NEW DELHI /LONDON/ NEW YORK(TIP): The University of East Anglia in the UK conferred on Ambassador Asoke Mukerji (he was Permanent Representative of India to the Unite Nations a few years ago) an honorary Doctor of Civil Laws degree for his contribution to diplomacy, more than two years after his retirement from the Foreign Service.

The last time they had given an honorary DCL to another Indian was in 2012 to Dr M.S. Swaminathan (the “father of India’s Green Revolution”) for his contributions to science. Since it was established 55 years ago, the University has moved into the top 200 universities of the world, and the top 15 of the UK. It has produced two Nobel Laureates from its alumni – the 2017 Nobel Laureate in Literature Sir Kazuo Ishiguro and the 2001 Nobel Laureate in Medicine Sir Paul Nurse.

In his Acceptance Speech on this occasion, addressing the students graduating on the same day, Ambassador Mukerji offered them the vision of Rabindranath Tagore from more than a century ago to confront the turbulence currently being witnessed in international affairs. This poem is from Tagore’s Gitanjali, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913:

“Where the mind is without fear

and the head is held high,

where knowledge is free.

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls.

Where words come out from the depth of truth,

where tireless striving stretches its arms toward perfection.

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way

into the dreary desert sand of dead habit.

Where the mind is led forward by thee

into ever widening thought and action.

Into that heaven of freedom, my father,

let my country awake!”