1. The origins of the ITA go back to the post-Vatican II springtime. It was the fruit of long years of fecundation and experimentation on indigenizing Christian faith and praxis in the Indian subcontinent. The seed was already sown before Vatican II, in the mind of Fr. Joseph Constantine Manalel CMI, the great visionary behind this venture, whose dream saw its realization at the first meeting, held at Hyderabad in1976. The registered Society of the Indian Theological Association came into existence in 1986 under the Karnataka Societies Registration Act (Act no. 17of 1960).
2. From its very inception, the ITA attempted to realize its objectives: (a) to be a forum for theologians to meet and discuss current theological issues; (b) to promote the development of an Indian Christian theology; (c) to foster research in matters concerning religion and society; and, (d) to offer theologians the encouragement and support they need through its powerful and insightful annual seminars and the statements issuing therefrom.
3. The annual seminars of the ITA have dealt with themes like: Theological Education in India; Indian Theologies of Liberation; Theology of Religions; Christian Commitment to Nation Building; Task of Inculturation; Methodology of Theologizing; Concerns of Women; the Identity and Legitimate Autonomy of the Local Churches; Dalit Concerns, Threats of Hindutva and Religious Fundamentalism; Ecological Integration; Marriage and Family Today and so on, which manifest the ITA’s attempts to address the concerns of the Church in India and society. These theological encounters opened up avenues for developing an indigenous theology which would foster the process of ecclesiogenesis or the birth of the Local Church in the Indian context.
4. To date, the Indian Theological Association has 200 members including 43 women and a few lay theologians. Based on the deliberations of its Annual Meetings, the ITA has published 28 books, and 2 volumes exclusively of its Annual Statements. Its identity is acknowledged by the Church in India and various bodies abroad, and its statements and books are widely referred to.
5. The ITA is a pointer to a new model of the Church in India in the making. It offers structural support to individual theologians and helps them familiarize themselves with issues of contextual theology and its methods, which have influenced their teaching and writing. Through its contextualized theological methodology it tries to counter various forms of discrimination based on language, gender, rite, region or caste. It fosters the creation of an inclusive space where differences and plurality are not merely tolerated, but respected.
6. The ITA has brought the issues of the periphery to the centre and stirred up a sense of urgency and restlessness in confronting and addressing the realities of the people at the margins. It has encouraged radical thinking by creating an awareness of the emerging challenges in society and in the Church and motivated its members with respect to personal and collective commitment for the transformation of oppressive elements.
7. The ITA has made a specific contribution in articulating Christology from an Indian perspective. It has shown that no dogma, no theological articulation rooted in a particular worldview can make an exclusive claim to have disclosed exhaustively the mystery of God revealed in Jesus Christ. It has furthermore pointed out that the plurality of Christologies in the NT itself gives us an indication of the possibility and necessity of articulating the Christic experience from different worldviews and communicating them in a language meaningful to those to whom they are addressed. The poor and the plurality of religions are the hermeneutical keys to open the revelation of the mystery of God in the Indian setting.
8. Resonating with the multifarious challenges posed by the Indian context with its amazing plurality of cultures, religions and spiritualties, Indian Christians have experienced Jesus Christ in a variety of ways. Indian theologians have attempted to articulate these experiences using models drawn from Indian philosophies such as Advaita, Vishistadvaita, Saiva Siddhanta and the less articulated visions of reality embedded in the lives, struggles, folklore of the marginalized and victimized sections of society. Among such significant Christological models there figure: Jesus the Jeevanmukta, Avatar, Sadguru, Iraivakkuchittat and Karma Yogi (liberator). Such models are not only complementary in expressing the inexhaustible riches of the mystery of Christ, but also enable us to transcend the God-human, heaven-earth, religion-society, mystic-prophetic dualisms often present in traditional Western Christologies. These presentations of Jesus Christ offer us an integrated vision of life in which God is envisaged as the companion in our life's journey, co-sufferer in our trials and participant in our struggles. These Christologies help us to perceive God’s grace as a gift and a call to a life of inter-relatedness and communion with the others, despite differences and an invitation to be in harmony with the whole of creation, under God, the Father-Mother of all.
9. In the light of recent scholarship, and taking into consideration the plurality that makes up the socio-cultural fabric of Indian society, ITA theologians propose Interculturation as an appropriate category to articulate the Gospel-culture encounter in the Indian context. They are strongly in favour of developing a theological approach that looks at multiplicity, duly nuanced, not as a threat but as a blessing, with respect to the growth of gospel values. In the opinion of some of these scholars, such a theology that fosters the mutual enrichment of Christian faith and other cultures ought to become a counter-cultural project by offsetting the negative values embedded in Indian culture like casteism, manifold expressions of Indian patriarchy, bonded labour and other forms of injustice inflicted on the poor and other vulnerable sections of Indian society. It is only when one engages in this process of Interculturation that takes seriously the commitment to integral liberation, does the celebration of the Liturgy unfold fully all its prophetic depth.
10. While the ITA takes pride in these contributions, it is, however, deeply aware of its limitations. Despite having held seminars dedicated to the concerns of women, the feminist issues have not been adequately addressed. Inclusive language and inclusive images of God have not yet become sufficiently mainstreamed in the ITA discourse. Furthermore, a re-reading of marginalization in Indian society has not been done using a gender lens, nor in the light of the religio-cultural sources of the subalterns. Even though approximately 8 per cent of Indians are Adivasis belonging to various tribes, tribal concerns have not figured significantly as a major theme in the ITA’s seminars. The inadequacy to deal with tribal issues, the question of gender justice, and other concerns of the marginalized are indicative of the fact that, despite being progressive in its theological involvement, the ITA has not fully succeeded in taking a bold prophetic stand on issues of major concern in the Church.
