How Henri Le Saux Wanted To Bring Salvation To Heathens

Catholic missionary J Monchanin (1895-1957) had established the 'Saccidananda Ashram' in 1950 and had started an elaborate mission to 'Christianise' Hindu spirituality. He wanted Hinduism to die, shed Vedanta and get resurrected in Christianity. In 1957, he died and was succeeded by another French Catholic missionary Henri Le Saux (1910-1973). Henri Le Saux assumed the Hindu name 'Swami' Abhishiktananda as part of his mission strategy.

When Henri Le Saux first came to India, Monchanin took him to Sri Ramakrishna Tapovan so that the former could observe first hand a Hindu ashram. At the same time Monchanin was also observing Henri Le Saux to see what effect the place was having on him. Monchanin made the following observation:

Henri Le Saux hence decided to understand and dismantle the Hindu spirituality so that it could be Christianised. So as part of the project, he started visiting Hindu pilgrim places in South India. Wearing the saffron robes of a Hindu sanyasin he visited the temples of Chidambaram, Kumbakkonam and Thanjavur enjoying the hospitality of gullible Hindus who welcomed him into their temples. He recounts in a letter of this experience in Chidambaram – the great Saivite temple:

At Srirangam – the great Vaishnavite centre he purportedly violated the explicit notice at the entrance that non-Hindus are not allowed inside the temple. He went into the inner corridor. His hagiographer James Stuart admiringly writes how “clad in Kavi (saffron robes) he followed a group of children into the inner sanctuary of the temple at Srirangam (carefully averting his eyes from the notice which prohibits entry to all non-Hindus.”

Nevertheless, standing right before the sacred statue of Vishnu he refused with derision to accept the aarti . In his words:

One place that particularly interested him was Arunachala – another great Saivite centre where the mountain itself is considered as a form of Shiva. It was also where Sri Ramana Maharishi experienced Advaitic state of the self. In 1953, in his letter to his family, Henri Le Saux expressed his desire regarding Arunachala, "When will Arunachala be inhabited by Christian monks?”

Sri Ramana Maharishi was having a great influence on the seekers of the West. This had to be countered. Henri Le Saux had a plan. He revealed this to a fellow Catholic priest:

By 1955, he was grooming a young Christian boy of 20 years to become a Christian Ramana, which however could not materialise (James Stuart, p.79). In 1957, following the death of Monchanin, Henri Le Saux then in charge of Shantivanam, soon developed the ‘fulfillment theology’ to ‘Christianise’ Advaitic experience.

The ‘fulfillment theology’ was one of the prominent and strong weapons in the theological arsenal of Christianity.

Fulfillment theology was prominently employed in the study of Hinduism by a Scottish educational missionary John Nicol Farquhar then working in YMCA (1902-23). His book Crown of Hinduism published by prestigious Oxford University became popular both in Indology circles as well as with protestant missionaries. Fulfillment theology in the Hindu context as put forth by Farquhar states:

Like Roman Catholic Monchanin did decades after him, Protestant Farquhar also declared that Hinduism should die in Christianity: “Hinduism must die in order to live. It must die into Christianity.”

Catholic counterpart of Farquhar was Pierre Johanns a Jesuit missionary. Johanns made the claim that "almost all elements of Christian religion...are to be found among them [the Hindus] in a higher form than they were ever known among the Greeks." Both Johanns and Farquhar paid special attention to Vedanta. Farquhar wrote:

In the 1920s, Johanns was publishing a periodical entitled, The light of the east where he serialised articles under the title 'To Christ through the Vedanta' over a period of 20 years. According to Harry Oldmeadow, the biographer of Henri Le Saux, 'fulfillment theology' had an abiding presence in the work of both Monchanin and Henri Le Saux.

As the head of the institution, Henri Saux set to work. In 1962 he finished a 100-page draft. Elaborately titled ‘The Experience of Saccidananda: Advaitin experience and its Trinitarian fulfillment’ the text would become an important document in the appropriation project. According to James Stuart the book brought “together Advaitic experience and Christian faith …through the adoption of a ‘theology of fulfillment’”. In the book, Henri Saux explained the need to Christianise Advaitic Vedanta:

Henri Le Saux wrote that Hinduism belongs to a category called the religions of the ‘Cosmic Covenant’ which means all religious traditions outside the Biblical revelation. Of these non-Biblical cosmic revelations he called Hinduism in general and Advaita in particular as 'the acme of man's spiritual in the cosmic religions'. However he stressed that though 'the cosmic covenant and Christ's revelation are not opposed to one other' they are not the same. On the contrary “it is that the first prepares the way for the second”. In the case of Advaita, it is the primeval evil that entered the Garden of Eden that is stopping this fulfillment of Hindu Advaita in Christian Divinity:

