Dramatic Theology: A Hermeneutical Framework for Discerning the Cultural Realities and the Role of Christianity in India

Abstract

This article explains how dramatic theology can discern, evaluate, and interpret critically different cultural institutions and bring forward the uniqueness of Christian revelation in a pluralistic world. It clarifies the concept, methodology, and relevance of dramatic theology, which uses mimetic theory as an auxiliary hypothesis; taking the concrete example of cultural realities in India, it unearths the archaic background of their all-encompassing nature, the multiplicity of gods, and the caste system. It also describes how dramatic theology exposes the unique role of Jesus as the human face of God the Father, and the new gathering—through five acts in the Drama of Salvation—in human history and Christianity in such a complex cultural context.

1. Introduction

World civilization is ornamented with multi-religious, multi-cultural, and multi-lingual traditions and values. In such a collective global culture, the role of individuals or the uniqueness and specialties of any particular culture, religion, or moral values become either insignificant or negligible. There have been attempts at creating a “global religion” or “rainbow of faiths,” (Hick 1995), and “world ethos” (Kung and Kuschel 1993), which consists of elements from all cultures and religions. Bewildered with such complexities, many theologians are trying to understand cultures and beliefs and interpret the role of Christianity and Christian messages according to the needs of the time.

Taking the concrete example of Indian realities, this study presents how dramatic theology, as a hermeneutical framework, can analyze and interpret various cultural realities and the significance of Christian revelation in such a pluralistic world. Different from any other culture, together with its archaic religious traditions, India has welcomed, assimilated, and absorbed all other religions and beliefs and remained simultaneously traditional and modern, rich and poor, fascinating and nauseating, and blooming and withering. India is projected as a symbol of religious tolerance and traditional societies which carry different social values and institutions such as family, religion, social systems, etc. However, when we look closer at the distinctive nature of Indian history, culture and economy, and religious life, we can say that India is not only a wonderland but a land of paradoxes. I have explained in detail, in my book, the paradoxical blending of similar customs in different religions, the existence of “mother–cults”, discrimination and torture against women, the reality of affluent cities and forlorn villages, the contradictory mixing of supra-technological jobs and children, and bonded labor in the socio-economic and cultural arena of India (Thomas 2009, pp. 8–36).

Christianity in India from the apostolic times played a vital role in different areas of the Indian way of life. The presence of Christianity brought about some major changes in Indian society, but the majority of the Indian population did not take the religious content of Christianity seriously. The uniqueness of Christian revelation is not accepted or recognized among the vast majority of Indian people. Since the arrival of foreign missionaries and their activities, attitudes, and methods for evangelization there has also been a mentality among many that Christianity is a “foreign religion” and it is criticized by the nationalist and fundamentalist groups in India (Goel 1996). Moreover, Christianity is also not free from many unchristian tendencies such as the caste system, competition, rivalry, conflicts, confrontations, and sometimes violence among its members and with other religions. They also fail to uphold the human and personal dignity of individuals, fight against the unjust cultural and social systems, and witness the uniqueness of Christian revelation among the people of India. Instead of becoming a religion with a counter-culture, Christianity is also captivated by the fetters of Indian culture. In other words, the inculturation of Christianity eclipsed its trans-cultural uniqueness in India.

There are many studies using different theological methods and tools to find out cultural complexities and their influence on Christianity in India. Many scholars have tried to sort out the reasons behind the “eclipsed” identity of Christianity and to present Jesus and Christian doctrines according to the realities in India (Kim 2004; Bauman and Young 2014).1 For them, Jesus is a moral teacher, a Sat Guru (Mazoomdar 1883, p. 46), a Revolutionary or Liberator (Kappen 1997; Rayan 1978), and the Holy Spirit is Antaryamin (the Indwelling One) (Francis 1994). Based on the ideas of religious pluralism proposed by John Hick (Hick 1977, 1982, 1983, 1985, 1987, 1988, 1995), Raymond Panikkar (Panikkar 1964, 1973, 1993), and Stanley J. Samartha (Samartha 1981, 1995), there are theological trends to separate the historicity and concreteness of the Christ event and propose a mixture of religious truths as a salvific message, to handle the concrete and paradoxical realities of Indian society. Taking such a cultural context as a background, here, we are presenting how dramatic theology can prompt critical analysis of certain visible cultural realities and explain the unique role of Christianity in India. Dramatic theology explains the origin of cultures and their complexities on one hand, and the concrete and historical Christ event on the other.

2. Dramatic Theology: An Advanced Method of Theologizing

Dramatic theology is a development in Christian theological thinking which provides multifaceted and dynamic interpretations of Christian theological truths in the present world context of religious violence, communication, and World Order. It does not replace other methods in theology but gives a comprehensive understanding of different themes, which reasonably answers the challenging questions of modern theology (Wandinger 2003, p. 173; See also Wandinger 2004, 2005). As the pioneer in dramatic theology, Raymund Schwager approached theological questions as a believer and searched for answers from biblical texts and the tradition of the Church, on the one hand. He presented it as part of an interdisciplinary research program that was based on the philosophy of science and reflected on the consequences of this, on the other hand. To understand dramatic theology better, we must explicate a little how Schwager developed this concept of ‘dramatic,’ mimetic theory as an auxiliary hypothesis, and the dramatic process of Christian revelation.

2.1. Raymund Schwager and the Concept of “Dramatic”

In developing his famous concept of “dramatic,” Schwager concentrated mainly on Ignatius Loyola’s understanding of the Church, Balthasar’s understanding of ‘Theo-Drama’, and René Girard’s mimetic theory (Wandinger 2006, p. 325). He formulated his concept of ‘dramatic’ at first in his doctoral dissertation by viewing Ignatius of Loyola’s understanding of the Church in a dramatic way (Schwager 1970). He made a courageous attempt to reread the biographical interpretations and the retreat preachings of Ignatius in the post-Vatican Council II context, which is marked by notions of the communitarian dimensions of the Church. He found a dramatic process in the life of Ignatius. Analyzing the different experiences of success, failure, tensions, and spiritual exercises in the life of Ignatius, Schwager argues that “it is the same Spirit of God who is working in the life of the individual and the life of the Church” (Schwager 1970, p. 127). It is this same Spirit that guides and leads the individual and the Church through different experiences and epochs and pays witness to successes and failures, tensions and conflicts, happiness and peace.

According to Schwager, this concept of “dramatic” helps us in life to realize the works of the Spirit, who sometimes leads through the darkness of life because he wants us to achieve more clarity in our lives and the community (Schwager 1970, p. 185). In the end, the Spirit of God leads human life to the stage of reconciliation. He says that the only thing that we need in such situations is the courage to confront these dramatic situations. For Schwager, Ignatius’ dramatic understanding of the Church helps us to see all life situations of an individual and the Church in their totality with the final end.

In the formation of dramatic theology, Schwager also made use of the categories of drama, proposed by the Swiss theologian, Hans Urs von Balthasar in his five volumes of Theo-Drama. For Balthasar, ‘dramatic’ means using the categories of drama (actor, stage, playwright, director, script–writer, etc.) to expound the infinite, absolute sovereign freedom of God concerning the dependent, limited freedom of man, and to construct a theology of history, Christology and theological anthropology. According to Balthasar, Theo-Drama takes place between the unlimited freedom of God and the limited freedom of human beings in the ‘World Theatre’, with God the Father as the Author, Jesus the Son as the main character, and the Holy Spirit as the director (Balthasar 1973, pp. 239–345). For Balthasar, the original drama (Ur–Drama) happens in the inner Trinity where there is the first kenosis of the Son from the Father, which reaches its climax on the cross. Schwager sees the dramatic moments not only on the cross but also in the whole life and works of Jesus in his public ministry and his passion, death, and resurrection (Schwager 1999, pp. 27–158).

The most important person who influenced Schwager’s dramatic approach was René Girard, whose mimetic theory was an auxiliary hypothesis for dramatic theology. Mimetic theory explains the dramatic influence of mimetic desire in human life and its tendency towards potential rivalry and violence. The Girardian idea of the scapegoat mechanism also gives a comprehensive view of archaic religions, gods, and cultural institutions in “primitive” societies. Mimetic theory also interprets the violence behind the sacrificial rituals of religions.

