Desmond Tutu: A Role Model For Indian Church Leaders

Desmond Tutu (center) stands between Issac Mathai (left) and his wife Suja Mathai (right) in 2005 at the Mathai’s Soukya International Holistic Health Center in Bangalore, India. Photo courtesy of Soukya.

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(OPINION) A vibrant advocate for human rights and iconic faith leader, South African Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu died at age 90 after fighting prostate cancer as bravely as he fought for peace, forgiveness, reconciliation and many other hot-button issues of the day.

South Africa’s first Black Anglican archbishop who went on to win the 1984 Nobel laureate and the Gandhi Peace Prize, Tutu early in his life tapped into India’s freedom struggle by imbibing the grassroots and macro-level strategies of its father-figure, Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi, born in Gujarat, India, honed his public leadership skills in the sociopolitical waters of South Africa while working there for nearly 20 years. After earning his law degree in London, Gandhi sailed to South Africa in 1893 to handle legal affairs for an Indian merchant.  

Gandhi’s night of shame and humiliation on a South African railway platform knocked the daylights out of the mind of the young lawyer, who experienced racial discrimination firsthand. Armed with a first-class train ticket, he sat in a Whites-only section in the train. A White man objected to his audacity and asked a White official to eject Gandhi. The racist officer threw him and his luggage out of the train.

That cold night stoked the fires of fierce resistance in Gandhi’s belly that led him to fight for the victimized and the marginalized. He devoted his entire life to them, taking the bull and bullies by their horns, until he was felled by an assassin’s bullet in New Delhi in January 1948, a year after India’s independence from Britain. Tutu, who was 17 then, studied Gandhi both in South Africa and India while cutting his teeth in political activism. Tutu’s lecture notes are peppered with Gandhian “satyagraha,” or “soul force,” campaigns against the establishment, dedication to communal harmony and a lifelong love for the poor and the downtrodden.

In 1931, the year Tutu was born, Gandhi was in London as the sole representative of the Indian National Congress at the Second Round Table Conference to iron out issues related to India’s freedom from Britain. The Mahatma — or Great Soul — would continue to have a big influence on Tutu’s relentless campaigns at home and abroad for the rights of Blacks and the marginalized.

“Gandhi’s life surely influenced Bishop Tutu,” said J. Alexander — an officer with the elite Indian Administrative Services, the 6,000-odd strong bureaucratic office that runs the governments in India. IAS is the successor to the Indian Civil Service that was founded in British India. Alexander is a former lawmaker and local government minister and current president of Bangalore YMCA.

“Tutu taught community leaders from the faith to leverage our positions of power to help the victims, the poor and humanity in general,” Alexander said. “He was a true follower of Jesus where he was.”

Christ’s Sermon on the Mount influenced Gandhi. Tutu embraced both Jesus and Gandhi in epitomizing biblically rooted faith in public life. He literally wore his faith on his sleeves: His purple cassock glistened with a white cross. He walked the talk in the marketplace. To many Indian church leaders, Tutu became a role model. They could pick any items from Tutu’s leadership buffet spread.

Subodh Mondal, resident bishop of the Methodist Church in India for the episcopal area in New Delhi and head of three conference areas across eight north Indian states, told ReligionUnplugged.com that Tutu has been his role model from the time he entered seminary to become a Methodist minister:

As episcopal leaders, handling vast challenges and myriad responsibilities in India, we closely studied his model of leadership, how he interacted with political, industry and faith leaders across the board, across religious barriers.

I met (Tutu) in Durban, South Africa, some years ago while I was there for a meeting of the World Methodist Council. I also heard him give a lecture on ‘justice of any kind’ at an American seminary before that.

For the Indian church today, Tutu’s model is relevant and workable. It is imperative in the current context to use our pulpits to speak truth to power and challenge our flock to get up from their pews and go out of the church walls and be involved in the causes and campaigns for justice, truth and righteousness, the biblical way.

For church leaders like Mondal and others, Tutu’s open expression of his faith — whether it was the crucifix on his purple vest or Bible references in media interviews — is a galvanizing force to take a stand. Do the right thing. Act fast.

Tutu was baptized as a Methodist, and his father Zachariah taught in a Methodist school. It was only later, perhaps through his White Anglican priest, mentor and benefactor, the Rev. Trevor Huddleston, that he transferred to the Anglican Church from which John Wesley, the founder of Methodism.  

The color of your skin determined your place of dwelling and your choice of a job in South Africa when Huddleston went from England to serve in the Black townships of South Africa from 1943 to 1956, getting his hands dirty and his cassock muddied as he fought in the trenches to fight the evils of apartheid. Tutu saw Huddleston in action with his biblically rooted theology and followed suit.

Tutu himself famously said that if you are neutral when it comes to fighting social injustice, you are on the side of the oppressor. He used an anecdote to drive home his point: If you see an elephant stepping on the tail of a mouse and you say you are neutral, the mouse is not going to be happy with your stand.

In countries like India, where the local church still battles issues related to caste, class, race, language and socioeconomic background, Tutu’s servant-leadership model, enveloped with kindness and compassion, is a North Star to follow.

Tutu’s impact was inside and outside the church compound. “Bishop Tutu taught us life lessons that love and forgiveness are tools for healing,” said renowned ayurvedic health expert Dr. Issac Mathai. Ayurveda is the traditional holistic system of medicine of India.

Mathai has some of the world’s A-listers as clients and personally treated Tutu during his three visits to Mathai’s sprawling Soukya International Holistic Health Center on the outskirts of Bangalore, now named Bengaluru. He told ReligionUnplugged.com:

Interacting with him closely for several years as his personal physician at our health center, I can only say that he is a true soldier of Jesus Christ. I have seen his genuine love for people, whether big or small. We are human beings first, he always says. For instance, I recall a scene when I was there in New York with Bishop Tutu. Soon after addressing the U.N. assembly in New York, and high-fives with global leaders, he consciously spent time with a lady janitor on the way out. It was a genuine stop to inquire about her well-being, not a photo-op for the paparazzi. He epitomized Lord Jesus’ teachings in truth and spirit.

While planting a gulmohar sapling at Soukya’s 30-acre health center in 2005, Tutu told the assembly there, “Love and forgive always for healing.” That was the essence he brought to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa after his friend Nelson Mandela became the first Black president of South Africa.

The Rev. Vincent Vinod Kumar, vicar of the 210-year-old Anglican St. Mark’s Cathedral in Bengaluru, said, “Bishop Tutu’s courageous faith and love in action is what we aspire to always emulate in our local context.”

In the India of today — where faith leaders across the spectrum, Christian leaders in particular, are learning to dodge the fiery darts of intolerance and religious bigotry catapulted their way by a small band of rowdy radicals — Tutu’s model of social and political outreach to the leaders in power, or the Tutu way, is a tried and tested template to ring in a spirit of tolerance and communal harmony as we step into a new year, 2022, and the 75th year of India’s independence.

Stephen David is a Bangalore, India-based journalist and political commentator specializing in religion, politics and public policy.