INTERFAITH SPEECH

I AM grateful to the organizers of this meeting for giving me this opportunity to participate in this important religious gathering and to share my views with this learned audience. The theme of this meeting is ‘Togetherness’. It is indeed a very beautiful theme. I would like to begin with an incident very relevant to the present theme. Once I visited Rishikesh. My host was Swami Chidanandji. He had arranged for my stay in a room on the upper floor of his Ashram. It was situated on the bank of the river Ganges. At night I went out of my room on to the balcony. It was facing the Ganges. In this calm and quiet atmosphere, there were various scenes of nature all around me—river, trees, mountains, moon, stars, etc. It was a world full of differences. But at the same time, there was complete harmony between the diverse parts of this world. It was a perfect picture of what we may call unity in diversity. I could only hear the sound of the continuous flowing of the water in the Ganges. It was like a sweet song of nature. I felt as if the Ganges was conveying a message on behalf of the whole world around it. When I paid heed to the sound of the Ganges water, I felt that it was conveying this universal message: Blessed are those who live together in peace and harmony. This unworded message of nature has been recorded in the Quran in these words: “Do they seek a religion other than the religion of God, when everything in the heavens and the earth has submitted to Him, willingly or unwillingly?” (3: 83) This means man is required to follow the same religion which has been established by God in the universe. In other words, living together with peace and harmony is the only religion for both man and the universe. INTERFAITH SPEECH PERSONAL EXPERIENCES Man is required to follow the same religion which has been established by God in the universe. Thus, living together with peace and harmony is the only religion for both man and the universe. This is a paper presented by Maulana Wahiduddin Khan in an interfaith programme.