I am reproducing letters exchanged recently between a lady in England and myself. They are relevant to the subject of this book.
Tel: 0409 281403 Mrs Sandy Martin 2 College Road
SHEBBEAR Beaworthy Devon EX21 5HH
England
28 March, 1994
Dear Mr.
Goel,
As part of my PhD thesis at Exeter University researching
Hindu understandings of Jesus, I would very much appreciate it
if you could take the time to answer the questions enclosed to
ensure that the study is completely up-to-date. I am eager to
present the findings entirely from a Hindu perspective (which is
also my own) and contemporary information
from Hindu sources, rather than Christian
reflections on Hindu insights, is somewhat scarce. I would appreciate
the permission to quote any response you might make which would be
included in a penultimate chapter on contemporary
Hindu interpretations of Jesus and the Hindu-Christian dialogue.
I would very much appreciate your co-operation for this
work and hope to hear from you. Please do move beyond the
scope of the framed questions if there is somethings further you
wish to add. Thank you.
With best wishes
Yours sincerely
Sd. Sandy Martin
Contemporary Hindu Responses to Jesus: A Questionnaire
What significance, if any, do you think Jesus has for Hindus around the world today?
If there is significance, how is Jesus primarily understood — as Jesus or as a Christ, and if the latter, is this the equivalent of avatar? If not, how is avatar best understood today?
With what strand of Hinduism is Jesus most closely associated today? Is such association primarily linked to Hinduism in the West or does it also apply to the Indian situation?
Have Hindu understandings of Jesus changed since Hinduism's expansion into the West and the movement towards it of many western devotees?
Many liberal Christian theologians criticise Hindu interpretations of Jesus as being out of touch with recent Christian 'discoveries' of the Jewishness of Jesus and his historical context. What would be your response to this critique, arising as it does from a very different world view?
Study so far suggests to me that Hindu interest in Jesus arose initially as a reaction against western Christian imperialism in India; this later changed to an incorporation of Jesus within a Hindu framework divorced from received western Christianity. Since the threat of Christianity subsided, there appears to have been no real development of Hindu responses to Jesus. How would you assess this critique?
Would there have been a natural interest in Jesus without the encounter in India during British rule there? If so, how might this have differed from current interpretations? If it had arisen from within a friendly interfaith exchange, would the Hindu response have been different?
Could you please summarise your personal perspective as a Hindu to the Hindu-Christian dialogue and the relevance of Jesus to that?
Sita Ram Goel 2/18, Ansari Road, New Delhi - 110 002 7th April, 1994
Dear Mrs. Martin,
By a strange coincidence your letter dated 28 March and the
Questionnaire reached me on the day and at the hour when I had
just finished the final draft of my small monograph, Jesus Christ:
An Artifice for Aggression. It is meant to be a companion
volume to the second and enlarged edition of Catholic Ashrams,
a book I wrote in 1988. It is quite some time since I have been
trying to have a close look at Jesus Christ, the stock-in-trade of
Christian missions, and in the process have become conversant
with the Christological research undertaken in the modern West
over the last more than two hundred years. I had never imagined
that Jesus was such a flimsy figure, historically as well as doctrinally.
Your letter has come as a surprise. I wonder why you have
addressed your Questionnaire to me. It is true that I have written
quite a bit on Christianity, and published some more. But I am
hardly a representative Hindu at present, though I may become
one in the not-too-distant future. Hindus by and large continue to
subscribe to sarva-dharma samabhava (equal respect of all religions), as I also did before I studied Christianity and Islam with
the help of their orthodox sources. I hope you have written to
some other Hindus also so that you have a fair sample of the
current Hindu opinion on the subject.
I have not been able to understand quite clearly what you
mean when you say that you are “eager to present the findings
entirely from a Hindu perspective (which is also my own)”. I
trust that you are not a Hindu like the late Father Bede
Dayananda Griffiths, or my friend Raimundo Panikkar. You may
clarify the point if you care. I am certainly curious.
