My father, Dr. Bahman Abadian, was a remarkable figure whose life journey shaped my understanding of humility and compassion. In the era of Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy, he fell in love with the values that this country represented and brought us to the U.S. from Iran when I was a young child. He was, for many years, a World Bank economist dedicated to combatting poverty. As an adolescent during WWII, his widowed mother sent him from Iran to India for educational opportunities, and he was there during the era of India’s independence movement when Mahatma Gandhi helped liberate India from British colonial rule.
My father himself was deeply influenced by Mahatma Gandhi and toward the end of his life, if ever anyone asked him what his religion was, he would call himself a Gandhian, which I believe meant to him that he honored the peaceful intent of all faith traditions and recognized our common humanity. While my father respected different faiths, probably as a result of witnessing the carnage of the India-Pakistan partition, he abhorred zealotry and embraced Gandhian ideals of peaceful coexistence.
One scene from the 1982 movie Gandhi particularly resonates with me, and is one which my father lived through when he was 18 years old. It was August of 1947 and Britain had just partitioned India and Pakistan, a rupturing that resulted in Hindus and Muslims committing atrocities on both sides. According to some estimates, between 1-2 million people were killed, 75,000 women raped, and over 15 million people were displaced. My son-in-law’s family was one of the families that lost nearly everything as they escaped to safety across the border from newly formed Pakistan and into India’s Punjab region.
Intent on stopping the savagery unleashed in August of 1947, Mahatma Gandhi, already a much loved and influential public figure, walked into Kolkata (then Calcutta), one of the hardest hit cities at the center of the violence and began a hunger strike. Fasting was his way of making an appeal to conscience, and in effect, he was saying to everyone, “I am willing to starve myself, to die, unless you stop your violence.”
In the movie scene, Gandhi is lying there, weak from fasting, when a distraught Hindu man comes to him weeping. He confesses to Gandhi, “I am going to go to hell! I killed a Muslim child!” Gandhi looks at him and replies calmly, “I can tell you how to find your way out of hell. Go out and find a homeless Muslim boy, take him into your home and raise him as a Muslim.” In a world plagued by religious strife, Gandhi’s message remains relevant—a call to transcend sectarian divides and embrace our shared humanity as a way out of the hell some are co- creating on Earth today. How can each of us, in our own context, and perhaps in less dramatic but still extraordinary ways, live as Gandhi asked that man to?
For me, it has required developing a kind of religious humility which celebrates the inherent dignity of every individual, regardless of their religious affiliation—at the heart of the interfaith movement. Religious humility, as I see it, requires us to abandon the urge to be in some kind of competition with other religions to propagate our own. Some seem to view religions like corporations, prioritizing religious market share rather than prioritizing a love for all of God’s creations, care of the soul, and aligning with Divine inspiration. Just because a religion “corners the market” doesn’t make it a “great religion” any more than Pepsi and Coke cornering the cola market necessarily makes them great beverages.
Religious humility recognizes that our own religious group does not have a monopoly on Truth or an exclusive, or superior, or more intimate relationship with God, the Divine, Source Energy, All that Is—whatever terminology we wish to employ. Some use the belief that their truth is truer as a way to justify forcing their religious views on others. Could it be that we have something to learn from others?
Religious humility confronts the fallacy of spiritual elitism, understands that all of humanity is beloved. We may each have our favorite religion, but no one religious group is more special than another, more spiritually privileged. Do we truly believe in a God who plays favorites, like a dysfunctional parent, or do we acknowledge the universal love that transcends religious boundaries?
For nearly half a century, the Interfaith Council of Metropolitan Washington has been a beacon of religious humility, fostering dialogue and understanding among diverse communities. By promoting mutual respect and curiosity about religious differences, it exemplifies the spirit of pluralism, essential for elevating humanity and for fostering a thriving democracy.
May the work of the IFC and all interfaith initiatives flourish and be blessed.
-By Dr. Sousan Abadian, IFC Executive Director