Girardian ideas about the Judeo–Christian revelation also urged Schwager to think about Jesus as a necessary scapegoat, which he presented in his book, Must There Be Scapegoats? Violence and Redemption in the Bible (1987). For him, mimetic theory urges us to have a new interpretation of the Bible in view of the theme of violence (Schwager 1987, p. 4). Mimetic theory (Girard 1965, 1977, 1986, 1998, 1999, 2001)2 and the scapegoat mechanism, gave impulse to Schwager to present the drama of Jesus in five acts in his book, Jesus in the Drama of Salvation (1999 Eng. edition). He explains the drama in the life and death of Jesus, where he presents the transformation of the view of a violent God into a non-violent and loving God.

2.2. Mimetic Theory as an Auxiliary Tool of Dramatic Theology

Mimetic theory starts with the basic anthropological assumption that a human being is a being of desire (Girard 1987, p. 7). For Girard, desire motivates a child to imitate their parents or immediate relations or some other model, and tries to make them role models in their life. A human being may not knowingly be imitating the desire of others but does it automatically (Girard 2001, p. 15). Girard observes: “if our desires were not mimetic, they would be forever fixed on predetermined objects; they would be a particular form of instinct. … Without mimetic desire, there would be neither freedom nor humanity. … If desire were not mimetic, we would not be open to what is human or what is divine.” (ibid., pp. 15–16). It is this imitative desire that enables a human being to escape from the animal realm. But, according to Girard, the structure of such a desire is triangular (Girard 1965, pp. 1–52). This means it is not a subject who desires another subject, but there comes a medium or model, which is desired in between. Girard says in one of his central passages in his book Violence and the Sacred:

Once his basic needs are satisfied (indeed, sometimes even before), man is subject to intense desires, though he may not know precisely for what. The reason is that he desires being, something he himself lacks and which some other person seems to possess. The subject thus looks to that other person to inform him of what he should desire in order to acquire that being. If the model, who is apparently already endowed with superior being, desires some object, that object must surely be capable of conferring an even greater plenitude of being. It is not through words, therefore, but by the example of his own desire that the model conveys to the subject the supreme desirability of the subject. … We must understand that desire itself is essentially mimetic, directed toward an object desired by the model.

(Girard 1977, p. 146; Girard 2001, p. 15)

Girard explains further how this mimetic desire can cause the worst things in society. According to him, in their mimetic character, every human being tends to desire what their neighbor has or what their neighbor desires. When this desire urges a person to imitate the other in such a way that they want to possess what the other possesses or what the other desires, conflicts will arise between human beings. Girard says: “if individuals are naturally inclined to desire what their neighbors possess, or to desire what their neighbors even simply desire, this means that rivalry exists at the very heart of human social relations.” (Girard 2001, p. 8).

According to Girard, the words that designate this mimetic rivalry and its consequences are the noun Skandalon and the verb skandalizein (ibid., p. 16). He says: “Like the Hebrew word that it translates, ‘scandal’ means, not one of those ordinary obstacles that we avoid easily after we run into it the first time, but a paradoxical obstacle that is almost impossible to avoid. The more this obstacle, or scandal, repels us, the more it attracts us. Those who are scandalized put all the more or in injuring themselves against it because they were injured there before.” (ibid., p. 16). At the height of such a scandal, each reprisal calls forth a new one more violent than its predecessor. If nothing stops it, the spiral has to lead to a series of acts of vengeance in a perfect fusion of violence and contagion. When the first scandal occurs, it gives birth to others, and the result is a mimetic crisis, which will spread without ceasing and will become worse and worse. If everybody considers everybody as a scandal and a block to oneself, human relations and communications are obstructed. In such a situation, individuals see each other as enemies. Here, the web of human relationships is broken and everybody becomes an enemy to everybody. Each person finds fault in others and accuses others of being the reason for the chaos.

From the exposition of the conflict dimension of mimetic desire, Girard moves towards his concept of the scapegoat mechanism. According to him, mimetic contagion finds itself a solution to such chaos. The enmity of everybody towards everybody converges towards a single victim. As an expression of the omnipotence of mimetic contagion, the group specifies someone who is weak and feeble and identifies him as the cause of the chaos (Girard 1986, p. 187f; Girard 1987, pp. 120–25). Girard points out that in all myths in all cultures, and in the witch-hunting stories of the Middle Ages in Europe, the victim is one who possesses either infirmity or other distinctive physical signs that attract the attention of others—such as sickness, madness, genetic deformities, accidental injuries, or even disabilities in general—or one with habitual characteristics of a common social outcast. Because of their weakness or vulnerability or the crimes they committed, the collective mass sees the person or the minority group as Satan or demoniac, or as the culprits of causing chaos. Then, the group of people, in a hysterical mood or possessed by mimetic contagion, kills the accused.

After killing the unanimously selected victim, the community feels purified of all its tensions, all its divisions, and everything that has fragmented it. The killing of the accused brings order to the chaotic society. For Girard, the victimary mechanism appeases chaos in human communities and re-establishes, at least temporarily, their tranquility. The lynching event re-establishes the former order or establishes a new one out of the old. Girard says: “Conflictual mimesis, therefore, creates a de facto allegiance against a common enemy, such that the conclusion of the crisis is nothing other than the reconciliation of the community.” (Girard 1987, p. 26). Then, the new order itself is destined to someday enter into crisis, and so it goes on. It is a cyclic process of disorder and re-establishment of order that reaches climax and ends in a mechanism of victimary unanimity.

According to Girard, it is this victimary mechanism that acts as the imperative of prohibitions and rituals in every culture and society. It is in this regard that Girard considers the function of laws in all societies as they prohibit imitation. He says: “if the transcendence of the judicial institution is no longer there if the institution loses its efficacy or becomes incapable of commanding respect, the imitative and repetitious character of violence is, in fact, most manifest in explicit violence, where it acquires a formal perfection, it had not previously possessed.” (ibid., p. 12). He says further: “Primitive societies repress mimetic conflict not only by prohibiting everything that might provoke it but also by dissimulating it beneath the major symbols of the sacred, such as contamination, pollution, etc.” (ibid., p. 17).

On this background, Girard analyzes ancient myths. According to him, myths in all cultures begin with a state of extreme disorder in terms of a crisis that threatens the community and its cultural systems with total destruction. This situation originates from an accumulation of different mimetic rivalries. Then, myths convert this epidemic of mimetic rivalries into a state of unanimous violence whose cathartic effect restores tranquility and strengthens social ties. For Girard, this mimetic cycle is the basis for all mythologies where we find two sides in the victimization process. When the unanimous violence has reconciled the community and re-joined the social ties and relationships, then, a reconciling power is attributed to the victim, who is already ‘guilty’, and already ‘responsible’ for the crisis. So, they consider this victim as their god, who brings peace and order.

Girard says: “On the one hand he [victim] is a woebegone figure, an object of scorn who is also weighed down with guilt; a butt for all sorts of gibes, insults, and of course, outbursts of violence. On the other hand, we find him surrounded by a quasi-religious aura of veneration; he has become a sort of cult object.” (Girard 1977, p. 95). Thus, the victim is transfigured twice: the first time in a negative, evil fashion; the second in a positive, beneficial fashion. According to Girard, this transformation of the evildoer into a divine benefactor is a phenomenon that is simultaneously marvelous and routine. But Myths only explain this second part by hiding the lynching of the victim. By the end of the myths, we see a metamorphosis where the people enjoy peace and unity based on collective violence, and the victim, once projected as malevolent, is seen as a god who heals epidemics. There arise many gods in every repetition of such a mimetic circle.

After establishing his arguments regarding the mimetic cycle and the victim mechanism, Girard moves very clearly to picture the founding murder behind every culture in the world. According to him, there is a fundamental and founding role of the single victim and their unanimous murder in all cultures in the world. Cultural institutions, practices, customs, and rituals emerged from a single victim who was murdered once in the undetermined past and later divinized. Girard says; “the creative power of this murder is often given concrete form in the value attributed to the fragments of the victim. Each of these is identified as producing a particular institution, a totemic clan, a territorial subdivision, or even the vegetable or animal that furnishes the community its primary food. The body of the victim is sometimes compared to a seed, which must decompose in order to germinate.” (Girard 2001, p. 82). In this way, all the institutions of all cultures originated from religion and religious rituals of sacrifice. Sacrificial rituals are scheduled just at the moment needed when there is a crisis to resolve. The sacrificial rituals re-enact the primordial mimetic cycle and the resolution of it through unanimous snowballing and the lynching of the victim. It is from the primordial murder and its remembrance and re-enacting in sacrificial rituals that social institutions and culture evolved gradually (Girard 1987, pp. 48–83).

