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Chapter 7. Attaining Harmony as a Hindu-Christian
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99 chapter7 Attaining Harmony as a Hindu-Christian Michael Amaladoss Iam an Indian Christian and a Jesuit. I was born and grew up as an Indian. My priestly formation has been in traditional scholastic philosophy and in a theology in transformation after the Second Vatican Council. I have been a student also of Hindu philosophy, theology, and spirituality. I have lived through the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council. I have been involved in interreligious dialogue between Hindus, Christians, and an occasional Muslim for thirty-five years. All this has led me to an awareness today of being a Hindu-Christian. I am encouraged by the thought that my guru, Jesuit Father Ignatius Hirudayam, and Swami Abhishiktananda (Henri Le Saux), whom I was privileged to know in his last years, were both Hindu-Christians according to my understanding. I think that Mahatma Gandhi was also a Christian -Hindu, perhaps the best Indian Christian of the twentieth century, if a Christian is someone who follows the teachings and example of Christ. At an international conference on “Double Belongingness in Religion” in Brussels , Belgium, in 1999, I felt at home in a group of about forty people who felt themselves to be Hindu-, Buddhist-, or Taoist-Christian.1 Such a double identity will seem confusing to many. Some will cry, “Syncretism!” In this chapter I therefore try to explain how I arrived at this point and how I feel and live such a liminal identity. At the end I also clarify my position by referring briefly to the experience of Swami Abhishiktananda, among others. My Story I was born in 1936 into a family that has been Christian for five generations. But my parents were teachers working in government schools in largely Hindu villages. So from the age of three I grew up in a large Hindu village with about five hundred families, of whom only three families (all teachers) were Christian. The village had a big temple to the goddess Mariamman. I was familiar with the temple’s rituals and festivals, observing them with my Hindu friends. On Sundays we had to walk three miles to go to our church. So I grew up surrounded by Hindus. Our different identities were clear, but we were friends and playmates, not enemies. At the age of eleven I went to a Jesuit boarding school. There, too, the majority of the students and many of the teachers were Hindu. In the morning and in the evening the sounds of the bells from the nearby Hindu temple and the Christian church used to mingle harmoniously. The Christian atmosphere in the school and in the boarding 100 Michael Amaladoss school was clear and dominant, but not aggressive or offensive. I went to nearby parish centers on Sundays to teach the catechism to children. I joined the Society of Jesus in 1953, at the age of seventeen. During the novitiate I spent two weeks with Father Hirudayam in a parish. He was a pioneer of inculturation and interreligious dialogue, born a little ahead of his time. In that period, because of his theology, he was living in some sort of exile in a small parish after teaching for a couple of years in the seminary. I imbibed from him his love for Hinduism, Indian culture, and music. He was an expert in Shaiva Siddhanta, one of the branches of Hinduism. Fifteen years later, after the Second Vatican Council, he was allowed to start an ashram in Chennai devoted to inculturation, interreligious dialogue, and Indian Christian spirituality. When I was student of philosophy, there was a growing interest in Indian culture among the students. A small group of us joined together to study various dimensions of Indian arts and culture, the aim being to understand better our own Indian identity and also use these dimensions to proclaim the good news in India. During my philosophical studies I read the Summa theologica of Saint Thomas Aquinas in the original Latin, as well as the works of other European Thomists, like Jacques Maritain and Etienne Gilson. I also read the five-volume history of Indian philosophy by S. N. Dasgupta and the writings of other Hindu philosophers, like S. Radhakrishnan and Ananda Coomarswamy, who was also an art historian. My paper at the end of the philosophy course compared C. G. Jung and Yoga. One consequence of this plunge into Hinduism was the slow realization that there are many good and holy elements in Hinduism that should provoke appreciation...