Thankfully God gave me my identity in birth. But god never created this identity as if He created the rest of the things in this universe. My present identity as an Indian or Hindu and then Hindu bhakta of Bhagavan Muktinath are created by the need of the society. Or, as I said in one article, ‘We are what we are because of what our society has made us. Our society is what it is because of what we make it. The main force behind this making and re-making is the search for IDENTITY.’1 India is not Hindu, Hindu is not religious identity etc. is true. We don’t have an Indian identity as a nation and Hindu identity as religion in our text and tradition, but it is there in our Constitution, law, (legal) and records and above all in our relationship with ‘others’. Even the caste identity by birth was ‘created’ by us however we have this system in our tradition from time in memorial. And when I came to this world, my identity was not merely ‘human’ but what we created and accepted with all its flaws and limitation. But unlike animals, I am not eternally bound by this man made identity alone. Being created in His Image, god allows me to work out my identity with new categories, and in my case, as Hindu bhakta of Bhagavan Muktinath. Of course ‘others’ are not going to accept it easily and immediately. But as I said in Living Water and Indian Bowl, it will take time for others to recognize this identity. We may not be here to see that recognition in the future. Anyhow, we sowed the seed, and it will give its own fruit in its own course like any other human thought:
Ours is a struggle for existence. As we have pointed out, every system started somewhere only at a small level and it took several hundred years to get recognition. Similarly our claim as ‘bhaktas of Muktinath and still Hindus’ may take several hundred years to get proper recognition both in India and elsewhere. Unlike others, we have to struggle on both ends – with Christians on one side and Hindus on the other. Now this struggle becomes more complicated because of the fight between the ‘fundamentalists’ and ‘pseudo-secularists’ to achieve their political ends. But conviction is not a small affair and one has to count the cost that must be paid for it. So learning from their experiences, all of the bhaktas of Muktinath in India should persevere with much patience, and accepting all the criticisms from every corner must be prepared to pay the cost for following Him as Hindus.2
God prepares a person to receive His grace within the background in which they were born and brought up. That person, in their encounter with god, can understand Him from that “point of view.” In that particular encounter, god doesn’t reveal His whole counsel or will for them. Though that person, in the process of their personal growth in the knowledge of god, may know
various theological aspects of her faith based on some concrete doctrinal statements, yet in her personal relationship with god as well as in sharing her faith with others, she will always stand on that first encounter with god–because that was her personal experience (e.g. through miracle, healing, fear of death, conviction of sin etc.). And this personal experience as bhakti will grow when we further engage dialogue in practical life and not mere intellectual understanding of our bhakti based on Scripture(s)
And this Living Dialogue is just a process of preparing the soil to sow the seed in every birth community in this beloved country of India. Thankfully this principle can, like the gospel, be incarnate anywhere in the world. And if this ‘brain storm’ in the name of LIVING DIALOGUE will help people to engage in a dialogue beginning from them first, then it will continue to remain as a LIVING DIALOGUE among people rather than frozen as a book.
Notes
- My Culture and My Identity. See the blog for this article
- Dayanand Bharati, Living Water and Indian Bowl, Delhi, ISPCK, (1997), 2001, p 169. I changed the words ‘Yesu, Christ and Jesus’ as Muktinath in this quote.