2.3. Dramatic Process of Christian Revelation

Taking the arguments of mimetic theory, dramatic theology presents the centrality and uniqueness of the biblical process of revelation in establishing social unity and order without polarizing or victimizing human beings. Schwager explains the dramatic process of the revelation of God and the creation of the people of God against a social order that is based on the scapegoat mechanism. Using the elements of drama, he depicts the history of salvation, in which the role of a loving God as Yahweh in the Old Testament and the Father of Jesus in the New Testament in the gathering of the new People of God was revealed.

According to Schwager, it is with a definite purpose that God called Abraham and his descendants in the Old Testament. God wanted Israel to be the sign of God’s purposeful involvement in history, from which there must emerge rays of light to enlighten the entire world. God’s purpose in the gathering was for Israel to know the real nature of a loving God, and for it to be a nation that could expose the darkness of violence and lies that reigned on earth from the beginnings of the world. “I shall make you a great nation, I shall bless you and make your name famous; you are to be a blessing … and all clans on earth will bless themselves by you” (Gen.12: 2–3) (Schwager 1992, p. 6). Israel must be an exemplary society as the people of God. For this reason, he made covenants with Abraham and Moses stating that the people of God must be His holy nation (Gen.15: 1–21; Ex.19: 3–8). “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt… You shall not make for yourself an idol… ” (Exodus 20: 2–4).

In the history of Israel, however, we see the breaking of these covenants by the people, their unwillingness to be a holy nation, and the interference of the prophets. They made their interpretation of the covenant and law and put emphasis on holiness through adherence to the law. Their purity laws, combined with their non-observance, created a large section of “sinners” and “outcasts.” They had an attitude towards sickness and disability that depicted them as the result of one’s sinfulness and as a punishment from God, and therefore, the sick had to be excluded from the community. The worst non-observers and the people who engaged in despised trades were also considered outcasts. The Pharisees and the rich discriminated against them through social boycotts and religious ostracism. There was also social ostracism based on ethnic purity. At the same time, the rigorous praxis of the elimination of all grave sinners led to much hypocrisy and to intense arguments concerning the question of what should be punished by death. These eliminations of grave sinners, if they had been carried out fully, would have had the consequence of the destruction of the whole population (Schwager 1990, pp. 181–82).

Schwager (1999) presents the entrance of Jesus in the New Testament by preaching the dawning of the kingdom of God in such a cultural and social background. The salvific action of Jesus starts from his public appearance in the first act and moves through the next four acts unto the descending of the Holy Spirit during Pentecost. Jesus was trying to bring out the nearness of God as a loving and merciful ‘Father’ who lets the sun rise over good and evil and the rain fall on the just and the unjust (Matt. 5: 43–47). This concreteness of the nearness of God the Father was not very familiar to the those who had followed Old Testament tradition or other religious or cultural traditions of other peoples. Jesus was not merely announcing the nearness of God in his abstract words, but he was making the people experience God in their concrete day-to-day lives, in their sickness, in their suffering, and in their sinful situations.

By forgiving sins, Jesus shows the mercy of God. He shows that God is not the one who punishes the sinners but who delivers them from the clutches of sin. Through his forgiveness of sins, Jesus cures the souls of individuals and brings back health to the body of the sick. In spite of their sinful past and their sickness, Jesus loves individuals unconditionally as children of God. Thus, Jesus’ forgiving of sins and his healing of the sick show that God the Father is the one who brings bodily health, too. This means that God regards the materiality of human persons as something which is very important. His bodily closeness and oneness with the ordinary people and the marginalized people, together with the elite people of good will made people experience the nearness of God rather than the abstractness and beyondness of God. Jesus makes the nearness of God experiential to the people in their concreteness rather than proclaiming the transcendence of God (Mk. 2: 15–17; Matt. 11: 19; Lk, 15: 1f.; 19: 7) (Schwager 1986, pp. 42–43).

Schwager (1999) interprets the refusal of integration by his hearers and by leaders of the community, and Jesus’ reaction to it, through the judgment sayings in the second act of the Drama of Salvation. According to him, there was a total unwillingness on the part of the people to be integrated into the kingdom of God. From their experience of the unconditional forgiving love of God, who “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust” (Matt. 5: 45), people are supposed to show love and mercy towards their neighbors. From their experience of how God cares for them, people also should have learned to let go of their own cares and trust the heavenly Father (see Matt. 6: 26, 26). Schwager says: “If people defend themselves against this new vision of reality, if they remain in their own old positions of fear and self-defense, then they necessarily defend themselves also against what Jesus brings. Thus, they lock themselves even more into their old world and give themselves up to a process of judgment, which runs according to self-chosen and stubbornly defended norms” (Schwager 1999, p. 66).

Thus, for Schwager, on the one hand, Jesus’ judgment sayings show that Jesus’ grace and judgment are not two alternatives within one single appeal, but there is a predominance of grace. On the other hand, they show that there is a possibility of doubling and escalation of the sins of the people. This is very clear from the fact that the offer of grace takes place in advance of human choice. The chance to experience this grace is always there. However, making it effective in an individual or a community also depends on the human response. When humans do not accept this grace, there is also every chance for them to be judged, for their actions. It is in this event that self-punishment for their sins will follow. Thus, the punishments mentioned in Jesus’ judgment proclamations are self-made consequences of the non-graceful life of the people.

The external events in the third act are the trial, judgment, crucifixion, and death of Jesus. According to Schwager, concerning the proclaimed kingdom of God, it is consequently shown that the intended gathering completely changed into its opposite. “Jesus’ attempt at a new gathering provoked a general gathering and conspiracy against him” (Schwager 1987, p. 182). A counter-gathering was formed exactly against the will of Jesus. Victimization of the Son happened in the third act, as occurs in any archaic culture. Jesus tried to include and integrate people in the unconditional love of the Father in the first act but he was fully excluded and eliminated by them. Jesus proclaimed all the consequences of the refusal of integration by the people in the second act, but he, himself, faced the consequences of their refusal in the third act. But Jesus courageously confronts this universal phenomenon of the scapegoat mechanism to open up the secrets of this mechanism from within. Schwager asserts that Jesus was not an accidental scapegoat but an indispensable scapegoat in the history of humanity. In this sense, according to Schwager (1999), Jesus is a necessary scapegoat in the modern sense of the term “scapegoat.”3 Jesus transforms the scapegoat mechanism of archaic religion by becoming, himself, a scapegoat.

According to Schwager, Jesus was excluded from the community because he tried to include everyone through unconditional love in his public ministry. Even in his expulsion, he identified with all and included every human being in love. Jesus tried to include all, but all excluded him. Thus, he says: “the concrete historical rejection of Jesus achieved a universal dimension (exclusive substitution) in that one who was driven out included all people (inclusive substitution)” (Schwager 1999, p. 192). Since many groups of people in the world and their milieu joined around him, Jesus knew that the destiny of the new gathering had to be played out at the crucial moment by him alone. Schwager says: “Insofar as his claim really stemmed from God, he had to show in his own behavior how God is able to come into the world which is ruled by quite different forces” (ibid., p. 93). So, even in his forlorn suffering, Jesus stood by his conviction and his proclamation about the loving Father. He fulfilled his demand to love one’s enemies in the Sermon on the Mount in his own life, on the cross.

He did not inflict any violence against his enemies; he only prayed for them. “Father, forgive them; they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23: 33). He knew that his opponents were moved by the power of sin and that they did not know what they were doing. Jesus realized that the people who acted against him were “in a strange blindness so that in the end they did not know what they were doing (Luke 23: 34)” (Schwager 1999, p. 169). It is by knowing their roles as victims of an evil power that Jesus prayed for them to the Father. For Schwager, in his forgiving prayer on the cross, Jesus identified with the people, as they were victims. Jesus identified with every human being, not in the sense that they were doers of evil, but victims of evil, because Jesus was never, himself, a sinner and never agreed to others’ sins (ibid., p. 171). Jesus identified with all human beings who were the victims of sin and who suffered the terrible consequences of their sin. In other words, Jesus identified with every victim or scapegoat in the world who suffered from the evildoings of others and those caused by himself.

In the fourth act, Schwager describes the resurrection of Jesus as the judgment and the answer of the heavenly Father, who integrates every human being with intense love, expressing his real image (ibid., pp. 119–41). The risen Lord integrates the disciples, and others through them, into the new gathering together, with the experience of their refusal, and Jesus’ suffering, death, and resurrection. He did not abandon them in their old behavior, or their feelings of guilt. They hid with fear behind the closed doors of their houses. This fear came from their ganging up in the process of the judgment of Jesus. They were wounded by their human aspirations, feelings of guilt, and egoism. Jesus confronted them in their old room of selfishness and provoked them again to come out of it.

