Some weeks ago, this report highlighted the Vatican’s giving the green light to a new Indianized Bible which depicts Mary and Joseph as poor Indian villagers (Click on the photo for a larger view):
Barefoot and wearing a sari, with a bindi on her forehead and a naked baby on
her shoulder, the woman in the picture is unmistakably Indian. So is the man
behind her, clad in a loincloth and turban.They could be any poor family in an Indian village, or at one of the country’s
teeming railway stations. This, however, is no ordinary family.The image is one of the Virgin Mary with Joseph and the baby Jesus in the
first “Indianised” version of the Bible, published by the Roman Catholic
Church last month.The New Community Bible is part of an attempt by the Vatican to attract
more converts in the world’s second-most populous country as congregations
decline in Europe and North America.
Not only do Mary, Joseph and others adopt Indian clothing and contexts, but this bible goes further in syncretization.
The Bible uses passages from Hindu scriptures, such as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, and Sanskrit words such as Moksha – meaning salvation – in its notes, so newcomers do not feel alienated by new concepts and vocabulary.
…
“The scholars felt that any serious and contextualised and inculturated commentary on the sacred text, made specially for India, could not ignore the rich cultural and religious heritage of the land,” said Fr Tony Charanghat, a spokesman for the archbishop of Mumbai.
For example, alongside the well-known passage in Matthew where Jesus tells disciples to “turn the other cheek”, the accompanying notes compare this to Gandhi’s creed of ahimsa, or non-violence.
Beneath another passage about miracles, the notes explain the difference between Jesus’s teachings and the Vedanta – a Sanskrit term for enlightenment.
“His miracles are eruptions of charismatic power not the result of yogic techniques,” the commentary says.The oddity of this New Community Bible is not the Indianization of the context, but the fact that it is rewritten in English, rather than the major languages of India. Who might the target audience be? Why would an English speaking and reading (presumably middle class or higher) Hindu/Muslim/Jain/Sikh/Buddhist be convinced by this to convert to the ‘one true faith’?
Adopting the context and imagery from different cultures is hardly unique. It has been done over the ages, even during the spread of Buddhism over much of Asia. This series of images (Click on the image for a larger view)
shows the distinctive change in appearance of depictions of Buddha as the faith travelled along from Asia Minor to the Far East. It has always been to the advantage of proselytizing groups to depict their deity in terms which would appeal to the largest group, which makes this Sari Mary and Turban Joseph not that radical or new.I suspect that the New Community Bible is targeted less at attracting converts and more at retaining current Indian Catholics, tempted as they may be by the lures of Hinduism and/or its practices, which strike a more resonant chord to them culturally than the rituals of the Roman Catholic liturgy. This Indian-American Catholic blogger concurs:
"so, it seems, this endeavor is really addressed to Indian Catholics, as part of the ongoing attempt to shuck the colonial baggage of being understood to be foreigners or European lackeys."
I have it on good authority that in order to discourage the tendency of Indian Christians to go to temples with their young children on Vijayadasami day (considered auspicious for ‘Vidyaarambham’ or initiation of learning), even churches have started their own special ‘Vidyaarambham’ services in the Indian state of Kerala. Now that is co-opting other religious practices indeed, despite the tendency of outside authorities like the Vatican to frown on these as straying from accepted liturgical practice.
There’s no doubt that the commissioning and promotion of the New Community Bible is a significant concession for the Vatican, even as the current pope has promoted the return to older practices such as masses in Latin rather than the local language, in an effort to prevent the dilution of the faith and the loss of the faithful.
Accidental Blogger 
6 responses to “An Indianized Bible: Sari Mary and Turban Joseph (Sujatha)”
i was waiting for reactions to the Indianised Bible ever since i read about it a couple of days(?) in the papers.
am wary of commenting on the issue but can give u a piece of infrmation.
there has been a movement going on in the Syrian catholic community from the 80s called delatinisation. this movement lends itself to post colonial and postmodern interpretations, tho surprisingly no serious studies along those lines were done till now-at least not to my knowledge. the movement was an effort at assertion of the indian identity of syrian christians. it lead to a lot of controversies, for it resucitated a lot of rituals that were discarded during the forcible subjugation of the syrian church under the portugese. these statements had to be taken seriously by rome for india, and kerala in india were the strongholds of roman christianity in the world – yes. in terms of the believers and the religios who join the orders.
if you read up on Synod and Diamper(Udayamperoor soonahados) and Coonan Cross oath (coonan kurisu satyaprathiknja), you’ll get a lot of interesting information about the colonisation of the syrian church in kerala, and the decolonisation movement of the church, which continues to the day.
the present book, among sme of the other things u mentioned, is also an attempt to appease this faction of catholics in kerala.
i get a feeling this issue will soon be politicised too.
