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In this volume that honours one of the outstanding educators of present-day India, Dr P S Jacob, one finds excellent resources on Philosophy, Faith And Higher Education, written from various perspectives both national and international. Several critically important issues for us- religious, philosophical, cultural and social, are discussed by well-known authors.
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Beyond Borders

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Beyond BordersChallenging B oundaries of

Philosophy, Faith & Education

A Festschrift Celebrating Five Decades of P S Jacob’s Career in Education

Editors: Gr aCE JaC oB & Paulson Pulikot til

Bangalore, indiaPublishing & Media

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Beyond Borders

Challenging Boundaries of Philosophy, Faith & Education

A Festschrift Celebrating Five decades of P S Jacob’s Career in Education

Copyright © 2010 The Union Biblical Seminary

Published 2010 byPrimalogue Publishing Media Private Limited

#32, II Cross, Hutchins Road, Bangalore, 560084, IndiaWebsite: www.primalogue.com

E‐mail: [email protected]

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any

means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher or a licence permitting

restricted copying.

ISBN‐13: 978‐81‐908904‐1‐0

Cover design by George Korah for Primalogue Publishing & Media

Printed and bound by Brilliant Printers Private Limited

Interpretations and opinions expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the editors or The Union Biblical Seminary

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Dedicated to former, present and prospective students

of Plamthodathil S Jacob

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I. Philosophy and Religion

1. Reflections on the academic study of religion - Paul B Courtright

2. Humanism and Religion: The Emerging Dialogue ‐ Jesudas M Athyal

3. Colonial Construction of Religious Identities in India: A Critique ‐ Brainerd Prince

4. Ramanuja and Kierkegaad on the Concept of Faith (Bhakti) : A Critique ‐ Gabriel Merigala

5. Bhakti in Maharashtra ‐ Sadanand More6. Tracing the Volitional Contours of the Self in the

Hindu Context ‐ Varughese John

II. Faith and Society

7. Christianity’s Contribution to Marathi Language & Literature ‐ Gangadhar Morje

8. Pandita Ramabai’s Quest for Mukti: The Struggle to Be an Indian Christian ‐ Sebastian C H Kim

9. Re‐Visioning God in the 21st Century: A Dalit Pentecostal Perspective ‐ V V Thomas

10. A Christian Response to Gender‐based Domestic Violence: Some Perspectives ‐ Elizabeth Leelavathi Manasseh

11. Apologetic Challenges in India ‐ C V Mathew

ContentsPreface

Introduction

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3

9

21

45

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79

81

105

119

139

151

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III. Higher Education

12. Science‐Library Partnership ‐ Nitya Jacob and Andrea Heisel

13. Higher Education: Perceived Role, Overriding Concerns, Changing Scenario and Evolving Form ‐ K B Powar

IV. Tributes

1. Monty Barker2. Mani Jacob3. Thomas Barnabas and Satish Barnabas4. Yeager and Louise Hudson5. Mary Clark Seelye6. Alice Clark7. Reny Ninan8. Smriti Jacob

Contributors

Index

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185193197200203206208210

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Preface

The idea of doing a Festschrift for Professor P S Jacob, Jake or PS as he is also called at the Union Biblical Seminary was originally

expressed by a close friend, Alice Clark when she was visiting India in 2003. Alice felt that this was long due. Jesudas Athyal, a former student of PS had some good suggestions and helped to list out possible contributors to cover the various academic contexts of PS’s work and associations.

At the same time, the Management Council of The Union Biblical Seminary felt the need for honouring Professor P S Jacob who has been associated with it since 1973. Dr Samson Parekh who was Principal of the Union Biblical Seminary took the initiative in materializing the idea by getting the official nod from the Governing Board in 2008. Professors Paulson Pulikottil and Grace Jacob were appointed as editors in order to bring out this volume by the end of 2009 to commemorate Professor Jacob’s fifty years of teaching.

We are grateful to all the writers who were related to Professor P S Jacob as students, colleagues or associates for contributing to this volume in honour of him. George Korah and his team at Primalogue deserve special thanks for taking up the publishing at a very short notice. Special thanks to the Governing Board of Union Biblical Seminary for their earnest support and to God for his sustaining grace throughout project.

It is our prayer that this book which celebrates five decades of PS’s teaching career “beyond borders” will accompany many students and scholars in their learning and teaching as PS himself continues to teach. We wish him many more years of happy teaching!

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IntroductionThis volume celebrates Plamthodathil Samuel Jacob’s fifty years of teaching, a lifetime achievement. Professor Jacob began his career at Ahmednagar College, Ahmednagar in Maharashtra in 1959 after his MA in Psychology at the University of Pune. Dr Thomas Barnabas was the Principal of the college at that time. Earlier, he was an undergraduate student at Ahmednagar College at the invitation of Rev Dr B P Hivale, the founder principal, who stimulated his thinking, teaching interests and a wider academic outlook. Dr Manorama Barnabas, who was head of the Department of Psychology was a close academic associate, friend and counselor to him from his undergraduate days. Over the years his academic interests expanded beyond Psychology to include the fields of Education, Philosophy and Religion.

As an educator, he actively contributed to a number of innovative programmes and projects which included the National Service Scheme which was pioneered at the Center for Studies in Rural Development (CSRD), Ahmednagar College in 1966. Dr S K Hulbe who was the faculty advisor of the Student Christian Movement of India (Ahmednagar chapter) and the director of the CSRD was inspirational for his involvement in social work. As a young teacher he always led his students beyond the prescriptions of the curriculum, exposing them to field study through camps, site visits and independent study projects. He also contributed to the administration of the Remedial Education Programme of the University Grants Commission (UGC) which was initiated in the 1970’s at the college. He served on the UGC Standing Committee on the College Improvement in Humanities and Social Sciences Programme. He was also a resource person at the National Institute for Educational Planning and Administration, New Delhi and jointly authored a volume on Teaching Methodologies in Colleges. His thoughts and ideas on education are reflected in a number of academic presentations and publications in the field of Higher Education. He was associated with the growth and development of the All India

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Association for Christian Higher Education and was its president from 1990‐1993. Jacob served as the Principal of Ahmednagar College from 1982 until his retirement in 1993.

