Delhi University: Celebrating 100 Glorious Years

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Many of India's most consequential nation-builders and opinion-makers have emerged from the hallowed grounds of India's most sought-after educational institution-the University of Delhi or DU, as it is popularly known. Institutions have waxed and waned over the years, but DU has always succeeded in reinventing itself to meet the demands of every decade. It is, therefore, not surprising that its alumni include highly respected government leaders, artists, entrepreneurs and littérateurs, who have been central to India's remarkable journey.

Delhi University: Celebrating 100 Glorious Years is an eclectic collection of personal narratives and reflections of some of the University's most distinguished alumni and faculty-Amitabh Bachchan, Kiren Rijiju, Dinesh Singh, Meenakshi Gopinath, Shashi Tharoor, Bibek Debroy, Imtiaz Ali, Raian Karanjawala, Sanjeev Sanyal, Arnab Goswami, Dhananjaya Y. Chandrachud, Lakshmi Puri, Namita Gokhale and Vijay Shekhar Sharma. Together, with editor Hardeep S. Puri, they celebrate the inimitable essence of DU-from its rich history, ethos and vibrant student life to its remarkable contribution to society and culture, both in India and across the globe.

Prospective students who have seen the university from afar will get an inside view of one of the most prestigious public universities in the country, while those intimately familiar with the institution will rediscover DU through the eyes of its most famous alumni.

Published in the year in which the University of Delhi celebrates the 100th anniversary of its foundation, this book is a treasured resource for all DU alumni.

Hardeep S. Puri excelled in academics, student politics and debating at Delhi University as a student, and went on to spend a year as a lecturer at one of the University's colleges. He then had a distinguished four-decade career in diplomacy, spanning the bilateral and multilateral arena, and held ambassadorial posts in London and Brasilia, and as India's Permanent Representative to the United Nations in both Geneva (2002-05) and New York (2009-13). He is one of the few Indians to have presided over the United Nations Security Council and the first to have chaired its Counter Terrorism Committee.

He served as senior vice president at the New York-based International Peace Institute; secretary general of the Independent Commission on Multilateralism in New York; and chairman, Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS). He has been a member of the Council of Ministers since September 2017 and a Cabinet member of the Government of India since July 2019.

He is the author of Perilous Interventions: The Security Council and the Politics of Chaos (2016); Delusional Politics: Back to the Future (2019); and Separating the Wheat from the Chaff: Decoding Dominant Narratives (2019).

When the Honourable Shri Hardeep S. Puri wrote to me about his plans to publish an anthology to celebrate the centenary of Delhi University and invited me as a celebrated alumnus to write a few words on this magnificent occasion, I wrote back and told him that I was the wrong person to be asked to do this. I did not believe that I fell into the category of 'eminent personalities' he had given reference to, as my years at the university (1958-61) were an academic embarrassment to me. If I were to write something, it would all be rather frivolous and not in keeping with the grace and intent of the anthology, I told him. But he persisted, and I relented. The DU (North Campus) where I sought admission and studied was, perhaps, patterned along the lines of the Cambridge and Oxford universities in the United Kingdom (UK), where several colleges stood side by side at one prominent location, many sharing common boundaries-not just of the physical built environment but also of a deeper educative ethos of imparting the requisite attitudes, values and knowledge to build generations of leaders.

This shared situatedness imbued immense camaraderie among the students. We would stroll into each other's colleges, mix with fellow students, relax at each other's canteens, travel in the same university bus to our home locations, become bitter rivals at intercollegiate competitions, and immediately forget all that animosity to join our voices in cheering for the university when it played against another.

This was 1958, and I was at Kirori Mal College pursuing the BSc General course, from which I just about graduated in my final year. Academically, it was the wrong decision to take up Science, but the years spent there were an education in many other spheres, which has proved to be invaluable in my life. Looking back at the influence of my education on my career, I realize that it is the amalgamation of diverse disciplines that inspires every form of creative activity. For instance, where would writers be without a printing press, stage thespians without a proscenium and lights, painters without pigments and canvas, and, in my case, film actors without a camera? Education engenders myriad symbiotic opportunities in the spheres of technology and humanities.

Chances are very high that I would not have been in cinema or in any other creative aspect of life without a grounding in education-education which is in consonance with the belief that 'what sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the human soul'.