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Swami Agnivesh is known for his campaigns against bonded labour, alcoholism and female foeticide. He is also the President of the World Council of Arya Samaj

What does spirituality mean to you?
It is about relating to the Creator through the Creation. It is a relationship.
It also implies as a human being to maximize my ananda, happiness. How do I do this? With the happiness of people and creatures all around me. So spirituality is a way of life, and a universal one. In that sense it is the opposite of religions, which are divisive, territorial, related to a book, or a prophet or rituals. Ideally spirituality should have no rituals and be completely universal. Diversity ought to be celebrated, instead of being feared and or considered to be a threat. Because every particle of the universe is both the messenger and the message.

A couple of years ago, I was invited by the government of Iran to a conference in Isfahan, with representatives of a number of religions. The furore over the Danish cartoons was then at its peak. There were riots among Muslims all over the world. When asked to share my views, I asked: ‘who do you hold greater, Allah or Muhammad?’ Spontaneously the Muslim clerics said, of course, Allah; Muhammad was only the Messenger. So I pursued: “if someone caricatures Muhammad all the Muslims get so agitated, but if Allah is defiled or caricatured, I haven’t seen anybody demonstrate and get agitated!” There was a stunned silence in the audience. “Air, water, earth are all created by Allah, by God. They are being polluted every single day which means Allah’s creations are being defiled. But I have never seen any devotees of God getting agitated or doing something about it.” They were completely taken aback.

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