Constructing Indian Christianities: Culture, Conversion and Caste 9781138020184

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Constructing Indian Christianities

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Constructing Indian Christianities Culture, Conversion and Caste

EDITORS

Chad M. Bauman Richard Fox Young

LONDON NEW YORK NEW DELHI

First published 2014 in India by Routledge 912 Tolstoy House, 15–17 Tolstoy Marg, Connaught Place, New Delhi 110 001

Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2014 Chad M. Bauman and Richard Fox Young

Typeset by Glyph Graphics Private Limited 23, Khosla Complex Vasundhara Enclave Delhi 110 096

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-138-02018-4

Contents Preface and Acknowledgements

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Introduction Chad M. Bauman and Richard Fox Young

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Part 1: Who and What is an Indian Christian? 1. Godparents and the Mother’s Brother: ‘Spiritual’ Parenthood among the Latin Catholics of Kerala, South India Miriam Benteler 2. Between Christian and Hindu: Khrist Bhaktas, Catholics and the Negotiation of Devotion in the Banaras Region Kerry P. C. San Chirico 3. Interlocking Caste with Congregation: A Political Necessity for Dalit Christians in Andhra, South India? Ashok Kumar M.

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Part 2: Whose Religion is Indian Christianity? 4. Late 16th- and Early 17th-Century Contestations of Catholic Christianity at the Mughal Court Gulfishan Khan 5. Authority, Patronage and Customary Practices: Protestant Devotion and the Development of the Tamil Hymn in Colonial South India Hephzibah Israel 6. From Christian Ashrams to Dalit Theology — or Beyond? An Examination of the Indigenisation/Inculturation Trend within the Indian Catholic Church Xavier Gravend-Tirole 7. Taking the Cross and Walking from Subalternity to Modernity James Ponniah

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Part 3: Can Christianity be Indian? 8.

9.

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Times of Trouble for Christians in Muslim and Hindu Societies of South Asia Georg Pfeffer The Interreligious Riot as a Cultural System: Globalisation, Geertz and Hindu–Christian Conflict Chad M. Bauman Studied Silences? Diasporic Nationalism, ‘Kshatriya Intellectuals’ and the Hindu American Critique of Dalit Christianity’s Indianness Richard Fox Young and Sunder John Boopalan

Afterword I by Anne E. Monius Afterword II by Rowena Robinson About the Editors Notes on Contributors Index

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239 246 253 254 256

Preface and Acknowledgements

The recognition of Indian Christianity as a growing field of study has been helped at least in a small way by consecutive panels on ‘Christians, Cultural Interactions and South Asia’s Religious Traditions’, held over the years at conferences of the European Association of South Asian Studies (EASAS). Originally convened by Robert Frykenberg (University of WisconsinMadison, US) and Geoffrey Oddie (University of Sydney, Australia), the panels have a hoary history, having been held biannually starting in Toulouse, followed by Copenhagen, Prague, Edinburgh, Heidelberg, Lund, Leiden, Manchester, and most recently at Bonn, with oversight passed on in recent years to the editors of this volume. Except for two essays (Chapters 5 and 10), the others (Chapters 1–4 and 6–9) were all first presented at the Bonn Conference in 2010. Anne E. Monius patiently sat through our full day of presentations there, which made her an easier target than she might have liked when we began casting about for respected scholars to offer responses to the original essays. Likewise, we are grateful to Rowena Robinson, with whom we had enjoyed working on other edited volumes, and who has herself had an important hand in the development of this field and in the formation of several of the authors who contributed to this volume. We are grateful to EASAS for its continuing support and sponsorship of our panels on Indian Christianity, to the patient and thoughtful editors at Routledge, and to all the authors who collaborated in the production of this volume, whose persistence, hard work, collaborative spirit, and congeniality helped bring it to life. As is so often the case with scholarly projects, our work on this volume occasionally required sacrifices not only on our part but also on the part of our families. For their patience, good cheer and continued interest in our idiosyncratic scholarly obsessions after all these years, we are grateful to our spouses, Alison Young and Jodi Bauman, the latter of whom must be thanked, as well, for designing the maps that appear in this volume.

Map 1 India

Source: Prepared by the editors.

Introduction CHAD M. BAUMAN AND RICHARD FOX YOUNG

Speaking of the vigour and vitality of contemporary scholarship on Indian Christianity in one of our two Afterwords, Rowena Robinson makes a claim that would seem rather prosaic — ‘we can now speak of the presence of a field’ — were it not also the case that until the 1980s much or most of the work on Indian Christianity was being done by scholars in the field of mission history. For such scholars, Christianity was less of India than in India. What is more, Christianity’s template for reproduction was assumed to be Euro-American (English Baptist, say, or Swedish Lutheran, or American Mennonite). Historiographically, much has changed, and Indian Christianity is more rarely written about as though it were merely an add-on to someone else’s missionary history. This is a welcome change. The reasons for it include the rise of subaltern studies, the emergence of World Christianity as a field of study focused on the global South, and the growing popularity of the new Anthropology of Christianity. The fact of change, as Robinson avers, appears unarguable. Naturally, in now being a field and no longer the preserve of mission historians, Indian Christianity has become an interdisciplinary crossroads. In most such studies, humanities-based or social-scientific, Christianity’s Indianness now has a certain taken-for-grantedness, even though Christianity may not always look or act Indian to those who think of ‘Indianness’ as an invariable, unchanging essence. Here, our bedrock assumption is that the cross-cultural transplantation of any religion — Christianity included — necessarily entails transformation. Not only that, we concur in conceiving of Indian Christianity as culturally and socially constructed, predominantly by indigenous agency, but without trivialising exogenous agency altogether. Being explicit about our assumptions will make it easier to appreciate why we highlight intra-Christian difference within an overall Indianness by speaking of ‘Christianities’ in the plural instead of ‘Christianity’ in the singular. Readers should also note that diversity as we think of it has nothing at all to do with deviation from a norm. Here, we eschew any and all efforts at reconciling one Indian Christianity with another or with an idealised ‘original’, even

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though one may wonder at how few the traits are that the Syrian Orthodox of Kerala, Baptists of Nagaland and Pentecostals of Chennai appear to have in common. Taking all such diversity at face value, we interrogate the controversies — past and present, local and global — that Indian Christianity’s pluriformity engenders. First, though, our preamble will place the larger discussion of the book in historical perspective. Since many of the controversies we study had parallels in Christian antiquity, we need to underscore the fact that there has never been a time when Christianity was either monoform or monolithic.

Global Questions, Local Answers One of the Christian New Testament’s most notable preoccupations, particularly in its Pauline and other epistolary books, was what kind of interface the life and teachings of the figure at its heart — Jesus — were supposed to have with the cultural norms and religious practices of the larger Greco-Roman world. Though not called ‘Christians’, until they arrived as refugees in Antioch in the aftermath of a backlash in Jerusalem against the new movement, Jesus’s early followers all happened to be Jews. It was therefore of critical urgency for them to reflect on ‘who’ and ‘what’ a Christian was in the wider Mediterranean milieu. Was the newly-emerged movement to be thought of as a mere sect within Judaism — and, ergo, only for Jews and their proselytes? Or, was faith in Jesus of Nazareth for everyone, everywhere, in which case the brakes were to be taken off the attempts already being made at bringing outsiders in (by the Apostle Peter, for instance, who bore witness of Jesus to Cornelius, the Roman centurion spoken of in the Book of Acts)? Once that dilemma had been resolved to the satisfaction of the dominant party and the constraints removed from the fledgling church’s interactions with the gentile world outside Israel, a surprisingly vigorous thrust toward universalistic inclusiveness became evident. New conundrums — theological, social and political — about being Christian differently from Jesus’s first Jewish followers then had to be solved. The questions Christians nowadays ask may not look the same in a South Asian context, but they ask them in ways that allow us to locate them on a trajectory similar to that of their first-generation predecessors, two millennia and a world away.1 Historically, each of Christianity’s multiple cross-cultural diffusions has elicited from its own adherents — invariably the ones left behind, on the far side of the change — cries of protest. Of this, again, one need look no farther than the Book of Galatians (Chapter Two) in the Christian New Testament.

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There, one finds the Apostle Paul rebuking the Apostle Peter for having backed away from his earlier and unprecedented welcome of the gentile Cornelius into the fold. Despite the ensuing decision of Jerusalem’s Christian elders to exempt gentile converts from cultural conformity to Jewish norms, there has always been a Petrine exclusivist for every Pauline inclusivist. That is, while the earliest Christians may have been shaped by Jewish cultural particularities, gentile Christians had difficulty being bound by them. Right from the start, doubts loomed over Christianity’s coherence and cohesion, as believers broke through their monocultural shell and became a diverse, polymorphic community. Not only their orthodoxy but also their orthopraxy came into question. From early antiquity, this has been an on-going, see-saw debate, and its eventual outcome may never be known. One side will insist on Christianity’s immutable untranslatability, while the other will uphold its translatable mutability. Similarly, arguments over what it takes to make an Indian Christian Indian or a Christian Indian Christian are part and parcel of a global Christian conversation. One might call it one of the few things about Christianity that seems truly timeless and unchanging. The Catholic and Protestant theologians who contribute to the contemporary phase of the debate sketched out previously often make use of the term ‘inculturation’, a semantically-important term. To them, it denotes a deliberate attempt, initiated by Christians on behalf of other Christians, to adopt and adapt Christianity to the religious beliefs and practices, symbolic forms (material, linguistic, etc.), cultural aesthetics, and social arrangements of the many worlds outside of Europe and North America to which Christianity travels, now and in the past. Generally speaking, these intramural theological discussions focus on something Xavier Gravend-Tirole (Chapter 6, this volume) aptly refers to as missiological inculturation. He means by this the adaptations, adjustments and accommodations that are deemed desirable — whatever the reason — as ways of making Christianity intelligible and appealing to a wide range of people at the same time that they remain permissible in terms of Christian orthodoxy. As such, ‘inculturation’ may connote a kind of strategic concession, aimed at gaining a local advantage; it may also presuppose a norm somehow imagined to exist above the ‘receptor’ culture in question, if not indeed above all culture(s).2

Who, then, and What, is an Indian Christian? In contrast to theologically-determined conversations such as the one described here, the approach of our authors in Part One to the study of Christianity’s

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interactions with India’s cultural and religious traditions conforms to the descriptive practices of ethnography. There, instead of ‘inculturation’, the term ‘acculturation’ would be the one preferred. While ‘inculturation’ is heard today almost exclusively within Christian circles where it denotes a selfconsciously deliberate and intentionally missiological project, ‘acculturation’ more often refers to processes that take place unintentionally and without apparent awareness. Acculturation can also occur despite the actual intent of religious leaders, traditionalists and other elites who do their best to prevent this kind of change from occurring. This, then, is the reason why we find it useful to differentiate the designedly missiological projects of inculturation from relatively more organic processes.3 A distinction of that kind is observed by the authors in Part One. Analysing a variety of ways in which Christianity adapts itself to a range of Indian cultural contexts, they trace how this occurs, largely in the absence of formal ecclesiastical intervention. Part One of our volume begins with Miriam Benteler’s ethnographicallydetailed and historically-informed account of the Catholic practice of godparenthood in the Latin Catholic communities of coastal Kerala (Chapter 1). Using data from the field to improve on conventional models, she illuminates how a practice of extra-Indian origin, introduced in the early 1500s, particularised itself locally. We learn, for instance, of how the roles ordinarily performed by the mother’s brother in patrilineal South Indian societies were gradually assimilated at the same time that the distinction between ‘natural’ parenthood and ‘spiritual’ godparenthood became more blurred. As Benteler demonstrates, the Kerala Catholic practice of godparenthood was both adapted to and altered by South Indian kinship patterns and mores. Or, to make the same point with McKim Marriot’s typology (1955) for differentiating between India’s ‘big tradition’ Hinduism (Brahmanical, pan-Indian, Sanskritic, temple-based) and its ‘little tradition’ counterpart (localised, oral, vernacular, village-based), Christian godparenthood was ‘parochialised’ or ‘reparticularised’. Unless one imagines a process different from transplantation or the reproduction of practices that were first introduced into South India from Portugal, the cross-cultural process described so ably by Benteler will remain analytically unclear. That both kinds of kinship systems, Southern European and South Indian, cannot remain unchanged when they exist in juxtaposition, she also demonstrates, arguing that certain features of local kinship systems (the heightened importance of ‘avunculate’ relationships, for instance) have been extended and taken up into Kerala Catholic life, despite being absent from the Portuguese model originally introduced. Throughout Part One,

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evidence will be found of how the processes of cultural interaction are never unidirectional, and instead are always reciprocal, at least to some extent. In Chapter 2, Kerry P. C. San Chirico shines a much-needed light on Varanasi’s vibrant community of Khrist Bhaktas (‘devotees of Christ’), a group of mostly marginal-caste folk who regularly worship at the Ma¯tr. Dha¯m Ashram, a popular site for Catholic worship. Notwithstanding their devotion to Jesus, such persons neither undergo baptism nor formally affiliate with the Catholic Church. As indicated previously, the unregulated messiness of on-the-ground acculturation often looms ominously over Christian elites (theologians, priests and pastors, etc.) as a threat to their authority. As San Chirico observes, the fuzzy identities of the Khrist Bhaktas — are they ‘Hindu’ or ‘Christian’ or ‘Hindu-Christian’ or ‘Christian-Hindu’ or something else? — also poses a definitional problem for scholars of religion. Uncertainty may simply mean that our definitions are somehow ill-conceived and one-sided; it may also mean, however, that attempting to draw a boundary between ‘Christianity’ and ‘Hinduism’ (‘Buddhism’, etc.) may in fact impose an alien taxonomy on phenomena that in the final analysis remain fluid and stubbornly unreifiable. Here, it also helps to be aware of the growing availability and popularity of a heterogeneous mix of practices associated with faith healing in today’s India, some of them new and others old. About them, we learn a good deal from San Chirico and Ashok Kumar’s contribution (Chapter 3) to this volume. As San Chirico observes of the Khrist Bhaktas, the impetus for an initial visit to the Ma¯tr. Dha¯m Ashram is frequently a quest for healing in one form or another, physical, spiritual or interpersonal. Not only are such findings congruent with historical and ethnographic work more generally (see, for example, Bauman 2008), there are indications that in rural India today, healings and exorcisms account for the vast majority of Christian conversions (Bergunder 2011). Although such conversions may depend on the repeatability of a ‘miracle’ and are therefore conditional, provisional and temporary, they engender the kind of non-exclusivistic relationship to religion that conforms to well-established Indian patterns of itinerancy among sites associated with the sacred. Making the rounds from one saint or shrine to another in search of efficacious power, physical and spiritual, is nothing new. As Susan Bayly (1989) and Chandra Mallampalli (2004) argue, one reason why Christians of the pre-colonial era used to fit more naturally into the contours of South India’s sacred theoscape is that they too were often on the move, impelled and propelled by a quest similar to that of their Hindu and Muslim neighbours. Historically, the perception of Christians as the adherents of a ‘foreign’ faith

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worsened when colonial reforms forced them to abandon improvisational and unsanctioned worship at the shrines of Christian saints in favour of fixedlocality parish worship. Except for the ancient Syro-Malabar churches, the dominant trend in Catholic, Protestant and Pentecostal Christianity since the high imperial period has been institutionalisation along Western denominational lines (ecumenical successes notwithstanding, of which the Churches of North and South India are notable examples). Along with that, a more tightly-bound sense of what and who a ‘Christian’ is has emerged. ‘Tightly-bounded’, however, would be an inaccurate description of who the Khrist Bhaktas are; preoccupied with Jesus at the centre of their devotion, they are less fixated upon the ‘edges’ and putative boundaries of Christian orthodoxy. As such, they remind us that a ‘Christian’ identity can be constructed additively and not only subtractively. In any event, conversion could never entail a total rupture with the past, except perhaps of affiliation — and not always that, as the Khrist Bhaktas demonstrate. San Chirico’s essay (Chapter 2) will not be the only one in this volume where standard-issue models of ‘conversion’ are shown to fail at accounting for religious behaviour observed in situ. The subject as he handles it, however, lends itself to a salient critique of problems that ensue from making a term such as ‘conversion’ carry too great a load of Western assumptions about the ideal singularity of religious orientation (one per individual, community, nation, etc.). Whether it would help our vocabulary for analysis to rehabilitate a term such as ‘adhesion’ and to think of conversion more as a process than a time-bound event is the kind of conversation San Chirico opens up. Since a total rupture with the past is an impossibility, it almost goes without saying that few systems of social organisation have proven more durable or more resilient among India’s Christians than caste (or jati; cf. Forrester 1980). Chapter 3 takes this up when Ashok Kumar adduces historical evidence for the lack of unanimity among Christians on whether caste is an unmitigated evil of which the church must be expunged, or a benign and ultimately tolerable feature of Christian life without which Christians would cease to be recognisably Indian. As the author points out, caste is a bone of contention between Catholics and Protestants, with Catholics being relatively more tolerant — in principle and in practice — of caste-based segregation in the churches (or segregated spaces within them). While few issues facing the churches, Catholic or otherwise, are often thought of as more intractable than ones having to do with caste and its eradication, the gamut of opinions actually held by Indian Christians is quite broad, from the abolitionists to

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the preservationists (for the latter, less-popular position, see Hephzibah Israel’s Chapter 5). Indeed, whether the continuum can be broadened beyond Catholicism and Protestantism to include at the extremes India’s most ancient churches, the Syro-Malabar, or its most recent, the Pentecostal, Ashok Kumar’s invocation of Louis Dumont serves as a helpful reminder of acculturation’s powerful tug: ‘A [foreign] sect cannot survive on Indian soil if it denies caste or consistently presents an uncompromising hostility to caste in all its manifestations’ (1970: 36). Be that as it may, formal projects of an inculturational kind are of less interest to Ashok Kumar than the action observable at ground level among the Dalit Christians of Guntur District, Andhra Pradesh. Working like San Chirico and Benteler from an ethnographic perspective, he identifies the various factors — political and social — that contributed to what he terms the ‘interlocking’ of caste and congregation among the district’s Dalit Christians. Mainly, these are Mala Lutherans, who by virtue of their numbers dominate the caste’s council of elders, nowadays called the Sangham (which in certain respects supersedes the importance of panchayats, the village governing body). Previously, Christians on the Sangham tended to adjudicate conflict with the best interests of the entire Mala community in mind. They were Malas first and Christians second — Christian Malas — and interacted cordially with the Hindu Malas whose rights they also endeavoured to defend. Today, however, Christians on the Sangham, who as often as not are pastors and church elders, have begun to distance themselves from Hindus and Hindu religious practices in the region, reversing the older sequence of primary and secondary identity such that they are now more properly understood as Mala Christians. While caste and congregation are merging in ways that are indigenously initiated, from the ground up, all such change is also offset and counterbalanced by the fact that some mask their Christian identity and register themselves as Hindus in government records in order to remain eligible for state-sector employment and other reservation benefits available to Dalits who are not Christians. Here again, identity issues loom large, not only religiously and theologically but also socially and politically.

Whose Religion is Indian Christianity? While the Christians discussed in Part One provide contrastive answers to the question of what an authentically indigenous — Indian — Christianity looks like, the essays in Part Two address concerns of a different kind: viz., on a question of this kind, who has the final say? Or, to use the word an American

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president famously coined, who gets to be ‘the decider’? Here, some caveats are called for, given that earlier we introduced the term ‘organic’ to refer to the acculturative processes described by our first set of authors (Benteler, San Chirico, Ashok Kumar). Our reason for introducing this distinction was to underscore their spontaneity and mark them off from inculturation, which is usually orchestrated and implemented from the top down. Yet we do not mean to imply an absolute difference between these categories, since acculturative processes are not unaffected by circumstance or isolated from the interplay of power and politics. Agency is always rife with enigma and is always exercised within the constraints of a particular social context, making certain kinds of behaviour more likely than others (Asad 1993; Ortner 2006). Questions having to do with what and who an Indian Christian is are therefore unanswerable if we only ask them theologically. As Part Two demonstrates, such questions are not only intrinsically political but also essentially and unavoidably politicised, regardless of the India we are talking about, past or present. Nandini Sundar (2006: 359), an astute observer, argues on the basis of her research into Hindu–Christian sectarian competition for the allegiance of India’s tribal peoples that, ‘[u]ltimately, all religions (like languages) are products of a particular politics of classification, and the recognition accorded to their gods depends on the economic and political power of a people’. What, then, an Indian Christian is, or who, depends in no small measure on the persons or parties who arrogate to themselves the power of decision. Even so, the outcome will remain inchoate, congealing only within a cauldron of intergroup rivalries, competing interests, and contestations over authority and authenticity. We begin Part Two with a piece of pioneering scholarship on Agra in the Mughal empire, more than a millennium after Christianity’s actual origins in the south of India. Here, Gulfishan Khan’s essay, Chapter 4, documents and discusses a Muslim–Christian encounter, sustained over a period of years and remarkable for its dialogical character and intensity. In this story, the European actors are Jesuits from Goa who were dispatched to the court of Akbar — invited at his initiative — and remained there through Jahangir’s reign. Although Jesuits would soon be suspected of complicity in European expansionism (as in the adage from later years: behind the missionary comes the artillery), Khan discerns an irenic convergence of interests among these interreligious interlocutors. Such was the case, despite Jesus’s simply being a much-beloved Prophet on the Muslim side but God the Son, Second Person of the Trinity, on the Christian. At the time, Mughal India had a wide-open intellectual horizon and its curiosity about Christian Europe was hardly superficial.

