Maintaining that India is “rediscovering its old glory”, Tamil Nadu Governor R N Ravi said on Friday said that the country has been experiencing comprehensive transformation at an unprecedented speed for the last one decade because of a “leader who understands Bharat”.
“Today, we have a leader who understands Bharat, who looks at this Bharat as a parivar. And that is why when the Prime Minister speaks, he never says ‘mere deshvashiyo’… He always says ‘mere parivarjano’,” Ravi said without naming Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He was addressing the convocation of Anant National University in Ahmedabad.
Addressing students, Ravi said that they are more fortunate than those who graduated before them “because the way the country is transforming”. “New opportunities are coming. You have far many more options than the generations before. Today, our country is experiencing comprehensive transformation at a speed, at a scale unprecedented. If anyone tries to understand India, any literature, any study, any analysis that is a decade old or older is rather irrelevant.”
“Today, our country is not what it was about a decade ago – a populous country but at the margin of world affairs… a country marred in pessimism, diffidence… accepting tardiness and poverty as a new normal or as an established normal. Today, India is at the centrestage of world affairs. When the Prime Minister of India speaks, the world listens and listens with apt attention,” he added.
Citing various fields in which the country has progressed in the last 10 years, Ravi mentioned rapid growth in GDP, health, education, women empowerment, security and building infrastructure.
Ravi said that 10 years ago, “every year, we used to suffer the agony of terror attacks”. “No part of the country was spared… Our theaters were unsafe, visiting malls was unsafe, our Parliament was attacked, our financial capital Mumbai was attacked.”
He added: “Our neighbour used to weild the threat of nuclear blackmail and our strategic experts used to say Pakistan has a nuclear weapon. We know they were the terror masters, they were the ones who were waging war on this country… The proxy war, not only in Jammu & Kashmir, but the whole country. But what happened after Pulwama? After Pulwama, they got to know that there will be a cost and the cost will be heavy when we hit them back deep inside their base. And now, we have peace.”
“On every front, our country is moving forward, transforming itself. A new country, a new Bharat is emerging or I should say Bharat is rediscovering its old glory,” said Ravi.
“What is Bharat? Unfortunately, we have not taught this to our students… Article 1 of the Constituion says India that is Bharat. But what is Bharat? It doesn’t explain… Believe me, India does not convey the sense and soul of Bharat. People of this country did not call themselves Indian or this country India until it was colonised. But reference of Bharat can be seen since thousands of years of our literature…,” Ravi said.
He further said that Bharat was not defined in terms of political state as the West understands, but it was defined by “our rishis” on the basis of Vedas.
