AP Chapter launch on Sunday, 18th February, 2024 at Vijaywada was a grand success. The program was well attended – there were many eminent speakers who shared their thoughts with a large audience. The call for action was received well – to be watchful of attempts to communalise as elections are approaching and report such incidents to SCH.

In the polarised environment in New India, we need voices of reason to counter the communal forces that are driving the current dispensation. Communal forces not only disturb the peace in the country but they diminish the human diginity and potential for enlightenment and progress of its people; the assault on freedom of expression and disappearing accountability of people in positions of power, partiality of all State institutions, including the Election Commission of India combined with the collapsing Justice delivery system pose a great threat to the survival of India as a secular democracy. This was generally the theme of talks of many eminent speakers – listed in the attached invitation card.

Members of the public can become Friends of SCH by registering online – free of charge. Website: www.sch.org.in

Vijay Rao

National President Society for Communal Harmony

That country is great where politics subdues religious divisions. And, the country where politics fuels religious divisions is under the watch of wrong people.
Martin Luther King 1919-1968 ** 

No one can stop the destruction of a country where people in the Government start scaring its own countrymen for sake of votes.
Albert Einstein 1879-1955 ** 

If you want to destroy a country make its citizens fight among themselves in the name of religion. The country will perish on its own.
Leo Tolstoy 1828-1910 ** 

India’s biggest weakness is its own citizens who script their misfortunes by dividing themselves in the name of caste and religion.
Huston Smith 1919-2016 ** 

India is a magnificent country. But a large segment of its population are fools. That segment damages its national interests by indulging in internal strife in the name of religion and caste.
Herbert George Wells 1866-1946 ** 

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964) understood and defined the idea of India. .He ensured India remained a secular State  More.. 

‘A Country Can’t Remain Prisoner Of Past’

SCI dismissed a PIL filed by Advocate and BJP leader Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay. The petitioner appearing as party-in-person, contended that many cities mentioned in scriptures are now named after Muslim rulers who invaded India.

More

Sardar Patel who right wingers idolize as if he was one of them, had declared RSS unlawful throughout India after Mahatma Gandhi was murdered. More

“Nationalism is a great menace. It is the particular thing which for years has been at the bottom of India’s troubles.”

Dr. Suresh Khainar quotes extensively from Rabindranath Tagore who took a dim view of the Hindu Supremacists and hyper Nationalists; he had the outlook of an internationalist. Read the detailed article which demolishes the right wingers’ distortions. More..

Chhattisgarh CM has ordered Magistrates to invoke NSA against disruptors of communal harmony in the Sate. More

SCI bench headed by CJI rapped the Delhi Police why after the incident of hate speech at Dharam Sansad in Govindpuri in December 2021, no arrests have yet been made? More

I WANT the freedom of my country so that other countries may learn something from my free country, so that the resources of my country may be utilized for the benefit of mankind.

Just as the cult of patriotism teaches us today that the individual has to die for the family, the family has to die for the village, the village for the district, the district for the province, and the province for the country, even so country has to be free in order that it may die, if necessary, for the benefit of the world. My love, therefore, of nationalism or my idea of nationalism is that my country may become free, that if need be the whole of the country may die, so that the human race may live. There is no room for race hatred there. Let that be our nationalism. More..

The chances of each of us coming into existence are infinitesimally small, and even though we shall all die some day, we should count ourselves fantastically lucky to get our decades in the sun.

A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men.

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.

A woman who tends a small plot of land, grows vegetables, weaves cloth, and provides for the family and the market, while caring for the financial, social, educational needs of her family is a multifunctional worker and the builder of a stable society

Absence of war is not peace. Peace is what keeps war away, but it is more than that; peace disarms and renders war useless

The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.

It is science alone that can solve the problems of hunger and poverty, of insanitation and illiteracy, of superstition and deadening custom and tradition, of vast resources running to waste, or a rich country inhabited by starving people… Who indeed could afford to ignore science today? At every turn we have to seek its aid… The future belongs to science and those who make friends with science.

Politics and Religion are obsolete. The time has come for Science and Spirituality.

The first requisite for building a strong, free India is unity and peace. If there is no unity in the country, it is bound to go down. Therefore, we must first of all adjust our differences and behave in such a manner that there is complete harmony and peace in the country. You cannot expect the Government continuously to maintain peace by force. It would be an evil day when in this country the Government has to use repressive measures permanently. Today we are passing through a period of crisis and our young men have, in their impatience, not realised that the freedom which has been obtained with great difficulty is likely to be lost or likely to give no benefit, no advantage, if we do not appreciate that our present duty is to unite and consolidate our freedom.

Caste, community will rapidly disappear. We have to speedily forget all these things. Such boundaries hamper our growth.

Where there is righteousness in the heart, there is beauty in the character. When there is beauty in the character, there is harmony in the home. When there is harmony in the home, there is order in the nation. When there is order in the nation, there is peace in the world.

What the mysterious is I do not know. I do not call it God because God has come to mean much that I do not believe in. I find myself incapable of thinking of a deity or of any unknown supreme power in anthropomorphic terms, and the fact that many people think so is continually a source of surprise to me. Any idea of a personal God seems very odd to me.