At the end of March this year, I travelled to London to speak at a conference, ‘Voices of Faith’, held at the Barbican Centre. The function was organized by the badshah of such events, Sanjoy Roy of Teamwork Arts, in collaboration with the Kamini and Vindi Banga Family Trust. There were distinguished speakers on Christianity, Islam, Sufism, Buddhism and, of course, Hinduism. Navtej Sarna, diplomat and author, spoke on the Sikh Gurus, from Nanak to Gobind; Reza Aslan, Iranian-American scholar, and the author of the best-selling book, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, was at his eloquent best on the birth of Christianity; Shaunak Rishi Das, who has opened a centre on the study of Hinduism at Oxford, spoke on the Bhagwata Purana; Barnaby Rogerson, who has written a biography of Prophet Mohammad, held the audience in thrall on Islam.
My specific subject was Advaita philosophy, especially as expounded by Adi Shankaracharya. The conference was enlivened by a scintillating performance by violin maestro, Padma Vibhushan L. Subramaniam. I also greatly enjoyed a session on Kabir, where two scholars who have done pioneering research on the iconoclastic saint, Professors Purushottam Agarwal, and Linda Hess of Berkeley University in California, were in conversation with Sanjoy Roy. Swaransh Mishra, the talented young son of classical music legend, the late Rajan Mishra, sang nirguna bhajans as part of the session.
Kamini and her husband, Vindi Banga, are discerning and charming patrons. Kamini said that she got the idea of organising Voices of Faith after hearing me speak on Hinduism in a podcast for Sanjoy Roy during the Covid period. Vindi and Kamini settled in England some 25 years ago. They had met at the prestigious Indian Institute of Management at Ahmedabad, where both were students, and later married. Vindi (Manvinder) has had a meteoric career in the corporate sector, where he became head of Unilever India at the age of 45, and then moved to higher responsibilities in the firm in London, where he sits on the Board of several companies, and is also the Chair of UK Government Investments. His younger brother, Ajay Banga, is the president of the World Bank. Kamini has over the last three decades helped build global brands worldwide, including icons like Coca Cola, Kellogg, HSBC and BMW. She is also the president of the IIM Ahmedabad chapter in London, and runs the family trust, with a deep commitment to the arts and culture.
Dialogue between religions is important. There is so much ignorance in people not only about their own faith but also that of others. This ignorance becomes the nursery to harbour prejudices, suspicions and hate. At one time, the inter-faith movement had much more resonance, but today you hardly see such events taking place. The barriers between faiths have hardened; walls dividing beliefs have become impermeable; and people tend to withdraw into the simulated comfort of their own religious eco-systems rather than retain even a curiosity—leave alone respect—for other faiths.
Equally, we seem to live in a world where the practice of religion has become primary, and the philosophy animating it, or the symbolisms and meanings behind its ceremonials, are increasingly being marginalised. This to my mind is an unfortunate development for two reasons. Firstly, it reduces religion to mechanical ritual, and secondly, it robs religion of the grandeur of spiritual insight. Religion divorced from spirituality often leads to bigotry, wherein followers are willing to give their life or take that of another merely to defend a particular ritual, ceremony or festival. Devotees are bereft of the deeper significance of religion itself, which is to build bridges of peace, harmony, solace and joy with oneself, and with those of other religions. Moreover, blind followers are easy cannon-fodder for dangerous religious evangelists whose ecumenical power depends on the creation of mistrust between different religions. It is even more dangerous when myopic politicians use religious divides to further short-term political dividends.
I personally believe—and history is witness to this—that religion divides and spirituality unites. Even where spirituality is concerned, there can be differences between different faiths. But what spirituality does is to view these differences as point-counterpoint in the grander symphony that guides our steps towards the same goal. Philosophy elevates this common pursuit to an even higher plane. Here the differences become insignificant. Only the search for the Ultimate remains, in which all possible acrimony is subsumed, for as the Mahavakya—great sentence—of the Rig Veda says: “Ekam satya bipraha bahudha vadanthi: The truth is one, wise people call it by different names.”
Although I have been posted in London as the Director of The Nehru Centre, I was visiting the city after a long hiatus. I must say that I witnessed a noticeable deterioration in its well-being. Heathrow Airport was dark and dim, and the immigration clearance lines stretched a mile with most counters unmanned. The city seemed to have lost its famed gaiety, and the impact of economic decline was visible.
