Christ, my bodhisattva: multinational businessman and politician Ram
Gidoomal talks about 'translating' the Gospel in today's world By:
Crouch, Andy, Gidoomal, Ram, Christianity Today, 00095753, May 1, 2007,
Vol. 51, Issue 5

Section: THE CHRISTIAN VISION PROJECT

The popular conception of a missionary as a pale-skinned, pith-helmeted
traveler in a distant, "primitive" land is amazingly hard to dislodge.
Ram Gidoomal fits none of these stereotypes. But he is certainly on a
mission, if not many missions at once. Having arrived in London as a
refugee from India by way of Africa, Gidoomal chose Imperial College for
his undergraduate degree, because it was a short bus ride from his
family's shop. Today, after building several successful businesses and
running twice for Mayor of London, he has built a reputation as a
tireless social entrepreneur whose activism encompasses race relations,
financial opportunity, and environmental sustainability in Britain and
South Asia, as well as Christian ministry among the South Asian
diaspora. He spoke with the Christian Vision Project's editorial
director, Andy Crouch, over lunch at his alma mater--where he is now a
member of the board of governors--with the wide-ranging enthusiasm of
someone who has spent his life exploring our "big question" for 2007:
WHAT MUST WE LEARN, AND UNLEARN, TO BE AGENTS OF GOD'S MISSION IN THE WORLD?

[AC]You come from a Hindu religious background and attended Muslim
schools in Africa, yet you became a follower of Jesus during your
studies at university.
[RG]At the university, I was out of the family context, with the need
for something that could make sense of the wider world in which I found
myself. I started reading about Jesus. I was intrigued by the strong
basis for his historical existence.

In my cultural context, the biggest religious problem is your karma:
your karmic debt. What you sow, you reap. You come to this earth with a
karmic account, then you die and you're reincarnated, and that depends
on how you've done in this life. When I read about Jesus' death on the
Cross, it wasn't so much the sacrifice for sin that struck me as the
sacrifice for karma. The Christians I met spoke of sin in this life, but
that was meaningless to me. Karma was what mattered. So I decided, When
they talk about sin, I think of karma, and I believe Jesus died for my
karma, so I am going to accept him on those terms.

As my mother and others in my family challenged my faith, I found that
biblical concepts were only helpful if they were properly translated. My
mother would say, "Jesus is a swear word. They use it in the shop every
day. Why do you follow this man?" She had followed a guru called
Ramakrishna Parmahansa from India; then she switched to a guru named
Radha Soami. One of the functions of a guru is to give you a mantra, but
when she went to the initiation, some people got the mantra and others
didn't. She felt some of those who were refused were more deserving than
her, and that troubled her.

So when she came to stay with us after our first child was born, she
opened one of the Bibles that we had strewn all over the place, and she
happened upon this verse, "Whoever comes to me, I will not cast out."
She said, "Your Bible is very strange! 'Whoever comes to me'--define
whoever!" She had a hard time believing that Jesus would never refuse
anybody. But that's the case, I said, because he's the sanatan sat guru.

Sanatan is a Sanskrit word meaning "eternal"; sat guru means "true
living way." You can put John 14:6 in brackets after that! He is "the
way, the truth, and the life." Guru is a living way. There are lots of
sat gurus, but try to find a sanatan sat guru. No guru claims to be
sanatan. Then she said, "Tell me more about this guru, who will love
everybody." So I said, "Not only is he a sanatan sat guru, he paid for
karma. He paid our karmic debt."