Moroccan University confers degree on Indian Vice President M. Hamid Ansari

Prior to that, Vice President Ansari delivered a lecture on the topic ‘Accommodating Diversity in a Globalising World: The Indian Experience’.

The Indian Vice President arrived in Morocco on Tuesday on a four-day official visit.

Ansari, in his speech said, "Even in distant India, the contribution of Moroccan intellectuals to modern thought and challenges is known and acknowledged. Names like Abdullah Al-Arui and Abid al-Jabri readily come to mind; so do the contributions of feminist writers like Fatima Mernisi and Fatima Sadiqi."

He also said that said that the challenge for the modern world is to accept diversity as an existential reality and to configure attitudes and methodologies for dealing with it.

Vice President Ansari also said that Indian Muslims have lived in India’s religiously plural society for over a thousand years and that has impacted on modern India and its existential reality of a plural society on the basis of which a democratic polity and a secular state structure was put in place.  He further said that the framers of our Constitution had the objective of securing civic, political, economic, social and cultural rights as essential ingredients of citizenship with particular emphasis on rights of religious minorities.

Image: Vice President Ansari at the banquet hosted by the Prime Minister of Morocco, Abdelilah Benkirane./PIB