India's Unending Journey

by Mark Tully

  Sadly, Maulana Wahihuddin and Muslims like him don’t only have to face provocation from extreme Hindu nationalists such as Dr Togadia. In 2006, BJP Members of Parliament refused to accept a sensible compromise in a row which blew up when the government unwisely announced that the centenary of the nationalist song Vande Mataram should be celebrated by being sung in all schools. Vande Mataram might well have become India’s national anthem if Muslims had not objected to the song, which calls on Indians to worship the motherland. Islam, being strictly monotheistic, allows only the worship of Allah. When some Muslims reminded the education minister of the difficulties they had with the song, he agreed that only those children who wanted to sing it need do so. However, instead of accepting this suggestion, the BJP Members of Parliament attempted to provoke a Muslim backlash by charging onto the floor of the Upper House of Parliament chanting Vande Mataram and shouting slogans such as ‘Traitors, leave India!’, impugning the loyalty of the Muslim community.

  To suggest that anyone can be a traitor to India merely because of their religion plays right into the hands of those Muslims who are not as open-minded as Maulana Wahiduddin, and who do not want their followers to believe that they are equal citizens of the secular democracy that has been guaranteed by India’s long tradition of pluralism. When I was working with the BBC, the Shahi, or Royal Imam, of the Jama Masjid, the principal mosque in Old Delhi, was a political prelate who attempted to build up a constituency by highlighting Muslim grievances. His was an important position. As Imam of perhaps the largest mosque in India – which was built by the architect of the Taj, the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan, to outdo in splendour any other mosque – the Imam regularly addressed large congregations and didn’t hesitate to preach politics from the pulpit.

  The Imam became a big-time player in the confused political scene that followed the defeat of Indira Gandhi at the end of the Emergency in 1977. He was wooed by warring politicians, who believed he could influence the Muslim vote, and was much given to confusing them by issuing enigmatic statements from his office in a corner of the mosque.

  I particularly remember one occasion when I struggled to the Jama Masjid, having received a call from the Imam saying, ‘Tully Sahib, you have to come today! I have a very important announcement to make.’ At the time, controversy raged over who should become the Prime Minister after the fractious Janata party had won the post-Emergency election. After a lengthy discussion about the political scene, I eventually asked, ‘Imam Sahib, where do you stand in all this?’

  A bulky man of impressive appearance, the Imam sat back, paused, looked at his watch and eventually said slowly, in his deep sonorous voice, ‘Today, at two o’clock, I have reached this conclusion – that I am not yet in favour of anyone nor against anyone.’

  Eventually the Imam came down on the side of a politician opposed to Morarji Desai, the Gandhian who eventually emerged from all the bickering as the Prime Minister. Being on the losing side, the Imam aroused Muslim anger against the government. Desai wrote to one of his senior colleagues, ‘It is quite clear to me that wherever he goes, [the Imam] is indulging in propaganda which is likely to create further communal hatred and pose problems for us. His approach to the problems is blatantly prejudiced.’

  In India, maintaining the tradition of pluralism is essential for the unity of the nation. In a country where the majority of people are devout, religion cannot be ignored, while the wide range of religions within the nation means that each one must respect the others’ beliefs.

  In a country such as Britain, the growing number of Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists has brought the issue of creating mutual understanding between religions into the spotlight. The troubled history of Ireland, and in particular the recent history of Northern Ireland and the sectarianism in Scotland, with its attendant rivalry between Catholics and Protestants, shows that there was always a need for pluralism, for more understanding between Christians of different denominations in the British isles. Now in Britain, Christians face the same challenge as Indian Christians – the challenge of accepting that other religions can lead to God.

