Polluted Christ

Life should be an ardent search for reasons to love and embrace rather than hate and exclusion. Jesus spent his entire life relishing with the people whom the world naively called ‘sinners’. We are so reluctant to love others that we desperately search for reasons to keep them at bay. ‘Sinner’ is one such word used to legitimize our discrimination; as if we know what exactly sin is. Swami Vivekananda once remarked

My Vedanta doesn’t recognize the definition of ‘Sin’. A Hindu does not brand any of you as a sinner. You are all sons and daughters of the Great God. According to Vedanta calling someone sinner is the greatest sin. No Christian has to become a Hindu nor has a Buddhist to convert to Christianity. Reach God choosing your own path – this is the message of Vedanta.

Mahatma Gandhi also opined, “To call people sinner is to undermine their humanity.” India is too good in qualifying someone a sinner and Caste System is its chief paradigm.

Indian soil gave birth to innumerable versatile gurus yet its conscience has not awakened. It is very disheartening that in a nation like India which is proudly acclaimed for its myriad forms of diversities in all walks of life is grappling with the viciousness of Caste System. Besides the four general social groups emerging out of the Varnashrama dharma – an idea that developed in classical Hinduism which leads to social stratification; there is a fifth group which is pushed to the abyss of unrecognition i.e. the Dalits.

The word Dalit has several meanings ‘broken people’, oppressed, crushed etc. Dalits are so low in the social hierarchy that they are outside the caste system and considered ‘outcastes’. Dalits are the people who bear the brunt of the hegemony of Caste System. They are also known as ‘untouchables’ as the mere touch of the Dalits is considered to pollute an ‘upper caste’ member. According to Article 17 of the Constitution of India, Untouchability is abolished and its practice in any form is forbidden. Despite the law, untouchability is practiced in every subtle way possible.

Today in the context of ‘untouchability’ the subversiveness of touch needs to be meditated. For our better cognizance I would like to juxtapose the healing of the leper by Jesus (Mark 1:40-44). Verse 41 mentions “Jesus stretched out his arms and touched him”. According to the Levitical code (Lev 13:1-5; 14:1-32; 13:40-59) touching or having any sort of contact with a leper was considered to be abominable. John Dominic Crossan, a New Testament Scholar, eruditely remarks,

The leprous person was a social threat not because of medical contagion, threatening infection or epidemic but because of symbolic contamination, threatening in microcosm the very identity, integrity and security of society at large.

Sathianathan Clarke, a Dalit theologian, further explicates,

In the healing episode of the leper Jesus’ instructions, “Go show yourself to the priest and make the offering for your cleansing which Moses commanded as evidence to them” (Mk 1:44) to the healed man seems to be a deliberate attempt by Jesus to confront the ideological hegemony. The change in object from ‘priest’ to ‘them’ does suggest a protest against not merely an individual but a whole ideological regulative system, a protest against ‘the entire purity apparatus’ controlled by the priests.

The milieu of Dalits too is the same. They are ostracized and considered as ‘untouchables’ in the name of religion which propagates the notion of purity and pollution.

Christians too cannot shy away from the ignominy of practicing untouchability. Henri Tiphagne, Indian lawyer and human rights defender, also the recipient of Amnesty International Germany’s 8^th Human Rights award states,

Untouchability is practiced in the Christian faith. Many Churches have separate cemeteries for Dalits and for non-Dalits. This exists today…The Dalit's status as an “untouchable” continues whether he is in the Hindu religion or in Christianity.

Fr. Bobby Jose Capuchin writes,

If measured by Varnashrama dharma to which caste does Christ belong? Jesus Christ was a Kshatriya by birth as he was born in the line of King David. He was a Vaisya by his profession (carpenter). He was further a Brahman because of his sacrifice, meditations and contemplations. He was a Shudra too because of his associations with ‘sinners’.

So since Jesus Christ does not attune to any of the caste specifications could we not consider him an outcast thereby a ‘Dalit’? And since he touched the leper wasn’t he ‘polluted’? This is the main argument of all the Dalit theologians. Dalits pathologically relate the agony and miseries endured by Christ to their ordeals.

Lent is an invitation to reflect on the pathos of the lives pushed to the fringes of the society. It should be a time to embrace the ‘untouchables’ just as Christ touched and healed that leper. It is a time to get ‘polluted’ like our Christ. Our senses should give heed to the groaning of the margins so that we are enthused with the unrelenting indignation of Christ.

I conclude with a fiction

Jesus once came to a home, apparently reborn on earth. Seeing Jesus, the host got surprised. He welcomed Jesus and told Jesus to feel at home. Thus Jesus asked the host for his permission to bring home his friends to which the host conceded. Jesus then brought along with him ‘sinners’ and ‘outcastes’. The host on seeing these people occupy his house was irritated and uncomfortable. He drove them out and took Jesus, locked him up in a cupboard, lit two candles on either side of the cupboard and started to pray.

Homes and Churches are becoming ‘Closed cupboards’. We do not have the audacity to free Jesus and welcome him into our midst because welcoming Jesus would mean welcoming ‘sinners’, ‘outcastes’ and ‘untouchables’, in this case, the Dalits.

Let us pray

Embracing God, as your Son outstretched his arms on the cross to demonstrate your love for the cosmos may we too outstretch our arms to embrace the ‘untouchables’ to keep the legacy of the ‘polluted’ Christ alive. For Christ’s sake we pray. Amen

Prayers

Dn. Basil Paul