Religion not only unites people but divides them as well. It triggers and provokes conflict among the people. This being the case, an understanding and knowledge of different religions alone can be the key to peace and harmony among the people of different faiths.

Amity across denominations was the purpose and objective of an inter-religious pilgrimage organised in the City recently. Close to 30 students from different colleges in the City were taken on a tour to the different religious places in the City.

Organised by the YMCA Task Group on Secularism, India Coexistence Initiative and Bangalore Initiative for Religious Dialogue, the students visited a Buddhist vihara, a Hindu temple, a Catholic church, a gurudwara, a masjid, a Protestant cathedral, a Parsi fire temple and a Jain basadi during the day-long pilgrimage.

“Such pilgrimages enhance the understanding about what people of other religions do and practice. One is able to peep into another persons’s faith experience. Such tours remind one to be gentle and respectful to the diverse expressions with sensitivity and sensibility,” says Rev Dr Thomas Ninan, Director, India Coexistence Initiative, who took the students on the tour.

For many, religion might be a uniting factor but today’s reality is that it is the root cause of many a conflict ending in bloodshed.

“The defences need to be constructed in the minds of men and women. Tours like this helps build peace within each individual, social peace within society and ecological peace within the world,” reasons Rev
Ninan.

The team that organised the pilgrimage believes that only the young can be channels of peace in turbulent times. Only they can act as intermediaries of faith and initiate a dialogue between conflicting communities.

“Older people pick up the prejudices quickly and refuse to give it up, the young pick up the links that are vital for building up the social fabric of the country,” Rev Ninan believes. 

J Suhas, senior secretary of the YMCA thinks the tour was an eye-opener. The highlights of the tour were the Parsi fire temple, the Lungar and Sangantan at the Sikh Gurudwara and the Muslim mosque for the women.

“Visits like these are educative and banishes hatred and builds love for other religions among the young. We visited places where the rich and the poor, the low and the high rub shoulders and ate from the same plate. This was a revelation,” Suhas says.

An understanding of the intricacies of different religious faiths helps widen one’s horizon. Every student was handed over a booklet on the symbols of all religions and a historical map of the origins of these religions that served as a map of the pilgrimage.

The youths who undertook the tour, said that the pilgrimage helped banish several misconceptions and misinterpretations they had about the other religions.

Syeda Akhira Mujassam, a II PUC student at Al-Ameen College says: “I perfected my understanding of secularism and how people of other faiths think, behave and carry out their religious beliefs. She adds, “it’s true when people say God is one and God lives within every human being and not in concrete structures.”

Echoing Syeda’s view is an 18-year-old second PUC student of Sri Bhagawan Mahaveer Jain College, Lakshith Jain.

Jain thinks that such pilgrimages must be held everyday. “I have friends of different faiths. It helps reconstruct and stimulate peace within our mind. It also encourages you to maintain friendly relations with people of other faiths,” he says.

Robin, who works with the YMCA in Mumbai had come down for a brief training session. He thinks this tour will help him converse better without any inhibition with people of other faiths.