Print
this page
Email
this page Consultations - Bangalore 2003 - Presentations
- Being Church in India today
- An Integral Vision of mission for a New Millenium
Being Church in India today: patch, cloak fringe, and divided clothes of Christ in an age of religious conflict by The Revd Dr Sathianathan Clarke
I am a Christian contextual theologian committed to liberational outcomes. I tinker with concepts that can be crucial and compelling to Christians in a particular historical location in their attempt to meaningfully conjure frameworks for living collectively under God for the sake of life in all its related wholeness as mediated by Jesus Christ. Contextual theology is a reflection that emerges from the ground. It is a view of God, human beings, the world and their interrelationships from the constraints and the inspirations of the underside. It emanates from the concrete, local, and common. But contextual theology is also keenly aware of the more than local character of contemporary contexts. In a world that has gone inescapably and intractably global, the local is intimately affected by the economic, technological, cultural and political dynamics of the nation, the region and the world. This is precisely why contextual theology may not be bracketed to suggest that it is true and relevant only for the residents of the constituency from which such a theology emanates. In a global world community both the resourcefulness of concrete and local communities and their incisive judgments are addressed to the wider interconnected universe.
It is important that we ground this discussion within the specificities of the Indian context. I am increasingly convinced that decontextualized reflection on religion, even if a philosophical goal, is a religious travesty; for it only manages to serve up a truncated and mutilated phenomenon. So first, I turn our probing gaze toward the context in India. Using a couple of news articles in the Bangalore daily paper as a point of departure I highlight the complexities within which Indians live today. My focus is the proclivity of religion as the cause of conflict as it is encountered in the everyday world of contemporary India. The overriding theme that confronts us today is the conflictual and destructive aspects of religion. But there is another side to this context, even if somewhat concealed, which points towards the congenial side of religion. I consciously invoke this as part of the loci for theological reflection. Second, I explore common metaphors in the field of textiles through which the Christian community can understand its own nature and mission. I suggest that the Church be presented as patch, garment fringe, and divided clothes of Christ in the world for the sake of life in all its interrelated wholeness.
The beauty and the beast
Religion can be both beast and beauty: it continuously appears in its devastating and enchanting representations. The former exposes the traits of contemporary praxis and is seen face to face in all its starkness; the latter encompasses the dimension of hope even while being reflected in the mirror dimly. Let me quote one headline from the Indian Newspapers over the past week, which signifies the devastating propensity of religion in India. ‘Blood on the Streets, Fear in the Hearts’ is the front-page caption that introduced the terror which ripped through Mumbai on August 25, 2003.[1] Forty-seven people were killed and 144 people were injured when two powerful bombs exploded in South Mumbai. The bombs were calculatingly positioned to signify the destruction of specific symbols. One of the bombs exploded in front of the Gateway of India, a magnificent and historic monument of India’s portal to the outside world. This is the centre of the world of tourists. The other bomb was detonated in front of the Mumbadevi Temple, which housed the city’s presiding Hindu deity, in a busy bazaar. Although no organization has claimed responsibility for the bomb blast all those who are involved in speculative interpretations suggest the possibility of the banned SIMI (Student Islamic Movement of India) or the Lashkar-e-Taiba (a Pakistan based militant Islamic group) or a co-operative effort of these two ‘jihadi groups’ together.
