Dear Editor,
We must not forget what happened in Kashmir 119 years ago. It was Swami Vivekananda who had worshipped a poor Kashmiri Muslim boatman’s daughter as Goddess Durga on Mahasaptami day during Durga Puja when he was in Kashmir in 1898. Also, he knelt down to touch her feet! With this singular act he defied divisions of religion, race, caste, creed, class, occupation, gender and generation to hoist the flag of universal humanhood. Actually, Swami Vivekananda did a Sri Ramkrishna who himself practiced Islam, Christianity and other religions to live his words ~ “many opinions, many paths”. Oceans of human blood could have been saved had we realised their teachings. Indeed, our dogma and egoism never let us realise it. As Sri Aurobindo had once said, “Each religion has helped mankind. Paganism increased in man the light of beauty, the largeness and height of his life, his aim at a manysided perfection; Christianity gave him some vision of divine love and charity; Buddhism has shown him a noble way to be wiser, gentler, purer, Judaism and Islam how to be religiously faithful in action and zealously devoted to God; Hinduism has opened to him the largest and profoundest spiritual possibilities. A great thing would be done if all these God-visions could embrace and cast themselves into each other; but intellectual dogma and cult egoism stand in the way.” Thus, we need more and more discourses on the teachings of those great souls for taking us, in the words of Tagore, to ~ “Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit.”
Sujit De,
Kalkata