The peace greetings of the resurrected Lord were another invitation of Jesus to come out of their ‘man-made’ peace systems to the real peace of the kingdom of God where they could experience the unconditional and forgiving love of the heavenly Father. Jesus did not judge them for their rejection or their roles during his crucifixion and death. He came again to them with full love and mercy. Jesus forgave them unconditionally. This coming of the resurrected one with his peace greetings touched their hearts and confused them. They could not believe what they saw and experienced. This encounter with the risen Christ challenged the disciples to see themselves realistically. They came to know who they were in their real selves, their innermost selves, and what kind of powers had caught them before.

Starting from the narration of Pentecost, the fifth act is presented in such a way that the process of gathering a new community finds its fulfilment. According to Schwager (1999), the Holy Spirit as the presence of the risen one is the main actor here. The Holy Spirit works by realizing the gathering of the new people of God in a new way. Pentecost is the moment where the transformation, which took place in the innermost selves and lives of the disciples, came out openly. The apostles, who were in the clutches of individualism and who had failed to respond positively to the call of Jesus previously, became a real community of disciples through the work of the Holy Spirit. Now they could openly preach the fate of Jesus and the transformation they experienced. They experienced the fruits of integration, which the heavenly Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit brought to their lives. They realized that “the actual salvation event took place in the surrender of Christ on the cross, in the resurrection brought about by the Father, and in the sending of the Spirit” (ibid., p. 146).

Even though we see parallel themes of the scapegoat mechanisms in the formation of archaic societies and cultures within myths and in the fate of Jesus, dramatic theology can explain the unique process of the new gathering in the New Testament revelation. With the help of mimetic theory, it explains the passion narrative, which is the most radical and full unveiling of the scapegoat mechanism. The passion narrative clarifies the universal phenomenon of mimesis, violence, and the scapegoat mechanism, which has played an important role in the history of human societies and cultures since the foundation of the world (Pösel 2005, pp. 168–69). In this way, dramatic theology helps us to discern the real God and the gods that originated in mimetic cycles. Based on mimetic theory, this method of theologizing helps us, thereby, to understand why there is a universal relevance of Christian revelation.

3. Indian Cultural Realities and Christianity: An Overview

When we try to delve deep into Indian culture, we find that it is a complex of different people, religions, cultures, and languages. India has 1.38 billion people, 680,000 villages, 18 official languages, over 300 dialects, and different ethnic groups.4 Even though there is diversity in cultures, there are certain undercurrent factors that unite them as one nation. This is made clear in the words of the late 19th and early 20th century British ethnographer and colonial Indian civil servant, Sir Herbert Risley: “Beneath the manifold diversity of physical and social type, language, custom and religion which strikes the observer in India there can still be discerned a certain underlying uniformity of life from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin.” (Risley 1915, p. 299). We explain a few such factors of Indian culture in the following sections.

3.1. All-Encompassing Nature of Indian Culture

Indian culture welcomes, accepts, and molds any new changes and reformations—either on religious, economic, or social levels. Even though it accepts novelties, starting from the Vedic times, developed through the process of Sanskritisation,5 Westernization,6 and Secularization7 (Srinivas 1997), there have been no drastic changes in the Indian cultural milieu. Instead of drastic changes, any such reforms are molded into the Indian style. It is through such all-encompassing cultures and religions that Hinduism itself has evolved, as an Indian scholar, R.N. Dandekar says: “not as a system but as a system of systems” (Dandekar 1967, p. 134). Sudheer Birodkar also observes that Hinduism is an eclectic religion and “it is more a collection of attitudes and forms of worship” (Birodkar 2005), where assimilation, acculturation, and amalgamation have been the hallmarks of its development and growth. He says that many deities of the Hindu religion are the results of the amalgamation of two or more deities.8 Together with the amalgamation process, this system of beliefs has incorporated various customs and beliefs into its own.

This attitude of accommodation can be seen in the pluralistic vision of Hinduism, which adopts any new way of thinking as part of a continuing eternal law, sanatana dharma. According to the popular concepts of dharma, it contains traditions, customs, and laws which exist in a caste. Since every tradition and custom, good or bad, is an expression of the eternal law of dharma, every individual or caste has its own dharma which constitutes its existence. All of these are unwritten or written rules that bring order to an individual or a particular caste. In this sense, dharma is the invisible rule or transcendental order that controls every being in the world.

Helmuth von Glasenapp, in his book on Hinduism, explains this aspect of dharma well. According to him, dharma manifests itself as natural law through its characteristics of the order of a thing or a being, as is the case with the flowing of water to a lower level or the giving of milk by a cow (Glasenapp 1978, p. 8). The term, ‘Dharma’ is a Sanskrit word to indicate the underlying order of nature and human life. He observes that according to the concept of dharma, just like in nature, the duty and capacity of every being or everything is also fixed by the eternal law. No human being can change its order, in the same way, that the fate of a human being is also fixed. The eternal law of dharma also pre-plans the joy and happiness or the success or failure of individuals. One’s fate is decided by one’s performance of the duties prescribed by the eternal law of dharma (Glasenapp 1978, p. 239f).

In accordance with the eternal law of dharma, there is also the theory of Karma in Indian thinking. Although they have differences in their particularities, all Indian religions believe in the theory of Karma.9 According to this theory, every action, every word, and every thought has, together with its natural visible effects, its own side effects that affect the fate of a person. The energy that is produced by the action, word or thought deserves a reward or a punishment. Glasenapp also explains how the Hindu theory of Karma works in the life of the individual. Karma functions in the individual with absolute necessity. The good or bad things that happen in the life of an individual are only the results of Prarabadha Karma, more simply understood as Karma from a past life (Glasenapp 1978, p. 240).

The value and importance of the individual are subordinated to the might of the theory of Karma, supported by the eternal law of dharma. Mostly because of this theory of Karma, the suffering, poverty, and ignorance of individual human beings in India, on the one hand, and the success and excessive luxuries of the minority, on the other hand, are discriminatorily justified even today. When the minority of rich people live in luxury and abundance, without caring about the suffering of others, millions of lower-caste people and outcasts in India are engaged in traditional unclean occupations such as scavenging, carrying “night soil”, removing dead animals, leatherwork, beating drums, etc. For thousands of years in India, and even now, they have been used by the social system without dignity. They are suppressed under the yoke of the eternal law of dharma and the theory of Karma.

Many oppressed people believe that their living conditions are destined by the principle of Karma, which is determined by dharma and will never be changed. The all-encompassing nature of Indian culture would rather attempt to keep this belief intact than to change it. After conducting a field study, Abraham M George said: “Most of them [lower caste people] thought their present conditions a matter of fate or destiny, and they were simply afraid that, if they failed to carry out their religious duties, such as frequent worship at the temple, some harm would come to them or their family…Social or gender equality as a right was never brought, probably because most illiterate people have come to believe that their present status in society was predestined by fate or God’s will.” (George 2005, p. 24).

Different authors mention this all-encompassing characteristic of Indian culture. According to Dandekar, Indian or Hindu culture is more speculative and abstract than practical and concrete. He says that the traditional Hindu social institutions are essentially authoritarian in spirit and they do not recognize the freedom and dignity of the individual. Individual dignity is admired only as a member of a collective whole. Collectivity or abstractness is more important than individuality and concreteness. Dandekar also says that the Hindu social order is largely governed by a kind of impersonal collectivity where an individual has no particular role or initiative of their own (Dandekar 1967, pp. 118–19).

