When all desires that dwell in his heart (mind) are gone, then he, having been mortal, becomes immortal, and attains Brahman in this very body.

Brhadaranyaka Upanishad, 4.4.

The Christian exegete is excited by such words as Brahman etc. Whenever she sees such words, she makes a connection with the Johannine Prologue. This Brahman is easily glossed as that Gospel’s Word and the exegesis smoothly makes a connection between the Hindu concepts of immortality with the eternal salvation of the struggling Christian soul. Let me put it a bit more academically: Christian inculturists see what they want to see in the Hindu Scriptures. For example, for the above quotation they’d have a natural tendency to annotate thus:

Desires: that which derives from the Pauline concept of sarx. In other words, the roots of sin etc.

Heart/Mind: the spirit of man, as Paul sees it.

Mortal: in the grip of sin

Immortal: only as a result of the salvific action of Christ.

Brahman: the dualist God whom Israel celebrates in the Shema.

In this very body: a heresy. It is not possible to see God face to face in this lifetime.

What then might be a Hindu gloss on these same lines?

Desires: the action of Prakriti on heart/mind, that is the Purusha, having been mortal (in the sense of being ignorant of his divinity) becomes immortal (conscious of his Divine nature: amritasya putrah) in this very life. Liberation is definitely possible here to the extent that a person can become fully aware of the divinity within him or if one takes up a Dualist position, then, the theistic Hindu will contend that she can have the awareness of God being everywhere right here, right now.

So we find that there are fundamental differences amongst these two readings. The Christian, in fact, perforce has to silently pass over the whole body-soul dichotomy integral to Hinduism.

Now let us read a passage from the Bible:

In origin was the Word,
and the Word was toward [the] God,
and god/deity/God was the Word…

This is the celebrated beginning to the Gospel of St. John. Let us first see how the Hindu might gloss this:

Word: Om, the Unutterable, the tremendous Other for the Dualist, the One for the Monist; the inexpressible.

God: Brahman, That Which Is (in us, but we are unaware, beyond words)

Word: the proto-Avatar

god/deity/God was the Word: the non-dual, the Presence which Shankara talks of

Now let us see how a Christian theologian might gloss this:

Word: though often thought of as the Hellenic Logos, yet now felt to be the Hebraic Incarnation.

God: the God of Israel, Jesus’ Father, the First of the Holy Trinity. The One who Is (but never one to whom we can seek equality)

was the Word: the One Pre-existent Son, commented copiously by the Church Fathers.

These two separate passages and their glosses illustrate the difficulties we might have while reading texts from either a Hindu or a Christian viewpoint. The moment we prioritize any one view, the very structure of dialogue collapses. While there are many voices out there trying to find some common-ground between Christianity and Hinduism, they are bound to fail as merely academic exercises because the fundamental natures of the two religions are different.

So what may be the alternative(s)? This is what we have to systematically explore. I shall spend some more time in reading various passages from key eastern and western theologians before entering into the subject matter proper.

There is a need for rigor otherwise this project will fail.

There is one more observation to make before I sign off today: India has got a Catholic Saint, Sr. Alphonsa (no doubt a very holy woman) but why not emphasize her surname. That sounds more authentically Indian. & while our television networks beamed her beatification throughout India live from Rome, how many Indian Christians are aware of Hindu holy women and men living right now in their midst?

Notice the OM on the sides: why not the Om in the centre?

Unless we clearly recognize the problems inherent in creating a Hindu-Christian theology, it will be impossible to really move towards any resolution. 

So here goes: 

a)  Can the twain ever meet? This question by extrapolation can be taken to question the very necessity for such an enterprise: is not there a very Hindu way of living? is there not a unique Christian way of living? Why on earth should Hindus mould their lives any differently than they have been doing and even if they want to change their theology, would it not be better for them to become more Hindu? What can Christianity teach us? The Christian apologist can ask the same questions and indeed often rejects wholesale any Hindu-concepts which might be seen to hurt orthodoxy. We meet the apparently insurmountable obstacle which individual Faiths pose for us: if the fundamentals of Hinduism are accepted by Christians, then Christianity is no longer such. On the other hand if Hinduism accepts Christian dualism, then too Hinduism loses it very self. Our initial question “can the twain meet?” transforms into “whether the twain should ever meet at all, to begin with?”  What is to be gained by these two ideologies meeting?