All along his teaching career, he nurtured a keen interest in Philosophy. After his MA in Philosophy from the University of Pune in 1964, he proceeded as a Fulbright Scholar to teach Philosophy courses at Colby College, Waterville, Maine (USA), at the invitation of Professor John Clark who was also a Fulbright professor from the United States at Ahmednagar College. John Clark was a great inspiration for Jacob’s teaching and research. He had also worked with Professor Yeager Hudson another Fulbright professor at Ahmednagar in publishing a pioneering volume of “self‐study” of the college titled Profile of a College. While Jacob was on the Fulbright programme, he joined the Ecumenical Fellows’ Programme in Advanced Religious Studies at The Union Theological Seminary, New York in association with Columbia University New York. During this time, he was privileged to take courses offered by the famous theologian, Paul Tillich. At Columbia he also served as an instructor for the Peace Corps Volunteers who were coming to India. Interestingly, during this programme he associated with Lillian Carter the mother of President Jimmy Carter, who was a Peace Corps volunteer and they maintained communication during her volunteer work in Mumbai (then Bombay).

While he was in New York in the Columbia University programme, he met V S Naravane, professor of Modern Indian Thought at the University of Pune, who encouraged him to return to India to pursue his doctoral research. His thesis titled Christian Influence in Modern Indian Thought: A study in the Philosophy of Religion was completed under the supervision of Professor S S Barlingay and was awarded the Gurudev Ranade Damle prize by the University of Pune for the best doctoral thesis in Philosophy during 1972‐1973. He was a contributory teacher and a research guide in Philosophy at the University of Pune. In 1996, he worked with professor Barlingay in organizing the World Philosophers’ Meet in Pune. One of the significant contributions he made to the field is his philosophical analysis of the religious poetry of Narayan Vaman Tilak, the well known Marathi poet.

Jacob returned to teach in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Colby College in 1976. During 1990‐1991 he served as visiting professor at Columbia Theological Seminary (CTS) in Decatur, Georgia. He recalls with great pleasure his friendship and

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association with the well known Old Testament scholar, Professor Walter Bruggemann at CTS. He served as visiting professor in the Department of Religion at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia during 1993‐1994 at the invitation of professor Paul Courtright, who has been a long term friend and academic associate. During this visit he also taught courses at Agnes Scott College, Decatur and later taught full time at the college during 1995.

While he was at Ahmednagar College, he was visiting professor at Jnana Deep Vidyapeeth (JDV), Pune teaching courses in experimental psychology during 1979‐1982. His associates at the JDV included John de Marneff, the well known philosopher at the Pune University and Fr Hans Staffner. Fr Mathew Lederle of Sneh Sadan, Pune was also a close associate.

Jacob’s association with the Union Biblical Seminary (UBS) began in 1973 at Yavatmal as a visiting professor. Dr Saphir Athyal, the Principal was instrumental in getting him interested in theological education under the auspices of the Senate of Serampore College (University). Since 1996, he has served as a full time adjunct professor of Contextual Theology and recently as the Principal of UBS during 2009‐2010. He is the founder editor of UBS Journal and continues to guide doctoral theses for Senate of Serampore College (University).

In our conversations with Jacob he mentioned several persons with whom he worked closely and whose names we have not been able to include here. He has always acknowledged with gratitude their contribution in shaping his life and thoughts.

Jacob’s career in a secular educational background and close association with people of different religious traditions has significantly shaped his approach and outlook to theological education. By constantly interrogating conventional borders, he urges his students to cross over for a while and discover new boundaries of knowledge and understanding. This he believes is an essential transcendental experience for pluralistic learning and his students, colleagues and associates have encountered this over the years. Right from his early years of teaching at Ahmednagar College, he was inspired by the idea of providing the opportunity for quality higher education to students who would not have been able to access it due to socio‐economic hurdles or other challenges for learning. He was thus constantly committed to innovative teaching in the process of engaging his students in participatory life‐long learning experiences. The insights

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gained from both his theological and secular educational experiences have enriched each other.

The contributions to this volume by former students, colleagues, associates, friends and immediate family are intended to provide a reading experience on a range of topics and issues in Theology, Philosophy, Religion, Christian Influence in Maharashtra and Higher Education.

Philosophy and Religion

In a reflective and dialogical style, Paul Courtright narrates his experience in the teaching and study of religion in higher education in the American context. He tells us how it not only leads one to perceive the similarities and differences in rituals and traditions across religious cultures other than one’s own but also to understand more deeply one’s own religious tradition. Hence the study of religion as an academic subject has an important role to play in the contemporary global situation in order to develop an inclusive outlook towards religious pluralism.

Jesudas Athyal draws attention to the philosophical roots of “humanism” in both Marxism and religion. He observes that though “Marxist humanism” was the basis for political ideology in communist states like the former Soviet Union and China, these states neglected the development of “humanism” as perceived by Marx and Engels in favour of their capitalistic interests. He underscores the need for Marxist and religious camps to come together and fuse their humanistic positions in order to address the concerns for protecting the eco‐system and counteracting fundamentalist forces in both religion and communism.

Brainerd Prince argues that Hindu identity in India was shaped as a result of colonialism. However its expression today in postcolonial times in the form of communalism is not just religious but also of caste and class politics. Very often caste politics is misread as clashes between religious groups and identities and this he contends is the basic reason for the spread of communalism in India. Prince illustrates his point with reference to the recent communal violence in Kandhamal in Orissa which he says could be seen as a conflict between two tribes for their economic reasons, though this was not how it was projected. He goes on to argue that it is important for politicians and others to

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“drop the language of religious divide” in order that the nation is not polarized in terms of religious identities.

