The Asbllry Jotlmal 66/2:57 -66

© 2011 Asbury Theological Seminary

PRABHUSINGH VEDHAMANICKAM

Living Water in Indian Cups: A Callfor Cultural Relevance

in Contemporary Indian Missions

Abstract
There has been a concentrated effort in contemporar~- India to stereotype
Christianity as a western agent involved in destroying Indic religions,
desecrating Indian cultures and destabilizing the nation. While there have
been some attempts to contextualize the gospel in Indian missions, in the
theological and missiological realms, there is an urgent need to incarnate
the gospel in culturally relevant ways due to three critical factors: The cultural
diversity of the nation, the rise of Hindu nationalism and the paradigmatic
shift from Indian cross cultural missions to local, indigenous movements.
While the multinational companies in India are tailoring their strategies
according to the Indian markets, Indian Christianity seems to uncritically
import and uncontextually apply some of the mission strategies from the
\"X!est, which perpetuates the stereotyping of Indian Christianity as a \'Vest-
dependent faith. The four key principles that enable us to serve in a culturally
relevant manner in contemporary India are: Sensitive listening, Humble
learning, Contextual laboring and "\uthentic living.

Key Words: Indian missions, Contextualization, Culturally relevant missions,

Christianity in India, Western mission strategies, Gospel and Culture

PrabhuSingh Vedhamanickam is a trained missiological anthropologist

with a Ph.D. in Inter-Cultural Studies from Asbury Seminary, Kentucky,
L'S"\, and he li,-es and serves in India. (He also serves as the Chair for
International Alumni in Asbury Alumni Council) .

57
58 I The AsblllJ'lollrllal 66/2 (2011)

In his highly acclaimed book Reimagilliflg Evangelism, Rick Richardson

presents an interesting story of Daniel, a youth pastor of a large church in
~\ merica. Daniel's deep desire to reach his own generation for Christ finalk
led him to take up a job in a Starbucks coffee shop, hoping to make friends
and share the good news with his fellow workers. ~ \s he shared the gospel
with his co-workers, there were two big surprises for Daniel: the first one
was that all the twenty one people who worked with him believed in God
and were open to spirimality. The second one was that even though they were
open to spirimal things, they were not interested in Christianity or the church.
~\llof them had some prior bad experience with Christians and the church
that made them resistant to Daniel's invitation to participate in the gospel.
Richardson comments,
For different people, the particular issue varied . But almost
everyone at Starbucks had experienced some breach in
trust ",'ith God or \v'ith Christians. So Daniel wasn't starting
at ground zero, but rather at minus three or four. He would
have to pierce through their stereotypes and rebuild broken
trust before they would even listen to what he had to say.'
Christians living in a post-colonial context like India are alrealh' on the
back foot because of some of the excesses of the colonial rulers who are
generally perceived as "Christians" and hailing from "Christian nations."
This situation is also exacerbated by the strategic stereotyping and malicious
vilifying of Christians and their faith by the Hindu nationalists." Christians
are often portrayed as subversive western agents involved in destroying
Indic religions, desecrating Indian culmre and destabilizing the nation. Added
to that, the culturall\' insensitive approach of some mission agencie s, both
Indian and western - due to a combination of ignorance and arrogance -
also give fodder to the anti Christian rhetoric, resulting in an almost "perfect
minus ten" situation for Indian Christians to meaningfully share the gospel
in contemporary India .