b)      The next crucial question is the question of order in this process of inculturation. In any free and fair dialogue we have to settle the touchy issue of priority: which/who should inculturate which/whom? This is similar to “synchronizing” between two Bluetooth devices…we cannot keep some of each religion and try to make a new religion altogether (this is the difference from my tech-analogy and inculturation) because any such new religion will by its very nature defeat the very purpose of inculturation. In short, we need to extensively define “inculturation”.

c)      Any discourse whatsoever is ipso facto a victim of various self-defeating structures: there is an inherent vacuity with all such endeavors, vide Karl Popper. Then there is the problem of postcoloniality and historiographical biases which inevitably creeps into any evaluations of religions in India. It is obvious how Christianity is a victim of the Raj here but less obvious, yet not less virulent than this, is the subtle shaping of Hindu heteroglossic voices over the centuries by capitalist and imperial forces. We need to clearly identify the hidden narratives of imperialistic agendas in both Indian Christianity and Hinduism. But as I said earlier, any such special knowledge we might have regarding this itself might lull us into creating a monolithic theoretical structure which may be wholly divorced from the lived aspects of Faith.

d)      What do we mean by Hinduism and Christianity? Which sect of both should we subscribe to? Is Tantra to be assimilated with Pentecostal Movements? Traditionally Christian theologians have solely commented on and accepted Adi Shankara, the Bhakti School, the Brahmo Samaj as fit theoretical corpus for their project. But this is to deny the plurality of Hinduism. As Bhakti is a sure way in Hindu praxis, so is Tantra with it emphasis on sex, drinks and controlled hedonism. We need to extensively define Hinduism and Christianity. 

Before we proceed further we need to extensively comment on each of these. I plan to now simultaneously reflect on these problems and at the same time start reading texts to illustrate the finer points in the problematics of inculturation.  

Before I start reading texts/discourses and interrogate the theoretical bases of inculturation I produce here with the author’s permission two of the articles I have mentioned in my “About” page. The problem which we face right now is how to escape the Orientalist Projects so well illustrated by Edward Said. No theological enterprise remains untainted. From my next post I shall start laying the foundations of the theory that should first inform any Hindu-Christian interface. Indian and even South American theologies have eschewed any effort at seeing/locating themselves within the matrix of contemporary postcolonial theories. Hindu theology is in a worse shape — after the great commentators, eg Adi Shankara and Ramanuja, there is hardly anyone really trying to locate Hindu praxis within Modern or Postmodern theoretical structures. 

There is a class of readers for whom this blog is not: I believe that the barbarian is at the gate and the ordinary mind is no more capable of understanding philosophy. Thus everything appears jargon to them. Yet, within a community of peers, jargon automatically transforms itself into the language of intellectual exchange. So if you are naturally repulsed by theory, please leave these pages.

Here goes:

Ignatius and his Sons in India: an ordinary Hindu perspective

                                            Subhasis Chattopadhyay 

                                      There is a lot of hullabaloo today about the repressive regimes of the various State Governments in India enforcing strict anti – conversion laws. Except peaceful sit-ins and repeated contentions that so many and such and such good work being done by the Church, there is little that the Catholic community can do. And of course, let us not forget about the numerous educational institutions run by missionaries today. What if they were shut down? Precisely, in this argument is inherent the problems facing Christians in India today. All these seem either as self – congratulatory or as threats on the part of the Christians. The larger populace of India will never look well upon these arguments. The Jesuits along with their Founder come in at this point, but we have to rethink and reinvent their relevance today. This author encountered the Jesuits first and foremost through the writings of the late Fr. Anthony de Mello. His sense of humour forced me to take a renewed and deep look at the Religious Order he belonged to. The fact that ill-printed leaflets warning of his possible heresies were stuffed into the books increased his appeal to me as a radical thinker. There is no substitute to radicalism in any spiritual path.  Might we pause here to recollect what is said in a very different context: 

But because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold, not hot, I will begin to vomit thee out of my mouth.

REV 3:16. 