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The tremendous effort that went into translating the Persian-language Life of Jesus called the ‘Mirror of Holiness’ (Mirat al-Quds), involving Jesuits and Qur’anic scholars in a collaborative project, must be seen in this light. When all was said and done, however, there was never really any doubt about the ‘decider’ of the real Jesus. Besides making parts of this rare text available in English, Khan also works with verbatim minutes of the Agra dialogues involving Jahangir and his Jesuit interlocutors. One (a Florentine, Fr Corsi) who was so forward (and foolish) as to trumpet the truth of Christianity in the imperial presence is said to have had to beat a swift retreat, ‘sweating profusely’. A recurrent theme of Part Two is in fact, the regularity with which foreign missionaries, Catholic and Protestant, saw their authority to dictate the meaning of ‘true’ Christianity subverted and undercut by Indian agency. ‘Sweating profusely’ is something many a Euro-American church emissary has done when confronted with resistance, behind their backs or in front of their faces, not only by Mughal emperors but also by ordinary village folk of the dominant castes or marginal communities. Although the question of what it means to be an Indian Christian or a Christian who happens to be Indian is still on the table today, the difference now is that we are talking about resistance to Christians from Christians and about a template for Christianity’s reproduction that has never been incontestably alien or un-Indian. As Hephzibah Israel’s Chapter 5 unfolds, one sees that even though missionary authority should not be trivialised, the outcome of most intra-church struggles has been the re-appropriation of power by Indian Christian brokers. Approaching her topic innovatively, with a focus on hymnology instead of doctrine or praxis, Israel focuses on mid-19th-century controversies over the properly ‘Christian’ content of Tamil hymns sung in South Indian Lutheran churches founded in the early 18th century by the German Pietist mission at Tranquebar (a Danish enclave south of Chennai). How this conflict was in large part waged over contrastive aesthetics (musical and performative) each side regarded as culturally and religiously incompatible, we leave to Israel to explain. With respect to agency, however, the point is how little the missionaries had. As her study shows, Pietists, scandalised by Tamil hymns with lyrics saturated in bhakti, accused their parishioners of being more of the temple than the church. Despite the hue and cry, such accusations were more or less shrugged off. The irony is poignant, since Pietism is arguably a Christian corollary to Hindu bhakti — that is, a form of fervently theistic devotionalism. And so it may be, but the upshot of Israel’s essay has more to do with how the missionaries were upstaged by one of their own — Vedanayaka Sastri (1774–1864),

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a renowned Protestant musician who became the figure at the forefront of indigenous resistance. Unwilling to stomach an alien (European) aesthetic, Vedanayaka also felt bound by conscience (quickened, in certain respects, by Pietism) to strip off the erotic from the bhakti of his Christian faith and anything else deemed ‘un-Christian’. Most interestingly, Israel highlights how he mobilised alternative sources of authority, ranging from the more permissive missionaries of the previous century to his own sovereign, the Hindu king of Tanjore, and — most tellingly in a Protestant context — the Christian New Testament itself. To navigate through Part Two as a whole, one has to have a high tolerance for perspectivalism. Not only that, Indian Christianity should be seen both through a wide-angle lens and in a multi-angled way. As the camera pans around, though, cognitive whiplash may occur. Just a moment ago, we were talking about missionary agency and how easily thwartable it looked; now, however, in Xavier Gravend-Tirole’s essay, Chapter 6, we learn that one indigenous community’s subversion of alien ecclesiastical hegemony may entail setbacks for another. To segue from Israel’s chapter to his, it helps to observe that Vedanayaka Sastri’s triumph over his missionary adversaries helped shore up the dominance of his caste, the Vellalas (propertied cultivators; technically, Shudra), over the church, its cultural assets, and power structures. That the triumph of a dominant-caste Christian might have been won at the cost of the Dalit Christians who are themselves nowadays the preponderant population cohort of the Christian church as a whole (with the exception of the Syro-Malabar churches) brings us back again to questions of acculturation. Although organic and emerging from the ground up instead of the top down, such developments may bode well in one sense and ill in another. For India’s Dalit Christians, the singing of church hymns composed by Vellala Christians entails much more than just a dissonance of aesthetics; the very language of the lyrics serves as a painful reminder that in the pre-Christian past Dalits did not participate in temple-based bhakti traditions with the same privileges Vellalas had. As Israel demonstrates for the past and Gravend-Tirole for the present, projects of inculturation fail less often because their initiators are European than because of being conceived and implemented from the top down. While the analogy may seem a stretch, it might help to imagine that what Vellalas were to Europeans, Dalits were to Vellalas. That is, even though Vellalas chaffed under European domination, they were not, as the dominant caste, uninvolved in the oppression of communities nowadays called Dalit. As Christians, however, both communities, Vellala and Dalit, found (and find) in aesthetics

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ample scope for self-definition and self-assertion. Here, then, lies the point of tangency between Israel, whose focus is on Vellalas, and Gravend-Tirole’s on Dalits. For each group, worship lies at the heart of Christian identity, whether voiced in song (Israel’s Vellala Protestants) or enacted liturgically and in sacramental rituals such as the Eucharist (Gravend-Tirole’s Dalit Catholics). After a post-Vatican II efflorescence of Catholic inculturationism in the 1970s and 1980s, catalysed in large part by a kind of Catholic think-tank, the Bangalore-based National Biblical and Catechetical Centre, the tepid response from Dalits has thrown most such efforts into doubt. Again, their exclusion from the Brahmanical, Sanskritic ethos of temple-based Hinduism accounts for a good deal of the antipathy toward the aesthetic of the dominant caste — and understandably so, as there are perfectly good Dalit resources that could be mobilised instead. As Gravend-Tirole goes on to show, inculturation not only stirs up a lively — sometimes edgy — intramural debate among Christians of diverse social backgrounds, it also precipitates and provokes a barrage of irate criticism from Hindu nationalists. Condemning it as a cynical ploy, they regard it as a desperate strategy intended to dupe hapless and witless Indians by cloaking the wolf of Christianity in the sheep’s garb of Hinduism (Goel 2010; Swarup 1983). Dalit Christians and Hindu nationalists are indeed strange bedfellows, but their opposition to inculturation from the top down also finds support among Christian fundamentalists and evangelicals. Imagining faith and culture in adversarial terms, resolvable only by the triumph of one over the other, they are especially averse to worship forms derived from Sanskritic Hinduism. News of this seeps into the Indian public square where it becomes grist for the Hindu nationalist mill (e.g., Arun Shourie’s 1994 exposé of intra-Catholic dissension on the nature and obligations of Christian mission). Besides the other insights they offer, Chapters 5 and 6 flag the subject of inculturation as one of the most challenging ones faced by Indian Christians. Not only is deculturation the flipside of inculturation, depending on one’s social and religious location (Dalit, for instance, as opposed to Vellala), but in addition any discussion of it invariably elicits the criticism from Hindu nationalists that foreignness remains the church’s most defining feature. Chapter 7 of Part Two, James Ponniah’s essay, draws richly upon his rural ethnographic work among contemporary Tamil Dalit Christians to elucidate two overlapping phenomena. First are the ways in which Dalits employ and deploy Christian symbols, reinvesting them with a ‘surplus of meaning’ (meanings, that is, over and beyond the ones officially propagated and traditionally transmitted by the Catholic Church). And the second is how

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Dalits appropriate and exploit ‘the project of modernity inaugurated by the Christian missionaries’ through literacy and other forms of education. They do this, he argues, in order to voice more compellingly the suffering that comes with being Dalit and to contest the very conditions that account for their marginalisation. While scholars have often thought of Dalit conversion to Christianity as akin to social protest, or as an ‘opting out of an oppressive social structure’ (Oddie 1996: 5), Ponniah goes further, for the Dalits in his study are Christian already. Needing a socio-cultural retranslation of Christian faith and praxis into terms more truly reflective of their Dalithood, Dalits initiate changes, whether sanctioned or not, ecclesiastically, and are undeterred by official opposition. In short, as part of the self-initiated process of revisioning their marginalisation, Ponniah’s Dalits literally walk with the Cross ‘from subalternity to modernity’. Already a multivalent symbol, the Cross in Dalit perception is not merely an ornament one wears or to which one genuflects or that one carries during a Passion Play. Rather, it encapsulates and articulates both the sorrows of marginality and the assurance of a final triumph over the adversities of death, experienced socially. Documenting a Dalit village during Easter, Ponniah finds in the re-enactment of the Stations of the Cross a passion for justice and human dignity that becomes the superadded meaning Dalits discover in Jesus’s Passion. Unsurprisingly, the same dramas afford ample scope for tweaking the pretensions of oppressors of all shapes and sizes, including priests and publicans, Hindu and Christian.

Can Christianity be Indian? Thus far in this collection, a variety of voices on the Indianness of Christianity have been heard. By and large, Christians have been the most vocal, although others — from yesterday’s Muslim emperors to today’s Hindu nationalists — have entered the conversation as well. Here at the end of our volume, the decibel level of non-Christian voices rises a notch, for the voices that clamour to be heard in Part Three, claiming to speak for ‘India’ or on behalf of ‘Hinduism’, can no longer be denied, ignored, or trivialised. As controversy intensifies, voices from the Indian diaspora also join in, demanding from afar an India purged of (allegedly) un-Indian anomalies such as Christianity — at least of the uncontrollable variety they find objectionable. Militancy of this kind worsens the globalisation of communal and interreligious conflict in ways that mirror the evangelistic excesses these long-distance nationalists

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decry. While we do not doubt that one can be privately intolerant, religiously or theologically, without also being publicly intolerant, socially or politically (e.g., by withholding from others their constitutionally-protected freedoms), the last three essays of our volume take a hard look at those who actually violate such guarantees and run amuck in riots, or come uncomfortably close to advocating a crackdown on minorities for reasons of their religion. Overall, when the question becomes one of whether Christianity can be Indian — or cannot — suddenly the whole conversation seems less amenable to rational discourse, more urgent and supercharged, and impossible of distantiation. While Georg Pfeffer’s (Chapter 8) and Chad Bauman’s (Chapter 9) essays stay well on the far side of academic advocacy, the last in our collection, Chapter 10, by Richard Fox Young and Sunder John Boopalan, makes no bones about being an act of concerned scholarship. Despite differences of approach and the inclination or disinclination of their authors, on this occasion, to separate ‘value’ from ‘fact’, all three essays can be read as if there were hardly any seam at all between them. For stereoscopic effect, Pfeffer works comparatively, bringing into conversation the troubled past(s) and present(s) of two Christian communities, geographically dissimilar but handicapped by similar marginality: the Chuhra sweepers of the Punjab in Pakistan and Orissa’s tribals of the Kandhamal Highlands. As Pfeffer documents from years of observation, it was only in recent times that the Muslim majority grew alarmed at the influx of Chuhras into the Christian church. As soon, however, as Chuhras took advantage of their newfound educational opportunities, prospered and attained prominence in church-related institutions, the indifference of the dominant population to their conversion gave way to animosity. Chuhras, accordingly, were targeted for reprisal and re-inferiorisation. Although different contextually and a world away on the other side of the Indian sub-continent, Pfeffer finds in the hills of Orissa a troubling parallel for Adivasi Christians. Here, Chad Bauman picks up where Pfeffer leaves off, reaching a conclusion similar to his by means of an analytical overview of the anti-Christian riots that rocked the Kandhamal Highlands in 2007 and 2008. Drawing upon Clifford Geertz’s famous analysis of religion as a ‘cultural system’ which fuses the ‘world as lived’ with the ‘world as imagined’ (Geertz 1973), Bauman argues that interreligious riots function in a similar way, fusing the world as actually experienced (the world produced by and after riots) with the world as Hindu nationalists ideally imagine it to be — free of Christian and Muslim, Dalit and Adivasi assertion or insubordination. Accordingly, outbreaks of mob violence aim at turning the clock of history

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back to a time when traditional structures of power and privilege were unaffected by conversion to Christianity. Last, in a twist of irony, considering where our volume began, Young and Boopalan round off Part Three with their reflections on how essentially local questions about the Indianness of Indian Christianity are nowadays addressed globally and not only domestically. More and more, Hindu Americans of the Indian diaspora, whose nationalism migrated with them, vie with their Dalit Christian American counterparts over who ought to be considered more representatively ‘Indian’ than the other. While the outcome of this intradiasporic quarrel remains uncertain, evidence accumulates of Dalits being doubly marginalised, at home and overseas. The spoils of the contest being waged abroad are indeed considerable, for the role of being ‘the decider’ brings with it the privileges and prerogatives of rectifying (mis)information about India in America and wherever the travails of India’s Christians, documented by Pfeffer and Bauman, are a subject of widespread concern and watched by the media. By now it may seem obvious, but here in Part Three, as our volume comes to a close, we draw attention to an under-recognised linkage between the current debate over Indian Christianity’s claims to Indianness and a concurrent debate going on in the background. That debate, long-stoked by Hindu nationalists — whether Indians or Americans or residents of other countries — purports to be not only about Indians as a singularly-religious people but also about India as a religiously-singular ‘Hindu’ nation.

Notes 1. Our outlook on Christianity’s pluriformity and plasticity, cross-culturally, has been shaped in part by the historiography of Andrew F. Walls in The Missionary Movement in Christian History (1996), especially ‘The Translation Principle in Christian History’ (Chapter 3). 2. On ‘inculturation’ and its numerous Christian spinoffs (‘enculturation’, etc.), Stanley (2007) provides a helpful overview. 3. An example of intentional inculturation would be the attempt by Catholic theologians to reconfigure classical Thomism for Indian consumption by adopting and adapting the terms and categories of Advaita Vedanta. As Xavier GravendTirole observes in Chapter 6, this kind of inculturation can seem transparently imperialistic to its critics.

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References Asad, Talal. 1993. Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Bauman, Chad M. 2008. Christian Identity and Dalit Religion in Hindu India, 1868–1947. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Bayly, Susan. 1989. Saints, Goddesses and Kings: Muslims and Christians in South Indian Society 1700–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bergunder, Michael. 2011. ‘Miracle Healing and Exorcism in South Indian Pentecostalism’, in Candy Gunther Brown (ed.), Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Healing, pp. 287–306. New York: Oxford University Press. Dumont, Louis. 1970. Religion, Politics and History in India: Collected Papers in Indian Sociology. Paris: Mouton Publishers. Forrester, Duncan. B. 1980. Caste and Christianity: Attitudes and Policies on Caste of AngloSaxon Protestant Missions in India. London: Centre of South Asian Studies, University of London. Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books. Goel, Sita Ram. 2010. History of Hindu-Christian Encounters AD 304 to 1996. New Delhi: Voice of India. Mallampalli, Chandra. 2004. Christians and Public Life in Colonial South India, 1863–1937: Contending with Marginality. London: Routledge Curzon. Marriott, McKim. 1955. ‘Little Communities in an Indigenous Civilization’, in McKim Marriott (ed.), Village India: Studies in the Little Community, pp. 171–222. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Oddie, Geoffrey. A. 1996. ‘Old Wine in New Bottles? Kartabhaja (Vaishnava) Converts to Evangelical Christianity in Bengal, 1835–1845’, in Lynette Olson (ed.), Religious Change, Conversion and Culture, pp. 132–152. Sydney: Sydney Association for Studies in Society and Culture. Ortner, Sherry. 2006. Anthropology and Social Theory: Culture, Power, and the Acting Subject. Durham: Duke University Press. Shourie, Arun. 1994. Missionaries in India: Continuities, Changes, Dilemmas. New Delhi: Rupa & Co. Stanley, Brian. 2007. ‘Inculturation: Historical Background, Theological Foundations and Contemporary Questions’, Transformation 24(1): 21–27. Sundar, Nandini. 2006. ‘Adivasi vs. Vanvasi: The Politics of Conversion in Central India’, in Satish Saberwal and Mushirul Hasan (eds), Assertive Religious Identities: India and Europe. New Delhi: Manohar. Swarup, Ram. 1983. ‘“Liberal” Christianity’, in T. R. Vedantham, Ram Swarup and Sita Ram Goel (eds), Christianity: An Imperialist Ideology, pp. 14–30. New Delhi: Voice of India. Walls, Andrew F. 1996. The Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith. Maryknoll: Orbis Books.

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PART 1

Who and What is an Indian Christian?

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1

Godparents and the Mother’s Brother ‘Spiritual’ Parenthood among the Latin Catholics of Kerala, South India MIRIAM BENTELER

Godparenthood, also known as ‘ritual’/‘spiritual’ kinship (see, for example, Böck and Rao 2000; Pitt-Rivers 1973: 91), is a topic that has attracted little attention in social anthropology in the last few years or decades. As a subject, it has always been rather limited in regard to its regional scope. The term compadrazgo — used in social anthropology to designate the institution — obviously derives from research on Southern Europe and South and Middle America (e.g., Foster 1953; Gudeman 1971; Mintz and Wolf 1950; PittRivers 1958, 1973). Though there are some studies on godparenthood in Southeast Europe, one hardly finds any discussions of the subject within the context of South Asia. Roderick Stirrat’s article (1975) on godparenthood in Sri Lanka, therefore, represents an important exception. Within the growing corpus of literature on South Asian or Indian Christianity (e.g., Bayly 1989; Busby 2000, 2006; Caplan 1980, 1985; Dempsey 1998, 1999; Mosse 1994a, 1994b, 1994c, 1996; Robinson 1998), the topic is rarely discussed, despite the fact that the topic of the accommodation of Christianity and Christian institutions in existing local culture and society, that is, the ‘Indianisation’ or ‘localisation’ of Christianity, is discussed extensively in many of these same studies.

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Focusing on godparenthood among the Latin Catholics of coastal Kerala, South India, this chapter demonstrates how an institution conceived of as basically ‘Christian’ got incorporated into existing ‘South Indian’ cultural patterns, and the implications of this incorporation for the South Indian value-ideas involved, as well as for the Christian institution of godparenthood. In this case study I therefore raise questions about the ‘universality’ of Christian institutions and concepts as well as about the relationship of Christian traditions to the multi-faceted variations they take on in different Christian contexts and environments. After a short review of selected anthropological studies on godparenthood, I will describe the ethnographic setting of South India, focusing on the institution of godparenthood. The analysis that follows focuses on two aspects. First, I will investigate the incorporation of godparenthood into the South Indian system of gift exchange, which will require paying particular attention to the differences and similarities between godparents and the mother’s brother, as well as to the changing concept of affinity. Second, I will test interpretations of godparenthood as ‘spiritual parenthood’ against my own ethnographic findings in order to determine their suitability.

Godparenthood or compadrazgo in Social Anthropology From among the many scholarly interpretations of godparenthood, two primary perspectives can be gleaned. One of these perspectives highlights the function of godparenthood in society. For example, studies such as those by Sidney W. Mintz and E. R. Wolf (1950) and George Foster (1953) emphasise that the practice of godparenthood fosters social stability and solidarity between members of the same social group (i.e., horizontal or symmetrical stability) or between members of different social groups (i.e., vertical or asymmetric stability; Mintz and Wolf 1950: 358). Thus, in this school of thought, godparenthood takes on functions supplementary to those of the family (Foster 1953: 9). This chapter, however, will focus on the second of these primary anthropological perspectives on the underlying concepts of godparenthood, and then criticise it against the background of a case study. Those working from this perspective believe that most analyses of the institution emphasise only its visible functions and neglect to explore and elucidate the important fundamental principles on which it rests and operates in particular social settings. In other words, they argue that most of the research on godparenthood fails

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to answer the question of why social solidarity is in certain societies encouraged specifically by godparenthood rather than by other functionally similar institutions (Gudeman 1971: 46). In search of these underlying principles, Stephan Gudeman argues that the institution of godparenthood is an ‘elaboration of Catholic Church dogma and practices’, itself varying over time,1 that exists today in ‘dramatically variant forms’ (ibid.: 45). In his article, ‘The Compadrazgo as a Reflection of the Natural and Spiritual Person’ (ibid., hereafter ‘The Compradrazgo’), he sets out to show that these different forms can be reduced to ‘essential principles’ (ibid.) due to their common origin. According to Gudeman, all the variations are based on the ‘historical Christian theological distinction between man as spiritual and natural, or cultural and biological, being’ (ibid.: 47). While ‘natural bonds originate in carnal intercourse’ (Gudeman 1975: 223; Gudeman and Stirrat 1976: 435), spiritual bonds originate in ecclesiastical law (Gudeman 1975: 223). It is exactly this spiritual bond that distinguishes godparenthood from other institutions of ‘social value’ (ibid.: 229), such as ‘blood brotherhood’, which also enhances social solidarity (Gudeman 1971: 47). The spiritual dimension is a unique characteristic of godparenthood and therefore cannot be disregarded. Gudeman further argues that while the distinction between the natural and spiritual aspects of human beings exists in many (if not all) cultures — a fact that facilitates the introduction of godparenthood in various contexts (ibid.: 48) — it is specific to post-Tridentine Catholicism that different agents are responsible for the care of these different aspects of human beings (cf., in contrast, Bloch and Guggenheim 1981). Natural parenthood and spiritual (god)parenthood serve, respectively, the natural and spiritual aspects of humans, and thus complement each other. Godparenthood is modelled after natural parenthood and thus constitutes a mirror image of it. Natural parents introduce the child into the family and household and care for the child’s physical and material well-being, whereas godparents initiate the child into the spiritual world and religious community (ibid.: 47, 57). Parenthood and godparenthood are therefore ‘ranged relative to each other along a natural-spiritual continuum’ (ibid.: 65) in the different societies where godparenthood exists. In ‘The Compradrazgo’, Gudeman concentrates on the spiritual nature of godparenthood. In one of his later articles, however, he hints vaguely at a ‘social’ dimension of godparenthood, arguing that for the spiritual relation to be seen and expressed, godparents must act within existing social contexts. The institution is relevant not only in the spiritual realm, but also in the social

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domain (Gudeman 1975: 225–226); ‘spiritual bonds are realised’, he argues, ‘in a social system’ (ibid.: 235) where they take on secular roles (ibid.: 221). But while he criticises functionalist explanations in his earlier article, he himself falls back upon the ‘solidarity thesis’ when explaining the distinction between parents and godparents. This distinction developed early in church history, and he believes that the separation was due to extra-religious factors, namely the solidarity godparenthood creates (ibid.: 229). Beginning with ethnographic evidence from Sri Lanka, Stirrat follows Gudeman in relating godparenthood to Catholic theology and the distinction between the natural and spiritual family (Gudeman 1975: 592). However, rather than pointing to the dual nature of humans as a fundamental idea from which godparenthood emerges, Stirrat emphasises that godparenthood in Sri Lanka relies on a ‘triadic notion of man as a natural, a social and a spiritual being’ (ibid.: 604, emphasis added): There are first the bonds of natural kinship in which individuals share a common bodily substance. Secondly, there is the spiritual aspect of man, associated with baptism and confirmation and the relationships which these rituals generate. Finally, there is the social aspect of man concerned with marriage without which there could be no society (ibid.: 597).

Parents are responsible for the child’s secular welfare, Stirrat goes on to argue; godparents are in charge of the spiritual growth and welfare and have ceremonial roles at the child’s baptism, Holy Communion and confirmation. But the mother’s brother is accountable for social growth and has responsibilities at the first fishing trip, the first menstruation and in the marriage ceremony (ibid.: 599, 602). Following Julian Pitt-Rivers (1958, 1973), Stirrat also points out and examines the similarities in the roles of the mother’s brother and godparents (1975: 592).2

The Latin Catholics of Coastal Kerala Latin Catholics constitute one of the many Christian communities in the comparatively small but densely populated state of Kerala, which lies on the southwest coast of India. This group was originally converted by Portuguese missionaries in the 16th century, who baptised predominately, but not exclusively among the fishing castes in the coastal regions of Kerala and other parts of South India. The original caste background of the converts can only be extracted from historical sources (cf. Antony 1993: 19; Becker 1921: 145)

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since the people themselves do not remember their original caste and it is not, as in other communities (e.g., the Latin Catholic Mukkuvar described by Busby [2000]), preserved in the contemporary name they use to designate themselves or in the name which other castes and communities use to designate them. Due to their former liturgical language, Latin, and in distinction from the long-established Syrian Christians,3 these Roman Catholics are known as latinkaar in the local language, Malayalam, or as Latins/Latin Catholics in English. The Latin Catholics in the coastal region of Kerala are further divided into the so-called Five Hundreds, who are of lower status and associated with the occupation of sea fishing, and the so-called Seven Hundreds,4 who are of higher status and associated with handicrafts, especially carpentry. These two formerly strictly endogamous groups inhabit the same area, but today belong to different dioceses and parishes (cf. Thattumkal 1984: 215–216). Fieldwork for this research was carried out in Chellanam, a grand village stretching along the coast of the Ernakulam District of central Kerala (in the years 2007 to 2009). The place is inhabited by different Hindu castes (Gaudha Saarasvatha Brahmans, Izhavas, Kudumbis, and Pulayas) as well as by members of different Pentecostal communities. The Latin Catholics, however, form the largest community in the area, comprising about 70–80 per cent of the population.5 Not only numerically, but also in respect to economic power and educational background, they surely constitute the ‘dominant community’ (Dumont 1980: 160–163; Srinivas 1967) of the area. Since the Latin Catholics predominate numerically, their churches, institutions and religious activities dominate the culture of the village.