Need for Cultural Relevance in Contemporary Indian Missions

In the city of '\!{adurai in Tamil :'\,Tadu, popularly known as the temple
cin', a Christian evangelistic outreach \vas organized few I'ears back. ~ \s an
advertisement blitz, some Christians wrote on the street walls thi s slogan ,
'Jesus is the answer." However, the next day, some perceptive Hindus wrote
underneath that slogan these words, "\Vhat is the question)"] Christian
communication that fails to take into account seriou sh' the doubts and
questions of the receptors as well as the socio-cultural contexts in which
they are embedded, will be irrelevant. Decontextualized presentation of
the gospel results in reductionism and miniaturization of human beings as
people are viewed and treated as disembodied souls or disembodi ed minds.
 V EDIHMA>iICKA.M : LIVI)JG WATER )" INDIAN CLPS I 59

\'Vhile there have been attempts to contextualize the faith in the Indian
context, both in the theological and missiological realms: the need for
cultural relevance and sensitivity in missions has gained greater ascendancy
in contemporary India. This is primarily due to three important reasons,
which I shall briefly highlight.
1. India is an ancient civilization known for its rich heritage of cultural
diversity and religious plurality. As Indian scholar Shashi Tharoor puts it,
"The singular thing about India is that you can only speak of it in the
plural."" The "\nthropological Survey of India's People of India project has
enumerated 4693 communities in India. 6 It claims that Indian diversity is
marked by linguistic heterogeneity, ecological diversity, biological variation
and cultural pluralism.)
\'(,'hile some argue that dle hegemony of globalization is inevitably shaping
the world into a homogenized western mould, in India, globalization and
economic liberalization have also led to the fragmentation and tribalization
of the Indian population, with each community attempting to assert its
identity. Thi s is evidenced by the formation of innumerous caste
organizations, regional political parties and religious movements in the last
two decades.
Indian Christians must celebrate the diversity of Indian cultures as this
not only reflect the Kingdom reality (Revelation 7:9) and Indian ethos, it is
also a bulwark against the homogenizing attempt of Hindu nationalists to
create a mono-cultural, mono-religious Hindu rashtra. Christian witnesses
arc called to incarnate the gospel in the nation so that the 4693 communities
may understand, appropriate and celebrate Christ in a manner that is
compatible with their own cultural contexts.
2. The issue of rootedness of Christianity in the native soil that reflects
the local culture has become all the more pertinent in the light of attacks
against Christians and the noisy propaganda of the opponents of Christianity
that Christians are involved in cultural cannibalism. Indian Catholic scholar
Felix \'Vilfred writes, "The recent incidents of attack on the churches,
Christians, religious personnel- condemnable and painful as they are - are
also an occasion for the Christian community for a critical self-examination
about its rootedness in the soil."s
In my PhD dissertation on Hindu nationalism and its engagement with
Christianity in Gujarat, I found out ten factors for antagonism towards
Christianity, and cultural insensitivity of Christians is one of them. Even
though it does not absolve the perpetrators of the atrocities committed
against the Christian community, nor can we accept uncritically the Hindutva-
inspired conception of Indian culture, Indian missions need to engage
cultural issues more seriously.
60 I The Asbury JOllrnal 66/2 (2011 )

3. The call for cultural relevance is also heightened due to the paradigmatic
shift happening in the Indian mission scenario. The Protestant Christian
mission in India can be broadh' classified as three waves or eras: 9 The Foreign
cro ss cultural era during the colonial period (1706-1946), the Indian cross
cultural era in post-independent India (1947-1990) and the Indigenous era LO
in post-liberalization India (1991 -).
,-\fter the independence of India in 1947, the 1950s and 60s were a period
of withdrawal as many of the foreign missionaries phased out of India. ~Ianr
Indian cross cultural mission movements were started from the late 1960s
onwards in south India and other places with the specific focus of taking the
gospel to the unreached adivas;s" in 1'\ orth and Central India.
From the 1990s onwards, there is an ongoing shift in emphasis from
Indian cross cultural mission movements to local, indigenous movements
and personnel, due to factors like the rise of Hindutva and also the
\videspread growth of local churches in different parts of the countr\,. :\earh'
50 years of Indian cross cultural efforts have borne fruits, evidenced by a
vast array of diverse churches thriving in various parts of the country. It
has also significantly contributed to the welfare and holistic development
of the adit1asi communities.
In many places, however, Indian cross cultural witnesses haye failed to
incarnate the gospel in such a way that the Christian faith has not been
rooted within the particular cultural context, as a result of which it looks
alien and foreign in some of those places. There are man)' instances, where
"Tirunelveli Christianity"l] has been uncritically transported and transplanted
by well-meaning "madarasi missionaries,"ll seemingly oblivious to what the
context demands. One of the vital reasons for the high attrition rate among
new adivasi believers, in some cases 30 to 50 percent as claimed by some
cross cultural witnesses in my anthropology seminars, is due to tlle alienation
felt by these new followers who have experienced a form of Christianity
that lacks cultural relevance.