James Joyce in his autobiography – laden classic A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, very sadly concluded that all his interest in becoming a Jesuit ebbed when he talked to a priest who seemed to be very self–importantly busy but unfortunately lacked the zeal or charisma of St. Ignatius of Loyola. (The religious wag would point out that since Joyce had no true vocation in the first place, the encounter between heady idealism and sordid reality could not hold up too well. But isn’t religion all about making ideals reality?) Through Joyce and de Mello I got to know about the Society of Jesus, and much more to the point, about St Ignatius of Loyola. When I met Jesuits in person I had already fallen in love with the ways of St. Ignatius. This Saint had seductively whispered to me piercing the hoary past through his letters, Spiritual Exercises and the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus. Most importantly, he spoke to me and continues to speak to me through the living legacy of his spirituality/charism left for all to see in the lives of the men who fashion their lives ostensibly after him, and proclaim Jesus, the Christ, in methods taught by St. Ignatius. St. Ignatius, his spirituality and the Jesuits along with lay collaborators of all faiths can transform India today. The Jesuits in India today need to shake off their inertia and once again become radicals venturing into new apostolates.

                                                    It appears to me that the Jesuits, contemplatives in action, the traditional militia of the Church are yet hardly understood, appreciated or even critiqued by the majority of Indian, us Hindus. We know the Jesuits as mostly ‘those Fathers who run the schools, the colleges for the rich and the powerful’, as also ‘those Fathers who do not meet anyone but by appointment’. These are so far from the expectations that we have from our men of the cloth. Many Jesuits will wince at these words and vociferously start the litany of the good that these institutions do. I agree that they did serve a purpose but the time has come to rethink their roles and even their relevance to modern day inculturation. There are of course many enlightened individuals amongst us who are aware of the great good that the Society did and continues to do in India, but few there are outside the Church who would turn to the Jesuits for spiritual solace, counseling or even try to embrace Ignatius’s way in their non – Christian paradigms. Mind you, my gentle reader, Hinduism has consistently absorbed the good in other religions but has not really assimilated Christianity which is merely a symbol of the colonial treacheries perpetrated in the past. The more the Jesuits try to build ashrams, initiate dialogues and dress in ochre robes without really changing their missionary thrust, the more we are suspicious of their motives. If one is proud of one’s own self/being, then there is hardly any need to don another’s garb. A John de Britto has his place as also did a Matteo Ricci, but the times they have changed and the Church in India needs to reinvent itself. Not in a new guise but in being more fully alive to the Christ present in all men irrespective of their religions. The argument that Faith creates a chasm between the Hindu lived faith and the successful practice of the Ignatian Exercises does not hold true. This writer believes/holds true that St. Ignatius’s greatness lies in the fact that unlike many another Catholic mystic (he is a mystic, of course, though generally the analysis of his life shows him to be merely a hard taskmaster and a disciplinarian) he not only transcends his own times but also transgresses successfully the limitations of his own religion of birth for his psychological/spiritual insights are as relevant to the Catholic as also to us Hindus. The Exercises are rooted in Roman Catholic Christianity but their essence is in timeless humanity. Ignatius teaches us to take a certain degree of responsibility for our actions, to relinquish control of our lives, to live a life centered in God and ultimately make life – changing decisions which will set us aright with God and our fellowmen, eventually bringing us self – fulfillment. Ignatius is then, relevant to all men and women of goodwill, and even otherwise, today. A busy corporate can do as well with Ignatius as an ambitious student. He has become a victim of constricted thinking on the part of the Society of Jesus in India today. Where are the Retreat Houses where a non – Christian can go and renew himself, the available and trained Spiritual Directors who will speak to us Hindus? Please, no jargon, no constant harping about inculturation, about telling us repeatedly how Indian the Jesuits have become or how many Ashrams have been set up in so many places in India. More often than not, these smack of an overriding urge to please us, to convert us and in a technical way, as a mission of the West to colonize the East.  Hardly any of us care whether the Church in India says mass sitting in the lotus posture or have introduced cymbal playing in the liturgy. What we want is that you help us to negotiate our own realties, be a fellow traveller in our woes and bring with you a genuine intention to give us the best you have to give from Fr. Ignatius. That will be more of a true dialogue than holding endless meetings with Hinduism’s experts and monks.  Who but academics and the elite few care for the umpteen dialogues that the devout type continuously has? It is worthwhile to consider that very many of us Hindus go the ‘dargahs’ of Sufi mystics to pray, more than we go to Churches  for we assimilate what is there in other faiths which do not threaten us with conversion or the perceived threats there from. The Jesuits in India are seen mostly as ‘admission Fathers’, especially those in urban settings. This is a fearful thing. It is not enough to say: “This is the Will of God”, that would go against the grain of Ignatian spirituality. Each age manifests the Will of God differently, and the very purpose of the Exercises is to precisely find and cooperate with that Will. It may be the will of God to run good schools and colleges, to hold high – level academic discussions about the finer points of Christianity and Vedanta, but these activities do not preclude other dynamic entrepreneurial ventures. Was not the Society mandated for risky ventures in the initial days? Let the Benedictines, the Rosarians, the Camaldoli run contemplative ashrams in India. Our country respects men of the clothe in every form: dervishes, swamis, gurus and even unfortunately, charlatans are revered. And not because they try to be Catholic priests. They attract us with their own charisma, for being fully themselves; not imitating the cultures of others just so to be accepted in the mainstream. Does not Ignatius teach us to be fully ourselves? Does not Christian emptying, in fact mean, a total becoming of the individual into someone new? Only the process requires a paradoxical emptying of the self. That is what Ignatius teaches us superbly. But who will bring his message to us? For the most of us, most Jesuits are unreachable, and unlike our own holy men, have to be contacted with appointments and through personal secretaries! Often also, Jesuit spirituality is confused with Ignatian spirituality but the two are definitely not the same —  Jesuits are celibates vowed to poverty and obedience and in the whole world they are only a few in number compared to the lay people. Jesuit spirituality is thus more constricted and ascetical. Their charism is of a singular type most suited to their state of life; whereas the average Indian non – Christian has different objectives in life. To us are important our own traditional quests of Artha, Kama, Moksha and Fr. Ignatius can help us reach God in our own social and religious contexts. The need of the hour is to reinvent and re – present Ignatian spirituality to help us who seek meaning in our hectic lives. The Jesuits are doing good work; they speak of ‘the option for the poor’ and often act on it, but what we want are living symbols of the Love of God for man, for us secular Indians. Help us to become ablaze with the splendour of God and we will bear witness to Christ’s. Christ was Asian and dear to us. We are afraid; you may convert us or dominate us with your formidable bastions of wealth and foreign pelf, existing in truth or in our imaginations. Om shantih.

