October 2007: Southern India
I went to southern India during our vacation for the Muslim feast of Eid al-Fitr at the end of Ramadan. My host and organizer for this trip was Vincent Sekhar, S.J., whom I had met in spring 2007 when he was a fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center on Georgetown University’s main campus in Washington, DC. He arranged for me to visit a number of Jesuit communities and to speak to a variety of educational institutions in the area. Vincent has written a book on interreligious relations amid the tensions with Hindu nationalists and the importance of maintaining the secular constitution of India: Building Strong Neighborhoods: Religion and Politics in Secular India (Bangalore, India: Claretian Publications, 2008). Earlier in the fall of 2007, I had read the manuscript and had written a brief description and appreciation, which appears with the introductory materials of the book. Without my knowing, Vincent had earlier taken a number of passages from my book, Revelation, the Religions, and Violence, and included them in an anthology of texts he edited about interreligious dialogue that was published in India (Vincent Sekhar, S.J., ed. Quest for Harmony: An Anthology of Religions in Dialogue. Malleswaram, Bangalore: Claretian Publications, 2002).

I landed in Chennai (formerly Madras) in the pre-dawn darkness of a Thursday morning in October 2007 and was greeted by Basqar, a young man who works at the Institute for the Dialogue of Cultures and Religions at Loyola College, Chennai, and who would be my initial guide to the area. Already at 4:30 AM, crowds of men hovered outside the airport terminal, with no purpose that was obvious to me. When I arrived at Loyola College, Chennai, Michael Amaladoss, S.J., one of the leading Catholic theologians in Asia, was up to welcome me. Later in the day I had a most enlightening conversation with him on issues of inculturation in Indian theology (“Why should I have to be a neo-Platonist?” he asked rhetorically at one point). We also discussed the religious/political scene in India, the tensions with Hindu nationalists, their waning power, as well as dialogues with Hindus and Muslims. He told me that the struggle with militant Sikhs has ended, as the Sikhs abandoned the struggle for an independent homeland. Amal (as he is known) gave me a tour of the Institute for the Dialogue of Cultures and Religions, whose library has copies of many original unpublished documents of Roberto de Nobili, S.J. (1577-1656), a missioner who entered deeply into Hindu thought and spirituality in an attempt to present a face of Catholicism that Indians could appreciate and accept. That evening I gave a talk on religiously motivated violence in the Abrahamic traditions to the teachers at the Institute for the Dialogue of Cultures and Religions, which Amal directs. Afterwards, there was a lively discussion, which continued into the reception that followed.

The following day I traveled around Chennai and was struck by the pollution, the garbage in the streets, the poverty of the dwellings, the people walking in the streets, men driving bulls pulling items on a platform behind, and a cow ambling along an overpass over a major thoroughfare with no obvious owner in sight. Later I was told that some families donate cows to a temple, which then allows the cow to wander freely wherever it wills. Alongside the cars, buses and trucks were bulls drawing carts and men riding tricycles with platforms carrying goods. There are also countless “rickshaws” weaving in and out of traffic. The current descendant of the original rickshaw is a motorized three-wheel vehicle, with the drive in front at handlebars like a motorcycle’s. The passengers sit behind. Since there is no side door or window, passengers are immersed in the flow of traffic much more intimately than in an air-conditioned car. On my first entry into one, I felt like I was getting into a ride at an amusement park. After reading about the rapid economic development of India, I was expecting an urban scene closer to what I had seen in the modern cities of China, but Chennai was not what I expected the new India to be.

We visited the co-Cathedral of Saint Mary, which houses a shrine to Saint Antony of Padua. Over coffee with a Salesian priest who had studied at Fordham University and lived in Yonkers (I taught at Fordham while living in Yonkers for six years—small world!), I learned that each Tuesday about 10,000 people come to pray to Saint Antony, not only Catholics but Muslims and Hindus as well. On the first Tuesday of the month about 15,000 people come to pray. Many healings are reported through his intercession.

