A Bit of Blasphemy for Our Times

In the days that I was into quasi-political activism, I used to get angry letters from my well-meaning fellow Christians. The over-all sense of their indignation may be summarized as follows. ‘You are a priest. Why are you dabbling IN politics? You had better sit in a corner, read the Bible and pray.’ The main argument that Christians of this persuasion proffer is that Jesus was completely non-political. He lived in a politically volatile situation. Yet he did not take on the Roman oppressors. Or strike a blow on behalf of wounded Jewish nationalism. Why should you look beyond the church compound?

To me the issue hinges on the idea of spirituality. What is spiritual, what is not? If the shaping goal of spirituality is to enable human beings to ‘have life, and have it in all its fullness’ (Jn.10:10), is it possible to pursue it without addressing life in its fullness, which cannot but involve politics? Every pursuit of fullness becomes willy-nilly political. What falls short, either by default or by design, of fullness is not spiritual. That applies as much to religion as it does to politics. The goal of seeking ‘fullness of life’ is the point at which religion and politics converge. Jesus called this critical meeting point ‘Kingdom of God.’ No polarization of any kind is compatible with spirituality which, unlike religion, is an integrative and holistic model of life. Otherwise, Jesus would not have said that God causes His rain to come down on the good and the evil alike. Or that we should love our enemies. Spirituality, like creativity, is the reconciliation of opposites.

What about the presumably non-political stance of Jesus, then? The question here is: How do we know if Jesus was sterilely non-political? Historical research has unearthed enough evidence to prove that literature pertaining to the Jerusalem faction of Christianity under the leadership of James, Jesus’ brother, was totally destroyed in the brutal assault that Rome unleashed on Jews between AD 66 and AD 70. Had this body of scripture and literature survived, we might have had a different idea of Jesus. Very likely, a Jesus who was politically proactive. This accounts for the plausibility of arraigning Jesus, before Pontius Pilate, as an insurrectionist. I refer the readers to the material readily available in the Internet on this subject, rather than exhaust the limited canvas of this article by reproducing the details here.

To me, the idea of the Kingdom of God is profoundly political. And I wish Congressmen would heed this, so that they become better equipped to cope with the existential crisis to which they have consigned themselves.

The Jewish establishment that Jesus encountered was political, even if religion was the medium through which this politics was played. It is impossible to have organization of any sort on planet earth without politics ruling its roost. The curse of politics is that it is plied entirely as a power game; the reason why it has become an exercise in expediency. It is ironic that Modi-Shah have appropriated this idea in a characteristic way. Consider the slogan, “Modi hai to sub kutch mumkeen hai” (Everything is possible, if Modi is there for you). Ask yourself: Is this a political slogan, or an article of faith? Is this not the biblical idea of ‘faith’ wrenched out of its context and stuck to a contrary phenomenon? Faith moves mountains! Mountains move to Modi’s orders.

The mistake that the Congress is committing is in engaging with the Modi-Shah juggernaut entirely in the negative and reactive mode. Rahul did an outstanding job of it in the last elections. I don’t think anyone can improve on what Rahul did in ‘taking on’ Modi. But he ended up heartbroken. Why? Surprisingly, this question was not asked in the wake of the decimation of the grand old party in the 14th general elections. The question I ask as a Christian is this: how would Jesus have dealt with the BJP challenge? I do not believe for a moment that he would have looked ‘the other way’: a response that Jesus denounced through the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Jesus would have effected a paradigm-shift, as he did with the Jewish political-religious establishment. Its custodians peddled an ethno-centric, territorial, exclusivist and oppressive religiosity. Jewry constituted a theological state, comparable to Hindu rashtra. Jesus cut the umbilical cord between religion and territory, rejecting the very seed of nationalism and patriotism. Kingdom of God has no geographical limits. It is free from cobwebs of selfishness and fear on which the authority of the priestly class rested. In place of communal selfishness and ethnocentric exclusivity Jesus projected their opposite: unconditional acceptance, especially of the alien and the different. He replaced religion-based intolerance (not just towards the Gentles but also towards those who did not fall in line, within) with the vision of universal kinship. In other words, he set the agenda; refused to be reactive. He broke the norms of the ‘legitimate and the illegitimate’ of the establishment: embraced lepers, forgave sinners, affirmed oppressed and suffering women, and hailed children and their spiritual superiority over the grimy and gloomy world of adult religiosity. He loosened the earth from beneath the feet of oppressors!

The Congress needs to re-think. In doing so, it could help itself with a modicum of historical-political wisdom (the pun is intended). If such wisdom is not available from the political pundits in its ranks, it could turn to Jesus Christ for a change. Not to be converted or perverted, but to be corrected and aligned to the logic of life. The ultimate paradox is this: you have to die to yourself if you are to live life in all its fullness!