SPEECH
BY SHRI K.R. NARAYANAN, PRESIDENT OF INDIA, WHILE RECEIVING DOCTORATE
OF POLITICAL SCIENCE (HONORIS CAUSA) CONFERRED BY BILKENT UNIVERSITY
TURKEY,FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 1998
Professor
Ishan Dogramacci, President of the Bilkent University, Professor Ali Dogramacci,
Rector of the University, distinguished members of the Academic Community
of the University, Excellencies, Students and Friends.
I
am immensely honoured to have been conferred this honorary degree by the
Bilkent University. I value it as a precious recognition by the Academic
Community in Turkey of my old association with this country, when I had
the opportunity of promoting friendly relations between Turkey and India.
I have received a few honorary degrees from other Universities, but strangely,
those were in Science, Law, Sanskrit and other subjects of which I know
very little. But here, in Bilkent University, I have been honoured by
a degree in a subject which I studied seriously as a student and which
I had the opportunity to pursue in practice throughout my career. I recall
that when I passed out of the London School of Economics with B.Sc. honours
degree in Economics and Politics, Mr. Krishna Menon, of whom you must
have heard - one of our major politicians of the early era of independence
- called me and told me, " I hope you would not now spoil the good degree
you have got by taking a Ph.D from the London School of Economics". I
did not relish that advice then but I have been extremely fortunate that
without going through the tedious and hard work of preparing for a Ph.D
in Political Science, I have been most thoughtfully conferred an honorary
degree in this science by this new but great University.
Bilkent
University has been founded by one of the great institution builders of
Turkey, Ishan Dogramachi, who is a Paedeatrician, a scholar, a writer
and internationally renowned world citizen and above all as his biographer
has described him, " a remarkable Turk". I salute him on this occasion
for the contributions he has made to Turkey, especially to its academic
development. When I was here in the 1970s, this University Campus was
a barren place. Today a magnificent University town has grown up here
and more than that, the best students from Turkey, and from all over the
world and the best faculty from different parts of the world are working
in this University. I am extremely grateful to him and to the Chancellor,
the faculty, and the Board of Governors of this University for the gracious
gesture in offering me this honarary doctorate. I receive it as a gesture
of friendship to my country, India, with which Turkey had a lot to do
during the last nearly thousand years.
India
and Turkey have known each other, interacted with each other, exchanged
cultures, languages, customs and manners in a very significant way throughout
these centuries. Today, Turkey is a modern developed nation, which is
capable of competing with the European nations in the world market, standing
at the door of full membership of the European Union. We, in India look
up on Turkey as a grand bridge between Asia and Europe, a bridge which
in the past transmitted historical impulses and cultural impulses and
which today is eminently suited to transmit the great economic and technological
impulses taking place in the world. I am visiting Turkey after nearly
twenty two years and I see with my own eyes the remarkable progress that
this country and its people have made during this period. We in India
have also developed during this period and we are now in a position to
co-operate with each other, exchange technologies, exchange knowledge,
and enlarge our friendship into the wider arena of the world.
A
University is today not just an institution preparing the youth for the
future; it is its main job of course, but a world Institution which develops
a broader intellectual vision appropriate to the one world, that is emerging.
I should like to read out to you what Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru said of
a University. "A University stands for humanism, for tolerance, for reason,
for the adventure of ideas and for the search of truth. It stands for
the onward march of the human race towards even higher objectives. If
the Universities discharge their duties adequately then it serves the
nation and the people". I am, therefore, exhilarated to see that this
new University in Turkey is equipped to pursue the objectives Mr. Nehru
had put before a University. Because we are increasingly becoming globalised,
a one world vision has to be evolved while one is in the university. The
concept of this University where scientific and technical knowledge is
imparted along with social and humanitarian sciences is appropriate for
the world today. In the classical times we have heard of 'complete scholars'
like the great Italian scholars who were scientists and artists and who
had considerable knowledge of social sciences and the humanities. In the
modern world a scientist without the knowledge of social sciences and
humanities is an incomplete scholar. So also a political scientist or
a social scientist without knowledge of science and technology is also
an incomplete scholar. Not that any one scholar can obtain deep knowledge
of all subjects but there must be awareness, there must be consciousness
of the inter-relationships between the various branches of knowledge in
life. I am therefore, particularly exhilarated to know that such an attempt
is being made in this University.
