New Delhi - Muslims had contributed much to the building of modern India and the country could not view Islam as an alien faith, federal Home Minister P Chidambaram said Tuesday, according to news reports. Chidambaram was addressing a gathering of 100,000 people including about 10,000 Muslim clerics at the annual conference of influential Deoband seminary in northern Uttar Pradesh state, IANS news agency reported.
"We cannot view Islam as an alien faith. Our Muslim brethren are honoured citizens of India. This is the land of your forbears, this is the land of your birth, and this is where you will live and work," Chidambaram said.
India has the world's third-largest Muslim population, after Indonesia and Pakistan. However, Muslims comprise about 13.4 per cent of its 1.2-billion population, while Hindus form a majority of more than 80 per cent.
"A nation can ignore its minorities only at its peril. The golden rule in a democracy is that it is the duty of the majority to protect the minority, be it religious, racial or linguistic," the home minister said. "Due to the acts of a few, we have allowed diversity to become differences."
Chidambaram condemned the demolition of the mediaeval Babri mosque in Uttar Pradesh's Ayodhya town in 1992, calling it "a manifestation of religious fanaticism and an act of extreme prejudice."
The 16th-century mosque was demolished by Hindu mobs, triggering bloody communal riots nationwide which claimed more than 2,000 lives.
Hindu groups believe the mosque was located at a site where their epic hero god Rama was born, and want to construct a temple there.
