On Resurgent India Movement - Resurgent India - Calcutta

Mahamahim Rashtrapati ji,
Mahamahim Rajyapal ji,
Dr. Subhash Kashyap ji, Dr. Debesh Das, Professor Dutta, Dr. Mandal
Distinguished Leaders of Thought and Action, of Art and Culture, of Science and Spirituality,

Sisters and Brothers,

The Movement that we call ‘Resurgent India’ wants to link itself with the Movement that commenced a hundred years ago in Calcutta and in the East through the electrifying pages of Bande Mataram penned by Sri Aurobindo, which instilled in the country within two years the demand for uncompromising programme of total freedom of India. Freedom has come, but we need at this stage once again to instill in our country a new demand for uncompromising Resurgence of India that can discover at the deepest depths that great and undying Soul of India and revitalize and create new forms of expression, - nothing short of Rebirth or Renaissance of India, more radical than the Renaissance that shaped the modern Western world.

It is propitious for us today that at this juncture we have in our Beloved Rashtrapati ji a leader of Vision and Action who has breathed in the country that new pulsation and force that can match the needs of Resurgent India. To that leadership we salute today on this occasion with profound gratitude, and from that leadership, we derive an undying inspiration.

Our Movement of Resurgent India is, first of all, a Vision, and it is secondly, a Call. Our Vision underlines the need for a new Synthesis which can lift us from the dawns of the Past and usher into our skies what Sri Aurobindo calls “the Noons of the future”.

This synthesis will be fourfold: synthesis of the East and the West, commencing from the “Look East” and culminating into world-unity that respects and nourishes living pulsations of diversity; secondly, synthesis of material prosperity that can be ours with advancement of Knowledge that welds together Science, Technology, Philosophy and Culture; thirdly, a synthesis of spiritualized life that excludes exclusivism from ideologies and isms, systems and religions; and fourthly, a synthesis of the stores of wisdom that are still to be pooled together from the past books of knowledge and the ever-progressive vistas of astonishing revelations that seem to be awaiting us at the present evolutionary movement which is refashioning humanity for its transmutation into super-humanity.

Our call is first to the youth, - the youth that has the leonine Swami Vivekananda as their ideal image, - one who had the strength and courage to ask the great question: Have you seen God? He realized God and wanted the youth to realize God; but he also wanted the manifestation of God in the upliftment of All, by transcending all the fretters of dogmas, and conflicting claims of doctrines and disputes. It is to that call that we invite the youth of today for its fulfilment.

Our call is, next, to the elite and to the rich, and to the capable leaders. We want them to remember the wise counsel that their eminence, their richness and their leadership has its sustaining force that emerges from below, and that their own good lies in transmitting to all their knowledge, their skill and their good fortune as rapidly as possible. For, it is in that transmission that lies the secret of painless transition from the past to the future.

Our call, thirdly, is to the holders of Power. It is in their hands to implement the Reforms in our Constitution and create a true democratic democracy; it is in their hands to change the present system of education that stifles the soul of the child, and to give to the nation the fruits of the pioneering experiments carried out in

India and elsewhere; we call them to create a permanent body of the wise and the learned who have studied the educational experiments of Tagore and Gandhi, of Maharshi Dayananda and Swami Vivekananda, and of Sri Aurobindo, of Rousseau and Pestalozzi, of Montessori, Russell and Paulo Freire, and who can therefore constantly innovate education and confer sovereignty on the child, - for indeed, the child is always the spiritual sovereign of the nation; it is in their hands to create establishments that can constantly empower the weak and the poor and which can foster the ideal and practice of Sarvodaya, the rise and fulfilment of All.  It is in their hands to energize the country, the first premise of which is abundant supply of electricity. It is said of Lenin that his wise foresight in developing the Soviet Union struck upon the issue of electricity, and gave to it the highest priority. We need that priority in our country, - even though we are rather too too late. It is in their hands to create right bonds with neighboring and distant countries, to provide security and protection and rule of law, - which are today in a state of great decline.

Our call, fourthly, is to all our sisters and brothers, - to all of us. It is in our hands to learn and to teach, to work and to co-operate, to do and to be, to scale heights of excellence and even to aspire for perfection. Did not Jesus Christ give us the message: “Be thou as perfect as God in Heaven is perfect”? Let us, in all our thoughts and deeds, in our aspirations and prayers, strive to be and to exceed continuously our own borders of limitations.

It is against the background of our above programme that the conference of today is being held; and we are beginning with the theme of ‘Look East’. And, in launching this theme, we are immensely grateful to our Beloved Rashtrapatiji for being with us, and we look forward to his inspiring guidance.