You are welcome to incorporate in your thesis
whatever I say on the points raised by you. My only request is that you will
not quote me at random, or selectively, or out of context. I have
noticed again and again that the average scholar from the West is very scrupulous when it comes to presenting other people's point of view. But I cannot say the same about Western scholars
with a conscious Christian bias. Very recently I had a shocking
experience from the Southeast Asia correspondent of the Time
magazine. I found him absolutely dishonest.
I am enclosing a list of Voice of India publications. Some of the
titles may interest you. Arun Shourie, the well-known
scholar-journalist, is also releasing shortly his latest book,
Missionaries in India: Continuities, Changes, Dilemmas. He was
invited to speak from the Hindu point of view in a meeting of the
Catholic Bishops' Conference of India held recently at Nagpur.
You will find it very informative vis-à-vis your subject.
Regards,
Sincerely
Sd.
(Sita Ram Goel)
Encl.: List of publications
Questionnaire
Before I take up your questions one by one, I prefer to give a little background about the intellectual atmosphere in post-independence India. This may help you in sizing up your subject.
The scene in post-independence India has been
dominated more or less completely by Communists and Socialists and Leftists of
all sorts. They have shown no interest in religious sub-
jects, least of all in Jesus Christ. It is only recently that the
Ayodhya Movement has drawn the attention of our educated
elite towards what they call religion. But in this context too they
have proved that they are either equally ignorant about all religions or equally indifferent to them.
Of course, there have been Hindu parties and platforms
present on the scene all along. But they have hardly mattered till
recently. The Arya Samaj seems to have lost its fire and has
become more or less moribund. The Hindu Mahasabha, the
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), and the Vishva Hindu
Parishad (VHP) have never been interested in
doctrinal Christianity or Jesus Christ as such. Their headache has been the conversions by Christian missions. If you ask them about Jesus, they are most likely to say that he was a good man. Some of
them may also call him a mahatma or rishi or even an avatar. But
that means nothing. They will say the same about Muhammad or about
any other prominent figure for that matter.
Thus there is no truth whatsoever in the Christian missionary
propaganda abroad that a Hindu-Christian dialogue is on in India at present.
I am totally unaware of any such dialogue being in the forefront. Of course, there
are some Christian groups across the country who are holding “dialogues” with “Hindus” and reporting them in the Christian press, here and abroad. But the whole
thing is a farce, in any case a far cry from the Hindu-Christian
dialogues during the long period from Raja Rammohan Roy to
Mahatma Gandhi. First of all, there are now very few Hindu
thinkers who are interested in Jesus Christ, one way or the other.
Secondly, Hindu thinkers who have studied Jesus Christ in depth
and who thus qualify for the dialogue, are fewer still. Thirdly,
knowledgeable Hindus are hardly the Hindus whom Christian
groups are likely to invite for dialogue. They pick up Hindus
who suit their purpose, with the result that Hindu participants are
no more than mere presence reported in the Christian press. For
all practical purposes, the current Hindu-Christian dialogue is a
Christian monologue. It seems that Christian theologians in India
have lost completely their self-confidence of earlier days.
Nor is there any truth in the missionary propaganda abroad,
namely, that Hindus are hungering for Jesus or that, in the words
of Mother Teresa, Hindus need Christ. This may help the missionaries to raise funds and gain other types of support from their
Western patrons. But the fact remains that this is as big a lie in
the present as it was in the past. Hindus have never been hungry
for Jesus nor have they ever been in need of Christ, notwithstanding the “harvest” which
missionaries have reaped from time
to time. The force and fraud and
material allurements involved
in the missionary methods tell the
true story.
Now I will take up your questions.
Jesus as such has never had any significance for Hindus at large. At best he means to them one religious teacher among many others. The educated Hindus have been fed for a long time and by some of the best Hindu leaders on the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount, the Jesus who saved the adulteress from being stoned, and the Jesus who cried from the cross that those who had wronged him may be forgiven. But for Hindus like me who have studied him first-hand and in the context of the history he has created all through these two thousand years, he means death to Hinduism and all that it stands for, the same as in the ase of many Pagan religions and cultures around the world.
