The Pope and the Indian social OrderMission in the antique l

Imagine a Hindu or a Muslim religious leader in the USA or Europe or a Christian in the Muslim world. Would such a leader inspire so much undiluted reverence in the host country?

Of all the world leaders, I recall Sheikh Hasina at that funeral. She is as devout a Muslim as any Iknow, but she is part of the South Asian civilisation unit. Remember, she has grown up in the ambience of Rabindra Sangeet and she wears the sari. It would have been unnatural for any other Muslim leader to attend with any degree of sincerity.

The Western world knows they are, from Jerusalem to the Arabian Peninsula, the cradle of three Semitic faiths. It is not commonly realised that Jainism, Budd-hism, and Sikhism were born in this land and that Christianity came to this country when Europe was engulfed in the dark ag-es. The Cheraman Perumal mosque in Cr-anganore was built when the Prophet of Islam was still alive and that an ancient synagogue in Kochi still attracts visitors.

All of this demonstrates a considerable hospitality to new faiths, ideas, and currents.

But in all of this interaction there has been one serious problem. And it is just as well that this particular problem has become part of a general debate in the context of the Pope’s visit.

Islam, Christianity, Marxism, Libera-lism,Capitalism are all linear proselytising systems, constantly looking for each ot-her’s space. Each seeks to capture the market at the expense of the other.

A fundamental difficulty crops up when these proselytising mov-ements come into contact with a pyramidical social order. Mind you, what Krishna said to Arjun, Vedas, Yog Vas-hisht are the highest le-vel of metaphysical tho-ught. That thought sta- nds secure in the midst of all the philosophical discourse. It is the social order that takes the br-unt of proselytising political currents.

Mandalisation has aggravated anxieties ab-out the structural weaknesses in this social order.

The core Hindu response to Islam, Christianity, Marxism, Nehruvian secularism, is roughly similar. All these ideas would be acceptable provided they did not tinker with the basic structure of the social order.

In fact, since Marxism and Nehruvian secularism are marching avowedly with vi-gorous political formations, the Hindu has rushed to meet these threats politically. Thepresent political structure in New De-lhi is, in part, a manifestation of the Hindu’s successful management of the overt political threat at least for the time being. Just as Buddha was accommodated as an incarnation of Vishnu, the post-Mandal assault on the social order has been sought to be neutralised by accommodating several social justice stalwarts in the BJP-led NDA’s top shelf. This is also evidence of the elastic the Hindu order is able to place around its girth in moments of crisis.

Since the advent of the Muslims in India and the subsequent arrival of the British, large-scale conversions have generally fed on the inequities in the social order. It has obviously been an unequal entente cordial. One gr-oup does not convert: the others do. Nearly 500 million Muslims, Christians and Buddhi-sts in South Asia were once part of a system the leaders of the Hindu community claim as the social pyramid on which they preside. It would be extremely insensitive of us not to realise that this awareness couldperiodically bruise Hindu sensibility.

The structural violence in Hindu society is now exposed to correction by the processes of liberal, democratic, electoral politics. Change is inevitable but, quite naturally, the Hindu would like to determine the tempo of this change.

In the midst of this vigorous churning process, bringing about tectonic changes in the social arena through the ballot box, the zeal of the missionaries in the tribal areas opens up yet another front. Hence the intemperate statements and misplaced anxieties on the eve of the Pope’s visit.

The end of the Cold War has not only given capitalism but also the Church a shot in the arm. After all, the Catholic Church was in the vanguard of the Solidarity movement in Poland, the first East European nation to be reclaimed by the Church. Similarly, the role of the Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia should not be underestimated.

Time was when the Dutch Church justified apartheid in South Africa, and the Catholic Church wassquarely behind the most brutal dictatorships in Latin America. Let us also not forget Franco and Salazar in Spain and Portugal. Every form of non-democratic rule was justified in those days because communism, the competing proselytising system, appeared to be gaining the upper hand in the mid-’70s, particularly after the American defeat in Vietnam.

Just like the Taliban in Afghanistan in another context, the Church too now has a great deal of spare evangelical vigour to target supposedly vacant spaces in the post-Cold War world our tribal belt for instance.

I can never forget my visit to Nicaragua when the Soviet-backed Sandinistas were entrenched there. Cardinal Ovando Bravo showed me the statue of the Holy Mother in Managua which "wept" every day until the American-backed Contras won. Such "miracles" were not unknown wherever the two proselytising systems were in contest.

In India, our majority social order does not proselytise. I think we ought to respect this fact even as we roll out the redcarpet for the Pope who, too, must be well aware of the touching and incomparable grandeur with which we bade farewell to one of the greatest Roman Catholics of all time.