This bomb attack coincided with the publication of the report of the Archaeological Survey of India submitted to the full Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court after excavations that it carried out on the disputed Ayodhya site. This dispute has been at the centre of much of the Hindu-Muslim conflict in India over the past decade. On December 6 1992 various militant Hindu organizations, primarily headed by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, banded together a force of some 200,000 volunteers. In violation of court orders they demolished the mosque that stood on that site and started initiating plans to build a temple to Rama in its place. The illegal demolition of the mosque was the culmination of a Hindu movement that believes that this site (Ayodhya) is Rama’s birth place and that there was an ancient Hindu temple on the same sacred space before the mosque was built in the sixteenth century. The 574-page report of the Archaeological Survey of India suggests that the excavation has found archaeological evidence of ‘a massive and monumental structure having a minimum dimension of 50x30 metres’ and ‘over 50 pillar bases’ dating back to the 10th century beneath the disputed site. Thus in a ‘vague and self-contradictory’ manner the report lends credence to the Hindu claim that the mosque was illegitimately built over an already existing temple which marked the birth place of the god Rama, by the first Mughal emperor, Babur, in 1528.[2]
Lest we naively conclude that Islam is the face of terrorism in India let us recall that Hinduism has incarnated itself through this century in various unprecedented hues. Saffron has many a time recast itself into blood red. This is principally threatening to Muslims. It has also been intimidating to Christians. But it is has serious implications for the survival and flourishing of Dalits and Adivasis in India too. Structural violence has become the characteristic of the Indian State. It is taken to be an inevitable part in fostering a united Hindu nation. State-mustered and state-maintained violation and violence is on the rise in politically religious India. This is a relatively new phenomenon that is jeopardizing the secular characteristics of the Indian nation state. The swelling forces of Hindutva have infiltrated the various mechanisms of the nation state, which has evolved its own pattern of repressing other religious communities as they seek to live out their differences in a pluralistic nation. No doubt this has roots in the ideology of Hindutva, which was propagated in the early half of the twentieth century by ideologues such as V. D. Savarkar and M. S. Golwalker. What is frightening is that this Hindu Nationalist envisionment has gradually and concretely become a viable political entity over the last 25 years.[3]
Apart from this growth of structural violence there is also the spread of the populist expansion of community-based Hindu militancy. This is now being built into the psycho-social fabric of what was once thought of to be the inclusive, tolerant, and hospitable Indian neighbourhood. In a newly formulated pathology of neighbourliness conscientious hindutvadis are taking over the streets in the guise of policing the sacredness of local communities from the infiltration of unstable and foreign cultural, religious and social elements. Both impulsive and voluntary violence is being utilized to deal with minorities who exert and exercise their religious otherness, which has cultural, political and social ramifications. Drawing upon “the intersection of notions such as cultural kinship (‘our people’) and residential belonging (‘our area’),” contemporary Hindu communalism has evolved a strategy through which the everyday familiarity of the intimate face-to-face relationship of neighborhoods has been transformed into a site of suspicion, chaos and violent conflict in order to fashion a Hindu locality.[4] Satish Despande interprets this feature of local Hindu communalization aptly by linking it with its more structural mission of forming a Hindu nation state:
In the last analysis, the significance of the locality as a spatial strategy is not really in terms of what it is able to achieve within its own spatial limits, but rather in the possibilities it creates for inserting such localities into a larger grid of ideological dissemination and political action. Thus, the neighbourhood acts as a sort of relay which, though it is crucially dependent on its particular location in social space, can nevertheless provide the ideological context for the production and reproduction of worldviews, as well as properly indoctrinated workers for the Hindutva cause.[5]
There is no doubt that the combined effects of this conflict have been most violently felt by the Muslims. This was most recently demonstrated in the rape, looting and massacre of Muslims in the Gujarat riots. It is because of this deep anxiety that retaliatory violence, which takes on dastardly and reprehensible forms of terrorism, is embraced. This is not to justify acts of terrorism such as the bomb blasts in Mumbai. They stand condemned on all counts. What needs to be reiterated is that acts of terror must also be interpreted within the larger context of the State in India promoting and perpetuating structural violence and within the local context of its collaborators who are working towards a vision of a powerful, homogenous, and hegemonic Hindu nation. The state’s active role in the adopting of ordinances and acts to prevent conversion away from Hinduism (specially in the recent cases of Tamil Nadu and Gujarat) is an extension of using the state to threaten the freedom to practice, profess and propagate any other religion than Hinduism. The recent laws passed by these state governments to prevent forced conversion have ensured that the Hindu neighbourhood remain undisturbed and unchallenged. The state has become the champion of retaining a Hindu-based society. All religious dissentions are monitored and all disseminations of alternate religious options are censured.
