Models of Leadership in the Indian Church: An Evaluation

Introduction to the Indian Context

Although India is geographically connected with Asia, she has always behaved independently of the rest of the continent. This is due to her being fenced by the Hindukush and the Himalayas at the north and flanked by Indus and Brahmaputra at the west and the east ends respectively. The Southern peninsula is surrounded by the Bay of Bengal, the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea. Consequently, this region not only has a different climate but its history and culture have also evolved differently from the rest of Asia. We call it 'Indian'. It is, however, difficult to define precisely what this 'Indian-ness'¹ actually is! Yet this Indian-ness can be so attractive or repulsive, for beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder.

The beginning of the story

Over six millenniums, beginning at the River Indus, the ebb and flow of many cultures and the rise and fall of many empires have left their mark on this civilisation. One single element, however, that has stayed constant in all changes of Indian history is the graded hierarchical social structure called the caste system. To this day the edifice of caste, though shaken, still stands firm.

What, then, is caste? Caste is understood as a social group that is endogamous, engages in specific type of work as its occupation and relates to other caste groups in a manner appropriate in the hierarchical structure.² Caste, furthermore, involves the practice of untouchability based on the notion of ritual purity and pollution. Consequently the social groups that consider themselves to be superior avoid the possibility of physical touch with the social groups that are deemed to be polluted and polluting. Some groups are, therefore, socially excluded from the main stream.³ They describe themselves as dalit. These socially excluded groups, however, did not vanish but settled in a symbiotic social relationship with the dominant caste groups. This is known as the jajmani system. Under this accommodation the socially excluded groups were allowed to survive on the lands of dominant group, who in turn needed their favor to work on their fields and for cleaning the village at cheap rates.

Understanding the origins of caste

The leadership in the Indian context evolved as a part and parcel of this social and cultural reality of exclusion, expulsion and exploitation. Therefore, following the cue set by Prof. Romila Thapar, I will here use two tools as instruments to comprehend the Indian society: caste and lineage. The first instrument is the perspective from the European scholars; the second is the perspective of an Indian scholar. The truth can be viewed from both perspectives.

The caste theory

Caste society can be understood as racial separation of the Aryans constituting the upper castes. The root of this perspective lies in the concept of varna, which categorises society into four groups, namely Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra. The root meaning of varnas is colour.⁴ This concept was therefore understood to be referring to the pigmentation of the skin. This gave credence to the late Eighteenth Century idea of Aryan superiority then current in Europe. The practice of endogamy was believed to have preserved the racial purity of the so-called upper castes; this however cannot be guaranteed with any certainty.⁵

The possibility that the castes evolved out of family customs is also a plausible theory. The separation in the practice of commensality in the family practically excluded the aliens. This was assumed to have worked to establish the separation of the short-statured and dark-skinned people from the Aryans.

Occupational theory has also gained ground. In this view, various occupational tasks gave rise to guilds. These guilds eventually differentiated themselves into hierarchical castes. This was based on the notion of the Indian village as an idyllic community. In other words every village was thought to be completely self-sufficient,⁶ where each caste community was involved in doing its own work as its occupation. Romila Thapar writes that 'the village community was seen as the root of Indo-European lifeand it was thought that in the...