India is in a cultural crisis. Constitutional humanism of enlightenment is rejected by the ruling party, which is wedded to Hindutva. It is a betrayal and corruption of Hinduism. Hindutva is political distortion by power mongering upper caste for lost hegemony. Political thinking involves humanism. Unfortunately the human concept that the Hindutva political system holds no more believes in equality, fraternity and freedom. There is a cultural crisis, which the ruling party has created through a return to the olden days and the tradition of caste separation. A cow becomes holier than man. The cardinal sins of our current Indian era is of empty rationality and calculative efficiency. The calculative mentality or talent for calculation is the shrewd high caste political hypocrisy of domination by a few. The question of the role of World-Hindu is racial; it is the metaphysical assumption of a type of humanity which absolutely assumes the world-historical ‘task’ of uprooting all beings from Being. Their identity is a matter of existence-structure that comes with psychology, anthropology, and certainly biology. Hindutva adherents are conscious of their heritage, as well as of their destiny, believing that they are always being addressed anew by a god of their land. The attachment to a place is the very splitting of humanity into natives and strangers and as such is the source of a king of unity where the sons of the soil subjugate the others in totality.

It is in this situation that the Christian community must become a creative minority to go back to their heritage of humanism, cherish and propagate it to infuse a culture of humanism, which includes all without discrimination. The Bible does not lead towards “the mysteries of God, but towards the human tasks of human beings”, writes Emmanule Levinas. For him ‘humanity is nothing but the Bible and the Greeks.’ He further said: “the calling of holiness is recognised by all human beings and… this recognition defines the human.” He is not asking like Tertullian, What has Athens to do with Jerusalem? His concept of humanity is confluence of Athens and Jerusalem. The tradition of Athens is in service of the tradition of Jerusalem as “wisdom for love.” The logic of the Greek brings in an understanding between human beings, but one must agree to speak. The obliging Divine word makes Greek universalism possible. Holy is the person who is more attached to the being of the Other than to his own. Holiness is man’s proximity to the Other. The great European thinkers defined Europe as constituted by the Bible and Greek: both are constitutive for the old continent. The ethical, “Hebrew” sensibility required “Greek” organization and discussion. Husserl writes: “We believe in a good humanity as an ideal possibility, a true and genuine possibility, as an objectively valid idea.”And there is, according to Husserl, one good and authentic life form of humanity—“to live to become a genuine and true human being, or a man of reason…,” for “to the extent that he is human, a human being has ideals.” The person is more holy than a land, even if it is a holy land, since before an injustice done to a person, this holy land appears in its nudity to be nothing but rocks and trees.” Christians must know that the Bible knows only one Holy Land, a fabulous land that spews forth the unjust, a land in which one does not put down roots without certain conditions.

Kant defined enlightenment and coined its slogan “aude sapere”(dare to think). For him enlightenment was “man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity.” Not to allow every human being to make use of their own reason would be tantamount to “trampling underfoot the sacred rights of man.” The young Marx, in his Critique of Hegel’s philosophy of Right, summarises what he calls “German Theory” as follows. “The critique of religion ends with the teaching that man is the highest essence for man—hence, with the categorical imperative to overthrow all relations in which man is a debased, enslaved, abandoned, despicable essence.” All our practices have a purpose, practices carried out to please God only to the extent that they allow one to safeguard the human in man. India must reinvent a fatherland which welcomes and protects the stranger. Levinas wrote, “It is Europe, which, alongside of its atrocities, invented the idea of “de-europeanization”; that is a victory for European generosity. For me, certainly, the Bible is the model of excellence; but I say that while knowing nothing of Buddhism.” To know is to be able to translate. Translating our cultures with a sense to avoid unnecessary wars and conflicts. Indian culture be given serious thought and interpretation so that Indian traditions generously provide us good and authentic life form of humanity—to live to become a genuine and true human being or a man of reason or a man of ideals.