‘India
will succeed as long as it's not splintered along religious lines...nowhere is
it more important to uphold religious freedom than in India,’ President Obama said
while speaking at the Siri Fort auditorium.
‘Your Article 25 (of the Constitution) says that all people are 'equally
entitled to freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practice and
propagate religion.
In both our countries, in all countries, upholding this
fundamental freedom is the responsibility of government, but it's also the
responsibility of every person.’
His reference to his own experience being a minority as
regards color and also accusations that he was a Muslim too added meaning to
the speech.
‘There were moments in my life where I've been treated differently because of
the color of my skin...
‘There have been times where my faith has at times been
questioned by people who don't know me, or they've said that I adhere to a
different religion, as if that were somehow a bad thing.
‘Every person has the right to practice their religion and
beliefs and not practice it if they choose so without any persecution.’
Obama said no society is immune from man's darkest impulses,
as he reminded the 2012 shooting at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin
that killed six people. ‘In that moment of shared grief, our two countries
reaffirmed a basic truth, as we must again today, that every person has the
right to practice their faith how they choose, or to practice no faith at all,
and to do so free of persecution and fear and discrimination.’
He quoted Mahatma
Gandhi, who said the diversity in faiths
in a country as beautiful flowers of the same garden and branches of the same
majestic tree.
He said in India, like in
the US,
diversity is our strength and we have to guard against any division along
sectarian or religious lines.
He also noted that those having ‘intolerance in minds and
the terror perpetrated by those who profess to be standing by their faiths when
in effect they are betraying it,’ considered as pointing to the Islamic State
terrorists.
Obama also noted that the peace that we seek in the world
begins in human hearts and one should rejoice in the beauty of every soul.
He also mentioned about the importance of keeping diversity in India.
‘Nowhere is it more important than in India... Nowhere is it going to be
more necessary that the foundational value be upheld. India will succeed so
long as it is not splintered along lines of religious faith, splinter along any
lines and it is unified as one nation; and all Indians whatever their faith go
to the movies and applaud actors like Shah Rukh Khan or athletes like Milkha
Singh and Mary Kom.’
