Skip to main content
Indian Kanoon - Search engine for Indian Law
Document Fragment View
Matching Fragments
The Minister has to explain. Otherwise, one religious place after another will be desecrated, will be demolished. You will remain helpless and you will remain silent spectators. I also demand, as it has been demanded, that to honour the sentiment of the minorities, the Muslim brothers, that place should be protected and that place should not be allowed to be desecrated by anybody. We should honour this sentiment of the minority people of Vadodara. We will have to think seriously in order to strengthen our democratic, secular character of our country. Now, they have gone back to their old agenda of Ram Janambhoomi, construction of Ram Temple, Hindutva, yatra, etc[r58] . It reminded us of 1990 Rath Yatra from Somnath to Ayodhya. I have seen the riots at a number of places. In my district, which is known as a peaceful district, in 1990, the moment the Chariot of Shri L.K. Advani left and entered Jharkhand, the erstwhile Bihar, immediately, riots were started and 14 persons were killed. We should be more cautious now to utilize the religion for political purposes. Here, we do not want to ban or stop it. We will have to think very seriously. We will have to strengthen our secular character. It should not be termed… (Interruptions) The year 2002 incident was a blot on the democratic secular character of our country.