There is nothing like 'more Indian or less Indian'

Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju on Thursday urged the north-eastern people not to be captives within their own borders, saying there is nothing like 'more Indian or less Indian'.

"I keep telling my people, student friends, colleagues that we should not be coming under the syndrome of frontiers of our own isolation or our own boundary. We cannot be captive of our own frontiers," Rijiju told the Tenth Biennial National Conference of the Physics Academy of North East (PANE) here in Meghalaya.

"We are a world in ourselves. Some people say the North East or South India, Jammu and Kashmir should merge with the mainstream. We cannot say that the North East should merge with the mainstream of India.

"Every state is a mainstream state, every society, every religious group is a mainstream of this country. There is nothing called more Indian or less Indian. We are all same," he said.

"Everybody is citizen of this country. There is nothing to say that we are far away from the national capital of mainland India. For me there is nothing mainland or side land. We are a part of this country and we must respect that," the BJP MP from Arunachal Pradesh said.

"I have a full confidence in my own ability. Whichever society or culture I practice or belong to is my mainstream. If I live in a small village outside the capital in a remote corner of India, that is my mainstream."

Stating that a country was defined not by the place where the capital or central region existed but by its borders, Rijiju said: "Yes, north-east is connected with the rest of the country by 22 km which we normally call chicken neck. So geographically it may seem to be isolated. But if you say that we are in the corner or isolated, it is actually not true."

--IANS

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