Hindi → English transcript

Honorable Mr. Jaswant Singh,

whose every word is connected to the nation,

whether it is matters of strategic importance, whether it is matters of military importance,

or matters related to diplomacy,

he has given leadership to this country, and the insight he possesses,

the farsightedness he has, we all respect it deeply.

It is a great matter of pride for me that today I have had the good fortune to share this stage with him.

Our very senior officer of the Army, former Lieutenant General Sinha,

who is a legend in himself— he was one during his tenure,

but even after retiring from the Army, he has set such benchmarks

that we and the entire nation are proud of him.

The work he did in Assam, in Kashmir, in Nepal,

apart from that, and in many other ways, he has dealt with the challenges that the country is facing.

The way in which he has continued to express his thoughts about them,

and the way he was in the army as well, the way he retired from the army,

that in itself is a story of how those who are brave and who stand firm in their faith and loyalty

make such a difference in giving a new direction to a nation.

I, Shri Ramlal ji, Shri Shyam Jaju ji seated on the stage, Shri Arun Singh ji,

and all the brothers and sisters present in this auditorium,

I am very, very grateful to all of you.

But among all the people who are here in this entire auditorium, I have known many of them for a long time.

But there is one whom I have known for the longest time.

And that is my guru, and in 1968 when I

went to the National Academy of Administration in Mussoorie, Shri T. N. Chaturvedi ji was our joint director of the academy.

We have always regarded him as a guru and with great reverence,

Inside our service, inside the civil service, he has a very big status.

I offer my greetings, I bow to him, and I begin my remarks.

About the personality of Shri Syama Prasad Mookerjee,

About the contribution he made in this country,

It is a sad thing that perhaps we have forgotten much of that.

In this country, perhaps people with such exceptional personalities,

who had political foresight,

who had the faith and belief that we can bring change,

who were fully devoted to nationalism and the national cause,

and who themselves were great scholars as well— at the age of thirty-four

he became the Vice Chancellor of Calcutta University, which is still a very great thing, and at that time it was an even greater thing.

He was so capable that in the Congress government, Nehru ji gave him a Cabinet position.

Sometimes I think that if Shyama Prasad Mukherjee were alive today,

what would he think about India?

What would he feel in India? What is the condition of India?

In these sixty-five years, nearly three lakh people because of internal security

have met with death.

In their own country, millions of people are living as refugees,

but we have not been able to find any solution for that.

It was just said that 248 districts are afflicted by one kind of violence or another,

actually this number is a little higher. One hundred seventy-three are Maoist,

sixteen in J&K, most of them are affected by terrorism.

In the Northeast, in more than sixty-four there are places where separatism and

other kinds of violence keep occurring.

Apart from this, there are forty-eight such districts in the country where, in jihadi activities,

there are people involved, whether they are foreigners or locals,

Those who have strengthened their roots, or their cells, or their whole being.

So out of 648 districts, around 296, almost half of India

is in a very grave situation.

In these sixty-five years, dangers have increased,

this is a matter of concern.

But the capacity to face those dangers has decreased,

this is an even greater cause for concern.

In the country, forces that break us apart have grown stronger,

the forces that unite the country have grown weaker.

Political power has ceased to be a means of nation building,

it has become merely a tool for the pursuit of vested interests.

And there is a phrase someone once used, I will repeat it.

That Indian patriotism has lost all instrumentalities.

That if a person says “I do not love anything else,

I have no attachment to any institution, any interest group, any trade union,

any language, any caste, I have no connection with these, my connection is with India.”

I only want to join that party which stands only for Indianness,

then perhaps within the country, perhaps the Bharatiya Janata Party is one such party that we can say

that, leaving aside all these things,

it places before us, in the form of Indianness, a political alternative.

Today the situation has become such

as if there was a big, huge banyan tree in a forest.

And then all around that banyan tree, many things,

a lot of weeds and many small trees grew up and

the very presence of that banyan tree, its existence itself started becoming less visible to people.

And gradually people felt that this existence belongs only to the vegetation spread all around,

that somewhere far away there is a banyan tree, sometimes a branch is seen, sometimes if there is a flower it can be seen.

The conspiracy to erase this existence of India

was indeed carried out by the invaders.

They said

that in India there was no one at all, there was nothing.

Everyone came from outside. History was made,

Caravans kept coming, people kept settling, Aryans came from Central Asia,

Parthians came, Huns came, Kushans came, Turks came, Mongols came, and in this way India was formed.

One chief minister of our country came to the Vivekananda Foundation and said the same thing,

that Indian civilization… this was a dynamic civilization.

This civilization had no base, no Hindu base, or any national base or any civilizational base, it had none of that.

So in weakening that banyan tree, in suppressing it,

its existence cannot be ended, but it is not visible

when such ideologies flourish.

After Independence these ideologies flourished more and became stronger.

The painful thing is that…

we have not been able to correct our history,

we have not been able to clean up around that banyan tree,

and we, we gave these even more strength

so that the anti-nation… anti-national mindset…

And the identity of a nation, this is connected to the identity of the nation,

therefore this is very necessary because when we talk about the security of anything

then the question arises, security of what?

The first question, the first… this is a fundamental pillar.

If we cannot define and identify three things,

then we cannot protect anything.

The first question is, what is it that we have to protect?

The second question is, from whom do we have to protect it?

This is very necessary. Awareness of the enemy is very necessary.

