RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH AND MALANKARA ORTHODOX CHURCH: NEW PERSPECTIVES OF DIALOGUE?

Starting from 1990-s, the relationships between Russian and Indian Orthodox Christian churches, having had their development in 60-70-s, were renewed in XXI century on a new basis of global reality. The document of the Synodal theological Commission of Russian Orthodox Church in 1994 indicates the significant strides in solving Christological problems between Indian and Russian churches, and at the same time it is not considered as a final document, enough for reestablishment of undamaged communication between Orthodox Church and Oriental (non- Chalcedonian) churches. Today Russian Orthodox scholars state that, as Soviet-Indian contacts had a different ground, now the dialogue is postponed. From the other side, in India Orthodoxy experiences all the problems of religious minority, the hardest of which is persecution. The dialogue between Russian and Indian churches could help to solve this problem, because dogmatic differences has never been a major hindrance for Indian Malankara church. Malankara Orthodox Church is unique historical case of having adopted and getting adjusted to such opposite systems as Nestorianism, Portugal Catholicism and Syrian Monophysitism influences. The special phenomenon of Malankara church is hardly known among Russian clergy. Meanwhile, it could be a ready bridgehead for Russian Church to support Orthodoxy in Asia. The research is showing sharp problems of ecumenical process in the global world.


Introduction
The history of Malankara church is itself the evidence of constant attempt to find a brotherhood in other strong Orthodox churches that could offer a protection, which is also conditioned by a political agenda. On the need of avoiding Portugal pressure Malankara church appealed to Syrian Orthodox Church in 1665 about patronage.
In India Orthodoxy experiences all the problems of religious minority, the hardest of which is persecution. Today the actuality of persecution, in connection with the rising activity of Hindu extremist organizations, such as The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), The Vishva Hindu Parishad, and RSS, which create ani-conversion legislation, ect., has only increased. Currently, five Indian states: Himachal Pradesh, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Chhattisgarh, -have anti-conversion laws, which are directed against "forcible conversion". But what is "forcible conversion" and how it can be revealed in real life of religious minorities?
The problem of "forcible conversion" is in vocabulary of the public and clergy talk in India, and it has a certain historical reasons. In the legislative history of India conversion has always been a suspicious term, to which, surprisingly, neither religious majorities no minorities were never favorably disposed.
Conversion, especially in Goa state with its recent colonial history, is associated with foreign invasion, of Spanish, English, Holland and Portuguese mission. For a common priest of the Catholic or the Orthodox churches it is hard to divide "forcible conversion" from "conversion". The latest is almost similar to preaching. But as the law prohibits preaching among other religious confessions, propagating of any kind is hindered.
For Christian minorities the mistrust to conversion is added by the fear of radical Hindu attacks (Mondal, 2019). The problematic consequence for Christian minority is that this question is directly connected with the missionary work, which has always been an integral part of Christian modus vivendi.
While the Catholic missionary work usually doesn't imply any resistance to Hindu organizations because of the "great name" of Catholic Church (according to Catholic explanation), for Malankara Orthodox Church as an absolute minority the outer mission and even preaching sometimes means the real trouble, such as throwing stones at the house of the priest after converting a Hindu into Christianity.

Problem Statement
This research is implemented in theoretical and empirical-practical ways. The first phase was implemented theoretically through studying the approaches, methods, methodologies used by such scholars of the field as Casanova (1994), Tamcke and Marten (2006), Horujy (2020), Konev (2020), Koodapuzha (1998), Kakkanatt (1996), Radhakrishnan (2007), Kalaitzidis et al. (2014), Raj (2002), Strenski (2020), Fedotova (2018), Krapchunov (2017), and many others. As for the topic of religious pluralism, our special attention was not payed to this conception in general, but to the aspect of forming attitude to ecumenical dialogue. We suggest analytical comparison of Russian and Indian forms of interpretation of ecumenism and its comprehension by the society. It is also very important to study how people perceive the concept of ecumenism in general and religious pluralism as a possible constituting part of it. https://doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2021.12.03.83 Corresponding Author: Elena V. Maximova Selection and peer-review under

Research Questions
-To get more knowledge on the research of ecumenical process; -To study different approaches to ecumenism in india, in russia and in germany and to use the theoretical framework to understand the relationships between russian and malankara churches; -To learn more about the principles of understanding cultural and theological peculiarities of orthodox christianity in india; -To reveal the effective experience of interpretation of ecumenism as dialogue in international science.