In a comparative analysis, Gabriel Merigala draws a parallel between the concept of bhakti and the concept of faith by comparing the views of the vedantic scholar Ramanuja and the existentialist philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. He elaborates how bhakti and faith are distinct concepts in very diverse socio‐religious contexts and yet similar when it comes to describing the directions that a human self needs to take while liberating itself from the clutches of “karmic bondage” or “sin”. In both philosophical positions the human self has to overcome alienation by responding to the “quiet call” or “grace” of God.

We have a further elaboration of bhakti and the bhakti movement in Maharashtra in Sadanand More’s paper. He highlights an essential feature of the Bhakti movement in Maharashtra‐‐ the shift away from Sanskrit to the Marathi language as a “literary and philosophical medium” in the 13th century used by the Manubhava and Varkari cults. Bhakti in Maharshtra gained an aesthetic expression of song and dance particularly in the varkari tradition.

Varughese John argues that the “dharmic self” within the classical Hindu religious tradition is predetermined. He goes on to say that there is a chasm dividing the traditional and modern notion of self in India whose growth points are the premises of the constitution and its statements He is optimistic that this gap between the traditional and the modern can be closed when the volitional self breaks free of the limitations of the traditional one.

Faith and Society

Two papers focus on the theme of Christian influence in Maharashtra. Gangadhar Morje describes how Marathi language and literature underwent changes in form at various levels both spoken and written as a result of its use in Christian missionary work. In the attempt to translate the Bible into an accessible Marathi, the lexis from spoken dialects were incorporated into the written form and new words and concepts included thus expanding on the existing lexicography of standard Marathi of the time. A new Dictionary, Molesworth’s Dictionary included words spoken by the “common people” and served as a model for dictionaries that followed. Thomas Candy

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introduced the system of punctuation, on the lines of English grammar. “Christian Marathi” evolved as a dialect of Marathi and a significant body of Christian literature in Marathi was also published in traditional literary forms: For example, the Khrista Purana by Fr. Stevens in 1614 and the abhangs of Narayan Vaman Tilak in the early twentieth century. Laxmibai Tilak’s autobiography Smriti Chitre is also recognized as a major contribution to Marathi literature. Beyond langauage and literature, Morje also comments on the influence of Christianity at the socio‐cultural level.

Among the converts to Christianity from the upper castes was Pandita Ramabai who is known as an articulate and independent thinker. Sebastian Kim’s paper draws attention to her conflict with the church hierarchy and Christian doctrines in her struggle to maintain her identity as an Indian Christian. This is reflected in her correspondence and exchanges and her own testimony.

Leelavathi Mannaseh reports on a study that she conducted on Christian women who were abused in their marriage. The observations show how bible study could be used effectively as a means for overcoming abuse. The findings have implications for theological education with particular reference to domestic violence.

In an overview of Pentecostalism as a reform movement which was directed towards religious social and cultural inclusiveness, V V Thomas illustrates the case of the Dalit Pentecostal Movement in Kerala. He addresses the need for a further broadening of the vision of God and spirituality in keeping with the social realities of a globalised world.

C V Mathew outlines the challenges that a Christian apologist should be prepared to face as a theologian while trying to present the Christian faith and its practices in India. He underscores the need for a cross-cultural understanding in key areas and an attitude of humility in trying to live one’s faith.

Higher Education

In their essay, Nitya Jacob and Andrea Heisel briefly share their observations from a collaborative study on “faculty‐librarian partnership” at Oxford College, Emory University. They elaborate on how the scientific thought process of investigation in a laboratory is completed only when students link it to the literary resources

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in the library. In the process, young science students learn how to substantiate their experimental evidence with references to published works. Both the science teacher and the librarian have their own proactive roles to play in the partnership.

K B Powar’s paper on Higher Education provides both a historical overview and a state‐of‐the‐art perspective. He traces the paradigm shifts that have occurred globally in the purposes of Higher Education under the influence of changing political, social and economic scenarios and a shift from elitist to egalitarian centers of learning.

Tributes

This section contains the personal reflections of select friends and the Jacob family: Monty Barker, Mani Jacob, Thomas Barnabas and Satish Barnabas, Yeager and Louise Hudson, Mary Clark Seelye, Alice Clark, Reny Ninan, Smriti Jacob

Grace JacobandPaulson Pulikottil

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Philosophy and Religion

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Reflections on the Academic Study of ReligionPaul B Courtright

In July 1964, when I first arrived in India to take up a job in Ahmednagar College as a tutor in English, I was met by a handsome young professor at the train station. “Welcome. My name is Jacob, P S Jacob. I am from Ahmednagar College.” Though I could not have imagined it then, that moment was the beginning of a life-long academic and personal friendship.

In the years that have transpired, each of us has pursued careers in the academic world: psychology, philosophy, religion, and administration and we have helped each other along the way. Jacob helped facilitate my research visits to India; I assisted him in arranging teaching opportunities in the States. We each wrote books, married, raised children, and participated in a life-long conversation about India, America, and religion. We share an ongoing interest in how religion shapes and is shaped by the cultural and historical contexts in which it finds itself. We each recognize some of the ways religion gives comfort and reassurance to individuals, families and communities, and some of the other ways it corrodes human communities and sanctions violence. Like food, water and air, religion can be nourishing and life giving; it can also be toxic and contaminated.

The Academic Study of Religion in the American Context

The academic study of religion as a project within higher education is a distinctively American phenomenon. It has its origins in late nineteenth century discourses on ‘world religions’ or the ‘great religions,’ modeled after the categories in Protestant systematic theology, the study of other religions—Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam. It focused on sacred texts (scripture), beliefs, and ethics. The study of religion is basically the study of texts, drawing upon the methods of Orientalist scholarship and Biblical studies.

