Page 50 - Acharya Vinoba Bhave in 21st Century ISBN

21oha “krkCnh esa vkpk;Z fouksck Hkkos dh izklafxdrk

‘All revolutions are spiritual at the source. All my activities have the sole purpose of achieving a union
of hearts.’

Thus, Vinoba boldly declared that ‘the days of Parochial Religion are over. The World will be
a family. Now we are in the era where service to our fellow humans should be considered as service to

God.’ By this declaration, what he meant was that the institutionalized religions with their stress upon
external practices should be replaced by service to humanity as means to achieve the spiritual goal. The

sectarian approach to religion is likely to divide people and create hatred for each other. The dogmatic
adherence to one’s own religion may lead to dislike and disrespect towards other religions.

Equality of all Religions

As against separating religions on external and superficial grounds, Vinoba tried to stress upon
the equality of all religions. He clearly pointed out four essential requirements to be fulfilled by a truly

religious person irrespective of the differences that prevail between different religions. These are as
follows:

1. Commitment to one’s own religion.
2. Respect for other religions

3. Reform one’s own religion, without which human development shall not happen, and
4. Opposition to irreligion.

Each of these four points is equally important to bring about harmony in the society and at the
same time to preserve religious identity of everybody which is absolutely essential in the cosmopolitan,

multicultural society that we are living in today. Most of the conflicts that are taking place in different
parts of the world today are caused by the threat to loosen one’s identity as a result of the dominance

of majority or powerful over the minority or the weaker section of the society. It is the need of the hour
to make the minority or the weaker section to feel secured and this can be done only by changing the

approach of the majority or the powerful towards the minority or the weaker.
Vinoba has very rightly suggested that in order to have genuine respect for other religions, it is

essential to have respect and commitment for one’s own religion. Just as an individual must first have
self-respect in order to respect others, an individual must be staunchly committed to one’s own religion

so that he /she can appreciate other religions. At the same time, having high view of one’s own religion
should not result in superiority complex as a result of which one may start treating other religions as

inferior. Rather, as per Vinoba’s suggestion, one must make attempts to learn and understand other
religions and try to draw important points from all religions. This kind of assimilation will prove to be

useful not only to bring about harmony and amicability among the people from different religions but
will also enrich one’s own religion.

50