Accusing Pakistan of taking hostility beyond the Kashmir issue, Finance Minister P Chidambaram said the neighbouring country backs terrorist activities and communal flare-ups across India and expressed concern about the divide between Muslims and Hindus that could result in ‘new waves of terror’.

The Minister, who was delivering the Field Marshal K M Cariappa Memorial Lecture in the capital on Wednesday, said alienation of the Muslim community is one of the biggest challenges to the country and discrimination is driving educated Muslim youth to violence.

Listing ghettoisation, social boycott, discrimination in employment and ‘blurring of lines between state and religion as was seen in Gujarat’ as reasons for the divide, Chidambaram said the communal divide is taking dangerous forms.

“Out of the hopelessness and despair of the Muslim community — and if not addressed firmly, the Christian tribal communities too — will rise new waves of terror,” the Minister said in his lecture on ‘Emerging India — Security and Economic Perspectives’.

Chidambaram said the increased divide and feeling of alienation is driving educated youth to violence. “There is no other explanation for the phenomenon of graduates and engineers and doctors — born, educated and living in India — taking to the path of violence,” he said.

Blaming Pakistan for inciting communal flare-ups and terror activities in India, the Finance Minister said Pakistan is ‘implacably opposed to India’. “While Kashmir appears to be the central issue of contention, Pakistan has taken its hostility beyond Kashmir and supports terrorist activities and communal conflagrations in other parts of India,” Chidambaram said.