  Pluralism involves acknowledging the uncertainty of certainties. Unlike in India, where there is no sign of a weakening in any religion, surveys indicate that Christianity has been on the decline in Britain for many years now. If that decline is to be reversed, it seems to me that the Churches still have to be more willing to accept uncertainty about some of their moral teachings, to acknowledge that the ways in which people live their lives have changed and that therefore the Churches must change too if they are to remain relevant. Just as the Catholic Church in India is trying to integrate itself more into the life of the nation, so must the British Churches become more integrated into modern life in Britain, and that process means shedding some of their previously held certainties.

  The Churches must, for instance, come to terms with science when its findings suggest that changes need to be made to their moral codes. The Anglican Community continues to be torn apart by the dispute between liberals, who accept scientific research showing that homosexuality is not a disorder, and those who insist on the traditional condemnation of all homosexual activity. Significantly, both sides insist on unconditional surrender. They are certain they are right and are not willing to consider compromise.

  The dispute about homosexuality is particularly damaging to the Anglican Church because, as I remember from my younger days, it all too often gives the impression that morality is all about sex. Even today I meet people who ask me, ‘Why is the Church so concerned about what we do in bed? Why doesn’t it care more about what we do when we are out of bed?’ If the Anglican Church were to find a way of accommodating the modern research that shows that homosexuality is not a disorder, it would help to dispel the image of an institution obsessed by sex. It would also surely bring the Church more in line with the message of a loving God that it preaches. Similarly, the Roman Catholic Church must also question its certainty about birth-control and about celibacy of the clergy.

  The Churches are still very reluctant to admit to any doubts about their moral codes, and so at a time when people are seeking a religion of experience they all too often give the impression that morality remains Christianity’s prime concern. Jesus, the teacher who inspired his followers with a Gospel of love, becomes instead the poet Swinburn’s ‘pale Galilean’ ‘from whose breath the world grew grey’. Of course, the Churches have to be concerned with morality, but they should surely be concentrating on teaching Christians how to experience God so deeply that they are inspired to live moral lives, rather than imposing an inflexible code on them. It is not as though moral doctrine hasn’t changed and developed in the past. If it hadn’t, the Churches for instance would not be able to practise usury by accepting interest on their investments – and where would that leave their finances? They would have to advocate abolishing the entire financial system on which the global economy is built.

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  When my tutor at Cambridge, Robert Runcie, became Archbishop of Canterbury he had to deal with various controversies that threatened to tear the Church of England apart. These principally concerned the ordination of women, who until then had not been allowed to become priests, and of homosexual men. He saw it as his job to prevent irreparable divisions in the Church. Although the Archbishop was personally in favour of the ordination of women, he urged the General Synod to proceed carefully, saying, ‘We need to encourage some interplay between the various points of view.’ He was attacked by his own colleague, the Bishop of London, as well as a Labour MP who was a member of Synod. They dismissed him as ‘someone usually to be found nailing his colours to the fence’, implying that he was a coward.

  Those who implied that Robert Runcie was a coward had got him totally wrong. As a young officer in the Second World War, he was decorated for gallantry.

  As Archbishop, he stood up to the imperious Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher throughout the controversy over the Church’s critical report on the state of
Britain’s inner cities. When he preached at the service to celebrate Britain’s victory in the Falklands War in 1982, he knew that Margaret Thatcher, her entourage and the powerful Conservative press were expecting a triumphant sermon. What they got was very different. The leader of the Conservatives’ Backbench 1982 Committee said, ‘I was sad and disappointed that there was no mention during the service that the Falklands crisis was an example of Britain standing alone for international law, freedom and democracy.’ Robert Runcie had described war as a ‘sign of human failure’. He had also said it was right to pray for the relatives of Argentine soldiers killed in the war as well as those who were bereaved in Britain.

  In my view, the key to Robert Runcie and the reason I admire him so much is his insistence on the Church giving ‘positive witness to the fact that integrity is a more fundamental virtue than orthodoxy … A man of unimpeachable orthodoxy and questionable integrity is a far greater threat to Christian truth than the man of questionable orthodoxy but undeniable integrity.’ Although he was the leader of the Anglican Communion, there were times when he too had doubts about his faith, and he had the integrity to admit that.

