Cambridge assembly line for Indian PMs

Cambridge, Oct 11 (UNI) The Cambridge University seems to have become an assembly line for Indian Prime Ministers.

Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India, studied at the Trinity College in Cambridge and so did his grandson Rajiv Gandhi. The brilliant economist, Manmohan Singh, was another who studied in the university and went on to become the premier.

''Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was at Trinity as was his grandson Rajiv Gandhi. Both became prime ministers of India. I am the third prime minister to have come out of Cambridge,'' Dr Singh told an august gathering of senior faculty and students of the university, which conferred an honorary doctorate on its famous alumnus today.

''Before the First World War, a young man from Allahabad came up to the Trinity College in Cambridge. After the Second World War, a simple young Indian came to St. John's from an obscure university in Punjab. Cambridge University embraced both,'' he said referring to his own beginning at the university.

The Prime Minister received the degree from Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, who is the Chancellor of Cambridge University.

Dr Singh, who had received an honorary doctorate in civil law from the Oxford University in July last year, said in his 15-minute acceptance speech that his teachers and peers at the Cambridge taught him to be open to argument and be fearless and lucid in expressions of one's opinion.

''These virtues and the relentless desire to pursue intellectual truth were inculcated in me at Cambridge. In many important ways, the University of Cambridge made me.'' Recalling his days at the university, the Prime Minister said it was in the campus that he met Amartya Sen and Jagdish Bhagwati, both of whom became renowned economists with Sen going on to win the Economics Nobel Prize.

''It was here that I became a contemporary of Amartya Sen, Jagdish Bhagwati, Maqbool Haq (the late Pakistani economist) and Rehman Shoban (Bangladeshi economist), all renowned economists from South Asia who became lifelong friends,'' he said.

Music by the King's Trumpeteers played in the background just before the one-hour convocation ceremony, held at the Senate Hall.

Dr singh received a standing ovation from the audience after his acceptance speech.

Dr Singh, however, said many other prominent Indians who excelled in their respective fields came from Cambridge, like physicist Jagdish Chandra Bose, mathematician Srinivasan Ramanujam, economist P C Mahalanobis, nuclear scientist Homi Bhabha and agricultural scientist M S Swaminathan.

Paying tributes to his teachers at the university, Dr Singh, who graduated in economics from Cambridge in 1957 with first class honours, said he had fond memories of Nicolas Kaldor, John Robinson, Maurice Dobb, Prof. RCO Mathew and economist Pivrro Rafa.

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