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From Our Correspondent
The day terrorism is rooted out from the country, it may become possible to introduce a Common Civil Code (CCC), to construct a grand Ram Temple at Ayodhya and scrap Article 370. And with adoption of such measures, India would emerge as one of the leading nations of the world. These were the observations made at a two-day conference of Muslims organised in New Delhi.
Muslim scholars gathered to debate on all these issues frankly and also exchange their views with prominent RSS leaders. The RSS Sarsanghchalak, K.S. Sudarshan also attended the conference and had an interactive dialogue with Muslim intellectuals. About 154 Muslim leaders, including several retired bureaucrats, 23 women, 35 professors, 18 advocates and 12 Imams from various states and districts of the country participated in the conference.
Muslim and Hindu delegates also jointly took the following pledge: ?I am a citizen of India and dedicated to my Indian nationality. Indian civilisation and culture are my joint legacy. Protecting my country and ensuring her stability is my supreme duty. To achieve these goals I have joined the Nationalist Muslim Movement and I will make all out efforts to bring awareness among my countrymen.?
This movement began on 24 December 2002, when the RSS Sarsanghchalak, K.S. Sudarshan attended an Id milan function held at the residence of Smt Nafisa Hussain, member of the National Commission for Women in New Delhi. Since then a number of conferences have been organised across the country under the banners of ?My Hindustan? and the Bharatiya Muslim Parishad. In this series it was the 29th conference.
?Today all Muslims are seen with suspicious eyes due to terrorism. The need of the hour is to remove this misconception so that both Hindus and Muslims can live as one fraternity,? said Mohammad Afzal, convener of the conference and president of ?My Hindustan?. He emphasised the need for a continuous dialogue between Hindus and Muslims.
Speaking on the occasion, Sarsanghchalak K.S. Sudarshan said that all people living in India share the same culture and same forefathers. We should have a feeling of respect for all faiths and forms of worship. ?We want the distances to be reduced. Muslims should mix themselves with this soil, culture and forefathers. By removing mutual distrust we can hope to make India one of the best nations of the world and present an example before the world community,? he stressed.
Indresh Kumar, Akhil Bharatiya Sahsampark Pramukh of RSS, said that the process of dialogue has changed the mentality of Muslims. He added that the series of conferences initiated by Muslims themselves and the RSS were ample proof of this. The conference has proved that a large section of the Muslim society has nationalist thinking. ?We need to raise our voice against the fundamentalists and also to change ourselves first,? he added.
Senior journalist, Muzaffar Hussain, declared that placing the Muslims and Christians as minorities in the Constitution was a mistake. ?Minority is a person who comes from outside. Our forefathers are the same. How can we be a minority? In fact, this alien concept has harmed the Muslims greatly,? he said, adding that the signs of a modest beginning in the Muslim society have already begun to show due to the nationalist movement. Others who spoke on the occasion were Dr Tahir, Maulana Umer Ahmed Ilyasi Nakshbandi, Shahin Khan and Mushtaq Ahmed Ansari.
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