India: Inter-faith Industry high on the market ; hardly a debate to promote alternative secular strategies

The Times of India
10 May 2009

IFDIL orgnizes meet to affirm secularism

MARGAO: Goa has a unique identity that boasts of peace and communal harmony and can emerge as a role model for the country.

However, the need of the hour is to strengthen the civil society, said Arya Samaj scholar Swami Agnivesh while calling upon politicians to shift priorities.

"The political system should now focus on real issues like starvation that takes a toll on over 7000 children per day in the country. Fifty per sent of the country's children are under nourished while 66% of women are prone to anemia. These are the areas which the government needs to shift its priorities," said the Arya Samaj scholar while delivering his speech on religions in search of peace and justice at a public meeting held Lohia Maidan on Saturday.
The meeting organized by Inter-Faith Dialogue for Life (IFDIL), in association with Council for Social Justice and Peace (CSJP) and Human Rights Law Network-Goa (HRNL) under the banner -- Combating Communalism, Affirming Secularism' sought to address the corrosion of the secular fabric by fascist forces in the country.