New Delhi

Khalaf Al-Harbi, the famous liberal thinker and writer of Saudi Arabia, has praised India for its diversity and religious tolerance.

In his write-up, India - a country that rides elephants in Saudi Gazette Khalaf Al Harbi says that in India, “there are more than 100 religions and more than 100 languages. Yet, the people live in peace and harmony. They have all joined hands to build a strong nation that can produce everything from a sewing needle to the rocket which is preparing to go to Mars.”

Khalaf Al-Harbi

He says he must admit that he feels jealous as he came from a part of the world that has one religion and one language and yet there is killing everywhere.

“No matter how the world speaks about tolerance, India remains the oldest and most important school to teach tolerance and peaceful co-existence regardless of the religious, social, political or ethnical differences.”

He also debunks the stereotypical picture of India in the minds of many in the Arab world about poverty and backwardness. “This is a totally false picture which has nothing to do with reality,” he says in his column.

“It is a picture which was created by our extreme judgment of things. When we were poor before the era of oil, the picture of India in our minds was linked to richness and civilization but immediately after our financial conditions improved, we converted India’s picture to one of poverty and backwardness.”

He further writes, “If we had any sort of wisdom, we would never have been occupied by India’s richness or poverty. Rather, we would have been impressed by India’s immense ability to contain and respect the conflicting ideologies and thoughts so that people would flood the streets without any feeling of fear or anxiety.”

Khalaf Al-Harbi says, “India is one of the largest and oldest democracies in the world. It had never known huge differences in religions or races. The country does not disdain its poor people nor hate its rich citizens. 

"It is a nation which is proud of Gandhi and the British colonialists at the same time."

“The Indian people are distinguished in many ways. They are great people. Nobody can deny this fact except the envious or the ungrateful," he says.