NEW DELHI: President Venkataraman said Tuesday, “our society seems to be degenerating to barbarism,” and warned that unless the state is able curb militancy we, as a nation will soon forfeit, the claim to be the representatives of ancient culture and civilisation.
In his message to the nation, Tuesday, on the eve of independence day, the president strongly condemned the phenomenon of militancy which has vitiated life in so many parts of India and continues to escalate. Attacks on women, children and public servants and barbaric practices of kidnapping in states of Kashmir, Punjab, Assam or elsewhere are “aberrations from human decency,” he said,
The president spoke of disparities existing in society, external assistance to militants and of the need to develop a work ethos and “a reorientation of our attitude to work.
Animosities and confrontation had come to be “our social conditions,” he said.
The president called for an international convention under which terrorism would not be given asylum as this would go a long way in curbing it.
Voicing concern over the growing disparities, he said “one third of the population of India still lives at the subsistence level.
Article extracted from this publication >> August 24, 1990
