Louvain Studies 43 (2020): 120-140 doi: 10.2143/LS.43.2.

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Marx, Jesus, and Buddha

The Counter-Culture of
Sebastian Kappen SJ (1924-1993) against
the Background of Indian Liberation Theology
Mathew Thekkemuriyil Antony and Idesbald Goddeeris

Abstract. — The article discusses the life and work of the South Indian Jesuit Sebas-
tian Kappen (1924-1993) and his position among other progressive theologians in
South Asia. Kappen became a prolific writer from the 1970s onwards, possibly being
motivated by the Louvain priest and sociologist François Houtart. Initially, he wrote
on Marxist themes, such as the Church’s alienation from the poor. In his first English-
language book Jesus and Freedom (1977), he put forward the human character of
Jesus (instead of the deified Christ). This book brought him into conflict with the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, but eventually no action was taken against
him. In the 1980s, Kappen increasingly wrote about Asian religious traditions, par-
ticularly valuing the Buddha’s ideology of a casteless and anthropocentric society and
the Bhakti movement’s opposition to the prevalent Brahmanic hierarchical system and
ritualistic ceremonies. By the end of his life, Kappen also launched a new concept that
would become the culmination of his thoughts: counter-culture. Targeting the culture
defined by the ruling classes and/or high castes, it embraced all of the themes Kappen
had been working on in the previous decades. All in all, Kappen was much more
radical than India’s best-known liberation theologians Samuel Rayan SJ, Madathip-
aramil Mammen Thomas and Paulose Mar Paulose and was closer to the Sri Lankan
theologians Tissa Balasuriya and Aloysius Pieris.

Liberation theology is mostly bracketed together with Latin America.

One immediately associates it with illustrious figures, such as Gustavo
Gutiérrez, Leonardo Boff and Juan Luis Segundo. However, it was also
popular in other parts of the world, for instance Asia. It quickly pen-
etrated the Philippines, the Asian country with the largest Christian
population, which moreover also had a Spanish colonial past (e.g. Car-
los H. Abesamis SJ [1934-2008], Vitaliano R. Gorospe SJ [1924-
2002], José de Mesa [°1946], and Edicio De la Torre [°1943]). It also
developed in South Korea, where Ahn Byung-mu and Suh Nam-dong
named it M­ injung (common people) theology. In India, which has a
 MARX, JESUS, AND BUDDHA121

population of 27.8 million Christians, liberation theology is mainly

known as Dalit theology, after the name now used for outcasts or
untouchables.1
Dalit theology, however, is already the second generation of Indian
liberation theology. In the 1970s, a first generation of progressive Indian
theologians came to the fore. Its best-known representatives are Samuel
Rayan SJ (1920-2019), Madathiparamil Mammen Thomas (1916-1996),
and Paulose Mar Paulose (1941-1998). This article examines the life and
work of Sebastian Kappen SJ (1924-1993), who lived a more isolated life
and has therefore been less in the spotlight.2 Focusing on his ideas, net-
works, activities, and sources of inspiration, it will demonstrate that Kap-
pen was a very thought provoking writer with a broad intellectual scope,
and argue that he was India’s most radical liberation theologian and the
first one to be censored by the Vatican. The article is primarily based on
Kappen’s writings, but also makes use of interviews (especially with rela-
tives and friends; on Kappen’s character and life course) and correspond-
ence with his superiors, kept at the archives of the Jesuit Kerala Province
House in Calicut, Kerala (especially on his clash with the Congregation
for the Doctrine of the Faith in the early 1980s).

1. Michael Amaladoss, Life in Freedom: Liberation Theologies from Asia (Mary­

knoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1997); Mathew Paikada, Indian Theology of Liberation: An
Authentic Christian Theology (New Delhi: Intercultural Publications, 2000); Felix Wil-
fred, On the Banks of the Ganges: Doing Contextual Theology (New Delhi: ISPCK, 2005);
Peniel Rajkumar, Dalit Theology and Dalit Liberation: Problems, Paradigms and Possi-
bilities (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010).
2. There are only very few studies about Kappen, most of them having been writ-
ten by close friends and collaborators: Ajit Muricken, “S. Kappen: The Man and His
Contribution to the Study of Counter-Culture,” in Religion, Ideology, and Counter-Cul-
ture, ed. Philip Mathew and Ajit Muricken (Bangalore: Horizon Books, 1987), 9-31;
Sebastian Painadath, “Preface,” in Sebastian Kappen, Jesus and Culture: Selected Writings
of Sebastian Kappen, S.J. (New Delhi: ISPCK, 2002), vii-xiv; and Sebastian Vattamat-
tam, “Sebastian Kappen (1924-1993),” in Marx beyond Marxism, S. Kappen, ed. Sebas-
tian Vattamattam (Kottayam: Voice Books, 2012). Two more extensive studies of par-
ticular aspects of Kappen’s thinking are: L. Jeyaseelan, Towards a Counter-Culture:
Sebastian Kappen’s Contribution (Delhi: ISPCK, 1999) and Sam Varghese, “New Insights
of Ecclesiology in Sebastian Kappen’s Understanding,” in Master’s College Theological
Journal 1, no. 1 (March 2011): 60-82. In addition, Kappen was the subject of three
unpublished academic works: Nazarene Soosai, Culture, Liberation, and Counter-culture:
Sebastian Kappen’s Counter-cultural Interpretation of Christianity in the Indian Context
(advanced MA Thesis, KU Leuven, promoter: Georges De Schrijver SJ); Ajith Abraham
Kuruvila, Alternative Narratives in Contemporary Globalization: A Case Study of Visthar
and Sebastian Kappen (PhD diss., Pacific School of Religion, Berkeley, CA, 2011), and
– the basis of this article – Mathew Thekkemuriyil Antony, Constructing Counter-Culture
through Liberation Theology: Sebastian Kappen SJ (1924-93) (PhD Dissertation KU Leu-
ven, 2018; promoter: Idesbald Goddeeris; co-promoter: Jan De Maeyer).
122 MATHEW THEKKEMURIYIL ANTONY AND IDESBALD GODDEERIS

1. Marx

Sebastian Kappen was born in the British princely state of Travancore,

in the southwest of the Indian peninsula, on 4 January 1924. Although
he and his family belonged to the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church, in
1944 he joined the Society of Jesus (which followed the Latin rite; this
inter-ritual flow was not uncommon). Kappen went on to train in Cal-
icut (with Fr. Aldo Maria Patroni SJ), Kodaikanal (with Emilio Ugarte
SJ), Mangalore, and Pune, and was ordained a priest in 1957. After
having finished his tertianship two years later, the Society of Jesus sent
him to the Gregorian University in Rome, where under the guidance of
Joseph de Finance (1904-2000) he wrote a dissertation titled Praxis and
the Emancipation of Man from Religious Alienation according to the Eco-
nomical and Philosophical Manuscripts of Karl Marx (1961). The topic
was not incidental: Kappen’s native state of Kerala had faced a commu-
nist threat after the Communist Party of India (CPI) had won the state
elections and had come to power in April 1957. The government espe-
cially clashed with upper castes and Christians, who in June 1959 played
a key role in the Vimochana Samaram (Liberation Struggle) that led to
the fall of the government.3 In Rome, Kappen wanted to equip himself
with intellectual arguments to fight Communism, but instead found
inspiration in Marx. In his dissertation, he not only commented on
Marx, but also elaborated on the latter’s criticism of the inefficacy and
the exaggerated other-worldliness of Christianity.4
Kappen returned to Kerala in 1962 and initially did not intervene
with politics or write on societal issues. This only changed at the end of
the decade and was mainly due to the Belgian Catholic priest and Marx-
ist sociologist François Houtart (1925-2017). Since the 1950s Houtart
had been closely collaborating with progressive Latin American theolo-
gians. However, because of his connection with the anti-war Communist
movement, the Vatican forbade him to help prepare the 1968 Latin
American Episcopal Conference (CELAM) at Medellin. Instead of going
to Colombia, Houtart accepted an invitation from the Sri Lankan

