The National Gallery of Victoria hosts a beautiful 19th century album of Hindu deities, which may have been commissioned by a Christian missionary. Harvard professor Francis X. Clooney says the album is a monument to the importance of interfaith dialogue. Margaret Coffey writes.

In a glass case in the National Gallery of Victoria sits an exquisitely drawn album of Hindu deities. Each of the 108 images tells in bright colour something of the myth of the deity, and perhaps of the people or animals involved in that myth. On the wall nearby a digital version allows visitors to turn all 108 pages to see the full panoply of gods and goddesses an unknown South Indian artist portrayed sometime early in the 19th century.

Just going to the gallery is a great act of education where we are able to move back and forth among these magnificent works of art, learning and seeing their spiritual and religious meaning, and then moving and seeing in another traditional context. Professor Francis X. Clooney, Harvard University

Every page calls up a story of how these divine beings struggled with evil and intervened for good. Images like these don’t allow the viewer to be satisfied with the aesthetic; they insist that the story is worth hearing, worth finding out about.

Turn around in the NGV’s Asian Gallery and everywhere there are images of the divine. In sculpture and painting, in wood, stone, paper and metal; the great art of diverse religious traditions communicates their religious and spiritual meanings to those who are open to hearing them and seeing them. It’s not a religious space, neither a temple nor a monastery, but it is a place of religious significance and inter-religious encounters.

‘So much of the art that we see in a place like the National Gallery has deep cultural and therefore religious and spiritual roots and the ability first of all to see such a variety of wonderful pieces of sculptures and paintings and drawings and the like in the gallery is a great feast for anyone of any religion,’ says Harvard professor Francis X. Clooney.

‘We all come to the gallery, we see each other's traditions, we see the portrayals in a space that is free and common for all. But we also realise that the pieces that are deeply important and cherished in one’s own tradition are now almost literally next to the pieces, the works of art, culture and tradition of other religious traditions as well.’

‘So just going to the gallery is a great act of education where we are able to move back and forth among these magnificent works of art, learning and seeing their spiritual and religious meaning, and then moving and seeing in another traditional context, a third and a fourth—really gaining in such a small and beautiful space a sense of the inter-religious depth and inter-cultural depth of the city and the world we live in today.’

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Professor Clooney took that album of Hindu deities as the subject of a talk at the NGV—he’s a scholar of Hinduism and is intrigued by the text as an example of 19th century Christian interaction with Hinduism. The album was certainly given as a gift to a Christian missionary by another, but Clooney thinks it was also commissioned by a Christian missionary who deeply respected the religious culture of South Indian Hinduism and who wanted to encourage his fellow missionaries to observe very carefully and to learn.

‘Look at the 108 images, see what you see of these Hindu idols, but then learn—why are you here in India if you don’t know what you are talking about? So learn, learn from the culture, learn from the things around you.’

‘The focus is on seeing the deity,’ says Clooney, referring to the Hindu notion of darshan. ‘This very famous notion of seeing the divine, being seen by the divine ... a powerful religious act.’

Clooney takes this as a model for thinking about the kind of attentiveness and respect needed when we recognise that ‘we live in an inter-religious world and are meeting people of other religious traditions all the time’.

The model extends to the ways people of different traditions might develop closer connections, says Clooney.

‘I mean once we realise, if we agree, that the world is increasingly inter-connected, that no religion lives in isolation, the inter-religious is a deeply important way of being religious, we still have to figure out how is it then that we relate to people of other religious traditions. I think there has to be a sense of respect for one’s own, respect for the other, a sense of an individual who is knowledgeable about his or her own community, and doesn’t simply as a free agent re-invent it for the sake of travel or meeting the other.’

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‘Similarly, and perhaps even more so, respect for the other tradition, that one cannot simply arrive and say, "I’m here to know your tradition, I’m here to learn from you," but rather to take the time, to learn the customs, to come across as a good guest, somebody who is hoping to learn, hoping to be received well, but not intruding and certainly not forcing one’s presence on the other. So some kind of deeply human respectful exchange where both oneself and those you meet learn to relate to one another in a good, humane way.’

‘Then hopefully over time as trust and respect grow, to deepen that by sharing deeper religious ideas, that both can find profitable. If it is simply a matter of, “I would like to learn from you and then go home”, that’s not reciprocal. So some kind of mutual reciprocal learning is really the ideal and that requires good human talent and also good understanding and a certain spiritual respect for the other all the way through the process.’

Texts and traditions Saturday 16 August 2014 Listen to this episode of Encounter to find out more. More This [series episode segment] has extra audio, and transcript

The gallery is the perfect place for inter-religious events, says its assistant director, Dr Isobel Crombie. ‘We are a secular environment but one where there is a great respect and value placed on matters of the spirit and an openness and an encouragement of dialogue.’

However, in Professor Clooney’s mind, you don’t have to be religious to learn from paying attention to the images of the album of Hindu idols: ‘it may teach you more than you could possibly digest in a lifetime.’

Observing the album or any of the chosen pieces in that gallery space, gives us ‘the chance to slow down, to observe from multiple angles a single image, a single sculpture, a single album’.

‘That slowing down and focusing on the image in a world in which we are overwhelmed by images is actually part of the discipline.’

Encounter invites listeners to explore the connections between religion and life—intellectually, emotionally and intuitively—across a broad spectrum of topics.