Edward Luce also observes that it is because of such an abstract and collective-approach mindset that modern Indian nationalist groups project the nation as an organic body. For them, India is a living organism that is deeply rooted in Hindu national soil (Luce 2007, p. 151). According to them, Hinduism is the spirit of this national body. They compare Hinduism with patriotism (Dandekar 1967, p. 123). For them, India is a huge body in which each individual, every culture, and every religion is supposed to live for the well-being of the national body. This approach is very clear from the writings of the nationalist leaders. Edward Luce quotes a comment of Golwalkar, a late leader of a Hindu nationalist group: “The ultimate vision of our work … is a perfectly organized state of society wherein each individual has been molded into a model of ideal Hindu manhood and made into a living limb of the corporate personality of the society.” (Words of Golwalker, cited by Edward Luce 2007, pp. 151–52). Golwalkar continues: “each cell feels its identity with the entire body and is ever ready to sacrifice for the sake of the health and growth of the body.” (Words of Golwalker, cited by Edward Luce 2007, p. 152). In this sense, there is only a totalitarian identity rather than an individual identity for a person.10

Here, we can understand that it is either due to fear of being rejected by the country or fear of religious persecution that every other religion in India adopts many Hindu customs and practices as their own. This is why there are not only similarities in the customs and rites of different religions in India, but also different theological attempts in Christianity in India to move in the direction of massive inculturation. Even though different religions have their own doctrines, rituals, and customs, because of the all-encompassing or rejecting mentality of Hindu culture, they either lost their individuality and identities or they adapted to a Hindu way of life. In this sense, all religions in India also function as cells of the whole “organic body” of Hindu society. According to this nationalist group, just as each cell must conform to the body, each individual and each religion must conform to the national body as a whole.

3.2. Multiplicity of Religions and Gods

Most of the people in India belong to one of the religious communities. Regarding religious demography, according to the latest census in India, out of the population of 1.38 billion, a little over 966 million (79.80%) are followers of the Hindu religion, 172 million (14.23%) are Muslims or followers of Islam, 27.8 million (2.3%) are Christians, 20.8 million (1.72%) are Sikh, 8.5 million (0.70%) are Buddhists, and 4.5 million (0.37%) are Jain. In addition, over eight million have reported professing beliefs in other religions and faiths, including tribal religions, that are different from the six main religions (Census 2011). According to their cultural heritages, these religions and groups have beliefs in their gods and deities.

As the major religion in India, Hinduism contains two major groups, namely, the Vaishnavaits and Shaivaites who worship god Vishnu and Shiva as supreme gods respectively. There are also a number of divine Avatars and personified divine incarnations from whom every worshiper can choose their own favorite deity (Ishta devata). A research paper by the Pew research center (2021) says: “When the opportunity is given to the Hindu population in India, to select the deity they feel closest to, most commonly select Shiva (44%), often referred to as the god of destruction. Roughly similar shares of Hindus feel close to Shiva, regardless of whether they believe there is just one God (42%), there is one God with many manifestations (46%) or there are many gods (46%)” (Sahgal et al. 2021).

According to Hindu belief, gods live in their own spheres, in the company of their associate gods and devotees, and participate in the creation, preservation, and destruction of worlds and beings as part of their obligatory duties (Khin 2020, p. 60). Sastri (1916) gives a long list of gods and goddesses, specifying their images in south India. As is believed traditionally in Indian culture, Krishna Sastri presents Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva as the triad, as well as Sakti-goddesses, village deities, and other miscellaneous deities. R. David Kinsley (1988), explains the history and gives a summary of the important myths and roles of important Hindu goddesses. According to him, Hindu goddesses are very different from one another. Some are of strong maternal character and others are completely devoid of it. Some others have independent natures and are great warriors. Still, some others are of domestic nature and are closely associated with male deities. There are also goddesses associated with the wild, untamed fringes of civilization and who are the very embodiment of art and culture (ibid., p. 5).

Moreover, there is a strong belief in Prajapati, the Lord of creation of the Vedic period. In the post-Vedic age, he came to be identified with the god Brahma. The Indian mythical concept of the creation of the world is from the body of this Prajapati or Purusha (man) described in Indian classical literature.11 Donald A. Mackenzie and Warwick Goble explain the theory of the origin of the world according to Vedic literature: “From the practice of sacrificing human beings arose the conception of that the first act of Creation was, if not human sacrifice, at least sacrifice of the first being with human attributes. The Universe is the giant Purusha (‘man’); he is ‘all that hath been and shall be’” (Mackenzie and Goble 2008, p. 89). Mackenzie and Warwick further state: “Prajapati afterwards created Asuras and cast off his body, which became darkness; he created men and cast off his body, which became moonlight; he created seasons and cast off his body, which became twilight; he created gods and cast off his body, which became day. … In the end Prajapati created Death, ‘a devourer of creatures.’” (Mackenzie and Goble 2008, p. 101). There are also a number of indications in Rig Vedic hymns regarding the origin of the world from the human body.12

3.3. Caste System and Social Values

In its blended culture, India keeps traditional values such as close relationships in the family, reverence, veneration towards elders and ancestors, indifference towards worldly affairs, love for asceticism, etc. Families in India, in general, are closely knit with grandparents, parents, children, and grandchildren. The same spirit, tradition, and property of a family are passed on from generation to generation. Such social values are kept and transmitted through systems such as castes, tribes, and villages, which bind their members closer together and create a collective identity rather than an individual identity in India. “Groups such as castes and tribes, which are inbreeding, and kinship circles have been effective units of social action in the Indian society and have shaped the collective identity of their members.” (D’Souza 2006, p. 282). The caste system, which has a very long history, has penetrated all fields of the Indian cultural, religious, social, economic, and political systems. It has worked as a system of social stratification in Indian history from the ancient past to this day. The caste system has been defined by many Indian and western authors. Many of them have stressed various aspects of this system. According to Edward Luce, the caste system is the institution which gives us the best insight into how India’s traditional society sees itself (Luce 2007, p. 105f).

At the top of the caste hierarchy is the dharma of the Brahmin (a priest or teacher) followed by the Kshatriya (landlords, warriors, and the ruling class) on the second level. The Brahmin caste possess the ‘sacred power’ of the word and they are the only caste permitted to read and write. The Vaishya (businessmen) come next and the Sudra (farmers, laborers, and artisans) are on the fourth level. They take of care the material needs of society. One of the main functions of the Vaishya caste in the past was to look after the principal currency, which was cattle. The Sudra caste keeps its distance from other castes and is not permitted to hear the recitation of sacred texts. Besides these four castes, there are about three-thousand sub-castes or jatis and their members identify themselves according to their origin, occupation, or territory. Below the four casts, there are casteless people or “untouchables” and tribal people who have no caste name. The membership within the caste is determined by birth, and the individuals remain within the caste throughout their lives. There is a general belief, in Indian culture, that high-caste individuals hold qualities related to wisdom, intelligence, honesty, austerity, and morality, while low-caste individuals possess qualities of dullness, stupidity, immorality, impurity, and other negative qualities (Sankaran et al. 2017). Every caste has its own rules and regulations to keep its identity, and whoever breaches these rules will be persecuted and eliminated from the caste.

The concepts of purity and pollution are a major concern in the caste hierarchy. It is the basis of the practice of “untouchability” or social distancing (Kapur 2022). Higher-caste people believe that they would be polluted by the mere presence of or contact with the lower caste. In the past, lower-caste people were not allowed to enter the temple, well, or any public places which the high-caste people were using. The lower caste was always harassed by the people of the upper caste. The Dharmasutras, the law code books of ancient India, give details concerning personal purity which is threatened by various types of pollution.13 (Mickeviciene 2003, p. 241). A person of the highest caste has the highest degree of purity and is very susceptible to pollution, much more than a person of a lower caste. The punishments for violation of the rules on the customs and practices of the caste are always inhuman and cruel. For example, a study was conducted in 2017 in the southern states of India examining the consequence of caste-norm violation and how an individual’s status is mentally represented. The researchers found that marriages between high- and low-caste persons are especially harshly punished and sometimes lead to public lynching of couples or their relatives, murder (of the bride, groom, or their relatives), rape, public beatings, and other sanctions (Sankaran et al. 2017).

Even though there have been many attempts, movements, and constitutional policies against cruel customs and discrimination based on the caste system in India, the caste system has been severed from its ritualistic and economic roots and is alive and kicking even in today’s India. No religion in India is free from caste stratification. For example, the gradual spread of Islam and its militant sense of equality after the eighth and ninth centuries A.D inspired a wave of anti-caste movements within Hinduism during what is called India’s medieval period. These breakaway cults were known as bhakti, or devotional movements, which stressed the worship of a particular deity and the equality of all before God. They generated fervor and attracted followers from all castes. However, later, the anti-caste bhakti movements also were gradually absorbed into the main caste system and became a new caste quietly slotted into the traditional hierarchy.

