 | |
| Formation | 2001 |
|---|---|
| Location | |
| Coordinates | 13°00′08″N77°37′26″E / 13.002232°N 77.623899°E Coordinates: 13°00′08″N77°37′26″E / 13.002232°N 77.623899°E |
Region served | India |
Chairman & Coordinator | P.N. Benjamin |
| Website | birdindia |
The Bangalore Initiative for Religious Dialogue (BIRD) is an organisation based in Bangalore, India that promotes dialog between people of different faiths, attempting to defuse tensions between religious communities such as Hindus, Christians and Muslims. [1]
BIRD was established in 2001. The founder, trustee, chairman and coordinator is P.N. Benjamin. [2] Another founding member was Fr. Mathew Chandrankunnel, a professor of Philosophy of Science and Registrar and Director of the Centre for the Study of world Religions at the Dharmaram Vidya Kshetram, Bangalore. [3] BIRD is supported entirely through donations from well-wishers. [4] These are not income tax exempt. [5]
The BIRD coordinator P.M. Benjamin is often quoted as an opponent of activism among Christians. After an attack on a Mysore church in February 2002 a team from BIRD and from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh visited to ascertain what had happened. The BIRD team was led by P.N. Benjamin, who called for calm among Christians, saying "the need of the hour is to unitedly follow Christ's prayer amidst his agony on the cross — forgive them for they know not what they do ... Christians must learn to talk to their enemies for overcoming their sense of alienation and insecurity and halt the march of misunderstanding between communities". [6]
P. N. Benjamin was cited in the 2003 report A Factual Response to the Hate Attack on the India Development and Relief Fund (IDRF) by Ramesh Nagaraj Rao, Narayanan Komerath and others. According to this report, Benjamin had said that Catholic and Protestant organisations had received far more money from abroad than Hindu and Muslim organisations combined, "especially the fundamentalist, and born-again Christian organisations that spread hatred against Hinduism ... Hindu-baiters are making a mountain out of a molehill while they themselves thrive under the shade of foreign funds". He was also quoted as saying "the biased Indian English media has always suppressed facts and encouraged the enemies of the country who received millions of foreign funds to tarnish the nation’s image everywhere by giving wide publicity to the so-called Global Council of Indian Christians and other vested interests. [7]
In September 2005 the website "christianaggression.org" published an article titled "When Intolerance Begets the Loss of Reason" that apparently had been published in the Vijay Times on 9 September 2005, written by P. N. Benjamin. John Dayal, president of the All India Catholic Union and a member of the National Integration Council, had accused Hindu political organisations of atrocities such as raping nuns and murdering priests. The author said that Dayal "opens his mouth and wields his pen only to spew venom on the Hindu community". He said that most attacks on Christians were due to aggressive evangelising. [8] In February 2012 P.N. Benjamin dismissed claims that the 2008 attacks on Christians in southern Karnataka numbered over a thousand. He said "It is just an exaggeration. I feel there have been a handful of attacks, which were instigated by some fringe Christian groups". He said these groups received funding from American Pentacostal churches. [9]
A group of Indian Christians issued a letter on 1 January 2007 to various world leaders entitled A Campaign Declaration: Bangalore Initiative for Religious Dialogue (BIRD). In it they asserted that the 1977 ruling by India's Supreme Court that a citizen had the right to "profess, practice and propagate" ones religion does not include the right to convert another. [10] The group called for a change to Article 18 the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to prohibit conversion through material incentives, coercion, threats or intimidation. However, the BIRD members affirmed the Great Commission that "unequivocally calls us to witness to Christ in a pluralistic setting". [11]
The BIRD runs inter-faith seminars and discussion sessions, and arranges annual lectures in memory of the theologian Stanley Jedidiah Samartha. [1] Dr. Samartha once called himself a Hindu by culture, Christian by faith, Indian by citizenship and ecumenical by choice. [12] Speakers at these lectures have included: [4] [13]
On 7 October 2010 Sir Mark Tully, former chief of BBC India, spoke on How certain should we be? The problem of religious pluralism to an audience of over 350. Sir Mark, who had spent over thirty years in India, spoke of his experiences and of the fact that India had historically been home to all the world's major religions. He said that had taught him that there are many ways to God. [14] The American Hindu author David Frawley delivered the tenth Dr Stanley Samartha Memorial lecture in March 2012, speaking on "Pluralism and Universalism in Hinduism". [15]
Religious pluralism is an attitude or policy regarding the diversity of religious belief systems co-existing in society. It can indicate one or more of the following:
Sita Ram Goel was an Indian religious and political activist, writer, historian and publisher in the late twentieth century. He had Marxist leanings during the 1940s, but later became an outspoken anti-communist and also wrote extensively on the damage to Indian culture and heritage wrought by expansionist Islam and missionary activities of Christianity. In his later career he emerged as a commentator on Indian politics, and adhered to Hindu nationalism.
