Our discussion has highlighted three central groups of debates that have structured the last three hundred years or so of Hindu–Christian encounters – historical, theological–philosophical, and legal – though we have also tried to indicate how these conceptually distinct types are sometimes interwoven with one another.
Christianity often continues to be characterised as an ‘alien’ religion that was forcibly transplanted to Indian soil. Concurrently the appeal is made by Hindu nationalists to recover the indigenous traditions of the land which are supposedly more tolerant and universal than the ‘foreign’ faiths tainted through their association with European colonialism. At a historical level, of course, such characterisations are inaccurate: whatever may be the basis of the claim of Thomas Christians in south India that the apostle Thomas landed in the Malabar sometime around the middle of 100 CE, it is certain that communities of Christians in south India were established by the third or the fourth centuries (Frykenberg 2008: 115). In recent decades, however, even some academic trends have, perhaps unwittingly, perpetuated the notion that the precolonial natives were haplessly dragged along by the complex political, social, and religious currents that were set in motion through the colonial encounters. Colonial discourse studies tend to see the transmission of power and knowledge in a unilinear fashion from Europe to India, and often conclude that various explanatory categories that now circulate among the once colonised – whether ‘religion’, ‘caste’, and, most importantly for our purposes, ‘Indian Christianity’ – were merely European constructs. Ironically enough, the conclusion they arrive at is often similar to that of the earlier Orientalists – that the precolonial traditions were frozen into an ahistorical passivity before the Europeans arrived on their shores to insert time, culture, and history. We have tried to show in several places that it would misleading to characterise the converts to Christianity as passive stooges of the British empire, for not only were the missionaries positioned at shifting distances from imperial policy but also the converts themselves soon raised the banner of a native Church that would be free from missionary control. Therefore, the primary emphasis – in some of these conversions at least – should be, as Robin Horton indicates, ‘not on the incoming religious messages, but rather on the indigenous religious frameworks and on the challenges they face from massive flows of novel experience’ (Horton 1993: 315). Nevertheless, for much of the missionary centuries, the native converts continued to be regarded as the ‘children’ of the missionaries who needed the latter’s care and guidance, and were incapable of exercising autonomous control over their Indian churches. Given the pervasive influence on the missionaries of the Victorian motifs of liberalism, Darwinism, and racialism, they often sought to ‘Europeanise’ their converts, thereby leading to the charges of ‘denationalisation’ that continue to be levelled against Indian Christians to this day.
Interestingly, the colonial view that the natives were sunk in a ‘childlike’ condition from which they needed to be recovered has been replicated by some members of the Hindu intelligentsia with respect to the Dalits and the Adivasis who are allegedly unable to exercise rational agency in choosing a ‘foreign’ religion such as Christianity or Islam. Our discussion of some historical studies centred around the term ‘conversion’ has indicated that this understanding of the subalterns as the passive receivers of Christian themes is incorrect: in fact, in some so-called mass conversions it was they, and not the missionaries, who played the critical role. The various complex products that these interactions produced were marked, on the part of the converts, by different degrees of accommodation of and opposition to the message that the missionaries preached. Further, from some Hindu perspectives, conversions from the ‘lower’ castes are specifically opposed on the grounds that they are motivated only by the ‘non-religious’ search for social mobility. As we have highlighted in our discussion of ‘conversion’, such views ultimately presuppose certain metaphysical notions of what, in fact, constitutes the spiritual life. For a religious standpoint that views the religious end exclusively in terms of a spiritual liberation, any applications of religious themes to the temporal domain will seem ‘irreligious’; however, religious schemes that conceive this end more broadly to encompass material well-being too will support the quest for social improvement. The Christian understanding of ‘conversion’ itself has undergone various shifts during the colonial era and later across the international missionary conferences: Christian missionaries were forced to revise some of their ‘spiritualising’ notions of conversion particularly in the light of movements towards Christianity from the ‘lower’ castes who sought not simply the ‘spiritual bread’ of the gospel but also the prospects of material welfare. Consequently, given the fact that the missionaries were often influenced by an evangelical theology which did not emphasise the issues of social justice, G. Oddie argues that ‘one of the most striking features of the British missionary movement in India throughout the [nineteenth] century is that so many men [sic] … should have become so caught up in ‘temporal’ affairs and social protest’ (Oddie 1979: 245). Today, it is accepted by most Christian denominations that conversion involves the acceptance not simply of a different cosmology or specific theological dogmas but also of an alternate social vision, which may include ‘material’ concerns such as some measure of security and prosperity (Bauman 2010: 285).
