RAHDAKRISHNAN RECEIVES DEGREE FROM H.S.I.U. /
DEGREE CONFERRED ON PRESIDENT OF INDIA
On the occasion of Your Excellency’s visit to Our country, it gives
Us special pleasure to receive you at this institution, itself dedicated
to the pursuit of knowledge and truth. It is altogether fitting that
Your Excellency should be the focus of this occasion, for Your
Excellency has yourself, since your youth, been dedicated to that cause.
Your marked achievement to the august rank of Professor at the
youthfull age of twenty-eight, your consistent endeavour to pursue
knowledge and the numerous books that have flowed from your pen, bear
witness to this.
Today more than ever before man realizes the bond of unity that
exists within the race; he is endeavouring to employ the accumulated
knowledge and wisdom of the ages. He is employing modern science and
technology; he is reaping the benefits, however limited, of political
and economic unity; and to that extent. he is transcending the age-old
barriers that have divided the race so long and is endeavouring to
reflect on the welfare not only of himself and his immediate neighbour
but also on the welfare of all the human race. This endeavour is in
harmony with the spirit of the mystics of ages gone by “... in the
mystic traditions of the different religions we have a remarkable unity
of the spirit. Whatever religions they may profess they are spiritual
kinsmen. While the different religions in their historic forms bind us
to limited groups and militate against the development of loyalty to the
world community, the mystics have always stood for the fellowship of
humanity,” so Your Excellency has taught us. And in an effort to carry
out this teaching to pursue truth – to promote those bonds common to the
human race – Your Excellency has dedicated your whole life. To free the
human race from superstition and fear that originate from ignorance; to
enable him to transcend the apparent obstacles of race and religion;
and to help him recognize the blood-ties of the whole human race, Your
Excellency has laboured. To this generation, so tormented between modern
knowledge and ancient faith, your scrupulous studies have pointed the
way by which man may be saved from traditional superstition and modern
scepticism.
Were the thoughts of Plato and Socrates, the beliefs of Christianity
and Judaism not harmonized with Hindu philosophy; were Yoga and its
various stages not exposed to Western thought; had Western religion and
philosophy not been exposed to the philosophy and religion of the East
through Your Excellency’s persistent endeavour, how much the poorer
would human thought have been!
In the history of the human race, those periods which later appeared
as great have been the periods when the men and the women belonging to
them had transcended the differences that divided them and had
recognized in their membership in the human race a common bond. Your
Excellency’s constant endeavour to challenge this generation to
transcend its differences, to recognize its common bond and to work
towards a common goal has doubtless made this age pregnant with
greatness. It is, therefore, in recognition of these labours that We,
with unequalled pleasure, bestow upon Your Excellency the degree of
Doctor of Letters, honoris causa.
Oct. 13, 1968.
Important Utterances of H.I.M. Emperor Haile Selassie I - page 551 - &
Selected Speeches of His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie - page 132 -
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