Christian missionaries also tried their best through educational, health, and charitable activities to free and uplift the poor and lower-caste people.14 There have also been many political and constitutional attempts to abolish the caste system in Indian society. The attempts of Bhimrao Ambedkar, India’s first untouchable leader, were remarkable. He was educated abroad and became the principal author of India’s 1950 constitution, and he hoped democracy would help to dissolve the caste system. It did not happen as Ambedkar had hoped. Edward Luce says that caste has not given way to class in terms of political loyalties. Instead, caste contradicts democracy. This is why he jokingly comments: “In India, you do not cast your vote, you vote your caste” (Luce 2007, p. 14). Every political party tries to appease their followers according to their caste in the Indian democratic arena. All parties make their so-called ‘vote banks’ according to caste differences. In this competitive run in Indian democracy, political parties slice the population, again, into ethnic politics.

As a part of Indian society, Christianity also is not free from the caste streams of society as a social order. A.M. Mundadan observes that St. Thomas Christians in India are considered a noble caste; however, until the coming of the missionaries, there was little evidence of this, which speaks of the existence of a caste nature in their own community (Mundadan 1989, p. 156). Even though they treated the high–caste members of other religions with the same respect and dignity, they had the same attitude towards low-caste people as other upper-caste members. For example, Mundadan says that there were intermarriages between Christians and the Hindu upper-caste people, but at the same time, St. Thomas Christians remained aloof towards the lower-caste people (ibid., pp. 191–92). Later, since mass conversions began from the lowest strata of Indian society into Christianity, strong caste considerations began among Christianity in India. Another Indian theologian, John Thattunkal (1983) also speaks of different caste groups in the Latin Rite Catholic Church in India.15 People who converted as a clan or a group carried their own caste with them and kept themselves as a particular caste in Hinduism, even though they became Christians. Since 70% of Indian Christians are from Dalit or Adivasi backgrounds, the minority communities of upper-caste Christians often show their discriminative mentality.16

4. Dramatic Theological View of Indian Realities

As we mentioned before, the Indian theological attempts at inculturation, liberation, and dialogue are not only concerned with theological matters but also discuss the socio-economic and cultural situations of India. The caste discrimination, the economic disparities between the rich and the poor, and the indifference towards the suffering of individuals and minority groups are also themes in Indian theological discussions. Such theological approaches have their own arguments and conclusions. Many of these approaches struggle to discern the real and complex realities in India and explain the significance of Christian revelation in such a cultural context. Dramatic theology can assist in discerning them and in explaining the relevance of Christianity in India.

4.1. Collective Social Identity and Victimage Mechanisms

First of all, in the light of dramatic theology, we can discern that behind the all-encompassing nature and the collective identity in Indian culture, there can exist victimage mechanisms. Even though mimetic theory did not directly speak about the existence of the body of the victim, behind the concept of the social body, the study of dramatic theology conducted by Stefan Huber (2007) explains this concept well. According to him, the perception of the body of the order-creating victim determines the code of concepts of physical and social corporeality (Huber 2007, p. 101). He says that it is not just the body of the foundation victim that strengthens the image of the social body, but that other factors connected to sacrifice and social institutions in the development of society replace the body of the primary victim over the course of time. For him, there always exists the image of the body in the structure of the social body (ibid.). In the process of social formation, the concept of the social body in the sense of the human body remains an invisible and abstract body. It is not touchable, experiential, or concrete, but it functions as a mighty and powerful body in disguise.

Based on this argument by Stefan Huber, we can say that the concept of the all-encompassing social body of India arises from the primordial victim and sacrificial rituals. In Indian culture, beginning from the story of Prajapati, there are many indications and much evidence of human sacrifice in different parts of India. Brian Collins (2014) explains different studies conducted on the subject of human sacrifice in India.17 He explains the Vedic mythology of Prajapati and Purusa in connection with mimetic theory and says: “In Girard’s reading, Prajapati, the scapegoat, and Purusa, the sacrifice, must be the same figure. He argues that we must see the myth of Prajapati’s incest and the sacrifice of Purusa as the same story told in two different ways” (Collins 2014, p. 75). He also mentions the prescriptions of the Aswamedha (horse sacrifice) and Purusamedha (human sacrifice) in Indian classical literature (ibid., pp. 39–40).

Moreover, with the help of mimetic theory, we can also understand the process of the development of the social body through the establishment of the prohibitions, laws, caste hierarchies, religious rituals, and social institutions that constitute Indian culture. Girard points out that the prohibitions and the laws in any culture emerge from the fear of violence and resulting murder (Girard 1987, p. 93). According to him, different cultural elements such as taboos, prohibitions against incest, consanguinity, and laws regarding the social institutions of marriage, family, and social stratification are different forms of concealed violence (Girard 1977, pp. 193–222). Such factors and social institutions play important roles in maintaining the collective identity of a caste or tribe or other ethnic groups in Indian culture.

We can also understand the eternal law of dharma in the light of dramatic theology. Dharma is the concept of abstract transcendent order developed in Indian culture to incorporate contradictions. After analyzing the exclusive phenomenon of an ‘axial breakthrough’18 that happened in Indian culture in the process of the formation of the social body, Heersterman says that dharma became the eternal law, which “posited the ideal of an absolute transcendent order that is, as a matter of principle, incapable of worldly realization” (Heesterman 1985, p. 157). He says: “The ensuing problem of power and authority is as insoluble as it is universal. Indian tradition, instead of trying to solve the problem, acknowledges its insolubility. Notwithstanding the deficiencies of the compromises, it requires in day-to-day practice, recognition of the dichotomy may still be the most efficacious way to deal with the problem” (ibid., p. 157). As a universal rule, dharma withdraws from society and resides only in individuals. But there are no criteria for all individuals according to which right and wrong can be decided. Every act of the individual is accepted as part of dharma if it is accepted by his own caste and status.

4.2. Cyclical Incarnation of Gods

There are different myths and legends regarding the origin and number of gods in Indian culture. Many Vedic hymns explain that gods are incarnated for the cyclical elimination of evil and the creation of order in Indian myths. It is this cyclical period of destruction and creation that is called Yuga in Indian traditions.19 Yuga is a specific period that starts with an order, develops into chaos, and ends with the elimination of evil through the incarnation of gods. In every Yuga, there are incarnations of God. We can understand this from the meaning of the famous sloka (small poems) in the Bhagavat Gita. Lord Krishna gives Arjuna the following instruction:

“Yada yada hi dharmasya glanirbhavati bharata

Abhyuthanamadharmasya tadatmanam srijamyaham.

Paritranaya sadhunang vinasaya cha dushkritam

Dharmasangsthapanarthay sambhavami yuge yuge”

(Bhagavad Gita 4: 7, 8)

This means, “whenever righteousness suffers decline, and unrighteousness is rampant, then I manifest myself personally. For the protection of the virtuous, the destruction of evildoers, and for re-establishing Dharma, I appear, from millennium to millennium.” (Srinivasan 2004). When we study this sloka in the light of dramatic theology, we find that it is about the incarnation of the gods cyclically in such a situation, in a society where social order is disrupted (but the reason for the disorder is not mentioned), and the establishment of righteousness or order. These Yugas are nothing but mimetic cycles which start with mimetic contagion and end with establishing peace and order in a community. This means the killing of the victim and the establishment of order can be seen as moments of the creation of new gods who are considered incarnations of Krishna. According to P. Thomas, the number of such incarnations in Hindu culture is thirty-three million and three (Thomas 1950, p. 8)20 and among them, we also find many female goddesses. The cosmic law, or the transcendental rule, has come into being in accordance with this establishment of the cyclical order out of disorder.

Furthermore, when we look at the images of many Indian gods in this light, we can also notice a kind of double meaning in their divinity. According to mimetic theory, in archaic societies, the body of the victim was seen, at first, as the cause of the social crisis and was attacked with mimetic rage. The body of the victim, with its monstrous appearance or physical peculiarities, was projected as devilish (Girard 1987, p. 120f; Girard 2001, p. 55). Sometimes, the body of the victim was disfigured by disease, and those parts of the body were seen as signals of danger. A deformity or other disorder of the body was seen as a monstrosity and was considered devilish (Stefan Huber 2007, p. 104; Girard 1978, p. 116f). According to Girard, such traits in the victims were one of the reasons they were considered a social nuisance. They were marked as destructors of social order or harmony and therefore eliminated to establish social order. In this sense, these portraits of Indian gods might be seen as having been victims of collective violence once upon a time, based either on their physical disability and peculiarities or their ‘foreignness’, and later, they were divinized.

