This is really pushing one’s luck. Trying to be Pope, the Prime Minister of India or the President of the USA is bad enough. But this is downright insane. Blasphemy. I can almost hear the cries of “Crucify him. Kill him. Stone him to death”.
Fortunately, I am not in Pakistan or in Judea, so I am still alive! India abounds in self-styled God men and women, so what is alarming about trying to play God? Recently Satya Sai Baba passed away. Some years ago when somebody challenged him for styling himself as Bhagwan (God) he had retorted, “You also are God, only you don’t know it”. The challenger became a disciple. Who doesn’t like to be told that he is God?
In India, there is no clarity about God. There are reportedly thousands of Gods and Goddesses in the Hindu pantheon. So adding a few more now and then is no big deal. Though even here one would need to make a distinction between Iswar/ Parmeshwar, Devta/ Devi and Bhagwan. I am not competent to comment further on the significance of these words. Suffice it to say that whereas Devi, Devta and Bhagwan are extensively used, the term Ishwar or Parmeshwar is sparingly used, and would therefore refer to the one and only Supreme Being.
On the other hand the Semitic religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam, are monotheistic religions, that believe in one God – whether we call this Being El, Elohim, Yahweh or Allah. The root is the same – El. Interestingly the Latin word Deo is similar to the Sanskrit word Dev. I would therefore dare to presume that, except for a few atheists and agnostics including Stephen Hawking, most human beings believe in a Supreme Being, who is commonly referred to as God in the English language.
How one perceives and therefore experiences God differs widely across religions, time and space. Even trying to arrive at a consensus or synthesis could be an impossible task, and I have no pretensions about even attempting it.
Before trying to “play” God, I first need to understand who or what this “god” is. I will limit myself to the Christian experience of God, beginning with the revelation of who or what God is, as experienced by Moses. When on Mount Sinai Moses asks God what is his name, he replies “I am he who is” (Ex 3:13). This is the translation according to the New Jerusalem Bible, which I commonly use. The New King James version has the words “I am who I am”. The Good News Bible also uses the same words. When commissioning Moses God tells him to proclaim that “I am has sent me to you” (Ex 3:14). In the earliest translations from Hebrew, the Greek Septuagint uses the phrase “He who is” while the Latin Vulgate translated by St. Jerome in the 3rd Century AD has the more commonly used “I am who I am” . The original word in Hebrew is Yahweh, which seems to have its etymological roots in the Hebrew verb hawah, which simply means “to be” or to exist . The actual Hebrew word for a divine being, or God is El, or Elohim. In other ancient Semitic languages it is Ilu in Akkadian and Ilah in Arabic. Again there is no etymological root, but the connotation is of a powerful being .
All this sounds confusing. It is actually quite simple. There is no human vocabulary to express the reality of the Supreme Being. Adjectives like Almighty, Omnipotent, Omniscient and Omnipresent (from catechism class) are merely superlatives; attempting to describe that which transcends description. Moses faced just such a predicament, which Yahweh sensed. He therefore changed tack to make it easier for Moses. He switched from deft definitions to personal relationships. This is what he now says to Moses. “Yahweh, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you. This is my name for all time, and thus am I to be invoked for all generations to come” (Ex 3:15). A definitive statement and a defining moment. A till then abstract being becomes a personal God, for all time. God was now someone to whom human beings could relate.
Way back in 1977, when I was just 26 years of age, I wrote my first book, “The Trinity and Me”. I re-read it while writing this, because it traced the journey from a “Hidden God” to a “Revealed One.” I shall borrow some of those observations.
In the allegorical account of creation in the very beginning we read “Let us make man in our own image, in the likeness of ourselves… God Created man in the image of himself, in the image of God he created him” (Gen1: 26-27). However, with the fall and banishment from the Garden of Eden, there is a disconnect between God and Man. You know how it is with your dish TV when there is no transmission because of a “technical problem”. Man is now afraid of this unseen God. This is how is expressed. “But my face you cannot see, for no human being can see me and survive” (Ex 33:20). And again “For what creature of flesh could possibly live after hearing, as we have heard the voice of the living God?” (Deut 5:26). Centuries later Isaiah will lament “Truly you are a God who conceals himself” (Is 45:15).
As Christians we believe that this fearsome, awesome, hidden God is revealed in Jesus, and through his death and resurrection the disconnect (the technical problem) is removed and the transmission (communication) lines are now clear. St. Paul observes, “The message which was a mystery hidden for generations and centuries has now been revealed to his holy people” (Col 1:26). “In him, in bodily form, lives divinity in all its fullness” (Col 2:9). Jesus is also referred to as being a man like us in all things but sin (cf Heb 4:15).
So the God who was earlier hidden, is now revealed in Jesus. Fine. But how do I become God? Sai Baba was not much off the mark. Let us see what some famous spiritual writers say. St. Gregory of Nyssa says, “When you hear that the divine majesty is exalted above the heavens… and its nature inaccessible, do not despair of ever beholding what you desire. It is indeed within your reach, you have within yourselves the standard by which to apprehend the divine”. St. Catherine of Sienna, another Doctor of the Church confesses, “Our nature mirrors yours, as your nature mirrors ours” . St. Augustine of Hippo would often say “Help me know thee, help me know me”.