From the 1960s to the present day, the academic study of religion in colleges and universities has expanded its perspective to include

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anthropologically informed research on religious practices such as—in the case of Hinduism: yatra, puja, and sampradaya. American scholars working in India in recent decades have taken to what goes on religiously in homes, shrines, and communities of practice. Scholarly publications have expanded from the study of Sanskrit texts and traditions to regional and local contexts. In the area of scholarly training, emphasis is placed on learning Indian languages, lengthy field visits often with longitudinal follow‐up research over a period of years.

The process of moving the study from the world of texts to the world of practices brings up important and sometimes vexing questions about what the academic study of religion is actually about. One incident comes to mind in my own experience that drove home the predicament.

Some years ago while I was staying in Pune for a few weeks studying aspects of religious traditions in Maharashtra, I had the good fortune of working with a distinguished scholar of Marathi literature, meeting at his home several times a week. On one occasion while we were having lunch with some European and American scholars one of them mentioned he was going to the town of Jejuri, where there was an important shrine to the god Khandoba, thought by many to be a form of Shiva. An important festival was going to take place in which Khandoba’s devotees carry his image from the temple at the top of the ghat, down a steep stairway, to the nearby river for bathing and worship. Many people brought their small images of their family deities for purification and renewal. Our colleague was working on a film of this tradition and wanted to add some footage to his project.

We drove to Jejuri and joined the thousands of devotees gathered there. Most of them were from villages and small towns. A handful of foreigners attracted some attention and before long a small crowd gathered around us. We were not there to conduct research, so we had the leisure of wandering around. One of my colleagues was fluent in Marathi, and before long a conversation with some of Khandoba’s devotees began. “What place are you from?” questioned one curious young man. “America, we are from America” my colleague replied. “Are you here to worship Lord Khandoba?” he asked, “No, we are here to see what everyone is doing.” The young man looked puzzled. “Then, are you missionaries?” he inquired. “No, we are teachers in universities in America.” “What is your subject?” he asked. “Religion (dharma)” she answered. “Religion? What do you teach about it?” She went on in more complex Marathi than I could follow. She had told him

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the Hindu religion was taught in American University classrooms as stories, rituals, art, and history . The purpose of such instruction was to describe Hinduism, compare it with other religions, and learn about the place of religion in people’s lives. Our goal was to make our students more aware of Hindu traditions and appreciate their contributions to human experience.

I’m not sure at what point the foreigners became the exotic ‘other’ to the assembled devotees of Khandoba. Such a practice as the study of religion in a classroom may have seemed curious indeed. At this point it was time to make the ascent to Khandoba’s temple. The conversation was a cordial one. We were not there to proselytize; we were not spies. What exactly we were there to learn or see, I suspect, remained perplexing or curious to those who were there for specific religious purposes. They were there to have the darshan of Khandoba, to complete or initiate a vow, to refresh their own spiritual lives, and to join their family and community in a place and at a time of heightened significance.

I have thought about that exchange from time to time as I teach and write about religion in general and religion in India in particular. What is it, precisely, that the study of religion seeks to study? My colleagues in the sciences, history, anthropology, philosophy, or literature seem to have something more specific in mind in their research: the behaviour of particles, a political event, a kinship system, a set of ideas, a text. To study religion as it is practiced seems less precise.

My own experience with the practice of the academic study of religion is to assume that almost everything is relevant. Indeed, religion is about everything in general. It is about how we understand the world in which we find ourselves. It is about how we are related to the things in the world that remain unresolved and undefined. My experience in learning about the world called “Hindu” invites me to see how sacred texts—Vedas, puranas, stotras, vrat katha, etc.—are related to what individuals, families, and communities do at particular times and places. Like a vast jigsaw puzzle, seeing how individual pieces of ceremony, food preparation, singing; indeed, breathing itself, form a complex and coherent framework of meaning.

Finding “there” “here”: When the familiar becomes familiar

Kipling once wrote, “He who knows only England knows not England.” Kipling’s imperialist sentiments aside, I take his point to be that we do

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not know our own place if we only know our own place. At the core of the liberal arts vision in American higher education is the notion that students must study things that are close to home: history, literature, arts; acquire skills in getting access to knowledge—sciences, including information sciences; and they must study things that are far from home. In the early part of my career in teaching comparative religions most of my students were of Christian, Jewish or secular backgrounds. With the demographic transformations that have been taking place over the past few decades, nearly a quarter of my students are from Hindu, Muslim, or Buddhist backgrounds. They bring important formation and experiences to the classroom when the religion being studied is their own.

For many students the practice of looking at a religious tradition as a matrix of practices, histories, sentiments, and narratives from the “outside,” from a perspective that sets aside the normative claims a religious tradition may make on its adherents, presses them to explore more deeply what they already ‘know.’ As several students over the years have told me, “we do these things (eg, puja, arati, etc.) but I’ve never thought about why.” There is no single answer to the question of why. Religious practices, like dietary ones, come from lineages of family habits and traditions. It is only when one steps out of the familiar frames of reference that the question of ‘why’ becomes relevant, even urgent. The consequence of asking ‘why’ is not one of abandoning the traditions, but deepening the nuances they bring.

In relation to the comparative study of religion, the study of a tradition other than one’s own, can also yield surprising result. Here I can give another anecdote from personal experience, one that connects again to my scholarly friendship with Jacob.

