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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 November 2024
The Modi dispensation provides a unique vantage for assessing the role, program, and self-understanding of the emergence of a local, indigenous style of theology within Roman Catholicism in India during the Nehruvian era. The style has often been linked to the internal history of Catholicism in the aftermath of Vatican II. In this article, the emphasis is rather located in the Indian context, and more specifically in the Nehruvian India. A special role in this relationship between Indian theologians and Nehruvian India was played by the category of difference that allows an appropriation of Western modes of thinking and yet marks a distance from them. I offer some consideration of the complex implications of this approach in theology.
1 Khilnani, Sunil, The Idea of India (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1997).Google Scholar
2 Helle, Jukka, Towards a Truly Catholic and a Truly Asian Church (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2022)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gravend-Tirole, Xavier, “An Examination of the Indigenisation/Inculturation Trend within the Indian Catholic Church,” in Constructing Indian Christianities: Culture, Conversion and Caste, ed. Bauman, Chad M. and Young, Richard Ford (New Delhi: Routledge India, 2014), Google Scholar.
3 This is the opinion of Filipino Jesuit priest C. G. Arevalo, who was present at that meeting. Quoted in Helle, Towards a Truly Catholic and a Truly Asian Church, 2.
4 Helle, Towards a Truly Catholic and a Truly Asian Church, 3.
5 Helle, Towards a Truly Catholic and a Truly Asian Church, 3.
6 The Second Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, Final Report, Rome, November 24 to December 8, 1985, II, C, 6.
7 Chakrabarty, Dipesh, “Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for ‘Indian’ Pasts?” Representations 37 (Winter 1992): CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 Not everyone is happy with the FABC’s essentialism. Jonathan Y. Tan argues, “An approach which essentializes ‘Asianness’ is problematic, because it tends to universalize the abstract, theoretical constructs in a manner that downplays the rich diversity and plurality of underlying Asian realities.” Jonathan Y. Tan, “Missio ad Gentes in Asia: A Comparative Study of the Missiology of John Paul II and the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (FABC)” (PhD diss., The Catholic University of America, 2002), 226–27.
9 Gaudencio, B. Rosales and Catalino, G. Arevalo, ed., For All the Peoples of Asia: Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences Documents from 1970 to 1991, vol. 1 (Quezon City: Claretian, 1997), Google Scholar.
10 Asian Colloquium 26 in Rosales and Arevalo, For All the Peoples of Asia, 72.
11 Eilers, Franz-Josef, ed., For All the Peoples of Asia: Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences Documents from 1997 to 2001, vol. 3 (Quezon City: Claretian, 2002), .Google Scholar
12 Mendoza, Ruben, A Church in Dialogue with Peoples of Other Faiths: A Journey to the Kingdom in the Spirit: The Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences, 1970–2007 (PhD diss., Catholic University of Louvain, 2013), Google Scholar.
13 Mendoza, A Church in Dialogue with Peoples of Other Faiths.
14 Shani, Giorgio, “Rebranding India? Globalization, Hindutva and the 2004 Elections,” Ritsumeikan Review of International Studies 3 (2004): Google Scholar.
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16 Tagore, Crisis in Civilization, 1–5, esp. 5.
17 In a letter to Charles Freer Andrews, he had written, “I love India … but my India is an Idea and not a geographical expression. Therefore, I am not a patriot. I shall ever seek my compatriots all over the world.” See Tagore, Rabindranath, Selected Letters of Rabindranath Tagore, ed. Dutta, Krishna and Robinson, Andrew (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), Google Scholar.
18 For a different opinion, see Brass, Paul R., The New Cambridge History of India: The Politics of India Since Independence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990)Google Scholar. Brass believes that Nehru committed India to both a rejection and a continuation of colony modernity.
19 Shani, “Rebranding India?,” 40.
20 According to Ashis Nandy, a modernizing nationalist elite under Nehru seemed to imply that the state was committed to implementing “the same civilizing mission that the colonial state had once taken upon itself vis-à-vis the ancient faiths of the subcontinent.” Nandy, Ashis, “The Politics of Secularism and the Recovery of Religious Tolerance,” in Secularism and Its Critics, ed. Bhargava, Rajeev (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), Google Scholar.
21 I refer to Partha Chatterjee’s two books, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse? (London: Zed Books, 1986)Google Scholar and The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993).
22 For a criticism of the very concept of “alternative modernity” (and its twin, “multiple modernities”), see Dirlik, Arif, “Thinking Modernity Historically: Is ‘Alternative Modernity’ the Answer?,” Asian Review of World Histories 1, no. 1 (2013): 5–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
23 The statement is included in the preamble to the constitution of India; emphasis added. See Abhyankar, Sharad D., “The Constitution of India,” in Constitutions of the Countries of the World, ed. Flanz, Gisbert H., Release 97-6 (Dobbs Ferry, NY: Oceana Publications, 1997)Google Scholar.
24 Bhargava, Rajeev, “The Distinctiveness of Indian Secularism,” in The Future of Secularism, ed. Srinivasan, T. N. (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006), Google Scholar.
25 Bhargava, Rajeev, Secular States and Religious Diversity (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2013), Google Scholar.
