Part VI - The Indian Jesus

Summary

Within largely Hindu India is a form of Christianity that goes back to the end of the second century and claims apostolic origin (the so-called Thomas Christians). But a true dialogue, initiated primarily by Hindu thinkers, between Christianity and Hinduism did not start until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Just like Krishna and Buddha, Jesus was seen by Hindu thinkers mostly as one in whom the unity of atman (the actual self) and brahman (the true self) was manifest in a way that was worth imitating. The words spoken by Jesus, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30), became a key text in this interpretation.

Within contemporary Indian theology, Jesus' role as mediator sometimes reflects very much the characteristics of the >avatara “descending from” Vishnu, sometimes also those of the guru “ascending to” Shiva in the midst of his fellow human beings. Detachment is central in both types of mediators. Here the notion of guru seems to be more capable of integrating the often difficult path of Jesus' earthly suffering than the notion of the merely temporally “descending” avatara. Both approaches are far from a third, Christian, approach to Jesus, namely Jesus as dalit, as an untouchable. In the Indian church, which is far from casteless, there is hardly any room for this casteless person, however much the majority of Indian Christians belong to this large group of “untouchables.”