 Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, colleagues, friends, it's with great pleasure and a particular sense of honour that I introduce to you Professor Nirmalia Kumar. We honour Nirmalia Kumar for his contribution to the world of art in those regions of the world to which the school has been devoted since its foundation in 1916. Dr. Nirmalia Kumar is Professor of Marketing and Co-Director of Aditya Birla India Center at the London Business School. One of the world's leading thinkers in strategy and marketing, Nirmalia Kumar has taught at Harvard Business School, IMD Switzerland, and at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. Nirmalia is an outlier among marketing professors, having accomplished the rare feat of authoring several journal articles and books on business and marketing, most recent of which include India's Global Power Houses published in 2009 and India Inside published in 2012. Not just as an academic, but as an advisor, Nirmalia has worked with more than 50 fortune 500 companies in 60 different countries and has served on several board of directors, including billion dollar plus companies and those of India's stock indices. As a commerce graduate from Calcutta University, Nirmalia went on to study for his MBA from the University of Illinois at Chicago and PhD from Kellogg Graduate School of Management. Nirmalia is a passionate supporter of the arts and it is his interest as a collector and enthusiast of modern Indian visual art that brought him to the attention of Suas and its friends. Over the years, Nirmalia has put together among the largest private collections of Germany Roy, considered by many to be the father of Indian modern art and Rabindranath Tagore paintings, the first Asian to win a Nobel Prize. Rather than simply seeing it as his personal collection, Nirmalia sees himself as a custodian to help increase the visibility of these artists and the understanding of the context in which modern Indian art emerged. Apart from the obvious aesthetic appeal, Germany's paintings, for example, were also part of India's freedom movement, both cultural and political. With the Germany collection, Nirmalia feels we are privileged to watch a perfectionist who quietly pushes himself out of intense personal necessity, a painting at a time to realize a unique vision of Indian modern art. According to Nirmalia, a Germany Roy painting never looks like anything but a Germany Roy painting. To focus on one artist, he was often warned, was not wise, but for Nirmalia, this is quite consistent with what he teaches in strategies to companies all over the world. Strategy is choice, he says, and focus is essential to be the world's best at what you do. Nirmalia's collection is open for viewing to any individual and is also used for philanthropic purposes. In 2010, Nirmalia undertook a new initiative to use the collection to raise money for charitable causes that target, in particular, South Asia. One of the charities that recently benefited from this was Padada Padadi, which runs a girl's school in a village in Uttar Pradesh, a state in Northern India. This event raised more than 20,000 pounds in a single evening. As time goes by, a great hobby is one that allows you to grow as an individual. This collection has introduced Nirmalia to many people in the world of art, connected him to his culture, helped him, his own self to develop, and more recently, helped charities that he wishes to support. More importantly, this collection has helped connect his daughter to her Indian heritage. As she reacts to these beautiful pictures, she also takes pride in being Indian. Since moving to the UK eight years ago, Nirmalia has become involved with Asia House and the Nehru Centre. He has lent his works to Asia House for their Tiger in Asian Art exhibition, to the Nehru Centre for their exhibition on Germany Roy, and to exhibitions on the emergence of modern Indian art to the former Acorn Gallery. More recently, in support of the 150th anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore in 2011, Nirmalia held an exhibition of Tagore's works at the Nehru Centre. He also continues to be a great supporter of the British Museums, Department of Asia, and its curators. As an academic at the London Business School, a role in which he has been supporting Indian business and economy, Nirmalia has brought a breath of vision, a deep reservoir of experience, and an intense commitment to enhancing innovation and strategic developments. He has been interpreting India and Indian business for companies in the West, and multinational companies have used his works widely. In 2011, the Economist's cover story, entitled New Masters of Management, featured Nirmalia as a rising superstar. While the biannual ranking of global management thinkers, entitled Thinkers 50, awarded him the Global Village Award for his contribution to business and industry in the emerging markets. Today, Mr. Chairman, we have the opportunity to honour a man who has been one of the most highly regarded in the world of art, culture, and education. It's my privilege now to present Professor Nirmalia Kumar for the award of the honorary fellowship of the school, following which he'll address the assembly. Mr. Chairman, Professor Rao, ladies and gentlemen, it's with great respect for the institution of SOAS that I'm honoured to accept the honorary fellowship bestowed on me. I feel privileged now to be part of an academic institution that has been so critical in understanding the Orient and Africa. I promise to try my best to live up to the citation read by Professor Rao and to be a lifelong supporter and friend of SOAS. I was educated in India in the 1970s and early 80s, a time when it was difficult for a teenager to be truly proud of being Indian. For many educated youth, it was a time to escape what we considered the perceived constraints of being Indian. And to go West. Gaining a scholarship to study in America, I got the powerful immigrant experience of boundless opportunities. But it was also a time for deep personal cultural conflict for me, trying to escape my Indian-ness and become American. At some stage, after realizing that it was an impossible transformation, given my obvious Indian looks and observing the substantial changes taking place in India in the early 1990s, I felt a tug back to India. But India was not yet a place for any word with ambition to be a world-class business school academic. As a compromise, I moved halfway to Switzerland. But in Switzerland, I was always a foreigner. Eight years later, whilst now having set up a permanent home in Calcutta, I made what was going to be, what will be my last move to London, the only truly global multicultural city. Here I found I could be a global citizen, a UK national and an Indian all simultaneously. It is against this personal context that my support for Indian art should be understood. It's a quest for the meaning of identity in a globalized world, something that many graduates today will face in the future. It was a very personal struggle for both Jhamni Roy and Rabindranath Tagore in their art. Pitted against the fervent belief of the British colonial forces, put forward so starkly in the official handbook of the Victorian Albert Museum in 1880s. And I quote, the monster shape of the Puranic deities, unsuitable for the highest form of artistic impressions. And this is possibly why sculpture and painting are unknown as fine arts in India, unquote. Jhamni was faced with a conundrum which all Indian artists face at some stage. How do you become modern, Indian and unique? And yet in the final part of the puzzle for Roy seems to have been a reconciliation of nationalism and individuality. Part of the freedom fight for Jhamni was searching for subjects and motifs that were truly Indian, absorbing rural arts, and then transforming them into high modern art. But Jhamni over time evolved away from the Indian-inspired subjects to painting anything that caught his fancy, provided it fit in with his vision of modern Indian art. Thus later in his career, he painted Christian themes. The subject became secondary to having his paintings look different and uniquely Jhamni. Being a global artist, global academic, or global citizen, one does not want to become a prisoner of one's national identity either. It's about being Indian and independent of it. Still in conclusion, let me just say I've been fortunate, as Professor Rao pointed out, to lecture in more than 60 countries. I've lived in four. I've held three different passports, but it has taken me 50 years to understand that you can visit many countries, you can have many passports, but you can only be one from one place, and I'm from Calcutta. My collection is an attempt to create a mini Calcutta in the middle of central London. Thank you very much.