Best way to conquer a territory is overtake its culture, destroy its language: Vice President Dhankhar

File photo of Vice President Jagdeep Dhankar

Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar on Thursday said the best way to conquer a territory is to overtake its culture and destroy its language, and lamented that aggressors, who entered India centuries ago, did exactly the same by building their places of worship over ours.

He also said that the aggressors were very oppressive, very cruel, brutal for our language, for our culture, for our religious places. "Barbarity and vindictiveness was in extremity," he added.

Interacting with the delegates of the 98th Akhil Bharatiya Marathi Sahitya Sammelan, he said a country is defined by its cultural wealth and its cultural ethos, adding India is unique in this regard as no country in the world can compare to us.

Dhankhar said it is our bounden duty and in a way a constitutional ordainment of our founding fathers to nurture our culture and languages.

"To ensure this blossom and this can be done only by hand-holding people who are painstakingly engaged in preserving the literature," he said. Referring to invasions in the past, he said the best way to conquer a territory is not to overtake it physically but to overtake its culture and destroy its language.

"They were very oppressive, very cruel, brutal for our language, for our culture, for our religious places. Barbarity and vindictiveness was in extremity. Enormity can be seen from this perspective. To hurt us, they made their place above our religious place … frustrated our languages. If our language does not flourish, our history will also not flourish," the vice president said.

NCP (SP) leader Sharad Pawar and his MP daughter Supriya Sule were present at the event.