View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Digital Commons @ Butler University Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies Volume 25 Article 14 2012 A Collection of Book Reviews Edward Ulrich Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.butler.edu/jhcs Recommended Citation Ulrich, Edward (2012) "A Collection of Book Reviews," Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies: Vol. 25, Article 14. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.7825/2164-6279.1520 The Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies is a publication of the Society for Hindu-Christian Studies. The digital version is made available by Digital Commons @ Butler University. For questions about the Journal or the Society, please contact [email protected]. For more information about Digital Commons @ Butler University, please contact [email protected]. Ulrich: A Collection of Book Reviews 62 Book Reviews takes on the challenge of creatively which sought (and still seeks) to maintain a reconstructing directions for Dalit theology feigned notion of auspiciousness, purity and that are practical, biblical, inclusionary and pollution.” (p. 19). liberative. These creative moves represent the Second, I am not convinced that “practical most substantial and enriching section of the efficacy” of Dalit theology ought to be the book. Moreover, in this contribution the vistas single criterion by which one evaluates the of theology are opened up to address concerns discipline. Surely meaningfulness and that include Dalits and non-Dalits. A more metaphysical plausibility can be added to the universal role is carved out for Dalit visions. All effectiveness of theology. But even if one lets human beings and their eventual liberation Rajkumar have his praxiological cake alone one matter to Dalit communities. In this sense Dalit must ask the question as to whether the people theology is not merely an assertion of one eating the cake have had much to say on the human particularity but an aspiration for the matter of whether it is satisfactory as their liberation of all human beings. meal? Perhaps what has emerged as Dalit There are a couple of critical comments I theology in academe-produced texts does not wish to register. First, Rajkumar’s get transferred to aid Dalit Christian practice interpretation of the caste system replicates on the ground. However, I am not so sure that the same weakness that he identifies with Dalit another imaginative, even if praxis-committed, theology: robust in churning out convincing text that is founded in Jesus’ healing stories has theory but ineffectual when accounting for a better chance of success. All this talk of actual practice. His interpretation maps out the bridging the gap between thought and practice stringent divisions and blatant discriminations seems to presuppose that individual Christian that underpin the rationale of caste system. Dalits and grass root Christian communities are This is no doubt an effective way of not living their theological aspirations. I am maintaining great distance between the Dalit’s convinced that local communities have micro- world of pollution and the Caste community’s scripts of liberative praxis that are operative, world of purity. Yet Rajkumar turns a blind eye even of partially and tentatively. One may need towards the incalculable and boundless to see liberation praxis as a collection of micro- practices of Dalit subversions, Caste-Dalit actions, micro-rituals and micro-beliefs that negotiations, and Caste resignations that live work tacitly and cryptically. Liberative and proliferate in the space in-between such narratives may emerge when such sources are theoretical formulations of purity and correlated with biblical speech-acts of Jesus pollution. An uncritical inflation of fixity and including healing stories. Sourcing of Dalit negligent disregard of fluidity in the theology must take place on the ground rather functioning of purity and pollution reinforces a than for the ground. Our vocation as Dalit stereotype of the power of caste communities theologians thus may lie in construing in contrast to the powerlessness of the Dalit. theoretical validity for what is pragmatically Thus, even if useful for valorizing a bridging already extant even of not fully effectual. After role for Jesus in the theoretical caste-Dalit all, magnificent bridges of stone and steel that divide, one is left with the unhelpful erasure of are constructed without the earthy canals of overt and covert manifestations of the mud and straw may be conceptually stable but calculating practices of Dalit agency. No concretely irrelevant. wonder then that Rajkumar is stuck with the language of “victims” in referencing Dalits: Sathianathan Clarke “The Dalits are the victims of a social system, Wesley Theological Seminary, Washington D. C. A Christian Pilgrim in India: The Spiritual Journey of Swami Abhishiktananda (Henri Le Saux). Harry Oldmeadow. Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 2008, xvi + 316 pp. Published by Digital Commons @ Butler University, 2012 1 Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies, Vol. 25 [2012], Art. 14 Book Reviews 63 God’s Harp String: The Life and Legacy of the Benedictine Monk Swami Abhishiktananda. William Skudlarek, editor. New York, NY: Lantern Books, 2010, x + 140 pp. Jesus Christ: Quest and Context of Abhishikānanda (Henri Le Saux OSB). Santhosh Sebastian Cheruvally. New Delhi: ISPCK, 2011, xv + 246 pp. Witness to the Fullness of Light: The Vision and Relevance of the Benedictine Monk Swami Abhishiktananda. William Skudlarek and Bettina Bäumer, editors. New York, NY: Lantern, 2011, 177. A few years ago, a suggestion went out on the Abhishiktananda (1910-1973), originally listserv of the Society of Hindu-Christian known as Henri Le Saux, was a monk and a Studies that proposed a panel on Swami priest at St. Anne’s Abbey in Kergonan, France. Abhishiktananda at the annual meeting of the In 1948 he settled in India and in 1950 he and Society, given his birth centenary in 2010. The Fr. Jules Monchanin established the general response was lackadaisical and a major Benedictine monastery of Shantivanam, near scholar commented that the area was Trichinopoly, with plans that it would conform exhausted. However, in the space of four years to Hindu customs of renunciation as much as four books have been published on was permitted by Christian faith. Benedictine Abhishiktananda. Two of them came out in monasticism, historically, has taken on conjunction with the one hundredth different forms in different countries, so anniversary of Abhishiktananda’s birth: God’s Abhishiktananda and Monchanin concluded Harp String and Witness to the Fullness of Light, that it should take on a distinctively Indian both edited by William Skudlarek, with the form. In order to learn more about Indian second edited also by Bettina Bäumer. The monastic traditions, Abhishiktananda visited former book is a collection of previously many institutions in south India, and thereby published essays and the latter a collection of came to meet Ramana Maharshi in 1949. He essays presented at a recent conference. The made many subsequent visits to Ramana’s other two books are by Harry Oldmeadow and ashram and he became deeply enamored with Santhosh Cheruvally. Oldmeadow explores Advaita. Abhishiktananda spent the next two parallels between Abhishiktananda’s thought decades of his life, until his death, seeking and the “perennial philosophy” of Frithjof immersion in Advaitic mysticism and relating it Schuon. Cheruvally’s is an analysis, from a to Christianity. Roman Catholic perspective, of Skudlarek’s first book, God’s Harp String, is a Abhishiktananda’s theological views of Christ. valuable work in that it draws together eleven All four books are worthwhile and should be a previously published essays from the bulletins part of the library of all Abhishiktananda of the American Commission of Interreligious scholars. Dialogue and the now defunct Abhishiktananda Society. This review will discuss two of these http://digitalcommons.butler.edu/jhcs/vol25/iss1/14 2 DOI: 10.7825/2164-6279.1520 Ulrich: A Collection of Book Reviews 64 Book Reviews essays. Bettina Bäumer’s “Pilgrim and Hermit” Abhishiktananda’s life, not included in James gives a good summary of the main conclusions Stuart’s otherwise comprehensive biography, Abhishiktananda reached in the final years of Swami Abhishiktānanda: His Life Told through His his life. During his two decades in India he Letters (Delhi: ISPCK, 1989). These details experienced great strain standing between concern the relationship between Advaita and Christianity as he did, for the first Abhishiktananda, Dupuis, Stuart, Vidyajyoti beckons one beyond names and forms whilst College of Theology, and Brotherhood House in the second is firmly rooted in the world of New Delhi. In so doing, it gives the context for manifest reality. Abhishiktananda tried to some of the essays Abhishiktananda wrote in reconcile theologically the two traditions, but the final years of his life, found in Intériorité et found them too disparate to do so. Hence, in his Révélation, (Sisteron: Presence, 1982). final years he took solace in a mystical Scholars writing on Abhishiktananda experience which he believed to be common to generally appreciate the influence of the both Advaita and Christianity, but which Upanishads and Ramana Maharishi on him transcends the doctrinal expressions of both. running consistently through his life, but there As Bäumer explains, “Abhishiktananda did not were also other Hindu influences on him. deny