I
should like to talk to you today something about India and something which
links India and Turkey. We are linked together by two great concepts:
democracy and secularism. India is a multi-religious, multi-lingual, multi-cultural,
multi-ethnic society which has cohered together over the centuries. We
have been, in the modern period, able to sustain this pluralist nation
through the mechanism and through the processes of democracy. Without
it the different religious groups, linguistic groups, regional groups,
and economic groups would not be able to play together in harmony. Turkey
is very similar to that. In fact we derived something of the impulse for
democracy and secularism from this great country, from the creator of
this Republic, the great Ataturk. All our nationalist leaders fighting
for our independence were inspired and enthused by the victory of the
Turkish liberation movement and the transformation of Turkey from an empire
into a democratic, secular State. In fact, it is not possible for the
present generation to capture the atmosphere of those days when Indian
leaders and our mass movement itself were affected, were enthused by the
events in Turkey.
We
have, as I mentioned, a complex and composite society in India. And because
of this great diversity Indian history has been a search for unity. I
should like to read out to you a passage from Nehru who had thought deeply
about Indian history and he wrote once, "some kind of a dream of unity
has occupied the mind of India since the dawn of the civilization. That
unity was not conceived as something imposed upon from outside, a standardization
of its strength or even of beliefs. It was something deeper and within
its soul the widest tolerance of beliefs and customs was practised and
every variety acknowledged and even encouraged." This is the background
of our democracy and I think this is the background of Turkish democracy
also. In practical terms this means for India, living together with different
religions, particularly with the immense population of Muslims that we
have in our country. The Jews came to India and we welcomed them, offered
them hospitality. The Hindu Maharajas liked them and helped to build their
synagogues. Then Christians came, they were welcomed the same way and
then the Zoarastrians came to take refuge from persecution in Persia.
They are still a flourishing community in India. We had our historic relations
with the Arab world even before the Arabs became Muslims. When Islam arose
in the Arab world its old cultural and trade relations were transformed
by the relations between Islam and India. In the same way, as we dealt
with other religious groups in India, we welcomed them. We were fascinated
by the new belief, new concept of God and the new brotherhood of man which
Islam preached. And in this association the Turkish nation had a big part
to play. Coming from Central Asia, the Turks established a great empire
in India. The British called it the Mughal empire, we didn't give that
name but it is also known as the Turko-Indian Empire.
One
amazing fact is that the interaction between the old civilization of India,
the Hindu civilization and the Islamic Civilisation was a friendly experience
in history in spite of the conquest. Actually, the interaction between
the two religions were profound. As time went on, Islam was influenced
by Hindu thought and Hindu thoughts were profoundly influenced by Islamic
thoughts. While these interactions were taking place, during the reign
of Akbar the Great, he even tried to combine the best in the two religions
and to establish a new religion. This was one of the great experiments
in Indian history. That experiment did not succeed partly because of the
European intrusion into India. In the fifteenth century Vasco da Gama
had already come to India and following the Portuguese other European
nations came in. So the peaceful process of interactions and assimilation
of each other's civilizations which was taking place in India got disrupted.
And I think India today, the sub-continent today, would have been in a
different state of affairs if the natural process of meeting, the encounter,
the interchange between civilizations which was actively taking place
in India as a process, was not disturbed, disrupted by European intrusion
into India.
But
that is a fact of history. We have to accept the facts of history. We
have no grudge against history. As Bismarck once said, "we can not take
revenge on history". All that statesmanship can do is to make sure that
the wrong things which happened in history would not happen again. There
is no point in trying to take revenge on the past. First of all, it cannot
be done. The past is past, it is with us. And therefore true statesmanship
means the acceptance of the past, the lessons of the past, so that the
historical mistakes need not be repeated.
At
the time of partition, our conception of the Indian sub-continent was
outlined by Nehru in a visionary manner. He was sitting in jail and he
wrote a great book called "The Discovery of India" where he wrote that
"if by any chance the partition of India takes place, but even then I
visualize that the two parts of India will co-operate with each other,
will be friendly with each other and develop together". The same thing
he wrote about three months after partition in 1947. He talked about our
Muslim minority and I would like to read out this quotation from him:
"We have a Muslim minority who are so large in numbers that they cannot,
even if they want to, go anywhere else. They have got to live in India.
