INVESTITURE CEREMONY OF DR RANA NAYAR AS FELLOW OF THE INTERNATIONAL ACADEMY OF ETHICS. [June 12,2025].

ADDRESS BY DR RANA NAYAR

I don’t have words to express my gratitude to IAE for the Award of Fellowship which I don’t know I deserve or not. Such self-doubt often comes in my way whenever some award is conferred on me. However, I consider it a rare opportunity to be connected with IAE. I have known Dr.Anand for a long time, our association has been decades long since he invited me to Bathinda, and our friendship has grown over the years. We possess a bond based on ideas which two poets share. Dr Anand is a wonderful poet.  I have only one book of poetry. But I admire Dr.Anand. I have read his verses. He is a true poet, as I would like to call, apoet at heart. He was born to create poetry, I am not only talking about his massive output  of 180 books which is astounding. On google, I tried to  see who has written maximum no of books.Osho Rajnish has authored almost 600 books which is probably a record of sorts, but he cannot be an author of these books because most of them are recited and recorded and he was only a speaker. Anyway, time would settle this questionwho has written the maximum number of books in the world.

I actually feel overwhelmed and I wonder sometimes how can any individual who has played different roles in life, can produce so much of creative work, the answer is that not only he was born to be a poet, but Prof Anand breathe poetry, he  lives poetry,  and if your allow me to say, he probably dreams poetry too. Poetry is not only his passion, it is his  vocation also, and his evocation too, and he blends his vocation and evocation in a beautiful way.

I have looked through some of his epics,  I can say Dr Anand is a poet philosopher. I also feel that it is really a bold decision on the part of Prof. Anand to write and write with such commitment, that too in an age in which, poetry is actually not as popular as some other forms of literature are. Unfortunately,  we are living in times which are highly unpoetic. Poetry demands depth and intensity and a different kind of imagination from the reader, but somehow, we have become slaves to technology, and we have lost the capability to think deeply and think passionately about the multiple layers of our minds.

Dr.Anand should not feel that the proper response is not coming to his poetry. The major reason can be that he is writing poetry in an age in which the  reading public is becoming highly unpoetic. Secondly,  his concerns are not the mundane issues. Rather, he is concerned more with universal issues. He is a kind of global poet, a humanist to the core. His concerns are very close to the philosophy of humanism. He takes up issues people are wrestling with: like the nature of evil, nature of suffering, basic conflict between good and evil, whether man can actually seek deliverance, can he become his own Jesus Christ or he needs someone else to redeem him. Such concerns confront us in his poetry. It is  in the perennial nature of his poetry where his strength as a poet lies. May be people do not respond to his poetry as they ought to, but the problem lies in their inability to engage with questions which are existential in nature. His success as a poet and the success of his epics lies in the fact that he makes us engage with deepest questions of life and existence. So extensive is his work, poem after poem, epic after epic, that one wonder where to begin and where to end, and the discussion may continue over a long time.

I accept this Fellowship that you have conferred on me.

I am grateful to all and humbled by this generous gesture. My deepest  gratitude to all office bearers. Itis an extremely humblingexperience and will give me strength and courage to keep on doing whatever little work I have been doing over the years.

Born in Amritsar, I come from a business family. But I firmly disagreed with my father to join his business, because I wanted to be a teacher, where you have  a lot to choose and a lot to contribute. Thus, I always had a sense of ethics right from the beginning. I think credit goes to  all members of IAE who are trying to create kind of an ecosystem where ethical imperative can be disseminate, popularized and circulated but they also talk about ethics with a rare degree of conviction and passion. We are living in times which are unpoetic, we are living in a time when ethics are not a concern of popular consciousness. It is a great service to humanity that this Academy is doing, and keeping the idea and discussion on ethics alive. That is in itself a stupendous job to keep discussion on ethical imperatives going which is so necessary for survival of human race.

Dr. Rana Nayar

Chandigarh.

DR J.S. ANAND’S EPICAL WORK ‘EPICACIA ‘ RELEASED

‘Epicacia’ a collection of 12-epics by Dr. Jernail Singh Anand, a former Principal of DAV College, and author of 180 plus books, was released yesterday by Dr. Rana Nayar who described Dr. Anand as a “synthesizer and a unifier” whose effort is always to fuse together  disparate traditions, poetic elements and ethical imperatives”.  According to Dr. Nayar, “Myth and history, past and present, lyrical and epical, poetic and dramatic, good and evil always come together to enliven his poetic landscape. Anand certainly knows how to rule over the poetic universe he alone can create and sustain”.

Dr. Rana Nayar was speaking at a function organized by International Academy of Ethics, at which, he was  honoured  with the Award of Fellowship by the Academy in view of his commitment to literature and human values.  Dr. Anand dedicated this work to Serbia and Serbian-US poet Dr. Maja Herman Sekulic,  as it was the Serbian Writers Association which made him an Honorary Member, and then, conferred on him the Charter of Morava Award, and his name was engraved on the Poets’ Rock in Serbia.

The function, moderated by Rupa Rao, was presided over by S. Himmat Singh, IPS, former DGP UP. The other eminent scholars who felicitated Dr. Rana Nayar and Dr. Anand included Dr. Swaraj Raj, Prof. Emeritus, Dr. BasudebChakraborti, Dr. Lalit Mohan Sharma, Prof. Seema Jain and Dr. Manju Chouhan.