Even as he was undertaking these efforts, Henri Le Saux harboured serious doubts whether through fulfillment theology he could really Christianise Advaita. When the draft appeared as the book he had dropped the subtitle ‘Vedanta to Trinity’. In a letter to Raimundo Panikkar, another fulfillment theologian, he confessed : "...whatever we do is it not a qualified visishta advaita? - and advaita is lost as soon as there is qualification?" Such doubts and confusions never made him lose sight of his ultimate goal which he explained this in one of his letters thus: “Without this recollection in [Jesus], the Indian Church will never be capable of transforming Hindu India into Christian India.” (letter dated 10.10.1963)

In his worldview, the spiritual traditions outside the church exist only because god conserves them for the Christian to bring them into the church. After a spiritual tradition is appropriated by the church it ceases the need to exist outside the church.

Unlike Monchanin who worked mostly within the confines of Shantivanam, Henri Le Saux took the appropriation crusade right into Hindu holy places. He always made it a point to go to the most venerated places of Hindus and conduct a Christian mass while unsuspecting Hindus would take the saffron clad missionary for a Western Hindu sanyasin.

It started as early as 1955 when he visited the Elephanta caves. He claimed it for Jesus by conducting a mass before the famous Mahadeva statue:

Later a three headed Jesus would adorn the entrance of his Catholic monastery at Shantivanam.

In January of 1965, he climbed to the summit of Arunachala – the sacred hill worshiped by Hindus and conducted a Christian mass there. While at Uttarkashi, another highly esteemed place of Hindu pilgrimage, while enjoying the hospitality of a Hindu ashram, he went into “the crypt of a small temple besides Ganges' where 'sitting cross-legged' he conducted the Christian ritual alone with 'the bread and wine after the order and rite of Melchizedech (…).” and then 'declared this act as ‘a prophetic sign’”. ( James Stuart:2000, p.172) It was at Uttarkashi, which he visited once again, he started experimenting an Indian liturgy with a Sanskrit base. He wrote:

He now started fashioning his masses based on fulfillment theology. Christmas eve celebrations of 1965 started with the reading of Hindu texts followed by the prophets and then Christian Gospel – thus Hindu texts becoming the preparation for the advent of Christianity. He called mantras as short prayer phrases which could be related to Christian devotion. In his work 'Prayer' he drew parallels between the Hindu Om and Sachhindananda and the Christian Abba, the prayer of Jesus. The mechanism for creating a Christian mantra, which Henri Le Saux called as 'Mantra Sandwich' was later consolidated in Shantivanam. Here a traditional Indic mantra venerated and practised for thousands of years like Om Nama Sivaya or Om Namo Bhagavathe Vasudevaya or Om Mani Padme Hung are taken. Then the Hindu or Buddhist spiritual principle (deity's name or symbol) is removed and Christian name is slipped in between.

Thus Om Nama Shivaya or Om Namo Narayana becomes Om Namo Christaya, Aum Sri Yesu Bhagavathe Namaha. Om Mani Padme Hung became Om Yesu Christa Hung. Ringu Tulku and Mullen in their paper 'Buddhist use of compassionate imagery' (2004) trace the Christian appropriation of Buddhist mantras to Shantivanam project and justify it through the fulfillment theology: "A strong connection between Om Mani Padme Hung, as a universal expression into human heart and the spirit of Jesus has already been made in Buddhist circles.”

In 1968, Henri Le Saux left Shantivanam handing over the charge to new occupants. On parting, he gave a four-fold advice to a Jesuit priest who had founded a Christian centre for dialogue with Hindus. In that advice, Henri Saux suggested that Christians should take up the celebration of Hindu festivals such as Deepavali as a joyful expression of their own faith and also use aarti or deepa puja in Christian churches giving it their own Christian interpretation.

There is an interesting twist in the life story of Henri Le Saux. Leaving Shantivanam and living by the banks of Ganges, there seemed to have happened in him some genuine transformation. According to Wayne Teasdale, a Catholic theologian, Henri Le Saux “seemed to lapse into purely monistic Advaita”. Abhishiktananda declared that it was the Advaitic experience and realisation that is important and everything else need to be dropped:

He also got critical about the church though he offered mass till his death. He felt the church’s insistence of Christ was as an obstacle to final spiritual liberation:

In another diary entry he again criticised the church – this time quoting a verse from the Upanishad:

He died on 7 December 1973. Meanwhile, Shantivanam itself had passed into the hands of a more virulent Hindu-phobic theologian who also would become more aggressive in appropriating Hindu spirituality and culture for evangelism.

Also read: Appropriation Wars