Vice President’s Address at Fourth Prof. Hiren Mukherjee Memorial Annual Parliamentary Lecture
Vice President’s Address at Fourth Prof. Hiren Mukherjee Memorial Annual Parliamentary Lecture
The
Vice President of India Shri M. Hamid Ansari has said that it is evident
from the overwhelming support given by the international community in July this
year to General Assembly Resolution 65/309 advocating the pursuit of happiness
as an essential ingredient of a holistic approach to sustainable development.
Addressing at the “Fourth Prof. Hiren Mukherjee Memorial Annual
Parliamentary Lecture” here today, he has said that a
memorial lecture, by established custom, is instituted to recall the
good deeds of those who are no longer with us.
Following is the text of Vice
President’s address :
“A memorial lecture, by established
custom, is instituted to recall the good deeds of those who are no longer with
us.
Today, we have gathered to honour the
memory of Hiren Mukherjee, a great parliamentarian of what is rightly known as
the golden era of Indian democracy. His passion, ideological commitment and
intellectual intensity remain an inspiration to those in public life who wish
to do public good.
Our
distinguished speaker today has chosen happiness
as the theme of the Fourth Hiren Mukherjee Memorial Lecture. He is
eminently placed to do so since thinking people everywhere appreciate and
commend the noble initiative of His Majesty the King of Bhutan in drawing the
attention of the world to the criticality of happiness in the promotion of
human wellbeing.
This is evident from the overwhelming
support given by the international community in July this year to General
Assembly Resolution 65/309 advocating the pursuit of happiness as an essential
ingredient of a holistic approach to sustainable development.
Many in this audience would recall
Lord Buddha’s dictum that the path to happiness starts from an understanding of
the root causes of suffering. He attributed suffering to the human desire for
craving which, in turn, emanates from ignorance and said each of these can be
eliminated by following the Middle Path of attaining virtue.
Nor was Lord Buddha alone in
considering happiness as an essential ingredient of virtue. The philosopher
Aristotle devoted one of his treatises on ethics to the examination of four
ingredients of virtue, namely goodness, friendship, pleasure and happiness. He
considered happiness the highest of virtues, an end in itself, to be desired
for itself and to be attained through contemplation.
And yet, as the human mind continues
its quest for the receding horizons of perfection, there can be no finality to
these ideas.
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