The two sides of the coin therefore are awareness of God as revealed in Jesus, and self-awareness. No doubt this is easier said than done. Who said being God is easy anyway? To be Pope, PM or President one needs to be aware of everything that is happening around. More so for a person who seeks to be God, one needs this third area of awareness, of what is happening now, what happened in the past, and what one may expect of the future.
Here is where I believe that Sai Baba has gone off on a tangent, so I will have to differ. We are not God, nor can we become God, but we can certainly aspire to be connected to God, be inspired by him, and live our lives accordingly. To become God like, let us follow the path of triple awareness – Awareness of God in Jesus, speaking to us through he scriptures; self-awareness through deep soul searching, personal prayer and psycho-analysis; and awareness of the world around us including temporary affairs, history, the environment, etc. A tall order? Obviously. That is why I cannot be God; but by his grace I can try to live a godly life, where my awareness is translated into action, for the good of all, especially that “neighbour” who is most in need of it.
On a lighter plane, I have so often heard people cursing God, especially when things go wrong, or not to their liking. If there is a flood we curse God for destroying our crops, but don’t thank him for enriching the alluvial soil. If it rains we grumble about the bad weather, instead of thanking God for cleansing the air and recharging the ground water. We grumble about the heat in summer, not realizing that without intense heat and a low-pressure area, there can be no monsoon. I have used these common “complaints” against nature, as nature itself is attributed to God. The message is clear. If God (Nature) cannot please all the people all the time, then I would be the biggest fool to attempt to improve on that by trying to be God!
Another common “complaint” against God is that he doesn’t say anything, or tell us what to do. It is the other way around. “Look I am standing at the door, knocking. If one of you hears me calling and opens the door, I will come in to have a meal that at that person’s side….Let anyone who can hear, listen to what the spirit is saying” (Rev.3:20,22) The problem is not with God, but with us. If we have bolted the room from inside, if the TV is on full blast, or there is a loud argument going on, will we hear the gentle knocking at the door? Since God has given us free will (something Christianity strongly believes in) he respects our freedom. Hence he cannot intervene in our lives without our co-operation. St Ignatius of Loyola, the master of spiritual discernment, says that for the one who is disposed the Holy Spirit comes like a drop of water on a sponge, unnoticed and quickly absorbed. Isn’t that exactly what happened at the Annunciation, the actual Incarnation of God as man? When Mary of Nazareth said a quiet “Yes”, not a leaf quivered or a bird twittered.
Sadhu Sundar Singh, also known as the apostle of the bleeding feet, was once preaching about God’s love, when a heckler in the crowd cried out, But God is so far away”. Sadhuji retorted, “Who moved?” Is God far from us or are we far from him? A simple example will suffice. A mother is sitting behind her infant child. The child cannot see its mother so it cries in fear, for it feels that its mother is far away. Though the reality is that the mother was very much there and close at hand. So let us stop childish complaining against God, and grow up to discover his presence and guidance.
Just like with all the others, I cannot be God, but I shall humbly attempt to be godlike in my awareness and action. I hope that the thoughts that follow in “An Unfinished Symphony” will contribute to that end for its readers. If only…
(All references to God in the masculine gender are only for linguistic purposes, as God enshrines all the qualities of both male and female. As I said at the beginning, human vocabulary is finite and cannot define the infinite)
Friday, 10 June 2011
Friday, 27 May 2011
IF I WERE IN THE WHITE HOUSE (In the sequence of “If I Were the Pope” and “If I Were the Prime Minister”)
A mischievous friend of mine said that if a black man were to enter the White House then pigs would fly, and swine flu (flew)! It is a witty ditty to which I trust nobody will take offence, as none is intended.
Do you know who the S.O.B. in the White House is? This could be offensive. We know what S.O.B. normally stands for, so I need not elaborate. But I am not “normal”, so I have another connotation for S.O.B. It stands for two guys whose names begin with O, where an S is replaced by a B. Got it? Yes I am talking about Obama and Osama. Is a B or an S all that distinguishes the two Os? O stands for something else as well – Oil. That is why I am concerned, and want to enter the White House, though I am neither white nor black, just plain brown.
Mr President, I wish to enter the White House, neither to bomb it, nor to be a fly on the wall to see what Monica Lewinsky did with that cigar; but because what is decided in the White House gravely affects the rest of the world, be they white, black, brown or yellow. Samuel Huntington may call it a “Clash of Civilisations”, but many of us brownies would rather believe that it is a “Clash over Oil”; over which the Middle East (which incidentally is Islamic dominated) seems to have the hegemony. There is a loud whisper worldwide that your country has the largest oil reserves, but you would rather exhaust the oil in the Middle East first, and then dictate terms later when everybody else’s wells have run dry. This isn’t quite cricket (or should I say baseball) Mr President?
