I have great pleasure to extend a hearty welcome to Archbishop Reverend Trevor Huddleston, His Excellency Dr. Nelson Mandela and all the distinguished guests present at this solemn ceremony this morning.  Father Huddleston was chosen for the Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development by a distinguished Jury consisting of Sir Veerasamy Ringadoo, former President of Mauritius, Mr. Robert McNamara of U.S.A., Academician G.I. Marchuk of Russia,  Sir Shridath Rampahl, former Secretary General of the Commonwealth and Sir David Williams, Vice Chancellor of Cambridge University, U.K. and chaired by the Vice President of India.  I am happy that Father Huddleston is personally present here to-day to receive the Prize.  I am equally happy that Dr. Nelson Mandela, President of the Republic of South Africa, has graced the occasion by his presence adding a special meaning to this function.

In 1980 we have had the honour to bestow the Jawaharlal Nehru Award on Dr. Nelson Mandela which was received on his behalf by Mr. Oliver Tambo as Dr. Mandela was still in jail at the Robben Island in South Africa.  The Indira Gandhi Prize now being conferred upon Archbishop Huddleston is a prestigious companion award.  The distinguished recipients of the two awards are spiritual companions in the struggle against colonialism and racialism and two happy warriors in the fight for freedom, human dignity and the rights of man.  If it is a co-incidence that these two separate awards have gone to these two great personalities and if both of them are present in our midst to-day, it is indeed a most significant coincidence.  The Nehru Award to Dr. Nelson Mandela and now the Indira Gandhi Prize to Father Huddleston are a declaration of India's opposition to colonialism and racism, and solidarity with the cause of African liberation.  In apartheid the world witnessed the merging together, almost a chemical fusion of the two evils of colonialism and racialism.  No honour is adequate enough to those who fought against it and won in the bitter fight.

I had occasion to meet Father Huddleston in India in 1971 during the Bangladesh crisis when he visited the sub-continent, together with my friend, the late Mr. Donald Chersworth, Warden of Toynbee Hall in London, for relief work among the millions of refugees pouring across the border into India.  Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was involved as a saviour in that situation of infinite tragedy.  Observing Father Huddleston's humanitarian work at that time and his previous and later work against colonialism and apartheid in Africa I thought of Thomas Paine the great champion of the rights of man and fighter against tyranny everywhere.  Thomas Paine used to say that "where there is no freedom there is my place."  Archbishop Trevor Huddleston could well have said "where there are no human rights and there is racial oppression there is my place."

 It has been the tradition of India from Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru to Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and Narasimha Rao right now to fight against colonialism and racialism in all their manifestations.  Indeed no country had considered so ardently and with such intimate identification as India, its struggle for freedom and independence as an integral part of the struggle against imperialism, colonialism and racialism in the world as a whole.  Indira Gandhi had visited almost by chance South Africa during 1940-41 and she was moved by what she saw of the humiliation and insults heaped upon Africans and Indians in Durban.  Nurtured in the school of Gandhi and Nehru she harboured since then a passionate hatred against apartheid and all forms of racism.  Much later at the Nonalignment Conference at Lusaka saying that "the heart beats of Africa were sounding like drums", she declared: "There can be no compromise with apartheid.  In fighting it, every nation, in whatever continent, should regard itself as a frontline state . . . the resurgent vigour and genius of this great continent cannot be suppressed and will prevail."

Indira Gandhi treated heroes of freedom struggle everywhere as India's own heroes.  She said that "whenever people care for freedom and human dignity, Nelson Mandela's name is known and respected", and again that "the spark kept alive so courageously by warriors like Nelson Mandela cannot be extinguished".  She also talked of the final victory of "the unfinished revolution" that will liberate mankind from oppression and thraldom and herald peace for all.  Indira Gandhi, while referring to the operation of reactionary forces in Asia and Africa pointed out how those forces exploited religion for domination and for narrow political and economic advantages.