To the best of my knowledge, no Hindu thinker has ever
accepted Jesus as the Christ. Some Hindu thinkers may have called him an avatar, but no
Hindu thinker has ever equated him with Rama, or Krishna, or the Buddha. Hindus
who know the shastric meaning of avatara as also the theological meaning of
Christ, will never equate the two terms. In any case, I have not
come across any Hindu literature on the subject. Christian theologians have tried to put their own
words in Hindu mouths, or their own meanings in Hindu terms. But that
is another story. Hindu scholars are not at all eager to get credit for such exercises.
Christian theologians have tried for many years to relate Jesus
to practically every strand of Hinduism — from Advaita to Bhakti.
But I wonder why they have not been able to make up their mind and say for sure that this is the strand of Hinduism
which needs Jesus as it crown. So far it has been a free for all, which shows what they are about. They are out to try different Hindu versions of Jesus on different sections of Hindu society. There
have also been a few Hindus who have tried to see this or that strand of Hinduism in
Jesus. But they have done so in order to prove that Jesus was some sort of a
Hindu, or that Christianity has borrowed from Hinduism. I have yet
to know of a Hindu who has asked Hindus to rally round Jesus because he is close to some strand of Hinduism. For Hindus like me who have studied Hinduism as well as Jesus, he can be
related to no strand in Hinduism. We see in him a dark force arising from the lower
levels of human nature. Hinduism in its essence can have nothing to do with the likes of him except
as villains a la Vritra or Ravana of Kamsa.
I am not competent to answer this question because I
really do not know anything about Hinduism's expansion into
the West. All I know is that some Hindu swamis are getting
audiences, even followers, in the West. I know the Hare Krishna
movement also to a certain extent. I was told by friends in the
USA that some Hindu swamis start with fulsome hymns to Jesus
before they come to their subject proper, or
tell their audience that they are not saying anything
which was not said by Jesus long ago but which the Christian West
has missed. I can understand the strategy, witting or unwitting. But I cannot approve of
it. I want Hindu swamis to be more self-confident, and not lean
on Jesus. I met some converts to Hinduism in the USA. They
came under the influence of another convert turned guru. They
did not tell me that they were dissatisfied with Jesus, only that
the new guru was more satisfying. The other type of Western
converts to Hinduism I have met in India. In their case the rejection of Jesus and the whole Judeo-Christian tradition is total. But all this is not sufficient for me to draw any firm conclusions. In
any case, I am not aware of any new understanding of Jesus
dawning in this country simply because some people in the West feel drawn towards Hinduism.
I am afraid I have not understood your question. Which are the Hindu interpretations
of Jesus that liberal Christian theologians are criticising? So far I have known
only one Hindus interpretation of Jesus, namely, that he was a good man, preach-
ing humility, compassion, and forgiveness. Thus Hindus have
remained out of touch not only with recent Christian “discoveries” but with all Christian
“discoveries” at all times. Jesus has never meant so much to them as to
make them go into Christological researches. I have not come across a single book
on Christology written by a Hindu. Even educated and modern
Hindus are not aware of the subject. But I am sure that once they
get informed they will feel more at home with Jesus the Jewish
preacher in a historical context than they have done with Jesus
the Christ. For instance, I am conversant with the latest researches. I find Jesus the Jew more
acceptable than the Jesus of Christian theology.
You are quite correct that Hindus were forced to take
interest in Jesus only because he came with Western imperialism, and threatened Hinduism in all sorts of ways. But you are not correct when you say that they incorporated Jesus in a Hindu
framework. Before Western imperialism came to this country
Hindus had lived with Islamic imperialism for several centuries,
and learnt the art of flattering the bully out of his crude hectoring
and cruel deeds. They appealed to the mullah and the sufi in the
name of “true” Islam and the “real” Muhammad. The art also
became a belief in some sections of Hindu society with the passing of time. But it will be untrue to say that Muhammad was ever incorporated into the Hindu framework. The same applies to the
Jesus of Western imperialism. Hindus have only tried to beat the
missionaries with their own stick, that is, by inventing a “true”
Jesus and praising him to the skies while denouncing
proselytisation in his name. That is all. And that also has come
to an end with the coming of independence. Christian missionaries can no more afford to be
bullies. Hindus are no more in need of the “true” Jesus. Now they
are bothered only about the hristian missions as a political problem.
