De Certeau's project of heterology describes what happens to the self when it engages with the other in such a way as to be altered–to become other. This was the point of the lengthy excursus on the liberative praxis of dalit theology. Theology of religions in India does not develop directly as a response to the Shoah. But it does mirror and intensify the catalytic effect which the Shoah has had on the way inter-faith relations are conceived. To that extent, the shift from ashramic spirituality to liberation theology has made the Indian Church aware of the ethical demands of the ‘context of otherness’. Once what Levinas would call the priority of the other is taken seriously, the Church finds itself called not just to speak of what it knows in faith to be true but to exercise a responsible discernment of the traces of God–‘seeds of the Word’–in its own forgotten or occluded experience of the other.

This focus on the other which continues to haunt the present underlies a theology of dialogue, a theology which emerges from reflection on the relational experience itself. However, this does not make such a project merely an alternative to, or extension of, the threefold paradigm of the ‘normative pluralism’ project. Despite its insistence on tolerance, openness and respect, pluralism begs the question of motivation.