SPEECHES / STATEMENTS 

PM’s address at the Indian Community Reception in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago

November 26, 2009, Port of Spain

My wife and I are truly delighted to be here with you all this evening. We bring with us good wishes and good tidings from the people of India.

I am happy to be here in this beautiful country to participate in the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting. The Commonwealth encompasses countries around the world where people of Indian origin have made a mark. In different and diverse countries the people of Indian origin have successfully blended Indian culture and values with the local cultural and social environment. In doing so, you have demonstrated the unique liberalism and pluralism of the great Indian civilization. This is what enables each one of us to adapt and adopt to new homes and new neighborhoods.

When I meet the people of Indian origin around the world I celebrate our pluralism as much as I celebrate our great civilizational inheritance. Indianness is like a large and all-encompassing banyan tree. It offers shade to everyone who comes in search of it. It has deep roots at home and branches that in turn go to great distances and strike roots there.

Today’s India is on the move, just as the people of Indian origin are on the move. India is reaching out to the world with confidence and in a spirit of live and let live. In reaching out to People of Indian Origin, we are also reaching out to the world at large. You are, for millions of Indians, the most visible and dynamic symbol of our own globalization process.

There is a fundamental difference between the globalization of India and many other developing countries. For us, globalization is a natural means of linking up with the world community of Indians. As I have often said, if there is one phenomenon in the world over which the sun truly never sets, it is the phenomenon of the global community of people of Indian origin.

It is often said that the 21st century will be the “knowledge century”. We in India are proud of our inheritance in this respect. Overseas Indians have played an extremely important role in global brand building for this purpose. I was in the United States earlier this week and felt proud as an Indian to meet so many people of Indian origin doing so well in so many different walks of life. If India is today viewed as a “knowledge economy” it is because of the reputation that people of Indian origin worldwide have earned through their creativity, through their adventure, enterprise and diligence.

India today seeks to tap the wellspring of Indian creativity and enterprise from around the world. Our ability to do so will depend on our ability to forge partnerships, on the one hand, and our ability to provide the proper enabling environment for the flowering of such partnerships back home.

Our Government is committed to cementing a new bond of mutually beneficial collaboration between India and people of Indian origin around the world.

I have often said that long before Indians crossed the seas as workers, they traveled the world as traders and great teachers. Time was when the Indian gurukul system and our universities at Takshila, Nalanda and Nagarjuna, were the envy of the world. Even after independence, Indian colleges and universities continued to attract students from all over the world.

In the last twenty to thirty years, we have lost ground both because we failed to incentivize our institutions to become global players and because foreign universities became more aggressive in marketing. I am conscious of the fact that an important demand of the overseas Indian community is to secure access to educational opportunities in India. That is why our Government has been widening educational opportunities for people of Indian origin in India.

I know many of your children wish to experience the new India, having heard about an old India from their parents and grand parents. I want all those people of Indian origin who have never been to India to make a pilgrimage and discover the new India that is in the making.

I invite you to make use of the investment and business opportunities that India now offers. I invite you to be active partners of a new India and walk with us in finding new pathways of development and progress. I invite you to feel the love and affection of Mother India and feel the warmth of her embrace.

I also hope we can promote more tourism from India to these beautiful islands. Indians are now traveling around the world. I do think the Indian diaspora can emerge as a major global network for the tourism and travel trade. There are many people of Indian origin on the US mainland who would be happy to come to these islands for business and holiday. There are win-win possibilities in this kind of business activity.

Education and business are the two major arenas through which we are reconnecting with people of Indian origin worldwide. But the cornerstone of our interaction remains our shared culture – both ancient and modern. I would like to see that children of people of Indian origin get opportunities wherever they are living to learn classical Indian dance and music. At the same time we must expand modern means of satellite based communication so that Indian film, music and television can reach your homes even though you may be distant from India physically.

Let me once again thank you for your warm hospitality and for your generosity of spirit. I wish you all a very bright future in this great land that you have now made your home. I extend to the people of Trinidad & Tobago our very best wishes and through you I convey to all citizens of Trinidad & Tobago the love and affection of the people of India.

Thank you.

Jai Hind.