Honorable Supreme court judge Elizabeth McDonough,
distinguished guests respected Past Presidents, Executive
Council 2022, family and friends, good afternoon and Happy New
year.
It gives me immense pleasure to stand here as the 32nd
President of the prestigious 43-year-old India Association of Long
Island. A seed planted by 5 families in the soil of Long Island grew
up as a beautiful tree with the love, affection and Harmony of
Indian Community in and around Long Island spread its branch all
over United States, today we have more than 2400 members. The
founding members mission was to promote our diversified Indian
culture through Dance, Music and celebration of various festivities
in a foreign land, which today is our adopted homeland.
It feels like a dream – a Past President of 2017 standing here as
the Current President. First of all, let me thank God for giving me
this opportunity and secondly my mother who is my biggest
supporter and my inspiration and my guide who taught me that
nothing equals to honesty, integrity and sincerity, stay humble and
truthful to the outer and inner self. My mother, a cancer survivor
taught me to fight for the right and never give up, never lose faith
in God in your thick and thin. She believes that God takes you into
deep waters, not to drown you but to cleanse you, and you always
come out stronger.
Pradeep Tandon
President – IALI – 2024
Every President comes with many ideas and plans. As all other previous Presidents, I have a vision to take IALI to the next level. My first goal is to bring all the Past Presidents getting involved with IALI affairs and make an advisory Board of 12 Past Presidents to attend all EC meetings regularly. Their active participation will give us a boost to perform our duties to their utmost satisfaction. Past Presidents are the root of this organization, their input is very important for the betterment and heathy development of IALI.
IALI is running many forums like Women’s, Sangeet, Senior’s, Outreach, Yoga and meditation, Sports, Youth, Professional and other forums successfully for many years. Year 2022, we want to add “Diversity forum” by adding one representative from each state of India and show our main stream population that India is a land of many culture and at the same time it is one.
We would like to increase our membership and update our database with email and phone numbers, even though it is not an easy task. To save the cost of Newsletter, we would like to encourage our members to use our IALI website for updates and events.
Even though outsourcing of the IALI election was discussed for many years in order to eliminate all doubts and conflicts of interest, somehow it could not be achieved in the past but we will be outsourcing the next election.
With the help of my wonderful and dedicated team of EC, I am confident that we as a team will achieve our goal. I will treat all my EC’s in the same manner and respect them for giving their valuable time to the community service. As I promised in my swearing, I will uphold the constitution of IALI.
My community service started at a very young age. Helping the elders in their daily chores, getting their grocery or helping kids in the neighborhood in their homework, but I did not know then that it is called community service. I thought it is a duty of every person to help others. The same interest got bigger as I grew up. Today the same interest made me stand here. I should not forget all those people from this country who molded me what I am today, Guru Maa from Vedic Heritage, Mr. Varinder Bhalla and Ratna Bhalla, Mohinder Singh Taneja ji, Indu Jaiswal ji, Bobby Kalotee ji, Dr. Bhavani Srinivasan ji, Dr. Binod Verma ji, Dr, AnilaMidha ji, who really gave me a big boost taking me as an EC member in her team, Dr. Jagdish Gupta ji, Dr, Sukhvinder Ranu ji, Dr. Kishore Kuncham ji, Zahid Syed ji, and last but not least Satnam Singh Parhar ji. I have learnt a lot from each and every one of them who are all unique in their own ways.
All those who have supported me, voted for me and made me to stand here today “A Big Thanks” to all of you. Also, my heartfelt and sincere thanks to all of you who have given your valuable time in this cold and covid situation to join me and my team to be a part of my joyous moment.
I would like to end with a quote from Swami Vivekanand:
“Don’t look back, only forward! With Infinite energy, Infinite Enthusiasm, Infinite daring and Infinite patience, great deeds canbe accomplished.” ;
And we will accomplish great deeds together during my tenure as IALI President.
Thank you all and a big round of applause to you.
May God bless you all and May God bless the United States of
America.