The Acceptance Speech by Swami Agnivesh, India.

Hon'ble Mr. Speaker and distinguished friends,

I consider it a special privilege to be honoured through the Right Livelihood Award, respected globally as the "Alternate Nobel Prize". I would like to thank the Right Livelihood Award Foundation for finding me worthy of this unique recognition.

I welcome this not just as a distinction conferred on me personally, but as a global recognition of a spiritual mission that I had the privilege to share with people of many faiths and cultures over the last four decades specially with Islamic scholar activist Dr. Asgar Ali Engineer and a Christian priest of renown Rev. Valson Thampu and a spiritual activist from Australia Alison Cameron and millions of children world over. Additionally, it is a tribute to the unique spiritual genius of India that breeds a composite culture of harmony and mutual respect. Sadly, this has come under assault from organized vested interests in recent times. But the soul of India spoke against it in decisive terms through the idiom of democracy recently. And I feel a sense of legitimate pride about the spiritual goodness of my people who have reasserted our shared spirituality and rejected parochial and sectarian agendas and advocacies.

I see this is an occasion to share with you, albeit briefly, the essence of my spiritual vision and mission. To me, the essence of spirituality is the duty to live to its full the glorious destiny of being human. The business of religion is to empower all people in this adventure of living with dignity and fulfillment. Sadly, the spiritual core of all religions has decayed and the competitive agendas of ghettoized religious establishments have become a blatant contradiction of their spiritual mandate. Religions have become a hindrance, rather than a help, to our shared pursuit of peace and progress. They tend to make us meaner rather than better human beings, less sensitive to the demands of justice, compassion and fellow humanity in our times. This is regrettable in the extreme.

Early enough in my spiritual pilgrimage it dawned on me that the ultimate value in this world is life in all its manifold forms and expressions. To that extent I want to emphasize that the focus on "right livelihood" needs to be centered on a commitment to value and celebrate life. Spiritually, life is a festival, a celebration. Joy is the essence of life; and, as per the Indian spiritual worldview, joy is the essence of God as well. The hall-mark of God is ananda, or pure bliss. Because we carry, deep within us, the imprint of the nature of our Creator, all human beings have a right, and duty, to be joyful. Anything that thwarts this spiritual human right is demonic. Spirituality mandates us to wage a relentless war to eradicate these forces of oppression and disempowerment. But joy is not merely a matter of obtaining some material advantages alone. Joy in fact is the result of the right relationship between the Creator and the whole of creation. Spirituality defines, directs and empowers that relationship.

This explains why I attach special significance to this award among all the awards conferred on me. To institute the "Right Livelihood Award" is to focus attention on spirituality as the foundation of life and a wholesome approach to it. I was born into an orthodox south Indian brahmin family, practicing a religion of multiple Gods & Goddesses, idol worship, caste system, superstitious mongering, ritual ridden way of life. At the age of 17, I came across the universal Vaidic spiritual vision of Mahrshi Dayanand - The founder of Arya Samaj Movement in 1875. Capt. Rudrasen Sindhu is here in this house representing the Arya Samaj movement in India. It demystified and devitalized and simplified religion for me and inspired me to be my own prophat. Based on that vision, I want to place on record my spiritual conviction that the religions of the world must be assessed, not on the basis of their convoluted theologies, but in terms of the extent to which they serve as forces of liberation and empowerment. Religion as the watchdog of the status quo is a curse and a liability. It is high time we cast it out, lock stock and barrel. That being the case, and going by mounting contemporary evidence, I have no hesitation in stating that the agenda of "Right Livelihood" has two complementary dimensions. First, we must liberate people from religion, as religion is understood and practiced today. Second, we must effect a paradigm shift from religiosity to shared spirituality.

This agenda assumes unprecedented urgency and significance in a globalizing world. The retrograde and mutually antagonistic outlook of religions is a liability we have inherited from the era and mindset of nation states. In the fields of economic and politics, in internal relations and trans-national military enterprises, the global outlook has shifted from competition to cooperation. It is a matter of supreme irony that, though the vision of globality was intuited first in the sphere spirituality, the religions of the world shut their eyes willfully against its opportunities and challenges, thanks to their narrow and narcissistic dispositions. The global village is shifting progressively from antagonism to alliances. This does not mean that peaceful coexistence will result automatically. Alliances can continue to be possessed by the spirit of antagonism and keep our world bleeding itself to death. Peace among religions is a precondition for world peace. But religions, as religions, can never be at peace with each other. To enable religions to be instruments for peace we need to enable, first, religious communities to progress from religion to spirituality. For the world order to be one of peace and justice, for the global village to be a theater of right livelihood, it is imperative that a new and proactive spiritual vision commensurate to the challenges of the emerging world order be enunciated without any delay. The challenge is to make "right livelihood" a universal goal. In this, recognizing this value in a symbolic way through an award like this is a significant step in the right direction. This is not, however, our journey's end. We must not rest until right livelihood is within reach of every human being upon this earth we love and cherish.

Today when the world is agog with a Global Alliance for War Against Terrorism and a reelected born again Christian President of a superpower has hiked his country's military budget to a whopping 400 billion US dollars. In the current climate can we who are committed Global Peace with Justice call for a 10% reduction in all military spending worldwide? Such a reduction would make a staggering US$100 billion a year available to provide millions of people the necessary amenities to lead a life of dignity, a life of Right Livelihood. Illiteracy, poverty and unemployment often create fertile breeding grounds for religious fundamentalism and eventual terrorism. One hundred billion dollars annually would make the difference to curb the spread of these influences. In addition to this, each one of us who wants to contribute to reducing global inequity and injustice should be able to cut down an incremental 10% on avoidable consumption of alcohol, tobacco and meat. Let us unite for a Global Alliance for War Against Poverty and Exploitation and Contemporary Forms of Slavery. Why should we suffer today the indignity of having 250 million children world wide as victims of child slavery. It is ironical that my friend Ahsan Ullah Khan who fought against child slavery in Pakistan in living in asylum here in Sweden and not allowed to go back to his country. Let us launch a People's Movement for Right Livelihood. In all humility I offer myself and nearly one million members of Arya Samaj in India & abroad to work for such a movement.

In accepting this unique honour, I renew my pledge to continue my spiritual struggle against all forms and forces of oppression and exploitation, of irrationality and obscurantism, and to endeavour to cleanse the garden of life from the weeds of discrimination, alienation and antagonism. Universal kinship -the insight that we are all children of God, equally- is the quintessence of a spiritual vision. Today we pay lip service to this glorious truth. Let us walk hand-in-hand to make this a flesh and blood reality. Let us declare from the hallowed precincts of Swedish Parliament that in equity & inequality between men & women, between the rich & the poor, between the whites & the blacks and the high caste & the low caste in simply intorable and utmost equality is non-negotiable.

It is a said that the birth of every human being is a God's statement of faith in the potential goodness of human life. I share this deep optimism about life. And it is my prayer that the global village will be a garden of life and not a wilderness of death, marked by hostility and demonic destructiveness. I wish to conclude by saying a prayer that millions in my country have been saying from time immemorial:

Asatoma Sadgamay,(O Divine ! Lead us from untruth to Truth)

Tamasoma Jyotirgamay,(from darkness and ignorance to light & wisdom)

Mrityorma Amritamgamay (from disease & death to immorality)