Our two countries are purportedly the world’s largest democracies. We should therefore be the best of friends. Yet we look at each other with suspicion, and you Mr President, spare no opportunity to shout yourself hoarse that “the injuns are coming”, but brown not red. There is more to our democracies than our Indian roots. As you have rightly and repeatedly observed, India has emerged as a neo-economic power. What you don’t know is that India is a threat to nobody, least of all the U.S. Why? Because our gigantic economic strides have been consumed by corruption. In your country the order is reversed. You are corrupted by consumption. See how close we are?
Five centuries ago White European settlers were the pioneers on the lonely prairie. Texan cowboys were as tough as their leather stirrups. Prospectors lived and loved for gold. That was long ago. You have now become a soft state like India. Your people are now accustomed to leisure and pleasure. Your wife’s main concern is obesity in children, while the other half of the world starves. Your per capita consumption of oil, food, water and timber is the highest in the world. Do you not also see the irony of the opium fields of Afghanistan being the opiate of the asses (oops masses) in your country? Who should you blame, if not yourselves?
Your children don’t want to study maths. They are happy doing waiters’ jobs in McDonalds or Pizza Hut; something we brownies did not so long ago. The roles have been reversed. Now you feel threatened by the brown and yellow guys.
Mr President, while the rest of the world was embroiled in World War II your people were relatively unscathed. Pearl Harbour was an aberration. Flanked by two vast oceans your country was insulated and isolated from the rest of the world. It made you feel invincible. You thought you were the world’s policeman. You thought that the US was bigger than the UN. You attacked Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and now Libya. You burnt more than your fingers in Vietnam, while burning children with napalm bombs. You could fire missiles from aircraft carriers to subdue Iraq. In ground fighting, that requires raw courage, your GIs were no match for tenacious freedom fighters. After World War II you entered into a cold war in a bi-polar world. You would dare to say, “Those who are not with us are against us”. Now you face a more complex multi-polar world.
You in the West belong to the First World. We Asian tigers and dragons, whom you once called the third world, are now the Second World. The Third World is the Islamic and oil-rich Middle East, North Africa and Indonesia/ Malaysia thrown in for good measure. The Fourth World is the rest of Africa, Asia, and South America. So you are now confused.
Yes you were insulated and isolated till 9/11 happened. You were then rudely jolted from your reverie. From the reel world of superman and batman you entered the real world. What you now saw scared you. You became paranoid. It is symbolised in the picture of you and your advisors sitting in the White House, waiting to be told that Geronimo was EKIA (enemy killed in action). Mr President, you were slouched in your chair, fear and anxiety written all over your face. Hilary, your Secretary of State, held her hand to her mouth horror-struck, eventhough nobody was striking you.
Mr President, I have never been to America. Unlike you, I was not born there. So I cannot be the President of the USA. But I am a world citizen, so I am concerned, not just for America, but for the world we all inhabit.
Mr President, you once said that if you had a choice of a dinner date, it would be Mahatma Gandhi, eventhough you would not have much to eat. The Father of our Nation once said that there is enough to satisfy man’s need, but not enough to satisfy man’s greed. That goes for every man, American or Indian. But given the reality that you are the biggest per capita consumer, you must seriously consider curtailing greed and consumption, lest you be gradually overtaken by the other three worlds, and be corrupted entirely.
Mr President, some years ago I attended an international meeting in Vienna, Austria, where we visited the headquarters of the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation. Present was a delegate from the United Kingdom, the empire on which the sun never set, for it was spread throughout the world, and at any given point of time the sun was shining somewhere. This Britisher was now bemoaning the fact that they had lost their car building industry to Japan, their shipbuilding to South Korea, and their doctors to your country, America. The sun had well and truly set. That is why they now went gaga about their son William getting married. At last they had something to cheer about!
Mr President, my wife visited your country, for two months, 15 years ago. She told me that the people of America are very hospitable and friendly. A die-hard communist friend of mine, who happens to be Muslim, and visited his daughter in America, said that your country is the best in the world. A Sikh classmate of mine, whose son has migrated to your country, says that there is no racial discrimination there. This is good news, and a rich heritage that must be preserved.
For that Mr President, I have through this column, entered the White House to humbly whisper to you that you must stop being the world’s policeman, otherwise you will be the biggest threat to world peace. You have no moral right to don that mantle. The days of colonialism and expansionism are over. Tell your wife that the kids are obese because they and their parents consume too much. As I said, you are corrupted by consumption.
Do read the writing on the wall in the White House, written by a fly that fell in my inkpot. If not, history will be witness to who is the S.O.B. in the White House. “God bless America”. No, God bless us all, and keep us in peace.
* The writer is a former National President of the All India Catholic Union
Do you know who the S.O.B. in the White House is? This could be offensive. We know what S.O.B. normally stands for, so I need not elaborate. But I am not “normal”, so I have another connotation for S.O.B. It stands for two guys whose names begin with O, where an S is replaced by a B. Got it? Yes I am talking about Obama and Osama. Is a B or an S all that distinguishes the two Os? O stands for something else as well – Oil. That is why I am concerned, and want to enter the White House, though I am neither white nor black, just plain brown.
