Modernity and its Discontents: Western Catholic Pioneers of the Hindu-Christian Dialogue

Abstract

This article presents a reassessment of the Hindu-Christian dialogue in its relationship with modernity. The focus is on a group of Western Catholic clergymen who relocated to India, specifically during 1940-70, and became involved in the Hindu-Christian dialogue. The article traces the reasons for these Catholics’ relocations to their dissatisfaction with modernity and the predominance of rationality in the West, as well as their aversion to modern scientific thought. It emphasises the dual character of the interfaith dialogue, and the struggles of this group of clergymen to overcome modernity, whereby a modern Weltanschauung was the obstacle along the path to reshaping Catholic theology and establishing a fruitful interfaith dialogue with Hinduism. Although they did not pursue a common agenda and had different goals, these pioneers of interfaith dialogue came to consider such a dialogue with Hinduism as regenerative, as a means of revitalising Western thought, of balancing the modern excesses of a Western civilisation increasingly dominated by technology, and of transcending the rationalised culture of the modern West to achieve higher consciousness.