Vice President M. Hamid Ansari inaugurates seminar on Indian culture

New Delhi : Vice President M. Hamid Ansari on Thursday said the Indian culture has a relevance to the globalising world of today.

He was delivering inaugural address at the International Seminar titled ?Indian Culture in a Globalised World? organised to commemorate the 60th Anniversary of the founding of Indian Council of Cultural Relations (ICCR) and 122nd Birth anniversary of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad here on Thursday.

Ansari said that the same holds good for manifestations of diversity in the daily life of the people, be it in language, cuisine, clothing, behaviour patterns.

?The imperative of a common market, and of a common political system, has induced intermingling. All of this finds reflection in popular culture and above all in films. The instinctive Indian impulse is to evade the either/or question and seek an approach that accommodates both. Fringe trends apart, assimilation and homogenisation are viewed neither as feasible nor desirable,? Ansari said.

Ansari said that the richness of values secreted in the interstices of Indian culture was known and appreciated long before the era of present day globalisation.

?It left its imprint on the culture and civilisation of East Asian, South-east Asian, Central Asian and West Asian lands. The Western world too discovered some aspects of it in the colonial period. The new world now taking shape amplifies and magnifies them,? he said.