NEW YORK: The myths of India`s secularism and `world`s largest democracy` were effectively exploded yesterday [Oct 13] by Pakistan`s Ambassador to the United States, Mr G. Ahmed, in a speech before the Council on World Affairs at St. Louis, Missouri. India has used those arguments throughout the world in recent years to repudiate her solemn plebiscite pledge to the people of Kashmir.

Addressing some 750 members and guests present, Mr G. Ahmed said `a fanciful argument advanced by India for retaining Kashmir is that India is a democratic, secular, multireligion, multi-racial, multi-lingual State, that if Kashmir is lost to India in a plebiscite India`s secular and multi-what-not character would be shaken and that India must be preserved because it is the so-called largest democracy in the world.

`What is democratic`? Mr G. Ahmed asked `about a country which has close upon a hundred million people living a sub-human life as untouchables and pariahs under a caste system.

.. What is democratic about a country in which one party manipulated by a few bosses has ruled without change for almost two decades, now what is democratic about a country in which elected State administrations are dismissed and thrown out of office and elected legislators kept out of the legislature if voting goes against the wishes of the party ruling at the Centre.

He added: `What is democratic about a country in which State Prime Ministers are dismissed and thrown into jails, regardless of their standing with their own State legislatures and what is democratic about a country which has stubbornly and unjustly denied the right of selfdetermination to the State of Jammu and Kashmir, which it holds in forcible subjection a right which India itself has acknowledged and publicly accepted?` Correspondent