Revisiting the Parable of the Good Samaritan

For most of us who have grown up in a ritualistic church going set-up we would be pretty familiar with all the popular stories of the Bible, including the parables of Jesus. We get so used to listening to them as time-pass stories or seeing them staged at occasional religious functions like the nativity scene at Christmas, but that is it. The tragedy for today's ‘modern’ Christians is that we get so familiar with those stories that we fail to apply them to our lives today. After all, isn’t the Bible supposed to be the guidebook for Christians along life’s journey?

The parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10: 25-37) is another story that we often fail to look beyond its mere narrative. But I think it still speaks in volume if we closely follow it. And as I see it, the parable has pointers to who a ‘true’ Christian is. Just a recap of the story in a nutshell: A man traveling to Jericho was robbed and beaten to a point of near-dead; a priest came the same way but walked away from the other side; a Levite also passed by but ignored him and walked away; finally, a Samaritan came along, saw the wounded man and helped him.

If we look at the context, the priest and the Levite were people who have businesses at the Lord’s temple and yet they failed miserably in what they claim to profess (For instance, “Love your neighbor as yourself” [Lev. 19:18]). On the contrary, the one who was supposedly an alien came to the rescue of the unfortunate man. It is important to understand that the Jews at that time despise Samaritans as outcasts and even refer to them at the level of dogs. (One can also infer this from Jesus' discourse with the Samaritan woman [John 4: 1-26]) Perhaps, the Samaritans also treated the Jews likewise. And yet, Jesus did an outrageous thing by presenting the Samaritan as the true ‘neighbour’. Of course, the Bible did not record the reaction of the ‘expert in the law’ or the crowd (including the disciples) present there but it would have been certainly interesting to behold!

Not only did Jesus upheld the Samaritan but he even told his listeners to “Go and do likewise” (v. 37). For Jews it must have been an insult to the injury: first, Jesus projected the Samaritan in the positive light and then told them to make him their role model! I believe Jesus chose the character of the Samaritan deliberately to make a point about the relationship of the Jewish people with other people groups living side by side with them. Jesus commended the act of the Samaritan to imply that we need to look beyond who the person is. The Jews, as we know, considers themselves ‘chosen people’ and therefore thinks highly of themselves.

Now, let us consider the situation of our contemporary society, more specifically of the relationships we share with communities living next to us. Let me take the case of the Naga Christians in Manipur as an example. I don’t think we’re any better than the Jews the way we think ourselves superior to communities living next to us. Religious bigotry is perceivable everywhere. Perhaps, our identity in Christ has not really sunk in to help us think beyond our subjective selves. But if we are to qualify ourselves as followers of Christ then we certainly need to broaden our definition of who our ‘neighbour’ is. If Jesus were to come in our midst today I’m sure he would have used the Kukis or the Meiteis or other people who are not of the same people groups in his parable to teach us a lesson. And as I see it, most conflicts within communities in the state would have been better monitored had churches and Christians looked deeper into the Bible for answers.

The relationship between different communities in the state can turn volatile any time because the old wounds have not really healed. And so, I think we need to be more cautious and act with a clear conscience. And the Word of God can be the light to light our way. Jesus said, “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you for this sums up the Law of the Prophets” (Matt. 7: 12). Most rules or laws made by man are normally stated in a negative way, like “Don’t do this…”, “Don’t do that…”, etc. But Jesus instead put it the other way round and tells us to “do to others”, implying a positive attitude towards our relationship with others. Generally, human tendency is to reciprocate to anything done to her/him. Good or bad, most of the time we only respond to the action done on us, and, perhaps, with the same measure precisely. Yet, Jesus instructs his followers with a different philosophy, that is, to be the first in doing good things for others. That way we can be certain nothing negative comes our way!

Jesus’ commandment to His followers implies a rather unusual approach to life altogether. But very seldom do we try and digest what His teaching would mean to us as His followers today. When he says, “Do to others as you would have them do to you” (Luke 6: 31) Jesus meant that his listeners should not only to be good to those who are good to them but to be good to everyone; not to only love those who love them but to love even their enemies! Such kinds of teaching by Jesus has often been considered ‘hard teaching’ by His own disciples and modern day scholars alike. Perhaps, that is so because Jesus was teaching contrary to the principles of the world!

The worldly principle would persuade us to be good to those who are good to us alone; to be bad to those who are bad to us; to love those who love us only, and likewise. Quite often, our desires seem to have grown to ditto others when it comes to relating with others. Somehow, it seems difficult to initiate but easier to follow suit! Our perspective to life is centered on our own world, so much so that we’ve developed a worldview of displacing the ‘other’. And in a world where ‘individualism’ is being encouraged, there is less and less time to think beyond the ‘self’! The principle that Jesus laid down for His followers is to first picture the ‘other’ before considering the ‘self’. He wants us to know that peace comes from looking into the interest of others. Harmonious co-existence of all living beings on earth entirely hinges on the respect for the opinion or the belief that each one may be contended with. When there is intolerance, hostilities certainly arise.

