Hyderabad: President Pranab Mukherjee has laid emphasis on making the universities and institutions of higher learning in the country a place where free minds interact freely.
Inaugurating the three-day Centenary Celebrations of Osmania University in Hyderabad, the president paid a rich tribute to its founder and last Nizam of Hyderabad Mir Osman Ali Khan as a “visionary”.
With the magnificent buildings of Arts College as the backdrop, the president went down memory lane recollecting the 100-year past of the university and said it was a privilege for him to be here on the historic occasion.
Addressing a gathering of more than 15,000 people including the guests, faculty members and students, the president said “hundred years ago on this day a visionary Mir Osman Ali Khan, the last Nizam, had a dream of establishing a university in Hyderabad which will be of world standards”.
“Osmania University was established with a dream that it would be an institution of excellence where free minds will meet freely, exchange ideas and views, interact and dream in peaceful coexistence”, the President said.
“These hundred years from 1917 to 2017 have so many momentous changes including in your own state,” Mukherjee said recalling the two World Wars in the first half of the last century. “It also saw the birth of a nation on the intervening night of 14 and 15 August. When half of the world was asleep, India arose from slumber of 190 years of foreign rule and India began its destiny.”
Dwelling on the objectives of Indian education system and institutions of higher learning, Mukherjee recalled that in 1956 when University Grants Commission was set up, the then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru had envisioned that a university could be place of higher learning, could be a place of learning environment where free views and ideas would be exchanged. “It will be a place where minds both in form of teachers and students interact with each other without any bondage any external imposition”, he quoted Pandit Nehru.
The president recalled that India had played a leading role in the international map of higher learning for 1,500 to 1,600 years with universities such as Takshashila which, is in Pakistan now, and Nalanda. “All of them are in ruins now but for 1,300 years they attracted talent from all over the world in form of teachers and students who made exchange of views advanced the learning on the basic principle of humanism, on which Osmania University was established.”
While expressing his happiness over celebration of 100 years of Osmania University, he urged the students and the faculty to look into the fact that universities in the country were lagging far behind in the basic research and excellence.
But he admitted that academic institutions alone cannot be blamed for the situation. “Uninterrupted flow of funds either from the government or industry was not possible. Industry must come forward. There must be interface between the industry and the academia and the industry should have vested interest in education research advance of science and development.
“Then only we will be able to achieve our rightful place on the international map of education system and economically advance,” he said.
President Mukherjee also recalled that the country’s first education minister Moulana Abul Kalam Azad had while founding the education system of the country had laid emphasis on three aspect; Research, Innovation and Interaction.
He also lauded the progress the nation had made in the field of higher education and infrastructure. “Right now as I am speaking there are 757 universities including 16 IITs, 30 NITs and scores of institutes of higher management. Quite a few of them have made their marks,” he said.
He said that first of the IITs have 100 pe cent campus recruitment and IITians were providing the leadership in the market and in a large number of MNCs all over the world.
But, he said, without resting on these laurels the country should develop the universities as the temple of modern learning.
He recalled that ever since he became President in 2012 he had been repeating at every educational congregating that “our universities should have international standard of excellence occupying the rightful place in the world”.
State Governor ESL Narasimhan, Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, and union minister of state Bandaru Dattareya were among the dignitaries who attended the inaugural programme. University Vice Chancellor S Ramachandram thanked the chief minister for making a budgetary allocation of Rs2 billion (Dh114.6 million) for the centenary celebrations and the development of infrastructure in the university.
