Liverpool Hope University awards Rajmohan Gandhi an honorary doctorate of letters

(A news report on the event, in the Telegraph of Calcutta, and an item with photos of the Gandhis, are available via links at the bottom of this page.)

"Chancellor Baroness Cox, Pro-Chancellor Monsignor Devine, Vice-Chancellor Professor Pillay, professors, students, parents, and guests:

I feel happy and fortunate to be able to share with Liverpool Hope’s wonderful students their milestone, and to share it in this unique, famous and consecrated setting.

Puzzled I may be, but who am I to judge the good people of Liverpool Hope for choosing to bestow on me this, as I feel, undeserved honour? I take it as a prod to do more, or better. Thank you.

On this occasion I recall that London’s Inner Temple disbarred one of its graduates, my grandfather Mohandas Gandhi, after he led a rebellion in India, and then restored his credentials. When in 1931, at the start of the Great Depression, Gandhi, travelling by ship all the way from India, came quite close to Liverpool, English workers hurt by Indian boycotts offered their friendship to him nonetheless.

As Rafael Nadal recently said at Wimbledon after winning the crown there, where else (he was referring to Britain) do you find applause for someone who defeats their star or, he might have added, defies their government?

Let me assure all concerned that I am not in Liverpool to defy the British government or this university.

Instead I would like, in this response, to thank the many scholars of British origin whose painstaking researches in far-off lands (at times in strange new languages) provided material for my books on Indian and South Asian history. I am here to salute the age-old (and I pray never-ceasing) British embrace of the spirit of scholarship which in its search for truth crosses every formidable barrier, and digs the hardest rock, enabling all who follow to build on their discoveries.

But in this response I also want to underline what all here know, which is that the future of humanity depends on whether or not the Muslim/ non-Muslim divide, which directly affects the people of this country too, can be bridged.

This bridge will have to be built from both sides, and by people of all kinds, including citizens, scholars, people in government, religious leaders, journalists, artists, and others.

An essential tool for this bridge will be the ability that Gandhi remarkably had -- of speaking the truth to your own side.

Allow me to point out that courageous sounds have lately been heard in Pakistan, where politicians, editorial writers, and grass-root activists are demanding that religious minorities be protected and assured equal rights. I salute their voice.

I was similarly struck, on a visit in April of this year to Israel and Palestine, by Jewish voices demanding justice for Palestine. On Easter Day I had the good fortune to visit the spot where Jesus was born and also the site where, it is believed, Abraham was buried. In each sacred spot I made two silent prayers, one for the liberation of Palestine and the other for the safety of the people of Israel.

All know that Britain has been involved in the stories of several nations, including in the Middle East, and including India and Pakistan. Equally, Pakistanis and Indians are involved in the stories of today’s Britain. Through this response I would like to express my conviction that people living in Britain, including those present this afternoon in this cathedral, and including Britons of Pakistani and Indian origin, have a role in bringing healing and justice to the Middle East and in the India-Pakistan relationship.

On my nuclearized subcontinent (which includes India, Pakistan and Bangladesh), a water crisis looms in the near horizon even as hundreds of millions of the hitherto impoverished look forward to a better life. Will armies insist on continuing to face one another at great heights in Siachen in Kashmir, where -- while guns for the moment are silent -- the freeze kills soldiers of both stripes every day? Will the armies continue to do this until the ice and the glaciers melt?

Whether on the subcontinent or here or elsewhere, the call for reconciliation is actually a call for sanity. It is also, today, my prayer as I receive the honour conferred on me. Thanks again.