3. Thomas Johnson Nossiter, Communism in Kerala: A Study in Political Adapta-

tion (London: The Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1982). The communists
would rule Kerala again in 1967-77, 1980-81, 1987-91, 1996-2001, 2006-11, and from
2016 to date.
4. Sebastian Kappen, Praxis and the Emancipation of Man from Religious Alienation
according to the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of Karl Marx (Gregorian Univer-
sity in Rome, 1961), 222-234. The original copy of the thesis was consulted in May
2016 at the archives of the Ufficio Dottorati of the Gregorian University, after months
of mails and in very strict circumstances.
 MARX, JESUS, AND BUDDHA123

l­iberation theologian Tissa Balasuriya (1924-2013) and went to

Colombo. On his way, he visited some other Asian locales, including
Kerala, where he met Kappen. This was the start of a year-long collabo-
ration. Kappen returned the visit in February 1970, staying for six weeks
as a guest professor of ecclesiology at the Centre for Socio-Religious
Research at the Université catholique de Louvain.5 Houtart wrote an
introduction to one of Kappen’s key works, Jesus and Freedom, and his
assistant Geneviève Lemercinier wrote a doctoral dissertation on religion
and ideology in Kerala.6
A year after his meeting with Houtart, Kappen published three arti-
cles in three different journals.7 Apart from a contribution to an edited
volume in 1964,8 these were his first publications and the outset of a
bibliography that would eventually stretch almost a quarter of a century.
His article on “Church and the Challenge of Social Revolution in Kerala”
especially deserves attention, since for the first time he elaborated on his
Marxist ideas. He had undoubtedly been motivated by Houtart.
Kappen ventilated a lot of criticism. He blamed the democratic
system and the ruling Indian National Congress for being driven by the
vested interest of the upper and wealthy class and for fueling corruption,
injustice and inequality. He also targeted the Church, denouncing its
“alliance with conservative socio-political forces” and the discrepancy
between its teachings and its actions. Kappen argued that the Church
had alienated itself from the poor and that its role had been taken over
by the Communists, who were actually its ideological opposite.9 He
found it remarkable that in spite of the large and socially dominant
Christian community, it was precisely in Kerala that the Communists
gained the strongest presence in the whole of India. In order to tackle
this Christian impotence, Kappen called on the Church to make the

5. Email contact with Nicolas Delpierre from the Archives de l’Université

catholique de Louvain (28 February 2016). For the moment, the archives are not inven-
toried and cannot reveal further details about these contacts.
6. Geneviève Lemercinier, Religion et idéologie au Kerala: Modes de production et
fonctions sociales de la religion (Université catholique de Louvain, 1977); English transla-
tion: Religion and Ideology in Kerala (Louvain-la-Neuve: C.R.S.R., 1983). Houtart also
wrote on Kerala, along with André Rousseau: Church and Development in Kerala (Ban-
galore: TPI, 1979).
7. “Christian Participation in Social Work,” Review for Religious 28, no. 4 (1969):
586-594; “The Role of the Church in National Development,” The Clergy Monthly 33,
no. 2 (1969): 59-75; “Church and the Challenge of Social Revolution in Kerala,” Vaidi-
kamitram 3, no. 1 (1969): 25-44.
8. “The Eucharist and the Quest of India for a New Vision of History,” in India
and the Eucharist, ed. Bede Griffiths (Ernakulam: Lumen Institute, 1964), 51-60.
9. Kappen, “Church and the Challenge of Social Revolution in Kerala,” 67.
124 MATHEW THEKKEMURIYIL ANTONY AND IDESBALD GODDEERIS

message of the gospel practically relevant to the aspirations of the poor,

and to translate the social message of the Church into revolutionary
action. He indeed advocated the creation of a “democratic revolutionary
front” in cooperation with the people of other faiths and a constructive
Church-Marxist encounter instead of the Church-capitalist alliance.
Over the following three years, Kappen further elaborated on the
topic of revolution in several articles in English and in his first book,
From Faith to Revolution, published in Malayalam in 1972.10 He stated
that every Christian had the right and duty to become a revolutionary,
since traditional theology gave importance only to spiritual revolution
and ignored the social and corporeal dimension of the human being.
Kappen’s idea of revolution was radical. Objecting to any partial settle-
ment of issues or the repair of the social system, he championed an
integral change of society. He also thought that this change should be
quick and planned. Since revolutionary activities gained rapidity when
the objective need became subjective, an elite group was to convert the
inarticulate objective aspirations of the exploited into articulated subjec-
tive aspirations. Revolution was not a natural happening, but a deliber-
ate process.11
Needless to say that Kappen was highly inspired by Marxism. He
made extensive use of Marxist concepts, such as ‘bourgeoisie’, ‘exploita-
tion’, ‘capitalism’, and ‘alienation’. For instance, he argued that the
means of production – both agricultural and industrial – were concen-
trated into few hands and that this disparity accumulated the wealth of
the rich and stagnated or impoverished the working class. Kappen was
even ambiguous about the use of violence. Although he did not explicitly
incite people to take up arms, he believed that power has to be encoun-
tered with power and gave the impression that non-violent means were
inadequate in the process of social transformation.
At the same time, however, Kappen did not renounce his Christian
background. He often wrote in biblical terms, such as ‘kingdom’,
‘prophet’, and ‘slaves’, and referred to phrases and conclusions of the
Second Vatican Council in order to enhance his point.12 He did not aim

10 “The Christian and the Call to Revolution,” in Jeevadhara 1, no. 1 (1971):