Mr President, I wish to enter the White House, neither to bomb it, nor to be a fly on the wall to see what Monica Lewinsky did with that cigar; but because what is decided in the White House gravely affects the rest of the world, be they white, black, brown or yellow. Samuel Huntington may call it a “Clash of Civilisations”, but many of us brownies would rather believe that it is a “Clash over Oil”; over which the Middle East (which incidentally is Islamic dominated) seems to have the hegemony. There is a loud whisper worldwide that your country has the largest oil reserves, but you would rather exhaust the oil in the Middle East first, and then dictate terms later when everybody else’s wells have run dry. This isn’t quite cricket (or should I say baseball) Mr President?
Our two countries are purportedly the world’s largest democracies. We should therefore be the best of friends. Yet we look at each other with suspicion, and you Mr President, spare no opportunity to shout yourself hoarse that “the injuns are coming”, but brown not red. There is more to our democracies than our Indian roots. As you have rightly and repeatedly observed, India has emerged as a neo-economic power. What you don’t know is that India is a threat to nobody, least of all the U.S. Why? Because our gigantic economic strides have been consumed by corruption. In your country the order is reversed. You are corrupted by consumption. See how close we are?
Five centuries ago White European settlers were the pioneers on the lonely prairie. Texan cowboys were as tough as their leather stirrups. Prospectors lived and loved for gold. That was long ago. You have now become a soft state like India. Your people are now accustomed to leisure and pleasure. Your wife’s main concern is obesity in children, while the other half of the world starves. Your per capita consumption of oil, food, water and timber is the highest in the world. Do you not also see the irony of the opium fields of Afghanistan being the opiate of the asses (oops masses) in your country? Who should you blame, if not yourselves?
Your children don’t want to study maths. They are happy doing waiters’ jobs in McDonalds or Pizza Hut; something we brownies did not so long ago. The roles have been reversed. Now you feel threatened by the brown and yellow guys.
Mr President, while the rest of the world was embroiled in World War II your people were relatively unscathed. Pearl Harbour was an aberration. Flanked by two vast oceans your country was insulated and isolated from the rest of the world. It made you feel invincible. You thought you were the world’s policeman. You thought that the US was bigger than the UN. You attacked Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and now Libya. You burnt more than your fingers in Vietnam, while burning children with napalm bombs. You could fire missiles from aircraft carriers to subdue Iraq. In ground fighting, that requires raw courage, your GIs were no match for tenacious freedom fighters. After World War II you entered into a cold war in a bi-polar world. You would dare to say, “Those who are not with us are against us”. Now you face a more complex multi-polar world.
You in the West belong to the First World. We Asian tigers and dragons, whom you once called the third world, are now the Second World. The Third World is the Islamic and oil-rich Middle East, North Africa and Indonesia/ Malaysia thrown in for good measure. The Fourth World is the rest of Africa, Asia, and South America. So you are now confused.
Yes you were insulated and isolated till 9/11 happened. You were then rudely jolted from your reverie. From the reel world of superman and batman you entered the real world. What you now saw scared you. You became paranoid. It is symbolised in the picture of you and your advisors sitting in the White House, waiting to be told that Geronimo was EKIA (enemy killed in action). Mr President, you were slouched in your chair, fear and anxiety written all over your face. Hilary, your Secretary of State, held her hand to her mouth horror-struck, eventhough nobody was striking you.
Mr President, I have never been to America. Unlike you, I was not born there. So I cannot be the President of the USA. But I am a world citizen, so I am concerned, not just for America, but for the world we all inhabit.
Mr President, you once said that if you had a choice of a dinner date, it would be Mahatma Gandhi, eventhough you would not have much to eat. The Father of our Nation once said that there is enough to satisfy man’s need, but not enough to satisfy man’s greed. That goes for every man, American or Indian. But given the reality that you are the biggest per capita consumer, you must seriously consider curtailing greed and consumption, lest you be gradually overtaken by the other three worlds, and be corrupted entirely.
Mr President, some years ago I attended an international meeting in Vienna, Austria, where we visited the headquarters of the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation. Present was a delegate from the United Kingdom, the empire on which the sun never set, for it was spread throughout the world, and at any given point of time the sun was shining somewhere. This Britisher was now bemoaning the fact that they had lost their car building industry to Japan, their shipbuilding to South Korea, and their doctors to your country, America. The sun had well and truly set. That is why they now went gaga about their son William getting married. At last they had something to cheer about!
Mr President, my wife visited your country, for two months, 15 years ago. She told me that the people of America are very hospitable and friendly. A die-hard communist friend of mine, who happens to be Muslim, and visited his daughter in America, said that your country is the best in the world. A Sikh classmate of mine, whose son has migrated to your country, says that there is no racial discrimination there. This is good news, and a rich heritage that must be preserved.