Conversion and the conflict of truth-claims
One of the most powerful sources of Hindu criticisms of Christian conversions, however, is not so much the alleged incapacity of Dalits and Adivasis to comprehend the contents of the message being offered to them as the very ‘intoleration’ of preaching the gospel at all. An underlying assumption in such claims seems to be that the propagation of any message that is grounded in some fundamental criterion through which the religious experiences of humanity can be graded as ‘higher’ or ‘lower’ is intolerant. As we have noted, however, the proclamation of truth-claims based on specific criteria is not in itself intolerant – though they can, and in the Christian case, have often led to the persecution of dissent and heresy. Toleration, properly understood, is the exercise of voluntary restraint so as not to prevent the spread of views which are believed to be inadequate, and a careful examination of ‘Hindu toleration’ reveals that the latter too is based not on the blanket acceptance of any view whatsoever but on specific beliefs about the nature of reality which rule out others as incomplete. The crucial question is not ‘whether toleration?’ – for both the Christian and the Hindu traditions have internal resources for developing tolerant stances towards the religious others – but ‘why toleration?’ Christian theologians who utilise various forms of the fulfilment theme see Christ already at work in Hindu life, and Hinduism as incorporated into the universal economy of salvation through Christ (Panikkar 1964: 34). In contrast, proponents of neo-Hinduism often see Christianity as a younger sister religion, and because they hold the ‘true Religion’ to be grounded in a non-duality between the world and the transpersonal ultimate, they view the historical dimension of Christianity – centred in Jesus, the son of Mary – as an unnecessary appendage. Therefore, they regard the Christian claim that Christ is the true goal of all humanity, and the inspirer of all that is good and holy, as a species of patronising arrogance, especially when some Christian theologians argue that the positive values of Hinduism need to be ‘supplemented’ in the light of the Christian faith.
Given that Christians, neo-Advaitins, Vaiṣṇavites and others appeal to specific criteria for their distinctive reconstructions of the religious traditions of the world, the central issue is, therefore, whose criterion is objectively valid, and whether it is even rationally possible to demonstrate this validity (Bachelard 2009). Philosophers of religion strongly disagree over whether it is possible to establish any non-question-begging criterion to adjudicate between the competing truth-claims of the different religions. For instance, it will not be very helpful in a dialogical context to set up ‘the belief in a personal God who has decisively intervened in the world’ as a criterion for the rational superiority of a religion and then go on to claim that Christianity fulfils it, for this criterion will not be accepted by, say, an Advaitin Hindu. Other criteria such as internal consistency, spirituality, morality, psychological health, or liberating capacity do not always fare better, for what weight to assign to these and also how to assess the success of their application will itself depend on personal judgements which are ultimately grounded on metaphysical commitments. Therefore, while J. N. Figgis believed that Christianity has satisfied more than any other religion the fundamental needs of human nature, non-Christians might disagree over precisely what these needs are and what is the best environment for their satisfaction (Bouquet 1921: 163). One influential view in these matters is that because each religious practice is thus confronted with a number of ‘uneliminated alternatives’, and because of the difficulty of finding some external reason to demonstrate the superior epistemic status of one’s own, the only rational course is to hold on to the religious scheme that serves one well in guiding one’s activity in the world (Alston 1991: 274). Therefore, coming to know about religious diversity should not in itself reduce the epistemic confidence of a believer in her own faith, for most religious traditions are internally complex, and believers can use their resources to explain why incompatible traditions exist (for instance, they are works of the devil or they are products of selves with defects of karma). On a somewhat different view, if maximising truth is a basic epistemic duty, then a believer who acknowledges epistemic peer conflict – that is, the fact that seemingly sincere and knowledgeable individuals hold different religious perspectives – cannot justifiably claim that her beliefs are cognitively superior to those of others unless she subjects them to critical assessment (Basinger 2002: 13). The knowledge of religious diversity can, according to this view, produce an ‘epistemic uneasiness’ which can be a ‘neuralgic point of creative conceptual growth for Christian thought’ (Griffiths 2001: 97).
