in the gettysburg address no ethnicity no nationality no sacred soil and no religion the union is not mentioned nor is the south the words the united states or america do not find a place it is an idea the idea of equality that lincoln sweats out or wrings out from the ten historic sentences everyone in this audience will have her or his picture of india of india now and india 2047 or india 1947 probably her or his changing pictures and what i have offered is surely a limited sampling but perhaps the sampling is enough to invite groans from us whats happened to our rivers how are our mountains is the indian earth clean enough to inspire instant devotion and where oh where is equality or brotherhood or sisterhood here i must make a comment on the claim that anyone whose sacred sites lie outside indias geographical limits cannot be a good or trustworthy indian i dont know if such a notion was ever valid today it is hopelessly out of date a corollary of such a suggestion would be that the millions of hindus who live outside india and the millions more who would like to do so cannot be good or trustworthy people in america or england or canada or australia or germany or mauritius or south africa or trinidad or guyana or fiji wherever such a principle would turn indians into secondclass citizens in the countries where they work under such a principle the buddhists of korea japan china thailand burma and sri lanka cannot be perfectly loyal in their countries for their sacred sites lie outside in india and presumably all christians are suspect unless they live in israel palestine syria or jordan or perhaps rome as for the worlds muslims they should be watched unless they live in saudi arabia or iraq where many of them are closely watched anyway or in jerusalem where they have a precarious existence today in truth nations are not prisons or caves and a human being cannot be coerced into a particular belief merely because he lives in a particular geographical or political space justice liberty equality and fraternity are the words the preamble to the indian constitution uses there is no reference in the preamble to an indian blood an indian race indias geography or to an indian religion further on our constitution uses precise language to prohibit discrimination against any person on grounds of religion race caste sex or place of birth all this we know and we are rightly proud about it yet we know too that real life at times involves intimidation and coercion which can come from different groups in different places i would like to remind this audience that in a few places even our constitution as it stands discriminates between communities before trying to show this i would like us to take in the fact that constitutionally speaking india seems to be more than a