All faith traditions have their mystical side and they are to be respected. The organisational side of many religions, though, pose the proselytising problem and these are to be resisted. Hence, wholesale denunciation of a religion is not only uncalled for but positively baneful for human development as these other mystical traditions offer significant insights into the reality that lies beyond and is the aspiration of all who thirst for God, and they do so from perspectives peculiar to them, their cultural locations and situations unique to them and their historical development. Knowledge coming from anywhere must be revered for all are the conduits of the same divine reality that transmits the idea through whatsoever cover, coarse or refined. But the message must be allowed to thrive so long as it does not attempt to extinguish other hopes of similar survival. In such harmonious co-existence of faiths and traditions will prosper the future world culture and this is the idea that is current in the West today as multiculturalism in its philosophical and practical sense both.
Written by Sugata Bose
No comments:
Post a Comment