You can never defeat, let alone fight, an enemy that you cannot define.

An enemy whom you cannot define,

you can never defeat him.

You will have to say it.

Now whatever its political cost may be, or whatever its social cost may be,

but if you want to defeat it, then defining it becomes necessary.

And third is the means, the arrangements, the tools through which we have to achieve our objectives.

Among these three, the very first, the most important, is the question: whose security has to be ensured?

Now some aspects of state security are common for all countries.

There are commonalities in them.

For example, there is a slight difference between the security of the state and the security of the nation.

The state has to secure its borders.

Its territory.

And within those borders, whatever is physical, tangible, that has to be secured.

The people there have to be protected, and the legislation there, the constitution, the law, the systems, all of these have to be protected.

The security of these three things is state security.

State security is not co-terminous with national security.

Within national security fall many elements that form the foundations of that nation.

Nations that are formed on the basis of religion,

their foundation is that religion.

If that wavers,

then that nation will not be able to remain as a nation.

The state can still remain.

If it is on the basis of a language, an ethnic group, or a caste, then that becomes its basic foundation.

What we need to recognize is that India’s fundamental identity

is its cultural identity.

All of us are one nation because all of us share a common heritage,

we share a common civilization that we all accept.

Beyond that, our food, our way of speaking, our religions, our languages can all be different.

But despite these differences there is a unity among us, and that is…

Is the sound not reaching you?

Are you saying something?

Okay, okay.

No, someone at the back was raising a hand, so I thought maybe the sound was not reaching there.

So our country needs to know that the identity of our country, our identity, is from our culture.

Now see, human identity is a big multiple thing.

Your identity is that of a person, of a family member, and of a caste as well.

But when identity becomes the greatest national identity,

It makes all other identities secondary,

then nations become powerful, nations become secure.

After the Second World War, 38 countries declined, which we say underwent disintegration.

They weakened, or broke into pieces, or were fragmented.

Twenty-seven of those happened due to internal security reasons.

Each of them had different reasons.

But one reason was common.

That before that decline,

the morale of the people there broke, and in place of the nation’s identity, some new identities were born.

Like Pakistan broke apart.

So the identity that was based on religion, or on Pakistan, was replaced by language, which took priority.

When language gained that primacy,

then on the basis of that identity, a new nation was created, the country was partitioned.

Within the Soviet Union, yes, there were economic reasons, there was strategic overstretch,

but among all the people of the Soviet Union, that sense of seeing themselves as Russian or Soviet citizens and as a part of the Soviet nation…

that inner sense they had, they could not build it up even in seventy years.

That was the fundamental reason.

I remember a small incident.

Two hundred years ago from today, inside Saint Petersburg, there lived an Israeli rabbi.

A local bishop from there went to meet him, as you may know Saint Petersburg has been a very important place for Christianity, its…

And the chief bishop there is very senior.

So he said this to the rabbi,

That you people have been struggling for so many years,

how long will this struggle of yours go on?

He said, this will go on until we attain victory.

He said, do you feel that you will attain victory? Yes, he said, we feel certain, this struggle will go on until we attain victory.

He said, can there come a situation where this struggle ends without achieving victory?

He said, I cannot say this to anyone, but yes, such a situation can arise.

He said, “When will that situation come?”

He said that situation will come when the Jews lose their Jewish identity.

And today, when their identity, whatever that identity may be,

whether it is the identity of a nation, or their religious identity changes, or the identity of their vested interests changes,

at that time this conflict will come to an end.

There is a big, weighty lesson in this. For two thousand years they remained a nation, but did not remain a state.

When a state was formed, it emerged as a strong state in itself.

But for two thousand years, by keeping only their identity alive,

they saved a nation from dying.

What is the problem in Kashmir today?

Basically, that conspiracy of Pakistan in which it, with some people,

by sidelining their Indian identity, their Indian sense of self, and giving primacy to their religious identity, hatched a conspiracy, we were not able to stop it.

In fact, to some extent, through some mistakes, whether inadvertently, thoughtlessly,

we strengthened those forces that fueled that separatism, that sense of being separate, that identity that set them apart.

We did not strengthen those forces that connected them with us.

Whether it is left-wing extremism, whether it is the problems of the Northeast, or the remaining internal security problems.

The question is how can we strengthen the identity of our nation, a national identity.

Now this slogan, Diversity in... or Unity in Diversity is a very good slogan.

But sometimes I feel people kind of forget to put even a little bit of meaning into it.

The emphasis here is on unity.

Diversity is its characteristic, not M.

We are proud of the diversity.

So that we can be united in a much more composite, consolidated, and strengthened way.

But to keep harping on this diversity, to make it your USP,

to imagine nation building on this basis,

and to say that we will weaken the forces of unity,

and that because we have a diverse culture, civilization, and way of life, we will promote only diversity,

on this basis the country cannot become strong.

It is a great privilege that today, at this moment, we are reflecting on what relationship security has with identity, with the recognition of identity.

We are thinking about this, and I hope that our other speakers here, the rest of our speakers,

will guide us in this.

But there is a great need to take this matter to the public.

There is a great need to carry this to the masses.

That in such a way, every child of our country, every youth, should feel

like a proud Indian, like an Indian filled with pride.

That they feel pride in everything belonging to their country, to their nation,

and where there are shortcomings, that there should also be a dedication to remove them, and within that…

an emotion as well, that we have to do something for the nation.

Thank you very, very much.