For that Mr President, I have through this column, entered the White House to humbly whisper to you that you must stop being the world’s policeman, otherwise you will be the biggest threat to world peace. You have no moral right to don that mantle. The days of colonialism and expansionism are over. Tell your wife that the kids are obese because they and their parents consume too much. As I said, you are corrupted by consumption.
Do read the writing on the wall in the White House, written by a fly that fell in my inkpot. If not, history will be witness to who is the S.O.B. in the White House. “God bless America”. No, God bless us all, and keep us in peace.
* The writer is a former National President of the All India Catholic Union
Wednesday, 11 May 2011
A CENTENNIAL TRIBUTE TO GOD’S SENTINEL
Writing about a giant is a dwarfing experience. The giant is my spiritual mentor (I won’t call him Guru), Fr Augustine Deenabandhu Ofm Cap. I write this on the occasion of his Birth Centenary.
First the basics. He was born on the 9th of April 1911 in Bajpe parish of Mangalore diocese, and baptised Henry Joseph Lobo. He died on the 13th May 1991, so this is also his 20th death anniversary. What was so gigantic about the 80 years this priest spent on this earth? Perhaps I knew him better than anybody else, having spent 7 of the most beautiful years of my life with him – from 1975 to 1982.
Henry joined the seminary in Mangalore in 1927 to become a diocesan priest, and was duly ordained in 1935. Nothing gigantic so far. We now go off the beaten track. He was not satisfied with being a diocesan priest. He was influenced by the frugal lifestyle and deep simplicity of the Capuchin friars (a Franciscan order). Three years after his ordination the Bishop of Mangalore permitted him to join the Capuchins, where he took the religious name – Augustine. He began life all over again as a novice in the Order.
As a Capuchin he was known for his piety and simplicity, so he was inducted into formation and teaching theology. He was also a caring pastor. During the Second World War, when there was food scarcity, he began a Fair Price Shop, long before the advent of ration shops, to assist the needy. When posted to Kirol parish in Mumbai, he strongly advocated the Catholic Workers’ Movement. Because of his sterling qualities Rome appointed him as the first Novice Master of the fledgling Indian Missionary Society, for two terms. So far so good.
Fr Augustine was not a man to rest on his laurels. Like St Augustine he would rather say “My heart is restless till it rests in Thee”. If we are satisfied and satiated we become complacent and revert to mediocrity. Not for this giant. At every stage of life he felt that he still had to walk that extra mile (cf Mat 5:41). There were three events that impacted his future – the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), the Church in India Seminar (1969), and the move to Jyotiniketan Ashram, Bareilly, U.P., in 1971.
Fr Augustine was deeply influenced by Vatican II ecclesiology – that the Church was still a pilgrim, not one which had “arrived”; that it should be more Catholic than Roman, rooted in the local culture; that there had to be a preferential option for the poor; that the Church is not a monolithic “spiritual edifice” with big buildings, facades and structures, but a living community of believers. The Church needed to shed its extra baggage and return to its pristine scriptural roots. This new ecclesiology was echoed in the post-Vatican euphoria of the “Church in India Seminar”, India’s endorsement of Vatican II. So Fr Augustine experienced another restlessness, to move on, to explore the unknown, and to renounce the comparative comfort and security of the Capuchin monastery.
This kind of stirring is very well reflected in the earlier call of St Francis of Assisi (the founder or inspiration for all Franciscan Orders, including the Capuchins). The divine call to St Francis was “Go and repair my Church”. He took it literally, and with his own bare hands began to repair a church building in his vicinity. It was later that the real mission dawned on him. In 13th Century Europe the Church had become opulent and corpulent; a far cry from the Son of Man who had no place to lay his head, and told his disciples to “take nothing for the way, when on a mission” (cf Mat 10:9-10). St Francis took the Gospel to heart, living a life of abject poverty, renunciation, humility and simplicity. Before his conversion he had wanted to be a knight to join the crusades for liberating the Holy Land. Post conversion Francis sought to dialogue with the very same Saracens (Muslim invaders).
When the common man lived in awe of the papacy and the hierarchy, Francis was a man of courage, who would even tick cardinals off for their wrongdoing. When Italian society was divided between the Majors (the landed aristocracy) and the Minors (the landless peasantry), he made a preferential option for the poor, calling his group the Order of Friars Minor (OFM). Had be been in India he may have called it Deen Bandhus or Chhotebhais! Centuries later Blessed Teresa would make a similar choice, when she chose the blue-bordered saris of Kolkata’s municipal sanitation workers as her form of dress. St Francis identified so closely with Jesus, that he was called the Alter Christi (the other Christ), to the extent of receiving the Stigmata (Jesus’ own wounds) in his physical body.
Francis would seem like a digression from the Augustine story. It isn’t, for it is impossible to understand the one without the other. After Vatican II Fr Augustine was looking for a more authentic way of living his Franciscan life. Through one of his students, Rev M Devanand Ofm Cap, he came in contact with Rev Murray Rogers, and Englishman, a pastor of the Anglican Church, who had a pristine ashram called Jyotiniketan in Bareilly.
