Crisis and Contention in Indian Society by Oommen T K;

Author:Oommen, T K;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: SAGE Publications

6

Indianisation of the Church and its Implications

The RSS Chief K.S. Sudarshan has given a call for the Indianisation of the Church. This is completely misplaced not only because the Indian Church is already Indianised but also because the very expression Indianisation is extremely problematic. On the other hand, there is nothing new in his advocacy because if one traces the history of the Sangh Parivar to the 1930s it can be seen that this view has already been articulated. The problem is not simply the demand for the Indianisation of the Church but the Sangh Parivar’s tendency to indulge not simply in double-speak, but in multi-speak. It seems to me that this is a deliberate strategy to confuse the victims and to test the waters.

I

To begin with, let it be noted that the very expression ‘India’, in its original sense, does not refer to a clear geographical entity. It is a derivation from the term ‘Hindi’, a medieval Arabian term which on the one hand excluded Dravidanad and the Deccan and on the other included Indonesia, Thailand and Cambodia. Sudarshan’s India refers only to one part of the trifurcated subcontinental India.

If by Indianisation what is meant is the adoption of a common culture or lifestyle, then it is not a plausible proposition. Indian food, dress, language, dance forms, art, architecture and music are all in multiples. Consider dietary practices; vegetarianism is not common to all Indians. Most dalit bahujans were/are non-vegetarians, although some of them might have abandoned beef eating due to Sanskritisation. But let us remember that beef eating was common in ancient India. Even the Brahmins vary in their food habits; the Kashmiri Brahmins eat mutton, the Bengali Brahmins eat fish, although the Tamil Brahmins may be vegetarians. Most of the westernised Brahmins have ceased to be vegetarians. There are individuals and groups (e.g. the Bishnois of Rajasthan) who are conscious vegetarians. But pure vegetarians constitute a minority in India now.

Language is a core identity in nation-states all over the world. But in India more than 1,000 mother tongues are spoken of which 18 languages (now 23) are officially recognised. A dozen languages are spoken by 10 million or more people. The biggest language, namely Hindi, is spoken only by 38 per cent and there are more than a dozen dialects of Hindi, four of which have 10 million or more speakers (see Chapter 7). All India Radio broadcasts in 170 languages! So what would Indianisation connote in the linguistic context?

Indian dress too varies vastly across linguistic regions. Today, a majority of the urban Indian males use a combination of western and Indian dress. Even the pan-Indian dress for women, namely sari, is worn differently from region to region. What I have said about food, dress and language applies, even if to a lesser extent to music, sports, dance, art and architecture in India. Carnatic music is played on the violin which is an 18th-century import from Europe. Cricket, a current craze in India, is a colonial gift.

India’s

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.