29-45; “Christianity and India’s Development,” Jeevadhara 2, no. 7 (1972): 47-62; “The
Goals of Revolution,” Religion and Society 20, no. 1 (1973): 51-61; and വിശ്വാസ
ത്തിൽനിന്നു വിപ്ലവത്തിലേക്ക് [From Faith to Revolution] (Kottayam: National Book
Stall, 1972).
11. Kappen, വിശ്വാസത്തിൽനിന്നു വിപ്ലവത്തിലേക്ക് [From Faith to Revolu-
tion], 17-19, and id., “The Goals of Revolution,” 52.
12. For instance, John XXIII’s call to ‘read the signs of the time’ (in Humanae
Salutis, 1961), the decree on the apostolate of the laity, which said that “men [and
 MARX, JESUS, AND BUDDHA125

for Marx’ egalitarian classless society, but for the new heaven and the
new earth promised by Christianity. He also reiterated the contributions
of the Church in various sectors of society including education, health
care, and social work.
It is obvious that all in all, Kappen closely resembled the liberation
theology that was flowering in those years in Latin America: in 1968 the
Latin American Episcopal Conference (CELAM) of Medellin had dis-
cussed the relevance of the Second Vatican Council, and in 1971 Guti­
érrez had published A Theology of Liberation. Kappen followed these
developments and briefly mentioned Camilo Torres, Hélder Câmara,
and Óscar Romero, without engaging in a debate or drawing compari-
sons with these international trends, though.13
Kappen did not uncritically plea for collaboration with Commu-
nists. He urged the Church to check whether partners promoted human
values, suggested a collaboration with the Communists on economic,
social, and political terrains but without assimilating their philosophy,
and also favored co-operation with other, non-Communist revolutionary
movements. Last but not least, he did not refrain from reprimanding the
Communists in Kerala. Kappen thought that they were too close to
capitalism and therefore deviated from the original Marxist ideologies.
They preached revolution in public and allied with business elites in
private. Therefore, according to Kappen, it was unfeasible to completely
entrust the future of Kerala to the Communists. Nevertheless, Kappen
would continue to flirt with Marxism until the end of his life.

2. Jesus

However, from the mid-1970s, Kappen also turned towards another

theme: Christology. He first wrote some articles about the interpreta-
tions of Jesus and in 1977 published his first English-language book on
this subject: Jesus and Freedom.14 In this new series of writings, Kappen
argued that Christian faith and practice had become alienated from the

women] should work together to renew and constantly perfect the temporal order,”
Apostolicam Actuositatem 7 (1965), see also Gaudium et Spes (1965), and Populorum
Progressio (1967).
13. Kappen, വിശ്വാസത്തിൽനിന്നു വിപ്ലവത്തിലേക്ക് [From Faith to Revolu-
tion], 65.
14. “The Jesus Fellowship,” Jeevadhara 4, no. 21 (May-June 1974): 190-198;
“Jesus Today,” Jeevadhara 13, no. 73 (1975): 169-181; “The Man Jesus: Rapture and
Communion,” Religion and Society 23, no. 3 (1976): 66-76; Jesus and Freedom (Mary­
knoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1977).
126 MATHEW THEKKEMURIYIL ANTONY AND IDESBALD GODDEERIS

historical Jesus mainly on cultic, dogmatic, and institutional lines. Con-

sequently, a cult had developed which was centered upon Christ, taking
Jesus away from the common man and his ordinary experiences, and
reducing him to an object of worship. Kappen called for a shift from the
Christ of faith to the Jesus of history. From 1975 onwards, he would
avoid the names Christ and Jesus Christ, and systematically use Jesus.
This, too, was in line with progressive theologians elsewhere, although
Kappen does not refer to them. Lutheran scholars such as Rudolf Bult-
mann, his former students Günther Bornkamm and Norman Perrin, and
Joachim Jeremias already in the previous decades dwelled on this theme.15
Catholic theologians, both in Europe (e.g. Edward Schillebeeckx) and in
Latin America (e.g. Jon Sobrino and Leonardo Boff) followed from the
second half of the 1970s, so after Kappen.16
Kappen’s progressive theology contrasted the teaching of the Church.
He conveyed the idea that Jesus was a human person and was only later
called God, thus preferring a Christology of ascent (from man to divine)
to one of descent (from divine to man) and denying an organic union
between the divine and human natures in Jesus. Kappen also stressed that
Jesus was a true prophet and cannot be considered a priest. Jesus had never
been a priest according to the Jewish law, and neither himself nor the
people had ever claimed that he was a priest. It was only because of the
spiritualized interpretation of Jesus’ death on the cross as a sacrifice for the
world that the Church had given him eternal priesthood. This, according
to Kappen, was historically incorrect. In addition, Kappen also questioned
the historicity of the miracles performed by Jesus asserting that reality was
covered and overlaid with myths and legends.17
Kappen also mingled his Christology with thoughts borrowed from
Marxism. According to him, Jesus’ teachings were not an “irreconcilable
opposition to the original Marxian vision of the classless society, the

15. Rudolf Bultmann, Jesus and the Word (New York and London: C. Scribner’s
Sons, 1934 [in German 1926]); Günther Bornkamm, Jesus of Nazareth (London: Hod-
der and Stoughton Ltd, 1960 [in German 1956]); Joachim Jeremias, The Problem of the
Historical Jesus (1964 [in German 1960]); Norman Perrin, The Kingdom of God in the
Teaching of Jesus (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1963).
16. Edward Schillebeeckx, Jesus: An Experiment in Christology (New York: Seabury
Press, 1979 [in Dutch 1974]); Jon Sobrino, Christology at the Crossroads: A Latin Amer-
ican View (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1978); Leonardo Boff, Jesus Christ Liberator:
A Critical Christology for Our Time (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1981); José M.
Bonino, Faces of Jesus: Latin American Christologies (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books,
1984); Juan L. Segundo, The Historical Jesus of the Synoptics (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis
Books, 1985).
17. Kappen, Jesus and Freedom, 54, 72, and 76.
 MARX, JESUS, AND BUDDHA127

latter being but a secular version of the former.”18 By referring to the

liberating mission of Jesus in the gospel of Luke 4, 16-21, Kappen
argued that Jesus as a prophet stood for the integral liberation of the
marginalized. Kappen envisioned a society that, by going beyond class
distinctions and exploitations, cultivated an economy of giving rather
than having. This new society would consist of people who lived for each
other, and the freedom of each individual would be the condition for
the freedom of all.
Another example of this Marxist influence is Kappen’s preoccupa-
tion with the alienation of Jesus. He argued that the historical Jesus, who
had denounced every form of cult and had subordinated it to justice,
mercy, and love, had been replaced by a glorified and deified Christ, put
at the right hand of God. In this way, Jesus was alienated from the his-
torical contexts, realities, and above all from his human nature, having
become somebody totally different from what he had envisioned himself.
According to Kappen, this alienation had taken place in different ways,
for instance via cult (the overemphasis of rituals, rubrics, and piety had
turned Jesus into an object of devotion), dogma (inspired by Greek and
Roman philosophy, the Church had reduced Jesus to a concept), and
institution (the Church had imprisoned the Jesus of history to safeguard
the Christ of faith, and theology had followed this, instead of recovering
his original messages). Kappen disapproved of this transition of a non-
cultic prophetic movement into a cultic religion that revolved around
dogmatic teachings. As the title of his book Jesus and Freedom indicates,
he presented Jesus as a prophet who came into the world with a message
of liberation.
Meanwhile, Kappen had also radicalized his own way of life. In
1975, he moved from Calicut, Kerala, to Madras (Chennai), Tamil
Nadu, where he initially settled in a slum area and in 1976 founded the
Centre for Social Reconstruction. Along with two of his close relatives,
his niece Mercy Kappen and his nephew Sebastian Vattamattam, he
tried to form a new generation committed to the messages of the his-
torical Jesus and Marx without depending on interpretations and inter-
mediaries. He invited people to his residence to give classes and have
discussions and began publishing journals and leaflets.19 In 1976 he set
up the English journal Anawim (Hebrew for poor or oppressed), a tract

18. Kappen, Jesus and Freedom, 155.

19. Interviews by Mathew Thekkemuriyil Antony with Sebastian Vattamattam
(Kottayam, 22 September 2014) and with Mercy Kappen (Bangalore, 19 September
2014).
128 MATHEW THEKKEMURIYIL ANTONY AND IDESBALD GODDEERIS

introducing Jesus to the contemporary man. Between 1978 and 1982,

thirteen issues of Socialist Perspectives occasionally appeared, promoting
independent socialist thinking in Asia. It was stopped in 1982 due to
financial shortage, but in that year, Kappen established Negations, a
quarterly of culture and creative praxis, to which Sadanand Menon and
Aloysius Pieris served as the associate editors. Kappen discontinued it
with the January-March issue in 1985.20 By then, he had also stopped
Anawim, the last issue of which had appeared in 1984.

3. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith

Kappen’s Jesus and Freedom came to the attention of the Congregation

for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), which in 1980 demanded an expla-
nation from the Society of Jesus and asked Superior General Pedro
Arrupe to disavow the book. Following this request, Arrupe initiated
certain formal procedures, including appointing a censor and asking for
Kappen’s explanation. In response to Arrupe’s demand, Kappen wrote a
ten-page explanatory letter on 15 May 1981.21 He expressed his discon-
tent at the practice of censorship based on certain criteria formulated in
light of once-and-for-all defined theological dogmas and doctrines,
asserting his belief in the continuity of revelation and hence the emer-
gence of new theologies. Just as he had done in his book, Kappen fiercely
attacked the institutional power of the established Church, comparing
its killing of progressive ideologies with the Crusades and the Inquisition
in the past. This attitude, according to Kappen, was due to the Church’s
failure to understand God’s intervention in different places and cultures.
For all these reasons, Kappen wrote to Arrupe that if the book was
against the vested interest of the Church or its hierarchy, he was helpless
and did not intend to apologize. Arrupe replied on 27 May 1981. He
did not debate Kappen’s progressive thinking, which is not a surprise
given the Superior General’s commitment to liberation theology. Yet, he
reminded Kappen of the Society’s law that insisted Jesuits receive per-
mission from their superiors before they publish books, especially when
the work is on doctrinal matters. It was unclear if Kappen had obtained
such permission.

20. Chandran, “Foreword,” to Sebastian Vattamattam, പ്രതിസംസ്കൃതിയിലേക്ക്

[Towards a Counter-culture] (Kottayam: Manusham Publications, 2008), 12.
21. See the correspondence in the archive of the Jesuit Kerala Province House,
Calicut, Kerala.
 MARX, JESUS, AND BUDDHA129

The whole case took a new direction when a few months later, in
August 1981, Arrupe fell sick. Due to the resultant inability in admin-
istrating the Society, Pope John Paul II appointed Paolo Dezza as the
papal delegate to the Society in October 1981. The Society, however,
nominated the American liberal Jesuit Vincent O’Keefe for the interim
period. Still, Dezza served the office until the Society elected Peter Hans
Kolvenbach as Superior General in September 1983.
While in office, Dezza followed the case of Kappen with great inter-
est. On 20 January 1982, he wrote a letter to Kappen asking to rectify the
problems in Jesus and Freedom related to the dogmas of the Catholic
Church, i.e. to reformulate his ideas and to submit the work to Dezza. The
papal delegate referred to the theologians who had studied the book (and
whom he did not identify) and pointed out that Kappen was one-sided in
his understanding of the teachings of Jesus. Dezza also claimed that it was
the influence of liberation theology that had motivated Kappen to write
against the dogmas of the Church. Kappen, however, did not respond to
this request. Dezza wrote again on 12 May 1982, urging him to answer
his previous letter, which Kappen eventually did on 12 July 1982. He
wrote that he would take at least two years for reflection and reply to the
demand of the CDF. Dezza then sent a third letter, on 3 August 1982,
with the more severe warning that without obeying the Pope and the
Society it would be difficult for Kappen to continue in the same status.
This indirectly implied the possibility of an expulsion from the Society or
even an excommunication from the Church. On 6 September, Kappen
replied that he did not wish to yield to this threat: “I do value my member-
ship in the Society which I have served for the last 38 years and I wish to
continue as a Jesuit. But not at the cost of my intellectual integrity and my
loyalty to Jesus and the God who lives.”22 He reproached Dezza for work-
ing as an intermediary to execute the decisions of the Vatican bureaucracy
on the Society and blamed him for not taking his letters seriously, which
he considered disrespectful towards him and the Indian Jesuits.
In order to find a way out, Dezza met with the Provincial of India,
Rex A. Pai, and insisted that Pai appoint someone to dialogue with Kap-
pen. In December 1982, Dezza wrote a letter to Pai, reminding him of
the duty of superiors to see that members of the Society were obedient
to its constitutional norms and regulations. He advised the Provincial to
discuss the matter with the Provincial of Kerala. However, no further
action was taken against Kappen after 1982.

22. Jesuit Kerala Province House, Calicut, Kerala: letter by Sebastian Kappen SJ
to Paolo Dezza SJ, 6 September 1982, KPA, 3.
130 MATHEW THEKKEMURIYIL ANTONY AND IDESBALD GODDEERIS

4. Asian Liberation Theology

The whole case did not stop Kappen from further elaborating and
spreading his ideas. On the contrary, in the 1980s he became an even
more prolific writer, both flirting with old themes such as Marxism and
embarking on new fields. In 1983, he published Marxian Atheism, which
was essentially an edited version of his doctoral dissertation but equally
included a great deal of new thoughts he had produced during his two-
decades-long study of Marxism. Kappen was quite radical about religion,
he continued showing his passion for leftist ideologies,23 and even sug-
gested the abolition of private property to eradicate the economic catego-
rization in society.24 Kappen also recounted the revolutionary contribu-
tions of the Communist movement in a number of Indian states,
especially in West Bengal, Kerala, and Andhra Pradesh. He considered
the Communists as a political and cultural force in India and particularly
highlighted land reforms and initiatives regarding social security and
salary rises as landmark achievements of Communist state governments.25
It is clear that the CDF had not changed Kappen’s mind.
Simultaneously, Kappen also increasingly wrote about Asian reli-
gious traditions. In 1983, he published a second book in English: Jesus
and Cultural Revolution: An Asian Perspective.26 Apparently picking up on
his argument against the CDF, Kappen became fascinated with the reli-
gious pluralism of India, which was being neglected by Rome. Initially,
he focused on Hinduism, which he criticized for a variety of reasons, such
as the caste system and the oppression, discrimination, and exploitation
that it encompassed. In this criticism, Kappen followed the Buddha,
whom he saw as a true revolutionary who questioned the existing reli-
gious and social taboos, denounced metaphysical views, and dealt with
the alienated existence of human beings. He highly valued the ­Buddha’s

