The Theological Challenges for a Hindu Theology of Liberation
Other fundamental questions remain to be addressed in the task of
constructing a Hindu theology of liberation. Why should the liberation
of human beings from poverty, powerlessness, and injustice concern
us with urgency? Why should it be inseparable from our understanding
of the meaning of the religious life? What is the value of the world
and life within it? There are powerful theological strands in Hinduism
that seem to devalue and negate the world and to promote indifference
to life within it. Such theologies appear to make the concerns of
liberation theology irrelevant. In affirming the truth of the ultimate
(brahman), for example, some interpreters minimize the significance
of the world by suggesting that the knowledge of brahman requires
and results in the negation of the world. The world is likened to a
sense-illusion, which we conjure, and then experience because of our
ignorance. The most famous of these analogies equates the world with
a snake that is mistakenly perceived in place of a rope. “The world,”
as T. M. P. Mahadevan puts it, “is but an illusory appearance in Brahman,
even as the snake is in the rope” (1977:28). The implication here
is that when the rope is properly known, the illusory snake will no
longer exist. In addition, the disappearance of the snake is a condition for truly knowing the rope. Similarly, when brahman is known
the world ceases to be, and brahman cannot be known as long as the
world is experienced. After the reality of the world is denied, it is easy
to deny meaning and value for its concerns.