Contextualization in the Corporate World - Learning from Burgers

and Pizzas
The call for cultural fit reverberates loudly in the corporate wo rld, in the
post-liberalization India. In her highly influential book, [,pe Are Like That
Ollly, Rama Bijapurkar explores the contemporary consumer scenario in
India. She writes that some of the multi national companies (~ IN C) that
made early entn' into India to do business, after the economic liberalization
in 1991 , did not achieve their desired success. The reason was their faulty
assumption that the strategies that popularized their products in developed
nations will do the same in the emerging markets of India as well. G iving
fascinating examples from the corporate world, like wh,' I,-ellogs breakfast
 VEDJ-ll\ . \LA..!'-:lCK
. ...-\..\[: LIVING WATER I::\" I~ DL\". . CUPS I 61

cereal could not take off in India, she convincingly argues that many i\L'\:Cs
failed to understand Indian markets as well as the cultural conditioning of
the Indian consumers.
Rama writes, "The Indian experience so far makes it pretty obvious that
only those companies that leverage their competencies for creating
businesses tailor-made for India are likely to win in India and benefit from
its inevitable growth, rather than those that mechanically transplant their
best practice strategies from other markets."l.j She recommends the :\INCs
to have a specific "i\Iade for India" approach that takes into account the
complexity and diversity of the Indian society: "The question is not 'What
sort of market for this [global] strategy?', but '\'\Ihat sort of strategy for this
~ocall market?"' 15
Some of the ;\1NCs are listening. While the ;\1cDonalds in India offers
j\lcAloo burgers (a variant of ;\1cChicken for the vegetarians) and Pizza
Hut churns out Chicken Tikka Pizza, Christians still lag behind in
contextualizing the gospel.

Western-initiated Mega Mission Movements and Mega Mistakes

In the Indian mission context, there seems to be an affinity for mission
strategies that emanate from overseas. Uncritical acceptance and
uncontextualized application of some of these mission strategies and mega
movements - that seem to originate from the classrooms of California or
boardrooms of Boston - may have serious ramifications for the future of
Christian missions in India. Some mission programs are often conceived
and executed in a militaristic manner by "mapping" the local area, fixing
"targets" and conducting "campaigns." The militarization of Christian
rhetoric is particularly offensive for people living in countries that have
experienced colonial subjugation.
Organizing large public meetings with a foreigner flown in to preach the
gospel alienates the Christian community and perpetuates the stereotyping
of Indian Christianity as a West-dependent faith. Some of the mission
practitioners' sloganeering like "India for Christ in 10 years," bombastic
claims and statistical hypes are also causes of concern. Obsession with
statistics leads to the objectification of people as members of a community
are reduced to mere numbers.
Some of the evangelical mega mission movements like Joshua Project
have come under the severe scrutiny of Indians. Sudarshan, the former
sarsal1gchalak (chief) of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS - the key
organization of the Hindu nationalist movement) claimed that Joshua project
is a threat to Indian national security due to the collection of strategic
statistics regarding the demography of India, which is then stored in the
data base of western agencies. Also, the name "Joshua" as a metaphor,
62 I The Asblily jOllrnal 66/2 (2011)