My own religious formation was in the liberal Protestant tradition. This tradition places a relatively low level of emphasis on ritual practices, especially in the home. When I returned to India for the second time, now to engage in dissertation research, I focused on aspects of Hindu ritual practices surrounding puja. I paid very close attention to the settings of pujas as they were performed, especially in homes. I recorded the pujari’s utterances, photographed the domestic shrine space, noted each gesture, and discussed each ritual episode with experts and family members. Along the way I consulted scholarly books and articles that were relevant to what I was observing. Eventually, I assembled a narrative of what I had observed, quoted extensively from the ritual

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texts used, and described the details of photographs taken.1

Several years after I had completed that study, my family and I began to attend a more so-called ‘high church’ form of Christian liturgy. I began to realize that I was noticing aspects of the ritual I was not aware of before. Gestures, the logic and structure of the ceremony, the use of language, exchanges of sacred food, assembled themselves into an overall process that made it more possible to understand why people came back to the altar again and again throughout their lives. What became clear to me was that my process of detailed observation and inquiry into Hindu ritual had given me a framework through which I could see things that were so familiar that they had escaped my notice before. My enhanced capacity to appreciate my culture’s own tradition was made possible by the hospitality of my Hindu friends and colleagues who helped make my research possible.2 Along the way I shared my findings with Jacob. Being both Christian and Indian he helped me clarify perspectives that were still taking shape in my own mind.

Stepping out of one’s own culture and attempting to make the strangeness of another culture familiar is a practice for which there are no set instructions. Crossing over into other people’s worlds, stories, and sentiments is part method, part intuition, and part timing. Sometimes scholars get it wrong at the level of facts and details. Other times they identify patterns or interpretations that the practitioners themselves find interesting or uncongenial to their own views. Like translating a text from one language to another, translating one culture or religion to another involves technical accuracy and intuition. If it were a simple matter of equivalence, translation could be done by computers entirely. Like poetry, religious texts work at the edges of language, potentially pulling in new associations and meanings with each reading or recitation.

The last couple of decades have witnessed a new level of religious passion. Contrary to confident predictions in the West in the early twentieth century modernity that religion was coming to the end of its career and would be replaced by a secular humanism, religion is back in ways that are more muscular, defensive, and aggressive.

1 Paul Courtright, Gaṇesa: Lord of Obstacles, Lord of Beginnings. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).

2 Paul Courtright, “Looking at Eucharist through the Lens of Puja: An Experiment in the Comparative Study of Religion.” International Journal of Hindu Studies. 2/3, 1998, pp. 423‐440.

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Each of the major ‘world religions’ has some ‘ultra’ or ‘extremist’ or ‘fundamentalist’ voices that claim to speak for the authentic tradition. For many, identity and subjectivity are tied up with exclusivist and totalitarian readings of religion that are inward looking and suspicious of boundary‐crossing hospitality to others. Perhaps these developments are inevitable responses to the global consumerism of late modernity as many scholars have argued.3 There is much to be learned from paying careful attention to these developments. Perhaps, like the twists and turns of the histories of religious traditions, these ominous developments will be succeeded by a new generation of voices that are more welcoming to difference and pluralism.

It is to this latter vision, a robust embrace of religious difference and the kinds of dialogues that emerge at the boundaries, that Jacob has spent working on for most of his intellectual life. From his research on Narayan Vaman Tilak, a ‘Brahmin‐Christian’ to his educational leadership in higher education in the secular state of India, Jacob has taught us the value of listening, comparing, and appreciating the complexity of individual religions and the relations between them.

3 See, Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).

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Humanism and Religion: The Emerging Dialogue

Jesudas M Athyal

A Tribute to a Mentor

During 1984-89, I had the privilege of doing my PhD study under Dr Jacob’s guidance. As a research scholar in the Department of Philosophy of the University of Poona, I could see the respect Dr Jacob commanded among the largely Maharashtrian Brahmin circles of the University. The fact that as a student he had been moulded by the legendry Professor Barlingay added to his stature. Owing to all these factors, in a rare departure from convention, the University allowed me to work from the Ahmednagar College of which Dr Jacob was then the Principal. What was remarkable about Dr Jacob as a teacher was that, within the broad methodological framework of the research, he would allow the student immense freedom to innovate and experiment with new and radical ideas even when they differed from his own ideological positions. He is indeed a researcher’s dream guide.

Philosophy of Religion had been Dr Jacob’s passion throughout his life. To his credit it must be stated, that even while working as the Principal of one of the biggest colleges in Maharashtra, he set aside several hours each day for scholarly pursuits. He was a sought after resource person at academic gatherings in the country and abroad. Dr Jacob taught religion in secular, academic as well as theological colleges. He is an original thinker, eager to break out of the conventional and stereotypical approach to the study of religion. As his classical study on Narayan Vaman Tilak revealed, rather than doing a textual or rigidly academic study, he preferred to study religion in the context of dialogue with living faiths in which he displayed a rare sensitivity to the cultural background of the context.

Religion, Marxism & Humanism

The disintegration of the Soviet Union and the collapse of Socialism and Communism in several East European countries have simultaneously re‐kindled an interest in “humanism” as the under‐lying value in all socio‐political systems. Of course, whether humanism is not at the

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heart of Communism continues to be an unsettled academic question. Communists themselves would prefer the term, “the socialist man” to any references to the “humanist”, to underscore the political content of any socio‐political system. According to this analysis, Socialism failed because the socialist societies succumbed to the lure of sophisticated consumer goods and capitalist cultural values dangled in front of them from across the borders. It neglected the task of building “the socialist man” as envisaged by Marx and Engels. “The creation of the socialist man was, quite evidently, not a part of the political agenda and therefore excluded from the academic fora”.1 Thus, the failure of the socialist system is analysed as a failure at the political front alone. From the historical information available now, there is no doubt that the earlier writings of Marx contain the rudiments of a “Marxist humanism”, extremely important for any current discussion on humanism. What is important at this stage is that contemporary history also reiterates the belief that any socio‐political ideology, to sustain the onslaught of time, must be rooted in a holistic philosophy that values the humanity of humankind. As M N Roy put it almost half a century ago: “Except on the basis of a philosophy embracing the totality of existence, all approaches to the problems of individuals and social life are bound to be misleading.”

