Celebrate 'oneness' amidst diversities: President Mukherjee

 President Pranab Mukherjee today asked people to pursue and celebrate "oneness" amidst India's rich diversity.

He was speaking during a function to inaugurate unified campus of the prestigious Bose Institute, which is Asia's first modern research centre devoted to inter-disciplinary research. Referring to Acharya Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose, the father of modern science and founder of the institute, Mukherjee said searching of oneness was one of the great contributions for the Indian culture and civilisation which began many millennia ago. "It (search) is still to be pursued to find oneness amidst varieties. To identify it. Not to ignore it, but to celebrate it amidst the huge diversities which we have," the president said.

Bose had set the goal of this Institute by saying "to pursue further and fuller investigation of the many and ever- opening problems of life and non-life... Here will assemble all those who would seek oneness amidst the manifold," Mukherjee said. He said Bose was ardently supported and inspired by some of the greatest personalities like Rabindra Nath Tagore, Swami Vivekananda, Sister Nivedita, Mahatma Gandhi and Gopal Krishna Gokhale, to name a few. In fact, the establishment of Bose Institute can rightly be termed as one of the earliest manifestations of India's quest to establish the nation's self-esteem as an equal to the colonising west, the president said.