23. E.g. in “Indian Communism and the Challenge of Cultural Revolution,”

Negations, no. 13 (January-March 1985). He again published this article under the title
“Whither Indian Communism?” in The Future of Socialism and the Socialism of the Future
(Bangalore: Visthar, 1992).
24. Kappen, Liberation Theology and Marxism (Puntamba, Maharashtra: Asha
Kendra, 1986), 110-111.
25. Kappen, The Future of Socialism, 40-41.
26. Jesus and Cultural Revolution: An Asian Perspective (Bombay: Build Publica-
tions, 1983). The book further dwelled on topics Kappen had already explored in some
earlier articles, such as “The Present Cultural Crisis: Analysis and Prognosis,” Socialist
Perspectives, no. 3 (1980): 1-21; “Jesus in the Indian Context,” in Ingathering: Autobio-
graphical Writings and Selected Essays of Fr. Sebastian Kappen, ed. Sebastian Vattamattam
(Kottayam: Jeevan Books, [1992] 2013), 217-221 (the publication of a lecture he gave
in 1982 at a seminar in Delhi).
 MARX, JESUS, AND BUDDHA131

ideology of a casteless and anthropocentric society of universal kinship

and love, free of religious and priestly dominance. Kappen also wrote on
the Bhakti movement, a Hindu religious movement between the 7th and
the 15th centuries ce that highlighted individual and single-minded
devotion.27 To Kappen especially the Bhakti movement’s opposition to
the prevalent Brahmanic hierarchical system, ritualistic ceremonies, and
idol worship appealed. Eventually, Kappen also began appreciating cer-
tain aspects of Hinduism, such as the ontic and cosmic understanding of
transcendence and immanence, the inclusive interpretation of the divine,
and the religious approach to nature. He contrasted these elements of
Hinduism with Christianity, which, he emphasized, sought the divine
outside oneself and considered it the absolute Other.28
In 1985 and 1986, Kappen combined many of these topics in two
new books: Jesus Today and Liberation Theology and Marxism. In the
latter, he also explicitly replied to the two documents the CDF had
issued on liberation theology, namely Instruction on Certain Aspects of the
Theology of Liberation (1984) and Instruction on Christian Freedom and
Liberation (1986). Kappen had been associated with liberation theology
since the 1970s: his publications on Marx and Jesus were close to pro-
gressive theology elsewhere and his conflict with the CDF had further
fueled his reputation. However, although he had been using the term
liberation since 1970,29 it was only from the mid-1980s onwards that he
combined this with theology. Kappen had even labelled Torres, Romero
and Câmara as revolutionaries, not as liberation theologians. His new
book definitely confirmed him as an Indian liberation theologian.
Both in Liberation Theology and Marxism and in earlier publications,
Kappen indeed showed many similarities with liberation theology in
Latin America (and beyond). He always maintained a preferential option
for the poor, calling for a theology from below that interpreted the gospel
in light of the cry of the poor. He returned to the original message of
Jesus and wanted to liberate him from “accumulated layers of interpreta-
tions, laws, procedures, credit bills, bank accounts, and the paraphernalia
of a State apparatus.”30 He fundamentally relied on ­Marxist ideology and
terminology. And he was praxis-oriented, looking for concrete solutions

27. Winand M. Callewaert, The Hagiographies of Anantdas: The Bhakti Poets of

North India (London and New York: Routledge Curzon, 2000).
28. A more detailed discussion: Mathew Thekkemuriyil Antony and Idesbald
Goddeeris, “Buddha, Bhakti, and Brahman: Sebastian Kappen S.J.’s Dialogue with
Indian Religions,” Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies 30 (2017): 100-108.
29. “Christianity and Liberation,” Rally 47 (December 1970): 12-13.
30. Kappen, Liberation Theology and Marxism, 11.
132 MATHEW THEKKEMURIYIL ANTONY AND IDESBALD GODDEERIS

and opposing the Church’s attitude of interpreting material deprivations

of people from a spiritual point of view and even glorifying them as
means to receive God’s blessings. In his view, liberation theology was the
aftermath of the “fruitful confrontation between the Gospel and the phi-
losophy of Marx.”31
Yet, Kappen’s liberation theology also differed from liberation the-
ology on other continents, since he strongly challenged the fundamen-
tally Western framework in which the Church was acting. He doubted
the legitimacy of the CDF’s instructions, which claimed universality but
neglected the Church’s diverse global nature, referring to Renaissance
and Enlightenment and looking at things exclusively from a Christian
point of view. This Christian triumphalism and theological imperialism,
in Kappen’s terms, brought a clear shift from Theo-centrism to Christo-
centrism and would finally lead to – as Kappen quoted from the second
CDF document – “the planting of Christianity in the different human
cultures.” In this way, Kappen argued, the CDF sponsored “ideological
aggression against people of other faiths” and everything that was non-
Christian.32 Kappen also distanced his theology from Latin American
liberation theology, which in his eyes “makes little sense in India.”33
It dealt with the Third World problems of poverty and economic exploi-
tation by basing itself on the gospels and on Marxism. According to
Kappen, applying these criteria in pluralist India would neutralize the
inherent potential of the Indian religious tradition.

5. Counter-culture

In the following years, Kappen further elaborated on pluralism. Stating

that every Christian in India was “first Indian and only then Christian,”
he criticized the attitudes of the mainstream Church for instilling the
conviction that Christians in India had nothing to do with Indian reli-
gious traditions. For him, Indian Christians were the children of the
same soil and, consequently, a cross-cultural and cross-religious people.
He therefore rejected overemphasis of imported theologies and advo-
cated inculturation, arguing that Christianity should be enfleshed in the
culture of the soil. Kappen himself did not want to be called a Christian,

31. Kappen, Liberation Theology and Marxism, 14.

32. Ibid., 101. The CDF quotation: CDF, Instruction on Christian Freedom and
Liberation (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 1986), no. 96.
33. Kappen, Liberation Theology and Marxism, 44.
 MARX, JESUS, AND BUDDHA133

but a disciple of Jesus, though also very much influenced by the teach-
ings of Buddhism, Bhakti and Hinduism.34
However, he also launched a new concept that would become the
culmination of his thoughts: counter-culture.35 Indeed, liberation theol-
ogy was not the end for Kappen, but only a means to support the con-
struction of a counter-culture. He understood culture as an “organic
whole of ideas, beliefs, values, and goals which condition the thinking
and acting of a community or a people”36 and condemned the fact that
the ruling classes and/or the high castes defined them. Since they mar-
ginalized the low castes and Dalits, culture, according to Kappen, was
functioning as an obstacle to human emancipation. He therefore pro-
posed a counter-culture, which was nothing but the demolition of the
existing culture and the construction of a new one. It could also be
understood as a new social structure that valued human dignity irrespec-
tive of class, caste, color, creed, economic status, etc. and that fostered
universal love, ethical religiosity, and humanizing culture.
Counter-culture, in other words, embraced all of the themes
­Kappen had been working on in the previous decades. Inspired by the
Buddha, who attached greater importance to a person’s physical and
material development than to religious issues, he highlighted the dignity
of human beings, i.e. the freedom of people to fashion their own future
without being influenced by religion. He referred to Jesus, whom he saw
as the embodiment of counter-culture because Jesus instructed the mass
to convert this world into the Kingdom of God instead of waiting for
its appearance at the Apocalypse.37 Kappen also appreciated Jesus’ criti-
cism of hierarchy, cult, law, and the priestly aristocracy within religion
and thought he accordingly paved the way for a socialist, egalitarian, and
humanist society, which were also key elements in his counter-culture.
Following Marx, Kappen’s counter-culture objected to capitalism as