Jesus said that if we love those who love us only, we’re no different from any other person. In other words, He wants His followers to be different by being more than the worldly-wise; “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:35). Here, Jesus was talking about ‘love’ that is without any pre-condition. To remain faithful to the teachings of our Lord today, let us be active in doing what is good because only then can we expect people to reciprocate in a positive way.

Literary Cultures of India's Northeast: Naga Writings in English

Book Review: People and Articulations in Naga Literatures

February 2, 2016, Morung Express

Manjeet Baruah

Literary Cultures of India’s Northeast: Naga Writings in English by K.B. Veio Pou
Publisher: Heritage Publishing House
Pages: 213, Price: Rs. 300/-

K.B. Veio Pou’s book Literary Cultures of India’s Northeast: Naga Writings in English is an important contribution to the study of literature and culture of Northeast India. It is important because it is an extensive study of Naga literatures, especially since the twentieth century. It is also important because it provides a nuanced view of literatures in English that have emerged from the region during the period. Divided into five chapters, the book covers themes which are as historical and political as they are literary and cultural. Therefore, it makes the study not only one on literature, but also a socio-cultural history of the Nagas, possibly one of the few in this field.

Issues such as modernisation, religion and orality; political experiences and shaping of ideological apparatuses; genres of texts; memory and social experience; and notions or practices of political geography, these issues have figured in different ways in some of the other works on the Nagas too. Then what makes the present book distinct? A reading of Literary Cultures of India’s Northeast highlights a difference which entering such issues through the vantage point of literature can make. For example, the book shows how literary works construct characters. The characters are drawn from the social world, and their experiences and perspectives, as provided with, are important in the making of the narratives. The characters may be of the urban world, or they may be rural. They may be male or female, and could be of different ages. They could speak or imagine in different forms, whether in oral genres or in the written ones. They could be part of events which occur in different locations such as market places, domestic confines, roads, camps, churches, graveyards and many more.

In other words, what is shown in the book is how literature allow us to see the people, the common people, and acquire a sense of how they view their own locations in history and politics. Therefore, what we see is how people being historical and political beings is also closely connected to they being human beings. And it is this relation which the characters and the narratives illustrate. Perhaps, it is this visibility of the common people and their lived worlds which often remain in the shadows of discourses. Therefore, Veio Pou’s book is importantly positioned, wherein the common people become humanly tangible, and it is the tangibility of human life which gives concreteness to discourses or their understanding in research work.

However, one may argue that literatures being fictional narratives, are the characters too only imagined realities? Perhaps not. One can support Veio Pou’s contention through other illustrations as well. For example, when one goes through the tour diaries, reports and brief life narratives of the 1950s from the erstwhile Tuensang Frontier Division, one gets to see how agrarian and guerrilla existences, landscape, objects, building roads, rituals and customs, and firearms were inextricably connected in the lives of the people. There were instances when land was exchanged for rifles and problems that could arise thereof. There were instances when disputes over ownership of agrarian resources were connected to the vicissitudes between agrarian and guerrilla existences. From growing rice to finding wireless sets in the rice fields were part of people’s experiences. There were instances when the focus was not Zapu Phizo per se, but his Tommy gun, and how it changed hands through several people until one day it was found in a field in the village outskirts.

To borrow an insight from Veio Pou’s book, perhaps one can say that what these archival narratives highlighted was the world of those Nagas who were common but tangible people. They were concrete in the materiality and thoughts of their lives. And as his book shows, people in this sense of reality abound as different characters in Naga literatures too. The people who figured in the archival texts were engaged in living their socio-economic lives and also had their political convictions for the Naga movement. After all, they entered the archival narratives because the state encountered them, at times accidentally, while looking for camps and leaders, and did not appreciate their political convictions. Similarly, many important Naga literary works bring out the inextricable totality of the human and political existence, or the historicity of life that comprises both the everyday and the political of the landscape.

Thus, characters from the archives and literatures appear to express a common point. Veio Pou’s book has numerous discussions on how culture, politics and history are contained in the very materiality of people’s existence and thoughts. We get to hear them, see them, and find how the vividness of their past and present can come alive if only we make that little effort. Naga literature abounds representing and manifesting such reality. Genres, languages, or styles in literature are also part of such conditions of reality. The nature or choice of genres and styles cannot be isolated from how they articulate such reality, and also seek to shape the making of reality. As the book shows, folk and written, human and political, state and organisations, body and gender, peoples and nation, these dimensions converge in Naga literary narratives, transforming literature into rich and complex narratives of a national life.

Veio Pou’s book, through exploration of these dimensions, is not only a work of literary studies but also one of socio-cultural history. And it stands as an important contribution towards a nuanced understanding of people, landscape and articulations from this part of the world.

Manjeet Baruah teaches in North East India Studies Programme,

Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

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