Nalanda Diary

A Few Key Statements from Talk By Shri S. Gurumurthy ji

on “Atmanirbhar Bharat and MAGA in a Multi-Polar World”

October 13, 2025 | Raj Bhavan, Patna, Bihar

There is a difference between an intelligent person and an intellectual: an intelligent person is concerned only about promoting himself. The intellectual is concerned about how to promote society or better the problems of society.

However, what is comforting is that the India is today focussed on solving the problem and not just talking about it as it used to do a decade back. But the lead to solve problems has come from the national leadership of the last decade. There is a huge transformation in the country. The change is visible. The world has noticed the transformation.

I heard Ramdhari Singh Dinkar saying that he knew the Nehru family more than anybody else. Indira Gandhi has become autocratic. The Bihar movement has to be led by JP to check. JP was not convinced. There was stalemate in the discussions. So they all decided to go to Tirupati to seek Balaji’s guidance. I didn’t immediately know what happened afterwards. But after months, Goenka told me that Ramdhari Singh Dinkar prayed to Tirupati Balaji, “Lord, please give the remaining years of my life to JP.”

And based on their testimony I have written this shocking incident in my obituary columns on Ramnath Goenka and Nanaji. I am saying this to only to tell you that I was fortunate to be connected to that generation which was intensely feeling for the nation and the society because of their intellect, training, commitment and their selflessness.

We have to have an integrated view of all aspects of the global order. More because the world today is totally different from different from the world before 1990 it is now so interconnected and integrated that no nation can think of or for itself. The greater a nation’s interconnection with rest of the world the more it will be difficult for it to disengage and and disconnect from it.

This is an effort to increase domestic production by protecting local manufacturing and to increase jobs. This is America’s new policy Atmanirbharata – the English equivalent of which is economic nationalism founded on nation first. In Trump’s language America First.