which implies the idea of spying and collecting vital statistics regarding the
land that leads to its eventual conquest as in the biblical narrative, is
disconcerting to those nations with a colonial past.
The 10 / 40 \'(!indow movement created an illusory window that
demarcated nations like India and others in Asia, :\Iiddle East and North
~\fricaas the "resistant belt" and under the dominion of darkness, while
convenienth' leaving out the western countries. Is Chennai more corrupt
than Chicago? Is there more sin in Lucknow than in Las Yegas? Even though
this movement attempted to mobilize and channel mission efforts towards
a particular region, the whole notion of boxing and labeling people and
places smacks of ethnocentrism.
\'Chile there is room for western Christians' contribution to Indian
Christianity in many areas, some of these highly publicized, West-initiated
mega movements tend to create suspicion and antagonism in the minds of
many Indians. l.:nfortunately, mam" Indian Christians do not look into these
issues critically or they choose to keep quiet due to their over dependency
on the West for their resources. XXlhile there is a legitimate and biblical
warrant for inter-dependent partnership between the global and the local
church, the deification of dollar can lead to the pathetic prostration of
Indian Christian missions at the feet of the wrest.

How Then Shall We Live and Serve?

The bible clearly exhorts God's people to understand and appropriate
the times they live in. The matrix of Christian mission in India is no longer
the same as during the previous eras (Foreign cross cultural and Indian
cross cultural eras), and we must be sensitive to the shifting moods and the
seismic changes that are happening in the Indian social, economic, religiOUS
and political realms. How then shall we live and serve in "such a time as
this" (Esther 4:14)? I shall briefly highlight four principles that help us to
serve Christ in a culturally relevant manner.

Sensitive Listening
Raj i'vIohan Gandhi, the grandson of :\lahatma Gandhi, in his work Rel)etlge
alld Recollciliatioll traces the aspect of revenge as a driving force in the south
_-\sian history, from }.:'urukshetra to Kargil. Even though reconcilers came
periodically, like Buddha and _\shoka, they were not able to stem the violence.
In his final chapter, "The New Century: Strategies for Reconciliation," he
presents various ideas and strategies for people to coexist peacefull\". One
of them is the need to listen to the other - "listening, with the heart as \vell
as the ear, to what is said and also to what is unsaid." l!.
Rajmohan claims, however, that south .\sians are more prone to talk
than to listen .
 VEDHA\fANICKAM: LIVING W ,\TER Il' beDIA'.; CUPS I 63

Is listening natural to the South Asian? A Japanese friend once

said to me: For fifteen years I have been attending international
conferences and seminars. ~\fricans, Europeans, ~\sians,
Americans, all take part. Do you know the biggest difficulties
that the person in the chair faces? One is to persuade the shy
Japanese delegate to say something. ~\nother is to persuade
the Indian delegate to end his speech. 17
Indians are quick to speak and speak at some length. Amartya Sen, Indian
thinker and Nobel laureate, begins his best-seller Tbe Argtlmmtative Il!dial!
with these words, "Prolixity is not alien to us in India. We are able to talk at
some length .... \'(fe do like to speak."18 Sen points to Krishna Menon's record
setting 9 hours, non-stop speech in the UN assembly nearly half a century
ago, as well as the Sanskrit epic Mababbarata, which is about 7 times as long
as Iliad and Odyssry put together, as some of the evidences of the loquacity
of Indians. 19
Christians have a propensity to talk more and listen less. However, without
listening to the sighs, groans, doubts and questions of a hurting broken
world, we would perennially be answering questions which people are not
asking and scratching where it does not itch.
John Stott writes, "Everybody finds listening difficult. But are Christians
for some reason (perhaps because we believe ourselves called to speak what
God has spoken) worse listeners than others?"20 He calls Christians to
develop the ability of "double listening," which is the "faculty of listening
to two voices at the same time, the voice of God through Scripture and the
voices of men and women around US."21