I later met Felix Wilfred, a diocesan priest who teaches at the historic University of Madras (one of the three oldest universities in India, founded by the British in 1857) and who is another leading Asian theologian. He gave me three of his books. During my travels I read two of them, Dalith Empowerment (Delhi, India: ISPCK, 2007) and The Sling of Utopia: Struggles for a Different Society (Delhi, India: ISPCK, 2005--also about the Daliths, formerly called the untouchables or the outcastes or non-scheduled castes). Sadly, the condition of most Daliths has not improved despite government efforts. Globalization, while it does allow a few Daliths to move into better positions, does not end the social discrimination against them and often reduces poor Daliths (who are often landless day-laborers) to even worse conditions than before. Even the Catholic Church in India suffers from continuing discrimination against this group, an issue that Pope John Paul II had raised in his discussion with Indian bishops during their ad limina visit to Rome some years ago. Felix asked me to speak about religion and politics in the United States, with particular attention to the evangelical Christian right. The audience consisted of students in their graduate program in theology, including priests and sisters. There was much interest in U.S. foreign policy, including the reasons for invading Iraq.

Afterwards, I visited the church that is venerated as the place where Saint Thomas the Apostle was buried, and then I had lunch at the Jesuit Regional Seminary and received a tour of their facilities. The faculty members there are also very interested in the inculturation of Christianity in Asia, and their chapel was one of the first to experiment with Indian forms: instead of pews or chairs, there are cushions for worshippers to sit upon. Jesus is portrayed teaching in a seated position, as is customary for religious leaders in Asia. Then I went to a popular shrine to Mary near the beach and also to the mount where Saint Thomas was reputed to have been martyred. The hill features a beautiful view overlooking the city and the sea. That evening Stanislaus, a friend of Vincent’s who teaches sociology at Loyola College, came to greet me. We chatted for a while and then went to visit the nearby Saint Antony’s Pastoral Center, especially Asha Nivas, a home and school for orphaned girls. When we arrived, the girls were finishing their evening prayers. After welcoming us, they eagerly performed dances. A group of middle-school girls danced very expertly, followed by some younger girls who were not quite as well coordinated. Finally, a young woman did a beautiful and elegant solo classical Indian dance. They asked me to say a few words, so I improvised a bit and closed by giving them a blessing. Stanislaus then welcomed me into his nearby home and introduced me to his family.

Vincent Sekhar (pronounced “Shaker”) arrived the next morning. We visited the Ramakrishna Ashram, a Catholic church of Saint Mary built in 1519, and also a Hindu temple dedicated to Shiva and his consort. That evening we had a lovely dinner with Stanislaus and his family. His son Sam eagerly showed me photos of his various events, including First Communion and Confirmation in the same year, and a school skit in which he acted the part of a Hindu god.

Vincent and I took the overnight train from Chennai to Koichi in the state of Kerala, where we stayed at a Jesuit house of prayer and home for writers. The lush green vegetation in the courtyard created an atmosphere a world away from the dirt and garbage of the city streets outside. We visited the Koichi Hill Palace, formerly the residence of the Maharaja of Cochin in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was an image of faded glory—elegant in its day but in serious need of attention and renovation. A lovely terraced garden filled the hill in front of the palace. Amid the portraits of the various Maharajas and their attendants was a photograph of Rudyard Kipling. I wondered to what degree the Maharajas accepted the ideology of the British Empire that Kipling portrayed.

We then went to the neighborhood still called “Jew-town” and visited a synagogue built in 1568 by Jews who came to India fleeing persecution in Catholic Spain. They found a warm welcome and lived in peace and tolerance for many centuries. After the foundation of the modern state of Israel, most of the religious Jewish community decided to move there, where Jewish Sabbaths and holidays would be officially respected and celebrated. They left behind a plaque honoring the hospitality of the Indians and explaining their reasons for leaving. An elderly Jewish man was giving a tour, which we were able to listen to for a while. He said it was not certain when the first Jews came to Kerala, but he thought it was about the fifth or sixth century C.E. The synagogue featured a multitude of glass lights. I thought of them as images of the vessels of light so prominent in the mystical theology of Isaac Luria, a sixteenth-century Jewish writer who explained creation as proceeding first into vessels of light (“Let there be light”). The vessels could not contain the divine radiance and broke. The fragments came to form the broken world of exile and sorrow in which we now live; by observing the mitzvoth, the divine commandments, Jews are called to contribute to healing a broken world.