Godparenthood among the Latin Catholics Among the Latin Catholics, godparenthood is initiated at the child’s baptism.6 For the first child, the family of the child’s father has the right and duty to become godparents. For the second child in the family, this responsibility falls to the mother’s family. The father’s sister and her husband are considered the godparents of choice for the first child; the mother’s brother and his wife for the second child. This does not mean, however, that only these specific relatives are considered as potential godparents. Other relatives as well as friends are also often chosen as godparents or propose themselves as such. Godparenthood can be reciprocal so that friends might become godparents of each other’s children. In fact, the people themselves sometimes compare godparenthood to sister exchange (which is rarely practised anymore), because

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reciprocity is a characteristic of both institutions. Through godparenthood, existing relations of various kinds are thus confirmed, strengthened and given an additional dimension. Godparents are exclusively chosen from among married couples (never two unrelated persons), which is not necessarily the case in Sri Lanka (Stirrat 1975: 595). If a man is unmarried at the time of baptism or his wife is pregnant (and thus not allowed to act as godmother), his mother, sister or a female cousin will take over the duties as a temporary surrogate until he gets married or his wife has given birth.7 Since it is essential that both a male and a female participate in the godparents’ duties, godmothers or godfathers who become widowed after the baptism of their godchild are usually complemented by one of their own children in their tasks. Nowadays, baptism takes place about three months after delivery so that the child’s mother, who is excluded from entering the church after delivery for a certain period of time, is able to participate. On baptism day, the child is bathed by the godmother and then dressed by her in white baptismal clothes. Afterwards, she gives some money to the woman who was hired to take special care of the child and mother after delivery. The godmother is also responsible for carrying the child to the church and holding it for most of the baptism ceremony. Additionally, both godmother and godfather promise to assist the parents in raising the child in the Christian faith. However, at the end of the ceremony, it is the parents who are blessed together with the child, which is by that point lying in its mother’s arms (cf. ibid.: 593). As the tasks of the godmother before the baptism ceremony in the church suggest, the responsibilities of the godparents extend beyond the mere fulfilment of the promise given in the church. Godparents have specific gift-giving functions at the time of baptism and later in the child’s life. For example, they give the child its white baptismal dress and small items such as soap and powder, and sometimes sponsor a part of the baptism festivities such as the obligatory cake and wine. Also, they give the child a ring, bangle or necklace made of gold. Though others give jewellery as well at this occasion, the jewellery given by the godparents is always more costly than that given by the other guests.8 In most families, godparents nowadays usually have no specific responsibility at the godchild’s first Holy Communion and confirmation, but they are invited to the ceremonies.9 The same holds true for the preliminary functions connected with marriages. Like other communities and castes in India, marriages are the most elaborate festivities among Latin Catholics, and the arrangement of a marriage is connected with many different celebrations.

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In the more public functions accompanying the arrangement of marriages, such as acharakalanam (fixing of the marriage) and manasammatham (engagement), godparents participate only as ordinary guests and have no active role in the process. However, the climax of their responsibility as godparents is at the godchild’s actual marriage celebration, which includes the festivities on the eve of marriage. Unlike baptism, where the relationship of godparenthood is enacted within the religious ceremony itself, the role of godparents during the godchild’s marriage is totally detached from the actual marriage ceremony in the church. On the eve of marriage, the godparents are, together with the bride or bridegroom, the main participants in a ceremony known as ‘taking a pinch of sweets’ (madhuram killal). The ceremony is performed separately in the house of the bride and bridegroom in the presence of their respective godparents. During this ritual, the godmother and godfather wash the hands of their godchild. Afterwards, the godfather asks the permission of the guests to offer sugar to the bride/bridegroom. Bride and bridegroom are supposed to take a pinch of this sugar, which is presented on a plate and decorated nicely. Subsequently, they give a gold ornament or money to their godchild and in doing so start the process of gift-giving at that occasion. On the wedding day, it is the responsibility of the godmother to lead the bride under an umbrella to church. During the church ceremony, the godparents participate without any special role. But afterwards the bride’s godparents greet the bride and groom at the entrance of the compound to the bride’s house by drawing a cross on their foreheads and tying a rosary or necklace around their necks. The godparents are also responsible for washing the hands of the newly married couple before the bride and bridegroom cut the wedding cake together and feed each other with it. After the meal in the bride’s house, the same procedure is performed by the bridegroom’s godparents in his house. It is also the bridegroom’s godparents who lead the bride into her husband’s house when she enters it for the first time. Not only do godparents initiate the gift-giving process at the baptism and wedding, they also hold a prominent position in gift exchanges more generally, and are distinguished by the specificity of their gifts and ceremonial roles, which articulate and manifest the particular relationship they have with their godchild and the godchild’s parents. Therefore, godparenthood not only constitutes a relationship between godparents and their godchild, but also that between the godparents and the godchild’s parents. This is a triadic relation, which Gudeman terms the ‘compadrazgo set’ (1971: 48), and which is also visible in the reciprocal invitations and gift-giving between parents

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and godparents. In addition to the occasions where godparents have special responsibilities, they are also invited to all festivities in the godchild’s family, such as baptisms, holy communions, confirmations, engagements, marriages, and funerals. In return, the godchild’s parents receive invitations to all main celebrations in the godparent’s family as well. Again, at these occasions, godparents and parents both give gifts, which are more expensive than the gifts given by other guests and/or more specific, that is, of a different kind than those ‘ordinary’ guests hand over. The triadic relation is further confirmed by the terms that godparents, godchildren and godchildren’s parents use to address and refer to each other. Godchildren (and at times their siblings) call their godparents pathirinjnappan and pathirinjnamma, or thalathottappan and thalathottamma, and godparents call their godchildren piilaasmoon and piilaasmool. Both terms used for godfather and godmother utilise the Malayalam words appan (‘father’) and amma (‘mother’); those for godchildren use the terms moon (‘son’) and mool (‘daughter’). While the origin and meaning of the terms pathirinjnappan and pathirinjnamma are unclear, the terms thalathottappan and thalathottamma refer to the ‘touching of the head’, thalathotuka, during the baptism ceremony. The terms piilaasumoon and piilaasmool seemingly originate in the Portuguese words filho/filha (‘son’/’daughter’) or afilhado/afilhada (‘godson’/’goddaughter’) (Kurukkoor 2002: 173–174). There is also a reciprocal term used by parents (as well as their siblings and siblings’ spouses) for the godparents and vice versa (kumpaari and kumpaaricchi). For example, a mother calls her child’s godmother kumpaaricchi and the other way round. Interestingly, the terms kumpaari and kumpaaricchi are also frequently used by people of all generations to address or refer to male or female friends. These two terms are also of Portuguese origin: kumpaari and kumpaaricchi10 surely derive from compadre, co-father (cf. ibid.: 91–92), underlining the probability that the institution of godparenthood was established along with the earliest conversions enacted by the Portuguese. In addition, terms like amma, appa, moon, and mool possess relational value. In a similar vein, godparents are greeted by their godchildren, independent of their age, by a specific Latin Catholic greeting known as sthuthi, which is a greeting the children also use with their relatives. When giving sthuthi, the palms of the hands are put together and a verse entailing praise to Jesus Christ is uttered. Unlike in other ethnographic contexts (cf., for example, Stirrat 1975: 595; McGilvray 1982: 257), there are no strict rules forbidding marriage between godparents and parents or godchildren and godparents’ children. Thus, a marriage between parents and godparents after the death of their spouses

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is said to be possible. A marriage between one’s own child and godchild is normally not considered, but this restriction does not extend to the godchild’s siblings and cousins. A marital relation between godparents and godchildren is excluded due to the generational difference. Therefore, the role of godparents goes beyond the co-responsibility of spiritual growth for the child as articulated in the Canon Law of the Catholic Church (cf. Can. 872, Sheehy et al. 1996: 480). Godparents are incorporated into a specific kind of greeting, manner of address and gift exchange. From baptism onwards, they fulfil particular gift-giving and ceremonial functions in the most important life-cycle rituals of their godchildren’s lives.

The Mother’s Brother: Godparenthood’s Impact on the Concept of Afſnity Many theories have developed around the so-called ‘avunculate’, which describes the importance of the relationship between the mother’s brother and the sister’s children, especially the sister’s sons (Homans and Schneider 1955; Lévi-Strauss 1963; Needham 1962; Radcliffe-Brown 1952). In Affinity as a Value (1983),11 the French anthropologist Louis Dumont highlights the special role of the mother’s brother in South Indian gift exchange. As the first and foremost affine, he performs in patrilineal castes and communities particular ceremonial functions, and is the giver of what Dumont calls ‘oriented’ gifts.12 These non-reciprocal, affinal gifts come into play when the brother’s sister’s children’s are born. They follow the orientation of the gifts given from wifegivers to wife-takers from the time of marriage. Depending on whether or not the positive marriage rules (generally known as ‘cross-cousin marriage’) are observed, this process will either initiate a new gift-giving cycle or continue an existing one (Dumont 1975: 210, 1983: 79–80). To demonstrate the mother’s brother’s responsibilities within one particular caste living in the same area as the Latin Catholics described here, we can take a look at some of his duties among the Kudumbi. Among the Kudumbi, it is the mother’s brother who whispers the name into the ear of his sister’s newborn child, and it is he who gives a sari (called ammaavan saari, the mother’s brother’s sari) to his sister’s daughter at her marriage. Hence, it is unusual and somewhat surprising that among the Latin Catholics the mother’s brother and his wife have no formally fixed or particular gift-giving or ceremonial obligations in the life-cycle rituals of his sister’s children. Among Latin Catholics, his roles differ from the roles he would take in other patrilineal communities in South India. Though the mother’s

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brother is often involved in the decision-making process of the family (e.g., the arrangement of marriages of his sister’s children) and gives gifts to his sister and her children at the time of the large patron feasts in her place of birth/ original parish, he does not give gifts to the sister’s children when life-cycle rituals are observed. Among Latin Catholics, it is the godparents rather than the mother’s brother and his wife who are singled out to perform ceremonial functions. Comparing the role of godparents among the Latin Catholics and the mother’s brother in other South Indian communities, one immediately notices that they possess a similar role in gift exchange. The gift-giving responsibilities of both the godparents among the Latin Catholics and the mother’s brother in other South Indian communities commence at birth. Their responsibilities culminate at the child’s marriage, and their gifts are given to members of the next generation and distinguish them from all the other gift-givers present at these occasions. The mother’s brother plays an important role in the life-cycle rituals among those castes from which people converted to Catholicism in the 16th century. At the same time, the mother’s brother’s responsibilities are totally reduced among the Latin Catholics, while the godparents have many responsibilities in their godchildren’s life-cycle rituals. Therefore, it can be assumed that the institution of godparenthood has, in fact, gradually replaced the gift-giving and ceremonial responsibilities of the mother’s brother among converts since the introduction of the Christian institution of godparenthood.13 The mother’s brother and his wife are a married couple and thus combine male and female. The fact that ecclesiastical rules do not require godparents to be married or even to include one male and one female further confirms the entanglement of these two institutions. However, the introduction of godparenthood did not extinguish the South Indian ‘mother’s brother’ construct altogether. The new institution, rooted in Catholicism, was rather adapted to or embedded within (cf. Gudeman 1971: 48) the South Indian pattern. Godparents were incorporated into the gift exchange at life-cycle rituals. At the same time, while the role of the mother’s brother as a specific, affinal gift giver in the life-cycle rituals of his sister’s children disappeared, he and his wife were granted the privileged position of ideal godparents.14 The role of the mother’s brother in South Indian gift exchange is characterised by Dumont as owing ‘its importance to the fact that it shows affinity under a genealogical form’ (1983: 91), that is, affinity in its diachronic dimension. Affinity in South India does not cease after one generation, as has been

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shown here, but continues over generations. This continuation of affinity over generations expresses itself clearly in the gift exchange between the mother’s brother and the sister’s children. The gift-giving of the mother’s brother to his sister’s children from their birth onwards replaces or continues the giftgiving of his father to his sister’s husband at the time of her marriage. The gift-giving obligation is thus passed down from father to son (the mother’s brother); the obligation to receive is passed down from the sister’s husband to his children (the sister’s children). Consequently, affinal givers and receivers of adjoining generations have identical obligations in gift exchange and are thus identified with each other. Gift exchange shows the intergenerational dimension of affinity (ibid.: 87–89). As the South Indian relationship terminology implicates the repetition of marriage relations over generations (the so-called ‘cross-cousin marriage’), the gift exchange implicates as well that affinity is transmitted from generation to generation. Given this diachronic dimension, affinity can be termed a value equal to consanguinity (ibid.: vii). In North India, where the relationship terminology does not suggest it, it is the distribution of gift-giving and ceremonial functions that show that ‘affinity has something of a diachronic dimension’ (Dumont 1966: 95). Affines of succeeding generations are identified with each other due to their affinal role in gift exchange (ibid.). Among the Latin Catholics, the role of the mother’s brother as giver of affinal gifts is highly reduced since he is totally excluded as a ‘special’ giver from all the important life-cycle rituals. The institution of godparenthood has obviously replaced his affinal responsibilities. The godparents are the specific gift-givers and fulfil certain ritual functions, and though their identity may also be that of the mother’s brother and his wife, they act exclusively in their roles as godparents on these occasions, not as affines. Godparenthood among the Latin Catholics, however, lacks the diachronic dimension described by Dumont, since it usually ceases after one generation. Godparent ties may be repeated between two families, and existing responsibilities are usually taken over by the godparents’ children after the godparents’ death. Furthermore, godparenthood serves to give permanence to, for example, relations of friendship. Nevertheless, there is no inheritance of godparent ties from generation to generation, as there is among the peasants of former Yugoslavia, where patrilineal groups are continually connected to each other by godparental ties (Hammel 1968: 1–2). The replacement of the mother’s brother in his ceremonial and gift-giving functions by a godparent thus has the following important implication for the concept of affinity among Latin Catholics: the diachronic dimension of affinity almost totally disappears in

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gift exchange. In contrast to affinity in other South Indian communities, it is here subordinated to consanguinity. This subordinated position of affinity in gift exchange accords with the position of affinity in the formulations of Canon Law. Canon Law is believed to have had an impact not only on gift exchange, but on the kinship system of the Latin Catholics as well, whose marriage practices and rules, and even relationship terminology differ considerably from that of other communities in the area. This difference can be understood as a result of their conversion to Catholicism and the accompanying implementation of Catholic marriage prohibitions. The negative marriage rules of Canon Law replaced the positive South Indian marriage rules, forbidding what is generally known as ‘crosscousin marriage’. The church rules are followed by the majority of the Latin Catholics in actual marriage practice so that marriages mostly take place between strangers, that is, families who are unrelated to each other and not even acquainted with each other before marriage negotiations start. In addition, the relationship terminology to a large extent lacks equations pointing to the transmission of affinity from generation to generation. ‘Cross relatives’ and affines are distinguished terminologically from each other by a process of ‘consanguinisation’. In the relationship terminology, in marriage rules and in marriage practice, as well as in gift exchange, affinity is encompassed by consanguinity among the Latin Catholics. That is, affinity to a large extent merges with consanguinity after one generation, as in European and North American society, instead of being transmitted from generation to generation. It thereby loses a considerable part of its diachronic dimension, and, consequently, value. Rather than talking about ‘affinity as a value’ (Dumont 1983), one should therefore talk about a ‘valuation’ (Dumont 1966: 113) of affinity among the Latin Catholics, as Dumont does in the context of North India. This term implies that affinity is not altogether devalued, though it is of minor relevance among the Latin Catholics as compared to its importance in other South Indian communities. Marriage still remains the most important ritual occasion, and the gift exchange between affines is the most important gift exchange.

Impact on the Institution of Godparenthood Given that the institution of godparenthood among the converts was integrated into an existing South Indian pattern and that its implementation brought about a transformation in the system of gift exchange and the concept of affinity, it can be assumed that the institution itself experienced changes and

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alterations as well. Godparenthood certainly took on a specific form among Indian Latin Catholics, and therefore constitutes one of the many variations found among Christian communities around the world. As indicated here, Gudeman (1971) emphasises that the origin of all these variations lies in Christian church dogma and attributes a common underlying principle to all of them because they are based on and result from the theological distinction between man as a spiritual and natural being. Consequently, parents are responsible for the natural growth of the child, and godparents are responsible for the spiritual growth, which manifests itself in the social dimension. In contrast, Stirrat (1975), who proceeds from an ethnographic example rather than from theological scripts, argues for a threefold division in which the natural growth is the responsibility of the parents, while spiritual and the social growth is the responsibility of the godparents and the mother’s brother respectively. In the context of godparenthood among the Latin Catholics of Kerala, it must be asked whether the assertions of both authors are tenable. In other words, is it in this context appropriate to reduce godparenthood to the spiritual domain and portray the social dimension only as a secondary effect of the spiritual? Can the distinction Gudeman and Stirrat draw between the spiritual, the natural and the social be accepted as the basis of godparenthood in general? It is certainly undeniable that among the Latin Catholics godparenthood has its roots in theological ideas and Catholic Church dogma implemented at the time of conversion in the 16th century. The Portuguese origin of the terms still in use bears direct witness to this. It is also undeniable that a certain bond is created at the child’s baptism between child and godparents, which might be termed ‘spiritual’ since it is enacted by a priest in the context of a church ritual and because it is considered as such in Canon Law. Furthermore, parents and godparents are certainly distinguished from one another among the Latin Catholics. In accordance with church rules from the Council of Trent, parents cannot become godparents. The separation of the natural and the spiritual also lies at the heart of the (temporary) exclusion of pregnant women from the duty of acting as godmother. However, the ascription of the spiritual to godparents, the natural to parents, and the perception of the social as a mere manifestation of the spiritual (Gudeman 1971, 1975) or the ascription of the spiritual to godparents, the natural to parents and the social to the mother’s brother (Stirrat 1975) consequently limits godparenthood to the spiritual dimension and therefore seems inadequate. It does not describe the respective responsibilities of parents,

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godparents and the mother’s brother satisfactorily. To begin with, it is not the godparents alone who are responsible for the spiritual growth of the child. As Gudeman himself notices, both parents and godparents promise during the church ritual to raise the child in the Christian faith (1971: 50). The godparents are only supposed to support the parents in this task according to church law, and parents also enter a kind of ‘spiritual’ relationship with their child by their promise. Besides, it is assumed among the Latin Catholics that the godparents are responsible for their godchildren if their parents happen to die (as in the ethnographic example from Panama given by Gudeman 1971: 60; cf. Stirrat 1975: 595). Though this responsibility would in practice in most cases be taken over by close patrilateral relatives such as the father’s brother and his family (cf. Gudeman 1971: 60), it is ideally the godparents who would act as ‘second parents’ in this case and who would then not only be responsible for the spiritual, but also the material and physical well-being of the child. Since godparents are generally considered to be ‘second parents’, it is not surprising that a boy will want to tell his godfather that he studies diligently, while it seems unlikely that he will want to tell him that he prays every day. Also, the possibility of marriages between widowed parents and godparents implies a merging of supposedly separate spiritual and natural functions as well. Godparents are certainly involved in what is generally understood as ‘spiritual’ or ‘religious’ activities during the baptism (e.g., the promise in the church) and marriage (e.g., greeting the couple by marking a cross on their forehead). But they also have an important part to play in ‘material’ exchange, which Gudeman considers part of the natural dimension and Stirrat portrays as social (because the role is fulfilled by the mother’s brother among the Catholics of Sri Lanka). The attribution of merely spiritual duties to godparenthood is as questionable as the attribution of only natural duties to parenthood.15 Kinship cannot be reduced to biology and the satisfaction of physical and material needs (cf. Pfeffer 1992).16 Among the Latin Catholics, godparents take on gift-giving functions which are in other castes in South India fulfilled by the mother’s brother. The gift exchange is certainly not just an expression or manifestation of the spiritual bond and does not become inherently and solely spiritual simply because it is fulfilled by godparents. Apart from baptism, gift exchange does not take place in Christian events like confirmation and Holy Communion, which further incorporate the child into the religious or ‘spiritual’ community. But it does occur in the most important life-cycle ritual of all — marriage.

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Conclusion The difficulty of restricting godparenthood to the spiritual dimension, parents to the natural and the mother’s brother to the social correlates to the observation that the atomisation of ‘domains’ and the clear-cut distinction of different spheres is a prevalent characteristic of Western, individualistic societies and not necessarily transferable to other societies. Religion and kinship, as well as politics and law, have to be understood as connected and inseparable from each other, as Marcel Mauss emphasised in The Gift (1954; cf. also Dumont 1980: 262–264; 1986: 262–263). Religion is all-encompassing, and cannot, therefore, be distinguished from the natural aspects of human life (Dumont 1980: 107). Gudeman ‘wished to suggest . . . that the compadrazgo is not an isolated phenomenon’ (Gudeman and Stirrat 1976: 435), but the distinctions he draws do, in fact, isolate it. Consequently, coming back to godparenthood among the Latin Catholics, one can state with some confidence that it is neither primarily based upon, nor does it primarily express the perceived dual nature of human beings. Though the concept of godparenthood is theologically based on this principle, this theological element is not crucial to the practice of godparenthood among the Latin Catholics of Kerala. Rather, it is the social relationship enacted or strengthened between the godparents’ and the godchild’s family that is important. This relationship manifests itself in the gift exchange into which the godparents are integrated (cf. Alvi 1999: 306). The ties of godparenthood are, as seen here, different from those of the mother’s brother. The gift-giving function of the mother’s brother is inseparably connected with diachronic affinity, since the affinal gift exchange continues over generations. Among the Latin Catholics, godparents replaced the mother’s brother in his gift-giving function. In contrast to the mother’s brother’s affinal gift exchange, the gift exchange of the godparents is neither necessarily affinal nor diachronic, since godparents act as godparents and godparenthood usually ceases after one generation. In consequence, godparenthood cannot be seen as an expression of ‘affinity as a value’. It is, rather, an expression of the superiority of consanguinity: godparenthood made the diachronic dimension of affinity implied in the mother’s brother’s role in gift exchange almost totally disappear. The Christian institution of godparenthood thus highlights that affinity is, in Catholic Church dogma, subordinated to consanguinity. The introduction of the institution of godparenthood not only brought about changes to the South Indian pattern of affinity (through, for example, the

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reduction of the diachronic dimension), but also created new understandings of Christian godparenthood. The theological distinction between natural and spiritual therefore seems too narrow, atomistic and simplistic as an explanatory framework for the structure and function of godparenthood in the Latin Catholic community of Kerala. Nevertheless, the connection to the Catholic Church is obviously crucial. It is the sacramentally established godparents who fulfil the role the mother’s brother possesses in other communities in South India, and it is its Christian origin which certainly distinguishes the Christian institution from other institutions. But while the concept of the dual (or triad) nature of man does not primarily show itself in godparenthood among the Latin Catholics, the ecclesiastical idea of the superiority of consanguinity certainly does.

