It is natural that at this moment I recall my first encounter with Gandhiji in September 1947 in the Harijan Colony of Delhi, when I had the opportunity to touch his feet and to utter a few words before him. The excitement of those moments has lasted a lifetime. The evil and unfortunate evening of January 30, 1948 is imprinted deeply in the minds of all of us, when the echo of the gunshots of Nathuram Godse reverberated throughout the country and cast a spell of stunned silence. The conspiracy continues with the same virulent intensity to render inefficacious the moral strength the nation derives from the sacrifice of Gandhiji. Each one of us, being a citizen of this country, has to decide his place and role in combating this conspiracy.

I did not have the good fortune of joining the freedom struggle but I grew up in the afterglow of that struggle, which had shaken the country out of its stupor and despair and paved the way for India’s independence. I have been witness to the project of building up of India according to Gandhiji’s vision and into a constitutional republic. For the Last 57 years, since my first encounter with Gandhiji, I have gained in experience about people’s life in this country. I have also had the opportunity to come into contact with some of the greater heroes of our era. Fifty-seven years of experience, since seeing Gandhiji, has made me realise the profound significance of that first encounter and as the days pass, the experience of that moment of glory for me become more vivid and intense.

There are several aspects of Mahatma Gandhiji’s life and so much has been said about each one of these aspects with great authority and relevance that it is difficult for me to add anything more to it. All of you who have graduated from this place under the shadow of this Gandhian project must have naturally imbibed many images of Gandhiji. Therefore, I will not try to either change your mind nor to add much to your knowledge about Gandhiji.

Since the 19th century, a kind of renaissance had started taking shape in India. Our freedom struggle was emerging as the most important dimension of this renaissance. This renaissance was giving shape to a new idea of India. This idea was of an inclusive India, which had on the one hand several golden chapters of India’s past, and at the same time, was painfully aware of several saddening aspects of India’s present. But more than the past and the present, there was this restlessness for the image of a new India that was being constructed. Several renaissance thinkers like Raja Rammohun Roy, Swami Vivekanand, Rabindranath Tagore, Jyotiba Phule, Dadabai Naoroji, Sir Syed Ahmed and many others in different parts of the country were engaged with this issue of what the new India should be like. After several decades of struggle, intellectual discourse and sacrifices, a new image of India finally started taking shape.

The restlessness for this new India gave birth to the freedom movement. This movement was articulated in a variety of ways throughout the country. Somewhere it was in the form of a rebellion of tribals, somewhere else it erupted as the struggle against the landlords by landless labour and somewhere else, as a confrontation of workers with the new industrial units and in many places, it was directly launched as a struggle against British rule. The struggle also got stuck sometimes in the divided causes of groups, castes, religions and various forms of identity politics.

Mahatma Gandhiji not only travelled across the country but also understood the core of all these different fragmented or cohesive movements. Through a proper understanding of the aspirations and dreams of all these movements, he fashioned a new approach towards the Indian question. Gandhiji’s project was on the one hand inclusive of all the social classes, at the same time, its most important aspect was giving a powerful voice to the deprived and exploited classes of India. The freedom struggle, which was to a considerable extent a matter of the elite classes of India, became, under Gandhiji’s leadership, a widespread people’s movement, converging into the most momentous but peaceful revolution of world history, and in the process making the most powerful empire of the time capitulate on August 15, 1947. It is only in the background of this revolutionary movement of Gandhiji that one can visualise India because this all-inclusive revolution gave shape to the Constitution of India. To quote from the Preamble to the Constitution of India:

"WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all its citizens:

JUSTICE, social, economic and political;

LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship;

EQUALITY of status and of opportunity;

and to promote among them all

FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation;

IN OUR CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY this twenty-sixth day of November, 1949, do HEREBY ADOPT, ENACT AND GIVE TO OURSELVES THIS CONSTITUTION."

