“India needs Christ: because the hierarchy in general and a fairly large section of priests, religious and laity have failed miserably to bear witness to the person and message of Jesus.”

Fr Cedric Prakash SJ

Christians in India are in the news once again: they are at the receiving end with vicious attacks from fringe elements who swear by a fascist ideology called ‘Hindutva’; which has nothing to do with mainstream Hinduism. They have attacked Christians, stopped Christians at prayer, stoned schools, burnt Christian devotional literature and done much more! They stop at nothing; these heinous crimes are done with impunity and the perpetrators are guaranteed an immunity: a license to do what they want; even to get away with day light murder in full view of a citizenry which does not seem to care! Besides State after State belonging to the ruling regime raises the bogey of conversion in order to pass anti-Constitutional prohibition of Conversion laws in order to polarise their vote banks and demonise Christians. More than at any time else India needs Christ!
India needs Christ: because the hierarchy in general and a fairly large section of priests, religious and laity have failed miserably to bear witness to the person and message of Jesus. A sizeable number among these seem to be more obsessed with their power and position, their possessions and privileges. They curry favour with a fascist regime – frightened that their ‘can of worms’ of scandals and sins will be opened if they do not do so. They use terminologies of the Hindutva brigade like ‘love jihad’ and ‘drug jihad’. They are afraid to be visible and vocal radiating the light of Truth and Justice which Jesus epitomised and gave his life for!
India needs Christ because India is battered and bruised with divisions and discriminations. Krishen Khanna, who belonged to the Progressive Artists Group, is one of India’s most celebrated artists. Among his works are some ‘Last Suppers’; there is however, one ‘Last Supper’ which has captivated the imagination of many and has also been a source of inspiration. The painting portrays a grotesque looking figure (battered and bruised), with the upper part of his body covered with a shroud which radiates light: this is obviously Jesus. Seated around him are twelve figures and one can easily see in the portrait, the poor and the ostracized, the excluded and the exploited with whom Jesus identified. There is no cup, there is no plate! There is no bread, there is no wine! The ‘Jesus’ in the picture, with hands outstretched is so obviously receiving from the others – and in turn giving of himself. A truly powerful representation of the ‘Last Supper’ which says more than the eye can meet. Commenting on this painting, Gayatri Sinha in the book ‘Krishen Khanna: The Embrace of Love’ writes “By locating the Last Supper within this group, Khanna opens the possibilities of varied interpretation. The absence of any vestige of the meal, the subaltern status of the dark rough-hewed men, their tense huddled bodies betray an anxious concern with issues of survival.”
India needs Christ to listen to the women here; just as he listened to the Samaritan woman and to Mary Magdalene, and for that matter, to his own mother Mary. A listening heart which empowers; which gives women their rightful place in Church and Country. The courage to effectively and immediately transform a patriarchal society in which women are kept subjugated and powerless; relegated to commodification and being trafficked. We need the Jesus who bent down on his knees and wrote those challenging words for posterity, “those without sin cast the first stone”. In doing so he took up structures and systems which were not merely archaic but basically anti-human!
India needs Christ because we are in the midst of a Synodal process which emphasis the need and importance of communion, participation and mission. Throughout his life Jesus was inclusive: he spoke about and embraced the lost, last and least, those who lived on the peripheries of society, the marginalised and the minorities, the excluded and the exploited, the Samaritans and the Gentiles. The Synodal process calls us to do exactly that: to transcend our rites and rituals, our dogmatism and dictatorial behaviour, our church compounds and our sinful exclusive structures. Sr. Nathalie Becquart , the Undersecretary of the Synod of Bishops puts it poignantly, “ Synodality is the call of God for the Church in the third millennium.. It is a shift of culture and a move towards pragmatism for all the people of God.” We therefore need Christ to vivify this journey with his presence in India: to be in our midst more than at any time before!
India needs Christ; at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago on 11 September 1893, Swami Vivekanand said “The present convention, which is one of the most august assemblies ever held, is in itself a vindication, a declaration to the world of the wonderful doctrine preached in the Gita: “Whosoever comes to Me, through whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are struggling through paths which in the end lead to me.” Sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible descen¬dant, fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful earth. They have filled the earth with vio¬lence, drenched it often and often with human blood, destroyed civilization and sent whole nations to despair. Had it not been for these horrible demons, human society would be far more advanced than it is now. But their time is come; and I fervently hope that the bell that tolled this morning in honour of this convention may be the death-knell of all fanaticism, of all persecutions with the sword or with the pen, and of all uncharitable feelings between persons wending their way to the same goal” Later he resonated these words saying, “that it was essential to worship God as man, and such a god man was Christ and hence not to give up his worship as all our ideas of God are concentrated there”… adding that “Christ was intensely practical and offered a practical religion!”
India needs Christ in a way perhaps envisaged by Mahatma Gandhi, “Jesus expressed as no other could, the sprit and will of God. It is in this sense that I see him and recognize as the Son of God. And because the life of Jesus has the significance and the transcendency to which I have alluded, I believe that he belongs not solely to Christianity but to the entire world, to all races and people. It matters little under what flag, name or doctrine they may work, profess a faith or worship a God inherited from their ancestors” For Gandhi who took great solace from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount he regarded Jesus as one of the greatest teachers humanity has ever had.
India needs Christ: our Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore drives home this point in a more forceful way saying, “As before, the genius of India has taken from her aggressors the most spiritually significant principle of their culture and fashioned of it a new message of hope for mankind. There is in Christianity the great doctrine that God became man in order to save humanity by taking the burden of its sin and suffering on Himself, here in this very world, not waiting for the next. That the starving must be fed, the ragged clad, has been emphasized by Christianity as no other religion has done.” For good measure he adds, “Charity, benevolence, and the like, no doubt has an important place in the religions of our country as well, but there they are in practice circumscribed within much narrower limits, and are only partially inspired by love of man. And to our great good fortune, Gandhiji was able to receive this teaching of Christ in a living way.”
Jesus embodied perfection; the totality of truth, compassion, courage, commitment, justice, fraternity, freedom, equality and dignity. Vivekanand, Gandhi and Tagore in their own way reiterated this non-negotiable fact. Given the grim realities which grip our country today there is no denying that India needs Christ desperately today!