By Justice Markandey Katju
Ibaadatkhana, an organisation for promoting inter-faith harmony ( whose media-in-charge is the Editor of indicanews.com Ritu Jha ), is planning to hold an online global webinar around the middle of April this year to celebrate festivals of four religions falling in close proximity with each other.
These are the Hindu festival of Holi, falling on 25th March, the Muslim festival of Eid ul Fitr, falling around 10th April, the Christian festival of Easter, falling on 31st March, and the Jewish festival of Purim, falling on 23rd/24th March.
Ibaadatkhana was created in California, USA in October 2019 by a group of like-minded secular persons who were deeply concerned over the dark clouds of religious polarisation and hatred and atrocities against religious minorities in India and other countries.
The Ibaadatkhana movement will be of historical importance, as it will set the train of India, which has been derailed by communal animosity fanned by certain vested interests, back on the correct tracks
Around October-December 2019, when I was in California, the festivals of four religions fell in close proximity with each other, viz Diwali of Hindus, Eid al Milad of Muslims, Gurpurab of Sikhs, and Christmas of Christians, and we decided to celebrate them together.
The inauguration of Ibaadatkhana was at a Unity Dinner held on 8th December, 2019 in Fremont, California
This was the speech I gave at the function
Thereafter we have been holding regular online webinars with many speakers, to promote our message of communal amity. Some videos in this connection are given below :
In the Ibaadatkhana online webinar we are intending to hold in mid April this year we shall be having speeches of prominent people of various faiths about how we can move forward in promoting inter faith harmony, and we also intend to hold an Urdu mushaira-cum-Hindi kavi sammelan.
Those interested in knowing further details may contact the Chairman of Ibaadatkhana, Tasawar Jalali who lives in San Jose, California, USA at tjalali@gmail.com or tasawarjalali@hotmail.com, the Vice Chairman Irfan Ali who lives in Princeton, New Jersey at irfan79@gmail.com, the Gen Secy Narendra Singh who lives in California at narensingh@yahoo.com, Ritu Jha, the media-in-charge who lives in California at rituj@indicanews.com, or me, the patron, at justicekatju@gmail.com
(Justice Katju is a former Judge, of the Supreme Court of India, and former Chairman, the Press Council of India. The views expressed are his own)
