When one reads what Nehru wrote towards the end of his career, particularly when one reads his famous piece, "The Basic Approach", you will find how much of the distillation of Gandhian thought and ideas were present in Nehru.
 
Our freedom movement produced great Titans. Nehru, Vallabbhai Patel, Subhas Chandra Bose, Maulana Azad, were not just mere followers of Gandhiji. They were vibrantly and ferociously independent people whom Gandhiji won over by his magnetism, by the method of struggle for Indian independence that he devised and by the ideal of a new society and a new order for the people of India that he placed before them. In a sense, we find that Nehru was really someone who tried to express and execute to the best of his ability some of the ideas of Gandhi not in a backward manner but in a progressive manner suited to the modern world into which he wanted India to move fast.
 
In that sense while not being what is often called a Gandhian, he was applying the essence of Gandhi which was peace, justice and equality, in a manner that would be applicable in the modern scientific, technological, industrial world. For example, you find him projecting in the international field the idea of peace. He did not believe in non-violence as a creed as Gandhiji did, but he was fascinated by the concept of non-violence as something inherent in the ancient thought of India and something that produced results in the circumstances of India. But as he used to say, only a Gandhi could practise it. What are we, he said, who were ordinary mortals, to practise such high ideals in practical life.
 
What was the concept of India that Nehru had? Once he described India as a palimpsest on which layer after layer of thought and reverie had been written, but no layer wiped out what was below it. The thoughts, the culture, and the dreams of India were overlaid with other dreams which came successively in our chequered history, but Nehru noted that none of the earlier dreams and thoughts were ever wiped out or extinguished by what happened later. It is this idea of India, which I was very happy to see, represented in this Exposition.
 
What are we? We are the sum total, we are the quintessence of all that has happened in our varied, complex, turbulent history, and to represent it in this way has been a most creative achievement. That is why I believe that this exhibition will be a centre of attraction particularly for our youth. This exposition is a school for Indian history taught in a most exciting, realistic and meaningful manner. About the spirit of India which Nehru somehow caught in his "Discovery", he said and I should like to quote it to you, "It is not some secret doctrine and esoteric knowledge that has kept India vital and going through these long ages, but a tender humanity, a varied and tolerant culture and a deep understanding of life and its mysterious ways. Her abundant vitality flows out from age to age in her magnificent literature and art, though we have only a small part of it with us and much lies hidden or has been destroyed by nature or man's vandalism. The Trimurthi in the Elephanta caves might well be the many-faced statue of India herself and those compelling eyes full of deep knowledge and understanding looking down upon us."
 
What could be a more beautiful as well as more realistic depiction of the march of Indian history and of Indian thought? I think Nehru, though a completely modern rational person, was overwhelmed as well as inspired by our long past. In the Constituent Assembly when he presented the final resolution for Independence, he said that he felt that our ancestors are looking down upon us and possibly blessing us on this venture that we have undertaken.
 
Though he had this weight of the past on his shoulders, his mind was free, moving freely into the modern, changing, technological age. Nehru had in fact written several books of history. His Letters to his Daughter, The Glimpses of World History, and Discovery of India are really books of lively throbbing history. There are, however, historians who say that he was not a professional historian and dismiss his credentials as a historian.
 
Sardar Panikkar, who was a historian himself, once remarked that Nehru's "Discovery" was a work of great originality, a history in the best sense of the word. He added that it was not pure researchers who have produced historical literature of value, and pointed out that Gibbon and Macaulay were not pure historians. They were actors in history and they have written some of the most authoritative and inspiring books of history. So was Winston Churchill, whose History of the World War, is perhaps the most authentic and moving history of the Second World War. But he was not a historian as such. He was maker of history. In the same way I think Nehru was one who was interested in and moved by history; he was a man who made history and wrote history at the same time.

Nehru had his own vision of history. Not that he was not aware of the technical academic conceptions of history at all. He wrote, I think it was in his "Glimpses of World History", that history is not a record of the doings of big men, of kings and emperors and their likes. Real history, he said, should deal not with a few individuals here and there but with the people who make a nation, who work and by their labour produce the necessities and luxuries of life and who in a thousand different ways act and react on one another. Such a history of man would really be a fascinating story. It is this fascinating history of the people of India that Nehru wrote in his "Discovery", which is represented at the Exposition here today.
 
Whenever we think of our great men, of their contributions, we also must think of the relevance of what they said, did and thought. This is the main thought that occurred to me when I passed through this panorama of Indian history represented here. One thing that struck my mind was Nehru's love of science and technology and his efforts for the modernisation of his country. He believed in this intensely. He had a scientific temper and I recollect, if I may go back to Sardar Panikkar who said Nehru was a scientist exploring Alladin's cave. His "Discovery of India" is something like a scientist exploring India with an Alladin's lamp. He believed in science and technology, and he wanted us to be rational and to overcome the superstitions and evil social practices to which we have been victims for long centuries. He wanted science in action in this country. Once he described the Five Year Plans as just science in action, i.e. the application of the rational method for the transformation and the development of our society and our country. He also used another significant idea when he said that science without religion was dangerous and religion without science was blind. It is this very fascinating combination of old philosophy and the modern rational approach that made Nehru great and makes him relevant for us today.

Nehru once used the term scientific humanism. He was of the view that the philosophy that the world needed was not just science or just philosophy but scientific humanism. It is this scientific humanism which is the essence of India's heritage exploring the mysteries, the depths of human nature, the spiritual world and at the same time facing the problems of modern society squarely, realistically, rationally.
 
Today we are overwhelmed by the resurgence of our past. There is a revival and resurrection of what we consider the past, but often mere rituals of the past which are in some ways glorifying some of the things which Nehru, Gandhi and the great men of the Indian revolution had tried to discard. We are also now beginning to recapture some of the essential aspects of Indian life, Indian society and Indian civilisation. If there is anything that we have to learn today from Nehru it is that we must cut through the complex web of social evils, superstitions and rituals which have accumulated in our country over the ages, and apply the light of reason for building a sane, rational society which at the same time fits in with our ancient thought and spiritual traditions.
 
I am very happy to have seen in this very magnificent exhibition, this approach of linking our past with the present and looking forward into the future and connecting all the different and diverse strands of our history in a beautiful complex unity answering, at least partially, the question, what are we?

Thank you