Text of the Vice-President’s Address to Participants of the third batch of Rajya Sabha Internship Programme

Good afternoon!

I must express a deep sense of gratitude to Shri Harivansh ji, Deputy Chairman, Rajya Sabha. You all had the benefit of hearing him today. Your internship program has been created after a very thoughtful process. There has been involvement at my level, Harivanshji's level, Secretary General’s level and other senior officials. This is the third edition and the underlying purpose is not to educate you because each of you have the capacity and potential to help yourself. Idea is just to initiate you, idea is to ignite that particular flame that connects you with Indian Parliament, in turn with Indian nationalism, in turn with the nation. Therefore from here you will be soldiers, warriors to propagate a theme that we should always keep the nation first. We will keep our nation above self interest, above partisan interest. We therefore have to understand what is meant by Nation and Constitution.

I am pained and disturbed that some people in positions have just no idea of Bharat. They have no idea of our Constitution, they have no idea of our national interest. I am sure your heart must be bleeding from what you see. If we are true Bhartiya, if we believe in our nation, we will never side with the enemies of the nation. We will all stand spinally for the nation.

Imagine, in getting this freedom, ultimate sacrifice has been given by how many in protecting this freedom, in protecting this nation. My brothers and sisters, now they are also involved in combat positions. Mothers have lost their sons, wives have lost their husbands. We can't ridicule nationalism. Every Indian outside the country has to be an ambassador of this nation. How painful. One who holds a constitutional position is doing just the reverse of it.

Nothing can be more condemnable, despicable and intolerable that you become part of enemies of the nation. They do not understand the value of freedom.

They do not understand that this country has civilizational depth of 5000 years. Let me invite your attention first to our Constitution. Some people are so ignorant that they just take the Constitution for granted, the Constitution that is sacred. It was structured over 3 years of painstaking work by the founding fathers of the Constitution, the members of the constituent assembly over 18 sessions without disruption, without disturbance, without sloganeering, without any posters being raised.

It worked through the mechanism of debate, dialogue, discussion and deliberation. Challenges, boys and girls, before them were Himalayan, insurmountable. The issues were divisive, there could not be easy consensus. They worked for it, they worked for us. Some people want to divide our nation. Ignorance in extremity!

Let me tell you about the preamble of the Indian Constitution. We the people of India are fountain heads of it. We are the source of it. We give to ourselves this Constitution. For Justice, liberty, equality and fraternity. Just imagine, someone wants to tear fraternity to pieces outside this country imagining a factual situation which is non-existent.

I beseech all of you to go through that period when a leader of the opposition, who became Prime Minister thereafter, Shri Atal Bihari Bihari Vajpayee. He went to represent the nation and Narasimha Rao ji was the Prime Minister. Not a single thought must have come to the mind of the Prime Minister that the leader of the opposition will play politics.

No. Every drop of our blood is committed to our nation. And they want to suck blood out of us.

They want to paint a particular image about India. You are stakeholders in democracy. You are the most vital stakeholders.

I have seen India closely, the government closely when I was elected to Parliament in 1989. I was a worried Member of Parliament. Why? Because our gold had to be sent in physical form to Switzerland to be placed in two banks.

Our foreign exchange was around 1 billion US dollars. Now it is 680 billion US dollars.

I went to Jammu and Kashmir, Srinagar in particular as the Minister. Deathly silence. Couldn't see more than a dozen people on the road. Now 2 crore tourists visit every year.

Then, the size of our economy was smaller than the cities of London and Paris. Now you know where we are.

I don't want to put out statistics.