Our discussion has indicated how Hindu–Christian encounters have, in fact, led to such uneasiness on both sides of the divide, leading to various patterns of reformulation of both classical Hindu thought and traditional Christian theology. From the Hindu side of the encounter, these reconfigurations of Hindu approaches to the religious other range from Raja Rammohun Roy who sought to distil the ethical essence of Christian thought out of its doctrinal statements, through Vivekananda and Radhakrishnan whose affirmation of religious diversity was rooted in the doctrine of the mystical interiority intimated by Advaita to Mahatma Gandhi who appealed to the common moral values underlying the different religions (Sharma 1988). Partly in response, Indian Christian theologians such as A. J. Appasamy (1942) and V. Chakkarai (1930) have tried to develop Indian Christologies by using the resources of the bhakti traditions to speak of Christ as the unique, permanent, and complete avatāra. Therefore, Hindu versions of Christology often take us back to one of the central questions that Christian theologians down the ages have grappled with: how to make sense of the claim that a series of occurrences in Israel two millennia ago is the fulcrum around which world-history turns and is constitutive of the salvation of all humanity in all times.
In recent decades, against the socio-political backdrop of religious identities, the boundary walls across Hindu–Christian dialogue have often grown higher, with Hindu critics sometimes alleging that Christianity is an irrational faith-stance whereas the truths of Hinduism can be demonstrated in a rationally perspicacious manner. As we have indicated, such charges are a caricature on two counts: first, the Christian traditions have a rich history of reflection on the relation between reason and faith, and, second, the Hindu religious traditions themselves have sometimes claimed that the primary means of knowledge for the existence and the nature of the divine reality is not reason but scriptural authority (Rambachan 1987). In a recent twist, some Hindu intellectuals have claimed that Hinduism is the universal religion of the future because its beliefs are scientific and evidence-based, but such apologies for ‘Vedic science’ ultimately turn out to be contemporary reworkings of Vedāntic metaphysics with their specific presuppositions. Whether, and to what extent, ‘reason’ can be the arbiter of competing truth-claims across the Hindu and the Christian traditions therefore is one of the vital issues that will continue to engage partners on both sides of these dialogical encounters, especially if it is the case that ‘reason’ itself is often guided by ‘faith’ commitments (Clooney 2001: 49). Many Christian philosophers have argued that though the arguments of ‘natural theology’ can provide support for the claim that the Christian understanding of Jesus Christ as the incarnate God illuminates, even if dimly, all facets of human experience, they should not be regarded as logically compelling for all rational inquirers. For instance, John Cottingham has emphasised that spiritual praxis is prior to metaphysical doctrine because unlike in the sciences where detached scrutiny is required for understanding, in the religious domain personal involvement and self-transformation are essential preconditions for the knowledge of God. However, the claim that praxis is the framework for intellectual assessment and that religious conviction is the means through which a seeker moves towards God does not imply that the question of whether religious belief is epistemically responsible can be ignored. The religious outlook must be able to integrate the diverse facts of common human experience – for instance, defend the claim that the world is a creation of a benevolent God in the face of evil – and while the religious claims may not be empirically testable, they should at the very least be ‘possible candidates for truth’ (Cottingham 2005: 152). The form of ‘committed pluralism’ that we discussed in Chapter 6 can be seen as one mode of dialogical encounters in the midst of these complexities: on the one hand, it affirms a specific tradition as one among many others which are tenable, for we cannot stand outside all relative positions and attain a ‘neutral’ vantage-point, but, on the other hand, denies that all of them are of equal epistemic merit for each position is undergirded by certain beliefs and presuppositions which can assessed for their consistency, validity, and plausibility.
