Former President of India : K R Narayanana

SPEECH BY SHRI K.R. NARAYANAN, PRESIDENT OF INDIA, WHILE INAUGURATING THE AKHIL BHARATIYA KALIDAS SAMAROH, 2000

UJJAIN, TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2000

I am delighted to be present at the inauguration of the Akhil Bharatiya Kalidas Samaroh, 2000. To be asked to associate myself with the festival in the name of the greatest poet of India is itself a great honour. When I recall that the first Kalidas Samaroh was inaugurated by Dr. Rajendra Prasad, the first President of India in 1958, and that the second Samaroh, was inaugurated by our first Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, makes me feel humble as well as proud to have been invited to perform this august function. On this occasion I should like to pay a tribute to the memory of Pandit Suryanarayana Vyas whose scholarly enthusiasm was responsible for the establishment of this festival and other institutions associated with Kalidasa in Ujjain. In 1958 our first Prime Minister, while commending this institution, had written to all the Chief Ministers of India suggesting that the Kalidas Samaroh should be celebrated as a national festival. I am happy that the Government of Madhya Pradesh is observing this as a genuinely national festival.

Ujjain, the venue of the Kalidas Samaroh can be described as a cultural and poetic capital of India. This ancient city is associated with the giants of Sanskrit literature like Kalidasa, Bhartrihari, Vatsyayana, and Hindi poets and scholars like Shivmangal Singh Suman, Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh, Prabhakar Machve, Balkavi Bairagi and Pandit Surya Narayan Vyas, to mention a few well-known names. Ujjain was, besides, a great centre of education. It is believed that Lord Krishna had received his education along with his brother Balarama from Maharshi Sandipani in his Ashram in this city of Ujjain. To-day, the Kalidas Academy is also situated in this city. I want to thank the organizers of this Samaroh and the cultured people of Ujjain for preserving and nurturing here the cultural and literary heritage of our country.

In Kalidasa’s "Meghadutha" there are about ten stanzas describing the palatial buildings, the decorated markets, the charming ladies of this city. Kalidasa had described Ujjain as a resplendent fragment of heaven. There are, besides, many references to Ujjain, in "Swapna Vasavadatta" of Bhasa, "Mricchakatika" of Shudraka, "Nitisara" of Harsha, "Rajtarangani" of Kalhana. Bana’s "Kadambari" contains a detailed description of Ujjain. The "Skandapurana" in its Avantikhand describes of the glory of the city when it is said. "Who would not like to live in the city of Ujjain where there is the presence of Lord Shiva and where there is the Shipra river flowing with its pure and clean water." The great poet Rajshekhara in his "Kavyamimamsa" described the city as the testing ground of poets.

Ujjain was, of course, the capital of King Vikramaditya when the navaratnas adorned his court. It is, therefore, with an emotional awareness of the ancient culture and the poetry of India that I stand here to inaugurate the Kalidasa Samoroh.

It was the translation of "Sakuntalam" in 1789 by Prof. William Jones that made the poetry of Kalidasa become known to the world and to Indian intelligentsia. It created, in the words of Jawaharlal Nehru, "something in the nature of a commotion among European intellectuals" and several editions of the book were published in German, French, Italian and other European languages. When the great German poet Goethe chanced to read this oriental play he was enraptured by it and wrote a poem on it:

" Wilt thou the blossoms of spring

And the fruits that are later in the season,

Wilt thou have charms and delights,

Wilt thou have strength and support,

Wilt thou in one short word

Encompass the earth and the heaven,

All is said if I name only, Sakuntala, then"

The German writer and philosopher, Herder wrote: "It is here that the mind and character of a nation is brought to life before us and I gladly admit that I have got a more accurate and real notion of the manner of the thinking of ancient Indians from "Abhijnana Sakuntalam" than from all their Upanishads and Bhagawathams." Prof. Wilson of Oxford wrote: "It is impossible to conceive language so beautifully musical and so magnificently grand as that of the verses of Bhavabhuti and Kalidasa". The American scholar Prof. Ryder compared Kalidasa to Sophocles, Virgil and Milton. And Monier Williams wrote "Kalidasa’s lofty vision transcends all barriers of time and space, and perceives the essential unity of the diverse constituents of this vast universe." What is even more important to us is that Kalidasa captured for us, the essential unity of our land of diversities. Is there any Indian whose heart is not enthralled when he reads Kalidasa’s lines of the Himalayas extending from the West to the East like the measuring chain of the earth, of the beauty of its rivers, mountains, its women. Kalidasa had a free and independent mind not hide-bound by superstitions and innumerable traditional constraints. Somewhere he has said: "Merely because something is old, it does not make it good, and because a poetic composition is new it does not make it condemnable".He even called a conformist as a "stupid person".

In his dramatic creativity Kalidas can be compared to Shakespeare. He took his themes from stories and legends as Shakespeare did and recreated them with originality and new meaning. For example, in "Sakuntalam" the original story is taken from Mahabharata. But he adds new dramatic features through his creative imagination. The curse of Rishi Durvasa is an innovation which had added a dramatic character to the story. So is the incident of the ring and the discovery of it by the fishermen. True to the philosophy of India the jasmine creeper and other plants and the deer in the ashram have become live characters of the play establishing the unity between man, woman, and nature.

The Kalidas festival is, in a real sense, the cultural and intellectual festival of India. Above all it brings out the importance of the Sanskrit language and literature as a unifying factor in all the diversities of India. This emphasizes the importance of the study of Sanskrit as a language for the unity and progress of India. Sir William Jones wrote in 1786: "The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is a wonderful structure, more perfect than Greek, more copious than Latin and more exquisitely refined than either; yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity in the root of verbs and the forms of grammar than could possibly have been produced by accident." Sanskrit had an Indo-European background and a close connection with the Central Asian region and religions, philosophy, art and civilization spread over to Central Asia, China, Cambodia, Thailand and Indonesia. It brought its script and literature to South East Asia. Sanskrit is thus for India the symbol and substance of its national unity and as a connecting bond with Asia and the world.

In the modern age Sanskrit has been claimed as the perfect language for computer communication. Kalidasa as the greatest poet in the Sanskrit language is relevant as sheer poetry and drama, as the depository of the glorious values of our civilization, as well as a language that is suited to the age of information and digital technology. To study and disseminate Sanskrit among the people not an ideological fetish but as a living and rich language would not only be a tribute to Kalidasa but way of preparing ourselves for the future. In this process Ujjain itself will have to develop into a modern city while maintaining its old and rich cultural heritage. The city deserves to have a modern theatre and a concert Hall. And it deserves an airport that would connect it to the rest of India and the wider world. The holding of this Festival is certainly a way of developing this City. I should like to congratulate the Madhya Pradesh Government and the people and the scholars of Ujjain for the brilliant manner in which the Samaroh is organized here year after year.

Thank you very much.

Jai Hind

^Top