Religion: Benedict’s Sanyasis

In a bare mountainside building in the Salem* district of the Indian state of Madras, 35 Indian ascetics live and pray together. In the tradition of the Indian sanyasis (holy men), they wear coarse cotton robes dyed a bright saffron. At mealtimes they eat a strict vegetarian diet of tapioca, rice and lentils. When they chant their prayers, they sit cross-legged on the floor. They wear no shoes or sandals, for Indian custom forbids any footgear inside a holy place.

The 35 sanyasis are neither Hindus nor Buddhists; they are Roman Catholic monks—priests and novices—of the Benedictine monastery at Siluvaigiri (Holy Cross Mount). Their superior, Dom Philip Kaipanplakal, 43, has dedicated the community to proving a fact which Western Christians often forget: the Christian message need not always be couched in the style of Christian Europe or America.

Plato’s Weakness. As a priest and a member of a family which has been Christian for centuries. Philip Kaipanplakal is forcibly aware of the snail’s-pace progress of Indian Christianity (Protestants and Catholics together form about 2½% of India’s population). The main reason, as Dom Philip sees it: “Missionaries offer Indians not pure Christianity, but Christianity plus European culture.”

Dom Philip himself began as a Carmelite, and his first six years in the order were spent in Belgium and Italy. There he had a chance to sort out the culture from the Christianity. On his return to India in 1936, he began a thorough study of Hindu culture and philosophy, found most of it not incompatible with Christian belief. A basic weakness of his own church’s missionary work, he concluded, was that it sought to explain religion in terms derived from Plato and Aristotle. To Indians, with no tradition of Western philosophy behind them, this kind of teaching seemed remote or meaningless.

Carmelite Father Philip decided that the Benedictines, oldest monastic order in the Catholic Church, with their traditions of communal work as well as preaching & teaching, were best fitted for bringing a new understanding of Christianity to India. Five years ago he transferred to the order and started work on the Salem monastery. Then he went to Europe for two years of Benedictine training. This spring, with two Belgian colleagues as advisers, he was able to open the monastery as a full-fledged Benedictine foundation.

Thread for the Bride. The idea of Indianized Christianity is at least 300 years old.* There is nothing in church law to forbid monks’ wearing saffron robes or following a vegetarian diet. Ultimately, following the example of Benedictine missionaries in Africa, Dom Philip hopes for permission to recite the liturgy in Hindi, India’s official language.

The Benedictines of Salem encourage Indian Christians to keep as much of their native custom as possible, e.g., Christian brides do not wear wedding rings, but tie a thread around their necks as Hindus do. The monastery itself has fitted snugly into the life of the surrounding communities. Local farmers now come there to get medicine for their sick and to look over the Catholic sanyasis’ agricultural methods. Said one Salem Hindu: “They look more like our type of sanyasis. Maybe there’s something in their religion.” This is the kind of talk that Dom Philip likes to hear. “Christianity,” he says, “was not founded by a European.”

*No kin to the world’s two dozen or so other Salems, most of which are named, directly or indirectly, after a Hebrew word for peace.

*In 1606, Father Robert de’ Nobili, an Italian Jesuit in south India, adopted saffron robes and lived like a Hindu holy man. He made converts among high-caste Hindus, but had to fight off the charges of apostasy made against him by literal-minded fellow priests. Similar missionary techniques were used earlier in the century by Jesuits in China, who followed the dress and manners of local Confucian scholars, and by Jesuits in Japan, who modeled their behavior on that of Buddhist priests.