Notes 1. The basic contours of godparenthood as it is known today were established during the Council of Trent in the 16th century. At the same time, this was the period when the institution began to be diffused from (predominantly Southern) Europe over the world by missionary activities. Since that time, only minor changes in the concept can be found (Gudeman 1971: 49, 53). 2. The different approaches of Stirrat and Gudeman become especially visible in two later comments, in which they directly refer to each other (Gudeman and Stirrat 1976). 3. The Syrian Christians, allied with Rome, claim that they were converted by the Apostle Thomas in the year 52 ce. In contrast to the Latin Catholics, they are supposedly of high-caste background. Their liturgical language was for a long time Syriac. 4. The origin of the terms is unknown. Some Latin Catholics provide legends and stories about the names’ origin. The legends have also been recorded in the literature (e.g., Arattukulam 1993: 126–154; Ayyar 1926: 253–259; Becker 1921: 145–146; Menon 1929: 444; Thattumkal 1984: 185–186). The stories explain the name with reference to the number of original converts or connect it to the differing original caste background of the converts. 5. Because the Indian census has not taken account of caste/community from 1931 onwards (cf. Bhagat 2007), these numbers are estimations. 6. As for baptism, godparents are needed for the confirmation ceremony. Either the baptism godparents or some other relatives act as confirmation godparents. These

‘Spiritual’ Parenthood among the Latin Catholics of Kerala

7. 8. 9. 10.

11.

12. 13.

14. 15.

16.

 19

confirmation godparents do not fulfil any role apart from the confirmation and are not called ‘godparents’, if they are not identical with the baptism godparents. Unmarried females do not become godmothers, probably because this would entail their bringing a gift-giving obligation into marriage. Exceptions are the gifts given by the parents-in-law. First Holy Communion and confirmation are certainly important ceremonies in the church context, but are usually not celebrated on a grand scale. The female form, kumpaaricchi, does not have its origin in the Portuguese comadre (co-mother), but rather derives from the male form kumpaari, to which a Malayalam female ending (cchi) is added. This compilation of articles presents Dumont’s concept of affinity. It has been highly criticised, but still dominates discussions on kinship in India. Examining the South Indian kinship system, particularly the kinship terminology, Dumont notices that affinity does not merge with consanguinity in the next generation, as it does in Western society. In Western society, the affine of one generation, e.g., the son-in-law, becomes a consanguine, an uncle, in the next. Affinity is therefore in Western society encompassed by consanguinity, it is subordinated to it. In contrast, the opposition of affines and consanguines remains over generations in South India (e.g., in the parents’ generation, the term for the consanguineal father is opposed to the term for the affinal mother’s brother in the terminology, and so are the terms of their children in the next generation; the term for the consanguineal son is opposed to the term for the affinal mother’s brother’s son, the so-called cross-cousin). Dumont therefore distinguishes between immediate affines, that is, ‘affines in the ordinary sense, in-laws’ and diachronic affines, that is, those ‘who inherit . . . an affinal tie originated in [an] upper generation’ (Dumont 1983: 75–76). Just as consanguinity is transmitted from generation to generation, so is affinity. It therefore possesses a diachronic dimension and is of equal value as consanguinity. This diachronic dimension finds its expression in the terminology, the positive marriage rules, the marriage practice, as well as in gift exchange of South India (ibid.: 3–104). It is the father’s sister and her husband in matrilineal communities. The similarity between a mother’s brother and godparents has, as mentioned, been emphasised before (e.g., Gudeman 1971: 60; Pitt-Rivers 1958, 1973; Stirrat 1975: 592). Notice, however, that priority is given to the father’s sister and her husband, not the mother’s brother and his wife. As a comparative ethnographic example from Panama, see Gudeman (1971: 55), in which the author says of a certain community that ‘when non-kin are brought into a household their ties to the other members are usually converted into elementary kin links’. For a critique of the concept of ‘family’ in Gudeman’s articles, see Stirrat in Gudeman and Stirrat (1976: 437).

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References Alvi, Anjum. 1999. ‘Bearers of Grief: Death, Women, Gifts, and Kinship in Muslim Punjab’. Unpublished PhD Dissertation, Freie Universität Berlin. Antony, E. P. 1993. ‘Origin and Growth of the Latin Catholics’, in M. Arattukulam and E. P. Antony (eds), Latin Catholics of Kerala: Communalism versus Christian Charity, pp. 9–100. Kottayam: Pellissery Publications. Arattukulam, M., 1993. ‘The Latin Catholics of Central Kerala. A Study of their Kinship with the Syrians in Apostolic Origin’, in M. Arattukulam and E. P. Antony (eds), Latin Catholics of Kerala: Communalism versus Christian Charity, pp. 101–328. Kottayam: Pellissery Publications. Ayyar, L. K. Ananthakrishna. 1926. Anthropology of the Syrian Christians. Ernakulam: Cochin Government Press. Bayly, Susan. 1989. Saints, Goddesses and Kings: Muslims and Christians in South Indian Society 1700–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Becker, C. 1921. Indisches Kastenwesen und christliche Mission. Aachen: Xaverious-Verlag. Bhagat, R. B. 2007. ‘Caste Census: Looking Back, Looking Forward’, Economic and Political Weekly, 42(21): 1902–1905. Bloch, Maurice and S. Guggenheim. 1981. ‘Campadrazgo, Baptism and the Symbolism of a Second Birth’, Man, 16(3): 376–386. Böck, Monika and Aparna Rao. 2000. ‘Introduction: A South Asian Perspective’, in Monika Böck and Aparna Rao (eds), Culture, Creation, and Procreation: Concepts of Kinship in South Asian Practice, pp. 1–49. Oxford: Berghahn Books. Busby, Cecilia. 2000. The Performance of Gender: An Anthropology of Everyday Life in a South Indian Fishing Village. London: The Athlone Press. ———. 2006. ‘Renewable Icons: Concepts of Religious Power in a Fishing Village in South India’, in Fenella Cannell (ed.), The Anthropology of Christianity, pp. 77–98. Durham: Duke University Press. Caplan, Lionel. 1980. ‘Caste and Castelessness among South Indian Christians’, Contributions to Indian Sociology, 14(2): 213–238. ———. 1985. ‘The Popular Culture of Evil in Urban South India’, in David J. Parkin (ed.), The Anthropology of Evil, pp. 110–127. Oxford: Blackwell. Dempsey, Corinne G. 1998. ‘Rivalry, Reliance and Resemblance: Siblings as Metaphor for Hindu–Christian Relations in Kerala State’, Asian Folklore Studies, 57(1): 51–70. ———. 1999. ‘Lessons in Miracles from Kerala, South India: Stories of Three “Christian” Saints’, History of Religions, 39(1): 150–176. Dumont, Louis. 1966. ‘Marriage in India: The Present State of the Question’, Contributions to Indian Sociology, 9: 90–114. ———. 1975. ‘Terminology and Prestations Revisited’, Contributions to Indian Sociology, 9(2): 197–215. ———. 1980 [1966]. Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and its Implications. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Dumont, Louis. 1983. Affinity as a Value: Marriage Alliance in South India, With Comparative Essays on Australia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1986 [1983]. Essays on Individualism: Modern Ideology in Anthropological Perspective. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Foster, George M. 1953. ‘Cofradía and Compadrazgo in Spain and Spanish America’, Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 9(1): 1–28. Gudeman, Stephen. 1971. ‘The Compadrazgo as a Reflection of the Natural and Spiritual Person’, Proceedings of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 1971: 45–71. ———. 1975. ‘Spiritual Relationships and Selecting a Godparent’, Man, 10(2): 221–237. Gudeman, Stephen and Roderick L. Stirrat. 1976. ‘Correspondence: The Compadrazgo and Sri Lanka’, Man, 11(3): 435–438. Hammel, Eugene A. 1968. Alternative Social Structures and Ritual Relations in the Balkans. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Homans, G. V. and D. M. Schneider. 1955. Marriage, Authority and Final Causes: A Study of Unilateral Cross Cousin Marriage. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Kurukkoor, George, 2002. Kraisthava Sabdha Kosam: An Analytical, Historical and Comparative Study of Foreign Words in Christian Literature. Kochi: POC Publication. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1963. Structural Anthropology. New York: Basic Books. Mauss, Marcel. 1954 [1925]. The Gift: The Form and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies. London: Cohen & West Ltd. McGilvray, Dennis B. 1982. ‘Dutch Burghers and Portuguese Mechanics: Eurasian Ethnicity in Sri Lanka’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 24(2): 235–263. Menon, K. P. Padmanabha. 1929. History of Kerala. Ernakulam: Cochin Government Press. Mintz, Sidney W. and E. R. Wolf. 1950. ‘Analysis of Ritual Co-Parenthood (Compadrazgo)’, Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 6(2): 341–368. Mosse, David. 1994a. ‘Idioms of Subordination and Styles of Protest among Christian and Hindu Harijan Castes in Tamil Nadu’, Contributions to Indian Sociology, 28(1): 67–106. ———. 1994b. ‘The Politics of Religious Synthesis: Roman Catholicism and Hindu Village Society in Tamil Nadu, India’, in Charles Stewart and Rosalind Shaw (eds), Syncretism/Anti-Syncretism: The Politics of Religious Synthesis, pp. 85–107. London: Routledge. ———. 1994c. ‘Catholic Saints and the Hindu Village Pantheon in Rural Tamil Nadu, India’, Man, 29(2): 301–332. ———. 1996. ‘South Indian Christians, Purity/Impurity, and the Caste System: Death Rituals in a Tamil Roman Catholic Community’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2(3): 461–483. Needham, R. 1962. Structure and Sentiment: A Test Case in Social Anthropology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Pfeffer, Georg. 1992. ‘Zur Verwandtschaftsethnologie’, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 117: 41–54. Pitt-Rivers, Julius. 1958. ‘Ritual Kinship in Spain’, Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences II, 20(5): 424–431. ———. 1973. ‘The Kith and the Kin’, in Jack Goody (ed.), The Character of Kinship, pp. 89–105. London: Cambridge University Press. Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. 1952. Structure and Function in Primitive Society. London: Cohen & West. Robinson, Rowena. 1998. Conversion, Continuity and Change: Lived Christianity in Southern Goa. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Sheehy, Gerard, Canon Law Society of Great Britain and Ireland and Canadian Canon Law Society (eds). 1996. The Canon Law: Letter and Spirit: A Practical Guide to the Code of Canon Law. London: Geoffrey Chapman. Srinivas, M. N. 1967. ‘The Social System of a Mysore Village’, in McKim Marriott (ed.), Village India: Studies in the Little Community, pp. 1–35. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Stirrat, R. L. 1975. ‘Compadrazgo in Catholic Sri Lanka’, Man, 10(4): 589–606. Thattumkal, John. 1984. Caste and the Catholic Church in India: A Historico-Juridical Study on the Nature of the Caste System and its Implications in the Catholic Church of India. Cochin: Santa Cruz Press.

2

Between Christian and Hindu Khrist Bhaktas, Catholics and the Negotiation of Devotion in the Banaras Region KERRY P. C. SAN CHIRICO

On the second Saturday of every month the Khrist Bhaktas or devotees of Jesus come to Ma¯tr. Dha¯m (Abode of the Mother) Ashram in the thousands. A 12-foot billboard Christ wearing a white and gold tunic stands comfortingly with outstretched arms, under which is written ‘Matthew 11:28’, a root text for understanding what must be considered a new religious movement: He thake ma¯n.de aur bhoj se dabe logo, tum sab mere pa¯s a¯o aur mein. tum se vis´ra¯m dun.ga¯ (‘Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest’). Underneath this Jesus stands the aca¯rya¯ or abbot of Ma¯tr. Dha¯m, Swami Anil Dev. With a thick beard, long hair and tanned skin, he looks remarkably like an older version of the deity standing behind him. He offers instruction for an hour with Dharmas´a¯stra, or scriptures, in hand. His talk is peppered with stories of healing from the lives of these very Khrist Bhaktas, punctuated with the occasional ‘hallelujah’. A period of healing testimonies (can.ga¯¯ı ) follows. One by one, devotees take microphone in hand, offering sound bites of trial and deliverance. Notably shy village women, who would normally veil their faces in public, flock to the dais of the Ashram’s Satsan.g Bhavan (literally, ‘Abode of the Righteous’) to thank Prabhu (the Lord) in Bhojpuri and Hindi for the healing of cancer, for an end to spousal abuse, for money alleviating a family squabble and for peace of mind. Five hours into this mela¯ (celebration, festival), another bearded, saffron-clad sa¯dhu (renouncer) forces his way

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through the centre of the crowd bearing a large monstrance in the shape of a wooden cross. The people are eager to take dars´an — to see and be seen by the deity in an exchange that bestows a blessing upon the devotee — and so must be warned through the microphone to not crowd in. Since they are faced by the steady push of his protective retinue, the throng parts like arctic ice sliced by a ship’s prow. Now on the dais, the sa¯dhu raises the cross before the eyes of the bhaktas, methodically scanning the crowd with the cross in a semi-circular pattern to bestow its blessing. Finally, the cross is placed on the dais as thousands begin to sing in unison the song that is perhaps the Ashram’s most popular: Mukti dila¯ya yesu na¯m, s´anti dila¯ya yesu na¯m. (CHORUS) (Salvation was received through Yesu’s name, peace was received through Yesu’s name.) Carnı¯ main. tu ne janam liya¯ yesu, kru¯s pe hua¯ kurba¯n. (Taking birth in a field, You sacrificed Yourself on a cross.) Kru¯s pe apna¯ khu¯n baha¯ya¯, sa¯ra¯ cuka¯ya¯ da¯m. (On the cross You made your blood flow, the entire debt was paid.) Yesu daya¯ ka¯ gahra¯ sa¯gar, Yesu hai da¯ta¯ maha¯n. (Yesu is a deep sea of compassion, Yesu is the great Benefactor.) Ham sab ko pa¯pon. ko mitha¯ne, Yesu hua¯ balida¯n. (In order to erase all our sins, Yesu sacrificed Himself.) Ham par Yesu kr.pa¯ karna¯, ham hein. pa¯pı¯ na¯da¯n. (Yesu, have mercy on us, we are ignorant sinners.)1

More bhajans (hymns) are sung in adoration. It’s now four o’clock. After six hours of worship, instruction, prayer, testimony, and veneration, the bhaktas (devotees) lift their water and oil into the air for a blessing in this final liturgical act. Nearby, vendors sell icons, medals, Hindi-language tracts, and compact discs. This is Varanasi, the ‘heart of Hindu India’, yet these thousands are worshipping Jesus of Nazareth. It so happens that the aca¯rya¯ is a Catholic priest of the indigenous Indian Missionary Society (IMS), to which the Ashram belongs. The saffron-clad sa¯dhu is a priest of the Roman Catholic diocese of Varanasi.

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While hundreds of bhaktas were assembled in Satsan.g Bhavan, others were praying at the nearby shrine known as Marialay (‘The Place of Mary’). Bhaktas ascend the shrine stairs delicately, touching their hands to the ground, then to their foreheads, just as one might see at thousands of Hindu temples and shrines in and around Banaras, e.g., San.kat Mochan, Ka¯s´¯ı Vis´vana¯th or Keda¯r. They sit on their knees, calloused heels behind them, and place their heads at the foot of the statues. Rising to their knees, they light a votive candle and incense. Some offer rice in thin plastic bags. Lips move in barely audible prayer with arms raised at 45-degree angles in supplication, and tears roll down rivuleted faces. Incense rises before Ma¯ta¯ Ma¯riam (Mother Mary) and the youth Jesus’s benevolent plaster faces, while little children place offerings (da¯n) of rupee coins under a parent’s watchful gaze. (Some other children will later return and steal the money.) Two women sit on the borders of the circular shrine, Bible in hand, offering advice, instruction and prayer. They speak as those with authority and are treated as such by inquiring men and women. When not occupied by seekers, they can be seen reading the Bible or praying the Rosary in silence, lips moving in a phantom cadence. Further into the Ashram, west of Satsan.g Bhavan, is a chapel. Cylindrical in shape and pink in colour, it looks like the offspring of a Buddhist stupa at nearby Sarnath and a child’s birthday cake. This more whimsical architecture belies the gravitas of encounter taking place within. Prior to the procession of the monstrance, it was based here for adoration. Free of the self-consciousness that attends the novice, pubescent girls sit on mats singing bhajans, interspersed with chants of the ‘Our Father’ and ‘Rosary’ in Hindi. And just in case they get a little too comfortable there is a female layperson ready to crack the whip. (Some things are truly universal!) As at Satsan.g Bhavan and the aforementioned Marian shrine, this chapel also maintains norms of interaction discernible by instructions given to first-time Hindu visitors and children by a few key insiders who are part of the Ashram’s ‘devotional apparatus’. Transgressions against accepted norms are quickly corrected, without the anodyne niceties associated with seeker sensitivity in the West. It is not so much that newcomers need to learn rules of Christian sacred space, what one might expect given Christianity’s diminutive size in Varanasi; indeed the practices encountered at Ma¯tr. Dha¯m are largely Hindu. Rather, they must, like all adherents, learn the religious norms of this particular space: how to enter, where not to sit, how long to stay, the degree of allowable emotion in a charismatic setting, the proper manner of interaction with Yesu (Bhojpuri for Jesus), and the material and ‘pneuminal’ economics of this Divine–human encounter.

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These broad strokes provide only intimations toward explicating the Khrist Bhaktas in situ, whether it be in a sacred space or a village context, or within the context of centuries-long Hindu–Christian interaction. I believe the Khrist Bhaktas represent many things: a unique Hindu bhakti movement exhibiting many of the attributes of so-called vernacular Hinduism — albeit with an unexpected ishtadevata¯, or chosen deity — in the heart of the putative ‘centre of Hindu civilization’, the surprising result of indigenising the Catholic mission following the Second Vatican Council, proof of the significance of charismatic Catholicism and Pentecostalism in the new millennium, a religious movement overlapping with Dalit upliftment, and the latest chapter in what we would now call Christian–Hindu interaction. Of course, when a Jewish twin named Didymus/Thomas came to modern-day Afghanistan and/or the Malabar Coast, probably following pre-trodden diasporic routes, an animal called Christianity was mostly indistinguishable from its West Asian Semitic parent. Meanwhile, the Pura¯n.as, the great epics and much of what we now too easily deem ‘classical Hinduism’ was still under construction, as they continue to be. This fact points to the verity that at the first time of encounter, the path of these dialogue partners could not be gainsaid. Only now can they be distinguished in their singularity, and that, somewhat anachronistically, in retrospect. Kierkegaard (2001) reminds us that life is understood backwards as it is lived forward. And so today the Khrist Bhaktas should be understood within an historical background, but understood in their singularity as they move into an unknown future. Part of what makes this movement singular is that for reasons political and theological — reasons discussed here — the community remains mostly unbaptised. Bhakti is often called ‘heart religion’, but whatever these devotees may believe in their heart, according to the guidelines of the Indian Constitution, they are Hindus. Likewise, the baptised Catholics ministering to these bhaktas also consider them to be ‘Hindus’. Aside from an object-lesson in the constructed and negotiated nature of religious identities, the fact of limited baptisms forces us to abandon treatments of the community as simply pre-Catholic. Indeed, realities on the ground and the history of Christianity, and Catholicism more particularly, in North India preclude this teleology, not to mention the ever-increasing presence of evangelicals and Pentecostals in the Banaras region. In the age of Dalit consciousness, Hindutva, indigenising post-Vatican II Catholicism and economic liberalisation, we must abstain from drawing straight lines from point A to point B, from Hindu to Christian or (less discussed but not uncommon practice), Christian to Hindu. In truth,

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the relationship between these two categories — and the religious categories themselves — is literally not so straightforward. Thus, rather than treating Hinduism and Christianity or Hinduisms and Christianities as essentially mutually exclusive categories in India, we should understand them instead as relational categories whose borders are determined by discursive practices, law, politics, spatial relations, and the presence of perceived ‘others’ that can sometimes unite and sometimes divide depending on the exigencies of a given situation. From the outside, the Khrist Bhaktas making their way to the Ashram look like so many low-caste Hindus. Generally classified by the Indian and Uttar Pradesh constitutions as both Scheduled Castes and Other Backward Classes (OBCs), they occupy that frustratingly vague and plastic space existing between people that have it bad and people that have it really bad. The difference between ‘Shudra’ and ‘Dalit’ (aka ‘Untouchable’) is often difficult to discern, at least for those who are not located within these segments. The Khrist Bhaktas are 85 per cent women, and middle-aged by Indian standards, which means they are in their 30s and 40s. During the week the women can be found sari-clad, stooped over in green fields, barefoot, sickle in hand, sometimes with a baby or toddler in tow, tending fields of garlic, onions, wheat, or mustard. The men are often majdu¯rı¯, day labourers, whose work is as fickle and feckless as the electricity in eastern Uttar Pradesh. Most live in waddle and daub homes, with joint families in houses set yards away at right angles. In and around their abodes, there might be a well, along with water buffaloes and sundry children. There might be apotropaic, Sanskritised Hindi slogans like S´ubh (happiness) and La¯bh (profit) painted in red on polished mud walls. As in all North Indian villages there might be a representation of the gra¯madevata¯ or village deity, known often as Dı¯ Ba¯ Ba¯, a supra-mundane presence that in the mornings and evenings is more propitiated than adored. One might also encounter temples dedicated to the Puranic translocal deities S´iva, Vis.n.u, Durga¯, and the ubiquitous Hanuma¯n, attended (mostly) by pundits of the Brahmin caste. And, above doorposts, noticeable to those with eyes to see, there might be an unassuming wooden cross, affixed in articulate silence. Crossing the threshold into a dark room, as the eyes readjust to the dim light, one may also spy a plastic Jesus directing the observer to his crownedin-thorns Sacred Heart. Life’s mundane realities press down on the Khrist Bhaktas, as for all such villagers living in contemporary India’s Hindi-belt. Burdens are set in starker relief because, unlike in previous generations, the poor know the extent of

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their poverty through the looking glass that is television in general and satellite television in particular. The disparity between promises made and promises kept by Indian governments over the last three score years now can be measured by reference to the chasm existing between election sloganeering about an ‘India Shining’ versus this particular Indian suffering. The central government’s latest slogan — ‘Incredible India!’ — need not evoke a positive association. The mundane or ‘pragmatic’ concerns, to borrow from David Mandelbaum (1966), weigh heavily: those involving the material (the rising price of food, a home unable to withstand the elements); the social (an alcoholic spouse, children attempting to pass exams, squabbles with the extended family); and the troika of body (cancer, cataracts, tuberculosis), mind (t.ens.un [‘tension’], depression, schizophrenia) and soul (the desire to love and be loved, the desire for meaning, unity with God, mukti [release]).

