“My wife Usha and I have spent amazing days in Britain - in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Sheffield, Bradford, Leeds, Hull, Oxford and London.
“We have been heartened to learn of numerous attempts across Britain to know one another, and one another’s faiths and cultures. Yet we have also learnt of alienation, of fears of surprise attacks in one section of the population, and of the experience in another section of being looked upon with suspicion. But Britain is a family, a changing, evolving, imperfect yet rich and wonderful family.
“Survival is an elemental necessity. Providing security to the British family is a primary duty, for a government and citizens. Yet survival cannot be a national purpose. Britain was not created merely in order that it should survive. It was created for a great purpose, and it is a search for understanding that great purpose that I urge.
“Perhaps we should remember Mahatma Gandhi’s thought about the place given to the human conscience in the long story of Britain, the history concern of the British people for the vulnerable and the weak.
“And perhaps we should recognise that the clash in the World today is not between civilisations, cultures, religions or nations, but rather between forces inside each heart, between fear and faith, between fear – or hate – and acceptance." Rajmohan Gandhi, London, November 23, 2005
