My grandfathers and me

The stories that I heard of members of my family, the stories that were played out in front of me in the family setting, both have had a profound influence of how I thought and acted. It has had its role in shaping the values that I live with or try to live with. I still remember the solemn promise I made to myself when writing my name on top of the answer sheet in exams. 'This answer sheet belongs to Thomas P. Thomas and it has my grandfather's name on it. (My paternal grandfather is Dr. P. M. Thomas and I am named after him.) I will not do anything that will sully his name.' Basically, it was just my prop to stop myself from cheating in the exam. Clearly, the unethical nature of cheating in the exam itself was not enough to stop me. And I must admit. This did not always stop me. I did have a couple of instances of cheating in exams in my time. But it did seem to work in most cases. But that is how I look at family folklore.

Now, it was not just Dr. P. M. Thomas, I also had another grandfather, the one on my mother's side. C. J. Palu. Now if you were to look at the two characters, they appeared very different from each other. One was a medical doctor working as a missionary doctor, initially for a short spell in Dahod in Gujarat and then later settling in with another missionary hospital in Vazhoor in Kottayam district of Kerala. He took  matters of Christian faith very seriously. I will rely on his nephew for a description of him. "Dr. P.M. Thomas who passed away in Oct. 1972 was a very extraordinary man. Six feet tall, broad shouldered and weighing over 80kg, he had an arresting personality. Always pleasant and soft-spoken, calm and unruffled, his eyes bespoke sympathy and tenderness. The papers have done scant justice in reporting his death, because in his lifetime he never cared to publicise his services; but the village (Vazhoor, near Kottayam) where he practiced medicine for over 30 years, held a condolence meeting and decided to perpetuate his memory. They wanted to construct a village hall in his name; but being short of funds, decided in stead to institute a foundation to help the poor children studying in schools."

Now C. J. Palu had fairly different pursuits in his life time. He was a businessman with interests in gold, agriculture and agri-commodities, chit funds (a financing mechanism), real estate and perhaps a few others as well that I do not know. In many ways he was a remarkable man. He grew up in a rather poor family. Was not educated beyond basic schooling, his grasp on matters of faith was perhaps not very high (Although he was fairly active in the church and my most enduring image of him is when I saw him through a partly opened door saying his prayers just before hitting the bed. He built a bit of a business empire during his time and he became a fairly well recognised person in Thrissur district. I came to know about the breadth of his influence only when I was typing address on invites to his death anniversary function. I was typing addresses of half the town of Thrissur and even senior politicians in Kerala turned up when he died. For me, he was the person who brought chewing gum for us in the evening when he returned from his shop, the leader of a silent pack of three (including his brothers) who sat quietly when there was any celebratory function at home. He was the one who took us to his farm early in the mornings and instructed the person in charge there to give us tender coconut water and raw mangoes with chilly powder and salt as accompaniments. He was the one who would address us in rather uniquely Thrissur ways like 'Kochappan' for boys and 'Kochammani' for girls, asked why we lacked 'chodi' (energy), moru kazhukiyo (did you wash your face?) and much more. His quietness was one of the most remarkable traits. As my uncle, his eldest son used to say, 'You should have seen him in his elements in his youth. He was a fairly fiery character.' But I did not get to see much of it. I still do not know much about him. But from what I have overheard about him at numerous alcohol driven conversations at home between my uncles, he must have been quite a character in his times, unafraid of anything, a visionary businessman and someone who always acted with a sense of fairness and in a spirit of compassion.

While, the two appear different on many fronts, there are two stories that I have heard about both of them which tells me that there was something which was common to both of them.

On one occasion, there was a theft at my grandfather's (Dr. P. M. Thomas) place. He knew who had done it. It became a bit of a talk of the town or rather the village. He did not file a police complaint because he felt that it was not required to harass the person on this theft which he was willing to overlook. The then Home Minister, who happened to be a friend dropped down in Vazhoor around the time and heard about this incident. He asked him to file a police complaint. However, he declined. The Home Minister then asked the police to send the beat police every night to their house. Thus was established a routine of two policemen coming to the house every night to sign the beat record kept at the house. Meanwhile, the person who committed the theft was not acted against.

Coming to my maternal grandfather, one of his friend's and supplier of gold for his business was arrested under a dreaded anti smuggling law of the time. The man was isolated by the gold business community as none of them wanted to direct the suspicion of the police towards themselves. My grand father was the one person who stood by him and helped him fight the case. He came down from Thrissur to Trivandrum to meet him in jail. The man, after the case was settled, went on to become a successful businessman in Thrissur. He remained a loyal friend of my grand father and his family since then.