Conversion and the Hindu nation
Nevertheless, in recent Hindu–Christian encounters these philosophical–theological issues have often taken a back seat and political struggles over identities have returned to the fore. The ongoing contestations over the Indian pasts and the attempts to recover ‘indigenous’ traditions have resulted – from the Hindutva perspectives especially – in the constructions of fixed and singular identities not only of the Hindu nation but also of the ‘minorities’ such as Christians and Muslims. The projection of such identities can be seen in the Hindutva argument that Christianity is a ‘foreign’ religion subversive of the timeless traditions of Hinduism which is indigenously and eternally Indian. The historicisation of these identities reveals, however, that they did not fall down pre-formed from some ahistorical space, but were products of complex historical currents. Thus while Hindutva groups often employ Hindu and Muslim as polarised analytic categories, social anthropological studies of ‘village India’ have shown that individuals sometimes use multiple, overlapping, and composite identities such as ‘Hindu’, ‘Muslim’, ‘Indian’, village resident, member of a caste, and so on, and that Hindus and Muslims interact with one another in various ways in both public and private spaces. For instance, the description of Benares as a ‘Hindu’ city ignores the presence of a sizeable Muslim population – presently a quarter – and the fact that while some Hindus participate in Sufi shrine veneration, the Hindu pilgrimage economy is supplied by Muslims in the forms of saris, sacrificial animals, decorations and so on (Gottschalk 2000: 36). Further, in some places in Rajasthan, Muslims sometimes participate in Hindu temple festivals, and in one instance in the fifteenth century Hindu Rajputs and Pathan Sunnis who were devotees of a certain Sufi saint fought together to preserve the independence of a new kingdom (Khan 2004: 31–8). However, the sense of an inevitable conflict across these boundary lines was heightened by Hindu nationalist anxieties over the numerical decline of the ‘Hindu population’ through conversions to Christianity of the ‘lower’ castes and the Adivasis. The attempts of Christians to forge dual identities, through their self-description as Indian Christians, and sometimes through the ‘interculturated’ products of their Christian patterns of life, are often viewed as threatening. Prominent figures associated with the RSS have responded by projecting an all-embracing Hindu social body, structured by the non-competitive ‘organic solidarity’ of varṇāśrama, to oppose the ‘foreign’ religions which are supposed to practice fraudulent means to deceive the subalterns (Zavos 2001). Further, the perception of the ‘alienness’ of Christianity, which stems to some extent from its connections with British imperialism, was reinforced by certain colonial policies which sought to address the legal ambiguity of India’s Christian population (they had no personal law unlike Hindus and Muslims) by constructing a monolithic Christian community over which Christian laws were applied more rigidly than Hindu laws. Under the Judicial Plan of 1772, Warren Hastings decreed that all disputes concerning matters such as inheritance, caste, and other customs would be settled by the Company in accordance with the laws of the Quran and the śāstras for Muslims and Hindus respectively. The presuppositions of this Plan were that it was possible to distil a Hindu code out of the śāstras by ignoring the vigorous traditions of contested interpretations centred around them, and further that the natives of the land could be brought under two clearly discernible heads, ‘Hindus’ and ‘Muslims’. This had the double consequence of bracketing together, for legal issues, groups such as Jains and Sikhs under the category of ‘Hindu’ and of ruling out Indian Christians as, in effect, foreigners who did not fall under the purview of indigenous legal traditions. While the marginal status of Indian Christians – with respect to the evolving notions of the Hindu nation during the latter half of the nineteenth century – is sometimes attributed to the distinctive beliefs of Christianity or to the western assumptions of the missionaries, the construction of their religious identity as culturally ‘non-Hindu’ should be attributed to some extent also to legal judgements relating to inheritance and marriage. British colonial policies sought to stabilise the Christian community by defining it in terms of personal laws that were distinct from their Hindu and Muslim counterparts, and these laws ‘served to reify Indian Christians as an alien community’ (Mallampalli 2004: 197).