Humble Learning
Listening is closely tied with learning. We must be ,villing to listen, observe
and learn from the songs and stories, poems and proverbs, myths and rituals,
religious symbols and world view of the culture of the people to whom we
are presenting the gospel. In Athens, Paul commended the spiritual thirst
of his audience (however misguided it may be) to win their attention, then
used the "altar of the unknown God" as a launching pad for the gospel and
proceeded to quote their own poets to help them understand the gospel
b etter. He could do this because he was a good observer and learner, as he
"walked around and looked carefully at their objects of worship" ("\cts 17:23).
King Solomon, known for his wisdom was also an avid learner (proverbs
24:30-34), as he writes, "I applied my heart to what I observed and learned
a lesson from what I saw" (24:32). Stanley Jones, in his talk commemorating
his 75 th birthday, spoke on what his life of 75 years taught him. He pointed
out that some where in the .\ lps, a mountain climber died and the epitaph
on his tomb read, "He died climbing." Then Jones said, "I would like my
epitaph to say, '} Ie died learning.'"
64 I The Asbllly jOllrlla/ 66/ 2 (2011)

/u the conclusion of a recent anthroplogical workshop I conducted for

cross cultural witnesses of one of the largest mission agencies in India, one
south Indian missionary who has been serving for nearly 15 years among a
p articular people group in N orth India, made a startling statement. He said,
I wish this training had come 15 years ago. T he oditJosi people
whom I serve are the original Christians as many of their
stories and myths are similar to those in the Bible. But 'we did
not take time to listen and learn; instead we brushed them all
aside as demonic and brought Christianity as som e thing totally
new. E ven though many have come to the Lord, many m ore
thousands would have embraced Christ if we had built on
what they already had. Instead we ended up presenting an
alien faith and also drove a wedge in the community.
Tragic but true, and there are many such stories in Indian missions.

Contextual Labouring
Sadhu Sunder Singh gave a succinct description o f what contextualization
in the Indian context is. He said, " It is giving the water of life in Indian
cup." "\s mentioned earlier, there are atleast 4693 cups within India that
need the water of life. Christian mission s do not occur in a vacuum as the
receptors of the gospel are deeply embedded in their respective cultural
con tex ts. Hence, Christian communicators are called to understand and
engage cultures carefully.
\'Vhile the Christian gospel is supracultural (it is no t a cultural con struct
as it is the revelatio n o f God) and also tran scultural (a pplicable and
translatable to all cultures), it can be understood, accepted and expressed
primarily through one's own cultural categories. T he Scripture teaches us
that God has created hunla11S as creative beings with tl1e capacity to produce
culture. Humans create culture, which in turn shapes them. As human s are
bo th good (created in the image of God) and bad (fallen), all cultures have
bo th good and bad elem ents. No single culture is fund amentally good or
fundam entally bad . T herefore, in its dynamic interaction with a particular
culture, the gospel affirm s what is good (contextual approach), judges what
is bad (counter-cultural approach) and transforms the wh ole culture, which
results in both cultural continuity and discontinuity.
Too often Christians tend to swing to both extremes - viewing all o f
culture as bad th ereby de velop ing an antagonistic approach and
demonization of the local culture and religion, or uncritically embracing all
of culture as good which results in syncretism and split level Christianity.
_\ balanced app roach requires a careful study of bo th the \Xford and th e
World. Unfortunately, while there is a proliferation of bible schools, mobile
training institutes and specialized seminars and conferences in India, Indian
Christians and cross-cultural witnesses are still poorly equipped to deal with
the cultural issues, as there is a distinct lack of teaching on culture and
rela ted issues.

Authentic Living
The church that incarnates the gospel must exhibit the mind of Christ
and embody the love of Christ. A Christ centered, other oriented, authentic
Christian living is imperative to make an impact on the world around us.
Stanley Jones narrates a visit of Kagawa, the saintly Japanese Christian,
to "\merica . Kagawa was a godly man but not a gifted public speaker. "\fter
an address by Kagawa, two American pastors were talking. One was
obviously not impressed. He looked at his friend and said, "He didn't say
much. Did he?" The other replied, "Well, if you are hanging on the cross,
you don't have to say much."n

