On Board a Special Flight: India’s commitment to religious tolerance and plurality is self-evident and it is laid in the Constitution, upheld by courts and no political party proclaims that intolerance is their agenda, said Vice-President Hamid Ansari.
During an interaction with journalists on board a special flight from Bali, Ansari said: “Our commitment to plurality, to religious tolerance is self-evident. It is written down in the Constitutional text as fundamental rights, it has been repeated again and again by the highest courts of the land.”
The Vice-President added: “And no political party actually says that intolerance is their agenda. Everybody’s agenda is the same, I am talking of proclaimed agenda. If there are shortcomings, for this reason or that reason, that is another matter.”
The Vice-President said while nowhere the performance is 100 per cent but the “aspiration” is 100 per cent. Asked what India could learn from Indonesia about tolerance and plurality, Ansari said that countries across the world learnt from India about plurality of society.
Expressing satisfaction with his Indonesia visit, Ansari said there is a need for greater business-to-business contact between the two countries.
He said over the years, there have been many agreements but both sides have been somewhat slow in implementing these agreements, so he suggested setting up of a Joint Working Group that would work to time schedules to which the President of Indonesia agreed.