However, Hindutva projections of Christian identity as ‘anti-Indian’ usually ignore such micro-studies of historical processes and instead accept certain sweeping assumptions about each cultural formation as a self-enclosed totality which is structured by certain ‘essential’ elements. As a matter of fact, far from being self-contained groups with radically alien norms and values, most cultures contain within themselves a variety of subcultures, and in some cases it may even be easier to facilitate dialogues across these cultures than within them – say between ancient Greek materialism and classical Indian materialism, than between Indian forms of atheism and Advaita. The important question is whether it is possible for a member of one culture to understand another without any preconceptions or presuppositions, and likewise whether one can remove from an indigenous culture all ‘alien’ categories of understanding (Halbfass 1991: 12). Christian readings of Hindu life-worlds as ‘deficient’ in that they insufficiently recognise the transforming presence of Christ, and likewise neo-Advaitic interpretations of Christian worldviews as ‘provisional’ to the attainment of the higher truth of non-duality should be properly challenged not on the grounds that they are ‘mere interpretations’ from the perspective of a distinctive standpoint – for all accounts are interpretive – but on the basis of how plausible, adequate, and informed they are. Therefore, the assertion that other religious traditions have elements of truth and goodness in them (whether made by Vatican II or neo-Advaita) and the attempt to present the cognitive, experiential, and spiritual superiority of one’s view-point, to the extent that this is possible through rational argument, are not incompatible with being ‘tolerant’ of these traditions.
Nevertheless, the essentialist motif of Hinduism as grounded on an immutable foundation, with the implication that any critical reading of its traditions is necessarily an act of interpretive violence, continues to be articulated by some Hindu thinkers. For instance, S. R. Goel argues that ‘Hindu culture grew out of Hindu religion over many millennia. The one cannot be separated from the other without doing irreparable damage to both’ (Goel 1988: xv). However, such views overlook the internal diversity of the multi-stranded formations of Hinduisms, and the various ‘internal’ movements that have interrogated, critiqued, and challenged its contours. For an instance of how modern ‘Hindus’ have positioned themselves vis-à-vis the classical traditions, we may turn to the conflicts between the defenders of ‘orthodoxy’ and the members of the Brahmo Samaj in colonial Bengal. In the 1850s and 1860s, many young men who had renounced ‘orthodox’ Hinduism and moved into Brahmoism were socially excommunicated by their families, and they often joined the Brahmo Niketan set up by Keshub Chunder Sen in 1871 to provide them a sanctuary. In the run up to the Brahmo Marriage Bill, which was enacted by the government in 1872, orthodox Hindus argued that Brahmos were an integral part of Hindu society (samaj), to which P. C. Majumdar replied that while nationally and socially Brahmos regarded themselves as Hindus, in matters of ethics, belief, and social practice, they were Brahmos and not Hindus, for they did not accept the infallibility of the Vedas, the incarnations of Viṣṇu, and so on (Kopf 1979: 104). Therefore, questions such as how Hindu ‘culture’ is related to Hindu ‘religion’, whether elements of the former can be retained even with the rejection of the latter, who are to be regarded as the ‘orthodox’ defenders of these aspects, and so on have a wider scope than the domain of Hindu–Christian encounters – they have also played a vital role in structuring internal Hindu debates over ‘reform’ movements. There is, of course, a significant grain of truth in Goel’s comment in that given the dense overlaps between the processes of ‘culturisation’ and ‘religionisation’, the attempt to take individuals from their cultural backgrounds and orient them towards a ‘non-indigenous’ religion leads to various types of strains, as the Indian Christian critics of the ‘denationalisation’ of converts have sometimes pointed out. The key question, however, is this: when Christian theological themes are woven into the fabric of Hindu cultural patterns, the process of transcreation leading to the emergence of distinctive forms of Indian Christianity, is the product an instance of an ‘irreparable damage’ to both or a ‘fruitful synthesis’ of both?