History There is an old Tamil proverb wisely stating that one should never seek the origins of a rishi or a river — suggesting an endeavour that is futile, unseemly, or even perilous. Nevertheless, through oral histories, I have been able to track the ‘beginning’ of this movement at the Ashram to the period between 1992 and 1994. It should be noted that there is a tendency, among those who observe the Khrist Bhakta phenomenon — particularly in light of viewing the monthly satsan.gs described in the previous section in some detail — to mystify the occurrence as though it emerged out of the ether. It is surprising that the origins of the movement, which is no more than 20 years old, are already becoming shrouded in mystery. For the vast majority of priests and nuns, it is enough to say that this is a work of the Holy Spirit. That settles it for most, if not for the historical-critical scholar. There is a level of mystery attached to any social movement and always a ‘causal remainder’ enduring in light of even the best social theories. And yet, for all the mystery, oral histories — rather fuzzily recalled by many if not all informants — reveal that, indeed, the Khrist Bhaktas did not begin ex nihilo. Long before low-caste Hindus began congregating at Ma¯tr. Dha¯m, particular activities were afoot in the surrounding villages — that is, in the Harahua block of the Varanasi district. Activities of Indian Missionary Society (IMS) priests and seminarians, beginning in the 1970s, coupled with the advent of the Catholic charismatic movement in the region in the early 1990s, sowed the seeds for what one now encounters at Ma¯tr. Dha¯m Ashram. I do not seek to answer why the Khrist Bhakta movement began when it did, for that is asking too much. Rather, I do believe that any

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movement arises out of multiple processes, processes outlined here, in the form of oral history dialogues. The story of the Khrist Bhakta’s advent dwells in the space that remains — as does that causal remainder. Fr Deen Dayal is an unassuming man. Perhaps 5 feet 3 inches tall, he doesn’t strike one as particularly ‘charismatic’. His grey hair is short and his beard is of a medium length. An early septuagenarian dressed in kurta¯ pyjamas and wrapped in a shawl, he is so soft-spoken that I found myself leaning forward whenever he spoke. The first time I met him, he was recovering from a shoulder operation, recuperating, as sick IMS priests and brothers do (from tuberculosis, motorcycle accidents, hepatitis), at Anjali, the Provincialate of the Varanasi Province within Ma¯tr. Dha¯m. Little did I know when I met him in October 2009 that the interviews I conducted over the next 12 months would reveal that this unassuming man was pivotal to the growth of a form of Khrist bhakti (devotion) in the region. Fr Deen Dayal came to Varanasi in 1961. Like many of his generation, he arrived from Kerala motivated by missionary zeal for North India. Interestingly, the young man, whose baptismal name prior to ordination was never mentioned, was moved to join the IMS by one of its inculturating priests whose sister lived next door to Deen Dayal’s own sister in the district of Kottayam.2 Like other IMS priests, he was raised in a Syro-Malabar rite Catholic parish — that is, a congregation that traces its lineage back to St Thomas and that follows a Qurba¯na (‘Sacrifice’, Mass, Divine Liturgy) in Latinised Syriac and Malayalam. Fr Deen Dayal has spent his entire adulthood and ministry in North India, mostly in the villages surrounding Ma¯tr. Dha¯m. Through the years, his service in the region has been punctuated by year-long stints in other parts of ‘the North’ at the behest of his superiors, but he has long been connected in one way or another with Ma¯tr. Dha¯m Ashram and its development over the last five decades. An excerpt from our interview provides an indication of his own understanding of the growth of devotion to Jesus in Banaras, as well as of the development of the Khrist Bhakta movement: Kerry P. C. San Chirico (KPCSC): So Father, when Fr N. was telling me the story and you were mentioned, he talked about —maybe around 1990 — you were having these meetings. Father Deen Dayal (DD): Ha¯n., yes. KPCSC: So on what day were you having these meetings? Was that a Friday, or a Sunday? DD: That is much before. That is, it must be ‘91? ‘92.

30

 Kerry P. C. San Chirico KPCSC: ‘92. DD: Ha¯n. [‘Yeah’], ‘92. KPCSC: And you were bringing the people. DD: Since I knew the people in the villages, I used to call them, the sick people, just to pray for them. KPCSC: So you used to call and they used to come here. DD: They used to come and take afternoon prayer with Adoration [of the Blessed Sacrament]. And some Sisters used to be here for the retreat. I would call them to. It was not a very known thing [that was happening], but it used to be [take place]. KPCSC: It used to happen. I’m just trying to figure out the years. What do you think? ‘92? ‘93? ‘94? DD: It was, ah, it must be ‘92–‘93. But before that actually, I must say, there was a Fr Veerendre. You must have heard about him. KPCSC: Yes, I’ve seen his picture up at Benipur [parish]. DD: Ah. Yes, yes. He was a big social worker. But not like the social worker now; nowadays they don’t mention anything about Christ. But since I was in the village, he used to take me — in the evenings he used to go into the villages. So he had an apostolate, a ministry called Alpa Bajan A¯yojana, a small saving society — [in] the 90 villages of this block. KPCSC: Of the Banaras diocese? DD: No, Harahua block, one particular block. Ninety villages. Ah, so he used to go to — he started this small saving society, Alpa Bajan A¯yojana. Every village. And every evening he used to go to one of the villages. Sometimes I used to go with him. But he always used to start with prayer, bhajan, then a reading from the Bible, then a small homily. Then only he [would] start [the meeting of the society]. Then in that meeting [was] every caste. There is no caste and creed. All: Brahmin, Ks.atriya. All used to come and sit with him and listen. I must say the crowd which is coming now, [to Ma¯tr. Dha¯m Ashram], the basis is that Father had already contacted them. KPCSC: [Father] was already staying in the village. DD: Already. Then, we were staying in the villages. Every evening we had a community, two, three of us staying in the village — every evening we used to have one-hour prayer. Singing bhajans. KPCSC: Every day. DD: Every day. Ah. KPCSC: Kitna¯ baje? [‘What time?’] DD: Almost six to seven in the evening. So people — in the village, [we held services at] houses in the village — like Benipur, in Kanauli. Some people used to come and sit and sing with us in their own language. KPCSC: Bhojpuri.

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DD: Bhojpuri. Then read a passage from the Bible. Then prayer of the faithful. Everything. Then at the end, a¯rti. Then prasa¯d is given. KPCSC: What kind of prasa¯d? DD: The little sweets. KPCSC: The white ones that you would find at the temple. DD: White. Ila¯yacı¯-da¯na¯ [‘Cardamom-gift’]. KPCSC: Ok. DD: So that was there. So the beginnings [of the Khrist Bhaktas] I must say that was there. Then Fr Veerendre’s contact of these 90 villages of the one particular block, Harahua block. Then people were eager to know what exactly — eh? — what exactly, Jesus means for them, the ‘word of contact’. Then when we started here [at Ma¯tr. Dha¯m Ashram], this prayer service, it was actually not a new thing for them. KPCSC: It wasn’t new because they had already been at those places! DD: Already were there! KPCSC: So the only difference was that it was now at Ma¯tr. Dha¯m Ashram. DD: At Ma¯tr. Dha¯m Ashram. KPCSC: So ok now tell me . . . So by the time you start moving them here, that was ‘91, ‘92, ‘93. DD: Ha¯n., ha¯n., ha¯n. [‘Yeah, yeah, yeah’]. KPCSC: Fr Veerendre’s ministry was how many years? How long was he working? DD: He was here almost 15 years. KPCSC: Fifteen? Starting when? What year was he starting? DD: ‘75 onwards. He was there. KPCSC: ‘75 onwards, so say, 1990? DD: Yes, yes. He was there working. He knew all the villages. People knew him. So the ‘word of contact’ he had.3

Several aspects of this very pregnant passage deserve exegesis. First, long before Hindus began coming to the Ashram, work was being done in the villages of the Harahua block by an Andhra IMS priest by the name of Fr Veerendre. By 1975, he was working among villagers, offering micro-loans through what would now be called a ‘faith-based organisation’. Significantly, all these meetings began with a period of prayer, hymn singing and a homily (Hindi: udes´). According to Fr Deen Dayal, the meetings were marked by an egalitarian spirit: ‘There is no caste and creed’. Moreover, this work was coupled with daily evening prayer meetings in various villages, wherein a basic service would consist of Hindi and Bhojpuri bhajans or hymns, a Bible reading, prayers of the people based on their individual needs, a¯rti, then the giving of prasa¯d.

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The fact that Bhojpuri and Hindi bhajans were sung should not surprise us, as the acquisition of local language had been stressed for decades. From the 1940s to the 1970s, Canadian Capuchins working in the region had stressed the importance of the vernacular in the missionary endeavour. More significant are the Hindu practices of a¯rtı¯ and prasa¯d, for the rotation of candles and/or incense before an image (a¯rtı¯) is a central act of the Hindu pu¯ja¯, and it would be very odd, in such a context, for there not to be some prasa¯d (food or other goods symbolically offered to a deity and then later distributed, in consecrated form, to devotees) given at the conclusion of the service. It marks the culminating encounter with the deity at most Hindu temples, not so unlike Holy Communion as the culmination of the Catholic Mass. Thus, during the 1970s, these indigenising practices were being imported to mission work among Hindu villagers in the Banaras region through the work of IMS missionaries. In addition to this, according to Deen Dayal — revealed in the interview, but not included in the extract here — another important factor was the work of some seminarians, who likewise held village services every Sunday. This same ‘liturgy’4 continues in the work of the agu¯a¯s today, who now do the work once conducted by Fathers Veerendre and Deen Dayal more than three decades ago.5 Though the power and energy of the indigenisation movement within the Catholic Church in northern India has long dissipated (on which, see Chapter 6, this volume) the innovations it sparked have become normalised. Thus, for villagers encountering Catholicism today, such practices represent normative Catholicism and not some deviation, affectation or innovation on their behalf. Second, based on his knowledge of the Harahua block villages, Fr Deen Dayal was able to mobilise villagers, particularly sick ones, and bring them to Ma¯tr. Dha¯m Ashram, beginning in the years 1992–1993. Also significant for the movement’s development was that it was coupled with traditional Catholic practices like Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. By this period, religious were already staying at the Ashram for their own spiritual growth. Healing services were being coupled with the ‘Indian Christian Spiritual Experience’6 and traditional practices such as sacramental adoration and praying the Rosary. There was thus a ready, mouldable infrastructure in place featuring a blending of particular elements: the presence of indigenising priests, brothers and seminarians; nuns affiliated with various social and educational institutions (often on retreat at the Ashram); indigenised worship practices that included Hindi and Bhojpuri bhajans, the Hindu worship practices of a¯rtı¯, and prasa¯d; and social institutions, established from the period of Independence onwards, available

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to meet the needs of the region’s villagers, as needed. Most importantly, there was a relationship of trust between these foreign (pardesı¯) religious and local Bhojpuri-speaking villagers created over three decades of interaction and IMS penetration, what Fr Deen Dayal calls the ‘word of contact’.7 Asked how Fr Veerendre was able to enter such villages, Deen Dayal attributed it to his knowledge of and respect for the culture and his own affability: KPCSC: How did they come to trust him with something like this? I mean, Fr Veerendre, was he from Kerala? DD: From Andhra. KPCSC: Andhra Pradesh. So how did they come to trust him for something like this? He’s a pardesı¯ [foreigner from another place within India], no? DD: Before starting he used to come to [the] village [and] meet with the Pradha¯n, it means the chief of the village. He had a knack for doing that. KPCSC: He was a person who people would trust. DD: Ah, trust. Also, he was a lovely person. He knows how to go. He was a missionary in Agra. KPCSC: Ok, so he had been in western UP [Uttar Pradesh]. DD: In western UP. He knew the language and it was the point of contact with the people he had.8

Also interesting in the interview with Fr Deen Dayal is the more oblique criticism of modern Catholic social work in India, both within and outside the IMS: ‘He [Fr Veerendre] was a big social worker. But not like the social worker now; nowadays they don’t mention anything about Christ’.9 This was a continuing theme in my interviews with IMS priests, revealing some of the misgivings shared by Catholic religious who fear that the institutional niches negotiated since Indian independence have come at a cost — that is, the ‘deeper’ motivation for conducting such service in the first place, the compelling motivation oft-articulated as the ‘love of God’. Finally, we must note that for Deen Dayal the most important outcome of this work in the villages was an encounter with Jesus: ‘Then people were eager to know what exactly — eh? — what exactly, Jesus means for them, the “word of contact”’.10 The assumption is that Jesus had been at work in their lives, and this Jesus did not discriminate based on inherited dharma or proximity to established Christianity. In response to the question of material inducements for the purpose of conversion, a common theme over the last two centuries of Hindu–Christian interaction, Father Deen Dayal was emphatic:

34

 Kerry P. C. San Chirico DD: [We had a] very good relationship, a very good interaction. We are accepted as part of the village. At that time, we never — even though we are every evening, we are taking from the Word of God and sharing with the — and we never baptised anybody. KSC: No? DD: Never baptised that time. But they know Christ. They know what exactly Jesus means in their lives. For years we were staying in the village, but we never baptised anybody. But we know that Jesus has entered into their lives.11

In my months of intermittent interaction with Fr Deen Dayal, before I realised the role he had played in the growth of the Khrist Bhaktas, it became clear that he was self-effacing, one prone to doing things quietly and without fanfare. This may be a positive Christian virtue and a goal for Catholic religious, but it is not as helpful for piecing together a historical narrative. For this reason, we must include another retelling of the advent of the Khrist Bhaktas, related to me by another IMS priest several months prior to my interview with Deen Dayal. It provides greater detail about the priest’s work during the 1980s and early 1990s. The following came from Fr Prem Anthony, director and rector of the Viswajyoti Gurukul at Christnagar, who himself studied at this seminary from 1982–1985. Another Keralite who joined the IMS in 1978, he comes from the generation succeeding Fr Deen Dayal’s, a period of priestly formation and a time of transition in the IMS, Indian Catholicism and Catholicism globally in the aftermath of Vatican II: KSC: So I’m wondering what you have seen in the way of the Khrist Bhaktas — when they first came on the radar screen for you as existing. Prem Anthony (PA): Well, I mean, you know [chuckling] it’s not as if they came cold. To begin with, we had if I get it right, we had one of our Fathers — one Fr Deen Dayal. Who was staying at the Ashram. Very kind, very fine, very kind soul and he was working specifically with the marginalised, mostly by way of helping them to have their food. He would — at least one time’s meal he would forego. He would carry that food in his hand to give to some poor families [who are] around. When he was in the Ashram, he used to invite some of these poor people who also have a very different social background, as you know. And who also have therefore problems in their family. They drink, they quarrel. Um, so, he used to invite such families to the Ashram to spend some time. I remember a particular family. A man — one of those, one member. He is still in the Ashram, very closely associated. This particular family was having real trouble. Within the family they used to drink and quarrel among themselves. So one day this priest asked some of them to come out to the Ashram. And

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they began coming since they respected him. And, ah, they started praying and they started listening to the Word of God. Anyway, as we understand — or as God has His own plans. They got reconciled amongst themselves and they began a good business. A simple family-based business. A poultry farm. They began actually with a poultry farm. And things began to progress very well for them. They became very well to do for a family of that kind. And gradually they began to have some sort of a kind of stability and position in the village. And they were themselves astonished. So gradually others also began coming. They all said, ‘If you go to the Ashram, if you pray at the Ashram things will definitely change’. Gradually people became coming like that — one, by two or three and so on — ones and twos and threes and all those things.12

Aside from corroborating what we learned from Deen Dayal, this excerpt tells us a little bit more about the priest’s personality and actions towards local villagers, and reminds us that the work of IMS priests during this period did not merely consist of prayer services, but sought to ameliorate material deprivation. In the narrative of Prem Anthony, it is this kind of work that becomes paramount. The passage also provides us with a fuller sense of the long-standing problems being faced in the villages: hunger, alcohol addiction, quarrelling — common themes discussed during the period of can.ga¯¯ı (healing testimonies) every second Saturday of the month at Ma¯tr. Dha¯m.13 Around the time that Fr Deen Dayal was bringing sick village Hindus to the Ashram, another significant activity was taking place there and in the nearby Varanasi Cantonment, 6 kilometres away. In October 1993, a team from the charismatic Catholic centre in Pota, near Allepey, Kerala — known in Indian Catholic circles as ‘The Divine Centre’ — was visiting the city. One of the organisers was IMS Father, Anil Dev, who had been working with such teams since the early 1980s throughout the Hindi-belt: Swami Anil Dev (SAD): . . . And in ‘93 October we had a training programme for people from all over UP — those who wanted to learn something about charismatic spirituality. Leaders from different dioceses and, ah, we had it in October. And as part of our training programme we had an outreach programme in the [St Mary’s] Cathedral campus. We had a convention there, three-days convention. Evening hours [were] there; daytime [was] here [at Ma¯tr. Dha¯m]. [It was a] training programme — part of it. That was the breakthrough for Khrist Bhakta movement. KSC: That is when you date that, huh? SAD: Ha¯n.. That was the breakthrough for Khrist Bhakta movement. KSC: Very interesting, ok. SAD: So that is how I came into the Ashram.

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 Kerry P. C. San Chirico KSC: So that was what year? SAD: 1993. October. KSC: And what was the breakthrough, exactly? SAD: The breakthrough was, during the Convention, we wanted to have, give, an experience of the use of charisms to the trainees. So we took them for this Convention right in front of the Cathedral; it was outside, just in front. KSC: So anyone could go? SAD: Yeah, yeah, yeah. A few hundreds of people had come. It was the first time we [held it] in the Cathedral campus like that. And many Protestant brothers came in for the Convention. Correct? It was rather powerful. Many Protestant brothers came in. They also brought some of their contacts from villages, especially those who were sick and suffering. Different parts. Ok? KSC: Yeah. SAD: So they all came for that. Correct? Quite many of them received mighty healings. So those village people started searching. ‘Where did this team come from?’ So that, you know they came after us to the Ashram. They came and said, ‘We would like you to lead us’. They were already, to some extent, evangelised by the Protestant groups. KSC: Ok. SAD: Correct? KSC: Ok. SAD: Omkar . . . you may have got some names. I’m not sure you have gone through [the names of the charismatic Protestant leaders]. Through them I started going to villages. Omkar, Jeevan Das, a few of them. Correct? Through them I started going to villages. That is how people started flocking [to Ma¯tr. Dha¯m Ashram].14

Thus, we see the confluence of work already conducted in the villages, the prayer meetings led by Fr Deen Dayal based on his on-going village work in the Harahua block, and the coming of ‘charismatic spirituality’ at the threeday convention held at both Ma¯tr. Dha¯m and St Mary’s Cathedral. The silent partners, of course, are the evangelical and Pentecostal Christians, who had by then been working in similar villages, people like Omkar and Jeevan Das, figures who must remain outside this current study. We can glean that Hindu villagers not already familiar with Christianity through work by Fathers Veerendre and Deen Dayal, and IMS seminarians, had come to encounter Christianity through these Protestants, ‘to some extent’,15 as Swami Anil Dev explained. One month after the charismatic convention, night vigils were added to complement the prayer services instituted by Fr Deen Dayal. Therefore, based on the accounts of Fr Deen Dayal and Swami Anil Dev, the advent of the Khrist Bhaktas can be traced to the

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years 1992–1994. Significantly for the future of this movement, in 1995 Swami Anil Dev replaced Swami Vinayanad as aca¯rya¯, fortifying the Ashram as not just a centre of Catholic indigenisation, but of charismatic Catholicism in a saffron hue.

Whither Indigenisation? In this volume, Xavier Gravend-Tirole (Chapter 6) discusses some of the vicissitudes of Indian Catholic indigenisation in this new century. What was once the cutting edge of post-Vatican II Indian Catholicism seems to have fallen by the wayside, the province of specific Catholic Ashrams, and dependent on supportive (or unsupportive) bishops. Meanwhile, many Dalit Catholics themselves want nothing to do with an indigenised Christianity that gives unwarranted significance to the Brahminical Hinduism that long subjugated them (Schmalz 2005). For their part, the priests of the IMS continue to celebrate an ‘indigenised’ liturgy, which takes place early in the morning each Sunday at the Ashram and at surrounding parishes, like the one that I frequented, only 6 kilometres from Ma¯tr. Dha¯m. Bhajans to Jesus are sung with Bhojpuri instruments, interspersed between the rubrics of the indigenised Mass developed by D. S. Amalorparvadass and the National Liturgical Centre in the years directly following the Second Vatican Council.16 Of course, the vast majority of Khrist Bhaktas are unbaptised and therefore not allowed to partake of communion. There are no exceptions. This has led to two significant innovations: first, the passing of the camphor flame for blessing; second, the giving of traditional sweet cardamom (ila¯yacı¯ da¯na¯) at the conclusion of the Mass. Thus, I would argue that for the Khrist Bhaktas the more poignant service takes place at the Second Saturday mela¯s (festivals), for it is in these services that the devotees can most easily commune: through devotion rendered in song and in ecstatic worship; through various forms of dars´an that take place in different spaces of the Ashram and in the feeling of s´a¯nti (peace) that is reported as pervasive through dars´an of the consecrated host that most cannot taste but all can see and thereby ‘touch’ or rather be touched by, through bread in the form of sweet buns that have come to take the place of the communion wafer, and in the periods of the aforementioned healing testimonies, and finally, through the blessing of water and oil at the conclusion of the service.17 Therefore, over the last 17 years a kind of unofficial liturgy has formed. This, too, must be considered indigenisation in process. The irony is that a movement often considered leftist has been paired with one that is actually

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quite traditional, the charismatic movement. No one could have expected this. And this pairing of semi-indigenised Catholicism with charismatic Catholicism is very different from the Pentecostal Indian experience that generally rejects indigenisation/enculturation as ‘syncretism’, a definite taboo and a perceived threat to the Christian faith.

Dangerous Prognostications In terms of religious movements, forecasting their future is just as difficult (and perilous) as determining the precise causal factors of their advent. The sa¯dhu may remain mute on such issues, but the modern scholar is not as wise. So we ask, what might become of this community? I believe there are three possibilities. As already mentioned, with the reluctance of priests to baptise we should refrain from simply assuming that the Khrist Bhaktas are merely pre-Catholics, though no doubt some will one day join India’s Catholic Church. Over the last 17 years, Khrist Bhakta families have been baptised, but only after several years of interaction with the priests of the Ashram and with the nearby mission parish. Contrary to the stereotypes adhering to those who have the unfortunate word ‘missionary’ attached to themselves or to their order’s name in contemporary India, these Catholics are in no hurry to baptise thousands of low- and no-caste Hindus in a period when North Indian Christians feel threatened by violence. Doing so would bring dangerous attention to the Khrist Bhaktas and to the religious that minister to them. During my time in Banaras, while many Khrist Bhaktas articulated a desire for baptism, it was the priests who demurred, even while recognising that such a position would be hard to sustain indefinitely. Reluctance to baptise is not merely based on political concerns, however. In fact, this is usually the secondary reason given. Perhaps this is to make a virtue out of necessity, but the primary reason offered by clergy was generally historical and theological in nature. The IMS priests accepted the critique that earlier missionary activity18 developed relationships of dependence between clergy and their (usually) Dalit converts. While this may not have been avoidable in the first half of the 20th century when poverty and exploitation was extreme, it is now to be avoided. The conventional wisdom among the clergy is that the net result of prior missionary activity in the region was the creation of nominal Catholics, not ‘true believers’. Now equipped with a new identity, the foreigner’s religion, Dalits had found a place in society.19 What they lacked, according to virtually every priest with whom I spoke, was ‘genuine’ faith. And this, we are told, is what the Khrist Bhaktas have in spades. The Khrist Bhaktas

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thus serve as the pious other who forever challenge a Catholicism deemed inauthentic or lacking in necessary fervour. A second possibility for the future of the Khrist Bhaktas is that, apropos of the movement’s Hindu devotional and vernacular marks, Jesus, the Virgin and the saints become part of a broader North Indian Hindu pantheon based on the Catholic diffusion of ideas, images, practices and material culture. Here, the pattern would follow that of southern and western India, where orthodox (read: ‘mainline’) forms of Christianity exist alongside Hindu appropriations of Christian figures along popular Hindu lines, where Christian figures are sought for various boons, just as Hindus and Muslims share mosques and Sufi dargah or tomb shrines throughout the region.20 This could be the case if a religious figure were to emerge who rejected the theologically exclusivist doctrine promulgated at the Ashram. Such an outcome is plausible given the small size of the clergy serving the Bhaktas. The staff of the Ashram numbers no more than 10, and their time is spent not just on the devotees, but on serving the needs of Catholics on retreat. But I think the most likely outcome is that many devotees are likely to become Pentecostals. To a non-Christian, the difference between a Pentecostal Protestant and Charismatic Catholic is rather negligible. Moreover, Pentecostals generally do not share a reluctance to baptise, and their missionary endeavours are not burdened by the requirement that Catholic religious receive years of higher education before they embark on a missionary calling. The theological reason for withholding baptism is connected to the historical. If prior missionary activity created nominal Catholics, something to be avoided, and if this is a ‘work of the Holy Spirit’, then the wisest thing to do is to wait and see what will become of it. Those who minister to the Khrist Bhaktas frankly admit, ‘We don’t want to screw this up’. At this point it should be noted that such an approach is utterly at odds with Catholic sacramental theology. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states: Holy Baptism is the basis of the whole Christian life, the gateway to life in the Spirit (vitae spiritualis ianua), and the door which gives access to the other sacraments. Through Baptism we are freed from sin and reborn sons of God; we become members of Christ, are incorporated into the Church and made sharers in her mission: ‘Baptism is the sacrament of regeneration through water in the world’ (Roman Catholic Church 1994: 312).

