Promoting Interreligious Understanding: Strategies, Challenges, and a Path Forward

Abstract

With almost all nations now having multireligious civilizations, the world of today may be a very diverse and challenging place to live. Multireligious societies are now even more feasible thanks to increasing mobility and shorter travel times. Although other parts of the world may be experiencing this for the first time, India has always been a multiethnic, multireligious, and multicultural country. Although it has struggled between religions throughout its history despite this diversity, it occasionally seems as though it lacks interreligious understanding. But we have always worked to foster and advance a mutually respectful knowledge of the various religions that people worship. This has frequently been accomplished through hosting interreligious discussions or by authoring scholarly studies on the areas where different religions have similarities. The reason “Interreligious Understanding” is preferred lexicographically over the currently popular nomenclature of “Interfaith” is because “Interfaith” has a definite orientalism undertone. There is always a chance to disregard other world faiths because, in its precise definition, it largely refers to Semitic religions. We must go over the idea’s unmistakable oriental imitative phase in order to begin a discussion that is more substantial and pertinent to India’s multireligious community.