We remember the Serampore Trio – Carey, Marshman and Ward – who initiated the
Indian Renaissance in Bengal in the early part of the 19th century. We may better
use the expression The Serampore Quartet , the group of four, rather than the Trio if
we duly recognise the active collaboration of Sarah Marshman, the ‘first European
woman missionary in India’. Sarah Marshman and the other women who soon
joined her were not simply “wives of missionaries”, but played substantial roles on
their own in accomplishing the mission. Commemoration of these men and women
is more than a ‘hagiographical’ remembrance. It is an act of thanksgiving, and a
future-oriented recapitulation of the legacy of those who sacrificed their lives for the
welfare of all, for the future of humanity. In a liturgical sense it is Anamnesis, the
Great Remembrance. It is not simply a psychological recollection of the past, but of
gathering together in a holistic vision the past, present and future of Christian
witness and commitment.
The celebrated work of the Serampore missionaries was mainly in education. Their
proposal in 1818 was for a “College for the instruction of Asiatic, Christian and other
youth in Eastern literature and European science,” and the founding of the
Serampore college as well as allied educational, linguistic and literary activities –
schools, boarding homes, education for girls, and translation of the Bible and
literature.
It is almost at the same period that British missionary activities started
in Kerala. All that we can say about the vision and the deep commitment of the
Serampore missionaries can be said about the first generation of British
missionaries in Kerala as well. The difference is that the latter made an attempt to
collaborate with the already existing ancient indigenous Malankara Church in Kerala
under the banner of the “Mission of Help”. (Of course, there was no pre-missionary
Christian Church in Bengal for the Serampore missionaries to work with).
In any case the great initiative taken by the missionaries to uplift the inhumanly
oppressed and exploited Dalit populations and to provide education to the girls and
boys alike brought a certain degree of human dignity to all those who were terribly
deprived of it. The movement anticipated and facilitated the great social change in
post-independence India. It also opened the eyes of the highly caste-minded ancient
Church in Kerala to some of the gospel values like justice and equality it had
ignored, and it helped them start socially caring programmes, and public
educational and medical services for the people.
More than 200 years have elapsed since the British missionaries began their work in
Bengal and Kerala. The western imperial-colonial-missionary paradigm has now
vanished though some of our Indian churches still seem to retain vestiges of that
age. We are now encountering an India that is completely different from that of the
colonial period. The difference is so radical that even calling our venerable
motherland India rather than Bharath might soon be considered a heretical and
politically incorrect utterance.
Let me very briefly point out a few areas, which would require our attention in
relation to Christian vision, theological education and ministerial formation in India.
The Enlightened horizon:
The British missionaries who came from the context of
European enlightenment and imperial Christianity naturally opened a new horizon
of enlightenment through educational initiatives in India. What we call ‘modern
India’ is, to a large extent, the outcome of European enlightenment. We made use of
modern scientific methodology and its concomitant technology for remarkable
accomplishments including the recent Chandrayan mission of ISRO. But the
assumptions of that western civilizational-missionary enterprise like the claim of
cultural-racial-religious superiority and the boastful European condescension to the
Indians had been questioned from the very beginning by sensitive Indians like Ram
Mohan Roy. A few decades ago Bishop Paulos Mar Gregorios challenged the
European Enlightenment, particularly its ratio sola (reason alone) principle and its
idea of secularism in two of his seminal books. He proposed for our nation-builders
the paradigm of the Indian/Asian Buddhist Enlightenment that embraces both
rationality and transcendence. This line of thought opens a new channel for us to
engage in a critical dialogue with western scientific secularism as well as to face the
spectre of a virulent ‘cultural nationalism’.
The Paradox of expansion and constriction: Contemporary Science and
technology opens up amazing dimensions of our macro and micro universe. For
example, the exploration, on the one hand, of space and the detection of hitherto
unknown galaxies and blackholes by James Web Space Telescope (JWST), and, on
the other hand, the unveiling of the “Attosecond” of time (a billionth of a billionth of
one second) to study the electron dynamism in human body cells by this year’s
(2023) Nobel laureates in Physics. While we open up to new dimensions of space-
time in an ever-accelerating inflationary universe, we are simultaneously choked by
social, cultural and geopolitical constrictions promoted by political ideologies and
religious fundamentalism. Religious-communal conflicts, racial hostilities,
genocides, border confrontations, and brutal wars now being staged are all
contemporary examples of this constriction. Sadly it is our own human creation.
Story and history, myth and logos:We have come to an era in India where the
borders of story and history, myth and logos are deliberately being blurred. In our
“post- truth era”, our usual notions of fact, interpretation, and wishful thinking are
mixed up in a deliberate political manoeuvring. We need to remind ourselves that
the borders between fact and fiction have been established as the result of laborious
intellectual and academic struggles over several centuries. An absolute distinction
between story and history has its own problems. In several languages of the world
there is only one word to represent both story and history. It engenders
historiographical issues. Therefore one has to be cautious and critical. Whether we
like it or not, what we call ‘modernity’ assumes these strict borders, and some of the
religiously-driven modern states enter into conflict with the modern scientific
notion of the distinction between fact and fiction. Striking the right balance and
finding the true interconnections between myth and reason (logos or ratio),
between great insights enshrined in ancient stories and Ithihasas and the
contemporary working out of those insights through science and technology could
be an important task for theology today.