There can, of course, be no blanket answer to this question – every case of interculturation will have to be examined on its own merits. For instance, while some Christian theologians have sought to develop the Christian understanding of creation through ‘creative adaptations’ of Advaita, these translations have also been interrogated by other Christian theologians on three grounds. Firstly, in singling out Advaita as the medium through which Christian doctrine can be indigenised, such translations ignore the richness, diversity, and vitality of the bhakti material; secondly, these Christian translations sometimes diverge from the self-understandings of contemporary Advaitins who read Śaṁkara in certain traditional ways; and thirdly, the liberative message of the gospel can arguably be more adequately translated into the dynamism of the bhakti movements than the Advaitic theme of world-transcendence (Ganeri 2007). As these intra-Christian debates show, Indian–Christian theology today faces – its ‘external’ moment – the challenge of giving shape to, and participating in, the movements of the subalterns in their struggles against oppression and injustice, while also nurturing – its ‘internal’ dimension – the specific intra-community Christian patterns of worship centred around the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. It is important to highlight the polyvalent and the multi-stranded realities of Indian Christianities, and how differing views on the relations between ‘religion’ and ‘culture’ lead to somewhat divergent responses to the question of indigenising the gospel into Indian forms. For instance, while the Catholic Church has developed a ‘gradualist’ approach and helped in the formation of an Adivasi-ised Christianity, a ‘new breed’ of missionaries emphasise speed in conversions and demand a clearer distinction between the Christian faith and the surrounding cultural environment. Since the 1980s, a large number of evangelical groups from south India have swept across parts of Adivasi areas in Gujarat by preaching the power of Christ to cure the deaf, the dumb and the crippled. In the context of the social and the economic marginalisation of the Adivasis, the charismatic groups offer a message that is clear and absolute – they will be cured and freed from evil forces by the power of the Holy Spirit (Lobo 2010). On the other hand, mainline churches in India sometimes criticise these ‘fringe groups’ for focusing too exclusively on spiritual liberation and ignoring the wider socio-political dimensions in which individuals are embedded. The central issue seems to be whether the primary emphasis in Christian witness should be on ‘Christianisation’ – preaching the gospel and redeeming individuals from their condition of sinfulness – or ‘humanisation’ – participating in movements towards social justice by forging broad solidarities across religions. The intra-Protestant debates regarding, firstly, whether conversion to Christianity requires Hindus to enter into the Church which, Kaj Baago argued, had become tainted by its colonial associations or whether ecclesial participation is a distinct marker of Christian life, as Lesslie Newbigin emphasised, and, secondly, whether the true meeting place for Hindus and Christians is the secular realm where Christianity should seek to establish a Christ-centred fellowship, as M. M. Thomas argued, are all different reflections of the ongoing attempts of the Indian churches to search for distinctive Indian Christian identities in the multicultural and religiously plural landscape of the country (Kim 2003: 88–108).
There is a further complication in that the various moves towards indigenisation will be evaluated and assessed in somewhat different ways depending on whether one takes an ‘internal’ Christian perspective or an ‘external’ Hindutva perspective. For a parallel example of an ‘insider–outsider’ difference, we may consider the following shift in Christian attitudes to Darwinian evolution. Over the last two hundred years or so, many Christian theologians have given up the belief in the inerrancy of scripture, and hold that the book of Genesis is not to be read as a literal account of the world’s origins – these are to be provided by physics and evolutionary biology – but rather as an allegory of humanity’s falling away from God. Now from some atheistic perspectives, these movements will be read as the gradual retreat of religious views in the advance of the superior forces of scientific progress, whereas some Christian figures would claim that they were enabled, in the light of scientific discoveries, to separate what was ‘essential’ in the gospel from certain ‘peripheral’ assumptions relating to cosmology that it had picked up during the medieval period. Similarly, the debate over whether Christianity, which was earlier driven by an ‘imperialist’ motive to dismantle local cultures, has started speaking the language of indigenisation because of a resurgent Hinduism – as Hindutva figures claim – or whether Christian reflection on these matters has been shaped by a deeper understanding of the ‘incarnationist’ basis of the gospel – as Christian theologians today may argue – does not admit of a straightforward resolution. For an instance of the latter, in a service for the repentance of the sins of the Church, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) prayed:
Lord, God of all men and women, in certain periods of history Christians have at times given in to intolerance and have not been faithful to the great commandment of love … Have mercy on your sinful children and accept our resolve to seek and promote truth in the gentleness of charity, in the firm knowledge that truth can prevail only in virtue of truth itself.
