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Asia in the Bible
Savio Abreu
T
his book traces the relationship of
Asian religions and cultures with
the Bible. As the author himself
admits, the title of the book can be
misleading since it does not cover
the entire continent of Asia, nor does it
span the vast time frame suggested by
the title. Also, as the author has mentioned, he has not been able to study
every work of every Asian biblical
interpreter, but has selected stunning
examples of Asian exegetical sedition,
idiosyncrasy, and imagination. That
probably explains why, even though
Philippines is a very prominent Christiandominated nation in Asia, biblical studies
from that country have not featured in
this volume. I was also surprised that the
contribution of George Soares-Prabhu,
a renowned Indian biblical scholar,
particularly in the field of Indian hermeneutics of the Bible, finds no mention in
this volume.
From a faith perspective, for an ordinary Christian believer to imply that the
parables and events mentioned in the
Bible have been borrowed from Indian
folktales, both in Sanskrit and Pali,
would be taboo and blasphemous, but
from a cultural perspective it makes
sense since all cultures and languages
have borrowed from one another. In
fact, the process of creolisation of languages and cultures has been studied
extensively by linguistic and anthropological scholars.
A ‘White Man’s Book’
The author describes the Bible as a
“white man’s book”, an intruder introduced to Asia by the colonial powers. He
begins by unearthing the presence of
Asia and specifically India in the Christian
Bible. The image of Asia that emerges
from the Old Testament is a land full of
power, wealth, and having a strong, welltrained army boosted by fierce Indian
elephants. On the contrary, the Asia that
Economic & Political Weekly
EPW
january 3, 2015
book reviews
The Bible and Asia: From the Pre-Christian
Era to the Postcolonial Age by R S Sugirtharajah
(Cambridge: Massachusetts; Harvard University Press),
2013; pp 303, price not indicated.
emerges from the New Testament is a
Roman province, a hostile territory with
unreliable people. The author paints an
interesting picture of Jesus, not as the
typical Semitic model of messiah, but as
a teacher of the truth repeating Buddha’s
message of renunciation and asceticism,
emerging from the Acts of Thomas, an
early third century text. He draws links
between phrases, theological ideas, concepts, symbols, stories, animals, and
plants found in the Bible, and similar
things found in Indian/Buddhist/Asian
cultures.
The book makes a critique of “Eurocentric thinking” found in mainstream
biblical scholarship. This Eurocentric bias
has led to mainstream biblical scholarship ignoring the influence of Asian
Buddhist elements on the New Testament
thought. This book points to a major
shortcoming in mainstream biblical
hermeneutics, viz, they accept Hellenistic influence on the New Testament, but
the influence of Eastern religions on the
formative years of Christianity has largely
been unacknowledged and unappreciated.
The reason for this blinkered view,
according to the author, is the perception
among Western biblical scholars that the
West provides the East with moral, intellectual and cultural strength, and accepting Christianity’s dependence on Eastern
faiths would appear as undermining the
West’s supreme status.
The author also offers a critique of
Asian biblical hermeneutics, contending
that their contribution has been limited
to the hermeneutical issues concerning
narrow Asian or Asian American issues.
They have yet to make a mark in the
vol l no 1
Jesus Seminar, the study of the Gnostic
Gospels and biblical archaeology. While
he finds examples of marginal hermeneuts such as the dalits, Burakumins,
tribals, and women fascinating, he laments that they have no grand ideas nor
big visions, and this leads to a reinforcement of a sectarian and ghetto mentality
that marginal hermeneutics claims to
undermine and subvert.
Asian biblical interpreters are tightly
tethered to the Bible and they need to be
unshackled from it in order to critique
the Bible itself and find meaning and
solace beyond its brutal and offending
tendencies. He advises Asian theologians
to look for the ongoing human-divine
tensions in their indigenous cultures, and
see how these engagements illuminate
and enlarge, or subvert and supersede,
the biblical revelation and narratives,
rather than translating Semitic idioms
and reconceptualising biblical tenets to
suit Asian realities.
Asian Biblical Hermeneutics
The author argues that the aim of
his book is not to show that Asia
was part of the biblical salvation
history, but to illustrate that there
were cultural and religious exchanges
between the biblical world and Asia.
