Ex­press­ing deep faith in the need and im­por­tance of in­ter-re­li­gious di­a­logue and in­ter­ac­tion, Deputy Pope Car­di­nal Jean-Louis Taran  from the Vat­i­can, wishes greet­ings to Sikhs on Guru Nanak Parkash Purab in a com­mu­nique sent to Uni­ver­sity teacher, in­ter-faith speaker and WSN colum­nist Surinder Kaur Khalsa. She shares the good wishes and her in­ter­ac­tion with Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ar­ies.

Iam de­lighted to share that through the of­fice of the Pon­tif­i­cal Coun­cil for In­ter­re­li­gious Di­a­logue  headed by Deputy Pope Car­di­nal Jean-Louis Tau­ran and Bishop Miguel An­gel Ayuso Guixot, MCCJ, His Ho­li­ness the Pope from the Vat­i­can has shared greet­ings with me on the oc­ca­sion of Guru Nanak Parkash Di­was, and has prayed that, “May all your cel­e­bra­tions mark­ing this holy feast strength the spirit of be­long­ing and the bond of unity in your fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties and thereby en­hance peace and hap­pi­ness among you.”

I have re­ceived these greet­ings as a re­source per­son for In­ter-re­li­gious Di­a­logue Cell which man­dates me to de­liver core lec­tures every year to batches of Chris­t­ian Mis­sion­ar­ies. These lec­tures are not just for­mal­i­ties. I fo­cus on deep phi­los­o­phy, re­li­gious tenets, Sikh his­tory, con­tem­po­rary is­sues -1984 geno­cide, loss in par­ti­tion of Pun­jab, in­ter­na­tional sit­u­a­tions and other con­tem­po­rary is­sues. At the end each batch starts the read­ing of Guru Granth Sahib in Eng­lish with ex­pla­na­tion. When these mis­sion­ar­ies are des­ig­nated as Car­di­nals, Bish­ops, Prin­ci­pals or Teach­ers of their in­sti­tu­tions they de­liver proper knowl­edge of var­i­ous re­li­gions to their fol­low­ers.

Rev­er­ent Car­di­nal Jean-Louis Tau­ran in his com­mu­nique has said that “on this oc­ca­sion fo­cuses on how we both Chris­tians and Sikhs can pro­mote ed­u­ca­tion to­wards uni­ver­sal fra­ter­nity. This theme, while as­sum­ing great rel­e­vant and sig­nif­i­cance in the pre­sent day global con­text of dis­turbingly grow­ing ap­a­thy, in­dif­fer­ence, in­tol­er­ance, ha­tred and vi­o­lence, also calls for mak­ing greater ef­fort on our part to­wards pro­mo­tion of uni­ver­sal fra­ter­nity.”

Tak­ing stock of the build­ing hate in the world to­day, the let­ter sent on the oc­ca­sion of birth an­niver­sary of Guru Nanak, the let­ter says, “More than ever now it is be­ing felt across the globe that uni­ver­sal fra­ter­nity as the foun­da­tional prin­ci­ple, upon which the ed­i­fice of life of hu­mans as in­di­vid­u­als and com­mu­ni­ties must be raised, needs new ex­pres­sions. Be­cause we are all re­lated to one an­other as chil­dren of God, en­sur­ing ed­u­ca­tion about uni­ver­sal re­la­tion­al­ity of hu­mans and our re­spon­si­bil­ity to­wards one an­other, as well as, the cos­mos, ac­quires a great im­por­tance for our times in or­der to ad­vance the well­be­ing and care of all per­sons. Echo­ing this need, Pope Fran­cis un­equiv­o­cally pointed out that “The com­mon home of all men and women must con­tinue to rise on the foun­da­tions of a right un­der­stand­ing of uni­ver­sal fra­ter­nity and re­spect for the sa­cred­ness of every hu­man life, of every man and every woman,…(and) of cre­ated na­ture.” as said in his ad­dress to the UN Gen­eral As­sem­bly on 25 Sep­tem­ber 2015.

“May all your cel­e­bra­tions mark­ing this holy feast strength the spirit of be­long­ing and the bond of unity in your fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties and thereby en­hance peace and hap­pi­ness among you.”