Rev Rogers, in turn, was influenced by Gandhiji’s ashram way of life. Padmashri Laurie Baker, another Englishman, who specialised in low-cost housing, built Jyotiniketan. It was truly “low-cost”. We called it an all-weather construction – hot as hell in summer, bitterly cold in winter, and damp and leaky in the monsoons! It had no electricity or running water, and was as close to nature as one could get. Peacocks and bamboos abounded. When Rev Rogers (another restless soul) felt that an Indian should take over the ashram, to make it authentically Indian, he found no takers in his own Anglican Communion. That is how Fr Augustine stepped in, in 1971, at the ripe old age of 60.
Ordinary folks think of retiring at such an age. Not the extraordinary and indomitable Fr Augustine. He was just beginning his second innings. He now took the name Deenabandhu (friend of the poor), and switched to a biscuit coloured (not saffron) khadi habit. At 60 he had to learn Hindi, to cook on a wood fire, to go to the loo in the jungle, to roll chapattis and squat on a cow dung plastered floor. Not easy at any age, let alone at 60, with no community support. Though his Capuchin Order professed poverty and simplicity, he got no companion from his Karnataka-Goa-Maharashtra Province. The few and far between Capuchin companions he had were from the Kerala province.
I joined Fr Deenabandhu in 1975. By that time he had already developed diabetes, because cooking was burdensome for him, so his staple diet was chapattis with gur (jaggery). Other than that he was a bundle of spiritual and emotional energy. Though slightly hunch backed he believed in doing atleast one hour’s manual work every day, be it tending the garden, sweeping the compound or chopping firewood.
The day I entered Jyotiniketan a bullock cart from the neighbouring village of Kareli knocked down the entrance gate. For the subsequent 7 years that I lived there, there was no attempt to rebuild the gate. It was for me symbolic of the total openness and utter defencelessness of Jyotiniketan and Fr Deenabandhu.
I first set foot in Jyotiniketan on a cold and misty December morning. There was Fr Deenabandhu, his nose red with cold. But he wore no socks. His feet were shod in sandals made by the village cobbler from discarded rubber tyres. He was addressed as “Father”, not guruji, swamiji, acharyaji or any other ji. I felt at home in the presence of a genuine person who had no pretence.
His back was hunched from spending hours in prayer. In scorching summer, under an asbestos roof, he would be praying before the Blessed Sacrament, in mid afternoon. At midnight (even in the dead of winter when no one wants to leave a cosy cot) he would be found in the windswept chapel. Very few outsiders knew that he had a metal chain in his room with which he would flagellate his frail body as penance.
But he was no zealot. He believed in service to the neighbouring villagers and leprosy patients by ministering to them, and helping in whatever way he could. Before my time, in the neighbouring village of Choubari, there was a long lasting and bloody feud. Fr Deenabandhu went and dwelt in their midst, fasting and praying till peace was restored.
He was a practical person, not an idealist. Once a Capuchin brother was complaining about the reforms ushered in by Vatican II, saying that earlier the friars kept a strict fast that they had now abandoned. Quick came Deenabandhu’s retort “Dear brother were you fasting out of the compulsion of the law, or the love of God? If you love God nobody can stop you from fasting”. This was an abject lesson in Vatican II spirituality, so much closer to the free flowing heart of Jesus, and in contrast to the Pharisaic keepers of the Law!
Fr Deenabandhu’s openness and simplicity were seen in his attitude towards diverse movements in the Church, like Inculturation, Liberation Theology and the Charismatic Renewal. He espoused them all. A somewhat conservative bishop, who was more comfortable with the pre-Vatican Latin liturgy, once visited Jyotiniketan. He found no dichotomy between liturgy and life. They were deeply Christian and authentically Indian. He frankly admitted, “If this is the meaning of inculturation I fully endorse it”. Indeed there were very few people who met Fr Deenabandhu, or visited Jyotiniketan, who didn’t go back touched in some way.
I lived with him as a layman for 7 years. Not once did I feel that I was a second-class citizen of the Church. Fr Deenabandhu had a deep understanding of the lay vocation, married life and human sexuality. He was no prude. When I once told him that I was attracted to a female visitor to the ashram and felt like kissing her, he floored me by saying that he too felt like doing the same! Of such stuff are spiritual giants made.
It is because of him that my to-be-wife Meerabai, reluctantly agreed to marry a mad cap (not ofm cap) vagabond like me. He even solemnised our marriage in 1984. Seven years later, when he fell critically ill on a journey, he asked to be taken to our home in Kanpur. He knew we were his family. We rushed him to hospital, stayed by his bedside day and night, and willed him to live; till his fellow Capuchins came to take him. We last saw him alive on his 80th birthday, twenty years ago, in another hospital, in Lucknow.
