Crisis and the Cross in India

The recently concluded World Food Conference at Rome reminded the human family of the grinding poverty and suffering that afflict our planet. In few countries is the problem as acute as in India. According to the Illustrated Weekly of India (Oct. 13, 1974), 90 per cent of the subcontinent’s 585 million inhabitants are “poor” and 30 percent (175 million) are “abjectly poor,” getting not even one square meal per day. Reports suggest that starvation may have claimed 1.5 million lives during the past three months in the densely populated states of Bihar and West Bengal. Meanwhile, apocalyptic voices warn of impending famine, which could mean disaster for tens of millions. Valiant efforts by government and volunteer agencies to reverse the tide appear overwhelmed by the rapid growth in the population, expected to number 1.1 billion by the end of the century.

Main-line Indian theologians have responded to the grave social crisis with a radical theology of humanization and liberation founded on a low view of the person of Christ. M. M. Thomas, director of the Christian Institute for the Study of Religion and Society (CISRS) and chairman of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches, stresses the secular relevance of Jesus, whom he describes as the “New Man,” the “New Creation,” and the “bearer of the New Humanity.” The new Indian theology, which synthesizes Western humanism and Indian pantheism, views Jesus as the paradigm of the higher spiritual being man is destined to become via the evolutionary process operative in history. Jesus’ call to discipleship in the broken world is a summons to be his co-workers in transforming oppressive power structures that impede the realization of man’s full humanity. The all-important datum is not personal conversion but whether the Church can effect political change by renewing and restructuring society. J. Russell Chandran, president of the United Theological College, Bangalore, warns against “an exaggerated emphasis on certain interpretations of sin and salvation which keep people preoccupied with peripheral concerns” (Religion and Society, XXI [1974], p. 32). The concept of sin prevalent in so-called fundamentalist Christianity is regarded as an alien import from the West.

Catalyst of the renascent Indian humanism is the Christian Institute for the Study of Religion and Society, founded in 1957 “to serve Christians and Churches in India in their evangelistic mission.” Under the management of M. M. Thomas, whose brother is a theoretician in the Communist party of India (Maoist), the community of specialist scholars has shifted from the historic Christian base to a secular socio-political ethic. The numerous publications of the society are pervaded with Marxist political jargon clothed in congenial but undefined religious language.

The leading voice in the field of Indian traditional religions is the Roman Catholic philosopher Raymond Panikkar, son of a Hindu father and a Spanish Catholic mother. Stimulated by traditional Indian thought which postulates the harmony and equality of all religions, Panikkar asserts that God has always been savingly at work drawing the sincere Hindu worshiper to Himself through Christ, who is present but hidden in the traditional faith. So Panikkar argues:

He is the light that illuminates every human being coming into the world. Hence Christ is already there in Hinduism in so far as Hinduism is a true religion.… That Christ which is already in Hinduism has not yet unveiled his whole face, has not yet completed his work there” [The Unknown Christ of Hinduism, London, 1964, p. 17].

Panikkar and a growing company of followers urge Christians to desist from the crusading spirit that seeks the conversion of Hindus to Christianity. The task of the Church is to enter into dialogue with Hinduism and thus to unveil to its sight Christ, its hidden guest. However, articulate Indian Christians challenge this optimistic universalism that views Hinduism as the kernel of truth of which Christianity is the head. Paul Sudhakar, a former Hindu now apologist and evangelist to Indian intellectuals, more correctly proclaims Christ as the fulfillment of the spiritual aspirations of the Hindu worshiper—i.e., Christ is the ultimate answer to Hinduism.

Faced with a sea of human need in India, many evangelical Christians and groups are faithfully offering their five loaves and two fish in the spiritual service of their fellow man. The conservative Union Biblical Seminary, Yeotmal, leads the field in the training of committed young men and women to the Th.M. level for pastoral and teaching ministries. Seeking a more strategic location, U.B.S. has targeted a move in 1977 to Nagpur, a city of one million situated at the heart of the subcontinent.

The evangelical alternative to the radical CISRS is TRACI, the newly organized Theological Research and Communication Institute, based in New Delhi. Under the leadership of missionary Bruce Nicholls, TRACI scholars are engaged in a range of research projects designed to enable the Church better to apply the historic Christian message to the contemporary Indian situation in all its complexity.

With nominal Christians making up less than 3 per cent of the population, the Church in India faces a titanic struggle against the revitalized forces of neo-Hinduism, Communism, and religious humanism. But heartening numbers of Indian Christians are asserting that the appropriate response to their country’s staggering human need is not the abolition of historic Christianity but the courageous application of its dynamic in genuine spiritual renewal and social reform. The Christian family worldwide prays that at the present moment of history the Sanskrit slogan affixed to India’s national emblem may be fully vindicated: “Truth alone triumphs.”

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