The Spirit appears to be mostly unconcerned with following the Catechism. If we follow the discourse of Khrist Bhaktas and those who serve them, the

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Spirit has indeed been poured out, creating an interesting reality that has yet to be adequately addressed by the Catholic hierarchy, an on-the-ground phenomenon challenging basic Catholic doctrine. What is the relationship between vis´wa¯s (faith) and the sacrament of baptism? Is vis´wa¯s all that is necessary for salvation? Listening to sermons at Ma¯tr. Dha¯m Ashram, one would think so. What are the long-term implications of the delicate negotiation taking place in Banaras? If this is an example of the changes being wrought by the charismatic movement in Indian Catholicism today, what are the long-term implications in India and throughout the world? One thing is certain. During the course of my research I kept hearing about the existence of Khrist Bhaktas or Yeshu Bhaktas (in evangelical and Pentecostal circles) throughout North India. There is an increasing trend, in contradistinction to prior Christian mission in India, to do as little as possible to disturb existing social structures. Moreover, it appears that despite Hindutva threats, Hindu Bhakti has afforded devotees a rather novel chosen deity. Thus, in an age when official conversion is deeply problematic in North India, when the threat of Hindu nationalist violence hovers in the air like the threat of an imminent storm, another type of conversion is taking place — a kind of ‘conversion without conversion’, a characterisation that would make IMS members chafe, given that it could offend both Hindu nationalists and Catholic hierarchs. Nevertheless, Khrist Bhaktas’ centre of gravity may now be Banaras, but this type of devotion to Jesus (note that I’m not calling it ‘Christianity’) will likely be commonly and increasingly encountered in the 21st century, a phenomenon that will challenge the religious and theological categories that we facilely take for granted. There has been much talk about the nature of Hinduism over the last two decades, between so-called centralists who believe in the existence of a single, pan-Indian, Brahminically-mediated tradition, and pluralists who argue that ‘Hinduism’ is simply a clumsy word representing a collection of diverse ideas and practices existing both alongside and in interaction with one another in South Asia. Obscured in this discussion, of course, is the fact that we seem to think we know what we’re talking about when we say ‘Christianity’, as though it is some kind of religious given, so known as to be over-determined. But is that the case? What makes something ‘Christian’ and what, exactly, makes a thing or a person a Christian? Who gets to say? The answer is not as simple as we might initially think. Christianity is itself no monolith, as anyone studying ‘it’ even in more than one Indian region can attest.

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As is often the case in South Asia, long-established occidental categories crash on the jagged rocks of Indian reality. And so it is with the Khrist Bhaktas: dwelling in Varanasi and in scattered local villages, they look like Hindus; worshipping in their homes before glossy posters of Jesus and Mary, they pray like many Catholics; telling stories that draw on South Asian bhakti tropes, they often face the opprobrium of fellow villagers for choosing a socially unacceptable and religiously dubious deity. Searching out Catholic priests for efficacious prayers and healing against ghosts, evil spirits and disease, they show a remarkable power of piety and solidarity in their organisation of devotional activities. They inspire weary Keralite Catholic clergy who bemoan nominal Catholicism, but their very existence challenges basic Catholic notions of sacramentality and the prior missionary activity of their forebears. In the age of Hindutva, charismatic Christianity and a developing Catholic theology of religions, perhaps both ‘Christianity’ and ‘Hinduism’ in India are entering a new phase, the most recent product of an exchange first begun in the first century, but now only identified in retrospect.

Notes 1. Apparently this hymn’s popularity crosses denominational boundaries. John C. B. Webster mentions it in his study of the Gramin Prachin Mandal (Rural Presbyterian Church) in Kanchannagla village, Etah district, Uttar Pradesh. This a church of the Dalit Avataris, a reference to Jesus as the Dalit incarnation of God, whose roots can be traced to the Bhangi ja¯ti mass conversion movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries (see Webster 2010). 2. Kottayam, in north-central Kerala, became the centre of Syrian Christianity after Thomas Christian families fled Roman Catholic-Portuguese domination in the early 17th century. Today it is a centre for Thomas Christians of all denominational stripes and liturgical rites. Among Roman Catholics one finds parishes of the Latin, Syro-Malabar and Syro-Malankara rites. Among Orthodox one finds the Syrian Orthodox and Malankara Orthodox Syrian Churches, two Oriental Orthodox communions currently in schism, as well as the Assyrian Church of the East. Among Protestants, there is the mainline Church of South India, the ‘reformed Orthodox’ Mar Thoma Church founded in the 19th century by Abraham Malpan, and innumerable evangelical and Pentecostal churches. 3. Personal interview with Fr Deen Dayal, IMS, Ma¯tr. Dha¯m Ashram, Varanasi, 18 August 2010.

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4. ‘Liturgy’, from the Greek leitourgia, means ‘work of the people’. As such, it is a fitting representation of these ritualised acts of divine–human encounter. 5. My visits with the peripatetic agu¯a¯s, or catechists, reveal that the service has largely retained the same order, with some minor development: prayer, devotion with bhajans (from a prayer book), teaching message, intercessory prayer, a¯rtı¯, and distribution of prasa¯d. 6. The ‘Indian Christian Spiritual Experience’, offered several times a month at Ma¯tr. Dha¯m, is a crash course in indigenisation and, for the discriminating observer, indigenising Catholic perceptions of Hinduism. Along with ha¯.tha yogic a¯sanas and silent meditation, much time is dedicated to explicating the ‘Hindu’ symbolism of indigenised worship. A¯rtı¯, the rotation of the oil lamp involved in pu¯ja¯ before images and murtis (statues) is glossed as acknowledging Christ’s presence in the consecrated host or the Bible as the Word of God; incense represents prayers rising to heaven (a common Christian understanding); the offering of eight flowers (typically marigolds) symbolises submission to Christ of the four cardinal directions of the universe and the spaces between them; and the postures assumed during the Mass by worshippers (pa¯n.ca¯n.ga pran.a¯m) are interpreted as signs of human submission to God (see Schmalz 2001). During my time in Banaras, I continually tried to participate in the Indian Christian Spiritual Experience and other retreats, but to no avail. Thus, I have here drawn on Schmalz’s description of his participation in February 1996. Nevertheless, the rituals remain largely the same in both masses and village prayer meetings to this day. The ritual symbolism is not explicated during the rituals themselves in settings outside the Indian Christian Spiritual Experience. 7. I put this phrase in quotes because it appears to be jargon, likely associated with missionisation, also known in Christian circles as evangelisation. The ‘word of contact’ may also be understood as the ‘Word of contact’, i.e., the Divine Word Yesu, who is manifest in and through human contact. 8. Personal interview with Fr Deen Dayal, IMS, Ma¯tr. Dha¯m Ashram, Varanasi, 18 August 2010. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid. 12. Personal interview with Rev. Prem Anthony, IMS, Viswajyoti Gurukul, Christnagar, Varanasi, June 2010. 13. Throughout the course of my interviews with Khrist Bhaktas and religious a certain liberative taxis, an order of redemption, emerged. It is one heard over and over again: (a) a family is plagued by alcoholism and consequent fighting; (b) while conducting his village ministry, Fr Deen Dayal meets the family, gains their respect and invites them to the prayer meetings at Matr Dham; (c) the family begins to pray and hears the Word of God, meaning, in this context, the Bible;

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14. 15.

16. 17.

18.

19.

20.

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(d ) ‘they get reconciled’; (e) they start a new business; ( f ) the business prospers; (g) their village status improves; (h) they are themselves astonished by the turn of events in their favour; (i) as a consequence they tell others to likewise come to the Ashram for, apparently, it is a powerful place where changes will take place. Personal interview with Rev. Anil Dev, IMS, Ma¯tr. Dha¯m Ashram, Varanasi, 25 August 2010. Perhaps surprisingly to Westerners, given five centuries of trade and colonial contact, throughout the Hindi-belt there are villagers who know nothing of the existence of Jesus Christ or Christianity. For a history of Indian Catholic inculturation following Vatican II, along with its attendant problems, see Schmalz (2001). The advent of these practices is difficult to pinpoint, especially when many traditional Catholic practices have Hindu analogues and vice versa. In a very short period of time, rituals of communion and exchange like the distribution of sweet buns (reminiscent of Eucharistic communion, Jesus’s miraculous feeding of the five thousand recorded in the Christian Gospels and the Hindu practice of receiving the blessing of the deity or saint through offering and then consuming prasa¯d, literally, ‘gracious gift’) come to be taken for granted. It suffices to say, such practices arose in the give-and-take occurring between Khrist Bhakta and Catholic religious as the Second Saturday service developed; and as both Catholics and Khrist Bhaktas were challenged to respond to each other’s needs; and in the case of the Catholics, to negotiate restrictions on the distribution of communion in the species of bread and wine. The Catholic religious take pains to distinguish between prasa¯d and param prasa¯d (the consecrated host), but it appears that many devotees fail to understand the distinction. For Khrist Bhaktas, the sweet buns have divine healing properties. The year 1935 marks the beginning of an organised Catholic apostolate in the Banaras region, with the arrival of Canadian Capuchins. Franciscans would follow. The founder of the Indian Missionary Society, Fr Gasper Pinto, arrived with a few priests on 3 November 1941. Thus, the Catholic Church was a latecomer to the region. The first Protestant mission began in ‘Benaras’ in 1807. Perhaps surprisingly then, the charge articulated against Christian missionaries in the first half of the 20th century by the likes of no less than Mahatma Gandhi — the charge of creating mere ‘rice Christians’ — is a premise largely accepted by Catholic religious as they reflect upon the work of their pre-Independence forebears. Of course, such intermingling has long existed in southern India. For a historical examination of religious interaction and exchange on peninsular India see Bayly (1989). For cases of Hindu–Christian popular encounter in the modern period, see Raj and Dempsey (2002).

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References Bayly, Susan. 1989. Saints, Goddesses and Kings: Muslim and Christians in South Indian Society (1700–1900). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kierkegaard, Søren. 2001. ‘Journalen JJ: 167’, in Niels Jørgen Cappelørn (ed.), Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter, vol. 18. København: Gad. Mandelbaum, David G. 1966. ‘Transcendental and Pragmatic Aspects of Religion’, American Anthropologist, 68(5): 1174–1191. Raj, Selva and Corrine Dempsey. 2002. Popular Christianity in India: Riting between the Lines. Albany: State University of New York Press. Roman Catholic Church. 1994. Catechism of the Catholic Church. Chicago: Loyola University Press. Schmalz, Mathew. 2001. ‘Ad Experimentum: Theology, Anthropology and the Paradoxes of Indian Catholic Inculturation’, in Michael Barnes (ed.), Theology and the Social Sciences, pp. 161–180. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. ———. 2005. ‘Dalit Catholic Tactics of Marginality at a North Indian Mission’, History of Religions, 44(3): 216–251. Webster, John C. B. 2010. ‘Varieties of Dalit Christianity in North India’, in Rowena Robinson and Joseph Marianus Kujur (eds), Margins of Faith: Dalit and Tribal Christianity in India, pp. 97–118. New Delhi: Sage Publications.

3

Interlocking Caste with Congregation A Political Necessity for Dalit Christians in Andhra, South India? ASHOK KUMAR M.

This paper explores Dalit Christian practice in contemporary coastal Andhra by focusing on questions of caste, Christian faith and community politics in the context of Dalit Christian struggle against the structures of caste domination. There are two primary elements of this struggle. The first is the struggle against caste-based discrimination within the church. And the second is how Dalit Christians prepare themselves to combat the caste-based discrimination of caste Hindus outside the church. This paper mainly deals with the latter, drawing upon empirical data collected from among Lutherans in Dravidapuram village of Guntur district, Andhra Pradesh.1 One of the most striking aspects of Christian life in Dravidapuram is the merger of caste and congregation. The presence and practice of caste among the Dalit Christians of Dravidapuram enables them to bring together the Christian faith they uphold and the caste unity they desire to maintain. My sociological examination of such Dalit Christian practices focuses on a social institution called ‘Sangham’. This chapter argues that Sangham, as a newly emerging social institution, facilitates the merger of caste and congregation among the Dalit Christians of Dravidapuram. The chapter therefore explores what Sangham is all about, how it is connected to the institution of the caste

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panchayat, its current and emerging socio-political and spiritual roles, and why it is perceived as necessary by Dalit Christians to accomplish a merger of caste and congregation. In the history of Christian missions in India, one of the most debated and controversial issues has been the survival of caste among Indian Christians, and some have argued that this ‘problem’ is as old as Indian Christianity itself. Before we make any attempts to understand Dalit Christian practices in the coastal region of Andhra, it would therefore be helpful to have an idea of how caste was viewed by Christian missionaries as well as the socio-political and theological factors behind their perspectives. Duncan Forrester rightly points out that pre-existing hierarchical caste attitudes managed to survive among Indian Christians because their conversion, in the view of many nonIndian Christians at least, had not gone deep enough to combat the ideology of hierarchy (1979: 4). Missionaries held differing opinions about caste in general and caste among Indian Christians in particular. The missionaries’ understanding of caste, of course, had a lot to do with their social, intellectual and theological background (ibid.: 6). It is easy to denigrate the attitude of missionaries towards caste as ethnocentric or an expression of cultural imperialism, but that would be too simplistic. There were differences of opinion about caste among Christian missionaries and secular scholars, and Louis Dumont (1970, 1980) provides some hint as to why missionary Christianity could never simply reject caste entirely: ‘A sect cannot survive on Indian soil if it denies caste or consistently presents an uncompromising hostility to caste in all its manifestations’ (Dumont 1970: 36).2 Providing some evidence to support Dumont’s assertion is the observation that Syrian Christianity seems to have been able to thrive in Kerala for over a millennium largely because it accepted caste (Fuller 1976: 53–70). Similarly, Roman Catholic missions in India from the beginning appear to have regarded the caste system as a religiously neutral structure of Indian society, and the earliest Catholic missions did not see the caste system as a hurdle for evangelism (Forrester 1979: 14). The most notable of these early Catholic missions was the mission of the Jesuit Robert de Nobili (1577–1656) to Madurai in 1606. He projected an image of himself as a Christian sannyasi by living apart from others, having no contact with persons of low-caste backgrounds, and by conforming to high-caste patterns of behaviour in food, dress and customs. For him, it was possible for Christian converts to remain as Brahmans within Hindu society. His understanding of the caste system and his methods of evangelisation elicited disapproval and debate even within

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the Catholic Church. Yet even though there were divergent opinions on the subject, I would like to highlight the fact that Catholic missions in India were generally less critical of caste than their Protestant counterparts. Protestant missionaries could generally be expected to hold strongly critical opinions on caste, which they saw as a great evil that had to be ruthlessly uprooted from the church. Among them were missionaries who conducted Eucharistic ‘love-feasts’ to combat caste differences among Christians and made attendance compulsory for converts and members. By 1850, almost all Protestant missionaries agreed that caste in the church was an unmitigated evil. Protestant missionaries differed only in the tactics and methods they employed to deal with caste. In any case, more than anything else, it was perhaps the missionaries’ intolerance of caste that attracted lower-caste Indians to Protestantism during the mass movements (Forrester 1979: 40). As noted in the Introduction, caste survived conversion in many Indian ecclesial settings, and in many cases converts who had been caste elders retained their responsibility and authority in the church.3 Local patterns of hierarchy and authority therefore have a long history of influencing church governance in South Asia. In Dravidapuram, the Sangham provides another important example.

The Sangham and its Organisational Structure, Past and Present Without taking the Sangham into consideration, it would be impossible to understand the logic behind the practice of Dalit Christianity in Dravidapuram. The Sangham is a new expression of the caste panchayat and/or a replacement of sorts for the caste panchayat. Generally speaking, ‘Sangham’ refers to a people’s assembly. In this particular context, however, the word is used more specifically to denote a body of representatives or caste elders of the Malas. For the Malas of Dravidapuram, Sangham is a customary body that has total authority over the community’s socio-political, legal and spiritual activities. The full body of the Sangham represents the Mala caste and hence consists of both Christian and Hindu elders, even though the number of Hindus in Mala communities ranges from very small to practically negligible. The organisational structure of the Sangham has two layers, with a figure known as the pedda mala on top and Sangham elders (Sangha peddalu) who work under his leadership. The pedda mala is the head of the Sangham and he is invested with the power to make the final call for crucial resolutions on behalf of the community. In a public gathering, he is democratically elected by the

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Sangham elders. The Sangham elders are the representatives of different kinship groups present within their community. (The caste customs of the Malas do not permit women to become Sangham elders, let alone the pedda mala.) The ritual of electing the pedda mala, even today, is considered an important customary practice. Even before the advent of Christianity in the village, the pedda mala was the head of the caste panchayat that represented the interests of his community at the village level. In terms of its modes of operation, the exercise of its power, and its methods of punishment, the present-day Sangham is no different from a caste panchayat. The strong authority of the Sangham among village Lutherans is quite remarkable. It is rare that they would seek adjudication from the state’s legal bodies for their inter-family or intra-family problems. Rather, Malas consider it mandatory that everyone first bring their problems or grievances to the notice of the Sangham elders, and then, only if the Sangham is unable to resolve them, to make use of the state government’s legal apparatus. All the kinship groups are provided equal representation on the Sangham, and Malas can approach the Sangham with the help of any Sangham elder. The idea of providing equal representation was also practised before the advent of Christianity. Quite often, however, people who enjoyed superior economic power in addition to the numerical strength of kinship used to dominate the positions of Sangham elders. Now, however, the situation seems to be different. Each geographic ward is given equal representation on the Sangham, and this has encouraged more democratic processes by which elders without external sources of kinship strength can emerge. The interface of caste and religion among the Dalit Christians of Dravidapuram is best demonstrated in the criteria for becoming a Sangham elder. One need not be an active member or a regular attendee of the church — or even a Christian — in order to qualify as a potential Sangham elder. The basic criterion is that one must be a Mala and live in the appropriate residential locality. The methods and measures used to select the Sangham elders, who eventually look after the activities of the church in addition to caste issues, have very little to do with their spiritual confirmation. The community itself came up with the idea of having both kinds of elders in the Sangham — Hindu and Christian. Christian elders look after the activities of the church and the Hindu elders have to organise an event on the day of Maha Shivarathri, a Hindu festival dedicated to the lord Shiva with all-day fasting and an all-night vigil. Even though the Christian elders were selected in a public caste gathering, the Lutheran church pastor gets the chance to announce their names in the church, and this provides a degree of religious legitimacy to their selection.

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The church pastor, however, has no role at all in the selection of Sangham elders. Only in rare cases can he request the Sangham to extend the tenure of a few Christian elders for a stipulated period of time and for specific reasons (e.g., in order to mentor newcomers). In this community, the election of a pedda mala is an important customary event that takes place in a public caste gathering. All such public gatherings of the Sangham are conducted at night, preferably after 10 pm. There used to be a good deal of competition to become the pedda mala, but nowadays there is a trend toward unanimous election. Someone who is educated, wise and systematic is always preferred for this position. He must have also demonstrated leadership qualities in community-level organisations. It is also, significantly, always one of the Christian elders who occupies the position. The same person may also be elected to become the parish elder, that is, the person in charge of organising events in all the churches under one parish. There are about 12 member churches in the Dravidapuram parish. It is a matter of pride and social status to become a parish elder as he is the only person, besides the parish pastor, who represents the parish in general elections of the AELC.4 For the last 15 years, the pedda mala from Dravidapuram village has managed to secure the position of parish elder as well. The village Christians of Dravidapuram always take pride in having the parish elder emerge from their community, and therefore the pedda mala is often selected in part based on his perceived fitness to fill the position of parish elder, and this, then, encourages the selection of a Christian. For all practical purposes, then, the pedda mala heads his caste panchayat (i.e., Sangham), organises Lutheran church activities in Dravidapuram, and also looks after his responsibilities as the parish elder. In fact, having the Lutheran church of Dravidapuram as the headquarters for the parish makes the pedda mala’s job considerably easier. The responsibilities and duties of the Hindu elders have gradually been reduced to looking after the Maha Shivarathri festival alone. The Hindu elders do not have any say in the Sangham decisionmaking process as it is dominated by the Christian elders under the leadership of the pedda mala. It was not always this way. In the early 1970s, the Hindu elders were equally powerful in the Sangham’s decision-making processes. The following infamous incident,5 as described by a Sangham elder, testifies to the popularity of the Hindu elders among the Malas of Dravidapuram: In the early 1970s, there was a Lutheran pastor, namely Mr Yesuratnam, who ministered in Dravidapuram and was highly respected by the villagers across

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 Ashok Kumar M. religious lines. He was also teaching the school children up to the 5th standard in a hut since there was no school building for them. He was a man of respect and integrity; he used to draw respect from all age groups among the Malas and was known for his straightforwardness. One incident, however, changed the entire equation between him and the community’s members. After celebrating Shivarathri, the Hindu elders (with the consent of the Christian elders) kept the prabha6 next to the pastor’s house. It was, reportedly, raining heavily and the only place where they could keep it safe was next to the pastor’s house. The disturbed and angry pastor opposed it, saying that it represents ‘Satan’, and hence must not be kept near his house. The Christian elders tried their best to convince him by saying that they would remove it in a few days. The pastor paid no heed to anyone in this matter and was firm in his opinion. Both the Christian elders and the Hindu elders were clueless as they could not see the way out of the deadlock. But the Hindu elders continued pressing their idea of keeping the prabha next to the pastor’s house until the rain stopped. Beyond a point, nobody made any further effort either to convince the pastor or to remove the prabha from there. It was left next to the pastor’s house which made him feel uneasy. Eventually the situation took an ugly turn as the pastor resigned and left the place. The Sangham elders managed to get a new pastor for the parish within a couple of months.

This particular incident demonstrates two points. First, at that time, the Hindu elders were still influential enough in the Sangham to keep the prabha next to the pastor’s house. Second, the interests of the community as a whole took priority over those of a particular religious faith. Some of the Christian elders felt that the pastor had overreacted to the situation. After all, the festival had been organised by the Malas and the Christian elders could not oppose people of their own caste even if they were practising a different faith. It was this shared caste consciousness that strengthened the Sangham among the Malas of Dravidapuram. In the course of time, however, the power and the popularity of the Hindu elders began to decline. Simultaneously, a number of factors favoured the emerging prominence of Christian elders in the Sangham, such as the increasing levels of education among Christians, the slow and steady growth of Christianity among Malas, and the close association of Christians with the Dalit movement and with regional Dalit leaders. The Christian elders gradually distanced themselves from Hindu religious practices and ceremonies in the village. The declining role of Hindus and increasing prominence of Christians on the Sangham has led to a situation where today the Sangham is coterminal with the community of Christian elders in Dravidapuram.

