Essay, Paragraph or Speech on “Communal Harmony” Complete Essay, Speech for Class 10, Class 12 and Graduation and other classes.

Communal Harmony 

Essay No. 01

Fifty year on, the spectre of Communal Harmony still haunts us. We saw its macabre form during the trauma of partition. How far the British played `mischievous game in dividing Hindus and Muslims during the last phase of empire will be debated for decades to come. Separate electorate was the most pernicious practice which divided Hindus and Muslims and Sikhs. It struck a blow to the composite character of nation. To a large extent, the Hindus and Muslim divide has been the legacy of British Empire; for centuries, the two major comminutes lived together like brother in almost all the cities in North and East.

A great and resilient country like India learn to outlive the nightmare of 1947 and our constitution makers did not leave any thing to chance the preamble of our constitution reads “We, the people of India, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into sovereign secularist, socialist and democratic Republic”. In a secular state religion is purely an individual affair with the state neither promoting nor running down any religion. In other words, there is no state religion as in Pakistan or Israel.

Right from the very beginning, the Indian state sought to promote total harmony among people professing different faiths, granting them freedom of worship and extending certain privileges to the members of minority community. Despite the best efforts of farsighted leaders, communalism and occasional communal rights have besmirched the fair name of the country known through ages as an oasis of tolerance and amity. The ugly eruptions have been more of an exception than the rule and they have been the handiwork of disgruntled politicians, anti-social elements and criminals. The people of India stand for a plural and multi-religions society.

It would indeed be foolish to judge India’s secular credentials and its innate capacity to tolerance by what happened recently in Gujrat, in Ayodhya and Mumbai ten years ago; and during the anti Sikh riots in Delhi and elsewhere in 1984.

These have been aberrations indulged in by petty minded people for immediate gains. The culpability of certain politicians and other elements including a section of media in stoking the embers of hatred can not be ruled out. But, man to man people have shown they could live as human beings with an inexhaustible fund of love, compassion and concern for one another.

This has been proved even by the information collected from the gory interlude in Gujrat, families going out to help others of a different community and even sheltering them.

Eternal vigilance is the shield against those who are out to tear apart our secular fabric. It is a happy augury that our media and saner public opinion have stood as a solid rock against those who sought to sow hatred between people in the name of religion. But there is no room for despair for we stand on firm ground, the base built through centuries of understanding, love, compassion and the fundamental realisation that Truth can be reached through different paths.

A glimpse into the past would show that communal harmony and tenets of tolerance have been an integral part of the great Indian tradition; an unassailable thought flows through the Rig Veda. “Truth is one, the learned may describe it variously”, says the Atharveda “The earth which accommodates peoples of different persuasions and languages as in a peaceful harmony benefit all of us.” Echoes the Rig Veda ”All human beings are of same race.”

None could have put the broad vision of India than the great son of India Swami Vivekanand who addressed the world parliament of religions in Chicago, USA on September 11, 1893; addressing his audience as “Sisters and brothers of America” he thundered “I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance, we believe not only in universal toleration but accept all religions as true. I am proud to tell you that I belong to a nation which has sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all nations of earth. I am proud to tell you that we have gathered in our bosom the pure remnants of Aryans who came to Southern India and took refuge with us in the very year in which their holy temple was shattered to pieces by Roman tyranny.”

Can the people ever forget Ashoka the great ? The only Monarch who abandoned warfare after victory. This great emperor said in one of his edicts “All sects deserve respect for one reason of another. By this acting a man exalts his own sect and does service to the sect of other people.

And during Mughal period Akbar the Great with his liberal and catholic outlook said, “Truth is no monopoly of any religion or sect.”

And how on earth can we overlook the contribution of the Bhakti movement in promoting the religious harmony. Kabir, one of the protagonists of Hindu-Muslim unity described himself as the son of Ram and Allah. If you say that I am a Hindu that is not true nor I am a Mussalman. I am a body made of five elements where the unknown plays.”

Guru Nanak Devji went through Hindu places of pilgrimage like Mathura, Banaras, Gaya, Junagarh. His last long journey was his piligrimage to Macca and Madina. Guru Nanak is still respected in Punjab–the king of Holy men, the Guru of Hindus and the pir of Mussalman.

“Baba Nanak Shah Faquir/Hindu ka Guru Musalmankapir.”

One of the greatest integrating forces of our country has been the world of art and culture and here we can include music, drama, camera, TV and the like. Some our great stars in different realm of entertainment have been Dilip Kumar, MeenaKumari, Ajit, Madhubala, Mohammed Rafi, TalatMahood, Begum Akhtar, Bismillah Khan, Jesudas and these great people have been human beings first, Indians second and then only followers of their respective religions. Rafi, through his inimitable rendering of immortal Hindu songs brings tears to the eyes of ardent devotee. So is Jesudas, a Christian by birth, has sung more songs for Hindu gods than any Hindu in Kerala or elsewhere.

