Kolkata: President Pranab Mukherjee attends Visva-Bharati University convocation

Santiniketan: President Pranab Mukherjee today said that the welfare of human beings should be topmost in the minds of youngsters when they go out into the world to join work.

In his address to students of Visva-Bharati University here during their 48th convocation, Mukherjee recalled the words of former US President John F Kennedy-- "Ask not my countrymen what the country will do for you, but ask what you can do for the country"-- to drive home his point.

"It is not wrong to be successful in the material sense....but can we forget we are products of a society...we are not in isolation...we are linked with human beings..we have an obligation to them," he said as he urged the students to embrace the world with "courage and conviction".

The President said that every University of the country should have a distinct identity and core value as he called for re-establishing the relation with nature.

Rabindranath Tagore founded the educational institute as an 'Ashram' in 1901 with only five students to begin with.The institution was declared a central university in 1951.