No new response to Jesus is called for. Christian theologians are deluding themselves
if they think that Jesus has ever meant anything much to the Hindus.
Hindus had heard of Jesus even before the British advent.
Jesus was very much present in Islamic theology. But I am not
aware of any Hindu taking notice of him in the medieval times.
They would have shown the same indifference to him, had he
come with preachers without any backing of bayonets. Hindus
have never denied to anyone the freedom to preach what one
likes. They have their own way of smiling at only sons and sole
saviours. They remained indifferent to Muhammad so long it
was only some sufis settling down among them and presenting
him as the last prophet. But they had to take notice of Muhammad when the sufis invited the swordsmen of Islam. So also in the case of Jesus. Even today, take away the financial and political backing which the powerful West provides
to Jesus and see the result. Hindus will have no objection to Christian preachers trying to make converts. But I am very doubtful about the Hindu response to Jesus being more
positive or substantial than it has been so far. Hindus have thousands of
saints, and Jesus comes nowhere near even the most minor of
their spiritual teachers. If all the military might, financial largesses,
and media power of the West has failed to impress Jesus
on the Hindu mind all these years, there is no reason to believe that he will fare better without this equipment.
The most worthwhile Hindu-Christian dialogue took place
when Raja Rammohun Roy, Swami Dayananda, Swami Vivekananda and Mahatma
Gandhi spoke from the Hindu side. John Mott and the Tambaram conference of the
International Missionary Council (1938) found the
Christian missionaries at the end of their wits in the face of Mahatma Gandhi. They would
have been nowhere if Nehruvian secularism, a continuation of
Western imperialism, had not rescued them out of the tight corner into which they had been driven. They
resurged forward, and devised new mission strategies of Indigenization and Liberation,
etc. They also achieved some notable success, particularly in the North-East. But they never felt the need of a Hindu-Christian dialogue any more. Why are they in need of it now? The Second Vatican is invoked as the new
inspiration. But the Second Vatican itself has to be explained. We have not been taken in by
the airs of condescension in the papal declaration of 1965 about Hinduism. We know that Christianity
has never made concessions out of an inner seeking. In fact, the word “inner” is not
applicable in the case of Christianity. It has always used or
bowed down to outer circumstances. The Second Vatican saw
that Christianity was in a bad shape in the West, and had to find
a new home in the East. Dialogue with Hinduism and Buddhism
became the new mission strategy. But unfortunately for the
Christian mission, Hindus have shown no interest in the dialogue. Nor are they likely to show
any interest so long as the missionary apparatus is maintained intact and the right to convert
is insisted upon. It amounts to picking my pocket after making
me look the other way. I have told my friends such as Raimundo
Panikkar that if they are sincere about a dialogue with Hindus, they should
denounce the missionary apparatus. They smile and
dismiss me as a Hindu chauvinist. Even so, we are prepared for
a dialogue provided the Christian side does not lay down the
ground rules. That is not acceptable to them. What they want us
to accept in the first instance is that Christianity has a lot in
common with Hinduism, that Christianity is a great and unique
religion, that Jesus is a spiritual power, and that Hindus should
have no objection to Christian missions. We will not walk into
the trap. In any case, we are in a dialogue with them through
Voice of India publications. They have refused to respond so far.
We do not know whether the silence is prompted by the fear of
losing the argument, or by the self-satisfied smugness of those
who wield big money, big organization, and big influence. Jesus
has a relevance to the dialogue if the Christian side allows us to
present him as we and not they see him. Why should we not have
our say?