NSA Doval leads interfaith harmony meet with Sufi clerics

The inter-faith conference is an outreach by the BJP-ruled government to defuse religious tensions in wake of the controversy over suspended BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma's remarks and its extreme reaction from a section of Sufi Barelvi Muslims.

Published on: Jul 30, 2022, 10:20:00 IST

By Shishir Gupta

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National Security Advisor Ajit Doval on Saturday will hold an inter-faith meeting as part of the Narendra Modi government's outreach to maintain inter-faith harmony.

A file photo of NSA Ajit Doval meeting Sufi clerics.

The inter-faith conference will be attended by religious heads from different faiths. Sufi saints will also attend this conference during which a resolution for peace, unity and harmony will be passed.

Hazrath Syed Naseeruddin Chishty, the chairperson of the All India Sufi SajjadaNasheen Council will be the key attendee at the conference.

The inter-faith conference is an outreach by the BJP-ruled government to defuse religious tensions in wake of the controversy over suspended BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma's remarks and the extreme reaction from a section of Barelvi Muslims.

The country witnessed killings as a fallout of the Nupur Sharma controversy with a tailor Kanhaiya Lal being beheaded by two Muslim youths in Udaipur, who even filmed the act and threatened Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The National Investigation Agency is investigating the ISIS-styled killing.

A similar hate killing took place in Maharashtra's Amravati where a pharmacist named Umesh Kolhe was hacked to death. The central agency is also probing the killing.

It is not the first time when Doval is holding an inter-faith meet with religious leaders. Back in 2019, he had met religious leaders after the Ayodhya verdict.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More