WELCOME SPEECH BY SHRI K.R. NARAYANAN, VICE PRESIDENT OF INDIA, ON THE OCCASION OF PRESENTATION OF JAWAHARLAL NEHRU AWARD TO SMT. ARUNA ASAF ALI

NOVEMBER 14, 1992

Respected Rashtrapatiji, Hon’ble Prime Minister, Smt. Aruna Asaf Ali, Members of the Jury of the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
 
I have the pleasant task this afternoon of welcoming you on the occasion of the presentation of the 1991 Jawaharlal Nehru Award to Smt. Aruna Asaf Ali. We are honoured by the presence of Arunaji in our midst to-day personally to accept the Award.
 
Instituted in 1965 this Award is in memory of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India. An impassioned nationalist Nehru was also an ardent internationalist. His pursuit of international understanding consisted of a life-long effort to promote peace and co-operation in the world and to reconcile and harmonize the enlightened national interests of the country with the larger interests of the world community. For him peace was of “paramount importance and essential pre-requisite for national development”.

As he put it in his characteristic mixture of realism and idealism : “The existence of under-developed and poverty-stricken nations or peoples is in itself an abiding danger to maintenance of peace. It has thus been increasingly recognized that the welfare and the peace of the world require the extermination of poverty and disease and ignorance from every country, so as to build up a liberated humanity.” Thus even while he was fighting for India’s independence, and striving to build a new India after independence, he was engaged ceaselessly in helping to create a peaceful, just, equitable and democratic world order. Though much has changed in India and the world in a spectacular manner since his time, the basic ideas and objectives for which he stood remain relevant and valid to-day.
 
By nominating Smt. Aruna Asaf Ali for the Jawaharlal Nehru Award the esteemed Jury has chosen someone who stands for the ideals of Nehru and whom Nehru himself would have wished to see honoured in this manner. He had admired the courage, audacity and spirit of sacrifice of this “heroine” of 1942, whom Gandhiji praised as “the central figure” in a struggle that “has been full of romance and heroism”. In 1947 Nehru described her as “a disturbing and disconcerting individual to many” and as a personality who “attracts, charms and compels attention.”
 
A fire brand during the freedom struggle, Smt. Aruna Asaf Ali became a constructive social worker animated by a crusading spirit in the post-independence era. She has been working untiringly for strengthening democracy and secularism, for eliminating communalism and casteism, and for building a socialist and democratic India. Dedicated to the social and economic transformation of India she worked amongst slum-dwellers, factory workers, agricultural labourers, trade unionists, women, youth and children. She has been a powerful force in the campaign for removal of poverty, illiteracy and disease from among our people. Her struggle for the liberation of women has had its impact not only in India but all over the world. Thus her work in India has been of world significance. She promoted international co-operation by struggling fervently for world peace, for friendship with the erstwhile Soviet Union, for solidarity with the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America, and indeed with all the down-trodden and exploited peoples of the world. In all this she demonstrated a sturdy independence of mind, an aversion to dogma, and a transcendental humanism.
 
 A fiery political revolutionary during the struggle for independence she became a constructive and compassionate social revolutionary after independence. To her can be applied the words of a kindred spirit in history, Rosa Luxemburg : “Determined revolutionary activity coupled with a deep feeling of humanity, that alone is the real essence of socialism. A world must be overturned, but every tear that flows and might have been stanched is an accusation, and a man hurrying to a great deed who knocks down a child out of an unfeeling carelessness commits a crime.” That was also essentially what Mahatma Gandhi, the greatest son of India and the father of the nation had in mind when he said that his ambition was “to wipe every tear from every eye”.

May I now call upon the Director General of Indian Council of Cultural Relations to read the citation of the Award, and request Rashtrapatiji to confer the Jawaharlal Nehru Award on Smt. Aruna Asaf Ali, the compassionate revolutionary with a deep feeling for humanity?

Thank you