Religion is personal, shouldn't be used to mobilise people: Dalai Lama

In the backdrop of recent clashes between two communities at Bhima Koregaon, Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama advised people from all communities to not use religion to mobilise people. "Religion is a personal business, one should not use religion to mobilise any group of people," the Dalai Lama said on Wednesday.

The spiritual leader was in Pune on Wednesday to address the second edition of National Teachers' Congress organised by the MIT World Peace University.

When speaking to the media on the sidelines of the event, the Nobel peace prize winner commented on the recent violence in the state and said, "Religion is a personal business. Who follows which religion is a matter of personal choice. Nobody should use religion to mobilise any group for any purpose. The business of 'We Buddhists', 'We Hindus' or 'We Muslims' is not good."

Earlier in his speech, The spiritual leader hailed Indian society for safeguarding different religious faiths. "The largest democracy in the world, India is young and yet a complicated nation. The country has remarkable tolerance when it comes to safeguarding religious faiths of different religions. People from different faith who mostly arrived from middle-east in the form of Christianity or Islam are living together and showing that religious tolerance is possible," he said.

Addressing the teachers from different parts of the country gathered at the national teachers' congress, the Dalai Lama expressed his disappointment about the present education system. He said, "Basic human nature is to show compassion, but in the present education system, more importance is given to material values than the inner values."

"Today's world is facing emotional problems, which can be tackled by education and not by religious faith. There is a need of teaching moral principles with reasoning that will come only through education and not faith," he said.