34. See, inter alia, Jesus and Culture: Selected Writings of Sebastian Kappen S.J.,
vol. 2, ed. Sebastian Painadath (New Delhi: ISPCK, 2002), 118; Divine Challenge and
Human Response, ed. Sebastian Vattamattam (Thiruvalla: Kraistava Sahitya Samiti,
2001), 108; Hindutva and Indian Religious Traditions, ed. Sebastian Vattamattam (Kot-
tayam: Manusham Publications, 2000), 67-71 and “The Asian Search for a Liberative
Theology,” in Bread and Breath: Essays in Honour of Samuel Rayan S.J., ed. T. K. John
(Anand, Gujarath: Gujarath Sahitya Prakash, 1991), 107.
35. He already worked on the idea of a counter-culture in some publications in
the early 1980s (e.g. “The Present Cultural Crisis” [1980] and Jesus and Cultural Revolu-
tion [1983], and came back to the theme in the last year of his life when he wrote
Tradition, Modernity, and Counter-culture: An Asian Perspective, which was published a
year after his death (Bangalore: Visthar, 1994).
36. Kappen, “The Present Cultural Crisis: Analysis and Prognosis,” 1.
37. Kappen, Jesus and Cultural Revolution, 27.
134 MATHEW THEKKEMURIYIL ANTONY AND IDESBALD GODDEERIS

a means of exploitation. Kappen called for a shift from “production for

profit” to “production for social needs”38 and also reflected on the ways
in which this counter-culture should be realized.
Along with this, Kappen increasingly committed to social and
political unrest. Already in 1980, he observed a cultural crisis in India,
featured by, inter alia, atrocities against Dalits, communal violence,
corrupt bureaucracy and politicians, subservience of the intellectual
elite to the ruling class, emerging religious fundamentalism, and the
increasing capitalist culture of profiteering. 39 In 1985, he further
exposed the discrimination of the Dalits, who were excluded from
India’s scientific and technological advancements and lacked adequate
political representation.40 In the early 1990s, he reacted to the self-
immolation of high caste boys and girls in protest against the Mandal
Commission Report of 1990, as well as the increase in Hindu-Muslim
communal violence and the tensions over the Babur Mosque in Ayo-
dhya.41 He was especially concerned about Hindu nationalism, which
he compared to German Nazism: both ideologies shared hatred, myth-
ological claims, and feelings of superiority.42 Simultaneously, he wrote
about international capitalism. In his book on liberation theology, he
argued that the capitalist system in Latin America was not only created
within the continent, but also derived from certain outside elements,
having been introduced mainly by the CIA and American transnational
companies.43
During those last years, Kappen regularly changed residence. At the
end of 1983, he moved from Chennai to Bangalore, and in 1985, he
returned to Kerala, more particularly to its capital Trivandrum. The
local bishop Jacob Acharuparambil on that occasion wrote a letter to the
Superior of the Kerala Province of the Society of Jesus, expressing his
anxiety over Kappen’s stay in Trivandrum, pointing out that priests
“who oppose the teachings of the Church and authority in the Church,

38. Kappen, “Towards an Indian Theology of Liberation,” 303.

39. Kappen, “The Present Cultural Crisis: Analysis and Prognosis,” 5.
40. Swami Vikrant, “The Dharmic Mind vis-a-vis the New Society,” in The
Indian Church in the Struggle for a New Society, ed. Duraiswami Simon Amalorpavadass
(Bangalore: NBCLC, 1981), 954.
41. Kappen, Hindutva and Indian Religious Traditions, 49-51.
42. “Hindutva – Emergent Fascism?,” in Understanding Communalism,
ed. M. Muralidharan, P. K. Michael Tharakan, and S. Kappen (Bangalore: Visthar, 1993).
43. Kappen, Liberation Theology and Marxism, 15. Interestingly, the CIA was also
involved in obstructing communism within Kappen’s native Kerala, but Kappen does not
make mention of this. See: T. Ajayan, “Mid-term Election in Kerala in 1960 and the
American Government,” History and Sociology of South Asia 2, no. 2 (2017): 212-220.
 MARX, JESUS, AND BUDDHA135

will find encouragement and support from Rev. Fr. Kappen.”44 The
Society, however, does not seem to have responded to this call. Kappen
lived for five years in the Kerala capital and in 1990 moved to Bangalore,
where he died on 30 November 1993. The Society brought him back to
Kerala and buried him at the cemetery of the Jesuit Kerala Province in
Calicut.

6. Comparison with Other Progressive Thinkers

Sebastian Kappen SJ was obviously inspired by many thinkers. His pub-

lications reveal direct connections – for instance with François Houtart
– and inspiration – for instance from Latin American liberation theol-
ogy. However, Kappen rarely referred to other thinkers. He did not
mention any other iconoclasts of traditional Christology, modern Marx-
ist philosophers or champions of counter-culture (such as Herbert Mar-
cuse or Allen Ginsberg). As a matter of fact, he solely referred to Gandhi
(whom he applauded as India’s most powerful spokesman but criticized
because of his glorification of poverty and his indifference to the abolish-
ment of the caste system),45 Freud, and Nietzsche (from whom he bor-
rowed the concepts ‘will to power’ and ‘will to life’).46
This does not mean that Kappen lived and worked in isolation. On
the contrary, he was not the only progressive theologian in India. Kap-
pen regularly collaborated with Samuel Rayan SJ (1920-2019) who had
also done his studies at the Gregorian (until 1960) and was based in the
Lumen Institute (Ernakulam, Kerala) where Kappen was sent to in
1962. Rayan was one of the initiators and editors of the journal Jeevad-
hara (1971-), in which Kappen published some of his key articles, and
conversely wrote articles for Kappen’s journal Anawim.47 A second
Indian liberation theologian was M. M. Thomas (1916-1996), who
belonged to the Mar Thoma Church (a Syrian Christian Church based
in Kerala) and became first and foremost known as a renowned ecumen-
ist. Thomas’ theology revolved around the spiritual dimension of the

44. Letter from Jacob Acharuparambil OFM Capuchin to Mathew Pullattu SJ;
Trivandrum, 1 March 1985, kept at the archives of the Jesuit Kerala Province House,
Calicut, Kerala.
45. “The Marxian Concept of Man in the Indian Context,” Indian Journal of
Theology 27, nos. 3-4 (1978): 123-136, especially 125-129.
46. Kappen, Liberation Theology and Marxism, 62-63.
47. Culas Nicholas Tharsiuse, Christian Faith, a Liberative Praxis in India: An
Analysis and Assessment of the Theology of Samuel Rayan (PhD diss., KU Leuven, 2001).
136 MATHEW THEKKEMURIYIL ANTONY AND IDESBALD GODDEERIS