Car­di­nal Jean-Louis Tau­ran, Deputy Pope

Deputy Pope Car­di­nal Jean Louis Touran vis­ited In­dia in 2007  in an In­ter-Re­li­gious Con­fer­ence where Swami Chi­danand Saraswati, Swami Ag­nivesh and Dadi Janaki Devi of the Brahmku­maris move­ment rep­re­sented Hin­duism, Muni Soor­ish­war Nath ji Jain­ism, Car­di­nal Bap­tista from Goa, Chris­tian­ity, Vice-Prin­ci­pal of De­oband in­sti­tu­tion rep­re­sented Is­lam etc. I rep­re­sented Sikhism and spoke on the con­cept of Miri-Piri -uni­fi­ca­tion of Bhakti and Shakti. I told every­body to cover their heads. The Deputy Pope spe­cially waited and had a pro­longed talk with me. He said that he had met sev­eral Sikhs dur­ing his global tours, what he knows about Sikhism is that they are jolly peo­ple and share their food in com­mu­nity Kitchen. 

With a keen de­sire to know more about Sikhism, the next day a 6-hour long lec­ture was arranged which was at­tended by Deputy Pope and other hon­or­able per­son­al­i­ties. I gave lec­ture with the help of pow­er­point pre­sen­ta­tion and videos. I ex­plained them Sikh Phi­los­o­phy (Shabad Guru, Panj Gun, Panj Vikar, Miri-Piri, no casteism in Sikhs, anti-rit­u­al­ism, Sikhs moral du­ties, Guru-Sikh re­la­tion­ship, Karma-Bakhshis Sid­dhant, Con­cept of Jee­wan-Mukat and Sha­ha­dat), Sikh His­tory(1469-2005), Sikh Re­hat Maryada (dis­trib­uted an Eng­lish ver­sion to all) and var­i­ous other fields of Sewa and con­tem­po­rary chal­lenges. They were stunned to know that Sikhism is not a mere frac­tion of Hindu re­li­gion as it is por­trayed by both Hindu and Sikh schol­ars but a com­plete and full-fledged re­li­gion with dis­tinct iden­tity.

“For a peace­ful, co­op­er­a­tive, car­ing and har­mo­nious global so­ci­ety, there is no deny­ing that in­ter-re­li­gion di­a­logue, di­a­logue and in­ter­ac­tion among re­li­gious lead­ers and prac­ti­tion­ers is the key.”

Sub­se­quently, Deputy Pope Touran car­ried all the in­for­ma­tion to His Ho­li­ness the Pope in Vat­i­can. Later they de­cided to have in­de­pen­dent re­la­tion­ship with Sikh com­mu­nity and 2009 on­wards started wish­ing Gur­purab to Sikhs world­wide. Every year be­fore Gur­purab of Guru Nanak Sahib, His Ho­li­ness the Pope ad­dresses our com­mu­nity through var­i­ous chan­nels and his wishes are printed and sent to some promi­nent Sikhs. I am for­tu­nate and priv­i­leged to be one of them.

Deputy Pope’s let­ter to the Sikhs with pro­foundly Sikh ter­mi­nol­ogy of “Guru Nanak Parkash Purab”,  says, “As be­liev­ers grounded in our own re­spec­tive re­li­gious tra­di­tions and as per­sons with shared be­lief that the Fa­ther­hood of God is the foun­da­tion of fra­ter­nity among us, may we, Chris­tians and Sikhs, to­gether with other be­liev­ers and peo­ple of good will, re­dis­cov­er­ing our con­nect­ed­ness with and re­spon­si­bil­ity to­wards one an­other and na­ture, pro­mote, in­di­vid­u­ally and col­lec­tively, ed­u­ca­tion to­wards uni­ver­sal fra­ter­nity.”

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Ac­cord­ing to Pope Fran­cis, “Ed­u­ca­tion to­wards uni­ver­sal fra­ter­nity is noth­ing but ed­u­ca­tion for peace it­self in the com­ple­men­tar­ity of di­verse sen­si­tiv­i­ties and of proper roles.” Un­doubt­edly, for a peace­ful, co­op­er­a­tive, car­ing and har­mo­nious global so­ci­ety, there is no deny­ing that in­ter-re­li­gion di­a­logue,  di­a­logue and in­ter­ac­tion among re­li­gious lead­ers and prac­ti­tion­ers is the key.