I agree whenever it happens, it has to be condemned. I feel that India manages internal conflicts pretty well. Overall, India is a pretty stable democracy. At some points there are dramatic, shocking incidents which could be caste and religion related. We can't ignore them.

We have to confront them, engage with them. We must condemn them in the strongest term possible. But recognition of a problem does not mean doom and gloom, and saying that the whole system is rotten. I don't believe in that.

I think we have problems, but we manage them as well as we can. As long as we have alert citizens, as long as we have the press alive and kicking, as long as there's freedom, we should be able to control these little manifestations.

Whether it is an extremist Muslim group or an extremist Hindu group or extremist regionalism, people are increasingly touchy about everything. This was not the case earlier. We have a tradition of mocking at our own guards.

Now we are hurt by everything. There is over-politicisation of everything. We turn everything into a political issue and new problems and cleavages are created for short-term political expediencies. That is a trend that people have to bring it to everybody's notice and also to ask what’s wrong with them.

Image: A group of men convicted in connection with the murder of Muslims during 2002 riots near Godasar in Gujarat, peer through the bars of their cell after being sentenced at the district court in Nanidad, some 65 km south of Ahmedabad.
Photograph: STR/AFP/Getty Images

Also read: Stop this nonsense about our great democracy

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