That afternoon, Fr. Raja, a Cottolengo priest of the Community of Divine Providence, came to greet us. He is director of his community’s college-level seminary, which is thirteen years old and has eight students. Together with him we visited the church of Our Lady of Ransom, with large outdoor images of the mysteries of the rosary housed in broken off tree trunks. We took a boat ride through the harbor, seeing navy vessels as well as the burgeoning skyline of rising condos, new restaurants and consumer goods shops. Many people are flocking to Kerala, and much new construction is underway. Meanwhile, many Keralans go to the Persian Gulf region to work for higher pay; some then return and build elegant retirement homes, known as “Gulf homes.”

The next morning Raja picked us up and took us to his seminary for a tour and breakfast. It is a bright, white-walled facility with an elegant brown roof and plenty of space to grow. Vocations in Kerala have been quite strong historically; but now with economic development, families are having fewer children and often are reluctant to have a child enter the priesthood or religious life, which would mean they would not have grandchildren through that child. After breakfast we visited the church at the spot where Saint Thomas the Apostle is reported to have landed, and later saw one of the churches that he is reported to have founded. When we arrived at the Cathedral of the local diocese, there was a student band practicing their music and steps. I thanked Raja for having arranged such a special welcome for me! At a nearby Hindu Temple that we visited, a man came over to Vincent and presented to him an offering of food, which we then shared.

That afternoon, we visited the Syrian seminary in Kaladi; and after sampling Indian beer in one of the nicer hotels, they left me at the Sameeksha Ashram, which is next to the Jesuit Regional Theology Center in Kaladi, also in the state of Kerala. Both the ashram and the seminary are surrounded by vegetation, again shutting out any hint of the urban area outside. I was startled to learn that my book, The Buddha and the Christ, was in their relatively small seminary library; and a student came forth and asked me about my ”time in the ashram,” referring to my description of my stay in a Buddhist monastery, Wat Rempoeng, near Chiang Mai, Thailand, which is at the beginning of my book. I was surprised to learn that a seminary student in southern India was familiar with my work.

That evening I began a lecture on interreligious encounter and dialogue in North America amid a heavy monsoon rain outside. After a while, the power went out, and they brought a battery-powered lamp so I could see my notes. I tried to out-shout the monsoon, speaking into the surrounding darkness. It was an archetypal experience. When an airplane took off from the nearby Cochin Airport, I paused, sensing the futility of trying to compete with two other sources of sound. The dean of the seminary, P.T. Mathew, S.J., then invited the people to move their chairs closer to me, and they brought a battery-powered microphone, which saved my voice. By the time I finished, the lights had come back on, and I was able to see my interlocutors during the discussion that followed. Again, some were very interested in Christian evangelicals and their role in American life, culture, and politics today.

Mathew was most interested in Hindu-Catholic relations in the U.S. and the relative paucity of Hindu-Catholic relations compared with Catholic relations to other traditions. I told him of my own earlier experience as dean of the Ecclesiastical Faculty of Theology at the University of Saint Mary of the Lake, when I hosted a Hindu-Catholic dialogue. In conjunction with the dialogue, John Borelli, who was then associate director of the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, brought in a number of Hindu leaders and Catholic scholars of Hinduism. On the morning after the dialogue, we had a long discussion about the prospects of establishing a national level Hindu-Catholic dialogue in the U.S., but it never worked out.

After my lecture and the discussion at the ashram, I had a lively conversation with Mathew about many things Indian and American, touching upon religion and politics, inculturation, and Hindu-Catholic relations. At dinner I met Sebastian Painadath, S.J., the director of the Sameeksha Ashram, which is similar to Bede Griffith’s ashram at Shantivanam. I had mentioned Pascaline Coff, O.S.B., in my talk, and Sebastian told me that she had visited Sameeksha a short time earlier--another connection with a distant land! Sebastian also gave me a copy of his book, We Are Co-Pilgrims: Toward a Culture of Inter-religious Harmony (Delhi, India: ISPCK, 2006).

The next morning I joined the community for a celebration of the Syro-Malabar rite of the Eucharist, though I was advised that this was somewhat modified for use at the ashram and for the full experience I should go to a local parish. This is the rite of the Catholic Church that is prevalent in this part of India. After breakfast and a chat with Sebastian, I flew to Bangalore. The cab ride from the airport revealed to me the face of the new India. This was the high-tech India that I had been expecting to see. Bangalore is the Silicon Valley of India, with many modern buildings and very fast traffic, at least until you run into a traffic jam, where everything just sits for a while. There were no cows on the road, no bulls pulling carts, and no pedestrians walking amid traffic.