But religion is not all beast. Although one has to look long and hard, religion is not without its share of beauty. Of course one has to turn to the inside pages of newspapers to notice this other aspect of religion as it operates in the life of India. Another caption on that same day (August 26, 2003) read ‘We went to see Kalki Bhagawan.’ This report brings good news of the safe return of seven children between the age of ten and seven (Ramaswamy’s daughters Radha, 13, Rekha, 10, and Sowmya, 8; Muniraju’s daughter Dhanalakshmi, 13; Kuppaswamy’s daughter Anu, 14,; and Rajan’s children Sudha, 13 and Sunil Kumar, 10). Feared to have been kidnapped, these children from three different families and as many schools had set off together on August 21st, without informing their parents, to seek the blessings of their favorite godman. The enchantment of this religious figure led them on an adventure that involved much courage and planning. In an interview five days after a journey of about 1000 kilometers, which did not result in the meeting of their religious Guru, they said, ‘We wanted to see Kalki Bhagawan. He has helped us a lot in our lives. We asked our parents to take us there but no one did. That’s when we decided to go on our own.’[6] Sudha (13), ‘a picture of confidence,’ further added on behalf of the group, ‘We were not scared of running away from our homes as we were sure God was with us. All we wanted to do was to visit the Kalki temple and pray for our well-being.’[7]
This incident might of course reveal details which may not corroborate the reported objective of the children of seeking only the Divine. Questions might be asked about the relationship between parents and children, the academic performance of the children, and the nature of this strange fascination with the godman. And yet the power of the religious to draw a diverse group of disciples to trust each other and abandon all that ought to have mattered in order to encounter the object of their sacred longing still stands out in the same world of religion-fueled violence. Religion as mediator of beauty cannot be underestimated even as we are arrested by the dramatic, excessive and intense manifestations of its conflictual and destructive features. These unrehearsed, child-like, grassroots-level, non-violent, refractory, co-operative dynamics must not go unnoticed and untapped.
Reclaiming the local
The reclamation of the local may be a good place to begin in a deliberation of being Church in India. I propose that Christians in India begin the process of being Church by consciously and concertedly naming and claiming in its entirety the intimate and face-to-face domain of the local Indian neighborhood, fully aware that it is the site of the propagation of religious hate, bigotry and violence. In one sense the mission of the Church is to recover localities and neighborhoods as units for the reproduction and dissemination of life in all its related wholeness. This is not to evade the responsibility of resistively engaging and subversively de-capacitating the burgeoning hegemonic hinduized nation state. Instead I submit that the restoration of a pluralistic, inclusive and peace-with-justice centred nation state can realistically be achieved by Christians, mainly through the process of transformational interventions that emanate from the ground up.
This is also consistent with the ministry of Jesus. No doubt the transference of the reigning of God from heaven onto earth was the objective of Jesus’ mission. And yet his praxis was principally confined to the various aspects of his diverse neighbourhood: home, town square, village meadow, backwater river, market place, local synagogue, street, regional hilltop, country lake and provincial lakeshore. Intimate face-to-face communities became his constituency for transformative proclamation and reclamation. It is in this locus that people were healed, forgiven, fed and restored. Jesus as the well spring refreshed and renewed human beings in their localities for the sake of life in all its related wholeness. The wider political and economic structures of Jesus’ time were denounced in more subtle ways. The hope perhaps lay in a process of God-initiated reproduction of transformed local neighborhoods and their infiltrating ability to encompass the whole world of reality that surrounded them. Thus Jesus’ invitation involves making disciples rather than soldiers, friends rather than slaves, brothers and sisters rather than mercenaries. The intimate locality is the framework for calling, equipping and sending of his recruits. And yet Jesus does not relinquish the broader expectation that transforming the neighbourhood would impact upon the structures of the kingdoms of this world.
I would like to imaginatively explore the implications this has for Christian mission in India. Let me enter the world of textiles as I seek to stretch metaphors from clothing to interpret the manner in which we can be Church in India today. I delve into the use of cloth in relation to Jesus’ teaching and ministry in the intimate spaces of the neighborhood to imaginatively tailor meaning with regard to being Church in India. The Church may be projected and promoted as being patch, garment fringe and towel of Christ in the world for the sake of life in all its interrelated wholeness.
