Sunday 10 October 2010

The newspaper and the Bible

Imagine we had the chance to give an emoticon for every article that appears in the paper. It would be a smiley for the story on Saina Nehwal’s win in a Super Series tournament. Or a winking smiley for the story on Aamir Khan travelling disguised for the promotion of 3 Idiots. But I know I would give a frowny face for the story of Shanti Devi and Fatima.
Shanti Devi, a Scheduled Caste woman, died minutes after giving birth to a premature baby girl. She had not eaten for three days before her delivery. A year and a half earlier, Shanti Devi, pregnant for the third time, had a miscarriage; the foetus died in her womb. But four different hospitals turned her away because she could not pay the bills….
Fatima, another young woman, gave birth to a baby girl under a tree in the crowded Nizamuddin locality right opposite the Commonwealth Games car park. Her mother approached a maternity home run by the corporation but was turned away. (www.civilsocietyonline.com/may10/may107.asp.)
Haven’t we heard of another woman who had “no room at the inn”? Has the smiley Christmas story of a “prince being born” overshadowed it? Let me try to “report” the birth of Jesus:

Bethlehem
December 25, 3 B.C.
By Staff Reporter
Mary, a poor young woman from Nazareth in Galilee, gave birth to a baby boy in a manger in a crowded locality here yesterday. She and her husband, Joseph, had just arrived from their home in Nazareth, about 150 kilometres south to Joseph’s ancestral home in Bethlehem in Judea, to register in the Census of Quirinius when she went into labour. Joseph is said to be a descendant of King David and Bethlehem is David’s birthplace.
The couple knocked at the doors of many inns, but was turned away. Finally, a kind innkeeper offered them a stable for the night, where Mary delivered the child.
The baby is said to be healthy. “It is an event of great joy,” said one of the shepherds who came visiting the family after they heard the news while guarding their flocks in nearby fields. The child was swathed in white cloth when they saw him.

The nativity story gives us a picture of the society into which Jesus was born. The fact that Mary and Joseph brought a pair of doves (not the lamb of the wealthy) to the temple for sacrifice shows that they were indeed poor.
This is not to say the situation in Jerusalem 2000 years ago is anywhere close to what it is in India today. But you can draw shocking parallels to it from contemporary society. That, to me, is the relevance of the Bible.
Jesus’ preaching reflected the obvious socio-economic tension of his times. So, the parable of the labourers who receive the same wages (Matthew 20:1-16) brings to mind the sight of unskilled labourers who wait at street corners not knowing if they will get work for the day. The minimum resources required for a person to support his or her family are the same.
I am not discounting the spiritual meaning of this parable. But Jesus used everyday problems to illustrate a point.
The gap between the rich and the poor were wide, as it is today. There were landowning farmers and absentee landlords who lived in cities at one end of the spectrum and labourers who worked for them and wandering shepherds at the other extreme. Then there were the high priests, the temple administrators and taxmen who lived fairly well and craftsmen like Jesus and his fisherman friends.
Under imperialist Roman rule, there were questions of identity and political unrest too among people, as our country has been through.
Other Bible narratives too hold a mirror up to contemporary society. The episode of Naboth’s vineyard (1 Kings 21:1-16) is the story of the abuse of authority. King Ahab, Queen Jezebel’s husband, wanted to own a vineyard near his villa at Jezreel. Its owner, Naboth, would not sell. Jezebel gets Naboth killed so that ownership of the vineyard was passed to Ahab. Farmers and tribals are still helpless against the mighty and powerful.
Dear friends, if you are indifferent to news around us, think again. You and I are part of the structural violence that makes all this happen.
Here are more killer facts. According to the multidimensional poverty index of the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, 421 million people in eight states of India live in extreme poverty. This is more than the total number of similarly impoverished lives in the 26 poorest African countries put together.
The National Crime Records Bureau states that 199,132 farmers in India killed themselves between 1997 and 2008. That makes it nearly 45 farmers a day.
So, if we are far too complacent with the everyday reading of the Bible, it is time for a rethink. As the great theologian Karl Barth advised, “Take your Bible and take your newspaper, and read both. But interpret newspapers from your Bible.”