HYDERABAD, INDIA, January 21, 2008: (HPI Note: This is a summary of an opinion piece written by Swami Dayananda Saraswati.) Dr Hans Ucko is the Head of the Committee on Inter-religious Dialogue and Cooperation of the World Council of Churches. Dr Ucko, as I know him, is an upright, outspoken gentleman. He made this seemingly innocuous, but profoundly theological, statement: “I believe it is important for us to bear witness to Christ.” Here is the clue to the potential for disharmony. The vast majority of Christian believers are firmly convinced that unless a person “accepts Christ as his saviour,” he is, at the very least, denied entry to Heaven, or possibly go to Hell — forever. Given this theological compulsion, a serious Christian has no option except to “save” the person from such a fate.
Obviously the theological belief that no faith other than Christianity can guarantee salvation, or that other faiths can only lead to Hell, cannot amount to honouring non-Christian religions. Can a Christian, who believes this, view a non-Christian religion as anything but inferior or, as is often the case, dangerous?
Hindus stand as an example of how to protect other faiths, not denigrate them. When the persecuted Zoroastrians, the Parsis, came here as refugees driven from Persia, they were received and helped to settle in India. Identical was the case with the Jews. The Hindus protected the early Christians and Muslims too. Our vision of God compels us to do that. We honor various forms of worship.
Conflict resolution demands that the conflict-prone faiths and civilisations understand the need to the accept others’ view of God. Here is where the world, as two of the greatest historians Will Durant and Arnold Toynhee had said, has to look to the Hindu civilisation for relief from conflicts. Toynbee prophesied that “a chapter which had a Western beginning will have to have an Indian ending if it is not to end in self-destruction of the human race. At this supremely dangerous moment in human history, the only way of salvation is the ancient Hindu way. Here, we have the attitude and spirit that can make it possible for the human race to grow together into a single family”.