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Thanks Sujatha for posting this interesting article. I am in fact surprised that the Vatican did not think of this before. Casting god in the image of man for the sake of the survival of religious institutions ought to have been a simple idea.
And thanks KPJ for your response from ground zero.
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Thanks for the tip, Kochuthresiamma. I read about the Synod of Diamper (talk about romanization of words – amazing how Udayamperoor became Diamper, but not much worse than Thiruvananthapuram turned into Trivandrum.) It’s quite a fascinating article about the split in the Syro-malabar Church that had a breakaway segment dissolving communion with the Middle-Eastern churches and transferring their allegiance to the Roman church.
Is the Vatican trying to induce more of the older group followers to move to Catholicism through this Indianized bible? It still doesn’t make sense to include references to Hindu concepts, though. I have my suspicions that the NCB will just become a collector’s item and wind up in curio cabinets before long, rather than a beacon of Catholicism.
Ruchira, if this article is accurate, then the process of ‘inculturation’ has been ongoing, with serious attempts being made only over the last 5 years or so. I think that with the competition for religious feelings and the money to be made from exploiting that, India, land of a thousand religions and sects, is the toughest market of all to crack. The NCB is just another addition to the overall ‘Choose me’ cacophony there.
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This reminds me of a chapter in William T. Vollmann’s “Fathers and Crows” (about proselytization by Jesuits of the natives of New France – Canada, in the 17th Century). Vollmann, in a detour, gives a fanciful account of the life of the Jesuit Father Roberto de Nobili “Who Brought the True Faith to India”. A shorter article about de Nobili in Wikipedia stresses his inculturation …
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_de_Nobili
What Wikipedia does not say is that de Nobili was ordered by his superiors in Goa and Madurai to stop his efforts at conversion through syncretization, that he was “corrupting the faith”. His appeals went all the way to the Jesuit Superior General who “decided to temporize”. The Pope finally ruled in his favor 13 years later and he continued his work until his death in 1656 “in a hut outside Mylapore … wearing his saffron-colored robe”. He had spent 50 years in India. Vollmann concludes with “So, if it had to be done at all, it could have been done that way in Canada. It could have been done.” Is there any other way? Ironic that the Raja of Cochin allowed the Portuguese to settle in Goa, thereby bringing the Inquisition to our shores to the detriment of his Syrian Christian subjects.
I believe there are Indian Bibles extant in the major Indian languages that could have been modified. So Sujatha is on the right track when she questions the use of English for the NCB. I went to a Jesuit school in the 50s and the Fathers made no efforts, overt or subtle, to convert us. Some 40 years later, in DC, a classmate asked one of our teachers why this was so. He laughed and said that their mission realized very early on that the middle class in India was an impenetrable target. Instead, they pursued their work among the Bhils of Bihar, and the hill peoples of Bengal.
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In the sixties and seventies, indianisation was very much ‘in’in the Roman Catholic church in india.mass used to be said in less conservative places, with the priests sitting on the floor in the padmasanam pose.this was an all india phenomenon which got submerged in the hugely popular charismatic movement of the seventies.in kerala this movement(indianisation) took another path-of delatinisation characterised by the revival of defunct rituals of the ancient syrian christian church.
to come to the point, i would not exclude the proselytory agenda from this new makeover of the Bible.guess it removes the alienness of christianity on the indian soil. there are plenty of statues in india which present Mother Mary in saree.
why in english? more than the older group. i’d think it is the younger group that is focused on.
reference to Hindu concepts again is an effort to create acceptability by highlighting the common grounds with the religion of the country. christianity is a semetic religion and implicit in the attempt to establish similarity with Hinduism is the idea of dissimilarity from the other semetic religion.
this is my take only-nothing official abouit it.
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Thanks Narayan and Kochuthresiamma for your illuminating comments.
From your insights, I think that it’s safe to conclude that the NCB is likely primarily targeting the English reading middle to lower middle class of other Christian sects (whether of the Syro-malabar, CSI, Anglican and Protestant groups, perhaps even the LDS and Baptist converts) to persuade them to take a serious look at the Roman Catholic church as a more ‘Indian’ alternative to their current church. People of other religions would be just the icing on the cake, if the Roman Catholic church succeeded in just pulling a large number from the other Christian groups.
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