the streets and protest? Is it not time? I think that meetings like this should help raise the consciousness of people around us.
People like Swamiji, people like Siddhartha, people like Salman here should really go out and raise the consciousness of people, as Salim Sahib has said. And raise the conscience of my brothers and sisters in India, the Sikhs, the Muslims, the Hindus, the Parsis, to come out and speak with courage, to write with courage, write in newspapers, speak, go to seminars, hold conferences and raise the conscience of this world, raise the conscience of Americans. I see very few people doing it.
