Malcolm Nazareth (Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research)

Updated: Sat, 31 Oct 1998 13:02:54 -0600

Malcolm Nazareth
Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research
Resident Scholars Program 1998-99
Ecumenical Institute #6
P.O. Box 5877
Collegeville, Minnesota 56321, USA

phone: 320-363-3366
Fax:   320-363-3313
Email: miploc@csbsju.edu

DESCRIPTION OF WORK:

My work on the Indian Christian poet and reformer of Maharashtra, Reverend
Narayan Vaman Tilak, has led me to collaborate with Dr. Lance Prabhu,
S.J., Chair of the Department of Religion, St. Xavier's College, Mumbai,
India, in initiating a Tilak Archives Project at St. Xavier's from 8/98. 

My doctoral dissertation on N. Tilak points him out to be "the other
Tilak" in relationship to his contemporary Lokmanya B. G. Tilak.  My
research is a project in culture criticism of Western India during the
British Raj.  It presents a hermeneutic (a la Gadamer) of N. Tilak as one
of the founding poets of the "renaissance" in modern Marathi literature. 
It understands and interprets N. Tilak in terms of the region's medieval
Hindu poet-saint tradition and the nineteenth-century context of Hindu
social and religious reform (sudharna) in Western India.  It enters into
detailed exegesis of vital excerpts from the Marathi prose and poetry of
this prolific Indian Christian author. 

I argue that there are demonstrable linkages between N. Tilak's Hindu
(1861-94) and Christian (1895-1919) phases of life and that his
controversial pro-Raj stance is unintelligible outside his "preferential
option" for the unprivileged of Maharashtra (dalits, non-brahmins, and
women).  I try to make sense of N. Tilak's self-perception as a "cross
between St. Paul and Sant Tukaram."  A case-study of Hindu-Christian
encounter at the turn of the nineteenth century, my N. Tilak project
claims to be a historical-and- textual work that is non-theological and
even-handed.  I depict Tilak as an interreligious figure with a "composite
Hindu-Christian consciousness" and as a harbinger of the "Ganges-period"
in the history of Christianity. 

TITLE OF DISSERTATION: "Reverend Narayan Vaman Tilak: An Interreligious
Exploration"  Committee: Swidler (Adviser), Bregman, Winter, Engblom

A 8/98 Graduate of Temple University (Department of Religion), I am
looking for a full time teaching and/or research position in a North
American university. 


[India / Maharashtra]
[poet-saints]
[Varkari Sampraday]
[modern Marathi prose and poetry]
[hermeneutic of a modern Indian]
[culture criticism of Western India]
[history of Christianity in India]
[compound Hindu-Christian consciousness]