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DAM-L LS: President Narayanan's Speech Honoring Baba Amte (fwd)
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subject: LS: President Narayanan's Speech Honoring Baba Amte
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SPEECH BY THE PRESIDENT OF INDIA SHRI K.R. NARAYANAN WHILE PRESENTING THE
DR. AMBEDKAR INTERNATIONAL AWARD FOR SOCIAL CHANGE TO BABA AMTE
New Delhi, Wednesday, 6 December 2000
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It is a great pleasure for me to have had the privilege of presenting the
Dr. Ambedkar International Award for Social Change to Baba Amte. I should
like to compliment the distinguished members of the Jury for the choice
they have made, and offer my respectful felicitations to Baba Amte for
winning this prestigious Award.
I think this is the most appropriate way to remember Babasaheb Ambedkar on
this solemn anniversary of his Mahaparinirvan. Following the principles of
the Buddha, -- enlightenment, equality and compassion -- Babasaheb exerted
his energy to the very end of his life for the transformation of our
ancient, caste-ridden society of graded inequalities into a social
democracy and a community of brotherhood. Babasaheb’s life, in his own
words, was a "continuous struggle for the poor and the oppressed". By the
Constitution of India, of which he was the principal architect, not only
untouchability was abolished, but he sought to wipe out the entrenched and
intricate inequalities of the caste system. Upholding that equality was
another name for democracy, he fought the caste-system which was the root
evil of our society and the cause of our downfall in history. Social
change, I should say, social revolution, was the master objective of his life.
As for Baba Amte, he has devoted his whole life for the same objective of
social change, social revolution and spiritual enlightenment of man and the
society. From his early boyhood Baba Amte had rebelled against inequalities
and caste exclusions and prohibitions of Indian life. He freely mixed with
Dalits, shared food and accommodation with them and allowed them to draw
water from his family well. He had organized an association of scavengers,
fraternised with them and even did scavenging work himself. It has been
said that a great man is the scourge and the scavenger of society. Ambedkar
and Baba Amte have been both. Dr. Ambedkar, referring to the condition of
the tribals had said, "aborigines have remained in their primitive state in
a land which boasts of a civilization thousands of years old". He held that
"civilizing the aborigines means adopting them as your own, living in their
midst and cultivating fellow feeling, in short loving them". Baba Amte, in
his tribal upliftment work, translated these sentiments and ideals into
practice. He established Lok Biradari Prakalpa, the Peoples Brotherhood
Project, by which he taught the tribals new farming and irrigation methods,
provided them with educational and medical facilities, taught them and
trained them in boarding schools, so that they could be groomed into agents
of social change among their own communities. It may be recalled in this
context that Dr. Ambedkar had emphasized the over-riding importance of
education in uplifting the tribals and Dalits. He said once, "We may forgo
material benefits, but we cannot forgo our right and opportunity to reap
the benefits of the highest education to the fullest extent". Baba Amte
adopted this line when he established educational institutions in order to
prepare the youth along these ideals for restructuring society.
Both Babasaheb Ambedkar and Baba Amte believed passionately in the unity of
India. But, for them unity was not just political and economic unity, they
yearned for social unity based on fraternity and abolition of distinctions
of caste and creed. Dr. Ambedkar was outspoken in the Constituent Assembly
when he said: "I am of the opinion in believing that we are a nation we are
cherishing a great delusion. How can people divided into several thousands
of castes be a nation? The sooner we realize that we are not yet a nation,
in the social and psychological sense of the word, the better for us. For
then only, we shall realize the necessity of becoming a nation and
seriously think of ways and means of realizing the goal." At the same time
Ambedkar declared that while at the moment we may be warring groups,
socially and economically, "given time and circumstances nothing in the
world will prevent this country from becoming one". Baba Amte in the 'Knit
India' movement that he launched to bring all India together from East to
West, from North to South, was trying to unite the country by removing all
distinctions of caste and creed and cleansing it of all social ills. In the
seminars held in different parts of the country he administered a pledge to
the youth to understand and feel the hurt of the hungry and the oppressed
through a fellowship of pain. Speaking in this very Ashoka Hall in January
2000 while receiving the Gandhi Peace Prize, Baba Amte said: "I courted
voluntary imprisonment for more than five decades with my depressed,
oppressed, lonely leprosy patients and the socially deprived at Anandvan.
It is well known that a just place for a just man in an unjust society is
either jail or death". By this Award we are honouring to-day a
compassionate crusader for the welfare of the poor, the lowly and the lost
in our society.
The struggle of Baba Amte now embraces the whole of suffering humanity and
the tortured earth and its environment. It has been said that the struggle
for environment is the biggest religious and spiritual movement in the
world to-day. Baba Amte has said: "Now that the sun of life is about to
set, I have set out to catch the rising sun of environmental
consciousness". For him the environmental movement is not merely to save
the trees, the mountains and the rivers, but the human lives that these
nurture – the tribals and the poorest of the poor of the land. Baba Amte
described the Narmada Bachao movement as new battlefront for youth action
"as an outburst of Gandhian courage and concern for antyodaya". I recall
that during our independence struggle the late Shri V.K. Krishna Menon,
directing his verbal missiles at British audiences, declaring that the
British imperialists had gone around the world "damming rivers and damning
peoples". Let us, now that imperialism is gone, take every possible care to
see that the impact of the dams we build is not ruinous to the lives of our
tribal brothers and sisters inhabiting our forests and river valleys. Dr.
Ambedkar had once said that "land shall belong to the State and shall be
let out to the villagers without distinction of caste or creed and in such
a manner that there will be no landlord, no tenant, and landless labour".
On another occasion he had proposed more pragmatically that all waste land
should be acquired by the State distributed among the Dalits and tribals.
In the blind and remorseless march of modern development it is good for us
to pause and recall these words, which were voiced by Mahatma Gandhi also
when he said "Land belongs to Ram". The forest land on which Baba Amte
established his Lok Biradari Prakalpa, ‘an outcaste land for outcaste
people’, he named Anandvan or the ‘Forest of Joy’. While presenting Baba
Amte with this Award let us recall the dreams of Mahatma Gandhi and
Babasaheb Ambedkar and try to make our forests and river valleys, forests
and valleys of joy, and not of human misery and deprivation. And let us all
wish Baba Amte good health and long life in order to fulfil his noble
mission for the welfare of the poor and the neglected in society.
Jai Hind
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