AMRITSAR: External Affairs Minister Inder Kumar Gujral has said that the threat India faced from Pakistan today was not merely a “military threat” but an attack on the very basis of the heritage of universal brotherhood, tolerance and humanism on which the Indian state was founded.
“These values have found political expression in the Indian constitution which reaffirmed secularism, respect for all faiths, human nights and equality before law,” Gujral said here in the Punjab state Saturday.
The external affairs minister said that in building of the secular state of India and its consolidation, Punjab had played a “seminal role” while Kashmir had been its “most visible symbol.”
Pakistan has denied India’s charge of supporting and aiding the militants in Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir.
The contributions that the people of Punjab and Kashmir have made to the struggle for India’s independence, prove beyond doubt that it is they who have shaped the mainstream of India’s evolution into a multi-ethnic, multi religious parliamentary democracy.
Reminding the people of Punjab and Kashmir that they were “heirs to a great tradition of communal harmony and religious tolerance,” Gujral said, “Now is the time for the people of these states to reaffirm and reassert our traditional values, values for which the entire country admires and respects them.”
Article extracted from this publication >> May 11, 1990