Once settled in the Jesuit residence, Ashirvad, I had lunch and asked for directions to the historical museum in the nearby park. I repeatedly asked for street names; but my instructor kept insisting, “You go to the Boarding Club, and then there is Koisy’s Restaurant, and then there is a slanting street to the left, and Saint Mark’s Cathedral is right there.” A bit bewildered, I set out intrepidly, and after walking a bit too far I eventually found the park and asked directions to the museum. Cubben’s Park is a little bit of nineteenth-century London set down in the middle of Bangalore, with all the Englishmen and women removed (as far as I could see, I was the only person of European descent in the park at all). As I walked through it, I observed the central axis and the graceful gazebo surrounded by a garden, flanked by winding side lanes. At the center, the elegant views of the High Court of Karnataka (the state in which Bangalore is located) and the museum on the other side reminded me of Victorian-era London. All the walkways were filled—on a Tuesday afternoon—with Indians and their children playing a variety of games.

The Karnataka Government Museum looked like it had not been modified since the British left India (the same could be said for the wing attachment, but it was built after the British left!). The first room featured various archeological fragments plus some prints of British victories and the British fortifications around Bangalore. The highlight of the museum for me was the room filled with Hindu sculpture—one glorious image after another. Upstairs was a room filled with miniatures of the Moghul dynasty in India. Many images were lovely, but to me not nearly as impressive as the Hindu sculptures.

Another building next door, the Venkatappa Art Gallery, housed the work of an early twentieth-century artist, Venkatappa. At the entry, there was a most impressive marble bust of Rabindranath Tagore and along one wall there were stunning bas-reliefs of images from Hindu mythology—e.g., Karna teaching the Pandava brothers archery (from the Hindu epic, the Mahabharata). Venkatappa also painted a marvelous scene of a moonrise, dominated by shades of blue, plus a lovely sunrise in orange tones. The room was a revelation to me. Afterward I visited the aquarium, the scene dominated by the shouts and shrieks of delighted, excited children racing about.

That evening Gladys, a friend of Vincent and a computer specialist, met me for dinner. To me, she also represents also the face of the new India. Her husband and two daughters live in Madurai, but there are very few IT jobs in Madurai, and so she has a professional computer job in Bangalore and visits her family twice a month. She is hoping to get a position in Chennai, where she would be able to move her family as well. In Bangalore, she lives in a hostel for single women. She asked me to pray for her and her family. She was most gracious. I asked her about Hindu-Catholic dialogue and learned that her husband is Hindu, and so this is an issue of the most personal importance for her.

The next morning Vincent arrived, back from checking on exams at his college near Madurai, where he serves as controller (and thus is responsible for the integrity of the final exam process). We went to Dharmaram College, run by the Congregation of Mary Immaculate. I gave two lectures, on religiously motivated violence in the Abrahamic traditions and on interreligious encounter and dialogue in North America. During the second talk, the lights again went out. They opened the curtains and the natural light was enough for me to see my notes. They had a battery-powered microphone already in place, and so I was able to continue without difficulty. Most of the questions were more on current events than on the topic of my talks. One student asked about global poverty as a form of violence; another asked about the execution of Saddam Hussein. The dean of theology, Paul Kachappilly, CMI, and the associate librarian, Joy Kakkanattu, CMI, were most gracious and interested in my work. That afternoon, Gladys took off from work and joined Vincent and me in a tour of Bangalore. We saw a most impressive temple of Shiva. There was mammoth statue of Shiva dominating the scene, as we walked through various tunnels and caves at the foot of the massive sculpture.

That night Vincent and I took the overnight train to Madurai. We then drove twenty-five kilometers to Arul Anandar College, run by the Jesuits amid the villages around Karumathur. Most of the students are from the villages and are the first generation in their family to go to college. Many would have no other realistic opportunity to obtain a college education. There are many frustrations in the adjustment process, but the prospect for transforming the lives of their families, as well as India is immense. The next morning Vincent gave me a tour of the campus, which houses 2,000 students, of whom about 400 are young women who live in hostels at a short distance from the campus. Many come from public high schools, which are not very strong at all; and thus a good number of the students have deficiencies. That afternoon we visited the Jesuit Technical College as well as their Community College in Madurai. The Technical College gives practical skills in mechanics and engineering to students, and the Community College helps with academic problems students who would otherwise not be able to go further in their education. We visited the Cathedral of Madurai, which is a little bit of northern French Gothic architecture dropped into southern India. French Jesuits came to India and left their style of church architecture both at Loyola College, Chennai, and in Madurai.

