Need for a model where people follow religion only inside their homes

By Sandeep Pandey*
At the airports one sees a ‘Prayer Room.’ It doesn’t say which religion it belongs to. One could go in and pray according to one’s religious practice. This is the model which human society will have to adopt if we are to prevent internecine disputes over religious places in future.
Recently we witnessed a frenzy of court cases with petitioners claiming mosques and dargahs having being built upon temples. Had the Supreme Court not intervened and put a stop on the process there would have been no end to this process in which monuments like Taj Mahal would have followed religious places. But this is only a temporary relief. Right now the Places of Worship Act 1991 has come to rescue. But irrespective of what Mohan Bhagwat is saying about Ayodhya being a matter of faith and people should not go looking for a Shivling in every mosque, after all some people may be motivated by faith in other structures and by now we should have learned our lesson that Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh or Bharatiya Janata Party functionaries speak in different voices and RSS mouthpiece ‘Organiser’ has already come out with a statement that knowing the history of disputed sites is important for ‘civilisational justice,’ the BJP led union government is perfectly capable of doing away with the Places of Worship Act just as it made Article 370 of the Constitution related to Jammu and Kashmir redundant or enacted the blatantly discriminatory Citizenship Amendment Act in complete violation of Article 14 of the Constitution. Then the floodgates will open once again.
Hence the only solution to this vexatious problem is to agree that people believing in God, if they concur that God is one, must come around to accepting all religious places as universal places of worship. This implies that all places of worship should allow followers of all religions to come in and perform their religious rites or worship according to the practice of their respective religion. In principle, everybody is praying that one God in their own manner under one roof. People will have to be just tolerant to others following different ways of worshiping. In fact, that would be a truly spiritual sight to see people worshiping in different ways in harmony with each other. After all, the objective of religion is to bring tranquility on earth where human society is in peace within and with the outer world.
However, slowly we must move towards a model in practice at the Maharogi Sewa Samiti, Anandwan in Warora, Maharashtra set up by the late Baba Amte, where there are no public religious places. Everybody is free to follow their religion inside their homes. After death everybody is buried under the earth, irrespective of their religion, and a tree is planted at their burial site. No tomb is allowed to be built.
Then the question is what would happen to the existing religious structures? All religious places would be converted into places from where welfare programmes would be run. Langars at Gurudwaras are an excellent example of a service being provided by a religious place. The beauty of the langars is that this service is open to all. It is not restricted to the followers of Sikhism. In fact, Sikhs go out of the way to provide the service of langars to all without discrimination based on religion, race, caste or gender, So, we saw Khalsa Aid set up langars in Bangladesh to cater to Rohingya refugees from Myanmar and langars were set up on Poland border for people fleeing Ukraine when Russia attacked it. There is no significant Sikh population in Bangladesh or Ukraine-Poland. The point is when it was required the langar service was pressed into action. The farmers movement on the Delhi borders sustained for 13 months because of the langars in which contributions were pouring in from villages of Punjab and Haryana. Families from villages has come and taken responsibility for running the kitchens of langars. This spirit of service is the essence of religion and followers of other religion need to learn from Sikhism. Hence, all places of worship must become places from where some human welfare work is performed. It could be a education programme, a health care programme, a women empowerment programme or simply a langar. As the essence of religion is service, there can be no better use of religious places than run human welfare programmes from their premises.
A Sarva Dharam Sadbhav Trust has been created in Ayodhya with the Mahant of a Ram-Janki temple, a Muslim activist, a Dalit scholar from Bihar, a Transgender and this writer, an atheist, as its trustees. This trust wishes to create such model religious places for future. A beginning has been made from Barabanki district in Uttar Pradesh. A temple has been renovated in Aseni village which displays on outside wall that people of all caste and religion are welcome to the temple and everybody is free to worship according to their method of worshiping. We hope more such places would come up soon. This is the only hope for a peaceful and friendly world.
---
*General Secretary, Socialist Party (India)

Comments

Lata Mangeshkar, a Dalit from Devdasi family, 'refused to sing a song' about Ambedkar

By Pramod Ranjan* An artist is known and respected for her art. But she is equally, or even more so known and respected for her social concerns. An artist's social concerns or in other words, her worldview, give a direction and purpose to her art. History remembers only such artists whose social concerns are deep, reasoned and of durable importance. Lata Mangeshkar (28 September 1929 – 6 February 2022) was a celebrated playback singer of the Hindi film industry. She was the uncrowned queen of Indian music for over seven decades. Her popularity was unmatched. Her songs were heard and admired not only in India but also in Pakistan, Bangladesh and many other South Asian countries. In this article, we will focus on her social concerns. Lata lived for 92 long years. Music ran in her blood. Her father also belonged to the world of music. Her two sisters, Asha Bhonsle and Usha Mangeshkar, are well-known singers. Lata might have been born in Indore but the blood of a famous Devdasi family...

