I recall that it was Dr. Juhanon Mar Thomas who officiated as the chief celebrant when about 40 years age, my wife and I were united in holy matrimony. If my estimate is correct, he held the position as the Supreme head of the Church for the longest period. During such a long period he towed the ship as its captain, he had to face the roughest weather and the wildest tempest. He was arrayed as the first defendant in litigation lunched by one of the early lay leaders of the Mar Thomas Church who had considerable knowledge in theological doctrines. To be fair to the person who launched the litigation, I must say that the issues cropped up in that case were not regarding any property, wealth or even any official position. Disputes centered on the interpretation of certain theological or doctrinal approaches. The litigation passed through all the tiers of the judicial hierarchy and it ended with the pronouncement made by the Supreme Court of India about four decades ago.

At all tiers the personality of Dr. Juhanon Mar Thomas scintillated like a beacon light. Even the judges paid economiums for his nobility and rectitude. I was then only a student of law when the litigation was fought in the trial court at Kottayam, but I vividly recollect the forensic skill with which the advocate for the Metropolitan explained the niceties and nuances of the theological doctrines of the church.

Today I am expected to speak on "Religious Harmony in a Secular Republic". I would not do fairness to the departed sage if I skip an episode, which is sticking in my memory as connected with Dr. Juhanon Mar Thomas. It is about an incident, which happened in my hometown, Kottayam, more than half a century ago. A dispute arose between some Christian Municipal Councilors and some Hindu Municipal Councilors regarding the choice of Chairman of the Kottayam Municipality. There was an earlier understanding that when a vacancy arose for the chairmanship of the municipality a particular person belonging to the Hindu Community would be chosen for the post. But when the vacancy arose, a Christian gentleman was elected as the Chairman, which was contrary to the earlier understanding. The Hindus of the town became angry and they staged a protest demonstration and finally converged into a Maiden where a pandal was erected for holding a Christian convention. Some miscreants in the frenzy of the protest demonstration, set fire to the pandal. The entire pandal was gutted down in no time. The next morning all the church bells of the town were tolled an almost all the Christians, irrespective of their demo national differences, angered by the news, rushed to the Maidan. In a mode of vengeance, they erected a bigger pandal than the original within one day's time. On the very evening the convention was inaugurated by Dr. Juhanon Mar Thomas, who was then in his forties.

The entire audience expected a stimulating and inspiring speech to boost up the morale of the Christians. But that great man, instead of saying even some good words for the Christians who did so much for restoring the pandal, castigated them left and right. He severely took the Christians to task for the breach of the solemn understanding, which they had earlier reached with the Hindu community. He quoted an adage "sow a wind and reap a whirlwind", and said what the Christians did was to sow a wind of breach of good understanding with the Hindus and what they themselves reaped were ill consequences in the form of a wild fire.

I mentioned the above episode to highlight the profile of a personality whose life we commemorate today as that profile has a great bearing on the subject I am expected to dwell upon. The statement "Religious Harmony" is a superfluity because if there is disharmony there is no religion. Disharmony erupts when religion decays. Is the antithesis of religion. No religion has ever preached destruction of harmony. But the fact is, among the many religions as between them, the one feature, which is not discernible, is religious harmony. In the secular Constitution, which our forefathers founded, religious disharmony has the potential of destroying the polity. A secular republic cannot afford to waste its resources for undoing the consequences arising from inter-religious squabbles, if not riot.

Shri Nani Palkhiwala, the most celebrated Indian Jurist living today, is also a spiritualist. His writings and speeches on spiritual subjects were listened to with equal fervour as his speeches on annual budget's and constitutional questions. One of his daring sentences is this, "Christianity has been tried and has failed, what remains to be tried is the religion preached by Jesus Christ". On the present subject, he once said, "interfaith harmony and consciousness of the essential unity of all religions is the very heart of national integration and identity".