We then visited a Hindu shrine that is surrounded by a huge moat which would sometimes be filled with water. That evening it was dry, and cows were grazing peacefully. The rulers of the area used to go to the central area for afternoon outings, and the spot is still used for Hindu festivals. After seeing the branch of the Tamil Nadu High Court in Madurai, we entered the Hindu temple of Meenakshi, a consort of Shiva. The vast entryway was filled with religious shops amid towering columns—six or eight across. Security was tight. We had to pass through a metal detector, and there were military personnel all over, on watch for any possible terrorist attack. On a friendlier note, an elephant was on hand to greet people on behalf of Ganesh, the elephant-headed god of prosperity and a son of Shiva. From the covered area of the religious shops, we emerged into an open space above the Golden Lotus Pond. On one side were neon lights with images of Shiva and his consort Parvati, Ganesh and his brother Murgan. There was also a peacock symbolizing the dynamism of life. People lined up to enter the most sacred spaces, which were prohibited to me as a non-Hindu. We heard two different groups of musicians performing classical Indian music. There were sculptures on the tops of columns and bas-reliefs everywhere, reflecting tremendous fertility of the imagination. The temple was reportedly founded in the second or third century C.E. and reached its present mammoth extent in the twelfth century. Vincent Sekhar thinks it is the largest religious structure in Asia.

That evening we dined in the home of Vincent’s sister, brother-in-law, and niece, who were most gracious. In honor of a special guest, dinner was served on a large green banana leaf spread out over the table before me. Vincent’s sister and niece served the four seated men (Vincent’s brother-in-law, Vincent, Gilbert, who is also a Jesuit, and myself). Vincent’s niece in particular hovered above me, watching me eat and hastening to refill anything I had finished. There was an abundance of curry fish, plain fish, chicken with two different sauces, plus vegetables and potato chips. A tiny, delicious Indian country banana served as dessert. At one point the son and daughter-in-law of Vincent’s sister entered the room and also watched us eat. Meanwhile, the television was on, first with images of soccer games and then with a soap opera (apparently Indians love what we call soap operas—I explained the origin of the term to the family).

After the meal ended, Vincent’s family asked me to talk about my experiences of India. I recounted the various adventures of the week, and they were amazed that I could be so descriptive. Vincent told me that an Indian would say only that “It was nice,” and maybe a couple more sentences, and that would be the end. His family wanted to know all the details and asked many questions. It had been four years since they welcomed Gasper LoBiondo, S.J., the director of Georgetown’s Woodstock Theological Center; and they relished the opportunity to meet and feed another American priest After numerous photographs of us, Vincent’s brother-in-law asked me to bless their home. After I had done so, Vincent’s sister, niece, nephew, and the wife of his nephew pressed forward for individual blessings. At first I thought his sister wanted to kiss my hand, as women from Eastern Europe had done when I was in Chicago; I quickly realized that she wanted an individual blessing, which I willingly gave. When we arrived back at Arul Anandar, the power was out, but just as I was settling comfortably into my room with a battery-powered lamp, I was informed that the power was on again.

The next morning, I rode on the back of Vincent’s “two-wheeler” motorcycle to a nearby university, where we met with a professor of Sikh studies and a Jesuit confrere of Vincent’s who teaches Christian studies there. They have a doctoral program in comparative religious studies. The professor of Sikh studies told me that Hindu nationalists are trying to co-opt the Sikhs into the Hindu nationalist program but that the tactic is not working. Hindu nationalists had already tried this tactic with Jains and Buddhists as well, but with little success. We had lunch at the convent of Franciscan Sisters of Our Lady of the Angels. The senior sisters run a dispensary that gives medications to priests, religious, and villagers in the area. The younger sisters are candidates, some of whom study at Arul Anandar College.

After lunch we visited some of the local Hindu shrines in the villages. Most of the local villagers are from the traditional caste of thieves, a dishonorable, backward caste looked down upon by the forward castes. Often significant people from the local area became deified after their deaths and now function as gods. Traditionally, the rites have been led by local people selected from the village. Usually they have little formal training and imitate the ceremonies that they have witnessed. A priest at one temple came out to greet us, with an orange band around his hair and a white dhoti around his loins and an open chest. He told us the names of the various local gods in the shrine.

