Delivered Extempore
ADDRESS BY SHRI K.R. NARAYANAN, VICE PRESIDENT OF INDIA, AT THE INAUGURATION OF THE NEW BUILDING OF THE DR. AKHTAR HASAN RIZVI SHIA DEGREE COLLEGE
JAUNPUR, APRIL4, 1995
Hon'ble Governor, Shri Motilal Vohra, Shri Mata Prasad, Hon'ble Chief MInister, Shri Mulayam Singh Yadav, Hon'ble Member of Parliament, Shri Sibtey Razi, Shri Jagdamba Pal, Leader for the opposition party present here, Shri Mahabir Prasad, Distinguished Members of the Faculty of the College, Students, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Yesterday, I was in Allahabad. My wife and I received a warm and affectionate welcome from the Government and the people of Uttar Pradesh. Today, we are receiving a warm and affectionate welcome at Jaunpur at a tremendous public gathering. This is our first visit to Uttar Pradesh, after Shri Moti Lal Vora became the Governor, and after Shri Mulayam Singh Yadavji became the Chief Minister. Therefore, this is an important occasion for us, particularly today because I have been given the honour of inaugurating the Dr. Akhtar Hasan Rizvi Shia Degree College.
Uttar Pradesh has given many gifts to India. It has been the storm centre of our national struggle. It has given seven Prime Ministers out of 10 to India and I think this immense state with merely 150 million people and rich history and culture have the obligation, have the responsibility and the capacity to give India even richer things. If Uttar Pradesh becomes fully literate, if it advances in education and in economic development India would become of the most advanced and powerful countries in the world and this advance of ours is especially dependent on our educational development.
Jaunpur is an ancient city full of culture. It was here from the banks of Gomti that thousands of years ago our sages and seers sang the hymns of the Vedas. It was here that Persian and Arabic culture and literature flourished centuries later. It was here that sufism blossomed in the poetry songs and philosophy. Sufism which is a most beautiful blending of Islamic and Hindu culture and thought, at Jaunpur a new college like this is coming up is of great significance. I want to congratulate the Chief Minister for the generous donation that he has announced for girls college at Jaunpur. I want also to congratulate Dr. Akhtar Hasan Rizvi for the initiative he has taken in building a complex for the educational institutions. This is the era of liberalisation of private enterprise. While the Government can do many things for education and for the welfare of the people, the prosperous private enterprise has a duty to contribute to education and to other fields of human development.
I am glad that this is happening in our country. I recall may be nearly a century ago Sir Syed Ahmed Khan talked about educational institutions being built and managed by the people and not by Government alone. We are seeing that today in India. Of course Government has a crucial duty to help this process and also to bring about uniformity and certain national ideals and goals for our education. Islamic society in India itself has been considered to be backward in the field of education. Sir Syed Ahmed Khan who was a modernist, who topped in those days said that the Muslims in proud disdain should not move away, refuse to enter the schools and colleges established by the British. He was wanting them to imbibe modern knowledge. He declared several times that there was no nation in the world which could develop by itself without borrowing, without the help of other countries, the international countries. Today, the knowledge is globalised.
We have to be in that mainstream of world knowledge and for that we have to develop our education on a very broad basis. But I think as the Chief Minister said this education has to be based fundamentally on our own culture, on our own values and our own language, the basic education. At the same time we have to imbibe knowledge from abroad and we have to learn foreign languages otherwise we would not remain in the mainstream of world knowledge. Hence I am sure that is the intention of the founders of this institution that you have have not only a college of higher education in various subjects but they would try to make this an institution for excellence of high standard. I know that Uttar Pradesh has advanced very much during recent times. In 1947 I am told there were only 5 universities and 25 colleges in Uttar Pradesh. Today there are 20 Universities and 480 colleges most of them in the private sector but taking guidance from the syllabus and curriculum fashioned by the Government or by UGC. This is remarkable progress indeed.
One of the purposes of education is to develop a full personality, a tolerant personality, a compassionate human being who can understand and sympathise with the lot of other human beings. That would mean that while do we emphasise the importance of higher education, we have to give even greater importance to primary education because that is the platform on which we can build up a sound educational system. I am told that in Uttar Pradesh, the National Literacy Programme the Total Literacy Programme, has been a successful programme that it has already covered about 40 or 45 districts of the 85 districts of this vast state. Every teacher, every student in a college like this whether it is a degree college or intermediate college has the duty to involve himself or herself in literacy programmes.
Our country of nearly 900 million people cannot become literate unless we teachers, students and all those who are educated take a part in that campaign. I think the students are the most acute and with sufficient enthusiasm to perform that task. In Islam there has been a misconception that education was not sufficiently emphasised especially women's education. I do not have to quote Quran here but still I should like say what the holy Prophet said, "Seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave". For the prophet, it was not just going to the school for a few years but knowledge was a lifetime search, a lifetime process. He once said, "Seek knowledge even if it is in China". China was too far away in those days.
There is another quotation "to acquire knowledge is binding upon all Muslims, men and women. I should like to emphasise the word "women" because in our country, I think, educational progress and the general progress of the country depends in a very vital manner on the development of women. Mahatma Gandhi had told us on several occasions. Jawaharlal Nehru had told, said, it is education for women that would be the ultimate test of the advancement of a society. Therefore, I am happy that an inter‑mediate college has been established here for women's education with the help of the state government, I am sure, it would become a degree college, and girl students, coming out of this college will be the catalytic agents in transforming the status of women in the state and therefore, in India as a whole for the development of India.
we know that we are a multi‑religious state. Harmony, friendship, tolerance, cooperation among all religions, all communities are vital for our development. Islam originated in Arabia, on the basis of a single culture. It was a single culture, based on a single language in those days. But it spread in a spectacular manner to different and distant corners of the world and it became a multi‑religious, a multi‑lingual system. It accommodated with Persian, with Indian civilisations, with Chinese civilisation, with European civilisation. This capacity of Islam to have mingled with and absorb other civilisations is a quality which was tested in our own country. I think, it was in India that the most magnificent, composite culture of the Hindus and the Muslims was produced and that culture is today inextricably Indian culture.
Whatever threats may be posed to that culture, and that system of tolerance, I think, nothing would be able to shake the long tradition of tolerance of the composite culture that we have developed as a nation over the centuries. It is the triumph, blossoming of this culture that would be the glory of India and that would establish a society which is secular. By secular I do not mean a godless secularism. For us in India secularism is suffused with spiritual values and that sort of secularism is the essence of our composite culture and civilisation. I am sure and I pray that this institution which I had the honour of inaugurating today will contribute to this composite culture, to the harmony and brotherhood of all Indians and make India great. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
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