Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Friday said that India has a huge history of religious and cultural tolerance and added that any aberrations cannot alter that history.
"Any society must be a tolerant society. It is a fact that each one has to accept and it is good to be tolerant. India has a huge cultural history of tolerance; any aberrations do not alter that history," said Jaitley.
Earlier in the day, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh had said that the country did not discriminate on the basis of caste, creed or religion and added that no place in the world has more cultural diversity than India.
Speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast, U.S. President Barack Obama on Thursday said the acts of intolerance experienced by religious faiths of all types in India in the past few years would have shocked Mahatma Gandhi.
He, however, did not name any particular religion and said the violence is not unique to one group or one religion.
In an address at New Delhi's Siri Fort auditorium on January 27, during the last leg of his India trip, Obama had made a strong pitch for religious tolerance, cautioning that India will succeed so long as it is not splintered along the lines of religious faith.