An interesting offshoot of the debate on reforming Communism is the preparedness to treat religion as something more than “a mere relic from the past” which would be swept away in the inevitable and dialectical course of history. Of course, the similarities between religion—particularly Christianity—and Marxism in the composition and mentality of early Christian and communist groups, their relations with society as a whole and the emergence of ideological conflict are not totally unknown to Marxist theoreticians. Several statements of Engels himself reveal “remarkable points of contact” between them (S.F. Kissin). Some prominent Christians—both theologians and lay people—such as Reinhold Niebuhr, Nicholas Berdyaev and Jacques Maritain endorse the similarities between institutions and concepts of early Communism and early Christianity. There have been similar attempts in other parts of the world too, relating Communism to religion. In the Indian context, Shashi Joshi had stated that in the recent past, Marxism and religion underwent a crisis of varying proportions and sections from within the fold which sought to overcome it and restore what they perceive as its original pristine purity by a return to

1 Ashok Mitra, Social Scientist (July‐August 1994): 5

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the sources and scriptural reinterpretation.2 Further, Joshi claims that this has led to the emergence of the twin phenomenon of humanistic socialism on the one hand and liberation theology on the other. Whether such direct parallels between the revolutionary changes in Marxism and religion as claimed by Joshi, can be drawn, is indeed a matter to be probed further. What is important for our present discussion is the fact that the willingness of the theologians to treat Marxism as a tool for social analysis and the Marxist appreciation of the liberative potential of religion, have emerged today as strong points for continuing the dialogue between faith and ideology. Indeed, the humanism of the religious believer and the humanism of the subscriber to Marxian ideals appear to meet as allies at this stage.

What is attempted in this paper is an identification of those humanist elements in religion, Marxism and post Marxism that can be the basis of such a dialogue.

Humanism: Philosophical Roots

The term “humanism” is generally understood in the context of an ideological system that considers the human being as the measure of all things. The rudiments of humanism can be found in various ancient philosophical systems. Greek Philosophy originated as an inquiry into the humanistic problems of knowledge and conduct as elaborated in the theories of Heraclitus and Parmenides. The Sophists and Socrates turned away from ontological and cosmological speculations regarding the constitution and origin of the external world and devoted their attention almost exclusively to the problems of human beings—to human knowledge and conduct.

Similarly, the ancient Hebrew philosophy also represented a humanism which visualised the highest and the most desirable human state as a life in communion with God. As Martin Buber, the Jewish theologian, put it,

“God speaks to every man through the life which he gives him again and again. Therefore, man can only answer God with the whole of life - with the way in which he lives this given life. The Jewish teaching of the wholeness of life is the other side of the Jewish teaching of the unity of God. Because God bestows not only spirit on man, but the whole

2 Shashi Joshi, Economic and Political Weekly (Nov. 9, 1991): 2564.

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of his existence, from its “lowest” to its “highest” levels as well, man can fulfil the obligations of his partnership with God by no spiritual attitude, by no worship, on no sacred upper storey; the whole of life is required, everyone of its areas and everyone of its circumstances.3”

While such an understanding of humanism falls short of the secular criterion in treating the human being as an autonomous and self-sufficient entity, it does place the total human being in a harmonious relationship with the rest of humanity, nature and the transcendental reality. Unlike the Sophist and the Socratic Greek theory of human beings, thus, the Hebrew thought represents a humanism which is essentially theistic in nature.

The ancient Stoics too had developed a humanism that placed the human being in harmony with God and nature. Reason was considered as the highest virtue and a life in accordance with rational laws, the most ideal. Human existence should be intellectual, and all bodily pains and pleasures should be despised. A harmony between the human will and universal reason constitutes virtue. The Stoics thus developed a humanism based on ethical norms.

The Epicurean philosophy, on the other hand, was essentially materialistic and individualistic in nature. By freeing atomism of its original naivety, Epicuros made room for individual freedom in a law‐governed universe, in a world “obeying the laws of nature”. This concept of humanism too was rooted in ethical values as the rules of physical science were considered as subordinate to and dependent on moral science. However, the metaphysical and ethical aspects of the Epicurean humanism did not prevent the human being from being essentially “epicurean”, for, “his philosophy was the art of enjoying life; it had no concern for death or the power of the gods whom he called the product of delusion; It was indifferent to the future, because there was nothing after death, the soul being a congeries of atoms which dissolved into its constituent.”4 In short, despite its spiritual and moral aspects, Epicurean humanism was rooted in the hedonistic, materialistic and atheistic streams of the ancient Greek Philosophy.

Coming to the middle ages, the rational and humanist thought of the Christian era permeated to the religious structures as well. In

3 Quoted in Philosophy for a time of crisis, (ed) Adrienne Koch (New York: E P Dutton And Company, 1959), 191.

4 Koch, Philosophy, 191.

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Europe, the Arabs were the torch bearers of scientific knowledge and rationalism. This paved the way for the renaissance in the Continent later. The spirit of free inquiry and humanism had entered the church structures as well. There was a growing demand for a reform of the church, moderation of the ecclesiastical authority and liberalising of the dogmatic orthodoxy. A passionate appeal to the church to return to it’s “humanist roots” however, was interpreted by the church fathers as heresy and atheism. The way was thus paved for the church to be reduced to a rigid, hierarchical institution.

The spirit of rational inquiry and humanism however, had permeated far too deep into the society to be put down by the ecclesiastical institution. The spectacular progress and achievements of science since the Renaissance had a profound impact on human life and mind. The traditional religious belief had instilled in human beings the feeling that everything worldly is evil and that what is of real value is the life beyond. Such spiritualization of the universe and life led effectively to a degradation of the human being. Renaissance, on the other hand, with a passionate love for nature and appreciation of the good things in life, blazed the humanist trail by negating all de‐humanising forces. In Lord Acton’s words, the Renaissance, by a passionate worship of beauty and the joys of life, placed “the aesthetic against the ascetic.” Renaissance was thus a crucial phase in history as it liberated the human from the clutches of the dehumanising forces and restored his/her humanity.

