I. The Organizing Idea of human dignity in our Conflicting Pluralism:
Yearnings of the Indian mind to integrate the diverging plurality of Indian culture has been a sloganising theme for years. The idea of human dignity of every person inhering in one being just a human is the finally accepted focal point of the yearnings to be implemented by the Indian Constitution. By God's grace, the yearnings and the focal point should be perfectly at home to us not to remain as just slogans. They should constitute the very consuming and pervasive spirit in everything we do, as it is central to our faith.

Further, it is little known that by God's plan of eternal patronage of all cultures as his own the idea of human dignity along with other humane values had been fundamentally imbedded in our ancestral heritage that were known, articulated, recorded and lived by our ancients. Human dignity was not an abstract theoretical principle but an organically evolved value in our ancient culture. Our native human values that naturally emerged from the self-evidently lived fundamental value of human dignity were subsequently dimmed by the imposition of an alien fair skin-race-based values. The imposition then (7th century CE) is self-evidently explicit to this day. Nevertheless, the suppressed ancient values have also assertively remained alive to this day as 'ethos and mores' of all people in spite of having been callously dimmed.

Together they also make it explicit that the blessings of the dignity of being human in its ordinariness is in fact the mysterious missing link in the evolution of Indian culture. This is my personal studied insight. It is worth noting also that the dimming of our native humane values was precisely the instance of the beginning of the chimera of our missing link. Clarification and addressing of the urgency of this missing link that is unconscionably present among us too is critical for our evolving into a CSI cultured temple of God. Otherwise, our witnessing in the veritable context of our culture, individually and collectively in God's grace, would be in jeopardy.

Therefore, our culture's own organic idea of Fundamental Human Dignity should be consciously borne in mind as our all-pervasive spiritual and cultural theme (pavigam in Tamil rendered as bhava in Sanskrit). The restoration of human dignity, the missing link, among us contextually would be our necessary cultural and faith catharsis. Faith of the revived CSI's congregation cannot remain furtive. Sloganising is not ours to indulge. And let our cathartic ripples spread to our neighbours with conviction, love and compassion.

II. Our Ancestral Environs -- Congenial for Disciple Thomas:

It is strange that the historicity of Disciple Thomas, a personal and living witness to Jesus Christ for 27 years in India, has not yet been authoritatively acknowledged and assertively upheld for its absolute factualness. The faithful in their divisive denominational identities have not yet realized the monumental cultural significance of Thomas' personal witness for all Indians. No concerted ecumenical effort has been made (I stand to be corrected), as it should have been, of the plentiful historical, archaeological and literary evidences (in Tamil) of Thomas' life and forcefully made known.

Much of what Thomas had heard from the Lord's mouth were the teachings he shared with the Tamilar of South India. The full details of that common heritage of all Indians has not yet been adequately researched, codified, remembered and, therefore, not seen in celebration of a commonly shared heritage. Paradoxically, Sainthood of Thomas is a virtual closure on his witness. In this juncture, nothing effective has been done to move the presuming Indian historians to incorporate the roots of Christian faith beginning Thomas's ministry as facts of history. They are pretty content to leave the matter in the doldrums of the "traditionally maintained"!

The faithful throngs of the faithful in Kerala have consciously maintained the heritage of the Christian roots of Thomas for more than 2000 years. That heritage has continued, beginning as part of the socio-political, cultural and religious relations and conflicts in a people-centred culture of the Chera-Chola Pandias and later prominently in the Sanskritised Kerala, to this day. It is a far more substantial and continuous historical narrative of people as such that one can make out. It is not a piddling matter in history and not tangential to our current consideration of the CSI either. The prejudices of historical scholarship aside, there is a fundamental need for the coordination of the much readily available written accounts and material evidences and the yet to be researched material found in all our languages. It cannot remain a loose end of historical accounting. It is a germane priority for ecumenical efforts to help develop an all-inclusive and wholesome view of the Indian heritage. Our culture being our context,

the need for our witnessing would do well with just the genuine and self-evident proof of the narrative that we have of us for verification. It is out there for anyone to see for historical authentication of the ancient roots of our faith.

