“Tradition is Not Baggage, It’s the Passport You Carry Into the Future”: Laila Tyabji At YIF Convocation 2025

Chief Guest Ms Laila Tyabji, recipient of the prestigious Padma Shri Award, delivered a memorable keynote address at Ashoka University’s Young India Fellowship 2025 Convocation Ceremony. She encouraged the graduating fellows as they embarked on their next journey.

“Handmade and traditional knowledge systems are the perfect partner to contemporary academic practice – each incorporates, learns from and gains from the other.”

Reflecting on her own journey, she reminded the students by sharing her own experience: “I confess I thought that leaving University also meant the end of studying and exams. A bit of bad news is that learning never stops, and every day has a test! But, funnily enough, this is what actually makes life worth living.”

Having spent a lot of time with women who did not get access to quality education, Laila Tyabji shared, “For them, education is as unattainable as the moon. As a result, they are deprived, marginalised and looked down upon; given the unpaid, back-breaking, beast of burden jobs.” In this way, she highlighted the reality of many, reminding the graduates to acknowledge their privilege: “The Education we get is our gold credit card to the world. The key to our multiple choices. We should value it and use it with respect and care. Education is something all of us take for granted.” She added that, however, for some people, it is a dream that cannot be reached.

Laila Tyabji pointed out that apart from having nuclear capability and the world’s fastest-growing IT industry, India also has crafts and craftspeople. She called these skills “extraordinary” and highlighted how craftspeople are able to handcraft everything – from a terracotta tumbler to a temple, a wicker basket to diamond jewellery. In her own words, “these skill sets and knowledge systems are a potential goldmine – an edge we have over the rest of the world…What makes us interesting as a nation is the differences, not the similarities.”

“Tradition and innovation are not two separate, mutually exclusive processes. Embracing this complexity is key and the mindset we need in order to capitalise on what we have inherited,” she added. She also encouraged the graduates to “embrace, experience and enjoy this rich diversity, our ability to live in multiple worlds. We are so lucky to have it. Tradition is not cumbersome baggage – it’s our passport to a unique identity.”

She gave a beautiful concluding message to the graduates, inspired by American writer Tennessee Williams’ words: “Make journeys, attempt them. It’s the only way.” She then expanded on this, stating that “What India needs now is not only physical journeys but a voyage of inner and external discovery – a reaching out to new horizons of the mind and spirit.”

Encouraging the 2025 graduates of the Young India Fellowship, Laila Tyabji said, “Growing up, I had the good fortune to have a father who told me, ‘I don’t care what you do in your life as long as you do it with passion and do it with pleasure.’ I’ve carried that as a banner through my 70 years. I pass on that message to you.”