Harjinder
In its long history, Argentina, the South American country has gone through many political upheavals and brutal repressions. However, today Argentina is evolving an an example of religious co-existence and tolerance while political battles continue to engaged peoples minds in the best interests of a democracy.
Christians are in majority in Argentina's population, and Catholics are in the highest number among them. The influence of Catholic traditions can be seen here and there in the government processes of this country. Among the minorities, Muslims and Jews are the biggest minorities. However when the Buddhist spiritual leader Dalai Lama visited the country a few years ago, the world discovered a small community of Buddhists in Argentina.
Agrentinians chose their new President Javier Milei in December 2023 elections. Not surprisingly, Milei is a jew by faith who is elected by an overwhelmingly Catholic voters' body.
Despite being a Catholic country, Dalai Lama was given state honour showcasing Argentina's committement to regilious tolerance and diversity.
Another interesting thing about Argentina is that 20 percent of its population describes itself as non-religious in the census. That is, it does not associate itself with any religion.
Though the country have gone through many violent upheavls, but today the signs of past communal or sectarian violence or tension do not linger on in the minds of the people or the culture of the country. Political groups have been clashing with each other there, but there are not many examples of religious groups clashing with each other.
To understand how all this happens in Argentina, we have to look at an incident from last week.
On May 23, a meeting of leaders of all religions was held in the capital Buenos Aires. The Secretary of the Department of Worship and Civilization from the government was also present in the meeting. So was the President of the Catholic Bishops' Organization of the country was also present, and the Jewish and Islamic religious leaders.
Interestingly, the All-religions meeting was held in the community hall of the Ahmadiya sect, which is declared non-Islamic in countries like Pakistan.
The meeting decided that all the festivals of all religions will be celebrated by people of all religions. A few months ago, it was tried as an experiment on the occasion of Ramzan and it was quite successful.
It was practiced on Easter with very good result. Now it has been decided as a policy that in Argentina, anyone's festival will be everyone's festival.
Culturally, the South America people across the continent love festivals; they always look for an excuse to celebrate. In Argentina, turning everyone's festivals into an occasion for everyone to be happy is an important decision.
This indicates one more thing. This decision has been taken in a country which was not going through any major crisis of religious or communal tension. Despite that, adopting such a policy shows that whatever the situation, efforts to connect all communities should continue.
Will people of various countries of the world going through various types of tensions take some inspiration from this Argentina?
.webp "Prime Minister Narendra Modi")
.webp "Representational Image")
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