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Excommunication: Caste in Defence of Lutheranism Besides the AELC, there are two more denominations that have had for some time a presence among the Malas of Dravidapuram: the Roman Catholic Church and an evangelical organisation named Gospel Peace Ministries (GPM).7 In the two congregations established by these denominations, no more than 10 families regularly attend Sunday worship services. The local priest and pastor of the two congregations belong to the Mala caste and reside in the same village. Both are also members of the Sangham. Because of their small size, minimal growth, and because their clergy are members of the Sangham, Sangham elders have long been confident that the presence of these two denominations would not cause division within the caste community. Things took an unexpected turn, however, when Sangham elders heard the news that a new church, the Bible Mission Church, had bought a piece of land to construct a building in 2009. While it was known that a few Malas attended the Bible Mission Church at Guntur town around once a month, the plan to construct a church in Dravidapuram was perceived by the Sangham elders as a threat to caste unity, and to the authority of the Lutheran church in the village. There are two significant reasons why the Sangham elders resented the growing local presence of the Bible Mission Church. First, the Bible Mission Church, a Pentecostal group known for healings and other miracles, is one of the most popular and fastest growing churches in the entire coastal Andhra region.8 Second, since 2007, the financial health of the local Lutheran church has declined considerably. The Dravidapuram parish was divided into three smaller parishes under the Parish Restructuring Programme (PRP). As a result, the number of member churches within the parish had been drastically reduced from eight to two. This sudden change pushed the village church into a financial crisis and negatively affected parish activities. Moreover, the resident Lutheran pastor depends exclusively on the freewill offerings of the local congregants, and so declining Lutheran numbers would represent a direct threat to his livelihood. Already in a state of crisis, then, the Dravidapuram Lutheran church could not risk further division within the caste or the Christian faith. Accordingly, the Sangham elders decided not to allow any new denominations to gain a foothold among the Malas of Dravidapuram. Strict orders were issued by the Sangham elders to not encourage any denomination to conduct prayer meetings or Sunday worship services. Those who disobeyed were to be penalised with the punishment of excommunication from the caste.

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Four families (three Catholic and one Protestant) who failed to heed the decision of the Sangham elders were eventually excommunicated.9 Until the eleventh hour they were given a chance to reverse their decisions by paying a fine to the Sangham and agreeing to stop inviting outside pastors to lead Sunday worship services. In spite of this, the four families were unwilling to accept the decision of the Sangham elders and even accused them of interfering in their personal religious freedom. The four families wanted to take the issue up in the local court. However, they soon realised that because their religious identity was officially Hindu, they would not be recognised as ‘Christians’ according to the government’s records. Dalit converts to Christianity (and Islam) become ineligible for the special benefits (e.g., reserved spots in educational institutions, civil service offices and political bodies) granted by the government to Hindu Dalits. In order to avoid losing their benefits, therefore, Dalit Christians like the four excommunicated families in Dravidapuram, often assume a dual religious identity: officially Hindu and privately Christian.10 Were the excommunicated Mala families to have declared themselves Christian in court, they and their family members would have forfeited all their special privileges as Dalits. Because of this, after the consequences of taking legal action, the three Catholic families paid their fine for violating the Sangham’s edicts and formally rejoined the Mala community. The Protestant family, however, opted at first to engage in a legal battle against the Sangham elders. The head of this Protestant family was a government employee who had taken advantage of reservation benefits to secure his job. His official religious identity was therefore Hindu. If he had filed a case against the Sangham elders regarding his right to religious freedom, he would have immediately lost his job. Mark Galanter (1963) has written about what he calls the ‘all-India legal culture’ of rural India that is determined by the social, cultural and political beliefs, and doctrines of caste panchayats. Any deviant behaviour that violates these beliefs and doctrines, norms and practices invites social expulsion from the caste. With regard to Dalit Christians, including those in Guntur, religion comes into this equation along with the beliefs and norms of the caste group. The power of the Dravidapuram Sangham in this situation, therefore, was substantial. Not surprisingly, the excommunicated Protestant family eventually decided not to pursue legal action, and submitted itself to the Sangham after about two years. As a symbolic gesture acknowledging their mistake, the family agreed to

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pay a fine. Sangham elders called for a public gathering to discuss the matter and seek public opinion, after which the family was readmitted to the fold. In light of the reality that caste discrimination in one form or another is still a social reality in coastal Andhra Pradesh, the Dalit Lutherans of Dravidapuram have naturally come into conflict with various upper-caste groups in and around the village. In their view, the Malas would be vulnerable to unspeakable atrocities by the upper castes if their own community were to become disunified. Maintaining unity is for this reason perceived by the Malas to be nothing short of an absolute political necessity. As Robert A. Nisbet (1967: 5) points out, ‘though communities are characterized with a high degree of personal intimacy, emotional depth, moral commitment, social cohesion and continuity in time’, at the same time communities prioritise themselves as communities against the individual. The practice of excommunication among Dalit Lutherans is a striking example of this prioritisation, as the Sangham wields its power to excommunicate in order to curb potential threats to Mala unity. The loss of social ties with one’s own caste group (referred to in Telugu as veliveyatam) is a disturbing and fearsome situation to face in rural India, as it degrades the social status of both the individual and his or her family. Such degradation has an enormous effect on the future of excommunicated family members, especially girls who are of marriageable age, as it compounds the difficulty for the parents of arranging good marital alliances on their behalf. Besides, excommunicated families cannot be invited to participate in community activities organised by either church or caste. They are treated as second-class citizens within their own community. The intention behind this punishment is not to arbitrarily cut anyone off from the group or the village but rather to exercise the prerogative of the Sangham to preserve the strength and unity of the community. In fact, excommunication is the most powerful tool in the hands of the Sangham for controlling deviant behaviour within the caste and — most importantly for our analysis — as a means of defending, preserving and promoting the interests of the Lutheran church in the village.

Conclusion The discriminatory rules of the state, which disqualify Dalit Christians from utilising the reservation policy meant for ex-untouchables, have encouraged the merger of caste and congregation in single-caste churches, as in Dravidapuram. These village Lutherans always desire to have a pastor who would facilitate

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their community needs, activities and programmes, but not one who might openly oppose or criticise them. In fact, the seeds for the unification of caste and congregation were already planted in the early days of the Lutheran church in the village. Especially among the Malas, the practices of that early era subsequently brought about a number of changes in their caste organisation. As Patrick A. Roche (1984) asserts in his study on the Paravas of Tamil Nadu,11 Catholic Christianity has become a distinct lifestyle of the Paravas serving the purpose of safeguarding their own tradition of corporate morality and shared values in the context of the larger society. In many ways, the introduction of Catholicism into Parava settlements resulted in a social situation wherein religion became a pivotal base of jati (caste) identity through the fusion of European and indigenous social practices. In a similar fashion, the entry of Lutheranism into Dravidapuram has heightened caste consciousness and Mala unity and has, above all, changed the organisational structure of caste. The Lutheran church has become the glue that holds the Mala caste together and preserves its corporate identity. In course of time, the Dalit Christians of Dravidapuram have brought about many changes in their caste organisation with the help of the Lutheran church. The merging of church and caste began as a sort of pragmatic approach to the day-to-day challenges they faced. The merger in Dravidapuram, and similar mergers elsewhere, suggest that caste/community politics and religion are never viewed as entirely separate domains by Dalits in modern India. In this situation, alterations in Mala caste organisation were partly conditioned by Christian practice, while at the same time Mala Christian practice in Dravidapuram was partly conditioned by the socio-economic realities of Mala life. The merger of caste and congregation was not for organisational convenience alone; rather, it was perceived to be a political necessity due to the realities of regional caste politics. The excommunication of four families from the caste had very little to do with denominational, theological or biblical differences. Rather, it must be understood as an intervention into caste politics in a region where Dalit Lutherans have been active participants. It must also be borne in mind that the conditions of extreme poverty and illiteracy, along with exploitation and discrimination, are the most fundamental social challenges that the Dalit Lutherans of Andhra confront today. As Webster (1999) rightly points out, liberation from religiously imposed and religiously sanctioned degradation continues to be at the centre of Dalit politics in India. For Dalit Christians, the dynamics, goals, and consequences of those politics are scarcely different.

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The Sangham is now a more powerful body than the caste panchayat because of its close association with religion (viz. Christianity). Having a close association with religion has strengthened the power and authority of the Sangham over the socio-economic and politico-spiritual life of the Malas. Due to the merger of caste and Christianity, the valence of Christian symbols no longer remains confined to the religious domain. Rather, such symbols can be equally significant in the domain of politics in coastal Andhra, as we have seen. The Dalit Christian practices of Dravidapuram therefore represent an example of how caste is shaping and reshaping itself with the help of religious institutions in the absence of ritual justifications based on notions of purity and impurity.

Notes 1. The Christians of Dravidapuram belong to the Mala caste, recognised as a Scheduled Caste (SC) group in this region, and have been highly active in the Dalit movement. They form a prominent social base for political activities as well as for Christian evangelistic outreach programmes. In fact, an overwhelming majority of Malas in the area are Lutheran. In our present context, the Dalit Christians of Dravidapuram belong to the Andhra Evangelical Lutheran Church (AELC), Guntur. Dravidapuram is a pseudonym adopted to anonymise my field research site. 2. Dumont’s views on the caste system run counter to those of F. G. Bailey (1963), who discounts religious and ideological factors by isolating caste as a social system independent of Hindu religion and culture. 3. This was quite clearly the case with the mid-19th-century American Baptist mission in Ongole, Andhra, under the leadership of John E. Clough (Webster 1999: 44). 4. In the Lutheran church, the parish elder holds an exclusively administrative position. Obviously, for a person to become parish elder, he must be a church elder in the first place. At the synod level, such parish elders are named delegate members who have the authority to elect the synod president as well as the AELC president and general secretary. 5. Recorded during my PhD fieldwork, this narrative comes from an interview with a resident of Dravidapuram named Yesupadam (14 May 2008), an octogenarian who had occupied many positions of responsibility within his community and also in the village.

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6. The literal meaning of prabha is ‘light’, light which is softly bright and radiant. In our context, however, it is a tall structure made of iron, portable, and decorated with images of Hindu gods and goddesses on the occasion of Shivarathri in Andhra Pradesh. 7. The founder of the GPM, Rev. K. A. Paul, is well-known to people across the state for his charitable works and philanthropy. Recently, he was in the limelight for his sensational remarks against both Sonia Gandhi (United Progressive Alliance [UPA] chairperson) and Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy (former chief minister of Andhra Pradesh). Recently he also floated a political party named Praja Shanthi Party (PSP) that went on to contest in the assembly elections of Andhra Pradesh in 2009 (but without winning a single assembly seat). 8. The Bible Mission Church, with its headquarters in Guntur city, is undoubtedly a currently influential and popular Christian denomination in Andhra. In 2009, it had its convention in late January, in an open space of 100 acres opposite Acharya Nagarjuna University campus, located on the outskirts of the city. The opposition party (Telugu Desam Party [TDP]) leader N. Chandrababu Naidu attended the gathering on the inaugural day, a Tuesday. On Wednesday, the then Chief Minister of Andhra, Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy addressed the gathering in the morning and on the same day the Praja Rajyam Party (PRP) chief and chief-minister-hopeful, Mr Chiranjeevi, also addressed the same gathering. Their attendance shows the popularity and political attention given to the Christians of Andhra in general and the Bible Mission Church in particular. 9. The punishment of excommunication entails a person’s being cut off from social interaction within the village. No one is allowed to talk to them or visit them, under any circumstances. In short, any kind of social and economic interaction with the excommunicated family is discouraged. After excommunication, the concerned family may remain within the village, but only as second-class citizens. 10. For further details about the dual religious identity of Dalit Christians of Andhra, see Kumar M. and Robinson (2010). 11. The Paravas, a Tamil fisher caste involved in the trade of the pearl fishery, inhabited the southeastern coast extending from Kanyakumari to Rameshwaram. In order to follow their profession undisturbed, especially from the attacks of Muslims in the 16th century, they saw conversion to Christianity as a viable solution for their predicament, as it secured for them the protection and support of the Portuguese.

References Bailey, F. G. 1963. ‘Closed Social Stratification in India’, European Journal of Sociology, 4(1): 107–124.

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Dumont, Louis. 1970. Religion, Politics and History in India: Collected Papers in Indian Sociology. The Hague and Paris: Mouton Publishers. ———. 1980. Homo Hierarchicus: An Essay on the Caste System. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Forrester, Duncan. 1979. Caste and Christianity: Attitudes and Policies on Caste of Anglo-Saxon Protestant Missions in India. London: Curzon Press. Fuller, C. J. 1976. ‘Kerala Christians and the Caste System’, Man, 11(1): 53–70. Galanter, Marc. 1963. ‘Law and Caste in Modern India’, Asian Survey, 3(11): 544–559. Kumar M., Ashok and Rowena Robinson. 2010. ‘Legally Hindu: Dalit Lutheran Christians of Coastal Andhra Pradesh’, in Rowena Robinson and Joseph Marianus Kujur (eds), Margins of Faith: Dalit and Tribal Christianity in India, pp. 149–167. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Nisbet, Robert A. 1967. The Sociological Tradition. London: Heinemann Publishing. Roche, Patrick A. 1984. Fishermen of the Coromandel: A Social Study of the Paravas of the Coramandel. Delhi: Manohar Publishers. Webster, John C. B. 1999. Religion and Dalit Liberation: An Examination of Perspectives. New Delhi: Manohar Publishers.

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PART 2

Whose Religion is Indian Christianity?

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4

Late 16th- and Early 17th-Century Contestations of Catholic Christianity at the Mughal Court GULFISHAN KHAN

Akbar and Revealed Faiths, Judaism and Christianity

Emperor Akbar’s reign (1556–1605) forms a watershed in the history of interfaith dialogue. His search for the transcendental truth of all religions, along with the high-level intellectual interfaith dialogues held under his aegis in the Ibadat Khana (house of worship), remain an absorbing theme in the history of such encounters. Moreover, his enlightened religious policy based upon the principle of Sulh-i-Kul (Absolute Peace or Universal Peace), has been the subject of intensive research and continued reappraisals (Husain 2004; Rizvi 1999). Initially including representatives of Sunni Islam, the debate of 1578 welcomed representatives of many faiths, as noted in the Akbarna¯ma by Abul Fazl (Beveridge 1897 [vol. 3]: 365): ‘Su¯fı¯, philosopher, orator [mutakallim], jurist, Sunnı¯, Shı¯a, Brahman, Jatı¯ [Jain], Sı¯u¯ra¯ [Jain], Ca¯rba¯k [Materialist], Nazarene, Jew, Sa¯bı¯ (Sabı¯an), Zoroastrian, and others enjoyed exquisite pleasure by beholding the calmness of the assembly . . . and the adornment of the pleasant abode of impartiality’. Significantly, Judaism and Christianity formed an integral part of the interfaith Ibadat Khana debates and dialogues (Fischel 1948–1949, 1952). The wide-ranging imperial translation project under the royal auspices, mainly from Sanskrit into Persian, along with the intellectual dimension of Sulh-i-Kul, provided the basic material for the intellectual scaffolding.

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On the other hand, the project went a long way in facilitating the intellectual communication between the different religious communities (Ernst 2003; Rizvi 1975: 206–207, 221–222). Similarly, the translation of the Christian and Jewish scriptures and other important books related to European civilisation, philosophy and culture into Persian was also an important imperial undertaking. Moreover, in its range and depth the translation of the sacred Judaeo-Christian literature was similar to the translation of the Sanskrit classics into Persian. The three Jesuit missions to the great Mughal Emperors Akbar and his son and successor Jahangir are regarded as one of the most remarkable exchanges in the history of East–West relations. Especially the third mission, led by the priest Jerome Xavier (1549–1617), along with two accomplished missionaries, Manoel Pinheiro and Brother Bento de Goes (1562–1607), contributed to one of the most flourishing literary and artistic exchanges in early modern mission history.1 The highly creative and receptive Mughal court successfully absorbed the Renaissance ideas introduced by the Jesuits. The Jesuits successfully offered the Mughals multiple perspectives on Catholicism and the Counter Reformation attitudes towards imagery formulated in Europe following the Council of Trent (1545–1563). The contemporary chronicler Abdul Qadir Badauni recorded the warm welcome of the Jesuits at the Mughal court. The learned men of Europe (afranja), known as Padres (Padri)—and their infallible head (mujtahid-i-kamil) known as the Pope (Papa), who could change the religious ordinances as he might deem advisable and whom even the king could not disobey—brought the Gospels (Injil) with them (Lees 1865–1869: 260).

Unquestionably, seeking knowledge of Judaism and Christianity remained one of the major intellectual concerns of the Emperor Akbar. The imperial quest for knowledge of Christianity and Judaism is evident from his unwavering pursuit to have direct access to the revealed books called Taurah, Injil and Zubur, as we see from the royal letters and the envoys sent to the Jesuit Fathers at Goa to obtain the scriptures. In a letter to Phillip II, Akbar wrote: It has been brought to our notice that the revealed books (kutub-i-samawi) such as the Pentateuch (taurit) and the Gospels (Injil) and the Psalms (zubur) have been translated into Arabic and Persian. Should these books, which are profitable to all, whether translated or not, be procurable in your country, send them to me.2

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The Gospels were one of the first books to be ordered by Akbar to be rendered into Persian, and, if one is to believe Badauni (Lees 1865–1869: 260), Abul Fazl, the official historian and ideologue of Akbar, was commissioned by his imperial patron to render the Bible into Persian. The translation project of the Judaeo-Christian scriptures into Persian, a major project, was executed under the personal care and attention of Akbar. Abd al-Sattar represents the translation endeavour as part of his enlightened religious policy and imperial desire to assert temporal and spiritual authority. Akbar desired preparation of a new code of conduct (dastur al-amal) acceptable to his subjects (Khan 2009–2010). Modern research shows that Akbar’s policy of religious toleration and Sulh-i-Kul was continued by Jahangir. Praising Akbar, Jahangir observed: In my father’s realm, which ended at the salty sea, there was room for practitioners of various sects and beliefs, both true and imperfect, and strife and altercation were not allowed. Sunni and Shiite worshipped in one mosque, and Frank and Jew in one congregation. Utter peaceableness was his established way. He conversed with the good of every group, every religion, and every sect and gave his attention to each in accordance with their station and ability to understand (Thackston 1999: 40).

The tradition of religious debates continued in the court of Jahangir in which scholars and experts participated and expressed their views in an atmosphere of freedom. Christianity formed a significant component of the debates held in the court of Jahangir. Emperor Jahangir, an aesthete-monarch and engaging conversationalist, was the focus of formal discussions on diverse themes. Xavier, called by his Mughalised name — Padri Zeronemushivar — and described as one of the leading wise men of the land of the Franks, was face-to-face in a number of munazarah (religious debates) against well-known noblemen and intellectuals of the court. The scholars and experts in the rational and traditional sciences who participated in the debates at Jahangir’s court included Muslims (Muhammadyan), Christians, and Hindu Brahmins. Each was renowned for a specialised knowledge of metaphysics, the natural sciences, mathematics, and geometry; and each one was equal in status and dignity. Amongst them were scholars (ulama) described as belonging to a variety of faiths and sects (milal wa nihal) such as the army judge (Qazi-yi Askar) Saiyyid Ahmad Qadri (Mir adl), Maulana Taqiya Shustari, Maulana Ruzbih Shirazi, and — especially important for our purposes — Padre Jeronimo Xavier, a Catholic from Europe.

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Father Jerome Xavier and Abd al-Sattar bin Qasim Lahori: The Making of the Fifth Mughal Book of Gospels Father Jerome Xavier Jeronimo de Ezpeleta y Goni, belonged to the Spanish province of Navarre and was a scion of the Castilian noble house of Espeleta and grandnephew of Francis Xavier, apostle to the Indies (Camps 1957: 1–13). Xavier, the priest-scholar and the superior to the Mogor mission, a mature man 45 years old, learned Persian. The emperor placed his young, talented courtier Abd al-Sattar bin Qasim Lahori to be trained as an assistant in the comprehensive imperial translation programme with the specific objective of acquiring the necessary linguistic proficiency to assist Xavier in the difficult task of translating the European works into Persian. Abd al-Sattar was to become the chief intermediary figure between the Jesuits and the Mughal court during the late 16th and early 17th centuries. He had emerged to full limelight only recently with the publication of Majalis-i-Jahangiri, which contains a fascinating account of the nocturnal discussions of the Emperor Nuruddin Jahangir (1569–1627; reigned 1605–1627) with his most intellectual nobles (Alam and Subrahmanyam 2009).3 Abd al-Sattar, referred to by Edward Maclagan (1932: 88–89) as ‘a prominent literary man of the day’, had received his education in the Islamic rational and traditional subjects. He was a man of letters well-versed in history, art and literature. The works produced by Xavier with the assistance of Abd alSattar as the chief assistant and collaborator, were wide-ranging indeed. They included translations from different books of the Old and New Testaments, a history of the spread of Christianity in Europe, a biography of Jesus Christ and the 12 Apostles, interfaith debates, Greek and Roman philosophy, and a Psalter. The literary productions of Xavier and Abd al-Sattar constituted the first Catholic literature in Persian, or indeed in any other Indian language (Camps 1961: 166–176). Most of the works translated have so far remained unstudied. However, amongst the translations produced under the royal auspices, the translation of the Four Gospels entitled Mirat al-Quds or Dastani-Masih was the most important work, the actual contents of which still remain largely unstudied.4 So far, research on the Persian works of Xavier is primarily bibliographic in nature, and that is why the actual contents of almost all his Persian works have remained unstudied. The only exception is Ain-i-Haqnuma which is chiefly an apologetic work that seeks to elaborate Xavier’s method of disputation (Bailey 1999; Camps 1957: 92–178).

