Speeches of Alagappa Chettiar |
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WELCOME SPEECH of
Dr.RM.Alagappa Chettiar Friends, Its is now my duty as it is my privilege and pleasure too add my humble voce of welcome first to you, Sir, our dear Prime Minister. It is a joy, to receive and to offer welcome; but it truly divine to welcome such a galaxy of statesmen and savants and men grown grey in their service to man and the lakhs that have gathered this morning. To you one all I offer my sincerest welcome. I have not been active participant in the struggle for freedom India. I have been just eyewitness; perhaps, I may add a heart-witness. But it will be true to say that right from the days when I was at school I, like many of you, have been an admiring spectator of the grand spectacle of the struggle of our beloved Prime Minister for the freedom of our land from his early days of his almost ascetic resolve to scorn the delights of conventional success and to live laborious days during the exacting years of his discipleship of the Father of our Nation - Mahatma Gandhiji in the midst of a suffering people. the life story of our distinguished son of India is verily the discovery of the Great and the good that was India; the survey of Mahatma's life is not a mere endless succession of good and great deeds but the chronicling of the results of experiments with Truth. The story of the Life of our leaders is the story of an unceasing sacrifice for the sake of an ultimate truth. Only taking in roots in the traditions that gave meanings to human endeavours they discovered the future. Hence it is that even during moments of occasional despondency one always feels cheered by the thought that a country and passion for righteousness can yet recapture its greatness in the future. The long and chequered history of India has always given a great lessons to learn. While on the one hand kingdoms rose and fell, and wave upon wave of invasions swept over the land and political life degenerated in the byways of courtcraft on the other from the very dawn of the Vedic age the relentless search for truth went on without any relaxing or interruption. the mystery of creation, the wonders of the world around, birth and death, the meaning and purpose of life these created a ferment in the minds of our ancestors. New religious faiths came into being. A few of then even denied God. One and all of them flourished, for the burning of the hetrodox and the wiping out of the unbeliever not the was of India. Truth as the mind of man conceived it was scared and free and it was the search for truth that broadened down form precedent. This is the true history of Indian civilisation, the centuries of mutual endeavours to discover the nature of the synthesis that unifies and explains the seeming contradictions that present themselves on the surface of the Universe. The chief feature of Indian culture is this emphasis on freedom of thought. In modern times one speak of the scientific approach. In the highest sense of the term it can mean on more that the canalization of disinterested intellectual curiosity and a fearless acceptance of whatever conclusions that flow out. By this definition our ancients were scientists in the truest sense of the word. We are the inheritors of that scientific approach. Forms, however, changes with the times. One shed consciousness of surroundings, Withdraw into one's self and pursue an elusive reality; or one may sit gazing at the stars, the sun and the moon and the mentally pursue their wanderings in the mysterious Universe or one may shut himself in a laboratory and spend years in understanding the shape and the structure of the matter. All the time it is the mind that is discarding the false and accepting the true. It would appear that nature reveals only a fraction of her infinite mysteries to each age. The mind that grasped the vision of the Nataraja statue, the mind that delved into the niceties of monism versus dualism of God, the Dwaita and the Advaita philosophies this mind was not in any manner of speaking lower in content or lesser in intensity than the mind that discovered the mechanics of the internal combustion engine or the flying fortress or the jet-propelled plane. The artist, the sculptor, the scientist and the hero that plights alone but not for himself alone are all of a piece-one and all imbued with the divine spark from Heaven. These are the circumferential trappings. What matter is that there is an urge, undying, never satisfied to discover, analyse, classify each little aspects of creation, animate and inanimate; and it would stand repetitions to emphasise that we in India are the heirs to long unbroken tradition of this scientific urge. Science in the last analysis, is disinterested pursuit of intellectual curiosity. Indian Mathematicians discovered the zero. It would be presumptuous to estimate the material or practical advantages of this discovery. The advantages accruing from the discoveries of science are incidental and true science cannot flourish if research is conditioned by the objectives of the moment. The weight of the earth, the heat of the sun, the distance of the moon to the earth may mean the uninformed that this pursuit has a tingle by the moon. Those who speak of pure and applied science labour under an elementary delusion, for he results of applied science are also not predictable, and by circumscribing the orbit within which a successful accident may occur, the possibilities of success are reduced and not enlarged. There can be frontiers to the mind. I may be pardoned for these vague philosophic ramblings. As