You have been a teacher for a long time at St Stephen’s College in Delhi. What do you think of Christian education in India?
Christian education, if it is practised in the true sense of the concept, is the greatest service we can render both to the Christian community and to the larger society. I believe that the relevance of Christian education has increased several fold. I also believe that Christian education is a remedy for the many maladies that are afflicting the society today. All around us we see signs of decay and disorder and my conviction is that these signs of social illnesses emerge from and are related to the underdevelopment of human beings. People are not growing as human beings. The emphasis has shifted from inner richness to external possessions. Material things are accumulated and they are growing, but human stature and human qualities are declining. So the ability to function as a healthy human being is lost. The main role of Christian education is to enable every human being to grow to his or her full stature
I sincerely believe that growth is the essence of spirituality, as the Bible teaches us. The Christian understanding of spirituality is focused on human growth. When human beings grow to their full stature, they express themselves in noble ways, and when they do not grow, they can only express themselves like animals. So, our society today is expressing a bestial or animal culture. The human culture and the human qualities are conspicuously absent. For example, why did Jesus teach? Jesus did not teach to qualify people for better jobs in the market. The most important thing is to be good human beings. If you are a good human being, properly developed, then you are also an asset in the market, in the work place, in the social context, in your house and everywhere. But that is not what is happening today. People do not want to grow, they want to grab, and this process introduces a lot of violence into the society.
As a result of violence, the quality of living together is lost and the felicity of life is undermined. Everywhere there is suspicion, anxiety, fear and misery. So, for all our progress, we are destroying the very foundation of life. We are cutting the branch on which we are sitting, and therefore my worry
Very often, violence arises out of an inadequate idea of greatness of life. How will you respect life if you do not experience any sanctity or greatness about your own life?
As a result of violence, the quality of living together is lost and the felicity of life is undermined. Everywhere there is suspicion, anxiety, fear and misery. So, for all our progress, we are destroying the very foundation of life. We are cutting the branch on which we are sitting, and therefore my worry is that we will be defeated and destroyed by our achievements. We will become poorer and bankrupt, because of what we earn and accumulate. We are poor, because we are rich. It is this contradiction that worries me most, because I don’t come across happy human beings who are leading meaningful lives.
My question is, what are your worth and what is your life’s worth? Even if you conquer the whole world but are not able to lead a happy life and are leading a miserable life, what is it after all? I deal with and I have met with hundreds and thousands of people, and I am telling you, today it is very rarely that I come across a happy human being. You start a conversation with a person, and in five minutes nothing but complaints is heard; complaints about people, complaints about what is happening, complaints about what is not happening. Where is human happiness gone? I can’t believe that this is being human. In such a context, I believe, the Christian education, if it is properly understood and practised, is a huge contribution to make. This is the conviction that sustained me in the field of Christian education for fortytwo years and with each passing day and year my conviction became stronger and deeper.
You had faced a lot of problems at Stephen’s during your last years of educational career. Why did that happen?
First of all, I had problems not only towards the end of my carrier. I had problems all along. In fact, my wife used to say in her own fashion that the only gift I have is the gift of earning enemies without trying for it. I have had troubles where ever I was, but the point is this, if you want to pursue your convictions and are unwilling to compromise and adjust to whatever is the fashion and the trend, you must be willing to accept suffering. Even in the case of Lord Jesus Christ, suffering was an essential ingredient of leading an authentic life. I am convinced that the most powerful ingredient and the authority Jesus had was His willingness to suffer.
He stated right at the beginning of His public ministry that the Son of Man must suffer. That is why people caught a note of authority in His voice. So, in the kind of systems and schemes that man creates for man, suffering is inevitable because of human limitations and pettiness. Given all this, the fact that you suffer is the only proof and reassurance that what you are doing is right and relevant. If you are universally popular, it means that you are doing nothing significant. So, first of all, I am quite happy that I had to go through difficulties.
Secondly, I believe it’s only through difficulties that we can grow and develop, particularly develop a clear mind. It’s only because I had the opportunities to pay for my convictions that my convictions became very meaningful to me. The more I suffer, therefore, the more my convictions grew upon me and the stronger I became. Of course, it is true that, as years go by, you become weaker physically, and that nobody can avoid. But, what every human being can avoid is becoming weaker mentally and spiritually. I believe that it is the most sacred duty we owe to ourselves and to God to remain strong in Spirit and clear in mind. These are great blessings, and I am grateful to God for the hard and difficult paths through which I have been led. I believe that I have not cut out my paths.
