Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-09-04-Speech-4-235"
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"en.20030904.10.4-235"2
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"Mr President, I am surprised that for once my political group is the first to be called in the debate. I recently had a long and interesting conversation in Scotland with the Consul General for India and we were reflecting upon the problems in trying to constitute a polity which is continental in scale and multilingual in character, with citizens of many faiths and of none, with memories of historical antagonism between religious communities and which tries to sustain a working democratic constitution and to live at peace with its neighbours.
We were thinking both of Europe and of India and it is humbling to us in the European Union, as we work towards improving our constitution, to think that India has achieved this continent-wide polyglot democracy in a secular polity for more than 50 years now. We have a lot to learn from India and we should approach today's debate with a certain sense of humility in that regard.
However, evidently, as the horrifying events in Mumbai show us, all is not well in India. The issue of the capability to sustain a secular state with religious tolerance is now before us, as is the question of whether the tension with Pakistan will be cooled and whether intercommunal relations in India will become peaceful.
That sets the background to this admirable resolution which is before us today. Some of it in a sense merely states the obvious: of course we condemn the bomb attacks in Mumbai; of course we deplore the targeting of civilians; of course we feel great sympathy with the victims. We support the Indian Government in its fight against terrorism, but there is more to be said than that and some of it is said in my group's amendment to the resolution where we call for further steps to be taken to enforce Indian constitutional law properly and to prevent communal violence inside India. We are particularly aware, for example, of recent Amnesty International reports on problems in Gujarat and the responses to the 2002 massacre there. The Indian National Human Rights Commission has itself called for improved vigilance by the Indian authorities and for effective protection of constitutional rights. At the same time we welcome the Pakistani Government's assurance that it also deplores and has no time for the terrorist act in Mumbai.
Times are critical, but we must also be critically sympathetic to the Indian state. Things are going wrong which will call for resolve in India to make them better. We should carry this resolution and the amendments to it tabled in the name of my group and of the ELDR Group."@en1
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