Endnotes
I Rick Richardson, &imagining Evangelism, (Illinois: Inter \Tarsity, Press, 2006),

p. 65,66.
, Hindu nationalism is an ideology that seeks to create a Hindu rashtra (nation)
in India by redefIning Indiannesss on the basis of religion. Hindutva (Hinduness)
is also a term often used to refer to tlus ideology and the movements that subscribe
to tlus view
1 Cited in Dayanand Bharati, Living Water and Indian Bowl (Delhi: ISPCK, 2001), p. 2.
Brahmabandhab Upadhyaya's interpretation of Trinity as Saccidananda
Brahman, .\ppasamy 's portrayal of Christianity as Bakti j\hrga, Chenchiah's
appropriation of "\urobindo's philosophy for Christian theology, as well as various
attempts by different scholars to present Christ as Ishvara, Avatara, Saguna Brahman,
Sabda Brahman, Yedic Prajapati etc, are some of the efforts in the theological
realm (See, Robin Boyd, An Introduction to Indian Christian Theology, Delhi:
ISPCK, 1969). Also, the .\sruam Movement, Sadhu ideal, Yesu Darbar, Yesu Bhaktas,
Truth Seekers and other movements are efforts to incarnate the gospel in the Indian
settings. However, most of them are geared towards Hinduism, and particularly
high caste Hindus (with some exceptions like Truth Seekers).
5 Shashi Tharoor, India: From Midllight to the j\1iffeJlnilllJl, (New Delhi: Penguin

Books, 2000) , p. 8.
o [Link], People of India: Introdllction, (New DelhI: ,\nthropological Survey
of India/Oxford University Press, 2003, Revised Edition), p. 289.
7 Ibid, p. 61.
8 Felix Wilfred, /lsian Dreams and OJristiall Hope: At the Dawn of the i\1illmllillln,
(Delhi: Indian Society' for Promotion of Christian Knowledge, 2003) , p. 189.
~ Like any periodization, this classification of the three wave s or eras is not a
watertight compartmentalization, but just a conceptual tool to analyze and
understand protestant n1issions in India that stretches over three centuries. The
three key markers are: 1706 - The arrival of the first protestant n1issionary to
India, Bartholomew Ziegenbalg; 1947 - India attains independence; 1991 - India
66 I TlJe Asbllry JOlin/a! 66/ 2 (2011)

liberalizes its economy that paves the way for rapid globalization and westernization.
This year also wimessed the demolition of Babri Masjid and the rise of communal
clas hes and polarization of the nation along religious lines.
IU T he term 'indigenous' is used here to mean "local."
"\divasi is a term often us ed to denote the various indlgenous tnbal
11

communities in different parts of India. It means original, primal inhabitants (".\di"

- First, "Yasi" - inhabitant).
12 Tirunelveli is a region in southern Tamil N adu that has his torically been one

of the prime loci of western missionary activities for many centuries. ,\ lso, it is the
region that has mobilized and sent thousands of cross cultural witnesses to North
and Central India, particularly among the adivasi commwuties, during the second
wave of protestant missions.
13 The term "i\1adarasi" is derived from Madras (capital of the southern state

of Tamil N adu), now called Chennai. It is usually used to refer people hailing fro m
south India, sometimes with a pejorative connotation.
14 Rama Bijapurkar, We are Like That 01l1y: Understanding the Logic of Consllmer
lZlclicl, ~ ew Delhi: Penguin/ Portfolio, 2009), p. 10,11.
13 Ibid, p. 270.
RajMohan Gandhi, Revenge and Reconciliation: L'llderstalldmg SOllth Ariall [Link]
16

(N ew Delhi: Penguin, 1999), p. 401, 402.

17 Ibid, p. 402.
18 :\martya Sen, The A rgmnentatilJe Indiall: Writil{gS ol1 Il1dia1l Culttlre, History alld

ldl1lltity, (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2005), p. 3.

,9 Ibid, p. 3.
20 John Stott, The Contemporary Cbristiall (Chennai: Evangelical Literature Service
& UESI Publication Trust, 2001), p. 28.
21 Ibid, p. 29.