New Delhi: Congress veteran Karan Singh on Friday bid farewell to the Rajya Sabha after a 40-year stint in Parliament with a speech that underlined India's greatness in diversity, acceptance of new ideas and tolerance of different viewpoints.

The tenure of Singh and two other Congress MPs, Janardan Dwivedi and Parvez Hashmi, will end this month.

More than the Opposition, the Treasury benches applauded the octogenarian who had in the past served as the head of the state of Jammu and Kashmir for 18 years.

Singh is the only parliamentarian to have worked with all Prime Ministers since Independence. He said Jawaharlal Nehru and Lal Bahadur Shastri were his mentors. Singh, who described himself as an "idealistic old man", said India was a unique country with diversity of religion, language, custom, dress and ideology.

"But, we have coped with this diversity by basing ourselves on our constitutional and civilisational values.... We have produced great ideas and we have received great ideas. And that is the genius of India. That is what has kept India going," he said.

Singh said that except perhaps for some people whose ideology might force them to be anti-religious, the country as a whole could not be anti-religious. The Lord resides in the heart of all beings, he said.

"I now bid farewell as an idealistic old man because I have implicit faith that India will overcome all its challenges as long as we remain faithful to our Constitution and civilisational values," Singh signed off.