Church as ‘patch’ of Christ: Mending life in all its related wholeness in the midst of ruptured local communities
In Mark 2.18-21, early in the ministry of Jesus, a dialogue is reported between some people and Jesus as to why his disciples were so different from those of John and the Pharisees. The question is put: ‘Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?’ Jesus in his reply justifies the participatory, celebratory and engaged manner in which his disciples lived out their lives in community. He reminds them that the Christ presence, as symbolised by the image of the bridegroom at the wedding feast, is in the midst of human community; there is no room for disengaging aloofness. Passionate involvement in forging joyous and intimate community, thus, is fueled by the knowledge that ‘as long as the bridegroom is with them, they cannot fast’. The option for Jesus’ disciples is to be engaged with the world in the knowledge that Christ’s presence pervades the world. The bridegroom has come home; there is no part of human life that is not Christ’s dwelling place.
It is in this context that Jesus suggests the notion that the Church functions as a patch. He puts this idea in the form of an intriguing metaphor. In Jesus’ words: ‘No-one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old cloak; otherwise the patch pulls away from it; the new from the old, and a new tear is made.’ But the imagery is more confusing than it appears. One interpretation links to traditional apocalyptic dualism. The cloak is old and the patch is new; but unless the cloak becomes new it will not be able to benefit from the patch. Here the indictment is against the older Jewish tradition as represented by the Pharisees. This has to be replaced in its entirely, since it does not have the intrinsic capacities to absorb the new. However, there is also another more contextual interpretation that can be attempted. This is that if the purpose of the patch is to be effectively achieved then it needs to be either old or new depending on the kind of cloak that has the rupture. Accordingly, if the cloak is old and needs to be mended/restored/saved by a patch then this patch ought to be as close in texture (in this case as worn, without being worn out) as possible to that of the cloak. Similarly, if the cloak is new then only a new patch can ensure that the ripped cloak is held together. This brings a specific characteristic to being Church that stresses the functional dimension of being Church rather than the substantive dimension. It is not so much in the claim to posses a new quality that Church as patch takes its place. Rather Church emerges through the process of fulfilling the new role as patch in order to mend/restore/save fissures in the community. This is where the mission of patching for the sake of life in all its related wholeness finds meaning.
In a context of deep and violent divisions between Hindu and Muslim segments, being patch that binds the ruptures is a specific calling. For Christians in India, who make up less than three per cent of the population, this is also an invitation to be Church by celebrating our minority status. The patch is not a new robe; it serves best to mend a tear that separates two large pieces of cloth. This ministry and mission of being patch can only be accomplished by a piece of cloth, which is willing to blend into the edges of the ripped cloak. It is a small part of the cloak but essential for restoring the robe or cloak for the purposes for which it has been tailored. In this context Paulos Mar Gregorios’s observation is pertinent. He notes that the word for patch in this biblical passage is the Greek word pleroma, which means fullness or wholeness. In his translation the verse reads: ‘And no one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for otherwise, the pleroma tears away from it, the new from the old’.[8]Fullness or wholeness thus does not imply that the whole cloak must be made like the patch. Rather it brings about fullness or wholeness by patching the ruptures in the cloak. It is this mending/restoring/saving function of the Church that makes it the patch of Christ. The boastful talk of India becoming Christian is nothing more than self-delusion. This is part of either foreign driven mission propaganda or Indian fueled deceptive rhetoric. Christianity in India has always remained between two and three per cent over the last 100 years. In fact, the 2001 census of India registers a fall in the Christian population over the last decade. The metaphor of the patch helps us celebrate our minority calling which specially prepares us to restore the divisions between various sections of the community, the Hindus and the Muslims in this case. On 15 August we celebrated Independence Day. There were numerous flag hoisting ceremonies all over Bangalore. In a local church at such a ceremony a lay person shared an interesting thought. Looking at the tricoloured flag, which has saffron (signifying the sacrifice of martyrs), white (signifying purity), and green (signifying agricultural flourishing), he mused: ‘The Hindutva forces have taken over the saffron and the Muslims have taken over the green. Christians are only left with the white, which is in the middle. Perhaps our role is to mediate between the saffron and the green for the sake of a united and peaceful nation.’ The truth that pleroma, ‘fullness’ lies in being the in-between patch that sews together two parts of the flag for related wholeness was captured by this Indian Christian.
