Towards interfaith dialogue

RELIGION AND THE CULTURAL CRISIS IN INDIA AND THE WEST - An Ecumenical Inquiry: Abraham Adappur; with a foreword by C. Subramaniam; Intercultural Publications (P) Ltd., 15 A/30, WEA/Karol Bagh, New Delhi-110005. Rs. 650.

RELIGION, IN its sublime semantics, is the manifestation of the divinity in every human being. But what is culture? It is "the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world and thus with the history of the human spirit." In a fundamental dimension, religion has divine roots and culture has spiritual foliage. The pluralism of religions and the multitude of cultures, sans humanism, merely become ritualistic godism and addictive opium, cultural barbarism, bristling with savage blind bigotry are a menace to mankind. Christianity, in its acme, accepts that God's spark is latent in man -- every human. So too, the other great religions like the supremely spiritual Upanishads. Likewise, cultural heights, in their glorious light and flight, make humankind a finer family knit together by compassion and love. Both are noble needs of the life of society. But a crisis has gripped both by a corrupt global creed and competitive corporate greed. I repeat a quote here pick-pocketed by me, which runs thus: "To expect greatness in public office, to anticipate a new meritocracy that can solve our problems, is a fantasy. The public interest and the safety of free government are better served by an alert, informed citizenry seeking to promote the common good. Whether that, too, is fantasy, only time will tell."

Says Will Durant in The Pleasures of Philosophy: "Human conduct and belief are now undergoing transformations profounder and more disturbing than any since the appearance of wealth and philosophy put an end to the traditional religion of the Greeks. It is the age of Socrates again, our moral life is threatened, and our intellectual life is quickened and enlarged, by the disintegration of ancient customs and beliefs. Everything is new and experimental in our ideas and our actions; nothing is established or certain any more."

Noble thinkers and philosophers may battle in vain against fissiparous and fragmented religions and cannibalistic cultures, missing the Absolute and the holistic Reality. From this miasmatic imbroglio, how can we elevate ourselves to Truth, which alone will make people world-wide free? Writes Durant: "From this confusion the one escape worthy of a mature mind is to rise out of the moment and the part, and contemplate the whole. What we have lost above all is total perspective. Life seems too intricate and mobile for us to grasp its unity and significance; we cease to be citizens and become only individuals. We have no purposes that look beyond our death; we are fragments of men, and nothing more. No one dares today to survey life in its entirety; analysis leaps and synthesis lags; we fear the experts in every field, and keep ourselves, for safety's sake, lashed to our narrow specialties. Everyone knows his part, but is ignorant of its meaning in the play. Life itself grows meaningless, and becomes empty just when it seemed most full."

William Safire in his Ode to Greed, writes, "Greed is finally being recognised as a virtue. Dressed in euphemism -- the profit motive or growth incentives or the entrepreneurial spirit -- our not-so-deadly sin turns out to be the best engine of betterment known to man. The world has learned that to concentrate on divvying-up diminishes us all, while scrambling to help ourselves helps others; without greed, there is no wherewithal for generosity." Indeed greed is now the new creed, which creates a gargantuan crisis. Ecumenism is the panacea, beyond the placebo of economism, holds Abraham Adappur whose book I review here.

This prolegomenon introduces the contemporary calamitous crossfire, based on "globalisation" baloney. Interface dialogue in the global context, geared to peace and harmony, forms the foundation of the great work under review with a facility and felicity that puts to shame the fanatical ferocity of hardcore Christians and obdurate, obscurautist Muslims and chauvinist Hindus who know not the perils at stake for the eidos and ethos of religions and cultures. The surrender syndrome of higher values to vulgar, violent, wealth-hungry downfall is in sight and Dr. Adappur's ecumenical enquiry will be a partial remedy for the macabre malady.

"East is East and West is West and the twain shall never meet," wrote Kipling brazenly assured of western materialism. And now, the West has over-run the East with a unipolar power fuelled by market-manic passion. But "ring out the false, ring in the fine", "ring out the narrowing lust of gold", "ring in the thousand years of peace," wrote Tennyson in transcendent verse. He is right, not Kipling, and we are fighting (in vain?) the obsoletely pathological but suddenly serendipitous moneyocratic globophilia with its subversive market-profit privatisation.

The author of this valuable temporal-spiritual book has an eclectic appeal and dialectic drive that it is compelling reading. The theme is of contemporary concern, the thesis is of universal interest and the synthesis, as a finale, "leads kind light amidst the encircling gloom". "Know ye the Truth and the Truth shall make you free Amen," is my soulful comment.

Has the author a well-founded scholarship to dwell on such a profound problem as the title of his book "Religion, Cultural Crisis in India and the West" indicates? Yes, indeed, for those who know him and his scholastic credentials no surprise is in store. The Jesuit author has many learned books to his credit in Malayalam and English. He has secured degrees and won awards too. Impressive humility hides his attainments. He has garnered fresh thoughts and travelled extensively. That is why he is at ease in the Rig Veda, the Bhagavad Gita, Biblical theology and Marxist materialism.

