REMEMBERING A RARE GENIUS A PERSONAL TRIBUTE TO PAULOS MAR GREGORIOS Valson Thampu It was about forty years ago. I was studying in We waited for the day. We waited for Paul Ramban.
The day came. It turned out to be a feast. Else, I would not have remembered
it now, years later. Paul Ramban spoke gingerly and
with extreme simplicity, as though he was worried about the low standard of
English in Kerala. But he spoke with great love. It
was obvious: he enjoyed pouring himself out in endless streams of thought,
yearning to share the best with us. We were sinking, minute by minute, under
the spell of the great Ramban’s eloquence. I do not
remember much of what he said on that occasion. But I do remember that he
imprinted my young mind with an indelible impression of human greatness. Only
two others have struck me in a similar fashion since then: Mother Teresa and
Metropolitan Philipose Mar Chrysostom
of the I did not get to see the great Ramban
for several years thereafter. In fact I was never, if you like, to meet the “Ramban” again. By the time I met him in There is an ever greater debt that I owe him. What impressed me
most about this great soul was his ability to hold the spiritual and the
secular – the Word and the world - in harmony. He had an integrated vision
large enough to embrace the whole world in love. Sure enough, he was firmly
and deeply rooted in the spirituality of the Orthodox tradition. For that
very reason, he was able to rise above the parochial and exemplify a freedom
of spirit and generosity of heart that spoke winsomely to people across
continents, cultures, classes and creeds. He was like the parabolic mustard
seed. He took root in a context and sent his branches truly unto the end of
the world. The result was a catholicity of vision, a universality of
interests and a versatility of mind that only one word in the English
language can do justice to: genius. Believe me, this man was a genius. A true
genius! The significance of what the Metropolitan stood and struggled
for dawned on me, not very clearly or conceptually but somewhat intuitively
in the early days. But, like Matthew Arnold’s Scholar Gypsy, I have followed
this ideal ever since. This comprises the poetic justice in my writing this
personal tribute to the Metropolitan. He taught me that to be able to serve
your community best, you need to go beyond its
boundaries. He taught me that the dichotomy between the religious and the
secular is spiritually untenable. He also taught me, at the same time, that
relating positively to the secular world should not blind me to the
limitations of the secular worldview. If today I am called upon to play a
small role in the life of our country, it has a reference to the wider sense
of mission I have learned from the Metropolitan. This is a personal tribute: let me stay personal. The year: 1991. The
HIV/AIDS pandemic had broken into the Indian scenario a few years earlier.
Being somewhat aware of its nightmarish implications for our country, I
decided to do whatever I could to contain its spread and devastation. Hence
the idea of producing a documentary on the subject –the first and the last I
was to make- to spread awareness about this rising national menace presented
itself. My strategy was to create a climate of opinion that would throw the
spiritual and ethical resources of our culture and society against this
enemy. So it occurred to me that the opinions of religious leaders from various
traditions should figure prominently in the documentary and the script was
prepared accordingly. The location shooting began: and I hit the dead-end. No
religious leader would agree to be interviewed. Almost all of them, except
the Metropolitan, confessed total ignorance. Mercifully, he agreed readily
and gladly. And what an interview it turned out to be. He stood out from the
rest –professionals, experts and opinion makers- as the most perspicuous and
persuasive communicator. When the documentary was screened before a
distinguished audience in the Speaker’s Hall of the Constitution Club, Shri. Ajit Kumar Panja, the then The second instance is more recent. The Indira
Gandhi International Seminar of 2002 was in progress. This is one of the most
prestigious seminars in this country. Getting invited to be a discussant is
in itself a distinction. But what gave me far greater joy was the fact that
at least two of the discussants –both of them non-Christians- referred to the
Metropolitan’s concepts and contributions, which made me feel rather proud of
myself. My memory went back to the 1994 Keswick Convention in The third instance is as recent as January 2005. The second
meeting of the National Steering Committee for Curriculum Review of the NCERT
was in progress in Clarity of thought and expression was the hallmark of this great
man. He was a brilliant communicator. Give him a pedestrian subject or the
most complex idea; he will couch them in expressions so transparent that even
a child can understand. He was a man of enormous scholarship; but he carried
his knowledge light. He never sought
to impress; he was keen only to express. He did not hide behind the arras of
authority to make up for deficiencies in understanding or apologetics.
