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Defence Minister Shri Pranab Mukherjee has called for concerted and visible efforts to curb Xenophobic tendencies and to dismantle the structures of terrorism. Delivering the keynote address at a seminar on The Partition of India Revisited: Thinking Through & Beyond Violence, Trauma and Memory here today, he said that in the same vein institutions, which feed on gullible young minds and arouse feelings of religions fundamentalism, leading to their subsequent enrolment in the ranks of extremists, must be countered. The Defence Minister said such activities eventually target the very societies in which they thrive. Shri Mukherjee said that export of such form of extremism has caused untold harm to innocent people over the last few decades. To check these tendencies he called for a determined shift in which the human welfare takes precedence over all else. This shift can take the shape of regional initiative and thereby transform the lives of millions of people, he added.
Cautioning the people about the continued attempts being made within the country to keep the communal card alive, the Defence Minister said the liberation of Bangladesh showed that religion is not a good basis to nationalism and that religious affinity was not sufficient to prevent a virtual genocide.
The seminar was jointly organized by the Centre for Refugee Studies, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, International Institute for Mediation and Historical Conciliation, Boston, International Centre for Peace Studies, New Delhi and WISCOMP, Foundation for Universal Responsibility, New Delhi.
SK / SKS / RAJ
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