That evening I took the overnight train to Chennai. My faithful guide, Basqar, was there to meet me at the train station in Chennai. Later in the morning we went to a shopping area and then toured Saint George Fort, which includes Saint Mary’s Church (Anglican), opened in 1680. Elihu Yale, who gave his name to Yale University in Connecticut, was associated with Saint Mary’s, and there were various items of his on display. The museum of the fort features dress uniforms of the British military plus formal portraits of King George III, Lord Cornwallis (who moved to Madras/Chennai after losing the war for the American colonies to George Washington at Yorktown, VA), Queen Victoria, as well as numerous other colonial governors. Early the next morning I flew back to Doha.

Spring 2008: Kolkata and Delhi
I arrived in Kolkata (Calcutta) on a bright, sunlit morning in March, 2008, and was greeted at the airport by Shibani Gosh, a sister of my colleague and friend, Adhip Chaudhuri, professor of economics at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Doha, Qatar. They are both participants in the Ramakrishna Mission, which was founded by Ramakrishna’s disciple, Vivekenanda. As we drove to the center of Kolkata, Shibani spoke about the Ramakrishna movement and asked about my own experience: “How did you decide to become a priest?” As we entered the courtyard of the Institute of Culture of the Ramakrishna Mission in Gol Park, Kolkata, I was overwhelmed by the wonderful display of multi-colored flowers.

As a welcoming present, Shibani gave me a copy of The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (abridged ed.; Chennai, India: Sri Ramakirshna Math, 2002). Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa (1836-86) was a Hindu mystic who drew upon Christianity and Islam in his religious practice, and he taught an ecumenical, interreligious path of devotion. He repeatedly experienced samadhi, states of intense mystical concentration. The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna is a collection of conversations, encounters, and anecdotes recorded by Mahendranath Gupta. Ramakrishna inspired the young Vivekenanda (1863-1902), who assumed leadership of the movement after Ramakrishna’s death. Vivekenanda was the Indian representative to the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893, where he gained international acclaim for his eloquent presentation of Hinduism and his openness to other religious traditions. In 1897, Vivekenanda founded the Ramakrishna Mission, which operates schools and hospitals and provides disaster relief and other humanitarian services around the world.

After lunch that day, I met a Turkish Muslim colleague, Cetin Akkaye, a member of the international movement inspired by Fethullah Gülen (1941- ). Gülen is a Turkish Muslim leader who has long been a leader in interreligious relations, presenting an open, tolerant vision of Islam in friendly dialogue with other religions. At Georgetown University’s main campus in Washington, DC, we are in ongoing dialogue with his followers in the Rumi Forum. In both Kolkata and Delhi, members of the international Gülen movement were most gracious hosts to me.

That afternoon, Shibani, Cetan, and I went together to meet Swami Prabhananda, one of the highest leaders of the Ramakrishna Mission at their headquarters near Kolkata along the Ganges River. This is the place where Vivekananda lived his last years and died. There is a large, impressive temple to Ramakrishna, and also a museum in his honor. The grounds also include the rooms where Vivekananda lived, the temple on the site along the Ganges River where he was cremated, and also a shrine at the nearby location where a number of other disciples of Ramakrishna were cremated.

Swami Prabhananda was most gracious and spent almost an hour with us. We spoke of my own involvement in dialogues with Hindus in the U.S. and also of his activities. Cetin hoped to invite S. Prabhananda to an interreligious conference in Hyderabad later on, but he refrained, thinking that it would be a bit forward to present an invitation on a first visit. Shibani disagreed, saying that Cetin could have invited him right away. Given the commitment of both the Ramakrishna Mission and the Gülen movement to interreligious dialogue, this may be the beginning of a new Hindu-Muslim relationship.

The next day, Cetin took me to see the banyan tree in the Kolkata Botanic Gardens—a huge growth covering more than an acre, with multiple shoots going down and taking root in the soil. We also visited the Queen Victoria Memorial, a monument to British imperialism, with a history of the British involvement in Calcutta from the eighteenth century to the twentieth.

