Children and National Integration

School plays a very important role in fostering national integration in the following ways:
(a) Children from different communities interact with each other in a school.
(b) Celebration of national days and festivals promotes national integration. Also, the study of the historical past and the National Movement promote the idea of unity within diversity.
(c) Organising programmes on all-India basis, where children from different parts of the country can meet each other, fosters national integration.
(d) The NCC cadets in a school get an opportunity to meet other cadets from other parts of the country and become aware of each others' cultures.
Mahatma Gandhi had once said, "We have to produce a society of those people who profess different religions, but they live like brothers." In fact, this statement of Gandhiji has the essence of national integration in India.
India is a vast country with a number of differences in food, clothing, languages, even in her different New Years in different communities. Besides, India has seen the mixture of various races, cultures, traditions etc. Again, there are those who are vegetarians and those who are non-vegetarians.
Through all these diversities and differences there runs the invisible link of common culture, common civility, common heritage, the same form of greeting one another, the same form of respect shown to elders as well as there are common Vedas, the Bhagwad Gita, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, the festivals, National symbols and finally the struggle for Independence that united the whole mass of Indian people.
Thus, national integration means a feeling of oneness among the entire Indians. All our countrymen must feel emotionally integrated. We must think that we are Indians first and members of a particular religion afterwards. Whenever India has been attacked by a foreign country, it has stood as one man to meet the crisis.
National integration is essential for social peace and armony too. The safety