On the finish of March this yr, I travelled to London to talk at a convention, ‘Voices of Religion’, held on the Barbican Centre. The operate was organized by the badshah of such occasions, Sanjoy Roy of Teamwork Arts, in collaboration with the Kamini and Vindi Banga Household Belief. There have been distinguished audio system on Christianity, Islam, Sufism, Buddhism and, in fact, Hinduism. Navtej Sarna, diplomat and writer, spoke on the Sikh Gurus, from Nanak to Gobind; Reza Aslan, Iranian-American scholar, and the writer of the best-selling ebook, Zealot: The Life and Instances of Jesus of Nazareth, was at his eloquent finest on the delivery of Christianity; Shaunak Rishi Das, who has opened a centre on the research of Hinduism at Oxford, spoke on the Bhagwata Purana; Barnaby Rogerson, who has written a biography of Prophet Mohammad, held the viewers in thrall on Islam.
My particular topic was Advaita philosophy, particularly as expounded by Adi Shankaracharya. The convention was enlivened by a scintillating efficiency by violin maestro, Padma Vibhushan L. Subramaniam. I additionally tremendously loved a session on Kabir, the place two students who’ve completed pioneering analysis on the iconoclastic saint, Professors Purushottam Agarwal, and Linda Hess of Berkeley College in California, have been in dialog with Sanjoy Roy. Swaransh Mishra, the gifted younger son of classical music legend, the late Rajan Mishra, sang nirguna bhajans as a part of the session.
Kamini and her husband, Vindi Banga, are discerning and charming patrons. Kamini mentioned that she acquired the concept of organising Voices of Religion after listening to me converse on Hinduism in a podcast for Sanjoy Roy through the Covid interval. Vindi and Kamini settled in England some 25 years in the past. They’d met on the prestigious Indian Institute of Administration at Ahmedabad, the place each have been college students, and later married. Vindi (Manvinder) has had a meteoric profession within the company sector, the place he turned head of Unilever India on the age of 45, after which moved to larger duties within the agency in London, the place he sits on the Board of a number of corporations, and can also be the Chair of UK Authorities Investments. His youthful brother, Ajay Banga, is the president of the World Financial institution. Kamini has over the past three a long time helped construct world manufacturers worldwide, together with icons like Coca Cola, Kellogg, HSBC and BMW. She can also be the president of the IIM Ahmedabad chapter in London, and runs the household belief, with a deep dedication to the humanities and tradition.
Dialogue between religions is essential. There’s a lot ignorance in individuals not solely about their very own religion but additionally that of others. This ignorance turns into the nursery to harbour prejudices, suspicions and hate. At one time, the inter-faith motion had rather more resonance, however at this time you hardly see such occasions going down. The limitations between faiths have hardened; partitions dividing beliefs have grow to be impermeable; and other people are inclined to withdraw into the simulated consolation of their very own non secular eco-systems reasonably than retain even a curiosity—go away alone respect—for different faiths.
Equally, we appear to stay in a world the place the follow of faith has grow to be major, and the philosophy animating it, or the symbolisms and meanings behind its ceremonials, are more and more being marginalised. This to my thoughts is an unlucky growth for 2 causes. Firstly, it reduces faith to mechanical ritual, and secondly, it robs faith of the grandeur of religious perception. Faith divorced from spirituality typically results in bigotry, whereby followers are prepared to provide their life or take that of one other merely to defend a specific ritual, ceremony or pageant. Devotees are bereft of the deeper significance of faith itself, which is to construct bridges of peace, concord, solace and pleasure with oneself, and with these of different religions. Furthermore, blind followers are simple cannon-fodder for harmful non secular evangelists whose ecumenical energy is determined by the creation of distrust between totally different religions. It’s much more harmful when myopic politicians use non secular divides to additional short-term political dividends.
I personally imagine—and historical past is witness to this—that faith divides and spirituality unites. Even the place spirituality is worried, there could be variations between totally different faiths. However what spirituality does is to view these variations as point-counterpoint within the grander symphony that guides our steps in direction of the identical purpose. Philosophy elevates this frequent pursuit to an excellent larger airplane. Right here the variations grow to be insignificant. Solely the seek for the Final stays, wherein all doable acrimony is subsumed, for because the Mahavakya—nice sentence—of the Rig Veda says: “Ekam satya bipraha bahudha vadanthi: The reality is one, clever individuals name it by totally different names.”
Though I’ve been posted in London because the Director of The Nehru Centre, I used to be visiting the town after a protracted hiatus. I have to say that I witnessed a noticeable deterioration in its well-being. Heathrow Airport was darkish and dim, and the immigration clearance strains stretched a mile with most counters unmanned. The town appeared to have misplaced its famed gaiety, and the affect of financial decline was seen.