Father Huddleston in his book "Naught for Your Comfort" exposed the use of religion during the industrial revolution in support of colonial oppression, and in White South Africa as a buttress to its apartheid policy.  As Vice President and later as President of the Anti-apartheid Movement based in London Father Huddleston conducted an international crusade against apartheid, organized demonstrations in Britain against the anti-sanctions policy of his Government, against the visit of P.W. Botha to London, for the "Nelson Mandela Freedom at 70" campaign and appeared before the United Nations repeatedly pleading for action against apartheid.  In 1982 he told the U.N. General Assembly:  "We were appealing to the world community to recognize that apartheid was not as many at that time liked to believe, a matter of South African political practice, a matter of purely local and internal concern, but an issue of world-wide significance and as much a challenge to the future of mankind as the Nazi ideology that had brought about the Second World War . . . ."

I referred earlier to the misuse of religion for oppressive purposes.  Mahatma Gandhi once said : "The most heinous and the most cruel crimes of which history has record have been committed under the cover of religion or equally other noble motives."  Father Huddleston exposed the use of religion to sustain apartheid.  At the same time he used religion, true religion, as a weapon to fight against it.  It is from Father Huddleston that Bishop Tutu got the idea of the Church as both a compassionate and militant institution.  He used it as a powerful instrument to rouse public opinion against discrimination and injustice, and the Bible as a revolutionary instrument. 

Bishop Tutu observed:  "It was a tremendous idea, to be partner of God in the dusty streets of the townships."  Father Huddleston had influenced Bishop Tutu, Oliver Tambo and, of course, Nelson Mandela, and he had carried out their noble mission in his role as a progressive and militant priest in South Africa and in the international arena.  The cause that Father Huddleston espoused was dear to India, dear to Indira Gandhi.  Indira Gandhi once said "the total abolition of colonialism and racialism in every form is a pre-requisite of a new world order."  Now that classical colonialism has ended and apartheid has been dismantled, we have the opportunity to work for the new world order of which Indira Gandhi spoke.  The Indira Gandhi Prize to Father Huddleston is a recognition of and tribute to one of the noble, compassionate and courageous individuals who has contributed to this historical process.

WELCOME ADDRESS BY SHRI K.R. NARAYANAN, VICE PRESIDENT OF INDIA AT THE PRESENTATION FUNCTION OF THE RAJIV GANDHI NATIONAL SADBHAVANA AWARD TO SHRI MOHAMMAD YUNUS ON SUNDAY, 20TH AUGUST, 1995.
 
We are assembled here to confer the Rajiv Gandhi National Sadbhavana Award upon one of the remarkable personalities of our time.  Shri Mohammad Yunus, as Rajiv Gandhi once said, was "an active and enthusiastic participant" in the nationalist movement and one who "personally experienced its thrill".  He is to-day a link between our present and the glorious days of our freedom struggle, and in his mellow ripeness he has nursed a spark of what Nehru was fond of calling the Indian revolution.  He is also a link between present-day India and its undivided past reminding us of the heroic sacrifices that the brave people of the North West Frontier under the inspiring leadership of Khan Abdul Ghaffer Khan made for the independence of the country.  As a young man Shri Yunus was an impetuous but disciplined soldier of the one hundred thousand strong force -- the Khudai Khidmatgars -- that the Frontier Gandhi organized as a non-violent volunteer army in the struggle for freedom.

The struggles and sacrifices of the people of the North West Frontier is perhaps not sufficiently well known to the younger generation of Indians.  The Rajiv Gandhi Award is as much a tribute to Shri Mohammad Yunus as to those freedom-fighters of the North West Frontier.  As Nehru wrote in his foreword to Shri Yunus's book "The Frontier Speaks",  ". . . . . it is good to think of our comrades of the Frontier, brave men and true, who have marched often through the valley of the shadow."

