MOKOKCHUNG, NOVEMBER 19: Rev. Dr. Jayakumar Ramachandran, founder of Academy for Church Planting & Leadership and General Secretary & Director of Indian Institute of Inter-Cultural Society, on Saturday said religious intolerance is significantly increasing in the contemporary India as never before despite the land having given birth to four religions and enshrined both secularism and freedom of speech in its Constitution.
He said this while presenting paper on “Better way forward for peacemaking and prevailing in the context of multi-religious context in India: a missiological perspective,” on the second day of the national seminar at Clark Theological College (CTC), Aolijen, Mokokchung.
Rev. Dr. Ramachandran maintained that harmony in the country was devastated by various issues significantly by “conflicts between religions” thereby putting up a challenge for people of diverse religions for peace to prevail. In this regard, he opined that interfaith dialogues can build effective bridges of cooperation between religious and philosophical traditions when religion is fuelling communal violence and a repulsive atmosphere.
“A need for a strategically designed approach to peacemaking and its careful implementation are inevitable and such broad efforts will certainly be a sustainable solution,” he asserted.
Rev. Dr. Ramachandran also stated that dialogue does not necessarily lead to dilution of faiths, values, and practices of any religion, adding, dialogue should not be limited to “table discussions.”
He also maintained that interfaith dialogues should not intend to take away or brush aside respective and distinct faiths and practices of other religions nor should it aim at coming to a common and syncretized belief. It rather it should seek to accomplish mutual recognition and understanding of “other” faiths and beliefs to build good relationships between religious schools, as people are expected to live in harmony in any given community of a region.
He also observed that religion has a key role in the power play of Indian politics. He pointed out that religious beliefs and political power are being intentionally interwoven by fanatic communities adding religions are used for enhancing vote banks by exploiting religious sentiments for political gains.
In this connection, he said when the Constitutional provision of secularism and religious freedom are loosely worded, legislation and judiciary must play the key roles in interpreting them.
The national seminar on ‘Peacemaking and Dialogue: Religious approaches in the quest for an interfaith relation,’ was organised by the Clark Centre for Peace Research at CTC on November 18 and 19.
The seminar was attended by leaders and theologians from Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Christian and Catholic denominations. Hosts of resource persons from all over the nation also presented papers on the issue of ‘Interfaith relation and cooperation’ which was deliberated by a group of panelist representing different denominations.