(Quoted in Fernando and Gispert-Sauch 2004: 318–19)
From an ‘external’ Hindutva perspective, such ‘repentances’ will probably seem disingenuous, for it is often claimed that Christianity has not abandoned its view of the centrality of Jesus Christ and remains as intolerant as ever.
The basic dilemma that Christian theologians, who hold on to the normative revelation of God in Christ, seem to be struggling with in working out a Christian position on religious diversity seems to be the following. On the one hand, one can assert a Christo-centric position that only those who have heard the gospel and been baptised into the Church may (not, of course, ‘must’) attain salvation. However, this response is prima facie inconsistent with the view, accepted by almost all the Christian traditions, that the God who was, and continues to be, active in Christ has offered salvation to all and not just to a segment of humanity (‘theological regionalism’) or only those who lived within a particular strand of history (‘theological epochism’) (Jathanna 1981: 35–40). Therefore, some Christian theologians have claimed that we may discern God’s activity also in religions in which individuals have never had the occasion to respond to the gospel. On the other hand, the claim that even those who for whatever reasons have not been able to respond to the gospel are somehow encompassed by Christ’s grace could imply that they are being dragged willy-nilly, without any conscious knowledge of the Christian God on their part, to the Christian hope of salvation. The crucial challenge, therefore, is: how to weave a path between, on the one hand, a ‘Christomonist’ claim that God’s activity is limited to the institutional structures of the Church, and, on the other hand, the ‘assimilationist’ claim that all religions are always-already oriented to the full salvation that the gospel speaks of, even without their individuals acquiring some specific knowledge about its claims. This is the task that the Catholic International Theological Commission identified when it asked: ‘How can one enter into an interreligious dialogue, respecting all religions and not considering them in advance as imperfect and inferior, if we recognize in Jesus Christ and only in him the unique and universal Saviour of [hu]mankind?’ (Race 2008: 160). To put the matter slightly differently, the theological challenge is therefore to hold together in a creative tension the ‘historical Jesus’ who is held to be the normative locus of the divine revelation and the ‘Christ-principle’ who is not exhausted by specifically Christian forms but is working through all of human history.
These are complex issues that Christian theologians have increasingly begun to deal with, and we have tried to emphasise that the key issue here is not well-phrased with slippery terms such as ‘toleration’, for the interpretation of the significance of religious diversity through a specific criterion – whether Hindu or Christian – need not in itself lead to intolerant consequences. Even against the backdrop of the religious persecutions of the English Civil War, John Locke could write that toleration was the ‘chief characteristic mark’ of the Church, because the true mark of a Christian is love and the faith which works, not through compulsion, but through love (Wootton 1993: 390). Similarly, though ‘Hindu toleration’ has received much battering in recent years, especially from Dalits and feminist groups who have pointed out that it is often a smokescreen with which various forms of caste-based and gendered oppression are masked, it needs to be emphasised that the Hindu traditions have significant resources for developing relations of hospitality towards the religious other. Swami Vivekananda’s words at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893 remain a powerful reminder of the devastations that religious violence caused in early modern ‘Christian’ Europe and continue to scar large swathes of the world today: ‘Sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible descendant, fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful earth. They have filled the earth with violence, drenched it often and often with human blood, destroyed civilization and sent whole nations to despair’ (1972: vol. 1, 4). The Swami’s view that such violence should be renounced because all the religious traditions of the world lead to the common Destination is one that some Christian thinkers too have emphasised, even if they would disagree with him over what is the most fundamental debate in the entire religious history of humankind – how to conceptualise the same Goal.
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