India News and Travel Times Provides India-centric and other News and Features

Urging the nation to leave behind the way of hatred, violence and anger, and appealing to one and all to put aside petty quarrels and factions, India ’s 13 President, Pranab Mukherjee, on Tuesday, urged Indians to work together for the nation “with the devotion of a child towards a mother.” Delivering his first pre-Independence Day speech Mukherjee, using invocations from Upanishads, said: “peace must be our ideology, (and) progress our horizon.” He said that he deemed it a great privilege to address the nation for the first time as president on the 65th anniversary of India ’s independence. “Words cannot adequately express my gratitude to the people and their representatives for the honour of this high office, even as I am deeply conscious of the fact that the highest honour in our democracy does not lie in any office, but in being a citizen of India , our motherland,” said Mukherjee. Reiterating that in the complex drama of nation building, it was everyone’s duty to perform with integrity, commitment and unflinching loyalty to the values enshrined in our Constitution, Mukherjee said that in the age of empires, freedom was never given; it was taken. He said that extraordinary men and women had sacrificed their todays for our tomorrows, and everyone needed to ask the question whether they had honoured the great vision of these stalwarts as a nation and as a society? Recalling the tough times of childhood and early youth, Mukherjee said that as a toddler, he had heard Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose speech as Congress president on the banks of the River Tapti in Haripura, during which he reminded us that "our chief national problems are eradication of poverty, illiteracy and disease". Mukherjee said that Netaji’s speech echoed through his home, as it did through millions of others. “My father was a freedom fighter and through those long years when freedom seemed an illusion, we were sustained by faith in ourselves, in our leaders, in the strength of non-violence, in the courage of Indians liberated from fear. But we knew then, as we do now, that freedom must mean both bread and dreams,” said Mukherjee. He said that Netaji and Jawaharlal Nehru believed that free India would become, by example, an alternative model for a post-colonial world through economic equity and a social revolution inspired by harmony between communities that had been misled into hostility. He said that they believed that propelled by freedom of faith, gender equality and economic justice for all, India would become a modern nation. “Minor blemishes cannot cloak the fact that India is becoming such a modern nation: no faith is in danger in our country, and the continuing commitment to gender equality is one of the great narratives of our times,” said Mukherjee.

We must work together for nation, keeping aside hate, violence and anger: Mukherjee