Church as garment fringe of Christ: Restoring life in all its related wholeness for the sake of outcast communities
Let us shift metaphors. From being patch in the middle of a worn cloak we move to the fringes of the garment. The in-between mission of mending life in all its related wholeness by mediating between religious hostilities that are violently rupturing in Indian neighbourhoods also needs to take cognisance of the possibilities for Christ’s mission at the outer fringes of human community. The Hindu nationalist vision for India is constructed on a caste-based understanding of human community. The village, which represents the habitation of at least 70 per cent of the Indian population, is a good case in point. It is still one of the most segmented and segregated social units in the world. There is a clear demarcation between the caste communities on the one hand and the Dalit and Adivasi communities on the other. They literally live in ‘colonies’ outside the boundaries of the caste communities’ ‘villages’. This is another kind of religious conflict. Dalits and Adivasis are considered culturally and religiously alien because of their underdeveloped nature. Hindu nationalism promotes an idealistic pattern of harmony for the Indian neighborhood by reinforcing a network of social relationships that are hierarchical and in conformity with the fourfold caste system. Dalits and Adivasis, who constitute about a fifth of the Indian population are outside of this fourfold caste system. Even today, when we debate whether we have moved beyond postmodernity, Dalits and Adivasis live in the shadow of the caste communities when they are in the village and on the fringes of caste-controlled geography, economy and society.
The Church must be part of the restoring of life among the outcastes of human society and extend the garment of Christ to empower and heal and restore the outsider. Luke 8.42b-44 captures the power of the ‘fringe’ of Jesus’ garment and its availability to those on the edge of human society. Two thoughts from this Gospel passage are worth noting as we ponder upon our calling as Church to extend the power of healing through being the fringe of Christ’s garment. The first is that the Church must be an outward-moving organism that does not insulate itself against those who live beyond the safe boundaries as construed by society. The Church is the presence of Christ’s power which skirts the borders and allows itself to be contacted by the outermost members of the neighborhood. Indeed one can argue that it was because of the unwieldy and careless manner in which Jesus wore and managed his garments that it was accessible to the woman. The clothes strayed to places that came close to one who was not at the centre. The spilling over of the garments to be accessible to those on the outermost side is a feature that can instruct the Church. The second point is that the Church becomes the hope for healing and restoration among the outcast only when it appears as the fringe of the garment of Christ. Outcast communities are captivated by available fringes of empowerment that press in on them. Centuries of dehumanisation and systemic oppression and marginalisation have made many communities (Dalits, Adivasis and women) diffident, shameful and frightened of approaching the centre of public authority and power. When the Church is there as garment fringe such communities are able to reach out to it as the extended presence of Christ which they can grasp onto for healing and restoration.
This links up another healing cloth that reaches out to outermost and lowliest in human society. In the Gospel of John Jesus uses another textile in the form of a towel to turn the attention of his disciples to feet (John 13.1-17). It reminds us of the feet that are bloodied by work in the dirt and grind of roads, factories and farms; the feet that toil to support the edifice of the superhero nation state, which talks and proliferates and feeds; the feet that are ritually unclean in Hinduized society; the feet that are organically connected to the nourishing and nurturing of the earth. Wiping feet with a towel after washing them is Jesus’ symbolic way of reaching out to the outermost and the lowliest in society. Thus, serving or servicing the feet is a way of life offered to the Church. Religions need to know whom they serve. Jesus enacts a certain way. This puts the feet at the centre of ritual and actual service. The feet are ennobled, anointed and cleansed by the combination of water and the towel.
