Inter Religious Peace March Held In Varanasi After Serial Bomb Blasts.

(March 14, 2006): Various social and religious organizations of Varanasi in India’s northern State of Uttar Pradesh held a silent peace march on 13th March ,appealing for peace and harmony in response to last week's serial bomb blasts. The peace rally began from Ratnakar park of Shivala and passed through Madanpura, Godowlia, Chowk and reached the town hall at Maidagin. Members of Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Muslim and Sikh religious communities actively participated in the rally along with members of various social and civil service and political organizations upholding secularism and democracy. The presence of Buddhist monks, the sisters of Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity, other Catholic nuns and priests belonging to the Indian Missionary Society added strength and colour to the peace rally. At the end of the peace march, the activists assembled in front of the statue of Mahatma Gandhi in the town hall premises and had a public meeting. Reverend Tenzing Rigzin, Professor at Tibetan Institute of Buddhist Studies in his speech appreciated the people of Varanasi for maintaining peace and harmony even in the time of trial caused by the terrorists. Father Anand IMS, president of Sajjha Sanskriti Manch, said that Kashi means light and the terrorist attacks were attempts to quench this light of peace and harmony among the people of Kashi. But the people of Kashi lived the message of Tulsi Das : -“There is no greater religion than the good of the other and there is no evil worse than the pain of the other.” Amarnath Bhai, veteran Gandhian and national chairman of Sarva Seva Sangh, in his presidential speech said that communalism or terrorism is like Holika, who follows the command of Hiranyakashyap-type people ,who consider themselves above the nation’s constitution and law and who want that the citizens worship such terrorists as gods.Several other important figures spoke at the public meeting. The programme concluded with a song of unity.