Swami Jayendra Saraswati, the Shankaracharya of Kanchi Mutt, led the Hindu delegation, which included Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, founder of the Art of Living movement; Swami Chidananda Saraswati of Parmarth Niketan, Rishikesh; Rajayogini Dadi Janki of Brahmakumaris; Swami Nikhileshwaranandaji and Swami Vigishanandji, two senior monks from Ramakrishna Mission; Sri Venkatachariar Chaturvedi Swami of Sri Ramanuja Mission Trust and Mahamandaleshwar Swami Vishveshwaranand Giri Maharaj of Sanyas Ashram, Hardwar. Catholic participants included Pedro Lopez Quintana, the Vatican’s ambassador in India; Archbishop Felix Machado of Nashik; Bishop Thomas Dabre of Pune and Bishop Raphy Manjaly of Varanasi.

I was surprised to be invited to participate in the event, which was hosted by the Archbishop of Mumbai, Cardinal Oswald Gracias, a genuine bridge-builder between the two communities. My only qualification, perhaps, was that I had participated in a global inter-faith meet on religious conversion in Italy in 2006, which was jointly organised by the Vatican and its Protestant counterpart, the Geneva-based World Council of Churches. It was the first ever inter-faith dialogue, organised by the two large Christian establishments, focused exclusively on the thorny issue of religious conversion. The joint statement adopted at the end of that meet has become a landmark document. Even the BJP’s manifesto for the recent parliamentary elections carried an appreciative endorsement of it, and called for the “setting up of a permanent inter-faith consultative mechanism to promote harmony and trust between communities”.

The good part of the Mumbai meet was that, even though the issue of conversion dominated it, the deliberations were marked by candour as well as cordiality. The Hindu leaders unequivocally condemned anti-Christian violence. Catholic participants were equally unequivocal in affirming that forced conversion, and conversion with allurements of any kind, is invalid and rejected. They stated that all faiths were worthy of equal respect. This is an affirmation that Hindu leaders have been waiting to hear for a long time, since many Christian and Muslim scholars make a thoroughly untenable distinction between “People of the Book” (Jews, Christians and Muslims) and those outside the “Book”. The long history of religious conversion in India has shown how Hinduism was, and still is in many places, presented as a “pagan” and “false” religion, whose adherents could attain salvation only by abandoning “falsehood” and embracing the sole “True Path”.

... contd.