Washington, September 26, 2013: This week an inter-faith organisation in Chicago, the Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions (CPWR), held firm to its prior decision to withdraw support for a Chicago event celebrating Swami Vivekananda’s 150th birth anniversary, after it emerged that organisations such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America (VHPA) and several temples were among the sponsor group.

Standing by the announcement made over the weekend by CPWR’s Executive Director Mary Nelson, the organisation emerged from a meeting between its executive management and Board of Trustees to reaffirm that it would not be involved in the “World Without Borders,” on September 27-28.

In a formal statement CPWR said on Wednesday that since it was an “interfaith organisation and not a political one,” it would “remain neutral relative to political interests and respectful of the self-identification of each religious community.”

However the decision appeared to have created cracks within CPWR itself, and two of its Hindu members, Minnesota University Professor of Religion Anantanand Rambachan his colleague Anju Bharagava, both of whom resigned following the final decision on the Vivekananda event. Speaking to The Hindu earlier Professor Rambachan said that the two of them had not been consulted prior to the executive management making its decision to withdraw.

In their resignation letters Professor Rambachan and Ms. Bhargava said, “Our dissatisfaction with the decision making process of our Board in this matter, and our inability to convince you of implications of this decision on the Hindu community leave us no choice, sadly, but to tender this letter of resignation.”

The CPWR statement appeared to cognise some of these internal disagreements when it said, “The decision of the Executive Director of the Parliament to participate in the Chicago World Without Borders event, made in consultation with a Hindu Trustee, and then her decision to withdraw from the event, made pursuant to her authority as Executive Director and in keeping with past practice, have both unintentionally plunged the Parliament into the middle of a storm of differing views, passionately held by people on all sides of the issue and who come from various faith traditions”

The statement also noted that Ms. Nelson “deeply regrets that she did not inform the organising committee for the event before posting the decision to withdraw the Parliament from co-sponsorship.”

Source: The Hindu, September 26, 2013