I request you to look back to the days when the Constitution was framed. Thus great document was made in the wake of a disastrous division inflicted on the pre-independent Indian land. A chunk of Indian land had been cut away for forming another nation which is founded entirely on religion. That division of India led to the bloodiest carnage ever recorded in the history resulting in lakhs of Hindus running away from that separated area seeking asylum in the remaining part of India. All of them were, by any standard, Indians. Most of them were either wounded or orphaned or maimed. They lost their houses, their lands, their wealth and all their belongings. After reaching the portals of Indian cities, including the capital of India, they camped themselves in tents and temporary sheds. Their wailings were overheard by those who were inside the Parliament House engaged in the momentous task of making the constitution. Those fugitives lamented as to what they did for courting such a devastating punishment imposed on them by religious bigotry. The Constituent Assembly which made our Constitution comprised representatives from this vast nation, a very big majority of whom belonged to the Hindu community. It was the pride of the republic that the Indian Constitution makers decided to make India a secular republic and not a theocratic republic, in the backdrop of the above billowing waves. They decided to give the same rights to the Hindus, the Muslims, the Christians, the Sikhs, the Parsis, the Buddhists and the Jains. Not only that, they even decided to give some more rights to the minorities in India than what the majority could wield.

Now let us consider the need for religious harmony in this scenario. The makes of the Constitution were the sons of Indian soil and they could not think differently because the very air they breathed, the water they drank and the traditions they imbibed were of that heritage. It is on this soil that people belonging to different religions, in ancient days, took refuge when such people could not survive in their own countries. This land gave them not only shelter but also enough fertile atmosphere for flourishing. So the Constitution makers were those who by the very ethos and upbringing could not have taken a different stand.

We thus live in one of the most sublime secular republics. This land is the birth place of five religions: Vedic religion, Hindu religion, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. This land has nurtured and cradled members of three religions of Semitic origin - Judaism, Christianity and Islam and a Persian religion, Zoroastrianism. May I say that members of these four religions are more secure in Indian soil than in the lands where the originated.

Any other republic need not bother about religious disharmony, as much as we in India have to bother about. The reason is this: Those Republics, by and large, are composed of people belonging to one religion. When we say about religious harmony in India it is a subject of great importance for the reason that it is this country which had suffered the most due to religious riots and religious disparities and caste differences. Any exercise to find out which religion is more responsible for the eruption of such religious riots would only lead to the consequence of endangering the already mangled religious harmony.

Is there a distinctively Indian conception of secularism and is it radically different from the Western concept? The idea of secularism acquires some of the colours of the social environments in which it operates, but it does not mean that it cannot be compared or contrasted with its counterparts elsewhere. The west spearheaded this concept. But there is no uniform conception of secularism even in the west. We must remember that there is no exact equivalent of the English word 'secular' in any Indian language. If the idea of secularism varies between the Indian and the Western, it also varies between Britain, France and Germany also. A secular, legal and constitutional order was dictated by the compulsion of demography. India is a land of many religions and within each religion, of many sects and denominations. There are more Muslims in India than in any country in the world except Indonesia, and India's Muslim population is larger than the total population of Britain, France or Germany.

Many of the remaining minorities are very populous in India. The Constitution makers realized that it would be impossible to govern such a country without secular institutions, which treat citizens without fear or favour, irrespective of religion.

The children in India are not trained on how to practice secularism. Each religion has tried to teach its children that their religion provides the correct way to God. What they further teach is that there is the only correct religion. Very often, they also teach that other religions are wrong. If our children are brought up in this way, they maintain the mental segregation that their religion is the only true religion whereas other religions are all fake.

Is it true, as a matter of fact? As the ultimate object of every religion is the Almighty God, how can it be that one religion alone is good and other religions are wrong? The same creator made white men, Negros, Mongolians, Eskimos, Red Indians, Aryans and Dravidians with different lingua franca. Apparently, they are all different people but you ask any Anatomist or Pathologist whether he came across any basic difference between two persons belonging to any two different ethnic groups. Different religions have sprung up in different ethnic or cultural or geographical or historical background and naturally there would be different shades between the religions. Then you ask any true philosopher whether there is any difference between any two religions. There can be only one answer to it; it is an emphatic 'No'.