The above article was published by the Indian Jesuit in-house magazine Jivan, September, 2006.

The next article has been published by The Herald, Kolkata, 26^th September, 2008 & Merinews:

Is the Carnage in Orissa Necessary: a Hindu Critique 

Subhasis Chattopadhyay

Jewish history is a history of Holocausts. The final destruction of the Temple marked just the beginning of the trials of the ordinary Jew. No wonder then, that the greatest Jew of all time is just a Marginal Jew. It is this idea of marginality or, in the Indian context — subalternity that distinguishes the path of this Marginal Jew. And the Lord of History has to repeatedly allow persecutions to beset those whom He loves to draw them close to him once again. The real Panopticon is that of God’s who did not hesitate to crucify His own Son for the sake of defeating structures of sin. The ultimate woof of history belongs to God. It is keeping these aspects of the Godhead and Jewish history that we should search for reasons for the carnage that is even now happening in Orissa. I write as a staunch Hindu who nonetheless believes in Jesus as my Ishta Devta and the Church as the rock on which the Kingdom of God is established. In other words, I witness as a Hindu Brahmin the wonders and the Mysteries of Christ.   

There are two angles to this simmering hatred that is boiling over in my nation: one is highly academic and thus of only scholarly value; the other is more plebian and thus much more important for our discussion here. I shall begin with this latter. 