This is so in spite of the fact that we do not have any written accounts that Disciple Thomas might have maintained about himself, his observations, his gathering of congregations and establishing churches and the Good News of his Master's teachings. It is not difficult to imagine that Thomas, known for his skeptical and empirical mind and hailing from a highly literate Judaic culture, would have maintained written notes and letters in Hebrew and, likely, in Tamil as well concerning what he did, taught and his observation of Tamilar culture etc. Yet, not a shred of the written material has been found. It is not a mystery. One has to accept the probability from limited evidences we have that it was due to deliberate destruction by fire and pillage in the dreadful internecine schism that plagued the South between 1st and 6th centuries. All documentations and evidences of Christian communities were just erased, to put it mildly, in much of the South. If truth were to be told, not because it is victorious, but because it would be transformative in our relationships to be human with integrity, the suppressed details are critical to be made known, but it is not relevant for our purpose.

However, one may reasonably speculate on the basis of cultural evidences and draw some insights from the Tamilar environs, which were pretty congenial for Disciple Thomas to live out his commission to witness.

The most basic features of the long prevailing culture were the theistic perceptions of "One Humanity and One God" (onre kulam, oruvane thevan), that God was without forms but inheres in one's heart, and that love was his main attribute. Thomas could not have found anything more coincidental to his Gospel message of God with us. His teachings are found delineated only in Tamil literature that is available. The features of the monotheistic faith along with the culturally lived ethics merge remarkably with the fundamentals of Christian faith and values. Uncannily, they are demonstrably compatible.

Furthermore, surprisingly remarkable is that the model of an ethical teacher in the primary culture as a guru coincides with Jesus' manifestation as just a human and Thomas' modeling of his sacrificial life after his master--the servant-hood of a guru, is a universally understood model of service and leadership. It is ours to embrace as our own in the re-formed CSI.

We are thankful to several Tamil scholars for their inspired insights from unmistakable literary evidences they have made known. There is much yet to explore. There are hordes of evidence of Christian witnessing in our own land by our men and women since ancient days. These facts must be bought to the knowledge and awareness of churches and independent evangelists to be owned by them as their Christian Indian heritage as well. By God's grace, it would make a difference to their chosen ways of witnessing.

Hence, the constitution of the re-formed CSI cannot but be a dynamic framework geared to ecumenical movement orientation. That movement must spearhead a sense of historical and ancestral ownership of the Christian Indian heritage as it has been and as it would continue to manifest in every other part of India by organized (Churches) and un-organized (independent evangelical) work of Christians. The shared ownership of our faith's cultural context would facilitate a shared cherishing of differences in witnessing the good news. A major part of the resources of the re-formed Church of South India should be centered around the dedication to ecumenical witnessing.

In view of these considerations the aligning of our faith doctrines in the awareness of the specifics in our context becomes imperative. The re-formed church of CSI cannot be seen as just an extraordinary conventional denomination.

III. Past Reasons for CSI's existence are Absolutely untenable Today:
The unprecedented first attempt at unifying the faith among Protestants resulted in the the creation of the CSI. It was necessarily a structural one. Denominational unity of a few was all that the clerics then could aspire for. The success in founding the CSI nevertheless was a mile stone. The promising grace of that unity disarrayed eventually by the willful and successive ecclesiastical abuse of power and greed. Other doctrinal and cultural fault lines were also intrinsic that came to the fore in tow. Details of the scandal are fully known. That much is enough to identify yet another critical specific for establishing the larger context for the raising of a truly ecumenical
structure of faith that is centered in Christ and his faithful congregation.

Constitution making is only of limited value unless anchored firmly and repeatedly in the well defined purposes to emerge from the contexts suggested and others that may be added.

Some of the provisions of the old CSI constitution did facilitate the odious abuses.
Certainly they could not prevent them. Bearing that disaster in mind, the old constitution
of CSI cannot be a reference point, let alone be a model, for the compelling reasons
glimpsed. Of course it is not a clean slate we have, but references to the past should
serve only to alert as warnings. Great many of us, laity and clergy, have been tainted by
our silence in the face of abuse of our faith in the name of church loyalty. Many have
been in collusion knowingly or helplessly. All of us are thankful for many that have
upheld the integrity of our faith.

