What started as an innocuous looking- somewhat entertaining and somewhat thought provoking Talk Show on DD1 and on DD News MANTHAN has become a signature tune for millions of Indians who identified themselves with the reason based faith approach, socially oriented religiosity, devoid of high decibel hate campaign or proselytisation.

           
In this initiative by Swami Agnivesh, young and old and sometimes school children joined audience as religiously endowed scholars of faiths ranging from Hinduism to Islam to Christianity and Sikhism, Jainism to simple Humanism participated in free flowing dialogue taking questions from a friendly audience but all seeking solutions to the deep seated social problems of Communalism, Casteism, Alcoholism, Female Feticide, Dowry, Tobacco related habits, Child labour, Terrorism and such other contemporary ills plaguing our society.
  
           
“Manthan” rapidly became a byword for confronting religious intolerance, religious stereotyping and fundamentalism and of course dogmatism. For the first time in our country, organized religions with their mind boggling rituals and divisive potential were urgent to come out openly in support of a common minimum program CMP where they can all come together with underlying spiritual ethos to mitigate the pain of suffering humanity. Researchers at Centre for Media Studies, CMS, called it the best of DD programs, for 2006-07.  “Manthan is a good example for how television programmes even in the new market driven competitive scenario could be made for social change of mindset and promote a new outlook for national concerns and national issues. Manthan, as per our analysis, signifies what an education, information and enlightening programmes should be like.  Manthan deserves all out support and promotion as a unique and ettective public service programme.” (C.M.S)   

           
Outlook magazine compared it with most other private channel soap operas and commended ‘Manthan’ for its contribution to building a healthy, social-cultural-plural-inclusive society. Letters and e-mails poured in by dozens after every episode and a national debate started emerging from the hitherto neglected area of our remote rural hinterland across the country and found positive echo in the otherwise hostile media of Pakistan. ‘Dawn’ was indeed euphoric when it came up with an article titled  “In praise of a brand new spring offensive” on 5th of March 2007.
             

MANTHAN has proved to be more than a curtain raiser for a sustained symphony of socialized religions in Bharat.  Its now time to take up the real challenge of building a bulwark against the dark forces of religious bigotry and hate brigades spawning the secular social fabric- diverting our national focus from the socio-economic essential to non issues.  Let us make Manthan the voice of sanity in the world of Religions the instrument of empowerment in our battle against, obscurantism, disunity and diabolical disharmony and make it powerful instrument of National Integration.