4.3. Caste System and the Broken World of Sacrifice

Even though there are many theories regarding the origin of the caste system, dramatic theology can discern its origin in the following way. According to mimetic theory, there was a phase of the development of sacrificial rites into structural formation of the institution of kingship in the second type of society (Girard 1977, pp. 269–73). But in the development of the institution of sacrifice, Indian culture witnessed an attack on its very nature. According to Heesterman, the institution of sacrifice was on the brink of collapse for a time in Indian culture. This might be because of the heterodox movements of Buddhism and Jainism regarding the legitimacy of violent sacrifices, or other reasons. Heesterman noticed that there was a stage of renouncing worldly power by the surrogate victim in Indian Vedic tradition. The surrogate victim did not fully become a sacred king. The surrogate victim either renounced his kingship or his potentiality as a sacred king in India was thrown away (Heesterman 1985, p. 115f). According to Heesterman, all these instances of retirement to the forest explain the idea that one should renounce the world in times of distress, when overcome by old age, or when vanquished by an enemy. If we reflect in the light of mimetic theory, we find the same scapegoat mechanism in all these instances. The kings who failed to be kings in the right sense were the surrogate victims who performed sacrifices, on the one hand, but failed to act as sacred kings, on the other hand. Alternatively, they might be the victims who were thrown into the forest to establish peace and order in society. In both cases, they were the scapegoats who established order either through their presence or through their absence in society.

This method of escaping from the role of a king as a future victim, or continuing as a future victim outside society, might be the basis of the idea of renunciation in Indian culture. The renouncer has a more important role in Indian society than the king. Those who renounce worldly might and power—which is based on their role as a future victim, and at the same time continues as a surrogate victim—are ideal Brahmins in Indian tradition. This might be the reason for the superiority of the Brahmin emerging in India. According to Heesterman, this idea of renunciation is seen equally with ritual sacrifice (Heesterman 1985, p. 42f). He explains the writings of Manu, which say that the ideal Brahmin is the renouncer. According to Heesterman, the Uttarajjhaya of the Jaina canon also exhorts the Brahmins to perform true sacrifice, which is renouncing of their way of life to become a monk. The Buddhist Kutadanta Sutra also says that the highest sacrifice is adopting the way of life of a monk.

This method of renunciation helps the Brahmin to enter into a relationship with the world without losing his purity. Through this ideology of renunciation, the Brahmin continues to influence the world. Heesterman says: “Having emancipated himself from the world, the renouncer can from his sphere of independence re-enter into relation with the world, where he now enjoys unequalled prestige. Indeed, the renouncer can, and to the present day often does exert considerable influence on the sphere of worldly life. The secret of his ascendancy over life-in-the-world seems to lie in his impartiality” (ibid., p. 43). The Brahmin is ‘desacralized’ from his role as a future victim. The Brahmin continues, in the Indian tradition, to be the one who knows Vedic texts and the one who officiates sacrifices. But he lives no more as a victim. Heesterman says: “Thus the Brahmin is no longer the rival on whom death and impurity are devolved and who is entitled to a ‘revanche.’ In the classical ritual, we see him as a member of the Brahmin caste whose functional specialty is the liturgy” (ibid., p. 35). The concepts of evil and impurity no longer belong to the body of the Brahmin, and he wants to be away from impurity. Impurity is fixed at the lower levels of the hierarchy of persons. Impurity becomes a hereditary specialty. The Brahmin class is free from impurity. “Death and impurity having been ‘assimilated away,’ the ritual has become the domain of absolute purity. The Brahmin’s world is a pure world and consequently, his place in the hierarchy is the highest” (ibid.).

The kings and the warrior group, Khatrya, play the second role in the caste hierarchy. The classical Indian texts are unanimous in assigning the protection of the people and the maintenance of order in the world, or even the whole universe, to the king and this caste (ibid., p. 109). The king is exalted to be the World Order itself. He is the dharma incarnate and equal to ten wise men learned in the Vedas. Everything the king does is according to the dharma, and thus, we have the phrase ‘rajadharma’, which means the law of the king. “The king is generally said to be made up of parts of gods. Even an infant king is not to be disregarded, ‘for he is a great deity in human form’” (ibid., p. 110). The king’s life is fully connected with sacrifice. His activity is often equated with life-long sacrifice. According to the Rig Veda, the king is the primordial celebrant of any sacrifice and the principal celebrant in great festivals. Royal rituals show the complete picture of the king’s function as a sacrificer. In this sense, the king is primarily a religious figure and his power of punishment is not a purely secular one. When he inflicts punishment, he equally fulfils his priestly function of purifying the evildoer (ibid.).

However, unlike in other cultures, such as the African tribal kings or the trickster in North America (Girard 2006, pp. 368–72; Huber 2007, p. 111), the power of the king or Khatrya in Indian tradition was concentrated only on worldly order, whereas spiritual and transcendent order was maintained by the activities of the Brahmins. The king could give only protection and justice to the people. But he, himself, was led in all other matters by the Brahmins (Heesterman 1985, p. 116). He had only a feeble grasp of dharma. He had little authority over the Brahmins. He must promise to exempt Brahmins from all punishments. Heesterman observes that in this way, the arbitrariness of the king was replaced by the absolutism of the Brahmin. Although the king was a sacrificer, it was not the sacrifice that gave him power. Since he possessed evil in him, his power was second to the power of the Brahmin. He participated in the evil of the world. That is why he needed to perform unending cycles of sacrifices.

Consequently, there are two worlds, those of the Brahmin and the king, that are contradictory but dependent on each other: the sacred and the secular. One is the realm of the transcendent and the other is the realm of conflicting relationships, which is the world. These two worlds, which are contradictory but mutually dependent, are very clear in Indian social contexts. Heesterman points out that this opposition is also reflected in the opposition between the settled agricultural community (grama) and the alien outside the sphere of the jungle (aranya) (ibid., p. 118). A settled community in a village is seen as a place of worldly relationships, which are tempted by conflicts, and the jungle is considered a place of mysterious order and transcendence. Those who live in the world and engage in worldly affairs, such as Vaishya and Sudra, are always inclined to pollute and are at the lower levels of the caste hierarchy.

The settled community and the jungle-dwellers guard themselves against dangers from other parties, and at the same time, they are complementary. The forest is also the place of their final refuge. At the same time, the village is the source of agricultural products, cattle, and other products of treasures, as well as military protection for the tribal inhabitants of the jungle. Both the village and the jungle thereby represent two worlds keeping their identities by carrying their contradictory and complementary roles. “Their constant latent or open conflict does not militate against their complementarity, but on the contrary, bears out its importance” (ibid.). Parallel to these two worlds, secular and sacred, we can also observe that the village system and the caste system are two simultaneous forms of social order in Indian society. According to Heesterman, the concept of villages as ‘little republics’ expresses the real heart of India and was officially recognized by English administrators. Villages in India are places where both castes and factors of peasant life meet together to form order.

4.4. Challenging Role of Christianity in India

After seeing the complexities of Indian culture, in the light of dramatic theology, we try to see the role of Christianity in India. In such a society, which has an all-encompassing nature, stratified and ruled by the hierarchy of castes, the personalities and individuality of human beings are periled by collective interests. Dramatic theology finds uniqueness in the ministry of Jesus and Christianity, which considers every individual as a valuable person despite their bodily differences, purity, health, or social status.

In his public ministry, Jesus does not consider the individual human person as part of a collectivity. He gives importance to individuals rather than to collectivity. It is not collective existence but individual existence that is important for Jesus. He allows no-one to make anybody a scapegoat for the sake of collectivity based on any physical deficiency or based on social status. In the eyes of Jesus, every person he encounters is a son or daughter of God and is worthy of being respected and integrated into the community. Jesus does not consider bodily deficiency or sickness as something which is to be seen as ‘impure’ or ‘untouchable’, but accepts and respects the dignity of each individual. He never categorizes individuals as men or women, children or grown-ups, rich or poor, just or sinful, priests or laymen, or educated or ignorant. He considers everyone to be a child of God who is to be loved and to be accepted.

Moreover, according to dramatic theological understanding, the healing and delivering works of Jesus in the first act show that God is not the one who is estranged from the material world and the suffering of human beings. This means there is no gulf between the secular and the holy in the love of God the Father. In this sense, if we relate this vision about a loving God who engages in the materiality and concreteness of human existence, we find that this vision is against the traditional Indian view of an abstract transcendence which is distinct from the secular world that succumbs to mimetic conflicts and the victimage mechanism. Such a vision of the divine is also against the Indian indifference towards human suffering. In this sense, every instance of humanitarian or charity work of Christianity in India is a concrete engagement of the love of God in the material world. Such activities are not to be seen as mere social work or charity work, but are concrete works of the love of God in the world. This means Christianity in India is not a religion that dwells in and deals only with supernatural, transcendental, and abstract things. But, as the pastoral constitution of the Vatican II, Gaudium et Spes, says: “The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ” (Gaudium et Spes 1).

