second assignment for Fr Cyriac

Religion: a means of integral liberation (moksha) through dharma sadhanas.
For Rev Fr Cyriac Kanichari CMI
by Desmond M Coutinho
I am going to have to tidy this one up and soften it. It comes across as a little too smarmy know-it-all west is best, but I just want to say the same thing in a more shaky shaky head gentle Indian way.

Borrowing from the Rev Dr Ian Paisley former First Minister of Ulster, Never Never Never. This is clearly a trick question. The course distinguished between the artful particulars of Faith and the general call of Religion. Since the dharma sadhanas are the fons et culmen of the Sanatana Dharma known today as Hindutva to which some unkindly add Fascism then it clearly cannot be a means of integral liberation unless the Lecturer is referring to the occasional attempts at genocide by this movement. A better question then is why does a Roman Catholic ascripted in the Syro-Malabar rite wish to propose a Hindutva model of theology as universally liberating. There are several possibilities.

First to continue the struggle for Indian Independence against colonial and neo-colonial cultural predators. Aristotle and Aquinas, gifted though they are, are artful interpreters of Religion. Thus the introduction of equally sound principles from another angle from ancient Indian thought can by weakening their stranglehold on formation theology allow Roman Catholics in India to breathe and consider afresh the fundamentals of Religion. Thus the reason for the question was not for students to embrace Hindutva values but to question their Greek and European one.

The foundation techniques of Brahminized India come from Pantajali's Yoga Sutra. As a basis for integrative liberation or salvation any one could be taken and explicated meaningfully. Ahimsa non-violence in word thought deed or ommission either personal or through an agent or through silent complicity appears harmless enough.

Ghandhi-Ji is presented as pre-eminent among the practitioners of Ahimsa. Ghandhi-Ji is only a man regardless what Einstein thought. Ghandhi-Ji's non-violence in theory did not prevent him from urging war with Pakistan because a United India was more important to him than contingent peace. Ghandhi-Ji also deliberately held back the movement for Dalit Liberation, threatening fasting unto death at Poona unless the Brahmin cause was upheld.

The model of Moksha theoretically offered by Hindutva observances flies in the face of all the evidence. The example of Nicholas of Cusa is relevant. He began his legal career as a member of the Conciliar Party at the Council of Basel. The Conciliar movement was democratic, God working from within rather than from on High, Cusa defended it because he wanted a more just world. He believed in Religion that derived from God's call in the human heart applied equally to all although interpreted better by the more intelligent. In order to preserve this vision Cusa switched sides and supported the minority party with the Pope. A counter-intuitive result occured then and the freedom for the lecturer to think and break free from Western Thinking models was provided by his sound basis in Western Thinking.

There is a deeper problem in the Brahminized view of a true and ancient Indian Philosophy. And the Eastern mind should not be put off by the Western concept of problem solving. Until the British came Indians were not aware of this History because they didn't have a history. History belongs to a people and Indians are only now becoming a people once more. Brahminization is essentially individualistic. Although it offers yoga with Brahman it offers it to individual practitioners. None of the Sadhanas suggested in the Vedanta-sutra or the Sankara-Bhasya or the Pantajali's Yoga are what we term liturgical. They all require one student one master.

A true integrative liberation can only come for a people. The people of India having rid themselves of British rule (which through the coincidentia oppositorum also created the people of India from bickering small kingdoms governed by petty tyrants) cannot now yield again to the rule of another rich efete intelligentsia.

India is multi-dimensional and is a fertile earth for the discovery of an integrated salvation. However for too long has the European Orientalist determined what counts as philosophy. Zoroastrianism is dying in India but it's Word has long been silenced. Eastern Theologies need to take their proper place in the discussions. And the newer insights of Dalit and Tribal theology have a Word to bring. Although these latter groups claim a more eco-friendly non-patriarchal democratic and communitarian approach time will tell.

It seems to me that an integrative theology of liberation that has no place for the Exodus story cannot be said to have anything to do with the Reality of Religion. The Exodus story is not a mere artful representation of Faith it is in the Ecology of Salvation, and therefore structurally so, the means of God's self-revelation in our midst. It is the Dalit and Tribal Theologians who embrace with heart mind and soul this Biblical typos. The Church is always too Quietistic because people with power and money can be quite pacifying. However the spiritual techniques of Sadhanas being spiritual techniques are a heavy anchor towards Quietism.

Ghandi-Ji provides a counter here also. His Gram Swaraj was at least an experiential and fully lived attempt at bringing out Asteya and Aparigraha among the people whose rights he had abrogated.