That is a basic fact about which there can be no arguments. Whatever the
provocations from Pakistan, we have got to deal with this minority in
a civilised manner. We must give them security and the rights of the citizens
in a democratic state". This was the approach of the Indian leadership
soon after partition, an approach to which we cling with tenacity even
today. Because that is the destiny of the sub-continent. It is not to
quarrel with each other but to co-operate with each other and develop
to the fullness of its destiny, through cooperation, as one of the greatest
regions of the world.
I
do not wish to talk to you only about Indian history. But facing an audience
of youth, I should like to say a few words that may be relevant to them
also. But these few words, I don't want to be in the form of any advice.
You must have all read Oscar Wilde's famous saying that 'it is always
silly to give advice; but to give good advice is fatal'. So I will not
advise the youth today. Actually they know much more than the grown ups
about the world. Even though we elders are in charge of the political
destiny of the nations, the actual running of the world has actually passed
into the hands of youth. The world itself is composed predominantly of
younger people. In India, it has been calculated that about 60% of the
population is below 40 years of age. And so our country is predominantly
young. I think, so is Turkey. Elders occupy high positions but I find
that even these high positions are being increasingly occupied by younger
people. And in the present day world which has become interdependent and
integrated culturally, the youth is the vanguard of the new world. In
a globalised society intellectual and cultural influences are spreading
all over the world and the youth absorb these influences and therefore
the power has already been handed over, I think more than 60% to the youth.
The world has become globalised in one sense. Through computer communication
and internet the world has really become one and I have seen in your library
students accessing internet on computers. All this is possible today.
At the same time a paradoxical process is taking place. Culturally and
in our own experience we are shrinking into narrower groups. While the
world has enlarged itself the groups, various types of groups have become
more powerful than ever before. This is the great paradox. But one can
explain it to oneself quickly. All human beings need some intimate experience.
The global village is partly an abstract experience, it is not a life
and blood experience. It is knowledge coming through, but there is a need
to cling to something more intimate to which people can have a sense of
belonging. This has made the smaller groups, smaller sects and small nations
concentrating more on their own cultures and their own societies for the
intimate consolation in life. The greatest problem of the world is to
reconcile these two tendencies; to have the liveliness, the freshness,
of intimate life in a community and at the same time to belong to a much
larger world entity which doesn't give you emotional not to speak of spiritual
satisfaction.
I
believe that such a reconciliation will take place through education alone.
I may advise the students that this period of your life is the only period
you have in life to learn things. I often regret that I did not have the
time or the opportunity to learn many more things. I am still living on
the capital I have accumulated during my student days. That is my intellectual
capital fund. I am still drawing upon it. Because once you are grown up,
once you take professions, once you raise families, you would be caught
in the network of a different kind of life and even if you wish to, you
will not have time to learn new things. And therefore this is the period
when you have to spend every bit of your time in imbibing as much knowledge
and together with it as much experience in life as possible. How do you
acquire it? A great Justice of United States, Justice Holmes, once said
the inevitable comes to happen through effort. It may be inevitable that
it should happen but as Justice Holmes said this inevitable really happens
when you work for it and do hard work. And this is what I am sure Dr.
Dogramacci and the faculty are doing by providing facility to the student
community here. I am sure that it is inevitable that you should occupy
the places which you covet in life when you go out of this University.
But that can really happen only when you put in your efforts.
I
do not know how to thank you, Prof. Dogramacci and Rector Dogramacci,
for this wonderful gesture you have made to me personally and even more
to my country and to my people. I thank you on behalf of India for your
kindness, for the friendship you have shown to our people.
I
have, as a very small gesture from us, brought a portrait of a great man,
a great leader of India, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. He was our first Education
Minister. He was a great scholar, an Islamic scholar who interpreted in
his various writings Islamic thoughts to Indians and to Islamic people
all over the world. He came to Turkey in 1951. He was the one who signed
the first cultural agreement between India and Turkey. I should like to
present to this University a portrait of this great man, great nationalist,
great freedom fighter, great scholar and a great Muslim.
Thank you
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