Cautioning against a systemic attack on India’s shared cultural heritage, Vice-President Jagdeep Dhankhar said on Tuesday that it should be responded to with ideological and mental counterattack.

Speaking at the inaugural session of the International Conference for CA Members at Birla Auditorium here, the vice-president called on the citizens to leave behind parochial divisions, embrace diversity and make an ideological and mental counter to the attack need to leave parochial divisions behind, embrace diversity to celebrate this country’s glorious past regardless of his or her faith, because that is our shared cultural heritage.

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Elaborating on his point of view, he said, “Because, when you think as a citizen of this great civilisational state, India (Bharat), home to one-sixth of humanity and a place known in the world for incredible human genius, we will have to leave behind the narrow parochial divisions.

“A citizen with a nationalistic outlook will have no difficulty in embracing diversity, he or she. Our shared cultural heritage is being hammered, attempts are being made to dub our cultural heritage as our weakness and in this process, a design is being made to destroy our country.”

The vice president went on to say, “Our national discourse needs more conversation about this nationalistic outlook because today, more than ever, we need our citizens to be nationalistic. How can we, in this country, ever imagine that we will have partisan interest, personal interest, fiduciary interest, and self-interest, ahead of national interest? That we see quite often.”

You can take a great lead very successfully in this direction. After braving many challenges, we have come a long way, from a ship-to-mouth country to the world’s fastest-growing large economy in a few generations’ time. With this rise, internal and external challenges grow, he contended.

He said, “Way back in 1989 when I was elected to Parliament, and I know the situation then. Our foreign exchange reserve, with which you all are concerned, was around one billion US dollars. The gold reserve of a country that once upon a time was called Golden Bird (Sone Ki Chidiya) was mortgaged in two Swiss banks.

“It was shipped by air to sustain our credibility and what a proud moment at the moment..!.. Our foreign exchange reserves are more than 700 billion. That’s a great accomplishment.”

Cautioning against the prevailing threat, Dhankhar said, “The greatest challenge I must advert to is a challenge that is growing day by day.”

“The challenge has taken menacing proportions, it is alarmingly worrisome, and that is narratives and efforts are afoot to upset our social cohesion. We all have to work with passion and in missionary mode to build a cohesive society that thinks in nationalistic terms and is not ridden by factions of caste, creed, colour, culture, conviction, and cuisine…

“…We are all absorbing, let me describe the scene. We as a majority are all-embracing, we as a majority are tolerant, we as a majority generate a soothing ecosystem and we have a counterpoint writing on the wall; the other kind of majority that is brute, ruthless, reckless in its functioning, believes in trampling all values of the other side. The difference has to be noticed,” the VP said.

Cautioning against prevailing concerns about the impact on the country’s accomplishments on the economic front, Dhankhar said that the audience were nerve centres and epicentres of this wholesome narrative.

“Such unity and cohesion is the very basis of economic prosperity. We are having exponential growth. Our developmental journey in infrastructure has the world stunned. Global institutions, the IMF, and the World Bank, are accolading India for a variety of reasons, digitisation in particular but this economic rise becomes fragile when social unity is disturbed when the fervour of nationalism dies when anti-national forces within and without generate in this country divisiveness. We have to be mindful of that,” he added.