In this same Gospel narrative Peter plays vintage realist. He does not want Jesus to ignore the head and the hands. ‘Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head.’ There is no awe, there is no esteem and no purity that can come from serving the feet alone. But Jesus is unwavering. The usual and populist justification of trickle down transformation is reversed. Having Peter’s feet washed and wiped signifies the healing of the whole body. The Lord anoints my feet and the fountain at the base gushes upwards to sanctify the entire body. The instruction of Jesus cannot be more lucid. The head that is glorified is a crushed reed. Thorns displace the crown. The arms that are lifted up are open and stretched out. Not clutched fists but embracive arms. The belly is fed from shared common meals. And this is preceded by venerating and nurturing the feet. Jesus calls his Church to be shocked and awed by the stains, the bruises, the calluses and the cracks of the feet.
The fringe of Christ’s garment and the towel of compassionate service are images of Church for they are symbolic offerings of power which restore to outcasts life in all its wholeness. The term ‘Christian power’ itself is, perhaps, a misnomer. As I see it, the concept of power, in the light of Jesus Christ, is a critique of the authoritarian, coercive, legalistic notion of power propagated by the organisational church. Christian power that is gifted to the Church is persuasive, suffering, loving, participating and self-giving power.
Church as divided clothes of Christ: quilting life in all its related wholeness for the sake of harmony of all creation.
There is a third image of fragmented clothing that is also relevant to our reflection on being Church. This pertains to the same garments whose fringe conferred healing to the woman suffering with haemorrhage for 12 years. Mark 6.56 suggests how the garments of Jesus became a spectacle of healing among the helpless. But at Jesus’ crucifixion these garments are in fragments and divided among the soldiers after casting of lots. John 19.23-24a records this graphically. I first came across this connection in an article by Ramon Panikkar.[9]
Three points are important in reinterpreting the Church through the metaphor of the divided clothes of Christ. First the remnant of Christ in the world is in fragmented pieces. These are embodiments of Christ's healing power left behind in the world. These are in the hands of a multiplex Christian community, which has divided itself on the basis that each possesses its own bit of the fragmented clothes of Christ.
Second, the resources of the mending/restoring/saving power of Christ as symbolised by his garments are also there among members of society that are not disciples of Christ. Interreligious community resources for healing are divided by casting lots among all sections of the neighbourhood. There is an ambiguous juxtaposition between the ‘seamless tunic’ that has been given to one soldier by casting lots and the remaining four portions of Jesus’ clothes that have been divided among four soldiers. It would have been convenient to identify the Christian Church as an institution with the ‘seamless tunic’ and the other religious communities with more partial and fragmented portions of Christ’s garment. But it seems more likely that all these soldiers, who shared in this sacred booty, were gentiles, which then implies that non-disciples become possessors of Christ’s symbol of healing: power of the Church for mending/restoring/saving life in all its related wholeness.
Third, the working of God in Christ can be now be portrayed most inclusively. It involves a process of gathering up and quilting together all the fragmented pieces of the garments deposited at will (as if by casting of lots) among all religious communities, even as all of Creation is preparing to be the royal garment for God in Christ at the end of time.
Notes
1. The Asian Age (August 26, 2003), p. 1.
2. The Hindu (August 26, 2003), p. 12.
3. I have discussed this relationship between Savarkar’s notion of Hindutva, which was first propagated in a systematic manner in his book Hindutva: Who is a Hindu?” published in 1923, and the emerging contemporary expressions of Hindu Nationalism, which has disastrous affects on Religious and Ethnocultural Minorities in India in another paper. Sathianathan Clarke, “Hindutva, Religious Ethnocultural Minorities, and Indian-Christian Theology,” Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 95, No. 2 (2003): 197-226.
4. Satish Deshpande, Contemporary India: A Sociological View (New Delhi: Viking, 2003), p. 91f.
5. Ibid., p. 93.
6. The Bangalore Age (August 26, 2003), p. 13.
7. The Hindu (August 26, 2003), p. 3.
8. A Human Face, Kottayam: MGF Spectrum Books, 1992 p.97-98.
9. ‘The Fragment and the Part: An Indic Reflection’ in The Church in Fragments: Towards What Kind of Unity? Ed. Giuseppe Ruggieri and Millos Tomka (London: SCM Press, 1997). p. 86.
An Integral Vision of mission for a New Millenium
Awaiting content
Top
