Dubai: Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has said that 'there is no indication of intolerance' on the ground in India, as he sought to dismiss debate in the country over the issue.
“On the ground I see an environment of public harmony in India. That's why I initially referred to this debate as a manufactured one,” Jaitley, who arrived here yesterday on a two-day visit to the UAE, said.
“It becomes an issue for discussion when people try to give the country a bad name and there the onus is on all of us as Indians to clarify the issue. But on the ground there is no indication of intolerance,” he told reporters.
This is not the first time that Jaitley has rejected pitch on the issue, saying opponents must fight political battles politically.
The debate over growing intolerance in the country has increased in recent time with politicial parties attacking each other.
Yesterday, Union Minister VK Singh stirred a new controversy by suggesting that the ongoing debate on tolerance in India was a creation of "imaginative" minds of those "who are paid".
"Like a small incident of theft in a church that was depicted as an attack on the church, the same is (the case with) this intolerance debate," the former army chief told reporters on Sunday on the sidelines of the Regional Pravasi Bharatiya Divas here.
Standing in for External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, who returned to New Delhi midway after Friday's terrorist attacks in Paris, V.K. Singh also suggested that the current debate was motivated by the Bihar elections that the BJP-led NDA lost.