Back at the Institute of Culture, that evening I delivered a memorial lecture on “The Essence of Christianity” in honor of one of the deceased colleagues of the Ramakrishna Mission. The director of the Institute of Culture had proposed the topic for me to address. The hall was a long, long rectangle. I sat at a table on the stage and spoke to the audience sitting in relative darkness. When I concluded, the presider, Prof. Chatterlee, gave a very gracious resume and response; in accordance with their custom, there were no questions.

On the following day we visited a tall minaret from the Mughal period, the Anglican Cathedral of Saint George, another monument to British imperialism, plus the India Museum, which has a marvelous collection of Buddhist and Hindu sculpture, including the reconstruction of a Buddhist temple that was discovered in the early twentieth century.

The Institute of Culture offers a UNESCO-approved course on “The Unity of Humanity,” an interdisciplinary study of intercultural and interreligious relations. That evening I spoke to the students in the course on “How Religious Universities Can Contribute to the Dialogue among Civilizations,” with both general comments and also specific references to what we are doing at Georgetown University. This night there were a good number of questions. Two Muslim colleagues attended the lecture, and the organizer, Dr. Chakrabarti, asked one of them, Sinan, to speak about the Gülen movement after my lecture had ended. I added a few additional comments on our relationship with the Gülen movement as well. At the end of the discussion, Dr. Chakrabarti asked an older Hindu woman scholar to speak. She was most gracious, recalling gratefully her own education in a French Catholic school many years ago. She remembered that they loved studying the Bible, but they did not like Catholic catechism very much.

On Sunday, we had a delightful breakfast at the Sheraton Hotel on the outskirts of Kolkata—the other side of the street from the hotel is farmland on which they cannot yet build new buildings. Then we attended Mass at Saint John’s Church. We arrived early, and the pastor was out in front, and so we chatted with him for a while. On a more somber note, I noticed a poster announcing an evening of prayer in solidarity with Catholics in the state of Orissa who had suffered from violent attacks by Hindu mobs.

After Mass, we went to the central home of Mother Teresa’s community, the Missionaries of Charity. They have an extensive display on her life. A nearby room contains her grave, inside the building—which is most unusual in India. We went upstairs to the chapel, where we joined her sisters for their midday prayer. Afterward, we visited a British cemetery nearby. One officer had been killed in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1841; his widow had his remains brought to Calcutta for burial. I could not help thinking how some patterns continue across centuries, given the continuing conflict and British involvement in Afghanistan.

On Monday I flew to Delhi and was met by a Muslim colleague from the Gülen movement, who was soon to become yet another new friend, Bulent Cantimur. My flight from Kolkata was about an hour late in arriving. As I walked down the line of people at the airport, I kept looking for my name on a sign but never saw it. At the very end of the line, a man pushed forward and said, “Are you Professor Leo?” I said, “Yes,” and we were fine. We met an Indian driver, Santij, who was supposed to be our guide to the Jesuit residence where I would be staying the first nights. We repeatedly stopped to ask for directions, and Santij phoned our destination a couple times. For a long time, it was all in vain, as we went round and round in circles, repeatedly passing the Delhi Engineering College, which actually is near the Jesuit Saint Xavier’s College where I would be staying. Eventually we arrived. Bulent waited with me until Fr. Victor Edwin, S.J., returned. Victor represents the Society of Jesus in India in interreligious relations. He is beginning doctoral studies in comparative theology in the fall of 2008.

On Tuesday morning, Bulent met me, and we drove into the city. As we went through one roundabout, by chance I noticed the sign of the Indian Catholic Bishops’ Conference, followed by the Catholic Cathedral of Delhi. Bulent asked if I wanted to stop, and I said, “Sure.” I was thinking of visiting the cathedral, but Bulent phoned M.D. Thomas, a diocesan priest who represents the Indian Catholic bishops in interreligious relations. He had some free time, and we chatted with him briefly. Earlier that morning he had been interviewed by an Indian television station concerning the Vatican’s new list of social sins, including pollution and “obscene wealth.” He was going to be on the news at 11:00 AM, and he wanted to see what the television station had done with the interview. I returned to meet with him later on the following Saturday for a more leisurely discussion.