Purpose of the Study
We have a lot of material from field researches and empirical observations of everyday life of Indian Orthodox communities since 2008, and have long ago made Christian churches of India a subject of our constant attention. We are having the aim to elaborate our field material through a modern and applicable theoretical approach. The purpose of our study is to analyze the possible hindrances in establishing Russian-Indian Orthodox connections and to reveal the discursive field of dialogue.

Research Methods
To research this area, we have to face the religious reality today. We use "lived religion" methodology, which is "radical empirical approach" (Ivan Strenski) in sociology of religion based on Max Weber's Verstehen method and Durgheim's philosophy (Strenski, 2020).
The research is based on the qualitative methodology which includes the following components: review of specialized books, studies, articles, reports and electronic resources in different languages, media resources (press conferences, articles, etc.), in-depth interviews conducted with the representatives of Malankara and Russian Orthodox churches, focus groups, observations at the worships.

Findings
In the contemporary world and in Russia as well there is a growing interest towards ecumenism, though this phenomenon is interpreted in a different ways. There are a number of scholars, and some of them are very famous scientists (T. Goricheva), who think that ecumenism is another side of secularisation process, making Russian Church a wellcome-for-everyone formation of contradictive notions, where anyone can live "spiritual life" without any effort. Anti-ecumenical position, with different arguments, is also common to fundamentalist Orthodox organizations, such as St. Thomas brotherhood, missionary in India (www.orthodoxy-sa.org), or The missionary society named after the monk Serapion 626 official level took a status of social norm, Russian national identity in mass-media is strongly referred not to Orthodoxy in general, but to Russian Orthodoxy. According to sociological surveys and analysis (www.wciom.ru, www.fom.ru) the "religious revival" of 90-s in Russia was connected with the urge to find something stable and permanent, which was found in Russian Orthodox tradition, connected with the state and having staunch value system. At the same time being "Orthodox" for a contemporary Russian doesn't entail participating even in minimum religious practices (90% of respondents said they do not attend the church even monthly).
The analysis of expert interviews of the following categories of people: clergymen, parishioners and administrative, politician and mass media leaders in Veliky Novgorod in 2020 shows that the mood of religious self-sufficiency is a part of general Russian identity construction, while ecumenism is understood as unnecessary or even harmful and dangerous thing, equal to heresy. "Religious pluralism" is mostly understood as total unification not only of Christianity, but of all world religions, -the project, which actually more correctly corresponds to the notion "superecumenism", though here it appears as synonym to "ecumenism", which in this case has the meaning of union but not of dialogue. This is only the manifestation that Russia still lives in situation of monoculturalism, with the absence of religious pluralistic tradition. This atmosphere of religious-national isolation may even look artificial and strange if we remember that Russia has never been mono-religious and mono-national country. Even before the era of multinational USSR, the biggest mosque in Europe, in St-Petersburg, was built on the personal funds of the tsar Nicholas II. The claims for the national uniqueness based on theological ignorance mean that pluralism as well as ecumenism is absent on mental and methodological levels (Pigalev, 2020). Creating an adequate and effective for Russian culture model of interrelation of ecumenism and pluralism could be promoted by borrowing theological and social experience of the West and by comparing concepts of ecumenism in Germany, in Russia and in India.
We intent to clarify the efficiency of dividing doctrine discrepancy from lived religion situation, for finding more similarities than contradictions between worships. Some empirical observations pointed me to this direction.  https://doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2021.12.03.83 Corresponding Author: Elena V. Maximova Selection and peer-review under  Meantime for the Russian Church these connections could also be fruitful. Some problems of Russian Orthodox missionary are also evident, as Russian brotherhoods have to fulfill their duty in circumstances of hard religious anti-conversion legislation of India and constant menace of Hindu radicals attacks. In this threat of extremism the Russian Church could be a mediator of connecting Indian Church with Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Besides, not only for Indian religious organizations but for all the country historically relationships with Russia have always been approved by population and deemed to be desirable, natural and friendly (Patel, 2020). The permission given by Malankara church to Russian Orthodox Church about using Malankara temples for Russian Orthodox worships has already been very useful for Russian people, who live in India more or less permanently, and the opening of parish Russian https: //doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2021.12.03.83 Corresponding Author: Elena V. Maximova Selection and peer-review under  What seems to be the real obstacle to the dialogue is the lack of ecumenical understanding of religious pluralism, as well as identifying religion with nationality, what is peculiar both to Indian and Russian churches. The special phenomenon of Malankara church is hardly known among Russian clergy.
Meanwhile, it could be a ready bridgehead for Russian Church to support Orthodoxy in Asia.