From exploitation to reverence: One of the major consequences of the
Enlightenment in Europe was the shift from pagan reverence for nature to nature’s
ruthless exploitation. Theologians took the lead in this shift in medieval Europe
followed by pioneers of modern science like Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes. Only
by desacralizing nature could they promote the empirical scientific method. Karen
Armstrong, after writing on all major religions and founders of religion, produced
her recent work Sacred Nature that critically reviews the various approaches to
nature. She is particularly harsh on her own western theological and scientific
tradition. Referring to the so-called biblical and then scientific drive to control and
subdue the earth she says: “Nature was no longer a theophany, a revelation of the
divine; it was a commodity that must be exploited.” Now many people in the West
want to re-experience nature’s enchantment after centuries of rational
disenchantment with God’s natural creation. Indian intelligentsia needs to be
liberated from the clutches of the anti-nature European Enlightenment. Indian
theology need not look to the West for wisdom in ecological concerns, but can find
an amazing wealth of resources in Dalit, Adivasi, Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain
traditions.
The interdisciplinary vocation of theology: Unlike in the medieval European
universities where theology was the “Queen of sciences” it is either banished or
relegated to an insignificant place in the academia in our secularised word.
Therefore, we need to seek a proper role for theology in connecting various streams
of human knowledge in a holistic manner in order to discern the meaning and
direction of knowledge itself. That means we would need a breadth of vision and
intelligence, and a sense of the totality of God's creation. Our secular universities
desperately need this confluence and directionality of knowledge.
From earth-boundedness to exobiology: Enormous amounts of money, energy
and intelligence are now being devoted to the search for signs of life outside of our
planet earth. Exobiology or astrobiology desperately seeks ‘life-markers’ like liquid
water in its search for extra-terrestrial life. Many people critically point out that a
country like India that has to address basic questions of food, shelter, education and
employment for a billion people is busy preparing to send human beings to other
planets. Looking at it from another perspective, it is the indomitable will and
aspiration of human beings to search beyond their immediate needs of food and
shelter. Spiritually speaking it could be the expression of the innate human desire to
seek the infinite and transcendent dimensions. Now it seems some theological
circles follow advanced science that seeks life in other planets. So theologians are
now facing again the old question: what happens to the whole doctrinal edifice of
Christian theology if we happen to find intelligent life in some other parts of the
universe? An interesting recent book in this connection is Andrew Davison’s
Astrobiology and Christian Doctrine. The author seems to think that a new
cosmological perspective at least will help us re-examine in a refreshing way our
conventional theological understanding of God and creation.
The humility of God:
In the ancient Christian prayer books one often comes across
expressions like “the humility of God” and “our humble God”. Of course, this is based
on St Paul’s teaching on the self-emptying (Kenosis) of God in the incarnate Christ
(Phil. 2:6-9). The idea of the self-humbling of God does not seem to occur in other
religious traditions. Since this is rooted in the mystery of incarnation Christian
theology should admit its own weaknesses and its limitations in expounding the
knowledge of the ineffable God. To discern the humility of God in our theology we
need enlightened intelligence, deep compassion and great trust and faith in the
power of God and the guidance of the Holy Spirit who continually perfects creation.
A kenotic God opens up infinite space to accommodate the created world. A kenotic
spirituality rising from such a self-emptying theology can take in the whole world
with all its diversity, contradictions and incoherence, and still provide meaning and
orientation.
The fearless little flock: The Serampore missionaries had the backdrop of an
emerging mighty empire and the tall claim of a ‘superior religion and race’. Do we
Indian Christians in the 21st century still retain this alien imperial-missionary
paradigm of a bygone age? Of course, we don’t, I suppose. Given the current trends
in India, Christians representing an already tiny minority in this country will have to
consider seriously the forgotten metaphor of “the little sheepfold” that Christ once
used for the community of his followers (Luke 12:32). What would be the outcome if
that metaphor comes literally true in India? What would be the implications for the
continuing fight of Christians for equality, for human rights, for freedom to profess
their faith, and serve their fellow human beings in a spirit of self-sacrifice, faith,
hope and love on the model of Jesus Christ?
We need a lot of wisdom to discern the
signs of the times in the fast changing political and religious-social environment of
our country. We need a compassionate theology that vigilantly seeks to remind our
rulers about meting out justice to the poor and the disinherited, of care extended
“unto this last”, of space of freedom where people can be together irrespective of
their political and religious inclinations. The Serampore motto reminds the new
graduands and all of us: Gloriam sapientes possidebunt – The wise will inherit glory.
