[Drugmachine]

In the words of Mr. Kuldip Nayar:
"I have no quarrel with those who equate religion with tradition so long as they realise that the Indian tradition does not have the stamp of any particular religion. My difference arises when this tradition is mistaken for Hinduism. Our tradition is that of accommodating different religions and separate faiths. Secularism is a product of that process. It has gone through the crucible of tolerance and understanding. So, secularism is about not mixing religion with the state or politics.


I recall my short stint at London as India's high commissioner. Margaret Thatcher was the prime minister then and the Soviet Union was crumbling. After her return from Moscow, Thatcher met me at a party. I asked her how she found Mikhail Gorbachev, then the boss at Moscow. She said Gorbachev told her that the country was slipping away from his grip and that he could not hold it together. She said she had advised him to go to "your friend" India and see how people there had lived together for centuries despite their different religions, castes, languages and standards of living.


Thatcher then asked me what I attributed this to. It took me sometime to put my thoughts together. I told her that we in India did not think that things were either black or white. We believed there was a fuzzy area of overlap which we went on expanding. That was secularism. And the sense of tolerance and the spirit of accommodation that grew out of it was the glue that held us together."