So the person who despises another religion is the one who has no knowledge about his own religion. If he knows his own religion in all its depths, its first outward manifestation will be the craving to show reverence to other religions. So the standard in a secularist society to measure one person about his knowledge of his own religion is this: Does he respect and show real reverence to other religions? If he does, I would say that he knows the length and breadth of his religion very well. If he does not, he has to tell himself that it is time for him to study his own religion. Here again I quote Palkhiwala, "A man may study or practice his religion. But if he is a fundamentalist, he deserves to be ranked as a religious illiterate".

In this context, I wish to narrate a very memorable visit I had in the year 1987. I visited the headquarters of the Missionaries of Charities at Calcutta along with my wife. Justice Fathima Beevi, who was then a Judge of the Kerala High Court, was also with us. We were able to see Mother Teresa. We had a very lively chat with that celebrity. At the end of our conversation she told us not to leave Calcutta without visiting Kali temple. In her perception, the great city of Calcutta was founded on the inspiration which people had drawn from the worship in that temple. The respect she had shown to the worshippers of Kali temple really amazed me but later I realized that it was on account of the true understanding of the teachings of Jesus which enabled her to have such a perspective. Nobody would dare to question the knowledge of Mother Teresa about her own religion.

You know why Alexander the conqueror was called "Alexander the Great". It was not because he was able to conquer every country he surveyed; his purpose was to establish Hellenistic culture, a universal phenomenon. For that he adopted a method which was the conventional method of every monarch during that period. His zest to spread the Greek culture earned this suffix to him which later historians acknowledged without exception. You may know why Akbar, the most celebrated among the Mughal Emperors, was called "Akbar the Great". I do not think that it was because he was the most powerful monarch of Mughal Empire. It was on account of his relentless efforts for establishing religious harmony during his reign in this vast country. For that purpose he went to the extent of cobbling up a new religion "Deen-A-Elahi" for accommodating Hinduism, Christianity and Islam into one fold. It is a different matter that the experiment did not survive his lifetime. If it had succeeded, perhaps humanity would have been benefited considerably.

Religious harmony has been badly impaired on account of the ambitions of those in India who created vote banks as shortcuts to reach power. People are basically happy and common without the barriers of religions, but the skill of the politicians unfortunately keep them segregated. In the famous book authored by Larry Collins and Dominic Lapiere "Freedom at Midnight", I have come across a very thought-provoking passage. The authors described the city of Lahore before and after independence. The pre-independence Lahore was a city which became famous as one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world. The authors pointed out how in one three-storied apartment building three families lived so joyfully and happily. A Hindu family occupied the ground floor apartment; the second floor was occupied by a Muslim family and on the third floor a Sikh family lived. For the three families Shrikrishna Jayanti, Moharram and the birthday of Guru Nanak were not intended to be celebrated separately. They were to be celebrated jointly and for years that practice went on like that. But after independence that city of Lahore became the graveyard of religious harmony. The only factor which brought about this lamentable predicament of a great city was the work of the politicians which resulted in cutting a great country into two, purely on the basis of religion.

A good and sincere religionist would dissuade another from giving up his religion for the purpose of taking membership of another religion. For him, religion which a man is already in is quite capable of transforming his life from bad to good and for traversing from destitution to the heavenly abode. Thus the hallmark of a good religionist is that he is against converting anybody. Once Mother Teresa was asked how many persons she had converted. Her answer was this: "Yes, I have converted many and the number is countless. I have converted a large number of bad Christians to good Christians, bad Hindus to good Hindus and bad Muslims to good Muslims but I have not converted a single non-Christian to a Christian. If you can point out one like that I will do penance for it. "No one could point out a single person whom the Mother had converted from a non-Christian religion to Christianity. Mother Teresa was a true religionist. She believed that the Kingdom of God is not for those who achieve large number of conversions to Christianity. She knew that King of God was reserved only for those who did the Will of the Heavenly Father.