In fact, the happiest thing in my life is that none of my plans ever worked out. Looking back, there is not a single thing where my plan or my will worked. Things happened completely contrary to what I wanted to do for myself. But, in each case I realized that whatever has happened, for all the sufferings and difficulties I had to put up, was easily the best and the most meaningful. My heart is full of gratitude and it overflows with happiness. It is the most blessed state I can possibly imagine.
There is an author called rené Girard who says that people today are suffering from mimetic rivalry. People are competing with each other, killing each other and that creates violence. do you agree?
I have believed that violence is a result of underdeveloped social imagination. When you are not imaginative, you cannot be original and you cannot lead your life as you wanted. You may not even know that there is a unique life possible for you. When that sense of personal uniqueness is lost, then all we are left with is the tendency to imitate others, and that is the meaning of the term mimetic. Mimetic tendency is the tendency to imitate others. Now, the problem is, when you imitate others, all you achieve is to become inferior copies of other people. You never lead an authentic life. In this context, I want to recall the statement of Oscar Wilde, the Irish playwright
who said we are other people. All our ideas are borrowed, our dreams are borrowed, and our passions are borrowed from others.
Another insight is, we are now living in an age of the complete tyranny about what is called public opinion. The paradox is that public opinion is the least public of all opinions, because public opinions are actually manufactured by handful of people sitting in their different hiding places. They have resources at their disposal, they have support of the media and interest groups, who then spread these ideas and views all over when everybody laps it and everybody imitates. This creates a slavish culture. My fundamental problem with this culture is not so much with violence but with poverty. People are becoming just tailor’s dummies and people have lost their uniqueness. When you have no uniqueness, when you have no self respect, then you feel like doing anything.
Very often, violence arises out of an inadequate idea of greatness of life. How will you respect life if you do not experience any sanctity or greatness about your own life? Violence is the attitude of a person or the practise of a person who is blind to worth. The outcome of violence is destruction. Destruction is the rejection of worth. For example, you use a pair of chappals, which gets worn out, and you just throw out. Instead of throwing out you can burn it also. But, if your pair of chappals is new and very expensive, you don’t burn it, you don’t destroy it. Jesus said, for example, do not be angry, why? Because, if you are angry you become blind to the worth of others. When you or I become angry, I abuse people or you will abuse people. What is abusing? Abusing is the denial of worth. You call a man a dog or a donkey or whatever, which means you have no worth. The problem with violence, the problem with anger, which is the root of violence, is that it makes you blind to worth.
Why do we destroy public property when we are angry? Because, in our eyes during that point of time, nothing has any value. It is the same with relationships. Violence will naturally result not when we imitate, but when life gets degraded through imitation. Imitation is only one of the ways by which this impoverishment of life happens. Therefore, I will not agree with any author who says that only mimeticism or imitation is responsible for all violence. Imitation opens the flood gates or the possibilities for violence. Imitation by itself is not enough for a society of violence to take place.
Imitation creates what is called the homogenization of desire and taste. Today, in the wake of globalization, all of human life has become one huge mall; everybody must go and buy the same kind of stuff, the same mobile, the same automobile, the same branded cloths, the same junk food etc. Tastes are homogenized; human beings are mainly homogenized consumers of homogenized products. Our desires are homogenized. Human distinctiveness or human uniqueness and the real beauty of being human are all being compromised and lost in the process. I believe that this is worse than war. In such a context, it is the sacred duty of every human being who has any God consciousness to respect life. I emphasize that, because it’s impossible to have God consciousness and not develop a sense of respect for life, because God has created life. Life is therefore sacred, and what is sacred has worth. What has sanctity and worth cannot accommodate violence. Violence is completely incompatible with worth and sanctity.
It is the sacred duty of every human being with a sense of the divine and respect for life to rise above every form of violence; verbal violence, emotional violence, intellectual violence, ideological violence, violence of desire and so on and so forth. That is why Jesus said, put down the sword. Violence is simply not acceptable. I believe that this is possible only when human beings grow in their stature and spirit. For me, the most beautiful thing in the world is a fully developed human being, which is the dream and the glory of spirituality.