Without being formerly initiated into doctrines, Sri Ramakrishna realised the ideals of religion other than Hindusim. He said “I have practised all religious Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, I have found that it is the same God towards whom all are directing their steps, though along different paths. But they never reflect that he who is called Krishna is also called Shiva and bears the name of Jesus. God is Allah and Allah is God. Sri Ramkrishna used a simple ex-ample which even a child can follow to drive home the point of fact “A lake has several ghats. At one, the Hindus takes water in pitchers and call it ‘jal’. The Muslims take in leather and call it Pani. At the third the Christians call it ‘water’. Can we imagine that it is not jal but only pani or water; how ridiculos! The substance is one. All are seeking the same substance…Let each man follow his path.

In brief our life on this planet is short, let us learn to live together be-cause we belong to same family-Man. Harmony is the keynote of the river of life

Essay No. 02

Communal Harmony in India

 India, a country of diverse ethnic groups and over 1,650 spoken languages, dialects and their regional variations, is a virtual Tower of Babel. Myriad tongues, numerous modes of apparel, countless mannerisms and group of characteristics weave the yarn of multi-hued fabric that his country of almost continental dimensions is It is, therefore, in the fitness of things that the State shows equal reverence for all religions and faiths; there is no effort at proselytisation at any level. Religion is a matter of personal faith with the State’s role reduced to the minimal in religious affairs. The Constitution itself has been framed with full consent of the people and it guarantees to each citizen, regardless of sex, creed or religion, freedom of thought and expression.

Communal tension in the country may be traced back to early or mid-eighteenth century. With the acceptance of the two-nation theory propounded by M.A. Jinnah and the subsequent creation of Pakistan, it was felt that the communal tension would disappear from the sub-continent. On the contrary, Hindu-Muslim clashes have been rather too frequent in recent years. This has been largely due to the rise of fundamentalist forces which have been exploiting religious sentiments of both the communities on one  pretext or another. The latest issue to add fuel to the burning communal fire is the explosive Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri  Masjid imbroglio that set most parts of the country aflame in 1992.

 It is no hyperbole to say that the British created the Hindu-Muslim divided and set the two communities on the path of confrontation to serve their own nefarious ends. At different times, they pampered one community at the expense of the other under the well-formulated policy of divide-and-rule. The fact is that the British did not create this great divide; they only accentuated it and encouraged separatist tendencies which had always been simmering under the surface. The chief contributing factor to this divide was the carrot of political power that the British dangled before leaders of both the communities during the struggle for freedom.

The persistence of communal forces that threaten to tear asunder the very fabric of India as a nation may be attributed to several factors, the chief among these being the feeling of veiled hostility between these two communities that the alien rulers had spotlighted. It is in the name of religion that the most atrocities are perpetrated on each other at the instance of so-called community leaders. There is a rampant feeling of mutual distrust and the politicians in power do their utmost to strengthen it. Charges of extra-territorial loyalties are often bandied about and desecration of places of worship is common.

 There should be no basis for mutual distrust and accusations, but this feeling has been fanned indiscriminately by leaders of both the communities. While professing to be ‘secular’ in public, religious leaders often incite their followers to be at loggerheads with their brethren belonging to different faiths. This could not be more true than the divide that has crept into Hindu-Sikh relations or Shia-Sunni differences within the same communities. Our effort should be to meet such forces and defeat in the larger interests of the integrity of the nation.

The need for communal harmony has never been felt more acutely than today. We must all realise that there is no alternative to secularism in web and woof of the body politic. We must distinguish between the leaders who ‘practise secularism’ and those who only mouth platitudes and-`profess secularisms’ as a way of life for the citizens of India. If we don’t, the country is doomed to the ranging fires of communalism and may disintegrate sooner rather than later. Ethnic cleansing has no place in the planet fast marching towards the 21st century when it is likely to become a global village. The perpetrators of disharmony and communal tension must be decisively dealt with and their designs effectively nipped in the bud. Direct responsibility must be fixed for disturbing communal peace in various parts of the country. The media that preach communal hatred and violence must be banned forthwith and the various practising democratic parties must have nothing whatsoever to do with communal groups and parties. They must not enter into any coalition with them in any part of the country for such short term ends as formation of governments at the regional level or getting favourable legislation passed in the national legislature. This will strengthen communal harmony and secularism in the country.

We must, at all costs, maintain and strengthen the “unity in diversity” that India is fabled for. Culture, language, manners and religion must be matters of individual taste and preference without affecting the overall fabric of life in this land. In this matter, the government of the day has a special responsibility to ensure communal harmony in the interests of the nation. School and college text books much preach the virtues of secularism and teachers as well as parents inculcate these values in their wards if the canker of communalism is to disappear from the scene. Communal harmony is, indeed, the need of the hour.