Culture, Secularism and Diversity SPEECH BY SHRI K.R. NARAYANAN, PRESIDENT OF INDIA, WHILE PRESENTING THE DR. AMBEDKAR INTERNATIONAL AWARD FOR SOCIAL CHANGE TO BABA AMTE NEW DELHI, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2000 It is a great pleasure for me to have had the privilege of presenting the Dr. Ambedkar International Award for Social Change to Baba Amte. I should like to compliment the distinguished members of the Jury for the choice they have made, and offer my respectful felicitations to Baba Amte for winning this prestigious Award. I think this is the most appropriate way to remember Babasaheb Ambedkar on this solemn anniversary of his Mahaparinirvan. Following the principles of the Buddha, -- enlightenment, equality and compassion -- Babasaheb exerted his energy to the very end of his life for the transformation of our ancient, caste-ridden society of graded inequalities into a social democracy and a community of brotherhood. Babasaheb’s life, in his own words, was a "continuous struggle for the poor and the oppressed". By the Constitution of India, of which he was the principal architect, not only untouchability was abolished, but he sought to wipe out the entrenched and intricate inequalities of the caste system. Upholding that equality was another name for democracy, he fought the caste-system which was the root evil of our society and the cause of our downfall in history. Social change, I should say, social revolution, was the master objective of his life. As for Baba Amte, he has devoted his whole life for the same objective of social change, social revolution and spiritual enlightenment of man and the society. From his early boyhood Baba Amte had rebelled against inequalities and caste exclusions and prohibitions of Indian life. He freely mixed with Dalits, shared food and accommodation with them and allowed them to draw water from his family well. He had organized an association of scavengers, fraternised with them and even did scavenging work himself. It has been said that a great man is the scourge and the scavenger of society. Ambedkar and Baba Amte have been both. Dr. Ambedkar, referring to the condition of the tribals had said, "aborigines have remained in their primitive state in a land which boasts of a civilization thousands of years old". He held that "civilizing the aborigines means adopting them as your own, living in their midst and cultivating fellow feeling, in short loving them". Baba Amte, in his tribal upliftment work, translated these sentiments and ideals into practice. He established Lok Biradari Prakalpa, the Peoples Brotherhood Project, by which he taught the tribals new farming and irrigation methods, provided them with educational and medical facilities, taught them and trained them in boarding schools, so that they could be groomed into agents of social change among their own communities. It may be recalled in this context that Dr. Ambedkar had emphasized the over-riding importance of education in uplifting the tribals and Dalits. He said once, "We may forgo material benefits, but we cannot forgo our right and opportunity to reap the benefits of the highest education to the fullest extent". Baba Amte adopted this line when he established educational institutions in order to prepare the youth along these ideals for restructuring society. Both Babasaheb Ambedkar and Baba Amte believed passionately in the unity of India. But, for them unity was not just political and economic unity, they yearned for social unity based on fraternity and abolition of distinctions of caste and creed. Dr. Ambedkar was outspoken in the Constituent Assembly when he said: "I am of the opinion in believing that we are a nation we are cherishing a great delusion. How can people divided into several thousands of castes be a nation? The sooner we realize that we are not yet a nation, in the social and psychological sense of the word, the better for us. For then only, we shall realize the necessity of becoming a nation and seriously think of ways and means of realizing the goal." At the same time Ambedkar declared that while at the moment we may be warring groups, socially and economically, "given time and circumstances nothing in the world will prevent this country from becoming one". Baba Amte in the 'Knit India' movement that he launched to bring all India together from East to West, from North to South, was trying to unite the country by removing all distinctions of caste and creed and cleansing it of all social ills. In the seminars held in different parts of the country he administered a pledge to the youth to understand and feel the hurt of the hungry and the oppressed through a fellowship of pain. Speaking in this very Ashoka Hall in January 2000 while receiving the Gandhi Peace Prize, Baba Amte said: "I courted voluntary imprisonment for more than five decades with my depressed, oppressed, lonely leprosy patients and the socially deprived at Anandvan. It is well known that a just place for a just man in an unjust society is either jail or death". By this Award we are honouring to-day a compassionate crusader for the welfare of the poor, the lowly and the lost in our society. The struggle of Baba Amte now embraces the whole of suffering humanity and the tortured earth and its environment. It has been said that the struggle for environment is the biggest religious and spiritual movement in the world to-day. Baba Amte has said: "Now that the sun of life is about to set, I have set out to catch the rising sun of environmental consciousness". For him the environmental movement is not merely to save the trees, the mountains and the rivers, but the human lives that these nurture – the tribals and the poorest of the poor of the land. Baba Amte described the Narmada Bachao movement as new battlefront for youth action "as an outburst of Gandhian courage and concern for antyodaya". I recall that during our independence struggle the late Shri V.K. Krishna Menon, directing his verbal missiles at British audiences, declaring that the British imperialists had gone around the world "damming rivers and damning peoples". Let us, now that imperialism is gone, take every possible care to see that the impact of the dams we build is not ruinous to the lives of our tribal brothers and sisters inhabiting our forests and river valleys. Dr. Ambedkar had once said that "land shall belong to the State and shall be let out to the villagers without distinction of caste or creed and in such a manner that there will be no landlord, no tenant, and landless labour". On another occasion he had proposed more pragmatically that all waste land should be acquired by the State distributed among the Dalits and tribals. In the blind and remorseless march of modern development it is good for us to pause and recall these words, which were voiced by Mahatma Gandhi also when he said "Land belongs to Ram". The forest land on which Baba Amte established his Lok Biradari Prakalpa, ‘an outcaste land for outcaste people’, he named Anandvan or the ‘Forest of Joy’. While presenting Baba Amte with this Award let us recall the dreams of Mahatma Gandhi and Babasaheb Ambedkar and try to make our forests and river valleys, forests and valleys of joy, and not of human misery and deprivation. And let us all wish Baba Amte good health and long life in order to fulfil his noble mission for the welfare of the poor and the neglected in society. Thank you Jai Hind ^Top