PEACE IN PLURAL SOCIETIES — Reflections

and the same. One such person was the late Dr. Bhagwan Das (1869– 1958). After a detailed study of all the major religions, he wrote a book, running into almost 1000 pages, titled Essential Unity of All Religions. He claimed that all religions teach the same things and so are one and the same. But to seek to prove that all religions are one by extracting portions from different scriptures is like culling out portions from the Constitutions of different countries and publishing them together in a single book and then claiming that all the Constitutions of the world are the same and have the same rules and clauses and provisions! This sort of imaginary universal Constitution may greatly please the author of such a compendium, but it will not be acceptable to even a single country. The same holds true in the case of those who have compiled books like Dr. Bhagwan Das’ about religion. Books of this sort may give their compilers great pleasure, but they cannot be acceptable to the followers of different religions. The fact is that just as there is diversity in everything else in the world, so also are there differences between one religion and another. A detailed study of this issue will show that the claim that all religions are one does not correspond to reality. In actual fact, the different religions differ so greatly from each other that it is impossible to practically prove them to be one. For instance, one religion says that God is one. Another religion talks of two gods. A third religion says there are three gods. Yet another religion claims that there are 33 or 330 million gods. Some religions insist that the number of gods is simply beyond counting. In such circumstances, to consider the teachings of all the religions as one and the same is simply wishful thinking that has no basis in logic and reality. And then, even if, by some means or the other, it could be argued that the scriptures of the different religions are indeed the same, the problem of differences will still remain unresolved because there are multiple and conflicting interpretations of each of these scriptures, as a result of which each religion is further divided into numerous sects. The fact is that such difference or diversity is not just a religious