Communal Harmony: India’s Heritage

  • P.V. Narasimha Rao

I am very happy to be associated with this function where we are honouring some of the brave sons of the soil who risked their own lives to save innocent lives during extraordinary situations such as communal riots. This is not an ordinary achievement because normally when there is trouble, people tend to get out of it. It is only rarely that even a passerby feels like plunging into the fray, stopping such incidents and perhaps getting wounded in the process. So these friends who are here deserve not only to be congratulated and encouraged but emulated by one and all because this is where the quintessence of humanity comes up and tries its best to face evil.

Last couple of decades have witnessed the re-emergence of communalism in a virulent form in the country and we all know why this has happened. There is somehow a political input in the situation which gives a fillip to the feelings of communalism, to hate a person merely because by accident of birth he happens to be in some other religion, belongs to some other religion over which he has no control. So it is something which is illogical, totally irrational and at this rate it will never be possible to have human society living together. If it is communalism today, it can be casteism tomorrow, it can be racialism, it can be the colour of the skin and all kinds of distinctions can be thought of in order to destroy each other, in order to attack each other for something over which no one has any control. Now this is something inimical to the spirit of a secular and a pluralistic society.

The questions of pluralistic society are engaging the attention of every nation today. It is just not possible to have a uniform society any longer. Even those societies where there was some uniformity of religion, uniformity of race, colour etc., are becoming multi-racial, are becoming pluralistic because the world has become small. There is no way we can keep these nations or any nation for that matter consisting of any one variety of people. Therefore, I have seen, I have experienced this in other countries also that the societies which are becoming increasingly mixed, increasingly pluralistic are groping for something which perhaps is available in countries like India and China. They are looking to us and it is here that India can play the role of a leader and I am not saying that we should lead or we should pose as leaders but the point is that we have some experience. Take languages for instance, we have as many as 16, 17, I think 18 languages now in the Constitution apart from so many other dialects hundreds of them. And still there is no antagonism between language and language. Of course, we had language riots also in this country, agitations in other countries, even two languages, three languages are not able to live together because one language group had always been there as dominant and today intolerance in regard to another language group which may come from a neighbouring country, from a neighbouring continent in some cases is seen as something like an outcaste. This is happening on the language front. Now they are looking to us, they marvel at the achievement of this country. Where sixteen languages or eighteen languages are enumerated in the Constitution, each language is becoming the official language of the State, one language becomes the link language in addition to English which is available everywhere, used everywhere, now this kind of thing just cannot be comprehended by them that it is possible in a country.

So in many ways, we are leading the way, in many ways, we are showing the model of a pluralistic society. But, of course in a pluralistic society, by the very definition, we have to get over certain tendencies which go against the name of a pluralistic society. And it is here that communalism has to be tackled first because we are secular, because we are pluralistic, because historically there is really no need, no reason at all for any communal feeling in this country. This country has welcomed everyone, this country has absorbed everyone who came from outside, people who came as victors, people who came as invaders became permanently part of this country. So, this is the kind of attraction which India has held for centuries together and there is no reason why it should not be so hereafter.

We have to be careful about those who inject politics into religion and that is why the struggle for the last few years in this country has been to separate the two. This country can never go against religion. This country can never become irreligious. It is just not possible. Look at every temple in the country, the incomes are going sky high. If only my income as Government of India had gone up as the income of say Tirupati, I would be very happy. But it is not so. People are becoming more and more devoted. There are certain reasons why this devotion is increasing or at the same time the antagonism between religion and religion also is increasing because the political input has come into it, the political element has come into it, in order to exploit this. That is where our main difficulty today is and this has to be sorted out by law, by example, by exhortation, by practice and by inculcating these values, our old values once again in the younger generation.

So, these are our tasks which we have been trying to address and I congratulate the winners of these awards. These are only a token. But at the same time these should be publicised very widely so that other people and particularly younger generation could take a leaf out of these great deeds which these friends have performed in order to save other innocent lives in a situation where their own lives would haven in danger. I once again congratulate them and thank the organisers by giving me this opportunity to join it.

Speech at the Kabir Puraskar presentation ceremony, New Delhi, August 13, 1994 • Taken from a Book ‘Selected Speeches of P.V. Narasimha Rao’, Volume IV, July 1994 June 1995