I stand before you equally expecting and rightly excited I turn up my heart to Providence in prayerful mood humbly tender my thanks to God for having given me this moment. It is bliss to be alive on a moment like this. on behalf of every one assembled here and the many more who are not present but whose hearts beat in unison with ours nevertheless, I have a genuine joy in offering our thanks to the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research for there decision to locate this Electro Chemical Research Institute at Karaikudi. The Prenatal period of this expression, was as anxious and overcharged with an element of fear as is always the case prior to the birth of any life. My thanks are due in no small measure to the Government Of Madras and particularly my friends the Hon'ble Minister for Industries, Mr.Sitarama Reddy who has been the architect f my idea from very beginnings: The proposal was blessed by the Madras Government at early stage. I cannot be sufficiently grateful to Dr. Bhatnagar but for whose endless and inexhaustible enthusiasm and wise guidance this scheme would not have materialised. Dr. Sir, K.S.Krishnan and Sir J.C.Ghosh have been uniformly helpful and spared many a valuable hour for me. The encouragement that I have received both from the finance Minister and Minister of Industries Dr.Shanmugam Chetty and Dr.Mookerjee can be appreciated only by those who know them and their capacity for good. I am happy all these great men who I have referred to have followed up there goodness by benign personally present here. I am grateful to them all for this genuine gesture. I Naturally reserve my humble token of gratitude to our prime Minister for having given his seal of approval at every stage and coming down here to lay the Foundation stone. Only history can record the magnitude of this event for a town Karaikudi. It is not conventional reference when I say generous friends told me time and gain during the last month that the coming of Panditji to Karaikudi can be linked only to the puranic Bagirat h, having brought Gana earth. though I am not impertinent enough to claim for myself the status of Bagirath, I can say fearlessly that the Panditji to Ganga is true in every respect. To those who have followed the doubts and fears of the fitness of Karaikudi to share this honour of the location of the institute will appear the aptness of the simile and the need of Ganga to fertilise the soil of Karaikudi. As i tender my thanks to Panditji, I feel like a devotee attempting to thank Providence for His grace and mercy. The advantages of Karaikudi for the location of the institute may not be quite well-known. I have been informed by the knowledgeable men of science that Karaikudi being situated close to the magnetic equators is suitable as a center for magnetic studies. It is close to the sea and its thus advantageously placed for caring on oceanographic studies. The first grade college I had the privilege to start which was recently declared open by our Premier of Madras Hon'ble Mr.Omandur Reddiar, will be the neighbor to this Institute and hence will have much to learn from and something to give to this great Institute. it is my hope to start here an Engineering College immediately, a college which God and the University of Madras willing to start functioning in civil engineering by the academic year 1949. Technological and Polytechnic Institutions are next in my list. In course of time other branches of learning will, I hope, rise in this area and before of long this temple of learning which has been blessed at every stage by good and saintly personages will radiate its halo and enlightment to all who came within its orbit. I have in mind the starting of a Research Institute in higher mathematics to be called the Ramanujam Institute of Mathematics - a small remembrance to a great man. My scheme for this Ramanujam Institute is ready and I hope it can be started in the not too distant further. This together with this great Electrochemical Institute which will start its career in a few moments will then form an aggregation of academic units of immense value to the culture and the civilisation of our country. I am a dreamer, but you will agree dreamers are the most practical of men; for without visions and dreams there is no shaping of the future and i have sufficient faith to feel that more and more of these dreams will son be transformed into reality. Before the Prime Minister proceeds lay the foundation stone and thereby initiate a force potential for good, I want to present this beautiful ivory jar scooped out of one tusk to our Prime Minister (Presentation). On it are engraved the Upanishad verse 'thamasoma Jyothiragamaya which is translated into English means 'from darkness lead me into light'. Friends, Institutions of this type fulfill this essential purpose to throwing light on our path and taking us to our desired goal. For inauguration so laudable an objective, one naturally looks to the most eminent our countrymen. Ina message which Dr.C.R.Reddy has sent me for this occasion he had used this significant sentence "Apart from the position of the high office he holds Jawaharlal Nehru is a man of immortal worth". He is imbued with the love of Truth and the universal outlook which should be the very basis of all scientific work. Let me conclude with the thought that the new spirit of freedom that has awaked in the country will be followed by an adequate realisation of the opportunities it has created the determination to use these opportunities in the service of mankind.
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