Graduation Address

"Encaenia Address, Ceremony B." (23 May 1996). (UA Case 67, Box 3)

Chancellor Eaton, Dr. Armstrong, members of the Board of Governors and Senate, Honoured Guests, Graduates, and Ladies and Gentlemen:

I would first like to express my gratitude for having this opportunity to speak to you, the Graduates of 1996, at this wonderful rite of passage in your lives, this your graduation from university. I congratulate you all.

I am deeply moved that this university you graduate from today and the one which I graduated from 39 years ago would grant an honorary degree to someone who has simply tried to do what has to be done in a world full of injustices. Long ago in the history of the Israelites, the prophet Micah gave the command very simply when he said that what was required of anyone was to do justice and to love mercy and to walk humbly with one’s God. That I suppose is what I have tried to do in small ways using the means and the methods that I have learned along the way.

In all my endeavours I have felt especially grateful for the support and encouragement of friends and family especially of my two sons, one of whom, Jonathan, is here with me today.

But whatever I have achieved I owe in very large measure to this university and this city and its people. It is from here that I have taken values of caring and learning; and seldom does one get an opportunity such as this to come back to one’s roots to publicly say thank you.

It would be easy to stand here and reminisce about this city and about my university years where classes were often held in our professors’ offices and we actually had something called a Ladies Lounge: but it would not be fair to reminisce in an address to graduates who are looking towards the future. Let me just say that I am glad there was an attempt made back then to give us a BROAD EDUCATION. Indeed many of us took Latin even to enter university. Somehow we came to understand that a democracy demands a broader education. It is therefore regrettable to hear of universities today educating for jobs with the same mandate as that given to trade schools and vocational schools. Driven by economics, higher education is in danger of becoming more focused, specialized and narrow. Universities—that is real universities—must never become hand-maidens to corporations.

There are ironies in my being here today. A first irony is that my father, who never had much use for honorary degrees, used to say that all such degrees were given to rich rascals or to scheming scoundrels. Since I do not fall into the former category, I must by his reasoning fall into the latter. Scoundrel I hope I am not, but I do confess to a life of scheming. What is more, I do believe scheming done for the good of others can be a very positive thing. In this sense, scheming is a process of having a vision, becoming informed and then getting involved. Indeed, my life has crossed paths with two of the greatest schemes of this century. As a child being brought up in India, newscasts were all about Mahatma Ghandi’s schemes to shut down the mills of Industrial England, and to organize marches, to gain independence for India. The British labeled him a troublemaker, a real subversive, when he proclaimed "I must not slacken my efforts in doing what I know to be my duty."

Later in my life I was to work in Atlanta, Georgia, alongside another "troublemaker" who was upsetting the status quo, Martin Luther King. His schemes involved making it right for Blacks to sit in buses, to eat in restaurants, and to be educated in formerly segregated schools and universities of the American South.

Fortified and inspired by the resolve of such men—and others in our century, men like Dag Hammerskjold and Raoul Wallenburg—I have tried on a much, much lesser scale to do my bit and yes, I do confess to scheming. I have learned many of my tactics for scheming from my involvement with Amnesty International. I have been with that organization since it began, and its concerns will always be my concerns: In too much of the world there is no observance of the rule of law, and corruption, oppression and killing dictate the day-to-day existence of so many people who live in fear and abject poverty. Too readily we forget that ultimately we are all part of the same fabric. Presently my efforts are concentrated on China, with 1/5th of the world’s people, where no one is safe and where prisoners of conscience are arbitrarily arrested and condemned to long years of labour reform with access to neither lawyers nor family members. I would like to see leaders in my own country be less cowardly in dealing wit such regimes whether they exist in China, Indonesia and Burma or in the countries of Africa and South and Central America.

I have resolved also to do what I can to prevent the United Nations from going the way of the League of Nations because of the present isolationist policies within the American Congress. Last summer when I attended the 50th Anniversary of the United Nations in San Francisco, I was shocked to realize that America (with its debt) was really serious about withdrawing from the UN! Ironically, this at a time when the rest of the world expects more and more from this bankrupt agency. We as Canadians have much respect at the UN, and we must therefore take a lead in preserving it and making it more effective. At the very least it must remain a forum for international debate because it is all we have.

On the National scene I will continue to do more to expose the failure of our present foster care system, where children from dysfunctional homes go through various courts and various foster homes until all too often they end up as dysfunctional and often destructive people themselves. One cannot help but ask why something more permanent and stable modeled on the Israeli Kibbutz or the Austrian SOS Children’s Villages cannot be offered to neglected children in Canada. No politician across the land is addressing the issue, and, of course, children do not have a vote. I also wish that the children of prisoners in Canada could be given something special in the way of housing and education so that cycles of crime could be broken. In the prisons themselves, I plan to go on working to see more worthwhile rehabilitative measures established to raise the self esteem of people, many of whom have been unwanted since birth or before. In B.C. I am in the process of setting up a fund to provide some money for such rehabilitation.

These are but some of the issues to which I will continue to address myself in the time that is left for me. Since youth is naturally the repository of ideals the world over, you will have your own visions, and I encourage you to pursue them. You must follow that inner guide at the very centre of your being—call it soul, or inner truth. As you leave your student days and go out into the workplace, many of you will encounter attempts by others to distort what you know to be right and good and truthful. Sometimes this will even be done by asking you ironically to be loyal and to be a good team player. And you will learn that somewhere on the journey of life, everyone has to decide on the selling price of his or her own soul. To stand firm with courage and knowledge is not an easy road, but it is the road that justifies what humanity and civilization are all about.

I speak of this out of my own experience, for there is another irony in my being here today. Some of the very things for which I am being honoured among you caused the RCMP to go to my parents’ home here in New Brunswick in the 1960s to find out about my background. My parents were told I was promoting some London-based "thing" called Amnesty International in Georgia, and even worse, I was working in the "radical" Civil Rights Movement. Needless to say, my parents were concerned, and I had a difficult time to assure them that both the causes I was promoting would become legends in my lifetime—and they have.

Looking back now, I remember those years as frightening years with threatening phone calls and fears of losing one’s job, and worst of all, fears of implicating one’s family. But I learned in those years that silence meant compliance, and fear and paralysis made what Hannah Arendt has called a ready path for evil. I have also learned in those years that there were always prices to pay for adhering to principles.

Today, you face a different world, in many ways an even more frightening world with many challenges: oppression, starvation, overpopulation, wanton barbarism, ethnic and religious conflicts, ecological crises and great inequalities in the distribution of health, wealth and power. Even the values and structures that have made Canada one of the more admired countries in the world are being eroded. But never believe that you as single individuals cannot make a difference. The opportunity to do something is also very great today. And remember, often it is only the single individual who can make the difference—for example to name but a few from history, Socrates, Christ, Buddha, and Joan of Arc. However, you will need an informed vision more than every in an age that tends to see technological advances as progress; it is that kind of vision which makes our life or the life of our nation and even our global community worthwhile. There is great wisdom in that saying "Where there is no vision, the people perish."

In closing, I turn to some lines from that beautiful classic by Saint Exupery, The Little Prince where the Fox says it all so very convincingly: "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye." I leave you with that last line:

"WHAT IS ESSENTAIL IS INVISIBLE TO THE EYE."