What I see as common to both the persons is that they give primacy to their own moral judgment instead of legality and due process of the law. They had their own convictions about rights and wrongs and was not willing to 'let the law take its own course.' There is a boldness in asserting their sense of rights and wrongs and they had not 'outsourced' their ethical framework for operation to the 'law of the land'. Perhaps, I note this feature the most because I find myself often doing this outsourcing and being afraid to apply my own sense of rights and wrongs when the law says the opposite.

Resurrection and the necessity of the claim

The resurrection of Christ is a claim that lies at the heart of Christian thought. It is a claim that meets with a lot of questions. From historians, there is the question of is it true. From the theologian, the philosopher and the spiritualist, there is the question whether the truth of the claim is material to the idea of Christianity. It is the second question that I am going to write about here.

Many commentators from different disciplinary areas have admired the Sermon on the Mount and assorted sayings of Christ for its clarity, the continued relevance of the sayings to the present days and philosophical consistency. Often, they detach it from the claim of the resurrection and say that it is not material for our spiritual development. In this, there could be two categories of people. One, for those whom the speaker and the spoken are two different things and for others the spoken (and the done) are the only ways of defining the speaker and often the spoken is the speaker. For the latter, the saying from Christ, 'Before Abraham, I AM' is a strong indicator of his claim that he was indeed divine. For them, it has to be either true or false and if it is false, the questions about other things he said about kingdom of God, God etc becomes difficult to accept at face value because here was an intentional lier. And then the ethics that flows from it will have to be examined carefully. Clearly, I am taking a side on the issue of whether he actually said that. I am also talking specifically about taking the word of a person because you know him to be a truthful person. Not about applying your reason to examine what he said and then taking a call on the truth of it.

Now, for those to whom the speaker is immaterial and the spoken words are the only matters at hand, those who want to apply their reason.......it is to them that I have to make an argument and a claim. There is a part in Christ's statement about turning the other cheek. When faced with violent action, do not defend yourself, let alone counter attack. What is the basis for it? It is a clear call to adopt non violence as a principle and not merely as a principle. What can be the world view in which that is doable. When faced with the massive scale of violence of a Hitler, Winston Churchill called for arms against Hitler, Gandhi wrote letters to Hitler. What explains the difference. In my view, this one call from Christ to turn the other cheek is the clear marker of the boundaries of the temporal earthly kingdom and the glorious eternal kingdom of God. Without a glorious eternity, it is difficult to conceive a reasoning for turning the other cheek. Our history of the world does not give us enough reasons to do that. The demands of establishing peace and a reign of fairness and love in any time bound manner (whatever be the length of time) demands some form of violence to counter the 'violence of the evil'. The more massive the scale of violence, the less time we can tolerate. Which is why Barack Obama, in spite of his best attempts to adopt the Gandhian world view on non violence, had to concede that he cannot abjure violence as the Commander in Chief of the United States of America. He chose to concede this when accepting the Nobel Peace Prize.

But when you do have a glorious eternity to think about, one has the option of turning the other cheek. Without the belief in a glorious eternity, one cannot cross the final frontier of the earthly kingdom and turn the other cheek. And I am not saying eternity. I am saying glorious eternity. For if there is no value for eternity, again one is left with no meaning or purpose for turning the other cheek. That begets the question, what is eternal. It is timelessness and what exists eternally. The only thing that is eternal is God. And God is glorious in himself. There is no cause for God's glory. He is uncaused and his attributes are uncaused. If there is a glorious eternal and it matters to us (if we take turning the other cheek seriously), then we must think of what is beyond death. And it is here that the Christian claim of resurrection comes in. There is eternity and death is not an end. There is a God who can transcend death. And the only basis we  have for that claim is the resurrection of Christ. In the absence of that, one questions the claim of eternity. When one questions the claim of eternity, one questions the sagacity of turning the other cheek. So for that saying of Christ to hold true, resurrection is his only argument. Of course, you can choose to apply your mind and pick what you want and leave what you dont want from what Christ said.

Compassion as the well spring of action

This has been bothering me for a few years now. The constant battle in mind between the idea of fairness and compassion. When I observe a waiter's error at a hotel and my mind goes into an over drive thinking of whether to forgive or punish in the interests of systemic improvements, the inherent sense of revulsion that I feel for a discussion on positive and negative incentives, when I find decisions on terminating an employee as a major cause of heart burn........

The primary basis for Christian action has to be  a  well spring of compassion and not really a framework of fairness. In fact, the framework of fairness has to come from that well spring of compassion. If the framework of fairness collides with the demands of compassion, perhaps we should change the framework of fairness and cede to the demands of compassion.