(b) Describing the Context Today
11. Since the Ruby Jubilee of the ITA is a historical milestone of contextual and liberative theologizing in India, it is imperative to take stock of the factors that make up the social fabric of this country today, particularly in view of charting its path ahead. We take a look at the Indian context from the economic, political, religious and social angles in order to spell out the challenges this situation poses for theologizing in India today.
12. India, having a population of 1.27 billion persons, has in the recent past grown into the 10thmost industrialized country in the world. Even so, it is home to 1/3rd of the world’s poor, since around 27.1 per cent of Indians live below the poverty line. The dominant economy of India today is capitalism, which is a profit maximizing global system of industrial production and exchange based on a system of unequal relations of human transactions. We also observe the open withdrawal of the State from most sectors of people’s welfare and a steady intensification of the privatization of public assets. This public sector disinvestment is forging ahead under the pretext of a reform; transferring national resources into the hands of a few like the corporates, multinational companies and the business class without sufficient care for social equity and ecological sustainability.
13. The affluent classes – corporates, landlords, businessmen, bureaucrats and industrialists – manipulate elections, create powerful lobbies in the assemblies and control the local government bodies. With the economic policies that are geared to the advantage of the business class, stock market deals and the underground mafias, farmers are at a losing end, being denied the rightful support for their labour or a just price for their products. Thousands of farmers committing suicide every year in the country illustrates this point.
14. The majority of the people affected by the present politics of exclusive development belongs to the Dalit and Adivasi/Tribal communities. At least 80 per cent of the Dalits who form 16 per cent of our population, are landless and illiterate. The dehumanizing caste system with its overt and covert ways of operation in our Indian society, ensures that Dalit people have very little opportunity for upward mobility. The internalized casteist mentality prevalent among many Indians constitutes a real hindrance for the Dalits to come out of their present socio-economic and other forms of backwardness.
15. The situation of the Adivasis/Tribals in our country is not very different. In the name of development and mega projects, Adivasi lands have been taken over by the government and given to multinational companies for mining or other industries. Many Adivasis, displaced by mega projects like the Narmada dam have not been rehabilitated so far. The Adivasis are becoming increasingly landless in the process and their culture, which is intimately linked to jal, jungle and jamin (water, forest, land), is gradually disappearing.
16. Indian women too experience diverse forms of oppression and subjugation. Sexual violence continues unbridled. India has become one of the most unsafe places for women in this world. Besides the unimaginable forms of discrimination and violence women are subjected to, many religions sanction the devalued status of women through their scriptures, cult and rituals. In the churches, women are denied opportunities to mediate the Divine and are excluded from the important decision-making processes.
17. A ghastly situation that threatens India today is the appalling rise of religious communalism. Promoters of the Hindutva ideology, which is a section of extremists within the broader framework of Hinduism, interpret Indian identity as Hindu identity; consequently, the place of the minorities in the new scenario is questioned. The life of the minority communities and marginalized groups like Dalits and Adivasis/Tribals and other subalterns are under real threat, as the proponents of Hindutva, under the pretence of defending their ideology and related symbols, take the law into their own hands and do so with impunity.
18. With the Hindutva ideology penetrating every aspect of public life, there is an increasing saffronisation of socio-economic, political and cultural life in India today. The saffronisation of education and other national institutions, the distortion of history, and attempts to alter even the Indian Constitution are among some of the alarming threats which would result in the erosion of the secular and democratic fabric of our country. Any resistance to this agenda is labelled as anti-national. The divisive Hindutva ideology is having disastrous effects even on young minds in colleges, universities and nationwide. On the one hand, any voicing of differing opinions and forms of democratic protest on campuses are snuffed out with gross violence, and, on the other, students are forced to either remain silent or support the saffron ideology; or else be the target of insults, intimidation, beatings and even imprisonment. Frontline Universities have been labelled anti-national, unpatriotic and ‘Marxist’ and have become battlegrounds with the State allowing its student-affiliates to attack staff and students at will.
19. In the face of Hindutva rejecting Semitic religions and opting exclusively for the Indic traditions, Christians and other minority religious groups live in a culture of fear as they are vulnerable to extreme forms of violence and destruction for following a religion different from what is being proclaimed as the Hindu Rashtra agenda. In this conflicting political scenario, even though Christians continue to render their services in the educational, social and health sectors, the Right-based approach is seldom used to effect a change in the existing unjust systems.
Examining Church life, we see it also divided on the basis of caste, gender, rite, language and the like. Dalit Christians are the majority in the Catholic Church, numbering around 12 million out of the 19 million members of the Church in India. But their participation at the level of leadership in the diocesan administration, as well as in religious orders is minimal and at the higher levels of decision-making, it is almost non-existent. There is the risk of growing institutionalization which is choking the Church. At times, overly obsessed with establishing themselves through the construction of palatial structures and excessive ritualism, the members of the Church are not always at the service of the Reign of God. Under the guise of religious renewal, fundamentalism gets a foothold in the Church. This adversely affects the relationship of Christians with the surrounding cultures and religions.