Secularism means state shall not have religion of its own: Hamid Ansari

Mumbai, Feb 3: Vice President Hamid Ansari today said that secularism implies that a state shall not have a religion of its own.

His statement comes in the backdrop of an ongoing row between political parties over an advertisement issued by Information and Broadcasting Ministry which carried a picture of the Preamble to the Constitution as it appeared before the 42nd Amendment, without the words 'secular' and 'socialist'.

"What do we understand by the word secularism? The ground reality is that we are a society, in which people of different faiths live side by side...The challenge is to accommodate (everybody)...In terms of a state, secularism means that a state shall not have a religion of its own," Ansari said during an interaction with students of Wilson College in South Mumbai.

"The state shall not differentiate between citizens on the basis of religion.. When it comes to dispensation by way of development programmes, scholarship, the state shall judge on an objective criteria, and not on grounds of religion, sex or creed," he said.

Discrimination on the grounds of sex is an ailment the society suffers from, the Rajya Sabha Chairman said, adding that the issue needs to be addressed socially.

"Discrimination on grounds of sex is prohibited by law. But, as we all know, our society suffers from various ailments and one of them is discrimination on grounds of sex... This challenge has to be addressed socially and not necessarily legally. Legally we have done all that could be done. We have made laws, we have prescribed penalties for discrimination. But we find this is not producing the desired results," he said.

PTI