To illustrate his point, he takes up the
works of various scholars from Asian
biblical hermeneutics. He describes in
detail the works of two scholars,
J Z Holwell and Louis Jacolliot in colonial India, who came up with their own
chosen Indian sacred texts containing
the original pure revelation, to prove
that biblical religion was inspired by
ancient brahmanical texts. Their hermeneutical enterprise is important since
it was a reversal of the perception
prevalent among the missionaries and
orientalists that the Indian sacred scriptures were influenced by the Bible.
While giving credit to Holwell and
Jacolliot for suggesting that Asian biblical inter preters should circumvent the
Judeo-Christian route to understand
divine revelation, he cautions that
their work on an idealised, pure Vedic
India could well be manipulated by
27
BOOK REVIEW
Hindu fundamentalists for their ideological purposes.
His lucid style and insightful analysis
of various Asian disputes of biblical
interpretation by Raja Rammohan Roy,
Hong Xiuquan, J C Kumarappa and Anagarika Dharmapala, who challenged the
reigning powers of those periods with
their biblical interpretations and advocated that if the “foreign book” had to be
relevant to Asia it had to be revised and
altered, makes for very interesting reading. Most Indians who know Roy as the
father of modern India and a critic of
traditional Hindu culture will be surprised to hear that Roy had written a
book Precepts of Jesus based on the ethical teachings of Jesus in the gospels,
which led to a theological battle with
Baptist missionary Joshua Marshman.
The story of Hong is equally fascinating
as he not only tampered with biblical
texts and came up with the Taiping
Bible, but employed the Bible for political purposes claiming that he was the
chosen instrument of god sent to exterminate the evil Manchu dynasty and
restore the Chinese to the worship of the
true god.
His analysis of the impact of the Bible
on Asian literature reveals that it is not
as profound and penetrative as that of
the Bible on the Western imagination.
The minimal impact of the Bible is because other stories and folktales such as
Ramayana, Mahabharata, Jataka tales
of Buddhists, etc, have influenced and
had an impact on the Asian literary
landscape.
He looks at the works of several Asian
fiction writers like Sarah Joseph, Gish Jen,
José Rizal, etc, who have used biblical
personalities, stories and events. To all
of them, the Bible, one of the effective
instruments of colonialism, is seen as a
book from the outside and the religion
it preaches is seen as foreign. In some
instances the novelists marginalise or
even reject the Bible.
Some Important Tasks
In the conclusion, the author lists some
of the important tasks awaiting Asian
biblical scholars. A very important task
that he highlights is to help Asia move
towards a post-scriptural society liberated
from the monopolistic claim of any
particular sacred scripture, especially in
the light of increasing religious fundamentalism. Another important task for
biblical scholars is to research on the
social and cultural history of the Bible in
Asia, situating it firmly within the intersecting historical, religious, literary, economic, and social contexts of the continent. Another task which has not been
mentioned in the book, but which I feel
is also important is research on the relationship between Asian art, sculpture,
and architecture, and biblical images,
stories, monuments, and concepts.
Given that this book is published by
Harvard University Press, I was disappointed to notice several typographical
errors on pages 22, 39, 108, 113, etc. This
detracts from the well-researched and
very interesting presentation of the book
contents. I was impressed by the painting on the jacket of the book, which is
a beautiful Moghul period miniature
titled “Akbar holds discussions in his
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january 3, 2015
vol l no 1
EPW
Economic & Political Weekly
BOOK REVIEW
debating hall at Fatehpur Sikri with two
Jesuits” painted by Nar Singh in 1604,
which is today in the Chester Beatty
Library in Dublin. This very absorbing
book backed by decades of research by
the author fills a lacuna in the field of
Asian biblical hermeneutics. This book
is an important contribution to biblical
scholarship in Asia and a useful aid not
just for students of biblical theology and
Outsourcing Reproduction
Anindita Majumdar
T
he transnational nature of the
commercial gestational surrogacy
arrangement has become a source
of contentious academic debates. The
practice of incubating an artificially
fertilised foetus in exchange of compensation by Indian women, seeking monetary help, has been attacked and lauded
in equal measure. However, the nature
of the practice and the way it operates
has got limited attention from academics working on commercial surrogacy
in India.
