The Hindu : National : Sonia: India, a truly pluralistic society

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Sonia: India, a truly pluralistic society

Special Correspondent

Inaugurates Festival of India at Brussels

NEW DELHI: Recounting the rich cultural heritage of the country, Congress president Sonia Gandhi said India is the birthplace of four of the world's major religions and home to the second largest population of Islam.

"India welcomed Christianity long before Europe as well as followers of the Zoroastrian and Jewish faiths. Our 22 major languages, 400 significant dialects, over 4,000 ethnic communities and castes, our regions with their own character and history — all these ensure that we are — and can only be — a truly pluralistic society," Ms. Gandhi said inaugurating an exhibition, "Tejas — Eternal Energy", at Brussels, Belgium on Saturday.

She said the Festival of India came to Europe after a decade and a half and that the choice of the city was a considered one. "Your beautiful city has become in many ways the capital of the European Union. It is the seat of European Parliament and Commission. It has a great sense of culture and history."

The exhibition, she said, was unique as it was the first time that so many rare and priceless sculptures had been taken abroad from among the treasures housed in museums all across India. Tejas profiles India's civilisation journey over 1,500 years of a most formative period of its past.

Ties with Belgium

On India-Belgium relations, Ms. Gandhi said while the ties go back to at least 1723 when traders from Belgium under the flag of the Ostend Company established settlements in the east and south of India, during World War I, more than 36,000 Indian soldiers laid down their lives on the soil of Belgium.

In the modern world, both countries share much in common and democracy, rule of law, freedom of speech, independent judiciary, a free press and protection of human rights were fundamental values to which societies in both countries were committed.

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