Speech in reply to the Address presented by the Muslim Students’ Federation, Gaya, on 1st January, 1938

“The students of Today are the leaders of Tomorrow”

The Address of the Muslim Students’ Federation was read out in Urdu. The Quaid replying, said:

“My young friends, what can I tell you? I am very glad that in your address you say this ‘The individuals of our student community are often called irresponsible, inexperienced, superficial observers, endowed with temporary enthusiasm, undisciplined, reactionaries, blind followers of the West, innovators and by such other synonymous expressions.’ This is in fact what I was going to tell you. It is rather a difficult task for any man to convince the youth because the youth is a mixture of so many elements full of dreams, sure of everything, he is a mixture of so many elements and so contradictory that to convert him is the most difficult of all the problems. This is the greatest tribute you pay to me. But we want to assure you that in the present troubled state of our country, your guidance has diverted the great storehouse of the natural dynamic power of our congenial tendencies into a channel where premature responsibility, sudden contingencies ordained by divine destiny, converts juvenile imprudence into mature wisdom and irresponsibility into seriousness. Well, dream your dreams, have your visions, indulge in what elderly people call folly. It is by indulging in follies that we learn wisdom. If I have converted your irresponsibility into seriousness, more than half the battle is won. I say it not because as people are wont to say ‘The students of today are the leaders of tomorrow,’ but because you have the advantage of learning the knowledge. You students, equipped as you are, you can, if you will, abandon irresponsibility and take to seriousness, then you can bring the senile, who are not following the right course, to the right course. You say in your address ‘We beg to assure you that the humble offering of our true feelings of esteem, regard and appreciation will not be made by mere words but by our deeds.’ Students of the Federation, prove it by your deeds. I bless you and bid you Godspeed and may God bless you.”