The soundtrack of resistance: How 'Sada Sada Ya Nabi' is fueling the Iran war

By Syed Ali Mujtaba* The Persian track “ Sada Sada Ya Nabi ye ” by Hossein Sotoodeh has taken the world by storm. This viral media has cut across linguistic barriers to achieve cult status, reaching over 10 million views. The electrifying music and passionate rendition by the Iranian singer have resonated across the globe, particularly as the high-intensity military conflict involving Iran entered its second month in March 2026.

'Batteries now cheap enough for solar to meet India's 90% demand': Expert quotes Ember study

By A Representative Shankar Sharma, Power & Climate Policy Analyst, has urged India’s top policymakers to reconsider the financial and ecological implications of the country’s energy transition strategy in light of recent global developments. In a letter dated April 10, 2026, addressed to the Union Ministers of Finance, Power, New & Renewable Energy, Environment, Forest & Climate Change, and the Vice Chair of NITI Aayog, with a copy to the Prime Minister, Sharma highlighted concerns over India’s ambitious plans for coal gasification and the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR).

Manufacturing, services: India's low-skill, middle-skill labour remains underemployed

By Francis Kuriakose* The Indian economy was in a state of deceleration well before Covid-19 made its impact in early 2020. This can be inferred from the declining trends of four important macroeconomic variables that indicate the health of the economy in the last quarter of 2019.

Incarceration of Prof Saibaba 'revives' the question: What is crime, who is criminal?

By Kunal Pant* In 2016, a Supreme Court Judge asked the state of Maharashtra, “Do you want to extract a pound of flesh?” The statement was directed against the state for contesting the bail plea of Delhi University Professor GN Saibaba. Saibaba was arrested in 2014, a justification for which was to prevent him from committing what the police called “anti-national activities.”

Food security? Gujarat govt puts more than 5 lakh ration cards in the 'silent' category

By Pankti Jog* A new statistical report uploaded by the Gujarat government on the national food security portal shows that ensuring food security for the marginalized community is still not a priority of the state. The statistical report, uploaded on December 24, highlights many weaknesses in implementing the National Food Security Act (NFSA) in state.

Why Indo-Pak relations have been on 'knife’s edge' , hostilities may remain for long

By Utkarsh Bajpai* The past few decades have seen strides being made in all aspects of life – from sticks and stones to weaponry. The extreme case of this phenomenon has been nuclear weapons. The menace caused by nuclear weapons in the past is unforgettable. Images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki from 1945 come to mind, after the United States dropped two atomic bombs on the cities.

Subaltern voices go digital: Three Indian projects rewriting history from the ground up

By A Representative A new wave of digital humanities (DH) work in India is shifting the focus away from university classrooms and English-language scholarship, instead prioritizing multilingual, community-driven archives that amplify subaltern voices . According to a review published in the Journal of Asian Studies , projects such as the People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI), the Oral History Narmada archive , and the Bhasha Research and Publication Centre are redefining how the country remembers its past — often without government funding or institutional support.

Beyond Lata: How Asha Bhosle redefined the female voice with her underrated versatility

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat* The news of iconic Asha Bhosle’s ‘untimely’ demise has shocked music lovers across the country. Asha Tai was 92 years young. Normally, people celebrate a passing at this age, but Asha Bhosle—much like another legend, Dev Anand—never made us feel she was growing old. She was perhaps the most versatile artist in Bombay cinema. Hailing from a family devoted to music, Asha’s journey to success and fame was not easy. Her elder sister, Lata Mangeshkar, had already become the voice of women in cinema, and most contemporaries like Shamshad Begum, Suraiya, and Noor Jehan had slowly faded into oblivion. Frankly, there was no second or third to Lata Mangeshkar; she became the first—and perhaps the only—choice for music directors and all those who mattered in filmmaking. Asha started her musical journey at age 10 with a Marathi film, but her first break in Hindustani cinema came with the film "Chunariya" (1948). Though she was not the first choice of ...

Search This Blog