Former Prime Minister of India - Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee

Prime Minister Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee at a function to release three books by Dr. L.M. Singhvi

When Dr. Singhvi requested me to release his three books, I readily agreed. But today I found myself in a bit of a dilemma.

For I started wondering what aspect of his personality, or what part of his work, can I speak on without risking the complaint of incompleteness and inadequacy.

The more I look at Dr. Singhvi’s work, the more I get convinced that he is not an individual; he is a living ENCYCLOPEDIA.

A Parliamentarian, a Diplomat, a Scholar, a Writer, an Educationist, a Constitutional and Legal expert, and always an engaging Speaker – he is truly Many Persons combined into one.

But the person I like the most is he who is always gentle and smiling and hospitable. I have travelled to many of our missions abroad, but Dr. Singhvi’s hospitality was perhaps unbeatable.

No wonder, he can count among his friends people from all political parties and from all ideological persuasions and professional backgrounds. His book “A Diplomatic Sojourn” is a pictorial proof of this.

His prime concern as a diplomat was to project India’s image abroad in all its intrinsic and many-sided greatness. And he achieved it in some unique ways.

For example, Dr. Singhvi, when he was the High Commissioner, got a bust of Rabindranath Tagore installed at the birthplace of Shakespeare, and a statue of Raja Rammohun Roy in Bristol, where he lived and worked for many years.

Friends, these days there is much talk about the need for a “Dialogue among Civilisations” – as a counter to the theory of “Clash of Civilisations”. Our good friend, Dr. Khatami, the President of Iran, has been pursuing it with special interest, and it has now become a continuing theme in the United Nations.

India has welcomed this thought. But it is not a new thought or a new concern with us. Dr. Singhvi’s many lectures in this book show with great scholarship how the theme of “Global Togetherness” is woven into the very fabric of Indian philosophy and culture.

The world we live in needs “Togetherness” and “Tolerance” more than ever before.

I would add that we need not only GLOBAL TOGETHERNESS, but also TOGETHERNESS AT HOME.

All our faiths, all our diverse traditions, all our great thinkers have taught us the path of peace, tolerance, co-existence and cooperation. Yet, sometimes, the reality is jarringly different.

After every few years, something happens in our country that makes us uncomfortable about the disconnect between what we preach and what we practice.

Intolerance raises its head in vicious ways. Exclusivism asserts itself at the cost of togetherness.

The very essence of religion and culture is man’s triumph over the base and barbaric aspects in his nature and discovery of his humanity and, later, divinity.

But why does barbarism performs its dance of death every once in a while?

I am at a loss to understand this.

Equally beyond my comprehension is how some human beings can be trained into terrorism -- and that too in the name of religion -- to kill innocent human beings in large numbers.

I think we need a deeper study of human nature and of collective social behaviour. I would like to call upon our intellectuals, social scientists and religious leaders to educate the society on how to counter intolerance and its various manifestations.

Some of the answers can be found in Dr. Singhvi’s lectures contained in the two books released today. In one of them he observes,

“There is a need for us to proclaim the fundamentalism of tolerance and the fundamentalism of togetherness.”

There is a lot of debate about secularism these days. Many divergent and sometimes conflicting points of view are expressed. I do not wish to comment on the merits and demerits of those viewpoints, except to say that I find Dr. Singhvi’s approach very sound.

Let me quote a few lines from his lecture on “Secularism and Human Rights”.

“If secularism lives and flourishes in India, it is not merely because it is the chosen political creed of a few articulate elitist intellectuals, but because it is a living tissue in the body of India’s plural culture, drawing nourishment from the best of Indian thought and example.”

Another subject of deep interest to Dr. Sanghvi – and, I must admit, to me also – is the affairs of the Indian Diaspora. Many of his lectures are devoted to this theme, to which our learned friend has given a catchy name! He calls it the “Global Indogenic Movement”.

Not many in our country realise that we have over 25 million People of Indian Origin (PIOs) and NRIs living in different parts of the world. We are proud of their achievements. Many of them are the embodiment of the true Indian Spirit – adventurous, challenge-seeking, success-chasing, innovative, adaptive in any foreign environment, but always retaining an emotional and cultural link with India.

We owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. Singhvi for not only speaking about this theme with great knowledge and passion, but also for his practical contribution to making it an agenda of the Government and the nation.

For example, when our Government decided to form a committee to go into all issues concerning the Indian Diaspora and make useful recommendations, we did not have to think twice about who should head that committee. Dr. Singhvi was our instant choice.

The Singhvi committee submitted a voluminous report in a record time, extremely rich in its information base, excellent in its analysis, and very practical in its recommendations. As you know, our Government has already begun to implement its several recommendations about PIOs and NRIs.

In conclusion, what can I say on this occasion? Just this:

May India produce more intellectuals like Dr. Singhvi. And may Dr. Singhvi continue to write more books, give more lectures, and handle more assignments in the service of the Nation.

Thank you.