Many Christians today define their faith by ‘religious’ symbols or catchy quotes on their cars. I have nothing against a cross or rosary hanging from the rear-view mirror or against biblical verses stuck on windshields. The other day I saw a sticker that said, “But as for me, it is good to be near Jesus” (Psalms 73:28)! A clever adaptation of verse 28 in the Psalm of Asaph, written much before Jesus’ time, which has God in place of Jesus.
Depending on one’s theological leanings, it can be seen as an overenthusiastic effort to spread the Word. Or as a naive belief that the Word will be the armour against dangers on the road. (It is rarely to remind the owner-driver to armour himself with Christian attitudes. If it were so, it would not have been on the rear windshield. In fact, it signifies a condescending attitude towards ‘people of lesser faith’.)
What I consider more sickening are in-your-face messages like ‘My boss is a Jewish carpenter’. No doubt, it is catchy and sounds impressive. But in my opinion, it displays an utter lack of sensitivity to the social and political realities in India today.
What is the actual situation in our social milieu? I, for one, with my privileged schooling, have never had a carpenter’s son as my classmate. That Jesus was himself a carpenter, who was at the lower end of the socio-economic strata, did not give the disadvantaged any better access to my Christian school for their only means of empowerment and social mobility: education.
In a lecture on ‘Inclusive Education: A View of Higher Education in India’, Professor Ganesh N. Devy says thus: “Despite achievements of half a century of affirmative action in higher education, legacies of discrimination, marginalisation and denial are still enmeshed in Indian social composition. …Successive governments have tried to cope with educational and social inequalities. All of the approximately 350 state-funded universities and16,000 colleges have been trying to provide education at a relatively low cost, not entirely unaffordable to students from the poorer classes. Yet, it cannot be said that the state has succeeded in providing access to higher education for the marginalised in India.”
Thanks to the efforts of social reformers and successive governments, opportunities have no doubt increased in higher education. Yet, the livelihoods of a mason or a carpenter without education are nothing to speak of.
A few years ago, a carpenter told me that he would never want his son to take up his profession. Getting a job, a respectable livelihood option, is as difficult as getting an education. It is also worthwhile to think if any of our youths would take up carpentry as a profession unless engineering colleges or IITs came up with a B.Tech or B.E course in it!
Herein lies the problem with simplistic statements or bold assertions like the one mentioned earlier.
But even if we were to dismiss all these as superfluous, there is another thing that should weigh more on our consciences: the deadly silence when we need to speak up. For all the alleluias and praises that we are willing to mouth, are we ready to speak up in the face of injustice in the world? What should be our reaction to the recent developments in Kerala with regard to admissions to self-financing colleges?
Years ago, Rev. Martin Luther King preached at the Riverside Church in New York City that “a time comes when silence is betrayal”. He was condemning the Vietnam War and the unjust system that created it. He said:
“We as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing oriented’ society to a ‘person oriented’ society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
“…And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak.
“…A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.
“…A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits outwith no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, ‘This is not just.’”
Depending on one’s theological leanings, it can be seen as an overenthusiastic effort to spread the Word. Or as a naive belief that the Word will be the armour against dangers on the road. (It is rarely to remind the owner-driver to armour himself with Christian attitudes. If it were so, it would not have been on the rear windshield. In fact, it signifies a condescending attitude towards ‘people of lesser faith’.)
What I consider more sickening are in-your-face messages like ‘My boss is a Jewish carpenter’. No doubt, it is catchy and sounds impressive. But in my opinion, it displays an utter lack of sensitivity to the social and political realities in India today.
What is the actual situation in our social milieu? I, for one, with my privileged schooling, have never had a carpenter’s son as my classmate. That Jesus was himself a carpenter, who was at the lower end of the socio-economic strata, did not give the disadvantaged any better access to my Christian school for their only means of empowerment and social mobility: education.
In a lecture on ‘Inclusive Education: A View of Higher Education in India’, Professor Ganesh N. Devy says thus: “Despite achievements of half a century of affirmative action in higher education, legacies of discrimination, marginalisation and denial are still enmeshed in Indian social composition. …Successive governments have tried to cope with educational and social inequalities. All of the approximately 350 state-funded universities and16,000 colleges have been trying to provide education at a relatively low cost, not entirely unaffordable to students from the poorer classes. Yet, it cannot be said that the state has succeeded in providing access to higher education for the marginalised in India.”
Thanks to the efforts of social reformers and successive governments, opportunities have no doubt increased in higher education. Yet, the livelihoods of a mason or a carpenter without education are nothing to speak of.
A few years ago, a carpenter told me that he would never want his son to take up his profession. Getting a job, a respectable livelihood option, is as difficult as getting an education. It is also worthwhile to think if any of our youths would take up carpentry as a profession unless engineering colleges or IITs came up with a B.Tech or B.E course in it!
Herein lies the problem with simplistic statements or bold assertions like the one mentioned earlier.
But even if we were to dismiss all these as superfluous, there is another thing that should weigh more on our consciences: the deadly silence when we need to speak up. For all the alleluias and praises that we are willing to mouth, are we ready to speak up in the face of injustice in the world? What should be our reaction to the recent developments in Kerala with regard to admissions to self-financing colleges?
Years ago, Rev. Martin Luther King preached at the Riverside Church in New York City that “a time comes when silence is betrayal”. He was condemning the Vietnam War and the unjust system that created it. He said:
“We as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing oriented’ society to a ‘person oriented’ society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
“…And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak.
“…A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.
“…A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits outwith no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, ‘This is not just.’”
