Speech by Dr. L M Singhvi
My distinguished friends, Ambassador Lalit Mansingh, Ambassador Abid
Hussain, my much admired and esteemed friend Dr Prof Lokesh
Chandra, who is one of the great scholars on the pan-Asian scene, Mr
Menon, Naveenaji, friends --
I happen to be a long-time admirer of Reverend Ikeda in the sense I met him and saw him years ago in Japan. And I admire his vision, and through his writings I have come to know of him as a poet, as a philosopher, as a prophet, and as a visionary. He has conceptualised from time to time what it takes to remake the world in this era and that is why I am particularly happy to be here, to associate myself with the Soka Gakkai and the Times Foundation, to salute the lifelong mission and work of Reverend Ikeda and to pay my homage to his initiative for a new era of dialogue a dialogue which proclaims humanism as the rallying cry, as the uniting slogan of humanity.
|
I think this is truly pioneering in many ways. Having been associated with the work of Unesco for many years, I feel that the work of peace is perhaps the most difficult. The Charter of the United Nations was made with the one animating principle to establish enduring peace in the world. It says, “We, the peoples of India … er ... We, the peoples of the world”, it says that we want to abolish the scourge of war. And so does this Charter of Unesco, which declares that since it is in the minds of men that defences of these should become structured. It is in the minds of men, and women and children, that we must build these defences of peace.
Currently I have been trying to do exactly that: building defences of peace and understanding in the minds of men through dialogue, through understanding, through mutual cerebration, through a dialogue which means not talking at each other but talking to each other, which means a dialogue which is a communication from heart to heart. Reality is what is called for. Empathy is what is called for. And providence is what is a necessary condition for the dialogue.
Humanism is a word that is differently understood in the West and the East. In the West, it is not nearly so deeply connected with humanity though it would appear to be so, but the dictionary would tell us that the movement for humanism was a movement for rejection of religions. A movement for humanism was a movement for rationality; in the name of rationality, to interrogate and even to question and to abandon religion.
I think humanism that Reverend Ikeda brings to the world is the humanism of the Asian tradition. The humanism which is not based on this or that religion, this or that denomination, but the desire to build bridges, to establish equations of tolerance, of which Vivekananda spoke as far back as 1892 in Chicago, and all the religions of the world were invoked at the meeting. And since I was elected in 1992 as the president of that centennial parliament, I thought it was important for the world parliament of religions to listen once again to the message of Swami Vivekananda. And Swami Vivekananda electrified the world by addressing the “brothers and sisters” in America in the name of the civilisation from which he came. And he said I am proud to come from a civilisation which has a time-honoured, embedded foundational respect for the issue of tolerance. And he described what he as a child and many of us as children would remember -- a beautiful mantra which reminds us of how the many tributaries and the many rivers were to be seen that make up this human universe. It is that sense of humanism, empathy, the compassion of Buddha, the non-violence of Mahatma Gandhi of which my friend Dr Pachauri just spoke, and at the same mission in uniting the world in a common cause, and to create a culture of peace through a dialogue of civilisation, through a dialogue of humankind where human beings speak of their needs and their rights and their duties.
For a long time I have been, I confess, associated with human rights -- almost 24, 40 years --- but a few years ago when I was invited to speak to heads and former heads of many different states in the West on the issue of all issues. |
