Address by Mayor of New York City
Hon'ble Mr. Bill de Blasio Thank you so much Eric. I want to thank you Eric for we worked together for years and anyone who has worked with him knows how extraordinary his commitment is toward all South Asian communities in the city. Now I want to make sure what I say is right. Pamella always in the city is there to correct my pronunciation “Happy Baishakhi”. Was it correct? Good. very good!! I had admired all the South Asian communities in the city and the crucial role they play in making your city great. I also have tremendous opportunity to get to know each one of these communities in their own way, celebrating their own culture, their own history and the Sikh community has been for me a revelation, coming close to this community, having many friends from that community, and getting to know more about the Sikh Culture and history and understating the challenges faced by discrimination, and the unfairness that this community has overcome, time and again. So it is special joy to celebrate, for such a worthy community has given and done so much to your city and to America. I say thank to them. Now, there are tremendous commonalities in terms of values and what I believe and talk about is creating one New York City with great honors of people seeing together in fairness and equality that brings back and confirms deeply with long-held beliefs of the Sikh community that believes in commonalities of all humanity – one of the things that animates the greatness of this community. Here in New York I understand that we have a special responsibility towards the world that has so many divisions and so many challenges. We still stand as we do, with diversity of culture of everything honoured and recognized a place where immigration is not attacked, as is happening in so many parts of the world. But here in your city immigration is embraced, it is appreciated and upheld and it is what makes us great and I have to tell you that tonight is a wonderful event, celebrating so many good things and I have to thank my dear friend Pam Kwatra who for years have been guiding us and for a long time. Pam Kwatra is a force of nature who wants something to be done for the community. I congratulate Pam. I thank the entire team of South Asia for making a better New York. I would like to thank Consulate General of Nepal and Phil Scanlan, Chairman of the New York Global Leaders Dialogue. I would like to thank my Commissioner for community efforts. Now there are many things I can do as a Mayor and one of the things I appreciate the most that we can honour someone who really has moved the world further and someone who has inspired myself to be a change agent, I take energy, More thanks to every people for their inspiration, that I received from for being a successful change agent in very very difficult circumstances. A thing we can 6
Mayor of New York City, Hon'ble Mr. Bill de Blasio honouring Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak with the Proclamation and declaring April 14, 2016 as "Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak Day", for being a "pioneer" in advocating for human rights in India by campaigning for social reforms and developing innovative and environmentally-sound sanitation technologies.
agree that Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak has been a great example of someone who saw great injustice, saw something that too many people believed was impractical and believe that something could change, had the creativity and the energy and the drive and hope to make a change and that for me is a kind of thing that inspire a true visionary applied it took the visionary to those oppressed the most. You know in this country we have the vaguest idea – the dream of the community called untouchables have gone through. We hear the word and think we can picture, how much difficulty they have been through and I don’t think we can possibly encounter it to the fullest extent. But one thing we do know one group of people is treated differentially and less than everyone else. Imagine what it is for anyone particularly a child growing up, feeling growing chin down and feeling that something has to be changed for them. Now Dr. Pathak, I have to say that, by looking at a situation and looking at arguably at one of the most problematic issue that this class of people in most inhumanized situation, literally confined to clean the latrines of everyone else used. You realized within that community the key to change and saw the pain and problems and you turned them into something that became positive. Through your work and through your organization, Sulabh International, you have changed the reality so profoundly by creating new technologies that is better, that is for public health, better for environment and inactive social justice on human itself and that has fundamentally changed the realities of the communities. You have been honoured many times before and you deserved those honours. You were honoured with the economist Global Diversity List, received over 60 awards, including the New York Global Humanitarian Award just yesterday. So you have momentum Doctor. So now I take it’s my turn to appreciate you and award you in a befitting way. I have the honour of speaking on behalf of 8.5 million New Yorkers and saying that we appreciate the humanitarians, we appreciate visionaries. And certain New Yorkers can all understand what it meant to reach out those who have been left out behind for so many years and that is part of their family history too. If one nation or another and they carry their history with them. I want to formally recognize your achievements and when I formally do that something it appeared, thank you very much, which looks like a certificate which is in Eric’s hand. Just a second before I pass it to the Doctor so I am going to formally do that. I am going to formally name today, Thursday April 14th, 2016 “Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak Day” in the city of New York. Thank you once again.
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