At the end of March this year, I travelled to London to speak at a conference, ‘Voices of Faith’, held at the Barbican Centre. The function was organized by the badshah of such events, Sanjoy Roy of Teamwork Arts, in collaboration with the Kamini and Vindi Banga Family Trust. There were distinguished speakers on Christianity, Islam, Sufism, Buddhism and, of course, Hinduism. Navtej Sarna, diplomat and author, spoke on the Sikh Gurus, from Nanak to Gobind; Reza Aslan, Iranian-American scholar, and the author of the best-selling book, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, was at his eloquent best on the birth of Christianity; Shaunak Rishi Das, who has opened a centre on the study of Hinduism at Oxford, spoke on the Bhagwata Purana; Barnaby Rogerson, who has written a biography of Prophet Mohammad, held the audience in thrall on Islam.

My specific subject was Advaita philosophy, especially as expounded by Adi Shankaracharya. The conference was enlivened by a scintillating performance by violin maestro, Padma Vibhushan L. Subramaniam. I also greatly enjoyed a session on Kabir, where two scholars who have done pioneering research on the iconoclastic saint, Professors Purushottam Agarwal, and Linda Hess of Berkeley University in California, were in conversation with Sanjoy........

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