DIYVADAAN, OCTOBER 30, 2010: The Thirty fifth annual meeting of ACPI (Association of Christian Philsophers of India) was held at Carmel Vidya Niketan, Pakhal village, Faridabad Dt., Hariyana from October 23 to October 27, 2010 to reflect on the theme “Tradition and Innovation: Philosophical Rootedness and Openness. On behalf of Divyadaan Institute, Frs. Ivo Coelho, Aloysius Hemrom and Robert Pen participated in it. It was a gathering of intellectuals that reflected on tradition and innovativeness as the complementary and interrelatedness dimension of life.
The meeting began with a well organized function for the release of the two volumes ACPI Encyclopedia of Philosophy that took place on October 23 in the Auditorium of Father Agnel School, Gautam Nagar, New Delhi. In the presence of various dignitaries and officials His Eminence Cardinal Telesphore P. Toppo, Archbishop of Ranchi released it by giving the first copy to the chief guest His Lordship Justice Sree Markandey Katju, Supreme Court of India. During the function the ACPI book on Violence and Its Victims: A Challenge to Philosophizing in the Indian Context which contained ACPI papers presented at Anugraha, Dindigul,Tamilnadu, India in October 2009 and edited by Fr. Ivo Coelho, was also released at the hand of Dr. Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, an Islamic Scholar and a Padma Bhusan Awardee.
The second phase of the ACPI meet began on October 23 in the evening at Carmal Vidya Niketan during which seventeen papers were presented by eminent scholars in the presence of sixty three philosophers across India. The papers were divided into three categories such as Philosophical Foundations, Religious Application and Social Critique. Fr. Ivo Coelho presented a paper entitled “Tradition-Innovation-Dynamics in Christianity” while Fr. Robert Pen gave an exposition on “Tradition-Innovation-Dynamics in Habermas’ Theory of Communicative Action”.
In the light of the theme the gathering also reflected on the Indian Christian Philosophizing. Accordingly they expressed that the term ‘Indian’ constitutes a geographically bound political grouping, whereas ‘Christian’ stands for a religious grouping. ‘Indian Christian’ however did not constitute two groups but ‘one’ group with a twofold ‘rootedness’. The members felt that innovation in Indian Christian Philosophizing has to be well rooted in the givenness of Indian Christian tradition. If not it can give rise to mere novelty in thinking without any stability and depth. They concluded that Indian Christian philosophizing has to be a philosophizing with a difference. This difference of innovative philosophizing with solidity and width can come about only in so far as it is carried out from the depth of Indian Christian tradition.