Panaji: Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu on Saturday said that discrimination of any sort must not be allowed and those indulging in it must be dealt mercilessly by law. At the same time he cautioned against politicising such incidents and sensational in the media as “hurtful to national interests”.
Speaking at the India Ideas conclave here on Saturday evening, Mr. Naidu said, “Any discrimination on the basis of region, religion, caste, sex, or on the basis of your belief, should not be allowed. That has not been the tradition of India. Anybody indulging in such things, has to be identified and law must take its own course and the society must also come together and tell him what you have done is wrong. But because of politics you try to highlight it and blow it out of proportion. And thanks to the media, media makes it sometimes very sensational, thereby hurting national interest also,” he said and added, “We have to identify them. We have to isolate them. We have to take action against them, without any mercy. I am very clear about it, otherwise this will spoil the name of the civilisation”. Mr. Naidu said that it was an unfortunate part of our system that, some people view Hindu from a very narrow, religious connotation. “Hindu is not a narrow religious connotation. It is a larger identity of way of living of the people of this country for years together. That is why this civilisation is able to survive after so many onslaughts,” he said.
Mr. Naidu said that India has a history of not attacking anybody in the world, with all its might of having one third of the GDP of the world but has been badly hounded and bruised by many.
“India did not attack anybody, you can proudly say that.But every Tom, Dick and Harry came and attacked us, ruined us, ruled us, looted us, cheated us... Not only cheated us, but also cheated some of our minds also. Even now we are not able to come out of it, despite so many years of independence, I feel really sad about the same, because those people through their education system, they have put in our minds that they are superior and we are inferior and that feeling has also been encouraged because we started neglecting our mother languages” said Mr. Naidu.
“I feel like telling in every meeting, four things should be respected — mother, who has given you birth; place where you are born; language that has come from mother's womb, whatever the language, even if it is Urdu, I have no problem; a mother land,” said Mr. Naidu.
Speaking of varied Indian weaknesses, he said, “There is another weakness in our system. Unless somebody from outside comes and tells, you what you are, you do not recognise it.”
He said that the Vedas speak of equality, universal peace, tolerance, non violence, welfare and brotherhood, where nobody is superior or inferior. The answers for many problems in the world can be found in the Vedas, he said.
