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 Full Text of president's Independence Day-eve
speech
It is a great privilege to address, for the first time, my fellow
Indians living within our country and in a hundred corners across
the globe, on the 65th anniversary of our independence. Words
cannot adequately express my gratitude to the people and
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New Delhi:
Anger against corruption is legitimate but there will be chaos if
street protests become endemic, Pranab Mukherjee warned Tuesday in
his first public speech as India's new president.
"Anger against the bitter pandemic of corruption is legitimate, as
is the protest against this plague that is eroding the capability
and potential of our nation," the president said in his
Independence Day-eve address to the nation.
"There are time when people lose their patience but it cannot
become an excuse for an assault on our democratic institutions,"
he said, in an apparent reference to anti-corruption movements of
Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev.
In a speech with distinct political overtones, the president said
that constitutional institutions should not be derailed.
"Our institutions may have suffered from the weariness of time;
the answer is not to destroy what has been built, but to
re-engineer them so that they become stronger than before."
Mukherjee, who while in the cabinet dealt with both Team Anna and
yoga guru Ramdev, went on: "When authority becomes authoritarian,
democracy suffers; but when protest become endemic, we are
flirting with chaos. Democracy is a shared process."
"We all win or lose together. Democratic temper calls for dignity
of behaviour and tolerance of contrary views," he said in the
nationally televised speech.
The president underlined the supreme importance of parliament in a
democratic set-up.
"Parliament is the soul of the people, the 'atman' of India. We
challenge its rights and duties are our peril."
Mukherjee, who became India's 13th president in July, added he was
not making these comments "in a spirit of admonition but as plea
for greater understanding of the existential issues that lurk
behind the mask of the mundane".
Democracy, he said, was blessed with a unique opportunity for
redress of grievances through free elections.
The president also covered a variety of subjects in his speech,
ranging from education and economy to diplomacy and India's
glorious past.
Mukherjee said he was not a pessimist. "I would go to the extent
of saying that the glass of modern India is more than half full."
He pointed out how British colonial rule had made India a poor
nation. Today, however, India was on the path of economic
progress, despite the global financial crisis.
But India, he said, needed "a second freedom struggle" to ensure
it becomes free for ever from hunger, disease and poverty.
Two decades of economic growth had done wonders, he said, but
quickly added that "a lot more remains to be done". He called for
extending the green revolution to India's eastern region.
The president said large areas in India were now in the grip of
drought because of poor monsoon. At the same time, inflation,
particularly prices of food items, remained a cause for worry.
Referring to last month's horrific violence in Assam, Mukherjee
said that minorities needed solace, understanding and protection
from aggression.
"Violence is not an option; violence is an invitation to greater
violence," he underlined. "We need peace for a new economic surge
that eliminates the competitive causes of violence."
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