Faiths Act

Negative news around the world spreads like wild fire. Carnage, riots, crime and unrest all grab our attention easily as they make headlines.  These news items do not die, they continue to haunt our minds and grip our hearts in fear. People continue to live with prejudice and inhibitions as these negative experiences of communal discord pass from generation to generation.
And then there is positive news which features on the fourth-fifth page of the newspaper. This is where the second World Interfaith Harmony Week featured. Thousands of events were organized around the world as people participated in common prayer meetings, interfaith feasts, social action and dialogue. However, this news still remained on the fourth-fifth page (where very few of us ever reach!).
As we were wrapping up a busy week in New Delhi, I was introspecting why is it that this hasn’t caught enough attention, why is good news so boring and why is that positive stories like that of the World Interfaith Harmony Week get lost among the milieu of other sensational news. And it occurred to me that force4good needs to be a hundred times stronger than a small bad news to get noticed.
May be we need a million events around the globe and billion voices talking about interfaith harmony to washout past injuries that communal discord has caused in different places. Violence is powerful in grabbing attention but as interfaith champions we have powerful voices to spur people into action. We need more and more voices from around the world to tell a positive story of interfaith collaboration so loud that all other negative news gets dowsed and the world realizes faith to be a force for good!