“A faith-full tryst”

In your editorial "A faith-full tryst” (Parsiana, May 7, 2007) you have written that Dr Manmohan Singh made a public pronouncement that "we accept all religions as true.” The correct position, however, is that we accept that all religions claim to be true and we accept that each religion has a right to make this claim for itself.

Every religion has three parts: its doctrines (which it claims to be true), its moral code and its recommended practices. Since many of the doctrinal beliefs of one religion often contradict those of another, all of them cannot be true together. That would be a logical impossibility. For example, the Christian belief that Jesus is the Son of God is not accepted as true by most other religions and the polytheistic beliefs of Hinduism are not acceptable to Christians, Jews, Muslims or Zoroastrians. Since we don’t have foolproof criteria to conclusively decide which are true and which are not true, we have to accept the right of a religion to hold and propagate what it believes to be true. This is the only decent option if we want to live an orderly and peaceful social and civic life. This is the essence of secularism.

The same goes for religious practices, which, obviously, differ from religion to religion. These, too, we must allow on the principle of ‘live and let live,’ so long as they do not disrupt public order or violate morality.

The moral code of a religion is a different matter. Here there can and does exist substantial common ground between all religions. But, then, moral precepts are not truths; they are prescriptions, recommendations or commands, and the question as to whether they are true or not true does not arise.

SHERYAR OOKERJEE