New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said that to make India a developed nation by 2047, it is extremely important to unite society against divisive forces.
The Chinmaya Amrit Mahotsav International Conference, organized by the Chinmaya Mission, was held at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi. Inaugurating the event and addressing it, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, “The Upanishads say that we are the children of immortality (Vayam Amritasya Putra). This is not merely a spiritual philosophy. It is also our cultural belief. This does not mean that our bodies are immortal; it means that our consciousness is immortal.
It is precisely because of this sense of awareness that India has remained undestroyed and enduring for thousands of years. The word India means a nation engaged in the pursuit of knowledge and light. All of us who wish for the welfare of the country must awaken and lead the nation onto the path of progress.
Swami Chinmayananda lived his entire life by making this very mantra his guiding principle. Just as he spoke with great passion about spiritual matters, he spoke about the nation with the same enthusiasm. For our nation is the birthplace of our culture. This nation is the very foundation of our existence.
Thanks to the efforts of Chinmaya Mission, millions of young people today are serving as cultural ambassadors of India. These young people are carrying India’s values forward to the next generations.
We introduced the National Education Policy precisely to ensure that our education system is aligned with the aspirations of New India. This National Education Policy gives importance to India’s knowledge tradition, mother-tongue education, modern science, and emerging technologies.
Across all directions of the country, India’s cultural centers are being revived once again. The Kashi Vishwanath Temple, the grand Ram temple in Ayodhya, and the Mahakaleshwar Temple in Ujjain are examples of this. There was a time when India’s artifacts and idols were stolen and sold abroad. There was no one to stop this. In the past 12 years, more than 650 stolen artifacts have been brought back to India.
Over the past few decades, times have changed. New challenges have emerged before the nation. New distortions and shortcomings have appeared in society. Today, the responsibility to correct these lies with all of us.
We must unite society against the forces that seek to divide us. We must awaken our fellow citizens toward self-reliance. We must connect every individual toward the goal of building a developed India by 2047. To achieve these objectives, we must work with even greater determination,” said Prime Minister Modi.