We went to the Red Fort, the Mughal fortress in the heart of Delhi, which includes elegant marble buildings where the sultan would receive guests, a harem, and a mosque. Afterward, we took a tricycle rickshaw from the Red Fort to a restaurant near the Jami Mosque. As we rode in the rickshaw, I could not help but think that I was in much graver danger of being run over by a motorized vehicle on the crowded streets of Delhi than I had been of being kidnapped by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, where I had been the week before. Our driver was a Muslim who wore an amulet on his arm to keep him safe. He and Bulent got into an animated conversation, during which the driver did not seem very attentive to the surrounding traffic. The restaurant, Karim Hotel, is run by the descendants of the chefs to the Mughal dynasty, and they have won numerous awards and accolades. The food was delicious. After the Muslim midday prayers had ended, we visited the Jami Mosque, which is magnificent.

On Wednesday, Victor and another Jesuit priest took me to Saint Xavier College and Vidyajyoti College of Theology in the heart of Delhi, not far from the Red Fort and the Jami Mosque. There I renewed an old friendship with John Chathanatt, S.J. We had been graduate students together at the University of Chicago in the 1980s. He is now the principal of Vidyajyoti, though he is hoping to be relieved of administrative responsibilities this coming summer. That night we went to a special dinner for the priests and seminarians from the Patna province in India. I happened to sit next to the Jesuit priest who edits the theological journal, Vidyajyoti, and he asked me to write two to three articles a year for him. After we finished eating, some of the Jesuit priests began peppering me with questions about Hillary and Barack, and who would win the U.S. presidential election. They were quite well informed and were extremely interested, and so that topic ended up dominating the end of the evening’s conversation.

On Thursday, Bulent picked me up a little after 6:00 AM to go to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. We got out of the center of Delhi in good speed, but the outskirts were more congested. All along the road to Agra, we would see animals in the middle of the road: bullocks pulling carts, an elephant leading a camel, and cows wandering about aimlessly. The Taj Mahal really is as magnificent as its reputation—perfect harmony and symmetry. There is a lovely mosque to the west, facing in the direction of Mecca. Another structure on the other side of the Taj Mahal mirrors the mosque. Architecturally, this building could be a mosque; but since it faces the wrong way, it never functions as a mosque. We returned to Delhi through another long journey with animals and bicycles and tricycles abounding. All along the way Bulent and I discussed interreligious activities. He is eager to learn more and become more involved in this area.

On Friday, I went to the Gandhi Samadhi—the national memorial to Mahatma Gandhi, with a memorial flame on the site of his cremation. Then I visited the National Museum, which has a magnificent collection of Indian miniature paintings, many from the Mughal period. I took the audio tour, and so I had a British gentleman explaining many of the most significant pieces along the way. Afterward, Ali, another colleague in the Gülen movement, picked me up and took me to see the Khutb Minar, a very tall (72.5 meters) minaret from the Delhi sultanate before the time of the Mughals. Behind the Minar there were the ruins of what had been a school of theology; and next to the school were the remains of a mosque, which today has one of the columns of the great Buddhist Emperor Ashoka (ca. 273-232 B.C.), famous for his interreligious openness. A later sultan wanted to build a minaret that would be twice as tall as the Khutb Mina. He built the foundation, which still stands—wider than the Khutb Minar—but then he died and no one completed the project, so it stands as a monument to unfulfilled ambition and a warning to human pride.

After a meal at a Pizza Hut, we went to the Lodi Gardens. The Lodi sultans ruled in Delhi before the Mughals, and left magnificent tombs, which today are amid a lovely garden. There are flowers everywhere, and thirty-nine species of birds fly through the area. It is a spot for romantic young couples, and there were numerous couples holding hands. Because of its romantic appeal, Ali told me that the population is always 50% male and 50% female.

On Saturday, John Chathanatt took me to a new temple of the Swami Narayan (1781-1830) movement. The surrounding buildings have various presentations of his life and teaching. In one, there is a series of moving and talking figures, presenting S. Narayan from his childhood through adulthood. The next was a movie that told the same story. We learned that there are temples of this movement in west suburban Chicago (Bartlett, route 59) and London, as well as elsewhere. The movement is addressing young Hindus, trying to get them involved.

I returned from India to Doha after each trip filled with wonderful new friendships and a deep gratitude for the wonderful interreligious work being done by so many in India. The interreligious violence that continues to plague India is a constant reminder of the importance of this work. I was also struck powerfully both by the tremendous economic development and also by the continuing cruel poverty of so many. Above all, it was the friendship and hospitality of Hindus, Muslims, and Christians that resonated deeply with me.