The shape of India that has been proposed in this Preamble contains the entire Indian renaissance, the freedom movement and Gandhiji’s peaceful revolution. The Constitution and its Preamble are our most precious national heritage. It is in this context that we must try to identify the forces not in harmony with this Preamble and the reasons for their discomfort with this. Who are these people in whose view the Preamble has not remained relevant in the India of the 21st century? For decades this Preamble was printed on the first page of all the books of the NCERT, but suddenly from the year 2000, the Preamble disappeared from there. This did not happen by any formal order but by some arbitrary decision not recorded in writing. We have to reflect on this. Who are the people afraid of the Constitution and its Preamble and why are they afraid of these words? As I have mentioned, these words contain the history of the last 150 years. They contain the renaissance, the freedom movement, Gandhiji’s life and martyrdom. First of all, we must ponder over the fact that the Constitution begins by saying that we the people of India have given it to ourselves. What does this mean? A straightforward answer to this is that this Constitution has not been given to us jointly by Hindus, Muslims, Christians or any other communities inhabiting this country. The Constitution has been given to us by our common and unified citizenship. Our citizenship is primary. If we have identities other than this citizenship, based on our religion, language, region or any other basis, those identities are not the source of this Constitution. We have to clearly understand that there are people and ideologies present in this country who do not accept the primacy and centrality of the notion of citizenship in this country and, therefore, they find it difficult to be at peace with this Constitution. The biggest proof of this is that immediately after coming to power five years ago, the first attempt by the last Government in Delhi was to undertake a review of the Constitution of India. It is another story that a vehement countrywide protest against this did not allow the attempt to succeed.

Our Constitution has given us four very important words. These words are Sovereign, Socialist, Secular and Democratic. These words are not ritualistic. Each of these words is a consummation of several ideological and concrete historic struggles waged not only in this country but in the entire world. These words cannot form the basis of a society based on status quo. According to the Preamble of the Constitution, India is to remain a changing and dynamic country. This change can be brought about only by bringing into the mainstream, the exploited people of the country, by making the people’s aspirations the basis of policy making and by fashioning a society founded on the principle of equality of citizenship. On the basis of this Preamble, we cannot erect an economic order in which man loses his identity and becomes merely a cog in the developmental effort. Only such policies can legitimately emanate from it which not only have a human face but whose spirit is also clearly and abundantly humane. It is clear, therefore, that all those people will be afraid of this Preamble, who want to maintain such a status quo wherein their vested interests can be continuously safeguarded. Those people will be even more afraid, who instead of uniting the people on the basis of citizenship, would prefer them kept divided on the basis of religion, caste, language or region, or who would like to impose the hegemony of one particular identity over the total citizenship of the country.

I have no hesitation in admitting that the pace of change since Independence, to give shape to the vision contained in this Preamble, has not been according to our expectations. Several failures stare us in the face despite many magnificent successes in realising the vision of our freedom fighters. Despite making the country self-dependent and autonomous in many ways, we have not been able to make the republic relevant in the life of all the people of this country. Even now many people are deprived, many are exploited, but the way forward is not by modifying this Preamble or by consigning it to oblivion, but by stepping up the pace of our efforts for change.

There are many forces in the country today who, for a variety of reasons, want to deflect us from our commitments. They want us to become dependent and while protecting the future of a few, want to consign the majority into a state of deprivation and despair. These forces cannot be confronted only by reiterating these commitments in words. The only way to resolve this confrontation is by way of generating a new movement according to the Gandhian vision. This movement must have food for the poor, restoration of honour to those suffering caste-based excesses. It has to promise women, Dalits and minorities an equal share of this country’s resources. An over-arching communal harmony must be its aim. We must never forget that only these objectives enabled Gandhiji to launch the struggle that uprooted colonialism from this country. Today we have the scene set for the emergence of a similar project and I sincerely believe that the youth of this country is ready to launch this movement if they are able to find sincere and honest leadership. It is my firm belief that such a leadership will also emerge from among them alone. Whatever we have attained through the freedom struggle and Gandhiji’s leadership is extremely precious and full of internal strength. In the grip of momentary despairs, we should not lose sight of the internal strength that we are heir to. There have been ongoing conspiracies to undermine this internal strength and on occasions there have even been external threats challenging this. We must clearly remember that India has a historic destiny among nations. Forgetting that destiny, we cannot chase an imaginary dream world, nor can we hand over that destiny to those who are trying to shape nightmare scenarios for this country.

You will be distressed and shocked to learn that a few years back, the episode of Gandhiji’s assassination was excluded from history textbooks. When this was protested against, there was an attempt to explain it away as a mistake. Subsequently, in a formal meeting of the NCERT Council, in the presence of the then HRD minister, the then director, NCERT, had the temerity to say that it would be pedagogically improper to describe the assassin as a Hindu fundamentalist.

I am placing both these things together because both the attempt to exclude the relevant passages about Gandhiji from the textbooks and the removal of the Preamble to the Constitution from the books are products of the same thought processes. These are attempts that cannot be made with openness or through formal orders. Therefore, it was considered safer to do these things surreptitiously, so that if caught and confronted there was always scope to say that these were mistakes and nobody was responsible for these glaring lapses. The nation has a right to know why these things happened and under whose orders.