Christ-event, rather than on the secular understanding of liberation, but

he also strove for the cause of the marginalized and the poor, and did so
even before Latin American liberation theology.48 A third important
name was Paulose Mar Paulose (1941-1998), who in 1968 became
bishop of the Chaldean Syrian Church in Kerala and was controversial
for his criticism of many of the basics of Christian faith, such as priestly
hegemony, the idea of life after death, retribution according to one’s
deeds on earth, etc.49
Kappen, however, was even more radical than his fellow South
Indian theologians. While Rayan agreed that the Church had to take
into account the Marxist criticism that it neglected the concrete realities
of human life,50 Kappen followed Marx much further. Whereas other
Indian progressive theologians wanted to strengthen the Church and to
transmit Christianity to non-Christian cultures by making use of the
latter’s customs, practices, celebrations, beliefs, etc., Kappen studied
other cultures and faiths for a better understanding and for a way to
better assimilate their liberating elements. What he meant by incultura-
tion was the Indianization of Christianity for the purpose of liberation,
and not of the Christianization of India. He looked towards the reconstruc­
tion and humanization of the Indian society and considered established
religions as obstacles because of their obsolete beliefs and practices, their
dogmas, and their distance from social ethics and justice. No other con-
temporary liberation theologians in India seemed to have criticized reli-
gion as seriously as Kappen.51
In a certain sense, Kappen was closer to the two most famous Sri
Lankan progressive theologians Tissa Balasuriya (1924-2014) and Aloysius
Pieris (°1934). Just as Kappen exploited Buddhist teachings more than his
compatriots, the two were very active in fostering the Buddhist-Christian
dialogue in their country, and Pieris became the first non-Buddhist to

48. Jesudas M. Athyal, ed., M. M. Thomas: The Man and His Legacy (Thiruvalla:
The Thiruvalla Ecumenical Charitable Trust, 1997). Adrian Bird, M. M. Thomas: The-
ological Signposts for the Emergence of Dalit Theology (PhD diss., Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University, 2008); Adrian Bird, M. M. Thomas and Dalit Theology (Bangalore: BTESSC/
SATHRI, 2008); George Samuel, The Prospects and Challenges of Ecclesiology in the Con-
temporary Indian Context with Special Reference to the Theology of M. M. Thomas (PhD
diss., Faculty of the Lutheran School of Theology, Chicago, 2002).
49. Paulose Mar Paulose, Spirituality for Struggle: A Selection of Lectures and
­Sermons (Thiruvalla: CSS, 1999). Two of his major works in Malayalam: Freedom Is God
(1996) and What Right Have You to be Silent? (1998).
50. Samuel Rayan, “Wealth and Power and the Catholic Church in India,” Jee-
vadhara 3, no. 16 (1973): 351.
51. For some more comparison, especially regarding the views on Hinduism and
caste, see Thekkemuriyil and Goddeeris, “Buddha, Bhakti, and Brahman,” 103-104.
 MARX, JESUS, AND BUDDHA137

secure a doctoral degree from the Buddhist University of Sri Lanka.52 They
also both criticized the Asian Church for its dependence on theology
imported from the West, its rigid organization and leadership, its indiffer-
ence towards human suffering, its failure to go beyond the limits of dog-
mas and doctrines towards the realm of praxis, and its disrespect of other
Asian religions and cultures. Pieris phrased this as follows: the Asian
Church failed to become the “Church of Asia,” rather, it remained a
“Church in Asia.”53 Balasuriya went further. He questioned some of the
fundamentals of Catholic faith like original sin, the divinity of Jesus, and
the motherhood of Mary, stating that talking about the privileged place
of Mary, Jesus, and the Church would be offensive to the dialogue part-
ners. This, not surprisingly, put him in conflict with the Vatican. The
CDF found certain dogmatic errors in his Mary and Human Liberation
and excommunicated him in January 1997.54 On the other hand,
­Balasuriya targeted capitalism, supported the Third World demand for a
New International Economic Order, applauded the achievements of
socialist China, and called for an Asian revolution.55 For all these reasons,
Kappen’s thoughts most dovetailed with the ones of Balasuriya. There are
even more connections: when Houtart visited Kappen in Kerala in 1968,
he was on his way to see Balasuriya.

7. Kappen’s Legacy

A key difference, however, between Kappen and most of these other

South Asian progressive theologians, was the former’s refraining from
institutional activities. Several of the above mentioned theologians estab-
lished centers to promote their ideas: Balasuriya in 1971 was the co-
founder of the Centre for Society and Religion, and Pieris in 1974

52. Aloysius Pieris, The Genesis of an Asian Theology of Liberation: An Autobio-

graphical Excursus on the Art of Theologizing in Asia (Kelaniya, Colombo: Tulana Research
Centre, 2013); Peter C. Phan, “Reception of and Trajectories for Vatican II in Asia,”
Theological Studies 74 (2013): 315.
53. Aloysius Pieris, An Asian Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books,
1988), 45.
54. Tissa Balasuriya, Jesus Christ and Human Liberation (Colombo: Centre for Soci-
ety and Religion, 1976), 103-104; David S. Toolan, “Heresy or Hokum in Sri Lanka?,”
America 176, no. 4 (1997): 4-5. The original text of “Mary and Human Liberation”
appeared in Logos 29, nos 1-2 (1990); see also Rissa Balasuriya, Mary and Human Libera-
tion: The Story and the Text (Salem, OR: Trinity Press International, 1997).
55. Bastiaan Wielenga, “Liberation Theology in Asia,” in The Cambridge Com-
panion to Liberation Theology, ed. Christopher Rowland (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1999), 58; Balasuriya, Jesus Christ, 99 and 119.
138 MATHEW THEKKEMURIYIL ANTONY AND IDESBALD GODDEERIS

c­ reated the Center for Encounter and Dialogue. They also participated
in international forums. Balasuriya, for instance, was a founding member
of the Ecumenical Association of the Third World Theologians (EAT-
WOT, 1976), the Civil Rights Movement (CRM), People’s Action for
Free and Fair Election (PAFFREL, 1987), and the Asian Meeting of
Religious (AMOR). The same applies to Indian liberation theologians.
Samuel Rayan was chaplain to the Kerala division of the All India Cath-
olic University Federation (AICUF) and cooperated with the World
Council of Churches (WCC) from 1968 to 1983, and with the EAT-
WOT. M. M. Thomas largely owed his international exposure to his
connection with the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF) and
the WCC.
Kappen, in contrast, was more a writer and a teacher than an organ-
izer or a lobbyist. All of his initiatives – the Center for Social Recon-
struction and the journals Anawim, Negations, and Socialist Perspectives
– died out after some years. He collaborated with student organizations,
such as the AICUF and the Student Christian Movement of India
(SCMI), but this remained limited. At the end of his life, in 1989, he
was involved in the formation of a Bangalore based non-profit secular
organization called Visthar, which addressed the issues of poverty, gen-
der discrimination, and social exclusion. Its founder and executive direc-
tor, David Selvaraj, acknowledged Kappen’s inspiration, especially his
attention to social realities and their interpretation from the perspective
of the prophetical Jesus.56
After Kappen’s death in 1993, Visthar began organizing memorial
lectures in his honor. They do not always explicitly mention Kappen, but
deal with themes that interested him, such as development, culture, coun-
ter-culture, secularization of Indian society, democracy, and nationalism.
Among participants were prominent intellectuals and activists from reli-
gious and secular sectors, including India’s best-selling author Ramachan-
dra Guha, writer and critic U. R. Ananthamurthy, and historian M. G. S.
Narayan. Visthar published a volume with recollections about Kappen in
2013, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of his passing.57

