In a recent post on HuffPo, Rajiv Malhotra, founder of Infinity Foundation, writes how the notion of religious ‘tolerance’ has clearly not changed much as it has been practiced in Europe for centuries while wars brewed between Christian denominations each claiming to own the pathway toward salvation.

In proposing we supplant “tolerance” with “mutual respect” in contemporary interfaith discussions, Malhorta has highlighted how this distinction uncovers how Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) have difficulty reconciling their claims to the “true” way to God while accepting other religions’ experience of the divine as valid. He writes:

Soon afterwards, at the United Nation’s Millennium Religion Summit in 2000, the Hindu delegation led by Swami Dayananda Saraswati insisted that in the official draft the term “tolerance” be replaced with “mutual respect.” Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict), who led the Vatican delegation, strongly objected to this. After all, if religions deemed “heathen” were to be officially respected, there would be no justification for converting their adherents to Christianity.

The matter reached a critical stage and some serious fighting erupted. The Hindu side held firm that the time had come for the non-Abrahamic religions to be formally respected as equals at the table and not just tolerated by the Abrahamic religions. At the very last minute, the Vatican blinked and the final resolution did call for “mutual respect.” However, within a month, the Vatican issued a new policy stating that while “followers of other religions can receive divine grace, it is also certain that objectively speaking they are in a gravely deficient situation in comparison with those who, in the Church, have the fullness of the means of salvation.”

How patronizing this policy of the Vatican to say, “objectively speaking” that practitioners of other religions are “gravely deficient” in their experience of the divine without the Catholic prescription to salvation. This follows, as Malhorta’s mentions, a distasteful aspect of how “tolerance” is practiced: that is, we “tolerate” things that we deem inferior.

Thus to achieve “mutual respect” requires not just a paradigm shift in recognizing the insufficiency of religious “tolerance” to promote a deeper peace and understanding between religions, but also a relinquishing of the notion of superiority and exclusivity of spiritual fulfillment.

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