I am mentioning these episodes on the occasion of the convocation because I want you, on whom the country’s future depends, to be aware of the challenge posed before Gandhiji’s idea of India and against our republican India. This challenge is manifesting itself in various forms and shapes before us. This challenge has to be certainly met by political mobilisation. But this challenge cannot be met only by political attempts. This challenge has to be met in our educational and cultural efforts, in the conduct of daily lives of our citizens and by a rededication to the future of our country.

To say these things and to reaffirm them as oath is important but their implementation is not so easy. It is my earnest request that you ask within yourselves this question: what kind of India do you want to make? You have to talk with each other on whether we are committed to Gandhiji’s idea of India or not. Only a collective mobilisation of this nature can defeat this challenge. For the past few months I have been concerned with the issue of Gandhiji’s assassination and have been thinking about this on a continuous basis. In this connection, several friends and colleagues and thinking people spread all over the country have been drawing my attention to various relevant episodes. Recently, someone drew my attention to Gandhiji’s statement at the time of the martyrdom of Shri Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi. On this occasion, Gandhiji wrote:

"I do not know if the sacrifice of Shri Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi has gone in vain. His spirit always inspired me. I envy his sacrifice. Is it not shocking that this country has not produced another Ganesh Shankar? None after him came to fill up the gap. Ganesh Shankar’s Ahimsa was perfect Ahimsa. My Ahimsa will also be perfect if I could die similarly peacefully with blows on my head. I have always been dreaming of such a death and I wish to treasure this dream. How noble that death will be, a dagger attack on me from one side, an axe blow from another, a lathi blow from yet another direction and kicks and abuses from all sides and if in the midst of these I could rise to the occasion and remain non-violent and peaceful and could ask others to act and behave likewise, finally I would die with cheer on my face and a smile on my lips. I am hankering after such an opportunity and also wish Congressmen to remain in search of such an opportunity."

This is an extraordinary coincidence — that Gandhiji got the same kind of martyrdom as he had desired through the hands of Nathuram Godse. This is also a monumental irony — that Gandhiji’s last words were "He Ram!" and today the same pious name of Maryada Purushottam Ram is being invoked by those believing in the ideology of Nathuram Godse, to consign the country into communal fire.

It is important to pay attention to this episode. As you perhaps know, Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi was martyred in the cause of communal harmony in 1931 at Kanpur. When we recall Mahatma Gandhiji’s statement, we have to recognise that these words of Gandhiji were with regard to the then active communal forces. At that time, in the entire country, there was no enemy of Gandhiji. Everyone felt blessed at being contemporaries of the Mahatma. One meaning of Gandhiji’s desire for martyrdom in this context, therefore, is also that, at least, he was not unaware of those people who were getting mobilised to work against his vision of India and he definitely had an apprehension that these forces could go to the extent of his assassination. He was defiantly declaring that he was ready for such a sacrifice, which he ultimately made, and which, perhaps, is the greatest martyrdom in human history after that of Jesus Christ.

Gandhiji’s life and his martyrdom, our Constitution and our vision of India, these are all connected issues. It is important that the country, particularly the younger generation, understands and keeps reflecting on this. We must always remember that communal fascist forces are active in the country today. Otherwise, in the place of Gandhiji’s birth, such a dastardly and brutal genocide could not have taken place, which has put to shame the entire country. And today, in this Gujarat, Hitler is being projected as an ideal person instead of Gandhiji.

Today on this overwhelmingly emotional occasion, my mind is full of many images, many thoughts and many dreams of Gandhiji. I will consider it a great fortune if my remaining years continue to draw inspiration from and seek fulfilment in these dreams. It is my prayer that all of you have a chance to come to terms with Gandhiji’s principles and thoughts, that you have your tryst with him. I also pray that you are able to imbibe some of those thoughts and principles. You are indeed fortunate who have been part of Gandhiji’s particular grace, in the sense that you are graduating from an institution that was directly founded by Gandhiji himself. Gandhiji’s legacy is a birthright of each citizen of this country. We can keep this right secure only by remaining anchored in our conscience. Only this anchorage will give us the strength to save the country from the fascist challenge. It was in this context that Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru had said, "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." You have an enormous burden of history to carry; you have a big responsibility. May God help you.

Jai Hind.