Humanism, as it evolved into a well-defined philosophical system during the Renaissance, had a definite spiritual dimension as well. The supernaturalism of the traditional religious belief was opposed to naturalism. Human as well as universal nature, placed against the supposedly transcendental dimension, was projected as finite and blemished. According to M N Roy, renascent humanism, on the other hand, held that, “if God had made man after his own image, the flesh could not be impure; its desires could not be sinful and to satisfy them could not be immoral.”5 What humanism did was not to negate moral or ethical values but to re-define them in the light of the emerging rational and scientific spirit. In tackling the moral as well as aesthetic question, however, renascent humanism did not fall back on the Greek or Christian philosophical systems of abstract speculation and spiritualism. Rather, the approach of the renascent humanists

5 M. N. Roy, Reason, Romanticism and Revolution (Vol.I), 79.

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was practical. They did not theorise about the relation between ethics and aesthetics, they lived a life which indicated a solution of the old problem. It confronted them in a somewhat different form, as the conflict between asceticism and aesthetic. The essential characteristic of the renascent morality was at once humanist because the human being was taken as the measure of all things and naturalist, because it was morality that does not shun but enjoys the goodness of nature.

Marxian Humanism

It is generally agreed by the Marxist as well as non‐Marxist scholars that Karl Marx stands essentially in the European humanist tradition though he made a distinctly original contribution to it. Following Marx, there was a wave of existential humanist‐interpretations of Marxism which focused on alienation‐anthropological questions.

The basis of Marxian humanism is Marx’s materialism which is identified as historical, dialectical and practical.6 Marxian materialism as an anti‐metaphysical and anti‐speculative system developed under the philosophical influence of Hegelian thought. Hegel’s philosophy, on its part, came as the culmination of German idealism and speculative metaphysics. The credit for laying the dialectical framework of Marx’s thought goes to the Hegelian methodology. However, Marx acknowledged Feuerbach as “the philosopher who had brought down the idealistic speculation of Hegel with his materialism and thus brought about a decisive defeat of all metaphysics by overcoming the highest and most sophisticated expression.”7

According to Marx, the distinction between classical materialism and dialectic materialism is essentially humanist in nature. Classical materialism contemplated nature as an object, studied its laws, and eventually reduced everything to the operations of these laws. Consequently, the worth of the human person was reduced to that of a cog in a machine. Even the thought process of human beings was considered nothing more than mere “physical reflexes of the brain.” Thus classical materialism was in reality “mechanical misanthropy.” The philosophy that originated in such an environment was one far removed from the existential realities of human beings. Even the

6 Marx, however, made a distinction between classical materialism which is essentially metaphysical and the dialectical (historical) form of materialism

7 Bastiaan Wielenga, Introduction to Marxism (Bangalore: Center for Social Action, 1984), 289.

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humanism of Feuerbach and his contemporaries did not take the historical dimension of any serious consequence.

The principle of dialectics, on the other hand, applies to the humanising process of the human‐nature relationship. Classical history had treated “human history” as part and parcel of “natural history.” While such a characterisation underlined the continuity of the human‐nature dialectic, it had relegated the human role to a secondary position. What was overlooked is the invariable link between the two. “Just as it is impossible to study nature without human beings, so it is impossible to study human beings without nature.” Nature and human history are not only closely connected but they condition each other as well. Within the natural process, both operate in dialectical tension.

Marxian humanism also affirms that the humanisation of the human person is possible only by the humanisation of nature. Nature as an exploited social structure stands in contradiction to the essence of human beings or the human values. Marx defined such a contradiction as “alienation” and proceeded to analyse the roots of such alienation in the political and economic spheres. Private property, the division of labour, capital, land, wages, profit, ground rent and also competition and the concept of exchange value are identified as the areas where the alienation of the human being occurs in a most glaring and gross manner. There is an invariable and negative link between the human who produces and his/her production.

Marx thus envisaged a humanising process by transforming the exploitative social structures and money relations to a more egalitarian, harmonious and just order. All labour is social and needs to be organised from the proletarian perspective. The resultant production too is social. Since both labour and production are social, such a process links human to human and relates the isolated individual to the whole society. Marx identified the whole of the production process and the society as invariably linked to and dependent on nature.

Post-Marxian Humanism

While there are many historical and philosophical reasons for a reassertion of the humanist emphasis in the post‐Marxist period, one important reason is the degeneration of Marxism as the dogmatised ideology of the Marxian State. There were wide‐spread criticisms, even in Marxist circles, about the “excesses” committed by Josef Stalin

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in the Soviet Union in the nineteen thirties. While most of the critics were neo-Marxists or post-Marxists, a radically different approach to Marxism came from another sector of the Communist establishment—China. The political theory of Mao Tse Tung emerged from the context of the revolutionary practices in the mainland of China. Mao did not directly attack Stalin, but his propositions, aiming at a rejection of dogmatism, deviated from the orthodox Marxist position. Inspired by the revolutionary practice, it is generally considered that Mao comes closest to the spirit of the Feuerbachian theses. He started with the critique of pre‐Marxian materialism which examined the problem of knowledge apart from the social nature of man and apart from his historical development. Mao’s political theory can be seen as a combination of the Feuerbachian and Marxian humanism applied to the unique situation of China. Along with Marx, Mao too maintained that the human person’s social practice alone is the criterion on the truth of his/her knowledge of the external world.

The Polish Marxist philosopher Adam Schaff, on the other hand, critiqued Marxian socialism from the European humanist tradition. Schaff’s attempt was to defend the humanist characteristic of Marxism, against the criticism of some neo‐Marxists that Marxism essentially is “theoretical anti‐humanism.” Their position was that Marx presented a “scientific breakthrough” and that his scientific socialism is a break from the traditions of bourgeois humanism. The French philosopher Louis Althusser was among the foremost in developing a critique of Marxian humanism which focuses on the central role of human beings as the subjects of history. Althusser held that in order to arrive at a scientific understanding of society, Marxist theory has to focus not on the conscious activities of the human subject but on the unconscious structures which these activities presuppose. He cautioned against the danger of Marxism slipping into the individualist Feuerbachian humanism instead of a revolutionary social praxis.