56. Interview by Mathew Thekkemuriyil Antony with David Selvaraj, Bangalore,

19 September 2014. See also http://www.visthar.org/ and Neha Nujumdar, “They’re
Still Stretching Boundaries,” The Hindu, 13 March 2013, http://www.thehindu.com/
news/cities/bangalore/theyre-still-stretching-boundaries/article4504113.ece [accessed
December 11, 2019].
57. M. M. Thomas, “Towards an Alternative Paradigm”; Sadanand Menon,
“Kappen: The Advocate of Radical Consciousness”; and Babu Mathew, “Kappen the
Inspirer,” all in Counter-culture Perspectives: Selected Kappen Memorial Lectures, ed. Koshy
Mathew and Mercy Kappen (Bangalore: Visthar, 2013), 13-19, 169-173 and 174-175.
 MARX, JESUS, AND BUDDHA139

In addition, some of Kappen’s relatives and friends cherished his

memory by collecting and publishing his articles, some of which had not
appeared before. His nephew Sebastian Vattamattam (°1945) edited five
volumes with Kappen’s writings.58 He also launched a Wikipedia site on
Kappen in 2005 and uploaded to YouTube some of the talks that Kap-
pen delivered on different occasions. A fellow Jesuit, Sebastian Painadath
SJ, in 2002 published two volumes of Kappen’s selected writings.59 In
this way, they keep Kappen’s memory alive.
Apart from them, India’s most radical liberation theologian no
longer receives much attention. When Kappen died, quite a number of
local and national media wrote an obituary,60 and in 2007 the leading
Indian daily Times of India presented him as one of the champions of
progressive thinking in the Church in India, but for the rest, Kappen
seems to have slipped into oblivion.61 Also internationally, Kappen is no
longer in the spotlight. In the late 1970s, his Jesus and Freedom was
reviewed in several journals,62 and in the mid-1980s, Canadian newspa-
pers reported his activism.63 As a result, he is included in a number of
studies of liberation theology.64 For the rest, however, Kappen did not
garner much attention and his death in 1993 did not make international
headlines. His two visits as guest professor in 1970 – to Louvain, Bel-
gium and Maryknoll, US – seem to have been his last foreign stays. Jesus
and Freedom had appeared with Maryknoll’s publishing house that had

58. Hindutva and Indian Religious Traditions; Divine Challenge and Human
Response (Thiruvalla: Kraistava Sahitya Samiti, 2001); Marx beyond Marxism: A Critical
Evaluation of Marxian Philosophy (Kottayam: Voice Books, 2012); Ingathering: Autobio-
graphical Writings and Selected Essays of Fr. Sebastian Kappen (Kottayam: Jeevan Books,
2013); What the Thunder Says: A Poem and Selected Essays of Fr. Sebastian Kappen
­(Kottayam: Jeevan Books, 2013).
59. Jesus and Society: Selected Writings of Sebastian Kappen, S.J., vol. 1 & 2 (New
Delhi: ISPCK, 2002).
60. Leading dailies and weeklies in Malayalam like Malayala Manorama, Math-
rubhoomi, Deepika, and the CPI[M]-organ Deshabhimani all reported Kappen’s death.
61. “The Cross and Communist,” Times of India (2 September 2007).
62. The Christian Century 94, no. 28 (1977): 796; Theological Studies 38, no. 4
(1977): 812-813 (by Alfred T. Hennelly) and The Journal of Religion 59, no. 1 (1979):
111 (by Robert D. Haight).
63. Observer News Service Delhi, “Priests, Nuns Defy Episcopal Orders: Libera-
tion Theology Splits Church in India,” The Globe and Mail (20 April 1985). The Asso-
ciated Press (AP), “Social Activism among RC Clergy in India Causing Strife in Church,”
The Ottawa Citizen (1 February 1986).
64. Douglas J. Elwood, Asian Christian Theology: Emerging Themes (Philadelphia,
PA: Westminster Press, 1980), 299-314; John C. England et al., Asian Christian
­Theologies: A Research Guide to Authors, Movements, and Sources, Volume 1: Asia Region,
South Asia, Austral Asia (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2002-2004), 270-271; and
Wielenga, “Liberation Theology in Asia,” 54.
140 MATHEW THEKKEMURIYIL ANTONY AND IDESBALD GODDEERIS

been founded in 1970 by the Nicaraguan priest Miguel D’Escoto and

in 1971 had published both Houtart’s The Church and Revolution and
Gutiérrez’s A Theology of Liberation, but Kappen’s other books were
published by Indian houses.
Yet, Sebastian Kappen deserves his place within South Asian pro-
gressive theology. He was a prolific writer who touched upon a wide
range of topics and brought Marx, Jesus, and the Buddha together. He
often returned to the original writings and attacked later interpretations
and appropriations, but also commented on topical and relevant sub-
jects. Kappen, however, was too critical and could not easily be absorbed
by the milieus he was living in. For the mainstream Church, he was a
rebel and secular thinker, but for most of Indian society, he was a Chris-
tian theologian.

Idesbald Goddeeris is Professor of History at KU Leuven, where he teaches, inter

alia, History of European Colonization and History of India. He is also senior
member of the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies, where he coordi-
nates the Leuven India Focus. He has done research on migration history, solidar-
ity movements, and postcolonial memory, and is now predominantly working on
missionaries after decolonization, first and foremost by means of the case of Jesu-
its in India. His most recent book publication is: Missionary Education: Historical
Approaches and Global Perspectives. Coedited with K. ­Christiaens and P. Verstraete,
Leuven Studies in Mission and Modernity (Leuven University Press, forthcom-
ing). Address: Faculty of Arts, KU Leuven, Blijde Inkomststraat 21 - box 3307,
BE-3000 Leuven, Belgium. Email: Idesbald.Goddeeris@kuleuven.be.

Mathew Thekkemuriyil Antony is a Catholic priest from India, belonging to

the Missionary Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament (MCBS). He holds an
MPhil in Theology and Religious Studies, and a PhD from the Faculty of Arts,
KU Leuven. His research is an investigation into Sebastian Kappen’s use of
Marx, the historical Jesus, and Buddha in constructing a counter-culture for
India. At present he is working as the Rector of the St. Mary’s MCBS Seminary,
Kerala, India. He teaches Theology of Religions and Ecumenism at Sanathana
Theological Major Seminary in Kerala. He also published (with Idesbald God-
deeris) “Buddha, Bhakti, and Brahman: Sebastian Kappen S.J.’s Dialogue with
Indian Religions,” Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies 30 (2017): 100-108.
Address: St. Mary’s MCBS Seminary, Pariyaram P.O., Kannur 670 502, Kerala,
India. Email: sthekkemuriyilmcbs@gmail.com