Posted by SGI Canadian leader Keith Robinson
The Pioneer (India)
October 22, 1997
Section: City
Rajiv's Vision of India Hailed
STAFF REPORTER
New Delhi
For members of the Bharat Sokka Gakkai, and the distinguished guests
invited by the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, the rosy, diminutive figure of
the Sensei (or Teacher), Dr. Daisaku Ikeda, brought bright new words
of hope: guided by its ancient tradition, he said, India would propel
the world into a time of New Humanism.
Buddhist messiah Ikeda was in Delhi at the invitation of the
foundation. In his lecture at Jawahar Bhawan on Tuesday evening, he
outlined the place India will hold in the 21st century with its
technology- and market-driven leap towards a Renaissance, according
to him. "The central theme of my own life is this," he declares,
"that a great revolution in just a single individual can change the
destiny of an entire society and even of humankind."
The inspiration goes back to Ashoka's reign, a single individual who
changed the world he lived in, he says, and to the late Indian Prime
Minister Rajiv Gandhi, another individual who had a "dream of an
strong, independent, self- reliant India and in the front rank of the
nations of the world in the service of mankind."
That was how chairperson of the foundation, Sonia Gandhi, introduced
Dr. Ikeda, as the man who brings a message of hope and joy for
everybody "in these days of pessimism and unrest all over the world."
Former US Ambassador Dr. Abid Hussain presented Dr. Ikeda with a
shawl on behalf of the foundation.
Dr. Ikeda is a Buddhist philosopher, author, poet and educator, as
well as president of the Sokka Gakkai International, a Buddhist
organization, which now has more than 12 million members in 128
countries, all known as votaries of the Lotus Sutra, including sports
stars, filmstars and intellectuals.
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