A few days later he passed on to his eternal reward. We bundled our sleeping children into the car and drove through the night to be in time for the funeral in Bareilly. He was a sentinel of God and a servant of mankind. I salute his revered memory on the occasion of his Birth Centenary. I hope and pray that the Church in India, and more particularly the Franciscan fraternity, will not have to wait another hundred years to see another like our beloved Father Augustine Deenabandhu Ofm Cap. Will such spiritual giants tread the earth again? As I said at the very beginning, I am dwarfed by the thought.
* The writer considers Fr Deenabandhu his spiritual Father.
MAY 2011
First the basics. He was born on the 9th of April 1911 in Bajpe parish of Mangalore diocese, and baptised Henry Joseph Lobo. He died on the 13th May 1991, so this is also his 20th death anniversary. What was so gigantic about the 80 years this priest spent on this earth? Perhaps I knew him better than anybody else, having spent 7 of the most beautiful years of my life with him – from 1975 to 1982.
Henry joined the seminary in Mangalore in 1927 to become a diocesan priest, and was duly ordained in 1935. Nothing gigantic so far. We now go off the beaten track. He was not satisfied with being a diocesan priest. He was influenced by the frugal lifestyle and deep simplicity of the Capuchin friars (a Franciscan order). Three years after his ordination the Bishop of Mangalore permitted him to join the Capuchins, where he took the religious name – Augustine. He began life all over again as a novice in the Order.
As a Capuchin he was known for his piety and simplicity, so he was inducted into formation and teaching theology. He was also a caring pastor. During the Second World War, when there was food scarcity, he began a Fair Price Shop, long before the advent of ration shops, to assist the needy. When posted to Kirol parish in Mumbai, he strongly advocated the Catholic Workers’ Movement. Because of his sterling qualities Rome appointed him as the first Novice Master of the fledgling Indian Missionary Society, for two terms. So far so good.
Fr Augustine was not a man to rest on his laurels. Like St Augustine he would rather say “My heart is restless till it rests in Thee”. If we are satisfied and satiated we become complacent and revert to mediocrity. Not for this giant. At every stage of life he felt that he still had to walk that extra mile (cf Mat 5:41). There were three events that impacted his future – the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), the Church in India Seminar (1969), and the move to Jyotiniketan Ashram, Bareilly, U.P., in 1971.
Fr Augustine was deeply influenced by Vatican II ecclesiology – that the Church was still a pilgrim, not one which had “arrived”; that it should be more Catholic than Roman, rooted in the local culture; that there had to be a preferential option for the poor; that the Church is not a monolithic “spiritual edifice” with big buildings, facades and structures, but a living community of believers. The Church needed to shed its extra baggage and return to its pristine scriptural roots. This new ecclesiology was echoed in the post-Vatican euphoria of the “Church in India Seminar”, India’s endorsement of Vatican II. So Fr Augustine experienced another restlessness, to move on, to explore the unknown, and to renounce the comparative comfort and security of the Capuchin monastery.
This kind of stirring is very well reflected in the earlier call of St Francis of Assisi (the founder or inspiration for all Franciscan Orders, including the Capuchins). The divine call to St Francis was “Go and repair my Church”. He took it literally, and with his own bare hands began to repair a church building in his vicinity. It was later that the real mission dawned on him. In 13th Century Europe the Church had become opulent and corpulent; a far cry from the Son of Man who had no place to lay his head, and told his disciples to “take nothing for the way, when on a mission” (cf Mat 10:9-10). St Francis took the Gospel to heart, living a life of abject poverty, renunciation, humility and simplicity. Before his conversion he had wanted to be a knight to join the crusades for liberating the Holy Land. Post conversion Francis sought to dialogue with the very same Saracens (Muslim invaders).
When the common man lived in awe of the papacy and the hierarchy, Francis was a man of courage, who would even tick cardinals off for their wrongdoing. When Italian society was divided between the Majors (the landed aristocracy) and the Minors (the landless peasantry), he made a preferential option for the poor, calling his group the Order of Friars Minor (OFM). Had be been in India he may have called it Deen Bandhus or Chhotebhais! Centuries later Blessed Teresa would make a similar choice, when she chose the blue-bordered saris of Kolkata’s municipal sanitation workers as her form of dress. St Francis identified so closely with Jesus, that he was called the Alter Christi (the other Christ), to the extent of receiving the Stigmata (Jesus’ own wounds) in his physical body.
Francis would seem like a digression from the Augustine story. It isn’t, for it is impossible to understand the one without the other. After Vatican II Fr Augustine was looking for a more authentic way of living his Franciscan life. Through one of his students, Rev M Devanand Ofm Cap, he came in contact with Rev Murray Rogers, and Englishman, a pastor of the Anglican Church, who had a pristine ashram called Jyotiniketan in Bareilly.
Rev Rogers, in turn, was influenced by Gandhiji’s ashram way of life. Padmashri Laurie Baker, another Englishman, who specialised in low-cost housing, built Jyotiniketan. It was truly “low-cost”. We called it an all-weather construction – hot as hell in summer, bitterly cold in winter, and damp and leaky in the monsoons! It had no electricity or running water, and was as close to nature as one could get. Peacocks and bamboos abounded. When Rev Rogers (another restless soul) felt that an Indian should take over the ashram, to make it authentically Indian, he found no takers in his own Anglican Communion. That is how Fr Augustine stepped in, in 1971, at the ripe old age of 60.