Neither reticence nor righteousness should mark our joining hands to draw the new
constitutional framework primarily in light of the contextual specifics that are self-
evident for regenerating our faith. It shall be centred in Christ and the faithful in order
to release the engaging spirit of ecumenism in our witnessing.

I believe the specifics identified are compellingly unique to be our primary context, if
not exclusively. The Biblical foundation is the given base for weighing the specifics
and the restructuring. The uniqueness of the specifics identified above would help
reappraise the CSI as the energising Indian temple of Christian faith and unity. When
that happens, the ecumenical chord of the unity of the faithful in His Name would be
heard continuously strumming the unifying rhythm at many levels of Christian life in
India across denominational lines.

If this sounds wishful, it is a call for the humbling discipleship of servant-hood for the
laity, clergy and the administration.

Some additional ideas to ponder contextually:

Episcopacy: Seriously, the idea of episcopacy is of dubious significance, if not wholly repugnant, in light of our cultural specifics and particularly in view of our ignoble disaster that reduced the CSI congregation as mute, irrelevant, utterly uninformed and,
hence, incapable of correcting the rot. With the impact of Christ-centred discipleship of guru on the part of laity, clergy and the administration to serve and minister in humility, the constitutional and bureaucratic manipulation that was the order of the day by
Episcopal justification shall not be there any more. It is neither rational nor theological. Theological justification has been mere rationalization for gaining political power in the ecclesiastical power structure and many, apparently, benefiting down the line in the
hierarchy. In the dreadful reality of the way the CSI ended up, the strange notion of episcopacy was created by the clergy, for the clergy and in their full view of its un-redeeming value for the faithful congregation that foot the bill of their extravagance.
Historically, it is a relic of the European imperial traditions -- the Holy Roman Empire, Imperial monarchies, Colonial regimes and now modeling the Corporate structure with the CEO as Boss. What has the basely loaded notion of power and control, of foreign and native variety, to do with Christ and the faithful of the re-formed CSI in the contextual dynamism identified? None.

Having an exceedingly complex culture as our context, it is imperative to have a simple but clearly honed message as Christ's witnesses on the part of everyone of the congregation and clergy of re-formed CSI.

The ancient rooted-ness of our faith in our soil and the dynamics of our complex cultural context could be considered as basic to our catechism and to on-going Christian education programmes for adults and the divinity training for the clergy and administration.

New insights emerging from further studies on the ancient rooted-ness of our faith in our own soil and other dynamics would not be an exercise in Indian cultural chauvinism. Nor would our attempt to restructure anew the CSI be seen that way. Far from it. They would complement great many Christian studies from Indian cultural perspective in the past as well as others attempted in the future. They are already clearly indicative of the development of a substantial Christian Indian theological understanding. The addition of the perspective on the dynamism of our cultural context would make them wholesomely rooted. Further, they would also convincingly fill one of the gaping holes in the rather western-centric account of the universal Christian presence, of Christendom.

Some of the terms and phrases, such as authentic, native, indigenous, and a whole lot of Sanskrit expressions in our writings and liturgy are of troubling nature, but little realized. We tend to use them in our desire to be culturally sensitive, or to make our worship forms, if not our doctrines, to be in tune with some cultural features. Now they would need considerable rethinking in light of our indubitable ancient roots. In particular, the use of Sanskrit's mystifications in Christian liturgy and worship is a problem for that very reason. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is simple, clear, and straightforward in its redemptive message, I believe. Sanskrit mystifications by their very nature have racial and political presumptions and would be invasive of Christian beliefs. In any event the terms and expressions identified among others are not abstractions. They cannot be casually employed. Seen contextually and historically they would gain the specificity of their meanings and purposes to be genuinely imbedded for informing our historical faith to us and everyone.

In the same vein, you would notice that the terms like radical, liberative, revolusionary, Third World, feminine, Dalit and such have not emerged at all in the context of Christian ecumenical witnessing in the culture of India.

Though long, many questions have been raised cursorily in synopsis for your reflection and deliberation. I will be happy to clarify any point raised in this writing in dialogue.

Louis Sundaramani Simon is an unconventional thinker with critical perspectives on the scholarship of history, culture, international relations, United Nations, Human Rights, Racism, Padagogy -Teaching experience among others. My faith experience has long been Associated with the World Student Christian Federation and Indian Christian Asiramam Movement.