A comparative study of divergent cultures and their cross- fertilization can disclose humanity in its essential diversity and underlying unity. The high priority agenda for the world to survive is to generate a multi-religious dialogue with a will to effectuate a secular-sacred vision as a modus vivendi. Who but a Keralite can initiate such an odyssey? Adi Sankara and St. Thomas hallowed Kerala.

Listen to the cultural travelogue of India reaching the West and other Eastern regions. Writes Dr. Adappur: "From the earliest times, Indian culture had attracted the attention of Western travellers and scholars. The impression India created on foreigners varied from admiration to evulsion. In his introduction to The Wisdom of India, an anthology of ancient sacred texts, Lin Yutang, a Chinese scholar living in the United States, observes that India was China's teacher in religion and imaginative literature and the world's teacher in trigonometry, quadratic equations, grammar, phonetics, Arabian nights, animal fables, chess, as well as in philosophy{hellip} She inspired Boccaccio, Goethe, Herder, Schopenhauer, Emerson and probably also Aesop. Western contact with India dates back to the early Greeks and Romans. Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.) led his armies into North-Western India. The earliest European accounts of India were based on a recollection of legends about Alexander's expedition written in Ptolemic Egypt probably in the 3rd century B.C. by an Alexandrian whom modern scholars call Pseudo-Callisthenes. When Plotinus (circa 205-270 A.D.) wanted to learn the philosophy of Persia and India, he had to rely upon notions current in the Greco-Roman world of that period. They too were based on ancient accounts originating from the companions of Alexander the Great and produced by classical writers such as Strabo, Pliny, Arrian, Plutarch."

Missionaries came to India and China, mastered language and phiolosophy and became messengers of cultures. The great tribute paid by Western thinkers to Hindu philosophy is well-known. Did not Max Mueller exclaim: "If we were to look over the whole world to find out the country most richly endowed with all the wealth, power, and beauty that nature can bestow -- in some parts a very paradise on earth -- I should point to India. If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered over the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions of some of them, which will deserve the attention even of those who have studied Plato and Kant -- I should point to India. And if I were to ask myself from what literature we here in Europe, we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans, and of one Semitic race, the Jewish, may draw the corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human a life, not for this life only, but a transfigured and eternal life -- again I should point to India."

Oft-quoted is the tribute by Schopenhauer, the pessimist: "In the whole world there is no study{hellip} so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Upanishads{hellip} (They) are products of the highest wisdom{hellip} It is destined sooner or later to become the faith of the people." And again, "The study of the Upanishads has been the solace of my life, it will be the solace of my death."

"If an ancient Indian of the time of the Upanishad, of the Buddha, or the later classical age were to be set down in modern India{hellip} he would see his race clinging forms and shells and rags of the past and missing nine-tenths of its nobler meaning{hellip} he would be amazed by the extent of the mental poverty, the immobility, the static repetition, the cessation of science, the long sterility of art, the comparative feebleness of the creative intuition."

In 1870, Keshab Chandra Sen wrote: "I am a child of Asia. Her sorrows are my sorrows, her joys are my joys. From one end of Asia to another, I boast of a vast home, a wide nationality, an extended kinship{hellip} Christianity was founded and developed by Asiatics, and in Asia. Jesus is akin to my oriental nature, akin to my oriental habits of thought. An Asian can read the imagery and the allegories of the Gospel, its description of nature and of customs and manners with greater interest and a fuller perception of their force and beauty than Europeans can{hellip} In Christ we see not only the exaltedness of humanity, but also the grandeur of which Asian nature is capable{hellip} Hence Christianity should not denationalise Indians. We must not confound the spirit of Christianity with the fashions of Western civilisation."

But, in a combatant mood, that cyclonic sadhu, Vivekananda argued: "The sacred books of the Christians and the Buddhists are different from ours because they are historical, not religious books. They deal with histories of the deluge, kings, dynasties and great men{hellip} These are just historical accounts (Puranas){hellip} and nothing more, whereas the Vedas were never written; they were never made{hellip} They have no historical character. Therefore they are right. Because the Christian scriptures are historical, it is clear they were made at some time by someone; they are man-made whereas the Vedas are not so. The non-historicity of the Vedas proves their superiority."

So thrilling are the pages, so philosophic the thoughts that breathe wisdom, so fair and objective the author's fearless criticism and marvellous quotations that the perennial process of interaction and constant experiment of reform had best be appreciated by reading and reflecting over 444 pages of learning.

How interesting that Karl Marx and Satya Sai Baba have received serious attention. Atheistic humanism and agnosticism also are not alien to the pages of Adappur.

Do read his counsel to Christians: "Our comparative survey of the cultures of India and the West has revealed several areas of contrast and convergence. The past relationships among peoples of different religions have often been strained by suspicion, rivalry, and even hostility. In their place, a new spirit of mutual respect and dialogue is now growing. This emerging pattern of relationship can play a vital role in promoting interfaith understanding and human solidarity. Hinduism, as we have seen, is a vast and variegated cultural complex covering divergent, or at times even contradictory beliefs and practices. In many ways, however, it embodies man's insatiable quest for meaning and for truth. An open and sincere dialogue between Hinduism and Christianity can contribute enormously towards cultural growth and human progress." Read on, dear reader, from Adappur by owning a copy.

V. R. KRISHNA IYER

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