Ordinary folks think of retiring at such an age. Not the extraordinary and indomitable Fr Augustine. He was just beginning his second innings. He now took the name Deenabandhu (friend of the poor), and switched to a biscuit coloured (not saffron) khadi habit. At 60 he had to learn Hindi, to cook on a wood fire, to go to the loo in the jungle, to roll chapattis and squat on a cow dung plastered floor. Not easy at any age, let alone at 60, with no community support. Though his Capuchin Order professed poverty and simplicity, he got no companion from his Karnataka-Goa-Maharashtra Province. The few and far between Capuchin companions he had were from the Kerala province.
I joined Fr Deenabandhu in 1975. By that time he had already developed diabetes, because cooking was burdensome for him, so his staple diet was chapattis with gur (jaggery). Other than that he was a bundle of spiritual and emotional energy. Though slightly hunch backed he believed in doing atleast one hour’s manual work every day, be it tending the garden, sweeping the compound or chopping firewood.
The day I entered Jyotiniketan a bullock cart from the neighbouring village of Kareli knocked down the entrance gate. For the subsequent 7 years that I lived there, there was no attempt to rebuild the gate. It was for me symbolic of the total openness and utter defencelessness of Jyotiniketan and Fr Deenabandhu.
I first set foot in Jyotiniketan on a cold and misty December morning. There was Fr Deenabandhu, his nose red with cold. But he wore no socks. His feet were shod in sandals made by the village cobbler from discarded rubber tyres. He was addressed as “Father”, not guruji, swamiji, acharyaji or any other ji. I felt at home in the presence of a genuine person who had no pretence.
His back was hunched from spending hours in prayer. In scorching summer, under an asbestos roof, he would be praying before the Blessed Sacrament, in mid afternoon. At midnight (even in the dead of winter when no one wants to leave a cosy cot) he would be found in the windswept chapel. Very few outsiders knew that he had a metal chain in his room with which he would flagellate his frail body as penance.
But he was no zealot. He believed in service to the neighbouring villagers and leprosy patients by ministering to them, and helping in whatever way he could. Before my time, in the neighbouring village of Choubari, there was a long lasting and bloody feud. Fr Deenabandhu went and dwelt in their midst, fasting and praying till peace was restored.
He was a practical person, not an idealist. Once a Capuchin brother was complaining about the reforms ushered in by Vatican II, saying that earlier the friars kept a strict fast that they had now abandoned. Quick came Deenabandhu’s retort “Dear brother were you fasting out of the compulsion of the law, or the love of God? If you love God nobody can stop you from fasting”. This was an abject lesson in Vatican II spirituality, so much closer to the free flowing heart of Jesus, and in contrast to the Pharisaic keepers of the Law!
Fr Deenabandhu’s openness and simplicity were seen in his attitude towards diverse movements in the Church, like Inculturation, Liberation Theology and the Charismatic Renewal. He espoused them all. A somewhat conservative bishop, who was more comfortable with the pre-Vatican Latin liturgy, once visited Jyotiniketan. He found no dichotomy between liturgy and life. They were deeply Christian and authentically Indian. He frankly admitted, “If this is the meaning of inculturation I fully endorse it”. Indeed there were very few people who met Fr Deenabandhu, or visited Jyotiniketan, who didn’t go back touched in some way.
I lived with him as a layman for 7 years. Not once did I feel that I was a second-class citizen of the Church. Fr Deenabandhu had a deep understanding of the lay vocation, married life and human sexuality. He was no prude. When I once told him that I was attracted to a female visitor to the ashram and felt like kissing her, he floored me by saying that he too felt like doing the same! Of such stuff are spiritual giants made.
It is because of him that my to-be-wife Meerabai, reluctantly agreed to marry a mad cap (not ofm cap) vagabond like me. He even solemnised our marriage in 1984. Seven years later, when he fell critically ill on a journey, he asked to be taken to our home in Kanpur. He knew we were his family. We rushed him to hospital, stayed by his bedside day and night, and willed him to live; till his fellow Capuchins came to take him. We last saw him alive on his 80th birthday, twenty years ago, in another hospital, in Lucknow.
A few days later he passed on to his eternal reward. We bundled our sleeping children into the car and drove through the night to be in time for the funeral in Bareilly. He was a sentinel of God and a servant of mankind. I salute his revered memory on the occasion of his Birth Centenary. I hope and pray that the Church in India, and more particularly the Franciscan fraternity, will not have to wait another hundred years to see another like our beloved Father Augustine Deenabandhu Ofm Cap. Will such spiritual giants tread the earth again? As I said at the very beginning, I am dwarfed by the thought.
* The writer considers Fr Deenabandhu his spiritual Father.
MAY 2011
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