Need to revisit methodology by which harmony is promoted: VP

Describing communal ill-will as a disease of the mind, Vice President Hamid Ansari today said there was a need to revisit the methodology by which societal harmony is being promoted.
Ansari, whose comments came in the backdrop of Muzaffarnagar riots, said absence of harmony in society impedes progress.
"Absence of harmony results in discord; discord disturbs social peace; absence of social peace impedes progress and development. Could there be a greater social sin? Should it not be placed high on the list of anti-national activities?," he said addressing a function organised to present the national communal harmony awards.
Ansari said as citizens of India, every one has the right to life, to equality, to equal protection of law and to equal share in the largesse of the state as per objective norms.

"The Constitution enjoins us to secure fraternity. We seem to fail in this. The failure is at every level - governments, civil society, individuals," he said.
The Vice President said that the harsh reality was that both communal ill-will and regional animosities are diseases of the mind. They operate at the individual and the communitarian levels.
"They have seeped into the interstices of our society, to erupt periodically while remaining dormant at other times," he said.
Ansari said often sections of citizen body are motivated by nefarious considerations, driven by paranoia, and an imagined otherness about other sections.