We must now evolve measures to narrow down the difference between different religions. One such measure is to adopt, adapt and absorb what you find to be the healthy practices in another religion and make them practices in your own religion.

Kerala State was fortunate in having Sri Narayana Guru, the renowned preacher of religious harmony. Mahatma Gandhi was the greatest inter-religious integrator the world has ever known. He endeavored all his life to evolve a common Code and a Common worship and a Common religious fellowship. I quote him:

My Hinduism is not sectarian. It includes all the best that I know to be the best in Islam, Christianity, Buddhism and Zoroastrianism. Religions are different roads converging to the same point. What does it matter that we take different roads, so long as we reach the same goal?"

Recently, I had the occasion to read a book written by a German Scholar "Holger Kristen". After conducting great researches, he propounded a theory that John the Baptist was in India for a few years and he was impressed by the religious practice of taking dip in the river Ganga as an external demonstration of cleansing the mind and soul. The author believes that John the Baptist could have witnessed at least one Kumbh Mela. It had created a great impression on him and he introduced that practice in his land, Judea, and propagated taking a dip in the river Jordan as a mark of cleansing himself. The baptism, which was followed thereafter, was actually inspired by what John the Baptist imbibed from the ancient Hindu religion. This is what the said author had enunciated. I do not know the correctness of this theory. I have noted one thing. Baptism had no background either in the Jewish scriptures or in any Semitic tradition.

In the early fourth century when delegates converged at the historic place called Nicea, an all-out effort was made to forge a common ground with other religions. Islam was not founded during that time and hence the participants in the conference had only the philosophies of other religions. In all religions the concept of Trinity has existed since the dawn of history from Egypt to Eastern Asia. Ancient Egyptians of early dynasties conceived their prime trinity of a sun god, an earth mother and a son of both the former. The Chinese equivalent was the trinity of Heaven, Earth and the Human. Among the Indian religions, the Vedic philosophy advocated the three forms of divinity as Sat (existence), Chith (Awareness) and Ananda (Blessedness). The Hindu religion acknowledged the trimoorthy of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. For Buddhism, Satyam, Dharmam and Bhudham were the three inevitable components to from the ultimate. Triumvirate was one of the phenomena of both Romans and Greek religions. The participants in the Nicene Synod were aware of these essentials in other religions. Most probably they would have made all the endeavour to find out materials from the four gospels for founding the new doctrines of Trinity
Which was unknown for the followers of Christ till then. Those great men were inspired by the great doctrine of the then existing religious and they made that endeavour for creating a common doctrine with other religions.

I do not wish to lengthen my lecture on a subject which is more talked about than practiced. If you are able to rediscover the real human being which the Almighty has created with one set of anatomical and pathological features that would commensurate with the rediscovery of religious harmony.

Once a professor was very busy with his home work. His little child of five years went to him and tried to catch his attention for playing with him. The professor found out a short cut to keep the child engaged elsewhere for one hour so that the Professor could concentrate on his homework without being disturbed by the child. He took out a world map and tore it into different pieces and gave them to his child and asked him to reunite them on the glass frame. Before the professor could spend any time on his homework, the child completed the map. The professor found that the world map was very properly reconstructed He then asked the child "Aray bachha, how did you make it?" The child answered, "Papa, look at the other side of the map, there was the big sketch of man. I only looked at that sketch and reunited the pieces". A great philosophy flashed through the mind of the professor. He realized - if you succeed in re-uniting the human being you can reconstruct the world. Religious harmony is the cement by which such a reconstruction is possible. This is the relevance of religious harmony in a secular republic.