At a time when the case of the Thai
surrogate Pattaramon Chanbua (who
allegedly kept one of the two children
she gave birth to for an Australian couple on the charge that the latter abandoned the baby because he had Down’s
Syndrome) is receiving widespread attention, it is imperative that we engage
with the Indian commercial surrogacy
“industry”. What converts this practice
into an industry?
Going beyond market projections
(though that plays a significant part in
its popularity), commercial surrogacy
is symbolic of a growing desire for a
biological family facilitated through
the use of assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) such as in vitro fertilisation (IVF). Asexual reproduction –
the hallmark of commercial gestational surrogacy – has been made possible
to a large measure through the use of
ARTs. The administration and availability of these technologies and allied
medical services are mapped in the
book Sourcing Surrogates: Actors,
Agencies and Networks.
The book contributes to the emerging
debate on surrogacy by describing the
kind of networks that operate within the
Economic & Political Weekly
EPW
january 3, 2015
Sourcing Surrogates: Actors, Agencies and
Networks by V Deepa, Mohan Rao, Rama Baru,
Ramila Bisht, N Sarojini and Susan Fairly Murray
(New Delhi: Zubaan Publishing Services), 2013; pp 98,
price not mentioned.
commercial surrogacy industry, especially
in terms of creating a transnational
demand for the same. As part of “reproductive tourism” the book notes that the
ARTs industry caters to,
a desire to access either cheaper reproductive services or a wider range of them; this
turns citizens who would otherwise be
restricted by their nations’ policies into global reproductive health consumers – individuals around the world who can carefully
select services based on access, geographic
convenience and price (p 2).
The focus of the book is firmly embedded in tracking the ways in which
couples from India and across the world
approach surrogacy in India. This is
undertaken through interviews with
service providers such as IVF specialists,
surrogacy agents and others who create
networks through which the arrangement
is organised. Sourcing Surrogates is an
ethnography of the transnational commercial gestational surrogacy industry
in India that documents the practice
of surrogacy across four cities (called
“sites”): Delhi, Chandigarh, Hyderabad
and Mumbai. A fifth site discussed in
the book is the internet and its role in
the transnational networks of reproductive tourism.
Local-Global Networks
The book has four sites as chapters each
identifying the primary players within a
city and the ways in which they operate
within commercial surrogacy. In the
vol l no 1
religious studies, but for anyone interested in Asian studies.
Savio Abreu ([email protected]) is the
director of the Xavier Centre of Historical
Research, Goa.
description and discussion of each site,
the local clinics and agents are seen to
create linkages with clients in other
parts of the world.
In site 1 in the city of Chandigarh,
clinics and hospitals arrange the surrogacy arrangement for couples in India
and abroad through religious contacts
of the gurudwara. Averse to the idea of
advertising infertility clinics rely on
word-of-mouth publicity to attract
non-resident Indians and foreigners.
One of the clinics studied was attached
to a gurudwara which had traditionally
been patronised by devotees for its
healing powers in relation to curing
i nfertility. Within such a context, the
limited or missing access to ARTs treatment and commercial surrogacy in
most of the government, public hospitals in the city is glaring. The growth
in medical services in the private sector has been encouraged by the slow
impetus to the same in the government/public healthcare system. Infertility medicine has come to be predominant within the private healthcare
sector with the “family-owned nursing
home” being the prototype for IVF and
surrogacy in the city. Here, referrals
and networks between doctors work to
the advantage of the clinic in drawing
in customers.
In the city of Mumbai, site 2 in the
book, networks are an essential component of the assisted reproduction
industry (ARI). Here, IVF clinics, maternity homes, nursing homes and
third party surrogacy agencies provide
surrogacy services in differing modules. The aut hors discuss the emergence of the third party agency (TPA)
which brings together doctors, surrogates and couples in a way that is supposed to make the arrangement easier
to navigate and organise. The popularity of Mumbai as a sought-after destination for foreign couples com ing to
India to have babies through surrogacy
29

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