This is an annual event which the Indian Council of Cultural Relations have been organizing since 1989 to honour the memory of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, the first Education Minister of India, and the founder President of the ICCR.

It is heartening that the response to this competition has been nation-wide and growing from year to year.  In the 1994-95 competition we have received more than 2000 entries.  This reflects the lively interest that exists amongst the younger generation in the personality of Maulana Azad and in the ideas and ideals for which he stood.  He was one of the greatest figures produced by the Indian nationalist movement -- a fearless freedom fighter, a great writer and orator, a prodigious scholar, and a statesman with a clear vision of the kind of India he wanted.  A person religious to the core, he was at the same time modern and secular in his outlook --  a combination of qualities which strikes a chord in the minds and hearts of every Indian.  His thought and action soared over the divisions and differences in our society and contributed to the intellectual and emotional unity of India.

 Maulana Saheb believed that "in the advancement of nations there is no greater hindrance than narrow-mindedness" which he called a social "disease".  More than any one else he had realized that narrow minds and a great composite society like that of India went ill-together.  In his Presidential address to the Delhi Session of the Indian National Congress in 1923 he dwelt upon the theme of Hindu Muslim unity, and said, "Eleven hundred years of common history have enriched India with our common achievements.  Our language, our poetry, our literature, our culture, our art, our dress, our manners and customs, the innumerable happenings of our daily life, everything bears the stamp of our joint endeavours".  He urged upon all Indians that "we must accept the logic of fact and history and engage ourselves in the fashioning of our future history."  This exhortation is as relevant to-day as it was when he made it.

Maulana Azad had a comprehensive concept of education as an instrument of the all-round improvement of human personality as well as of the development of India as a modern nation.  His idea of education was not merely academic.  He maintained that "true citizenship implies knowledge of and respect for the laws which govern the health of the community".  He pointed out that "at present in India", and it is relevant even to-day in India, "there is often emphasis on certain rituals of personal cleanliness, accompanied by colossal ignorance of and indifference to the laws of social health.  One of the main purposes of social education must be to train people for clean and healthy living".  Like Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Nehru he was a staunch advocate of women's education.  He held that "our educational programme will ultimately depend upon the proper education of women.  If women take to education more than half of our problems will be solved". 

However his concept of education was not just academic, physical, mental and social.  He held that education must not ignore proper training and refinement of the emotions, and in this training and refinement of the emotions he saw an important role for art, literature, folk music, drama, dance, poetry and recreative activities. 

Maulana Azad's vision  of a new India is to-day a beckoning call to our younger generation.  That they are responding to this call is evidenced by the enthusiasm shown by our young people in participating in this Essay Competition to honour him.  Through their essays they have articulated and expounded the Maulana Sahetsb's ideas and vision of India in the present-day context.  I congratulate all the participants, particularly the prize-winners, Miss Deepti Sharma, Mohd. Munis Ansari Azmi, and Mrs. Subhobrota Ray. 

May I now invite Respected Rashtrapatiji to give away the Awards.

Thank you