March 11, 2006

Dr John Fernandes
Professor and head
Mangalore University's
Mangalore Diocesan Chair in Christianity
Mangalore                                                     (Via e-mail)

I was eagerly looking forward to meeting you in Mangalore. I have fond memories of my visits to Mangalore and Udupi during the last two years.

During this visit, we had planned to consolidate our cooperation to work towards justice and peace. The programmes arranged by you - an interreligious seminar on the topic 'Religions for Social Justice', the domestic workers' rally, meeting at the Mangalore University and others would have given me a good opportunity to outline our future cooperation. 'Religions for Social Justice' is a project close to my heart. I, together with leaders of various religions, had launched this movement some years ago, and I proposed it to the whole world at the Third Parliament of World Religions at Cape Town in December 1999.

I am present in spirit with you at the symposium and wish you fruitful deliberations.

Kindly offer my regretful apologies to the wonderful people who work with you in the service of social justice. It was my sincere and earnest desire to be with you on this occasion. But, given the unfortunate twist of events in Varanasi and the likely horrendous consequences for the health and wholeness of our country, I am constrained to head there.

A group of multi-faith religious leaders, under the banner of 'Religions for Social Justice' is also accompanying me to Varanasi. It may seem paradoxical but it is spiritually very true that the best way for me to be with you in your present enterprise is not by coming there but by going to Varanasi.

What was under attack in the Sankat Mochan temple was not just a religion. It is all that you and I, indeed all well-meaning and spiritually-sensitive people, hold dear and non-negotiable. Those who perpetrate outrages of this kind, destroying innocent lives without any qualms to make their points, if they have any, have no faith or humanity. And it is a scary thought that very likely they have lost their human feelings asn sensitivities on account of their religious fervour. We do not know, but it could well be true.

Religion means different things to different people. And it is high time we came together to arrive at a common and sensible understanding of what religion should mean and should not. Also, we need to ensure that the best in religion - its spiritual light, expressed through values - and not the worst in it that is brought into the public place. To me it is clear that religion is valuable only to the extent that through it we are willing to hear the agony of God about a world that is convulsed with injustice of every kind.

Justice is the foremost agenda of God. No religiosity that remains deaf to the cry for justice can pretend to be godly. This is why sense an instinctive spiritual kinship with you and what you stand for.

Your relentless struggle to make justice available to the powerless and the poor is more spiritual than a thousand rituals that go on in various places of worship. It is a great mistake to confine worship to temples, churches and mosques. God must be acknowledged and honoured everywhere. God is in solidarity with the oppressed and the marginalized.

So, as you led the domestic workers in their struggle for justice and dignity I see you in an act of worship. And I salute that act of true worship with pride and joy. If religions do not unite in the pursuit of social justice, they will aid and abet the perpretrators of social injustice.

It is an embarrassing fact of history that the keepers and custodians of religions have, in the past, stood with oppressors more frequently than with the oppressed. The spiritual light hidden in the religions cannot be expressed unless we unite, crossing religious barriers, to eradicate social evils like the caste system, gender exploitation, economic inequalities, communal madness.

Kindly convey my utmost solidarity with everyone who participates in the march being organized on March 12, 2006. I look forward to a future occasion to join you in this holy struggle. 'Ethical Values in University Education' would have been the topic of our meeting at the University. I regret that we cannot meet this time. Perhaps we can do it some time later.

Let us put our minds hearts together and join hands in building up a Nation where justice, peace and integrity of creation flourish.

Swami Agnivesh
President
World Council of Arya Samaj
New Delhi