  While the Churches are declining in Britain there is evidence that interest in spirituality is increasing. The heaving shelves of the Body, Mind and Spirit sections in the bookshops testify to this, as does the response my colleagues and I get to the radio programme Something Understood, which explores spiritual matters. The Australian academic David Tacey has written a book called The Spiritual Revolution about this phenomenon. He describes the revolution as:

  … a spontaneous movement in society, a new interest in the reality of the spirit and its healing effects on life, health, community and well-being. It is our secular society realising that it has been running on empty, and has to restore itself at a deep primal source, a source which is beyond humanity and yet paradoxically at the very core of our experience.

  When I was in the BBC in India there were occasions when I found myself acting as the guardian of various spiritual seekers who had some sort of connection with the corporation. Once, I was telephoned by two young men who had been arrested at a religious festival for not having their passports. They said this was the only call the police were allowing them, so I must do something to help them. Through friends in the Rajasthan police I managed to get them back to Delhi, where they could pick up their passports from the hostel in which they had left them, but I was not able to prevent the young men being brought to the city in chains.

  Young people who come to India nowadays in search of spirituality still stop by to have a drink or a cup of tea at my home – not, I hasten to say, because they think I am likely to be the guru they are looking for. Some are the children of friends; some I have met on my visits to Britain; some have listened to broadcasts, and some have read Gilly’s and my books. Whoever they are, it is always interesting to talk to them, although these days the spiritual seekers I encounter are rarely Christians. Often they seem to be confused, thinking that there is a divide between organised religion as they know it and spirituality.

  Why are these spiritual seekers so seldom Christian? When I ask them about this, the explanations I get include variations on the following themes: ‘The Churches are not relevant any longer’, ‘the Churches do nothing but preach about morality’, ‘Christianity is not a spiritual religion’. The Churches must bear some of the blame for this. As the Irish poet Diarmuid O’Muyrchu says in his book Religion in Exile: ‘the prevailing culture, especially within the formal Church or religion, tends to protect the old values and can be quite harsh in its treatment of those whose spiritual growth leads them in other directions’.

  The Anglican priest and philosopher Giles Fraser provides an example of how harsh the Church can be on spiritual seekers. In an article in the Anglican newspaper the Church Times, he describes spirituality as religion that has been mugged by ‘capitalism’s only moral value; choice’. Giles Fraser accuses private and inner religion of ‘the moral failing of being easily conscripted by self regard’ and goes on to explain that:

  … the moral and philosophical objections to ‘spirituality’ coalesce on the insistence that religion can never be a conversation of one. Religion, and religious experience as a part of it, is properly a conversation with others. It’s always part of a tradition.

  But he nevertheless admits that spirituality-shopping reflects a failure of the Church.

  And Giles Fraser has a point: spirituality should be part of a tradition, otherwise it can all too easily become self-indulgent and concerned with how we feel and not how others do.

  The Dalai Lama is the much-loved spiritual superstar of our times, although he would never accept that description of himself. He is so widely loved because of his simplicity and because he does not take himself too seriously, qualities all too rarely found in superstars. I once interviewed him in connection with a concert of music of all religions that he was promoting. When I asked what music meant to him I expected to be told about the spirituality of music, but instead the answer I received was wonderfully honest: ‘I’m not very good at telling tunes,’ the Tibetan secular and spiritual leader confessed, and paused for one of his inimitable giggles. ‘I prefer silent meditation.’ Another giggle – ‘Helps you go to sleep, you know!’ – by which point I was also in fits of laughter.

  I once heard the Dalai Lama asked why there were different schools of Tibetan Buddhism. With a broad smile he replied, ‘Because there are different sorts of people.’ But while being open-minded, and accepting the role of the individual in choosing which faith to practise, the Dalai Lama does not support those who take individuality so far as to refuse all involvement in organised religion. He is the heir of a religious tradition that began in India 2,500 years ago, and, as such, he believes that his tradition and the traditions of others have a common purpose. This is: ‘the betterment of humanity, to bring about a more compassionate and harmonious humanity’.

