Camille was part of a wider network of Hindi writers since his university days in Allahabad and had an illustrious list of friends such as Mahadevi Verma, Dharmavir Bharati, Raghuvansh, Vishnu Prabhakar, Sarveshwar Dayal Saxena, Sachchidananda Hirananda Vatsyayan (popularly known as Agyeya), Harivansh Rai Bachchan and Sumitranandan Pant, among others. He was well respected, and he engaged in productive conversations with many of them. That was an era in which differences in thoughts and approaches were never impediments to long-lasting friendships.

While some of the more robust and hard-hitting critique of Camille’s works came directly from Hindu theologians such as Swami Karpatri, his friends greatly respected his scholastic mission and at the same time offered very sophisticated and nuanced critiques of what they perceived as his simplistic understanding or misreading of Hindu philosophy, literary traditions, myths and practices. His belief that the Christian ethical worldview was universal, historical and superior as compared to the Indian or Hindu belief systems that lacked both historicity, centrality of tenets and universal ethics was rarely challenged by his friends.

The most profound and yet gentle rebuke came from one of his closest associates and friends, Raghuvansh, who pointed out that Camille wanted him (Raghuvansh) to write the story of Christ with his (Camille’s) approval so that it adhered to the religious sensibilities of those who practised the Christian faith and that his fixation with a singular ‘truth’ (that of Christianity as the answer to the human spiritual quest) was problematic and limited in its vision (Raghuvansh 1961, pp. 220-221).

It is our reading that on certain issues Camille’s Christian missionary training and his own fastidiousness did not enable a space where he could question his own theological certitudes and embrace more diverse and dynamic interpretations of the human quest for truth and spiritual knowledge. The Indian idea of bhakti, or devotion, fascinated him, but his missionary robe prevented him from the kind of scholarly and spiritual transgressions that would have further enriched his works, free of all constraints. 

His friends, luminaries of the Hindi literary world, understood his limitations and yet admired his diligent work to unpack some of the complex Indian literary traditions and acquire proficiency in both Hindi and Sanskrit. Many of his critics and friends saw him as an inquisitive foreigner, a benign white European scholar who wanted to understand India.

While this in itself was not a new phenomenon given the number of European Indologists who had contributed towards knowledge creation about India during the colonial era, what set Camille apart was his devotion to India and the people of India, ultimately embedding himself within the Indian ethos.

To the Idea of India and Indian-ness

India and the larger South Asia have witnessed disturbing levels of communal polarisation and vigilante justice and frequent incidents of religious mob violence in recent times. We have seen the targeting of religious minorities across the region and the bullying and silencing of several scholars and activists who have tried to critically engage with their own faiths and traditions or those of communities that they may not belong to – prominent cases being the Indologist Wendy Doniger, Malayalam writer M.M. Basheer, Santhal author Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar, Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasrin, Indian-origin novelist Salman Rushdie and many others.

The Taliban regime in Afghanistan has banned women’s education and attacked women’s public presence in many ways, even going to the extent of killing women who have spoken out.

Amidst these militarised, masculinist and extremist worldviews are lost many an opportunity to experience empathy, collective and comparative wisdom and shared humanism of religious and philosophical traditions that have stood the test of time. Where diversity of thoughts, beliefs and practices have always existed, these traditions now appear to be hard-line, impermeable and exclusivist beyond recognition.

A parallel process is visible in contemporary India where ‘Indic’ civilisational values are being revived and debated with great passion and vigour, to which Father Camille Bulcke actually contributed in significant ways.

In fact, Camille’s legacy could be selectively appropriated in different and perhaps polarising ways. For the majoritarian Hindu nationalists, his idea of Hindi as the link language and his interest in the Ramkatha as the moral and inspirational source would be extremely appealing, while he could also appear as the ideal ‘secular’ Christian priest for those who are invested in challenging hard-line majoritarian positions. In other words, he could sit comfortably in both the right-wing and the left-liberal camps in contemporary India.

For Camille, India was his only home, and he could never think of leaving. One of his students, Scholastica Kujur, recalls that she had seen Father Bulcke cry only twice: the first time was upon learning about the death of his mother and the second when he heard that there was a move to ask foreign-born priests to leave India (Kujur 2015, p. 163).

Camille said, ‘I can’t go anywhere except you people now. I want to die in India, among you all.’ Kujur narrates that ‘later, this proposal to repatriate the foreign-born missionaries was dropped, and a much-relieved Father Bulcke said that he would be able to complete his mortal journey in India. Both of us started to cry with happiness’ (ibid.).

In March 2018, at the reburial commemorative meet in Ranchi, one of his associates recalled that Father Bulcke was an Indian citizen and resented being labelled a ‘foreigner’ in any context. He never imagined himself as anything but Indian and took great pride in being known as an Indian. He was overwhelmed by the warmth and generosity of this country that had accepted him.

On one occasion, he had said, ‘Thank God, who has sent me to India and thanks to India, who has received me with so much love!’ Some called him more Indian than Indians, and others conferred the title of ‘Bhumiputra’ (son of the soil) to honour his relationship with Jharkhand.

Excerpted with permission from Cambridge University Press from Camille Bulcke: The Jesuit Exponent of Ramkatha by Ravi Dutt Bajpai and Swati Parashar.

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