26 Bhargava, “The Distinctiveness of Indian Secularism,” 20–53.
27 Bhargava, “The Distinctiveness of Indian Secularism,” 20.
28 Bhargava, “The Distinctiveness of Indian Secularism,” 23. Professor Bhargava also claims that the interpretation and the content of this normative doctrine evolve. In passing it can be added that in the same article, on page 26, Professor Bhargava probably unintentionally echoes Nehru and his dictum on modernity. In fact, Bhargava notes with regard to Indian secularism’s critics that “if secularism is modern, they believe, then it must be western.” The statement can be interpreted as an understanding of modernity as universal, that is, not essentially Western.
29 Bhargava, “The Distinctiveness of Indian Secularism,” 40.
30 Here I refer to the fact that although the postcolonial Indian state abolished separated electorates based on religious and cultural differences, it continued to conserve the colonial distinction between majority and minority religious communities, particularly in the reality of personal and civil law. Other examples of state interference in the private sphere of religious affairs are the introduction of temple rights to Dalits, the abolition of polygamy and child marriage, and the establishment of divorce.
31 Bhargava, Rajeev, “What Is Secularism For?” in Secularism and Its Critics, ed. Bhargava, Rajeev (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), Google Scholar.
32 Bhargava, Rajeev, “Reimagining Secularism: Respect, Domination and Principled Distance,” Economic and Political Weekly 48, no. 50 (2013): 79–92Google Scholar.
33 Khilnani, The Idea of India.
34 “To think in terms of ‘alternative modernities’ is to admit that modernity is inescapable and to desist from speculations about the end of modernity.” See Dilip, P. Gaonkar, ed., Alternative Modernities (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), Google Scholar.
35 According to Sathianathan Clarke, a theologian with scholarly roots in both India and the United States, Indian theology cannot exclude and ignore “the voice of the majority, who testify to centuries of oppression and marginalization has been an ideological vehicle in the hands of the status quo.” See Clarke, Sathianathan, Dalits and Christianity: Subaltern Religion and Liberation Theology in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), Google Scholar.
36 Panikkar, Raimundo, “The Jordan, the Tiber, and the Ganges: Three Kairological Moments of Christic Self-Consciousness,” in The Myth of Christian Uniqueness: Toward a Pluralistic Theology of Religions, ed. Hick, John and Knitter, Paul F. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1987), 89–116Google Scholar.
37 Amaladoss, Michael, “Toward an Indian Theology,” in Theological Explorations: Centennial Festschrift in Honour of Jesef Neuner S.J., ed. Kavunkal, Jakob (Delhi: ISPCK, 2008), 18–34Google Scholar. Of course, Amaladoss is not the only Indian theologian involved in inculturation. The list would include scholars such as Sebastian Painadath, Paulachan Kochappilly, and Kurien Kunnumpuram.
38 Amaladoss, “Toward an Indian Theology.”
39 Amaladoss, “Toward an Indian Theology.”
40 Indian Theological Association, Statement 1983, “Search for an Indian Ecclesiology,” no. 4. The reference to Panikkar refers to a private meeting with Pope Paul VI in which Panikkar wondered if Christianity must be indefinitely bound to its Greek and Semitic origins. “I remember once telling Pope Paul VI during a private audience [probably dated January 1966], when he asked me what I was doing, that I was wondering if, in order to be a Christian, one had to be intellectually a Greek and spiritually a Semite.” Panikkar, Raimundo, “The New Role of Christian Universities in Asia,” Cross Currents 41, no. 4 (Winter 1991–1992): Google Scholar.
41 Amaladoss, Michael, John, T. K., and Gispert-Sauch, George, eds., Theologizing in India (Bangalore: TPI, 1981), Google Scholar.
42 For the meaning of “Hindustan,” see Ahmed Asif, Manan, The Loss of Hindustan: The Invention of India (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In his book, Ahmed Asif argues that Pakistan, Bangladesh, and the Republic of India share a common political ancestry: they are all part of a region whose people understand themselves as Hindustani. Asif describes how the idea of Hindustan went missing in the 1900.
43 Benedict XVI, Lecture of the Holy Father: Aula Magna of the University of Regensburg (September 9–14, 2006), “Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections,” https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2006/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_university-regensburg.html
44 Gaudium et Spes (December 7, 1965), §53, https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html.
45 See the recent Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s “Doctrinal Note on Some Aspects of Evangelization” (December 3, 2007), in which it is said that the gospel is “independent from any culture,” §6, https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20071203_nota-evangelizzazione_en.html
46 For the phrase “nativist consciousness of difference,” see Chatterjee, the Nation and Its Fragments, 233.
47 Buttorm Myklebust, Olav, “My Pilgrimage in Mission,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 31, no. 1 (2007), .Google Scholar
48 Amaladoss, Michael, People’s Theology in Asia: Collection of the Lectures, East Asia Theological Encounter Program (2006-2018) (Phnom Penh: Jesuit Conference of Asia Pacific, 2021), Google Scholar.
49 Biblical interpretation in India has been flourishing for decades. George M. Sores-Prabhu is probably the most influential biblical scholar in India.
50 Soares-Prabhu, George, “The Kingdom of God: Jesus’ Vision of a New Society,” in Indian Church in the Struggle for a New Society, Amalorpavadass, D. S. (Bangalore: NBCLC, 1981), .Google Scholar
51 Amaladoss, People’s Theology in Asia, 21.
52 Chakrabarty, Dipesh, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).Google Scholar
53 A brilliant and recent example of theology of inculturation is Parappally, Jacob, Christ Without Borders (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2024).Google Scholar
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