MM

pursuance of these questions I spent a year in Bangalore reading in the theology of society and the
In
understanding of our Indian social reality. The Neo-orthodoxy of Nicolas Berdyaev and
scientific
Niebuhr coupled with an appreciation of the Marxist analysis of Indian social history gripped
Reinhold
I returned to full-time work with the YCCA convinced that Marxism was a necessary ideological
me.
for political action for social justice in India but that its utopianism, which elevated it to a scheme
basis
total spiritual salvation, was a source of tyranny; and that therefore the Christian has the double task
of
cooperating with the communists in the politics of class-struggle and intensifying the spiritual
of
against the character of communism as a scheme of salvation by works. Here class politics
struggle
justice and evangelistic witness to justification by faith became equally central to my understanding
for
Christian mission in India. The evangelistic witness to Christ, to be relevant, has to be within the
of
of a politics of justice and not in isolation. The church as the fellowship of transcendent
framework
and mutual forgiveness must be present as the ultimate destiny of those involved in the
divine
tragic powerpolitical struggles in a sinful world. An amendment I proposed for the "Aim and
necessarily
of the Youth Christian Council of Action wanted it to "accept the Catholic Christian Faith and
Basis"
Scientific Socialism," reacting against "both Fundamentalism that is indifferent to science and
Marxian
questions and the Liberal Social Gospel which denies the fact of sin" and to offer "the Orthodox
social
Faith as in the long run the only possible basis for social and scientific realism." It was to
Christian
this double task of the Christian mission that I asked for ordination in my church and for
pursue
Bishop [ohanon Mar Thimotheus (later Mar Thoma metropolitan), who had participated in the
But
activities for several years and perhaps had faith in my theological integrity, urged the church to
YCCA
the early 1940s Malcolm Adiseshiah of the Madras Christian College, Tambaram, began inviting me
In
speak at the SCM Leaders' Training Courses. For a period I was also the editor of the SCM Student
to
I also became involved in the dialogues of the Indian SCM with the British SCM and the
Outlook.
Student Christian Federation (WSCF) on the Indian political situation. All this led to my being
World's
1947 to 1950 I was full-time secretary and from 1950 to 1953 an officer. This gave me
From
for dialogue with the "West" within the setting of the ecumenical movement. My
opportunity
in the volume on Church and Society in preparation for the first assembly of the World
participation
of Churches (WCC) and especially my conversations with J.H. Oldham, the chairman of the
Council
and Society Committee; and the endless discussion in the Political Commission of the WSCF,
Church
led to the publication of the book, by J. D. McCaughey and myself, TheChristian in the World
which
(1951)-all made for new thinking. I had also to rethink my ideological stance in the light of
Struggle
independence and Nehru's ventures into nation-building. I began to question my thesis that
India's
technology was a matter only of "natural necessity" and that divine justification was
political
only "after politics."
experienced
led me to a new appreciation of the ideologies of liberal democracy and Gandhian nonviolence
This
to a revision of my understanding of Marxism in their light. In my talk at the WSCF General
and
in 1952 I referred to this change in my approach as follows: "There was a time when I
Committee
that the New Age of Christ was so much beyond history that it could be experienced in politics
thought
as Forgiveness and not as Power; that political philosophy could be only a philosophy of sinful
only
where the cross was relevant only as forgiveness to the politician, and not as qualifying
necessities
political parties, techniques and institutions as such." Of course, the depth of sin in collective
politics,
made for a permanent tension between the politics of justice and redemptive love until Christ came;
life
membership in the Communist party. Both rejected me, for opposite reasons.
appoint me its youth secretary. That was in 1945.
III
invited to Geneva as a secretary of the WSCF.
but "it is possible for politics itself to be redeemed of its extreme perversions and be made more or less