Culture, Secularism and Diversity REMARKS BY SHRI K.R. NARAYANAN, PRESIDENT OF INDIA, WHILE RECEIVING THE COMMEMORATIVE VOLUME ON DR. ZAKIR HUSAIN ENTITLED "TEACHER WHO BECAME PRESIDENT" NEW DELHI, JULY 21, 2000 Hon'ble Vice President, Hon'ble Prime Minister, Hon'ble Ministers and distinguished friends, I am very happy and honoured to receive this Centenary volume on Dr. Zakir Husain. Dr. Zakir Husain was a man of great learning, of vision and an aesthete and above all a man of culture and a fine human being. He said that when he became President, 'I presume that I have been chosen for this high office on account of the contributions I have made on education of my people'. He was an educationist par excellence. He believed that it is through education that India can be regenerated. In fact, he once said, India can achieve renaissance not through the strait and narrow gate of politics, but through the floodgates of education. He was also a man with a common touch. I came across a story that while he was the President, a petty shopkeeper called Subba visited him. He almost rushed to receive him. His protocol people told him that it is not protocol for him to receive the shopkeeper but he told them your protocol is in its place, but my protocol is part of my life and he met him. He added that but for this man, I and my family would have faced starvation in my earlier days. The shopkeeper had helped him in his earlier days and he never forgot that. It is this great man that we are remembering today and Mr. Vice President in your house in Maulana Azad Road, you can still see the imprint of his aesthetic qualities with the rose garden he built there and the roses he planted there. His spirit lives on through his works, through his aesthetic qualities and contributions. I have great honour today to pay my tribute to his memory. Thank you Jai Hind ^Top