From the beginning, Shri Yunus was not just a brave young man of the Frontier, but one whose heart throbbed for India and who loved the Indian people.  He wrote about his entry into politics: "I jumped into the political arena, and came under the influence of Jawaharlalji.  I travelled with him all over the country, met the young and the old, and became acquainted with people like Maulana Azad, Zakir Sahib, Prof. Mujeeb, Rafi Ahmed Kidwai, a host of colourful characters . . . . .  I was involved with varied aspects of politics, whether it was Gandhiji's Ashram or Gurudev's Santiniketan, the hustle and bustle of Anand Bhawan, or a wistful village night ! "   When Nehru asked him about his zest for travel he replied: "I may as well see my country for which I may be called upon to die one day."  It was in this spirit he went to jail during the Quit India movement, and left his blood relatives and friends and comrades in the Frontier and cast his destiny with India after partition.

Shri Mohammad Yunus cherished the ideals for which Rajiv Gandhi dedicated and, ultimately, sacrificed his life.  Rajivji was one who loved India, and the people of India and proud of being an Indian.  He fought against the irrational forces of communalism and violence and worked for harmony in society and the emotional integration of the country.   He once said that the status of becoming an Indian does not come by getting one's name registered in the electoral rolls or by possessing a passport.  It came rather from the way one felt, one accepted its diversities and differences with understanding, one loved the people whether they are from north, south, west, east or the north-east or the north-west, and one felt pride in our culture and traditions.  Indeed Sadbhavana is the essence of Indianness.  Mohammad Yunus is a fine example of Sadbhavana as conceived by Rajivji.

It has been the privilege of Shri Mohammad Yunus to participate in the drama of India's development as he did in the saga of India's freedom struggle.  The ardent Khudai Khidmatgar  -- the servant of God -- became a servant of the people.  In 1947  Jawaharlal Nehru sent him to Indonesia as India's representative where he played a role not only as a diplomat but as political activist earning the trust and affection of the heroes of Indonesian freedom struggle like Sukarno, Hatta and Sutan Shariyar.  Next he was sent as India's representative to Turkey.  One of his brothers, Abdur Rahman, had distinguished himself as the Ambassador of Turkey to Afghanistan and was buried in Istanbul. 

Shri Yunus recalls how when he arrived in Istanbul he was met by a former Prime Minister of Turkey and taken to the tomb of his brother.  Indeed the diplomatic career of Mohammad Yunus was a remarkable one.  He was an unorthodox diplomat of new India marked by the spirit and attitude of Sadbhavana.  While in Turkey, he records: "At times the ordinary peasants were surprised to find a diplomat in what to them was a prestigious flag-flying car ready to sleep in a village school and be content with the food they offered."   He had the privilege of opening several of India's first diplomatic missions, and he participated in the historic Asian Realations Conference in Delhi, the Asian African Conference in Bandung, and in Nonalignment Conferences at the instance of Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi.  At all these he was an unorthodox diplomat representing the spirit of resurgent India that had emerged from the anti-colonial revolution.

Indeed Shri Yunus retained his broad humanity and the common touch in his public career after independence as he did during the period of the freedom struggle.  He was bitterly opposed to communalism be it of the majority or the minority and he worked for a secular democratic society in India infused with the spirit of harmony, equality and fraternity.  And in the spirit of Sadbhavana and as a true Muslim he ardently wished that there be harmony and brotherhood among the communities in India, and peace and friendship in the Indian sub-continent, especially between India and Pakistan.  He wrote: "I pray for the day when the two nations step together on the path of friendship and begin to share joys and sorrows of one another.  There are thousands like me who hope and pray that we develop a new relationship, where we can co-exist in mutual love, peace and harmony."  This is the outpouring from the heart of the deep feeling of Sadbhavana of a great Indian who has sacrificed so much for the freedom of the country and who yearns so passionately for peace and harmony.  It is such a personality on whom we are confering to-day the Rajiv Gandhi National Sadbhavana Award.  I have great pleasure to welcome to our midst, on behalf of you all, Shri Mohammad Yunus.

Thank you