My Lord Chairman, Your Excellencies, High Commissioner, My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen:
Two reasons bring us together today—both of them important to all of us who share in and want to sustain the great friendship between Britain and India.
And both bear a name so important to the development of that friendship in the years since independence: that of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, whose centenary year this is.
The first reason is the opening of this splendid commemorative Exhibition in Pandit Nehru 's honour.
The second is the launch of the appeal for the Nehru Gallery of Indian Art at this Victoria and Albert Museum.
The combination of the two brings together the past, the present and the future of India in a unique way.
I was very pleased when Robert Armstrong asked me earlier this year to join Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi as a Patron in Chief of the Museum's Committee of Honour for the Nehru Gallery. [end p1]
One of the advantages of being a Patron is that you leave the real work of the Committee to its distinguished members, but you still enjoy its success yourself.
I am glad to see so many of the members here today, and to be able to thank them very warmly for their agreeing to work for such an excellent cause.
And can I say a special word of thanks and congratulations to the Museum's Director, Elizabeth Esteve-Coll, and her colleagues for their enterprise and their imagination in initiating this project.
And we are very grateful indeed to the Hinduja Foundation and Mr Vijay Mallya for their extremely generous donations to the appeal which they have just made.
The Nehru Exhibition—which I have just visited—is a very exciting one and beautifully designed.
It traces both Nehru 's own life and the development of modern India and shows us how central Nehru 's role was in the creation of the India of today.
It shows us both India's pre-independence history and India as it is now, so that one can measure the tremendous progress made, so much of it derived from Nehru 's bold vision of India's future. [end p2]
The Exhibition is a worthy memorial to a most remarkable man, one of the true giants of the modern world—and someone who himself symbolised the historic meeting and mixing of the cultures of India and Britain.
The Victoria and Albert Museum houses the oldest, richest and most comprehensive collection of Indian art outside India. The opening of the new Gallery will bring to an end more than thirty years in which this great collection has lacked a permanent home.
Thanks to the work of the Committee of Honour and to the determination of those involved, we shall at last be able to enjoy the collection as it should be enjoyed, in a setting worthy of it.
For the Indian Gallery collection will be more than just a showcase of beautiful pieces.
It will illustrate why India is rightfully regarded as one of the great civilisations of the world.
It will explain why it is that this huge country, of many peoples, languages and religions, is yet so clearly one nation. [end p3]
It will remind us also of everything that Britain and India have been and still are to each other—of a relationship thankfully now rather happier than that symbolised by the Museum's most famous mechanical toy—‘Tipu's Tiger’—which represents a ferocious Indian tiger eating a recumbent Englishman.
With our community of over 800,000 people of Indian origin in Britain—and they make an important and enterprising contribution to our national life—it is right that this great collection should be given the pride of place which it deserves.
It will strengthen the justified pride of our Indian community in the great achievements of their nation: and it will help people of British ancestry to understand better the ancient civilisation with which our own history is intertwined.
Pandit Nehru recognised the value of art and of history to a people's self-confidence and pride as well as to their enjoyment. But he also urged Indians to look the future.
“Nothing is more advantageous and more credible than a rich heritage” he said. “But nothing is more dangerous for a nation than to sit back and live on that heritage. A nation cannot progress if it merely imitates its ancestors; what builds a nation is creative, inventive and vital activity.” [end p4]
He saw history not as the pathology of dead civilisations, but as a solid foundation on which to build the future.
This belief in the future and his vision helped Pandit Nehru to shape modern India, to create a modern economy in a modern society.
Today, one hundred years after his birth, we can see the results of his far-sightedness.
India is among the world's top ten industrial countries. She has an impressive reputation in the fields of science and technology.
And she has made use of that technology for her people's benefit, in both agriculture and industry.
Pandit Nehru would have been proud to see this name linked with this Exhibition and with this new Gallery, which will help bring together: the people of Britain, including our Indian community, Indians from abroad and visitors from the world over so that wonder at the achievements of the past can bring inspiration for still greater achievements in the future. It is with great pleasure that I declare the Exhibition open.