Witnesses of Mercy for Peace and Reconciliation

32 ohar and good evening to everyone. I would like to thank KAICIID as well as Board Member, Swami Agnivesh, who is responsible for my presence here and for the opportunity to speak about our religion. I belong to an indigenous people of India, the Munda community. Firstly, I will talk about my religion – many of you might not know much about the Sarna religion. I will share my religion through stories of practices because God’s mercy is there. There is no conflict in it, and mercy within human beings comes through prac- tices. So, what are those practices? To whom do we pray? We pray to Almighty God, who we call Singh Bungha , Singh meaning lion and Bungha meaning spirit. Together, the words mean King of Spirit. It could be good spirit or it could be bad spirit, but only this one name signifies supernatural power, one God who is invisible and who shows mercy to us whenever we pray to Him. We say that God has given land for us to take care of, not to occupy or take ownership of it. This land has been given in trust to the community in which each individual family has their own part for agriculture and for housing. We have a tradition in which each family group is responsible for its own territory, which includes a place of worship, and this operates within a kind of commu- nity land tenure system. We worship nature but with a “God has given land for us to take care of, not to occupy or take ownership of it” Kaushalya Munda J Kaushalya Munda (right) with Bibi Kiranjot Kaur THE FOUNDAT IONS OF MERCY