Instead, he made sure that he explored the argument in depth and expressed it
with power and precision. Almost always when I listened to him, I would
remember the words from Genesis, “Let there be light”! He proved that
simplicity of expression and clarity of thought are the two legs on which
profundity walks into human hearts. Then, he was truly creative! He was a sculptor of ideas. And he
thought in depth. Small wonder the West listened to him with respect. He
could synthesize the best of the East and the West. He could do that, I
suspect, because he was so deeply rooted in the Eastern tradition of
spirituality. The mark of a creative mind is its ability to bring out hidden
possibilities and resources. This makes such a person at home in every
context, as the Metropolitan was. Give him any subject or context; he would
transform it into something beautiful. He could see what most others could
not. Yet he could share his insights with us in words that were wholly our
own. The Metropolitan was truly a world citizen. Beyond that he was a
spiritual statesman. I have had the privilege of being taken into confidence
in respect of the Metropolitan’s innumerable encounters and enterprises
involving world leaders. Nothing would prevent him from accepting the best
from whichever tradition or source it came. Nor would he withhold his best
from anyone in the world. He
symbolized the Christian presence in contexts to which most others won’t or
dare not venture. I wish to believe that this is an authentic expression of
the spiritual vitality of the Orthodox tradition. Through the novels of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, I have
developed a deep appreciation of the depth and profundity of the Russian
Orthodox tradition. It is this spiritual tradition that underlies the
uniqueness of the Russian intelligentsia, marked by its adventurous moral
passion and universal vision. The Orthodox tradition is much more than the
veneration of orthodoxy! It is a dynamic and searching dialogue between the
old and the new, the depth and the surface and between the immediate and the
ultimate. This spiritual dynamic is, alas, fast becoming a lost art at the
present time. It is in this respect that the memories of a great soul like
the Metropolitan should make a radical difference. The Catholic core of the
Orthodox tradition needs to be re-appropriated and re-articulated at the
present time. Finally, the Metropolitan taught me that spirituality does not
have to shun politics. Rather, boycotting politics amounts to spiritual
irresponsibility. There is a great need to enunciate a spiritual foundation
for secularism in the Indian context. The Christian mission in the sphere of politics
is to imbue the culture of politics and governance with spiritual values so
that human welfare remains the unwavering purpose in both. I met the
Metropolitan in the Orthodox Centre a few months
before he departed from our midst. He was totally bedridden. I sat by his
bed. He talked at length about the conferences he had conducted a year prior
to that on alternate systems of medicine. He gave me the literature that he
had brought out on the subject. He talked very reflectively about the need to
be more eclectic and hospitable to those who are not exactly of our own
persuasion. He was physically very weak; but his mind was amazingly clear. Well, that was the last impression he left me with: the clarity
of his mind. That is the insignia by which I prefer to remember him: a man of
clarity. That was what he was. Clarity, as C. S. Lewis says, is a function of
truth. It is an aspect of godliness. The Holy Spirit, after all is not a
spirit of confusion or disorder; but of discernment and clarity. Those who lay
special claim to the gifts of the Holy Spirit but remain utterly confused
would have been, perhaps, converted to honesty and sanity if they had met
this man. But, alas, such people chose to keep a distance from him. I too
have a tinge of regret. If only I had made better use of the Metropolitan’s
goodwill and his eagerness to involve me more and more in his many missions! It is eminently appropriate that the Sophia Society continues to
celebrate the memory of this great man. ‘Sophia’ means the love of wisdom. It
is a quintessential human trait. We cannot be fully human or spiritual if we
do not love wisdom, as King Solomon would have gladly testified. But ours is
not an age of wisdom, but of information explosion. Where is the knowledge,
asks T.S. Eliot, that we have lost through information; and where is the
wisdom that we have lost through knowledge?
The Metropolitan was an inspiring invitation to earnestly desire
wisdom and to pursue it life-long. Wisdom is the ability, among other things,
to see inter connections. It remands a transcendence of the narrow, the petty
and the reductive. It involves the spiritual discipline that Jesus defined
as, “Seek, and you shall find”. Nothing short of reinforcing this fast-dying
discipline of seeking wisdom and spreading a spiritual culture conducive to this noble goal can honour the
memory of the Metropolitan. The task at hand is not only to look for great
men and women here and there whom we may honour. It
is also to encourage all people –created in the image and likeness of God,
mind you- to love and pursue greatness so that the vision of the prophet may
come true: “Their old men shall see dreams and their young men and women will
see visions”. The Metropolitan was a brilliant shaft of light that illumined
human greatness for a while; and his memory continues to be an earnest
invitation for us to do justice to the uniqueness of our creation and the
greatness of our spiritual destiny. The author is a Member of the National Commission for
Minority. Educational Institutions & Member, National Integration
Council. |