Infosis Logo

lnfosys Foundation,
Bengaluru

&

Bhavans Logo

Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan,
Bengaluru & Mumbai

Present...

Cultural Festival
on
Unity in Diversity

Bhavans Logo

Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan,
Bengaluru & Mumbai

Day-01 Date: 18-02-2023
Time: 5.30 pm

Inauguration

Inauguration
Welcome Address Shri Jagdish Lakhani
Joint Executive Secretary,
Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Mumbai
Chief Guest Shri Purushottam Agrawal
Hindi Writer and Public Intellectual
Guest of Honour Shri Pravin Kulkarni
lnfosys, DC Head, Pune
Shri K. G. Raghavan
Chairman,
Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan,
Bengaluru
VENUE
BHARATIYA VIDYA BHAVAN,
Dr. K. M. Munshi Marg,
Chowpatty,
Mumbai - 400 007

The inauguration function started with lighting of holy lamp and recital of prayer songs by Uday Mazumdar and Parag Jhaveri. Eminent editor and poet Vishwanath Sachdev addressed the distinguished guests and speakers on the dais, cognoscenti and connoisseurs in the audience giving a short introduction to the festival highlighting its core points and objectives.

Jagdish Lakhani, the Joint Executive Secretary of Bhavans, Mumbai gave a welcome address while acknowledging the valuable support extended by Infosys Foundation in terms of sponsorship for about 8 years.

It was followed by the inaugural speech of the chief guest Purushottam Agrawal, an eminent Hindi writer and intellectual from Delhi. While referring to the benefits of diversity in contrast to the ideal of Hindu Rashtra of India, he pointed out that the policy of single nation, single language, single culture, single religion and single life style based nationalism of Italy and Germany resulted into disastrous combination of dictatorship and world wars within a period of about 100 years. Thus the need of the hour is the temperament of accepting the value and beauty of local dialects and languages instead of tolerating them. It is foresighted that the concept of acceptance will bring a sure progress and development of the whole of diverse India.

The guest of honour Pravin Kulkarni, DC Head, Infosys Pune, said that under CSR activities Infosys had five focused area: education, health care (spent more than Rs 200 crore during the pandemic), taking care of under privileged of the society, rural development and art & culture. Infosys is connected with Bhavans for promotion of Indian arts and culture besides hosting food festival, and others.

The final speaker of the evening was KG Raghavan, the Chairman of Bhavans Bengaluru, who highlighted the importance of diversity by saying that “It is ordain of nature that things should be different”. Being a lawyer by profession, he mentioned, “Our constitution provides for is to prohibit discrimination and it does recognize that there should be diversity. The philosophy of constitution encourages diversity, thus it foresees that all religions and all languages must progress and all cultures must coexist. Unity is a part of diversity. There is really beauty in diversity thus do not put down anybody on the basis of different ideology as there may be problem in perception and not in diversity. In fact, diverse thinking, diverse views and diverse way of life are the essence of democracy. Diversity also supports the vision of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan that states: Let noble thoughts come to us from every side.”


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