Marxism, by definition, seeks to analyse human alienation in society and projects the vision of a new social order where the humanity of the alienated people is restored and thus can be characterised as a humanist philosophy. Though the entire Marxian theoretical edifice is built on such a humanist basis, the works of the “later” (or “mature”) Marx are devoted to a scientific analysis of the economic and social factors responsible for human alienation. Humanist references are rare here and when made, are coated heavily with economic and social thoughts. It is the writings of the “early” (or “young”) Marx,

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first published only in 1952, that present the humanist philosophy in a more explicit manner, from the Marxian perspective. Initially, there were strong tendencies to dissociate the “economic‐social” Marx of the latter period from the “humanist-philosophical” Marx of the former period. However, a more comprehensive study would establish the integral relationship between the philosophical and the materialistic trends in Marxian theory.

While there is no unanimity of opinion on whether the works of the “mature” Marx were an extension or a negation of the earlier humanist framework, what is undisputed is that any study of the humanist philosophy of Marx needs to take seriously his earlier writings, known otherwise as the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts.

Like Mao, Althusser too developed his Marxian critique against the background of the de-humanisation under Stalin. Significantly, it was during the post‐Stalinist period that the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts were discovered. Against the background of the discoveries of the Manuscripts and the de‐humanist image of Stalin, several Communist countries in East Europe stressed the need for a reaffirmation of the humanist values within the Marxian framework.

Striking a warning note however, Althusser added that such generalized interpretation of the Marxian theory could undermine the revolutionary potentials of Marxism. He saw in such humanist talk “the danger of petty-bourgeois values undermining the firm foundations of scientific socialism and hampering the class struggle”. He conceded that alienation and the complete emancipation of the human species are indeed the humanistic basis of the anthropological Marx. But “the humanism of the early Marx needs to be rejected for the sake of a proper discovery and distinction of the real breakthrough achieved by the mature Marx.”8 This, Althusser calls, is the “epistemological break” where Marx gave up both the Hegelian idealism and Feuerbachian humanism and started studying history with structural concepts such as forces of production and relations of production.

Althusser’s analysis thus is that Marx gave a structural analysis in which the relations of production and not the isolated human beings play the crucial role. The individual man is made the subject of history in the Marxian scientific analysis of society. The “epistemological

8 Louis Althussar, Lenin and Philosophy and other essays (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971), 105.

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break” is with the bourgeois humanist theory which places the pursuit of the individual person after wealth and status, the centre of history. Marx discovered the crucial role of the material and technological conditions of production. He presented the “mode of production” rather than, “man” as the key to a scientific analysis of society. In such a sense, it has often been pointed out that Marxian humanism is theoretically anti‐humanist in nature.

Bastiaan Wielenga, reviewing Althusser’s critique of Marxism, points out that Althusser overlooks that Marx, with his scientific analysis, is not presenting a new general truth, but that he is involved in a concrete critique of the capitalist mode of production. What is important is that it is capitalism which turns the productive process against the human beings, thus degrading their human hood. Even for the latter Marx states the confrontation is not between the mechanical and inanimate objects called “capital” and “labour”; the tension essentially is between “dead labour” and “living labour” where the former dominate over and exploit the latter. It is “the throbbing human labour” that stands at the centre, as being reified, alienated and subordinated to the laws of motion of capital. Thus, under the capitalist conditions, humans have been turned from being the subjects to be the objects of history. It is this humanist emphasis in Marx which Althusser seems to miss in his critique. The Marxian emphasis on “the subjective element of living labour” is not presented as an apology for bourgeois humanist illusions, but in order to critique it from a socialist perspective.

Prometheus Rediscovered

For Marx, the tyranny of religion is the consequence of the tyranny of the private property and the division of labour in the “natural” change of history. Religion thus represents the secular and religious forms of human alienation, rooted in this basic form of alienation. The abolition of this form of human alienation, consequently, becomes the condition for the abolition of all human alienation. That this process is completed only under a communist system is the position of the Marxian humanist theory.

Apart from the role of the oppressive religious structures, the Marxian theory has fundamental philosophical problems with the theistic position. Here too, the approach is essentially humanistic as the purpose of the Marxian rejection of God is to affirm the centrality

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of man. The symbol of Prometheus, the Greek mythological figure, is chosen to make this point. The confession of Prometheus in simple words: “I hate the pack of gods,” is its own confession, its own aphorism against all heavenly and earthly gods who do not acknowledge human self‐consciousness as the highest divinity. It will have none other beside. Prometheus best represents the “militant” humanism of Marx. The mythological figure symbolises the liberation of the oppressed humanity. As a contemporary dialectics of the “Magnificat”, the symbol points towards the need to bring the gods down from their exalted positions, in order to lift the human to the heavens.

Paradoxically, Prometheus also symbolises the point of entry in a Marxist‐religious dialogue today. The emergence of liberation theologies that reject the academic, transcendental nature of traditional theology and affirm the humanity of all humankind and the integrity of creation has been a phenomenon in all religions in the modern period. As a result, a section of theologians and clergy have involved themselves in the struggles of the economically oppressed and socially marginalised people, especially in third world societies. Several concerned individuals from religious as well as Marxist backgrounds are convinced that a fusion of the two ideas is the urgent task today. The need to preserve the delicate eco‐system, combat the forces of communalism and religious fundamentalism and resist the onslaught of capitalism and imperialism on non‐western societies (“neo‐colonialism”) are a few of the major challenges before the liberative sections in the various religions and the Marxist / Socialist camp today. By striving together to redeem the lost humanity of humankind, a new humanism will be born.

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