After Vatican II the Church in India actively seeks to establish cultural roots here. There exists a large corpus of Christian theological exegesis which bolsters what is now known in seminary-circles as “inculturation”. There is an ever increasing demand for dialogue and condemnation of what is termed as Hindutva. In other words, the Church desires to contextualize Hindu praxis within Her own matrix, namely, the liturgical practices of the Catholic Church in India. Putting it a bit more academically; the Roman Church in India wants to create a new grand narrative in contextualization which deliberately wants to erase the old nakedly Eurocentric thrusts. At least this is how the Church sees Herself doing. Even a cursory glace at the available Catholic apologetics of our times reveal this much instantly. How does She go about executing this erasure of the old ways and the construction of new paradigms sensitive to the Indian ethos? This has been done with great visual and aural effects in three ways: through the changing of the age old habits of the Religious from European soutanes to saris and ochre robes of the Hindu sannyasis; adding Sanskrit songs and chants within the Liturgy in the Latin Rite and lastly, by creating Hindu temple like structures where the Virgin and the Lord are made too look like Hindu deities. And often on Sundays, one finds the Religious at the Church doors, speaking in Hindu terms to their parishioners: Jai Yesu, for example. Then there is the endless discussion of Hinduism in seminaries and courses galore on comparative religions in Papal Seminaries throughout India. These are what the Church in India thinks as legitimate endeavors of a free people.  

Let us now in all fairness see how these efforts are construed at the grassroots level. Why should the Church do this and not simply condemn the barbaric and heinous nature of the assaults in Orissa? Why should she concede that fundamentalists are not the only ones to blame? The answer lies in Church History — suffering often has a message. May be there is too much counter-witnessing within the Church. When demoniac men burn alive other women and men, then the former need not be discussed in conciliatory terms but rather delegated to penal systems to see them punished suitably. What is this message? Is it possible that inculturation is simply not working in India?

The much touted dialogue in the Church is in reality only monologue. Hinduism is fundamentally a non-celibate religion. The Church being top-heavy in India naturally draws Hindu monks in Her efforts to reach out to Hindus. While certainly the Church runs much coveted educational Institutions all over India; they simply serve to weaken the Church here. It is true that most students in such institutions are Hindus but notice how often their parents are offended by seemingly powerful headmasters and principals. Notice how often these same women and men of the cloth are seen posing in photographs with business-scions and politicians. Also notice the unavailability of these same education-Religious within the local social structures of the places where they live. And these are the most numerous amongst Indian Catholic Religious. The Catholic Church in India is certainly perceived as an educational behemoth which is elitist and exclusive in Her choice of pupils. The Church in India is firmly entrenched within a vicious circle of paradoxes and thus runs the risk of being termed a chameleon which preaches sacrifices but serves hedonism. Walk into any of the urban schools and colleges run by the Religious in India and all the efforts of the rural Religious in inculturation will immediately seem hypocritical to even the least conscientious of men. How is it possible that those who profess Sannyasa, those who vow renunciation of the world and its pomps, live like feudal lords in the fiefdoms that are their institutions? So the average man on the streets lusts after the coveted seats provided by these established places of learning while at the same time cringing at the tortures and humiliations that the process of entry to these places often entails. It never helps that the Church in India keeps on boasting about the service She so kindly renders to the Hindu populace. This Janus-nature of the Indian Church, this deplorable polarization between the much more honest rural Church and the Pharisaical urban Indian Church is Her undoing here. The whiff of double-standards defeats any efforts at inculturation.  

This is not to condone the violence that rocks my fellow-men. Yet my response is one of Faith in both the truths of Hinduism and Catholicism. Everything that happens: happens only for God allows it and God speaks to us through daily occurrences. More than the hierarchy who suffer, it is the ordinary Christian who is persecuted. Let the Church note this.  

The academic explanation for this violence should not only be located in the idea of anti-conversion laws in India or the rise of the so-called Hindutva. By being seminary-limited and imitative of Western, South American theology Movements, Indian theologians have created a morass of dead theologies which subtly bypass the more lived elements of both Catholicism and Hinduism. By blindly accepting Indian society’s structural injustices as givens, Catholic theology in India seems always resistant to understanding Hindu sentiments which see this discourse merely as another western diatribe. Indian Catholic theology is merely a rehash of Western movements and draws its inspiration from Patristic sources rather than any genuine appreciation of Anekattavadas. Thus, the whole idea of studying Hinduism is defeated in Indian clerical circles. There are no Hindus really involved in this experiment.  Everything is reduced to changes of names from erstwhile European ones to new Sanskrit ones. This nominalist effort as claiming everything Christian in India as ontologically native just remains polemical and superficial.

May be God wants to send a message across to the Indian Church: be more loyal to the Gospels first and then inculturate.   

And as a Church of praying people in pilgrimage across this vale of tears, I request your prayers for my Hindu brothers who are persecuting you. Father, they do not know what they do.

Om Shantih.