Paul Thelakat

Emmanuel Levinas, a modern Jewish philosopher of ethics, wrote in his Otherwise than being: “Communication with the other can be transcendent only as a dangerous life, a fine risk to be run.” I personally believe that Christian leadership in India should take that risk of engaging with the BJP and the RSS in dialogue. There are two possibilities that we confront in India in the face of Hindutva movement which has democratically come to power in India. To consider them as enemy and fight politically or otherwise. This involves confrontation and war of words and even deeds democratically or not. As a community of faith in India Christians have the duty to accept an elected government and if there are difference of opinion we have no other ethical means than of dialogue and communication. The only ethical way is to talk and communicate.
But the way of dialogue has the minimum requirement of an agreement to talk. This is minimum from which talk can start. This involves the readiness of walking together without violence. The BJP and the RSS are ready to talk in the platform of language and sharing, which involves mutual acceptance as partners in speech. This implies renunciation of violence both in language and action. The fact that Bishop Thomas Dabre was invited to the meeting of the RSS is a clear sign of some sort of hospitality and good will. ‘Everything in me – every movement, gesture, lived-experience, thought, feeling – everything must be such an [answerable] act or deed; it is only on this condition that I actually live, that I do not sever myself from the ontological roots of actual being’ wrote the Russian thinker Michael Bakhtin on language and dialogue. We must know that RSS is a paramilitary organisation with historical links with Fascism and Nazism. We must respond to it; but it should not become any way a matter of political propaganda. We are aware we have serious issues at stake with the RSS and the BJP.
The simple reason is that there is the danger of monologue rejecting its dialogisity. In such attempts to detach utterances from dialogue, language no longer answers the other. Language now represents the other and language becomes a monological attempt to deny place to the other. Monologue pretends to be the ultimate word, expecting no answer. Willingness to talk is ethicality, which lies not simply in the norms and principles of the professional or the institution. The ethical aspects we have addressed point to a primordial ‘layer’ prior to knowledge and meaning. A ‘layer’ of language prior to and more fundamental than the linguistic representation or co-construction of reality: the ethical in the event of saying. The historical dialectic can make a metamorphosis. The sacred turns into the profane, and the profane becomes the sacred. Christianity must act within history. We cannot live only by our slogans. There must be sincere attempt and desire as a primary factor in our success to preserve continuity along with change, continuity that does express itself by changing form.
Until some basic agreements on the dialogue is reached and mutual respect is created, nobody should go public with statements. There is mutual suspicion, fears and anxieties which have to be addressed. There is confusion over Hinduism and Hindutva but a sizable number in our community is voting for Hindutva; there is communal tendencies, especially in the urban milieu. Our steps into this landscape of ethical ‘neither–nor’ is metaphorically described as the ‘move’ to an orchestrated, indivisible world of ‘invisible’ presences.’ It is in this world of becoming through metaphor and dialogue, that change in therapy can be understood as an ethical event. We must take the risk but with care. It is our duty to democracy as a way of talking involving all and deciding to agree or disagree and living together. There are attempts to create a wedge between the minorities in India. It is very palpable at least in Kerala. The field is complex and the path is risky but we must be willing to talk with all and no one be left to silence or be silenced. We do not expect anyone to serve us with uncooked and untimely statements. We must, as Pope Francis says, “Put yourself in the other’s ‘shoes’; try to “peer” into his or her heart. This is the starting point for dialogue.” We shall seek unity in diversity, in the words of Pope Francis “reconciled diversity.” Tagore, our national poet, in an interview with Izvestia in 1930 told the Russians about India: “In my view the imposing tower of misery which today rests on the heart of India has its sole foundation in the absence of education. Caste divisions, religious conflicts, aversion to work, precarious economic conditions – all centre on this single factor.” Let there be a unified effort to ameliorate the problems of our country in dialogue of collaboration.