The Jesuit Swamis of India

DESPITE their talent as missionaries, the Jesuits have left their imprint most deeply on the culture of the West. Now, not so much as missionaries but as citizen Christians, they are making a mark on a major culture of the East -that of India. "If India is today in some degree Christian, it is because of the Jesuits," says Father Theo Mathias, S.J., head of the Roman Catholic education organization in India. The 3,100 Jesuits in India constitute the third largest national contingent in the society after the U.S. and Spain, and fully 2,600 of them are native Indians. In 1972 they took in 161 new entrants, almost as many as did Western Europe, Canada and the U.S. combined. The De Nobili seminary at Poona is the largest Jesuit "house" in the world. Indian Jesuits are even sending missionaries to other countries.

The Indian Jesuits still take their cue from the adaptability of the pioneer missionary, Father Roberto de Nobili, who adopted the ascetic life of the Hindu holy men shortly after he came to India in 1605. The Jesuits reflect the broad spectrum of the subcontinent's culture. At Poona, for instance, a group of De Nobili Jesuits are experimenting with an Indianized version of the Mass that incorporates Indian serving dishes, Indian music, language, and postures of prayer. Father Matthew Lederle, a German-born Jesuit who is now an Indian citizen, directs the serene modern center of Sneha Sadan in Poona specifically to encourage an intellectual exchange with the city's 200,000 Maharashtrian Brahmins. Some De Nobili seminarians live out in the city's slums where they have won the friendship of the poor.

Jesuits are engaged in pressing secular problems. They administer the country's Roman Catholic medical network, with its 400 small hospitals and 600 dispensaries. They run India's only social sciences institute. But perhaps the most engaging of the Indian Jesuits are the handful who have chosen to adopt the life-styles and manner of Hindu sanyasi -holy men -while continuing their work as Roman Catholic priests. Two such Jesuits are Swami Amalananda and Swami Animananda, who work in remote, poor villages in the state of Mysore. The 70-year-old Animananda, whose chosen name means "devotee of the small," turned sanyasi in 1947. Now he travels by bullock cart to five small villages talking about religion with clusters of interested listeners in Hindu temples. Because the villagers are monotheists, Lingayat Hindus who worship the God Shiva, Animananda preaches "less about Christ and more about God the Father."

Swami Amalananda, 54, whose name means "taking joy in the immaculate, "is building a small stone church at Deshunur in the style of the Hindu temple, the mandir. But it will have Stations of the Cross carved into the outside wall and ten windows symbolizing the Commandments. Sitting on a small cement platform in the holy man's traditional style, he dispenses advice to reverent villagers. The advice is often practical as well as religious, perhaps warning them about such practices as thatching their cow sheds because of the danger of fire. He has also started both a savings bank and a seed bank for the villagers.

The Indian Jesuits are in an enviable position compared with priests elsewhere. The religious man is still hallowed in India; the priest is still an authority as he was in Europe before the Industrial Revolution. Because he is expected to be an ascetic, there is little temptation to become "relevant" by marrying. Eventually, of course, Indian Jesuits may face the same problems as their colleagues in the West. Already they are getting fewer novices from the Westernized parts of the country than from those that are still underdeveloped.

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