Guj to decide future of communal politics: Omar

Gujarat polls would virtually decide whether communal politics would be allowed to flourish in India or not, Minister of State for External Affairs Omar Abdullah said.

Gujarat elections would virtually decide whether the "politics of communalism" would be allowed to flourish in the country or not, Minister of State for External Affairs Omar Abdullah said today.

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"Fundamentalism is a bigger problem than we are willing to admit, and it is tearing up the very core of the country. What the people of Gujarat have decided, we will find out only on the 15th, but today will be a landmark day in deciding whether politics and religion can be mixed or not," Abdullah said at a session on "The Voice of Change" Young Leaders Demand, organised by FICCI here.

"I was under the impression that fundamentalism is a very rural problem, not found in the educated, urban class, but I have been proved wrong when educated people from the "majority community" accost me at dinner parties and harangue me on my views on secularism," he said.

Congress MP, Jyotiraditya Scindia, who was present, also stressed on the need for abolishing communalism and casteism from the social fabric saying economic power would be a distant dream if these lacunae were not removed.