  While the Dalai Lama has played a major role in the growth of interest in Eastern spirituality in the West, so inadvertently have the Western Churches, by giving the impression that they don’t always welcome spirituality. Yet Christianity itself has a long tradition of spirituality, which is still alive today. Beginning with the Bible, who would say that some of the psalms, St John’s Gospel and passages from St Paul’s Epistles are not spiritual? Then, in the early days of the Christian Church, there were the Desert Fathers, who lived extraordinarily ascetic lives. The middle ages saw the creation of such spiritual classics as The Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love, written by the fourteenth-century mystic Julian of Norwich, and the anonymous work The Cloud of Unknowing. These works were followed by the writings of metaphysical poets such as George Herbert, Henry Vaughan and John Donne in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. And so the Church’s history of spirituality continues, until we come in my own life time to the works of writers such as my teacher Harry Williams and poets such as the Welsh R.S. Thomas, also an Anglican priest. Thomas described poetry as ‘that which arrives at the intellect by way of the heart’.

  But I must not be too hard on the Churches. They still provide for spiritual seekers. When I read the Roman Catholic magazine the Tablet, I am struck by the advertisements for Christian retreats; renewal programmes; mind, body, spirit courses; spirituality centres and other places in which to read, pray and reflect.

  The modern Christian Meditation Movement provides a particular link with the East, as its founder, John Main, first learnt to meditate from a Hindu monk. When he himself became a Benedictine monk, he was discouraged from meditating by his novice master, who did not regard meditation as a Christian practice, but eventually he overcame that traditionalist attitude. Now John Main’s successor – another Benedictine monk, Lawrence Freeman – travels the world, teaching Christian meditation. (He landed up in my flat on a recent visit to India.) So the marriage of East and West appears to be flourishing.

  Yet, for all that they do offer, it seems
to me that the Churches in Britain will not attract the sort of spiritual seekers I meet in India if they don’t become more Indian themselves; that is to say, more tolerant of plurality and more willing to question their certainties. But the Indian tradition must not be understood to mean that Christianity should forfeit all claims to certainty merely in order to avoid conflict with others, or that it should come to feel it should avoid all moral judgements.

  Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan describes the Hindu attitude to the Vedas as ‘trust tempered by criticism’ – tempered, he says, ‘by the recognition of the truth that God has never finished the revelation of his wisdom and love’. This comes close to the thinking of Richard Clarke, an Anglican bishop I once met in Ireland. In his book And Is It True, the Bishop criticises the Western Church for being ‘awash with certainties for centuries’. But this does not mean he gives up on Christianity. He uses the metaphor of no man’s land in the First World War – the trenches that soldiers had to move into if they were to advance – as a metaphor for where Christians should stand today. He describes it as ‘a place of acute vulnerability, a place where one is exposed, almost defenceless, often floundering, probably wounded, and very likely caught in continuing crossfire from the trenches on both sides’. No man’s land may be an uncomfortable place, but Richard Clarke assures his readers, ‘I am certain that we should not expect to find truth or God in the safety of our personal custom-built trenches.’ According to the Bishop, ‘to be afraid of truth is to be afraid to change one’s ideas and is, in the poet Blake’s phrase, “to breed reptiles in the mind”.’

  When I read those words, I took Bishop Clarke’s no man’s land metaphor as a personal warning. I sometimes find that, by accepting uncertainty, I am standing safely in a trench, protected from any attack on my beliefs because I believe there is no ultimate truth that can undermine them. So I need to remember that the Indian tradition does not say there is no truth, no ultimate reality. What it does say is that the ultimate reality cannot be fully and finally defined – there is always that neti, neti. And we have to keep on searching in order to get closer and closer to it.