Interfaith dialogue refers to cooperative, constructive, and positive interaction between people of different religious traditions and/or spiritual or humanistic beliefs, at both the individual and institutional levels. It is distinct from syncretism or alternative religion, in that dialogue often involves promoting understanding between different religions or beliefs to increase acceptance of others, rather than to synthesize new beliefs.
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John Dayal is an Indian human rights and Christian political activist. He is a member of the National Integration Council (NIC) of India, Secretary-General of the All India Christian Council and a past president of the All India Catholic Union. He has been outspoken in opposition to communal polarisation, bigotry and the spread of hatred between religious communities.
Rajiv Malhotra is an Indian-American Hindu activist, author and founder of Infinity Foundation, which focuses on Indic studies, and also funds projects such as Columbia University's project to translate the Tibetan Buddhist Tengyur. His writings have led to verbal and physical attacks on western scholars and their institutions.
Stanley Jedidiah Samartha was an Indian theologian and a participant in inter-religious dialogue.
Jeffery D. Long is a religious studies scholar who works on the religions and philosophies of India, particularly Hinduism and Jainism. He is a professor of religion and Asian studies at Elizabethtown College.
The Ekal Abhiyan is a non-profit organization involved in education and village development in rural areas and tribal villages of India and Nepal. It is the largest grassroots, non-government education initiative in India with presence in more than 102753 villages providing free education to more than 2786847 children, out of which 1392674 are girls. As the name suggests, the model of operation of the Foundation is a single-teacher based school, with the provision of "Ek Shikshak, Ek Vidyalaya" that means "one teacher for every school." The individual schools, known as an Ekal Vidyalaya, have local teachers who teach in regional language by using different models such as story-telling, folk acts, and folk songs. The schools also impart moral education, health care education and organic farming techniques. Pratap Chandra Sarangi, a union minister of India, was the early pioneer of Ekal Vidyalaya in the 1980s in the interior areas of Odisha.
The Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) is an Indian right-wing Hindu organization based on Hindu nationalism. The VHP was founded in 1964 by M. S. Golwalkar and S. S. Apte in collaboration with Swami Chinmayananda. Its stated objective is "to organise, consolidate the Hindu society and to serve and protect the Hindu Dharma". It was established to construct and renovate Hindu temples, and deal with matters of cow slaughter and religious conversion.
The All India Catholic Union (AICU) represents almost 16 million Catholics in India: followers of the Latin Rite, the Syro-Malabar Catholics and the Syro-Malankara Catholics. It has 120 diocese and district units. The AICU was established in 1930.
Sabrang Communications is an organization founded in 1993 that publishes the monthly Communalism Combat magazine and that operates KHOJ, a secular education program, in schools in Mumbai, India. Communalism Combat is edited by Javed Anand and Teesta Setalvad. The Khoj programs try to help children to get past identity labels.
Narayanan Menon Komerath is an Indian-born professor of Aerospace Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the United States. He has written numerous articles and books. He is known for his views on ways to build structures in space from asteroid debris, which could be used for a space-based economy, and for his research into microwave power transmission in space.
Prof. Dr. Mathew Chandrankunnel CMI is a professor of philosophy of science at Dharmaram Vidya Kshetram and Christ University, both in Bangalore, India. He is the author of several books including "Philosophy of Quantum mechanics" and "Ascent to Truth: The Physics, philosophy and Religion of Galileo Galilei". He is a scientist, philosopher and theologian.
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Paul David Devanandan(1901–1962), spelt also as P.D. Devanandan or Paul D. Devanandan, was an Indian Protestant theologian, ecumenist, and one of the notable pioneers in inter-religious dialogues in India.
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