Buddhist messiah Ikeda

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, accordingm 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.