One
and the Many: Looking at the Question of Religious Pluralism in India from a
Materialist Philosophical/ Theological Perspective
There
is a Vedic aphorism in India: “Truth is one, sages call it by many names.” This aphorism has been used to denote the
religious/ cultural tolerance in India. The Vedic theologies/ philosophies like
Advaita (non-dualism) hinge on the
logic of One, of course, which is not the totalitarian One. The Advaitic logic of One, according to its
theologians and philosophers, is nothing but ‘all-inclusive mansion which has
many rooms within.’ For them, this Oneness is to be explained in terms of its
depth and abyss, mystery and negativity; but not in terms of the numerical
logic of One.[i] Indian Christian theologians who appropriated
the Vedic philosophy/ theology, found it as the epistemological habitation for
the Christian doctrine of trinity-the logic of accommodating many in to One. As efforts to interact with ‘the other’ religious
and philosophical traditions in India and to make Christian theology contextual
and ‘indigenous’, these theological inventions are to be validated and
acknowledged. At the same time, the absence of the
dialogical engagement with the materialistic philosophical traditions makes us inquisitive
and on the other hand, invokes us to listen more carefully to the theologies
from the margins that posed sharp criticisms to the transcendental logic of the
Vedic theologies in Indian Christian Theology.
It may be true that the
materialistic philosophical traditions like Carvaka/
Lokayata and the counter-Vedic religious traditions like Buddhism and
Jainism might not have made a visible effect in the Indian theological/
philosophical academy. At the same time, those interrogations to the
transcendentalist, all embracing, and accommodative politics of the Vedic
epistemologies and the subsequent legitimizations of the ‘unitary social
orders’ are still validated in the political/ theological aspirations of the marginalized
sections in the contemporary post-modern/ post-colonial India. For example, we
have to ask certain questions like how do we address the Ambedkarite political
philosophy that vehemently challenges the Vedic logic of One that pretends to
be all inclusive and plural? How does he appropriate the materialist religious/
philosophical traditions in India to augment the political becoming of the
marginalized in Indian democracy? What
would be our response to Ambedkar’s re-definition of religion as an ethico-political
practice (Dhamma) that denies any kind of notions of a Transcendent Big Other
who legitimizes the theo-logic of a ‘unitary social order’ from ‘beyond’? Setting it in this wider spectrum, this paper tries
to address the question of religious pluralism as it is attended by the Vedic
and non-Vedic religious traditions in India and tries to formulate a
theological response to the problem of ‘one and the many’ from the materialistic
philosophical traditions in India. It analyzes how the early materialistic philosophical
traditions like Lokayata addressed the
question of plurality differently and how it has been appropriated in the
(post) modern and the (post) colonial Indian context by Ambedkar in order to
re-define the notions of God, human freedom, and religion. By addressing the problem of ‘one and the
many,’ this study proposes a materialist philosophical/ theological response to
the problem of religious pluralism in India.
Abstract
Published in NCC Review, September 2014 issue.
Rev. Dr. Y. T. Vinayaraj
[i] For a detailed study on
this point see, S. Wesley Ariarajah, “One and Many: The Struggle to Understand
Plurality within the Indian Tradition and Its Implications for the Debate on
Religious Plurality Today” in Divine
Multiplicity: Trinities, Diversities, and the Nature of Relation, edited by
Chris Boesel & S. Wesley Ariarajah (New York: Fordham University Press,
2014), 106-118.