If we look at the situation of Christianity in India in the light of the context of rejection in the second act, we find similar rejection of the invitation of Jesus by Indian culture. This rejection was either the absorption of Christianity in the all-encompassing culture or the rejection of it as a ‘foreign religion.’ Consequently, Christianity either eclipses its identity or suffers persecution and suffering. In such a context, according to dramatic theology, the strategy of confrontation must be appropriate to the Christian values. It should be similar to that of Jesus, which also fosters methods of invitation to personal conversion and integration. It should be such that it can be used against the powers and systems of darkness, but should not be directed against human beings. Christianity must avoid strategies of confrontation such as accepting and adapting all cultural elements and customs without any discretion, on the one hand, and mass demonstrations, violent methods, discrimination, and elimination on the other hand.

Reflecting on the events in the third act, dramatic theology can say that even in his violent death, Jesus did not show any sign of anger or violence in his body. Instead, he forgave every one of his persecutors and prayed for them on the cross. Jesus realized the meaning of his suffering and the oppressive mechanism behind his torture. Jesus rose up from the spiral of mimetic desire and its aftermath of suffering and conflict and thereby transformed it into new life, so he could stop the language of oppression in himself without spreading it to anybody else (Niewiadomski 2005, p. 495). He did not resort to the language of violence; instead, he transformed it. Thus, Jesus silenced his opponents and transformed the suffering into self-sacrifice. This bold decision of Jesus to be loyal to his message of unconditional and forgiving love, and to give his life for many at a time of violent persecution, gave courage and strength to martyrs throughout time to hold onto their faith and their Christian identity and to give up their lives. Such loyalty to the basic message of Christ is expected from Indian Christianity, without being absorbed by or molded according to the sacrificial logic of Indian culture. This aspect of the suffering of Jesus must be shown by Christians in India, especially in its attitude towards caste discrimination and other unholy actions.

When we look at the role of Christianity in India in the light of narrations in the fourth act of the Drama of Salvation, we can also find certain significant things. First of all, we can see that the divinity of Jesus is different from that of the gods of Indian culture. The peace-greeting and the message of God the Father’s forgiving love challenge Christianity in India to proclaim that God is not a violent God who violently punishes the mistakes of human beings. Thus, this peace-greeting of the resurrected Jesus is a counter-call against the sloga of the Bhagavat Gita (4: 7, 8) which we have seen before. This says that God incarnates from millennium to millennium for the protection of the virtuous and the destruction of evildoers. According to this sloga of the Bhagavat Gita, gods incarnate to establish peace and order by removing disorder and evildoers. It is against such an attitude that the peace-greeting of the resurrected Jesus expresses God’s forgiving love to all humans, both the virtuous and evildoers. God the Father is not a violent God who excludes evildoers but the One who includes everyone, even by allowing His only Son to be killed by evildoers.

Secondly, the resurrection of Jesus brought hope to the disciples who felt guilt and fear, Christianity in India must be an agent of hope to the people of India who suffer from the theory of karma. As we have seen before, many poor and low-caste people in India only live under inhuman conditions because of the theory of karma. In contrast to this theory, the message of the resurrection challenges inhuman disparities in Indian culture and gives courage to everybody to confront them even in the midst of suffering and persecution. The message of the resurrection explains that God is the One who suffers and dies with humans and transforms them in the resurrection. Christians in India should reveal the victimizing mechanism behind this theory of karma and invite people to come out of it and form a counter-community based on the concept of the equal dignity of human beings.

In the light of the dramatic scenes in the fifth act, Christianity should be a counter-community in India. To understand the uniqueness of this counter-community, it is necessary for us to understand the uniqueness of the Holy Spirit, who is the main agent in the formation of the new gathering in the final act. Otherwise, we may easily find similarities between the works of the Holy Spirit and the works of the dark forces of sacrificial logic, and thus, also between any other social body and Christianity, or we may fail to understand the uniqueness of Christianity compared to any other world religion. We read in the first letter of John: “My dear friends, not every spirit is to be trusted but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets are at large in the world. This is the proof of the spirit of God: any spirit which acknowledges Jesus Christ come in human nature is from God and no spirit which fails to acknowledge Jesus is from God; it is the spirit of Antichrist…” (1 John 4: 1–3). Therefore, dramatic theology affirms that the Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity, who is active in the human body of Jesus in all the dramatic scenes in his life and who is active in the community during Pentecost. According to Schwager, the Holy Spirit is the “reciprocal love” between the Father and the Son (Schwager 1999, p. 215). That is why the Holy Spirit guides every dramatic situation in Jesus’ life, to fulfill his mission of gathering the new community according to the will of the Father.

The Holy Spirit is the spirit of freedom, with whom Jesus lived his freedom through and beyond his suffering on the cross by surrendering his whole being to the Father. As the central character in the Drama of Salvation, with the freedom to choose, Jesus chose and fulfilled the will of God. This is the same freedom of Jesus that the disciples experienced during the Pentecostal experience of the Spirit. They were inwardly grasped and liberated from compulsions and fears in their very being, and became capable of going out and witnessing openly (ibid., p. 213.). Additionally, the celebration of the Lord’s Supper in the post-Pentecostal Church was the fundamental occasion in which they experienced their inner freedom and a new type of relationship which was given by the Holy Spirit. Their gathering around the Eucharistic table was a unique occasion in which they participated in the death of Jesus on the cross, on the one hand, and in the new relationship, on the other hand. They experienced the difference between a Eucharistic gathering and other sacrificial-meal gatherings. They experienced the Eucharist as the unique institutional factor of their new relationship and of their new gathering. For them, the Eucharist was the constitutive element of the counter-community, all of the characteristics of which were different from those of any other worldly society.

If we look at the Indian context in this regard, we can say that the Eucharistic communities in different parts of India can be the basic counter-communities against the caste-bound and inhuman societies in India. Christian communities in the form of Eucharistic communities in every corner of the body of India can work as signs of the integrating and forgiving love of God, who unconditionally loves every individual. Whereas the body of India discriminates against and eliminates individuals through social institutions based on caste, gender, wealth, religion, language, and culture, Eucharistic communities can include and integrate every individual. In contrast to the concept of the nationalist groups about the body of India, in which individuals are cells of a collective body, every individual is valuable and possesses dignity as a human person in Eucharistic communities. In addition, whereas the body of India functions according to abstract, transcendental concepts, the Eucharistic community functions according to concrete and physical interactions of the members whose suffering and joy are considered as their own.

5. Conclusions

As we have seen the concrete cultural reality and the role of Christianity in India, as an example of a pluralistic world, we can reasonably assume that such scapegoat mechanisms and victimization of individuals and minority groups are behind every culture in the world. The weak and the powerless are marginalized and victimized by society at all times and in every culture according to the decisions and policies of the collective whole. The suffering and cries of the downtrodden are neglected, and theories and “theologies of the powerful” become popular and fashionable in world culture. Christianity is also associated with the cultures and systems of the whole world through the process of acculturation, through the amalgamation of different cultures, and through political influences throughout the centuries. Many worldly cultures crept into the lives of Christians and the gospel values and truths were outmoded or watered down. As we mentioned in the introduction, there are many theological attempts to inculturate Jesus and Christian teachings and try to project Him as one among many incarnations. Tendencies towards developing theologies of comparative religions on the basis of the concepts of “mysticisms” of other religions began to emerge. There are also studies regarding mimetic theory and world religions (Palaver and Schenk 2018), where the authors try to compare the kenotic death of Jesus with the concept of the mysticism of other religions.

It is in such a pluralistic and complex world, and in a synchronizing theological atmosphere, that dramatic theology, as a hermeneutical methodology, evaluates and brings forward the concealed truths behind cultures throughout time and presents the uniqueness of the Christian revelation. Even though there has arisen criticism against dramatic theology describing it as an exclusivist method, it presents the uniqueness of God, not as one who is estranged from the material world and the suffering of human beings and as a transcendent reality, but as one who engages in the materiality and concreteness of human existence. It explains the ministry of historical Jesus as a necessary scapegoat and the Christ event as a one-time and unique occurrence in human history. It helps us to have an overall view of the trans-cultural uniqueness of the Christ event in human history. It affirms the basic anthropological characteristics of human beings in every culture and time and the unequal significance of the Christian revelation for all human beings, irrespective of culture and history.