The Polluted God (A Theology of the Unbecoming Messiah)

This book tries to underscore, the foundational and most basic manifestation of the Divine, in and through the person Jesus and reinforces God’s self-identification with humanity and the world of the weak, vulnerable, the outcaste and the polluted. This study contends and believes that the life and work of Jesus the Christ and the God he represented and manifested, is one that is polluted and one that has the capacity to pollute, and yet, liberate and transform. Therefore, The Polluted God: A Theology of the Unbecoming Messiah!

We need a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and a certain measure of terror in short, we need an activist - struggle for liberation, a movement informed by its action towards its theological reflection. Our pathos should give birth to our protest - a very loud protest. Our protest should be so loud that the walls of Brahmanism should come tumbling down. A Christian Dalit theology will be theology full of pathos, but not a passive theology.

The Dappu or a large drum is exclusively played by the outcaste groups, or the Dalits, for almost all occasions in India. For the Madigas, one of the outcaste Dalit community in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India, the dappu or the drum is the heartbeat, their voice, their very lifeline. It is as much a part of their body as the hand that wallops it. Feast or festival, delight or mourning, morning or evening, the 'dappu' is omnipresent. The Madiga person could be an untouchable to the world, yet life's all-important moments are incomplete for him without his dappu. The reverberations or the echoes of the madiga dappu, intensely enunciates the agony of the Dalits in India. It also articulates the historically suppressed and silent voices of these outcastes. It exposes the atrocities of the so- called high caste groups. It brings to surface the pain and angst of being considered polluted over the centuries. It conveys the deep hunger for justice and their passionate quest for liberation. The reverberations are to be intensified, so that the walls of Brahmanism, its law - the dharma and its creation - the caste system should come tumbling down.

**Contents and Sample Pages**