Kolkata: Amid rising protests against intolerance, President Pranab Mukherjee on Monday underlining the need for tolerance while wondering if "tolerance and acceptance of dissent are on the wane".
"We celebrate diversity, we promote tolerance, we accept dissent. If it wasn't there, India's civilization couldn't have survived for 5,000 years," Mukherjee said at an event in West Bengal's Birbhum district.
"Are tolerance and acceptance of dissent are on the wane?" he asked.
"Humanism and pluralism should not be abandoned under any circumstance. Assimilation through receiving is a characteristic of Indian society. Our collective strength must be harnessed to resist evil powers in society," said Mukherjee, who is on a four-day visit to his ancestral house at Kirnahar in the district to attend Durga Puja.
"Indian civilisation has survived for 5,000 years because of its tolerance. It has always accepted dissent and differences. A large number of languages, 1,600 dialects and 7 religions coexist in India. We have a constitution that accommodates all these differences," he said.
Mukherjee's comments come on a day when members of the little known Hindu Sena smeared ink on independent Kashmir legislator Engineer Rashid's face in New Delhi, shortly after he had spoken about a fire bomb attack in Udhampur that left a truck cleaner from the Kashmir Valley dead.
The day also witnessed the cancellation of talks between Board of Control for Cricket president Shashank Manohar and Pakistan Cricket Board chief Shahryar Khan after Shiv Sena activists demonstrated at the BCCI headquarters in Mumbai protesting against revival of Indo-Pakistan cricket ties.
Monday's was the second major protest in a fortnight by the Shiv Sena against Pakistan.
The Sena first forced the cancellation of Pakistani ghazal maestro Ghulam Ali's concerts in Mumbai and Pune, and then attacked journalist Sudheendra Kulkarni before he hosted the launch of a book by former Pakistani foreign minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri.
In Lahore, Pakistan's Punjab assembly urged the government to approach the UN to get the Shiv Sena declared a terrorist outfit.
And in Bengaluru, BJP activists heckled a young Australian man for sporting a tattoo of a Hindu goddess on his leg.
The heckling occurred at Konark restaurant in downtown when Gordon was seated with his girl friend Emily Kassianou, 20.
"A dozen people walked up to me and threatened to skin my leg if I did not remove the tattoo and apologise to them," Gordon told police.
A constable took the BJP activists and the Australian pair to a police station to sort out the issue. The BJP activists claimed they lectured the Australians on Hindu religion.
This is the second time in a month that the president has stressed on the importance of tolerance.
Days after the lynching of a Muslim man in Uttar Pradesh over rumours that he ate beef, Mukherjee had appealed for tolerance, saying core values of civilisation cannot be shunned.
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If Aurangzeb had the intention of demolishing temples to make way for mosques, there would not have been a single temple standing erect in India. On the contrary, Aurangzeb donated huge estates for use as temple sites & ..... 
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