ADDRESS
TO THE NATION BY SHRI K.R.NARAYANAN, PRESIDENT OF INDIA, ON THE EVE
OF INDEPENDENCE DAY-2001
MONDAY,
AUGUST 14, 2001
Fellow
citizens, On the eve of the 54th anniversary of our Independence, and
the first Independence Day of the twenty-first century, I have great pleasure
to offer to my fellow citizens, whether in India or abroad, my greetings
and salutations. I extend a special word of gratitude to the brave men
of our defence and para-military forces who guard our frontiers, to our
kisans, mazdoors, artisans and entrepreneurs, our teachers, doctors, engineers,
scientists and technologists, and the youth and the women of India, whose
toil and hard work have put India among the front rank of the nations
in the world, preserving the values of our ancient civilization. My fellow
citizens, on this anniversary eve let us remember with gratitude and pride
the freedom fighters and the founding fathers of our Republic who sacrificed
so much to gain our independence.
We particularly remember Mahatma Gandhi
who pitted his soul-force and organized the power of our "dumb millions"
against the mighty empire that ruled over us. It is they who laid the
moral foundations and the political framework that made India a resurgent
nation and enabled all of us to hold our heads high in the world. On any
reckoning the independence of India was a landmark event in history. Speaking
in the Constituent Assembly on January 22, 1947, our first Prime Minister
Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru said and I quote his words, "On that occasion,
I felt the past crowding upon me, and I felt also the future taking shape.
We stand on the razor’s edge of the present. I felt that we are coming
to the end of an age.
I had a sense of our forbears watching this undertaking
of ours and possibly blessing us. It was a great responsibility to be
trustees of the future and it is also some responsibility to be the inheritors
of our great past." My fellow citizens, may I greet you on this anniversary
as the inheritors of a great past and the trustees, I believe, of a greater
future. Friends, the last 54 years of our independence despite all our
shortcomings and frustrations, have been perhaps the single longest period
in our long history, when relative peace, progress and a sense of unity
prevailed in this vast country of ours with hope for the future rising
in the minds of the millions of our people. It is possible to find a hundred
faults and failures, during the over fifty post-independence years, but
the fact of our having made forward strides during this period has to
be recognized, because it is then only we can build a better and brighter
India. We are to-day a united nation.
This unity has not been brought
about by blood and iron but by the softer and by the more enduring methods
of tolerance and the human approach, in short through the gentle and genuine
method of democracy. The biggest achievement of ours since independence
has been this, the patient building up of a democracy and of unity in
the midst of all our bewildering diversities and overwhelming difficulties.
This achievement of unity and democracy has been hitched to an unprecedented
experiment in social democracy, all our endeavours and our arms stretching
constantly to human freedom and social justice. It is imperative that
we should strive to maintain this balance between freedom and justice.
It is this essential and basic balance at the heart of our system that
has enabled us to continue to serve our poverty-stricken people in the
face of the tidal wave of globalisation that is sweeping the world to-day.
It might sound an impossible thing to do. But I have great faith in our
people, the millions of our ordinary people, what Gandhiji called the
"dumb millions" who are becoming to-day more and more articulate and impatient.
Let the better off amongst us ask themselves what they can do for our
people and for our country, to be the inheritors of our great past and
trustees of our future. Our future is in our own hands. Let me on this
anniversary greet you once again with the challenging victory cry.
Thank you
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