Today’s Seminar organised by the National Council of YMCAs of Bangladesh is very timely and very important. In my presentation, I will attempt to look at the possibilities and ways of cooperation among different religions for promoting peace and communal harmony. Obviously, we are more interested in the practical aspect of the issue.

In the Statesman newspaper, the following letter to the editor was published on 22^nd December 2000 –

Sir,

I am a Hindu; but more than that I am an Indian. I have a humble question to ask of the Sangh parivar; India is vast country. And there are numerous Ram Mandirs in innumerable places throughout the country.

According to the epic, Ayodhya was the birthplace of Ram. By all means do have a temple or two for Ram at Ayodhya. But why at the very place where there is already a mosque?

 

How does anybody know that was exactly where Ram was born? Or perhaps it should be the exact place where Kaushalya drank the payas or better still, should not be the place where the Putrakameshti Yagna was performed?

 

Ten years ago, in 21^st December 1990, the Telegraph newspaper received a letter to the editor with a thumb impression. It was entitled, BJP Took Away My Family, from a rickshawpuller named Y. Ravana Reddy from the Muslim-dominated Zumirhat bazaar area of Hyderabad. His wife was stabbed to death and his only son was murdered in quick succession. In fear he had fled to Calcutta. In that letter, the Hindu rickshawpuller did not blame the Muslims of the area but the BJP for murdering his wife and son.

Religious communalism is endemic to the Indian reality. Fissiparous tendencies have been let loose in the country in the name of religion. Such a situation has threatened the unity and integrity of the nation after fifty-three years of Independence. Communal riots are common in India, as recent as 1992-93 in Mumbai and Calcutta. Post-Babri masjid demolitions, Christians have been deliberately and openly threatened, raped and even murdered in different regions of India. 6^th December 1992 and 23^rd January 1999 stand out as the worst symbols of communal carnage. Burning alive of an Australian missionary-doctor among lepers along with his two small sons, witness vividly to the diabolical character of religious communalism. The Government of India had ‘kindly’ set up a Commission under Justice Wadhwa. But very unfortunately, it did not state or do anything concrete to assuage the fears and insecurity of the Indian Christians. At this juncture, it is good to remember that the first Prime Minister of India, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had uttered in 1963, thirty-eight years ago, in response to the question of communists coming into power, "Communists, communists! The danger to India, mark you, is not communism. It is Hindu rightwing communalism." In last ten years (1990-2000), there has been a systematic upsurge of Hindu Rightwing ideology. This one-dimensional ideology is bent on saffronising the very consciousness of all the people in India.

In this context of religious communalism, all religions are called to play a prophetic role of peace-making. We have to leave behind our mediaeval mind-set, engaging in crusades, jihad and dharmayuddha. It is time to forgive and learn from each other. Mutual forgiveness and reconciliation is our redemption. Christian conservatism, Islamic fundamentalism, Sikh extremism and Hindu revivalism have been detrimental to the evolution of harmonious communities.

Doctrines divide but actions unite. Similarities make dialogue possible and differences make dialogue necessary. It is for us, at the dawn of the third millennium, to seriously look for convergence of meaning, goals and the "unlosable essences." In this age of globalisation and information revolution, we know much more about each other. We are living in a post-colonial, post-missionary era when can learn afresh of the rich mosaic or beehive that is India.

India is a grand experiment in the modern world. It symbolises unity-in-diversity or more realistically a diversity seeking for unity particularly religious. But unfortunately, there are people and leaders in all religions, who still inhabit the Ptolmaic, eurocentric and elite world. They do not want to enter the exiting Copernican world of change and dialogue.

Indian philosophers had anticipated this kind of religious fanaticism and bigotry. Swami Vivekananda had advocated vigorously harmony of all religions in his historic speech in Chicago in 1893. He had affirmed and promoted the pluralistic religious milieu of India. I am glad that at the centenary celebration in 1993, all religious leaders got together again in Chicago and advocated a GLOBAL ETHIC. Hans Kung took enormous interest in this venture.

Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan had pleaded for a "Fellowship of Faiths", "Commonwealth of Spirit" and "Partnership of Religions." Therefore, he had rightly stated, "The meeting of the East and West may produce a spiritual renaissance and a world community that is struggling to be born." Such a vision was possible because he genuinely believed, "Toleration is the homage which the finite mind pays to the inexhaustibility of the infinite."

Earlier, Rabindranath Tagore had the vision of a coming world civilization or universal humanity. In the midst of hostility and division of his time, Tagore declared,

I refuse to think that the twin spirits of the East and the West, the Mary and Martha, can never meet to make perfect the realisation of truth. And inspite of our material poverty in the East and the antagonism of our time, I wait patiently for this meeting.

Sri Aurobindo had a similar vision, beyond narrow nationalism and religious chauvinism. He saw the urgent need of ‘englobing’ or ‘ensphere’ which would bring about our ‘totality’ or wholeness.

Mahatma Gandhi, inspite of his conservatism, had regular All-Religions Prayer Meeting. He certainly wanted Hindu-Muslim harmony. But it is ironic that he was shot dead at one of those meetings. Indeed, he gave his life, hoping that India will remain one.

I am sure there are Hindu bhaktas, Sufi saints and Christian devotees who are coming together to make this dream come true. We cannot any more suffer from tunnel or myopic vision. We have to move beyond one-eyed or even two-eyed to a third-eye vision. Both our intellect and our intuition must guide us in this venture and adventure of faith and trust.

Jesus was a Jewish rabbi. Fundamentally, he did not come to establish a religion but show us a way of life. He was very critical of the Jewish religious systems and the leaders. So he had said, "I tell you, many will come from east and west and sit at table with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 8:11). He accepted and tried to understand the Gentiles; the Roman centurion; the Syrophoenician woman (Mk. 7:26); the Samaritan woman (Jn. 4: 7-26); Samaritan man in the parable (Lk. 10: 33-37) and others.

Jesus himself did not indulge in Christomonism. On the contrary, he pointed to God, to the Holy Spirit, to the Kingdom of God. Thus he had declared.

The wind (sprit) blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it. But you do not know where it comes from and where it goes. So it is with every one who is born of the Spirit (John 3:8).

 

The ancient apostles like Peter and Paul had to learn to overcome their Jewish prejudices, expand their horizon and go beyond the little world they knew. Consequently, Paul had said, "there will be tribulation and distress for every one who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek ........ For God shows no partiality" (Rom. 2:9 and also 11). Peter had to confess, "Truly I perceive that God shows no partiality, but in every nation any one who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him" (Acts 10: 34-35).

One scholar has stated, "The church cannot limit God’s saving presence or exhaust God’s saving grace." God has not left without any witness and has spoken in the past (Heb. 1:1; Acts 14:17). He/she is reconciling all people every where (II Cor. 5:18) and summing up all things in him (Eph. 1:10; Col. 1:20).

The Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, espouses the cause of the poor and the oppressed. It categorically stands for and speaks for and acts for liberation and justice. The story of the Exodus and Exile stand for it. Jesus and justice are intrinsically related. We cannot miss this basic thrust of the Bible as a whole.

All this means that Christians cannot continue to entertain the idea of "manifest destiny" or suffer from teacher complex or crusading mentality. They must learn to be liberated from "Latin captivity" and "mission-compound". There are sufficient religious sources and resources to counter and challenge religious communalism.

Plurality and poverty are the basic features of the Indian reality - one very positive and the other very negative. This means that we have to cooperate to promote to promote actively rich plurality and diversity. We have to go beyond co-existence to pro-existence of all religions in India, minor or major. We also have to cooperate to eliminate wretched poverty of our people. For this we have to uphold love and justice. In and through this effort we have to discover or recover our common humanity. Peace must be based on promoting plurality and eliminating poverty. That must be the goal and vision of all religions worth the salt.

Prof. Serampore College

Serampore

West Bengal, India.