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Knowledge of Islam and quotations from the Holy Qur’an and Hadith are the characteristic features of Xavier’s highly controversial work (Camps 1957: 16–21). This was his major polemical work, to which he himself attached great value: ‘Some of the sayings of the Messiah are so abstruse that they defy human intellect. Many of such mysteries and perplexing themes I tried to explain in my other work entitled Ain-i-Haqnuma, which if God be willing, will be complete shortly’.5 This controversial work was presented to Emperor Jahangir on Sunday 11 May 1610 by Xavier with the introductory remark, ‘Having spent twelve years of life, working through days and nights, herein I have forwarded proofs of my faith, by presenting rational and traditional arguments as a philosopher, along with the points of view and arguments of both sides [tarfain, i.e., “of the disputants”]’ (Naushahi and Nizami 2006: 29). Here, the more important work is the Mirat al-Quds, a seminal theological text which was the result of fruitful academic collaboration between the budding Mughal courtier-historian Abd al-Sattar and Jerome Xavier. The title Mirat al-Quds, ‘Mirror of Holiness’, was bestowed by the Emperor Akbar. The title highlights its character as a biography of Jesus Christ distinct from the Taurah (Torah), a book given to Moses. In the preface of Ahwal-i-Hawariyun, Xavier observed that the story of Jesus (Hazrat Isa) (Dastan-i-Hazrat-i-Isa) our Lord was written during the auspicious reign of Hazrat Arsh-i-ashyani Jalal al-Din wa duniya (Emperor Akbar) and was designated by that exalted king with the illustrious title Mirat al-Quds, or the ‘Mirror of Holiness’ (Hosten 1914: 83). Since the textual component and infrastructure of this important work have so far remained largely unexplored, the translated text is consequently known to the Jesuit historiographers only as a biography of Jesus Christ. Consequently, the important question whether Xavier could provide his royal patrons with a Persian Bible has remained unresolved till now (Maclagan 1932: 203–206, 213–215). This was the first work produced by Xavier, as Abd al-Sattar noted in 1603 that Mirat al-Quds, which contains a biography of Jesus Christ, was written on the orders of Emperor Akbar.6 On the other hand, this unstudied manuscript is not only a biography of Jesus Christ but a faithful Persian translation of the four Gospels. It seeks to re-enact the life and ministry of Jesus as recounted in the New Testament. It provides a complete narrative as contained in the New Testament, but the various events are recounted regardless of the order related by the individual Evangelists. By combining the four stories into a single narrative, Xavier created a fifth story. It is also a theologically framed narrative of the life and ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus, that is, the basic subject matter of

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Christian preaching and teaching. All information is blended in a concise, comprehensive and chronological order. By retelling the four Gospels which combine the sometimes divergent reports in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the work provides a homogeneous account of the activities and preaching of Christ. It could be categorised as a Gospel harmony, an important genre employed in Christian catechism, mission and liturgy. It was presented to Akbar by Xavier in 1602 as ‘The Life of Christ’.7 The same was presented to Emperor Jahangir in March 1607 (Camps 1957: 30).

Sources and Authorship The task of translation and compilation in all probability began in Lahore immediately after the arrival of the third Jesuit mission in 1595 and was completed at the Mughal capital, Agra, in 1602. Xavier sought to impress upon readers that the production of Mirat al-Quds was his own unique achievement and he takes full credit for the difficult task of rendering the sacred volumes into Persian and thus fulfilling the long cherished desires of his royal patron. Nonetheless, this was definitely a cooperative project. Abd al-Sattar, the chief assistant and co-translator stated that the team began to produce Persian translations within six months of embarking upon the royal project. It is also not unlikely that the other Jesuits who accompanied Xavier would have been actively involved in this tremendous intellectual enterprise. A brief reference in Majalis points to such a possibility. Emperor Jahangir is reported to have told Khan-i-Azam, Abd al-Sattar read aloud the life of Jesus Christ in the august assembly from the Gospels (Injil) and other books of the Christians which had been rendered into Persian by him, with the consent of the priests (ba-ittifaq-i-Padriyan) under this exalted court’s patronage (daulat) (Naushahi and Nizami 2006: 34).

However, the style, presentation of the subject matter and vocabulary employed suggests unity of supervision and authorship. Xavier did not specify the sources he utilised in the compilation of the sacred volume. Nonetheless, he realised the seriousness of the project and noted: To enhance faith in the work it has become incumbent upon me to state that most of the information embodied in the present work is taken from the sacred Gospels (Injil), whereas the other sources utilised or seen for the preparation of the text have been noted in the margins.8

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But the colophon at the end of the manuscript, wherein Abd al-Sattar’s assistance is explicitly acknowledged, also provides a major clue to the sources utilised by Xavier in the composition of Mirat. This respected work and its fortunate introduction (dibacha-i-sadat) [has been set down by] the slave, Padre Jeronimo Xavier, a Frank, who belongs to the community of Hazrat Isa, from Injil-i-Muqaddas [Gospel] and other books of the prophets (kutub-i-paighambaran), which were brought to the capital city of Agra under the command of the king of kings, the illumination of the hearts, sovereign of the age, Jalal-al-Din wa duniya Akbar Padshah — may his kingdom and sovereignty remain forever! This has been translated by Maulana Abd al-Sattar bin Qasim Lahori with the consent (ittifaq) of this slave at the seat of the caliphate, Agra. It was completed in the year 1602 of the birth of Jesus Christ (Hazrat-i-Ishu) being the 47th Ilahi year from the regnal year of the exalted emperor.9

Xavier’s preference of using the words Injil and Taurit rather than the New and Old Testament is obvious, as the Islamic conception of the Jewish and Christian scriptures is distinctive. The use of the terms ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Testament could be confusing for a Muslim for whom Taurah, Injil and Zubur are the three heavenly books. Taurah is the Hebrew Bible while the New Testament of the Christians is invariably the Injil. The first book was given to the Prophet Moses and the Injil was revealed to Jesus, while Zubur is a separate book given to David. There existed no equivalent Perso-Arabic terms for the Old and New Testaments; the terms ahd-i-jadid and ahd-i-atiq are 19th-century inventions. The use of the broad generic term kutub-i-paighambaran, which means ‘books of the messengers of God’, denoted the varied sources utilised in the composition, although Xavier did not specify their names. Helpfully, Roberto Gulbenkian’s research (1981) reveals that Xavier had at his disposal two Persian versions of the Gospels made from the Syriac and Greek originals, which are also categorised as ‘books of the messengers of God’. One of the versions, a Persian translation from Syriac of all four Gospels, was made by a Jacobite or Nestorian cleric named Yuhanna bin al-Kass Yusuf alYaqubi. A copy of the same was made in 742 ah/1341 ce in Kaffa (modern Feodosiya) in Crimea by Simon bin Yusuf bin Yusuf Ibrahim Tabrizi (possibly an Armenian Catholic), sent to India in 1598, and brought to the court of Akbar at Lahore in 1600. Eventually the same translation was incorporated into the London Polyglot Bible of 1657, by Bishop Brian Walton, making it one of the first Persian translations of the Bible to be printed (ibid.: 7–17).10 Similarly another Persian version of the Gospels, translated from Greek by

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Sarkis Luj bin Amir Maleik (possibly an Armenian member of the Dominican Order of Preachers in Urmia), was brought in 1598 from Jerusalem for Akbar by the Armenian Brother Nicholas, of the Dominican Order of St Gregory, and received by Father Manuel Pinheiro in Lahore in 1600.11 Additionally, Xavier may have utilised the Latin Vulgate (the version of the Bible formally approved by the Roman Catholic Church) or the Royal Polyglot Bible printed in Antwerp a few years earlier. As he observed, ‘I compared the Persian translation with the original Latin several times’.12 This could also be a reference to the Biblia Regia, which had text in Latin, Hebrew, Greek, and Syriac, and was presented to Akbar. The emperor is said to have returned it to the Jesuits, not because no one among the courtiers could read the Hebrew, Chaldean, Greek, and Latin in which it was written, but to remind the Fathers of the imperative need to find and bring him the four Gospels in Persian that he had persistently and unsuccessfully tried to obtain since 1578 (Camps 1957: 186; Gulbenkian 1981: 27–28; Maclagan 1932: 191). Furthermore, internal evidence suggests that the compilers had consulted an Arabic version of the Gospels. The use of the Arabic term ‘Imada’ for baptism indicates such a possibility (Naushahi and Nizami 2006: 31). Important information on the life of Christ is supplemented with stories from the Apocrypha and the Old Testament. Themes from the Old Testament are invariably said to be taken from the Taurit and the references are quoted in the margins with red ink, such as Isaiah 52 on Christ’s humiliation and Passion. These Old Testament events are added only to explain a given event in the life of Jesus such as Moses and the serpents (Torah 4:21), Isaiah’s prophecy of Jesus, the story of the Prophet Elias, and the widow of Sarepeta of Sidon, and of the Prophet Elesius (Elisha) and Naaman the Syrian from 2 Kings 5. Only one event, the siege of Jerusalem and destruction of the Jewish temple by the Romans under Titus in the year 70 ce is derived from a secular historical work.13 However, the first part of the text that describes the nativity of Mary is largely based on the Gospels of Protoevengelium of James. Some later events such as the Papal Edict of 1250 (of Pope Innocent IV) to celebrate the Virgin Mary’s birth on 8 September, the declaration of a feast in honour of the Prophetess Hannah in 570 ce in Constantinople after an epidemic and then mandated for the whole church by Pope Sergius in 888 are other additions from extra-biblical sources. It is difficult to ascertain whether the text ultimately produced by Xavier and his co-translator Abd al-Sattar consisted of an emended version of these already existing ancient Persian translations, made available to him by the royal patron, or whether Xavier and his assistants prepared fresh translations.

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The question remains unresolved. A literary comparison of the prologue with the actual text points to the possibility that the translated version was incorporated into the text after necessary emendations. The language of the prologue, penned by Xavier, though grammatically correct, lacks the literary elegance and lucidity of expression that are the characteristic features of the Persian version of the Four Gospels embodied in the Mirror of Holiness.

Motives: Imperial and Missionary Xavier’s preface addressed to the Emperor reveals the deep personal involvement of Akbar in the translation scheme. Akbar’s quest for knowledge of world religions and his fascination with the earlier revealed faiths looms large in the prologue written by Xavier. The prime motive of compilation of the sacred text was to satisfy the intellectual quest of Akbar, whom he compared with Abgar/Abgarus V, king of Edessa (4 bce–50 ce):14 When the fame of the Messiah’s miracles spread far and wide, Emperor Abgar of Edessa evinced a keen desire to see the blessed face (didar-i-mubarak) and sent an intelligent envoy (ilchi dana) with the message that if Jesus was to visit him, he would bestow half of the kingdom upon him. A skilled painter also accompanied the envoy with the explicit instruction to prepare a portrait of that incomparable one to satisfy his craving to see his face at least through the medium of a painting, if not directly. Unable to do justice to his subject the painter asked Jesus to impress his face onto a cloth to leave an imprint. When his embassy returned with this miraculous portrait, it restored the king to his health. He found the picture on the holy garment to be correct and without discrepancy, and he was cured. He brought the veil of God before him and treated it with the greatest care and respect. And through this he was successful in all of his affairs.15

Xavier went on to point out that: I narrated the tale because His Majesty Emperor Akbar, Asylum of the World, having heard different traditions (riwayat) and stories of the renown and excellence of Jesus (dastan-i-kamalat), and the secrets of the greatness of Jesus, therefore sincerely wished to know the true story of his blessed person. In search of truth and regard of scholars, he ordered this priest Padre Zerunamushivar, who enjoys the felicity of touching the blessed throne, that whatever was there in your books about the character and life of this blessed person should be rendered into Persian.16

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Xavier admitted inordinate delays in fulfilling the imperial wish: I arranged the material several times, and thought that I had completed the work, but each time when I compared my own Persian version with the original Latin, I felt dissatisfied. As what I thought was complete appeared incomplete and deficient. So much so that I was ashamed and lost hope and pondered over my incapacities and lack of skills. I prayed incessantly and was rescued due to the divine favour and good fortune of Your Majesty, the shadow of God upon earth. At last I felt satisfied, and now I consider it a privilege to present the work before the just threshold. I pray Christ to bless Your Majesty and others who listen to it.18

Xavier entertained lofty views of his achievement, as he asserted that his own production surpassed anything thus far accomplished under the royal auspices. I would like to propose to your Majesty that of all the works rendered in Persian under your patronage, this one will recommend itself most to your attention, for no book of this nature has been composed yet, either because the Persian scholars were not acquainted with Latin or the Latin scholars with Persian. Maybe it was true that there was never an emperor who searched wisdom for its own sake.19

Xavier had recourse to an analogy in nature in order to highlight the significance of his achievement. As the footprints show the size of the elephant, and the mark of the paw the strength of the lion, the work would be accepted as an expression of his sincere wish to serve the emperor.20 Xavier did not conceal his missionary zeal, which surely inspired his painstaking research. The purpose was primarily to satisfy the intellectual quest of the patron-emperor but also to spread the word of God. Xavier pleaded with

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the Emperor that the work was to be read aloud in the august assemblies, for its teachings were a source of virtue, peace of mind, and solace for the craving soul. The Christ himself is reported to have said, ‘My words (guftar) are a source of contentment and eternal life’.21 The prologue ends with prayers for the royal patron: ‘May Jesus Christ take your Majesty under his benign protection, and vouchsafe his knowledge, as I your servant sincerely pray, which remains an indispensable source of salvation’.22

The Textual Infrastructure The text opens in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who are one God (bism al-ab wa al-ibn al-ruh al-quds ilahi wahid Mirat al-Quds), and names itself the ‘Mirror of Holiness in which is given the wonderful story (dastan) of Hazrat Yeshu Christus Isa, Jesus Christ, and some of his heavenly teachings and his elevated miracles’. It consists of four major chapters and an introduction. The first contains an account of the birth, boyhood and youth of Jesus, whose home is identified as Nazareth in Galilee. It provides details of Jesus’s nativity and infancy, the years in Nazareth, his journey to Jerusalem at the age of 12, and his temporary separation from his parents.23 The account of the nativity is preceded by a narrative of the life of the blessed Mary (khujista Maryam), her birth and parentage as well as her upbringing. Her father’s name was Jaochim (Shokin) who was also from Nazareth. Her mother Anna was from Bethlehem of Judaea, the birthplace of the biblical King David to whose lineage both belonged. It describes the conception of Mary, whose parents were told by an angel of the birth of a girl child whom they should name Maryam, ‘whose belly will be full of the Holy Spirit (Ruh al-Quds)’.24 Anna was also told that ‘from this daughter will be born the redeemer of the world’.25 The name ‘Maryam’ itself had several meanings: Buland, i.e., ‘exalted’ or ‘high’, darya-i-talkhi or ‘sea of bitterness’, sahib-i-darya or ‘Lord of the sea’.26 Thereafter, the Presentation in the temple, the nativity of Virgin Mary, the entry of Virgin Mary into the temple, growing up in the temple, and her daily routine are described.27 Mary’s devout life, meditation on the secrets of God (asrar-i-Ilahi) and selection of Joseph are described in an evocative manner. She continually uses the phrase deo gracias, which means an offering of thanks to Almighty God.28 Mary was married to Joseph (Yusuf), son of Jacob, son of Matan (Yaqub bin Matan); here, the main objective is to confound Satan, who knew from the earlier books that the Messiah would be born to a Virgin. Xavier sought to emphasise personal purity and her perpetual virginity before,

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during and after Jesus’s birth. The account of Mary closes with a sketch of her outward appearance (hilya-i-maryam): Mary was a girl of medium height, wheaten colour and long faced. Her eyes were large and inclined towards blue. Her hair was golden. Her hands and fingers were long. She had a pleasing figure, in everything well-proportioned. Her discourse was extremely mild. Her glance came from a modest and bashful face. Her apparel was humble and chaste. Such greatness and chastity appeared in her countenance that when the wicked and perplexed-hearted gazed upon her they pulled themselves together and became reformed. All her companions knew of her goodness, agreeable nature and humility.29

Mary’s nativity is followed with a chapter entitled ‘On the Birth of the Messiah from the Belly of Mary’, in which the Annunciation by the Archangel Gabriel that Mary was to be the mother of the Messiah is narrated. Chapter (fasl) One of Luke is noted as the source in the margins with red ink. Mary was occupied in prayers in a secluded room (khalwatkhana) and was meditating on Isaiah’s words that a virgin would conceive and bear a son and his name would be Emmanuel, meaning ‘God with us’. Suddenly, Gabriel appeared in the form of a handsome young man, pure, full of dignity and light (nur), and knelt humbly on the ground as he addressed her. ‘Peace be upon you, full of God’s grace. Blessed are you among women’. Gabriel explained to her further, ‘Do not be afraid. I have been sent to you by God. You have found favour with God. You should know that you will conceive and you will bring forth a son. You shall call him “Jesus”. His name means one who will bring salvation, and Messiah means the same. He shall be great and shall be called the son of the most high. The Lord God will bestow upon him the throne (kursi) of his father David, as it is said that he will sit on the throne of David. But his kingship (badshahi) will not be a visible kingdom over the bodies of men, but a spiritual kingship over their souls. He shall reign over the house of Jacob (Yaqub). There will be no end of his kingship’.30

Mary said to the Angel, ‘How shall this happen since I do not know any man’,31 and Gabriel said to her: ‘The Holy Spirit (Ruh al-Quds) shall come upon you and the power of most high shall overshadow you, and therefore the one to be born shall be called son of God’.32 Mary responded obediently, ‘Behold the handmaid (kaniz) of the Lord. Be it unto me according to your words’. Having Mary’s consent, Gabriel disappeared from her sight.33

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The other events narrated in a detailed manner from the four Gospels are the adoration by the poor shepherds and by the rich Magi from the East, the flight of Joseph to Memphis in Egypt, Joseph’s return from Egypt, the presentation of Jesus in the Temple, and Simon’s doubts regarding the Virgin’s giving birth to a son.34 The birth of Christ is placed during the reign of Octavius [Alexander] Augustus (63 bce–14 ce), whose decree brought Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem where Christ was born. Octavius Augustus succeeded his grand-uncle Julius Caesar . . . He had the distinction to be the first ruler who adopted the policy of peace (Sulh) not only for Rome but for almost the entire world. Since he regarded himself as a restorer of peace, he decreed that every citizen of his kingdom should be registered.35

Jesus was born on a Sunday night, 5,199 years from the date of creation; 2,957 after the deluge of Noah; 2,015 after the birth of Abraham; 1,510 from the expulsion of Moses and the Israelites from Egypt; 1,032 from the lament of David and his accession to the throne of Israel; and 752 after the foundation of Rome, in the 42nd year of the reign of Augustus Caesar when peace prevailed throughout the world. In the silent atmosphere of the middle of the night, the blessed virgin was occupied in prayers when she felt inner happiness and looked on the ground and saw that Jesus (Hazrat-i-Ishu) had been born.36 As he was born in Nazareth (Nasira), therefore he was known as the Nazarene (Nasiri), as it was prophesied by the Prophets that he would be called with the same title. His followers are called Nazarenes (Nasrani). Similarly, from his name, Isa, his followers are called Isawiyan and from Christ (Krist) Christian (Kristan). His adolescence and youth were spent in devotion, abstinence and divine worship. He was obedient and sincere towards his parents—the mother and metaphorical father Joseph (zahir pidar). When Jesus was about fifteen years of age, Augustus Caesar died and was succeeded by Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus [42 b.c.–37 a.d., emperor 14–37]. Until the time the Messiah had reached the age of thirty, he neither preached nor propagated his faith.37

The second chapter provides a detailed account of the ‘wonderful miracles and teachings of Christ’, his public ministry, and epigrammatic parables, ending with Jesus warning of Jerusalem’s impending disaster and signs of the Last Day.38 This chapter happens to be the most comprehensive. It contains a detailed and accurate narrative of his teachings, beginning with an account

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of John the Baptist as the precursor of Jesus, the Baptism of Jesus, Temptation of Christ, the fast of 40 days, and the Galilean ministry. When he reached Galilee (Jalil) he began to preach (talim) and proclaimed: ‘Repent (tauba kunaid) because the kingdom of God (malakut-i-asman) is near. Repent and believe in the Gospels (Injil); the messenger of God has come on the appointed hour’. Many people listened to him as they gathered around him. Gradually, the fame of his preaching and the miracles he performed began to spread.39

Here the narrative breaks down and shifts to an account of the marriage feast in Cana from John 2:1–8. Thereafter, an account of Jesus preaching the word of God (Kalam-i-Khuda) on the Lake Genesareth, the great catch of fish, and the calling of the first disciples is narrated from Mark 1:16–20. ‘Jesus said to Simon Peter and his brother Andrew, Come and follow me, for, I will make you fishermen of men’. Here, the word for ‘fishermen’ is saiyad, which also means ‘a ravisher of hearts’. Next, Jesus’s journey to Jerusalem as the festival of Passover (Id fashi) approaches is recounted, along with the episode of the cleansing of the Temple (John 2:13–17) and of the Jews questioning Jesus (John 2:18–24) where Jesus saw ‘oxen, sheep, and doves being sold for sacrifice, and the money-changers (sarrafan), usurers lending money on interest, and other evil practices tolerated by the priests’. After this comes the story of ‘Nicodemus, a leading Pharisee of the Jews (sardaran-i-Yahud), a man of great erudition’, who visits the Messiah at night, to whom Christ explained rebirth. Baptism (imada) means ‘rebirth’ or a fresh spiritual life (John 3:5–7). The entire episode is derived from the Gospel of John (3:1–4, 9–15). The episode closes with the remark that ‘Nicodemus accepted the true faith (iman awurd) but did not disclose it, as he waited for the right time’.40 Jesus left Jerusalem along with his devoted disciples, entering Judea where he successfully baptised many new converts. Jesus’s huge success naturally aroused the jealousy of the Pharisees. Consequently, he left Judea and started towards Galilee again, passing through Samaria, a large town and capital of the 10 Jewish tribes, in renown and grandeur competing with Bait al-Muqaddas (John 4:1–4). Here the story of the Samaritan Woman at the well is reproduced from the Gospel of John (John 4:1–42). The people of Samaria recognised Jesus as the Messiah and Redeemer of the world (Khulasi dahanda-i-alam). Thence, Jesus proceeded to Nazareth where he had spent his childhood, and the narrative is largely from Luke (4:16–30). Further, Jesus’s stay in Capharnaum (Capernaum) is described, where he performed a number

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of miracles (4:31–44). Thereafter, miracles such as the restoring of eyesight of two men blind from birth (Matthew 9:27–31) are retold, along with most of the parables illustrating spiritual truths, such as the Parable of the barren fig tree (Luke 13:6–9). The third chapter relates the pains and sufferings that Christ endured for the salvation of mankind, culminating in his passion (jafaha) and death (mirg). The chapter seeks to emphasise that the Messiah was born not only to heal and deliver but also to suffer and die. His death on the cross was a redemptive sacrifice (khulasi mardum), the source of salamati (peace, safety, salvation), humanity’s salvation and atonement (kaffara) of sins (gunahan). Herein are related the Last Supper, the Institution of Holy Eucharist, Jesus’s arrest, Peter’s denial, the trial before the Sanhedrin, and the Crucifixion.41 The final chapter contains a description of the resurrection, which is called the rising from the grave (qabr) and ascension to heaven.42 It begins with a description of hell, purgatory (parkatin) and its four stages, limbo for those who die young, and paradise inhabited by souls after death. Included are captivating discourses on events such as the meeting with Mary Magdalen and two other women, including his own mother, the auspicious Mary (khujasta Maryam), and their interview with two angels. Jesus tells his disciples, ‘I am going to meet my father and your father your God and my God (Khuda)’.43 The charming story of the disciples walking to Emmaus is literally derived from Luke (24:18–24): Two of the disciples (shagirdan) of Jesus, were going to a village named Emmaus, which is about one farsang away from Jerusalem. They were conversing about the events concerning the Messiah. The Messiah drew near them, but they did not recognise him and he went along with them and enquired about the topic of their conversation which made them look sad. One of them whose name was Cleophas answered, Are you a stranger in Jerusalem and do not know what happened in the city these last days? He asked, What happened? And they said, Yeshu Nasiri (Jesus of Nazareth) who was a prophet mighty in deeds and words before God (Khuda) and before people. The chief priests and the commanders of the Jews delivered him to be killed and crucified him. We had hoped that he would redeem (khulas) Israel.44

The account closes with the events of the day of Pentecost following his resurrection and ascension, which led to the formation of the Christian church. At the end, two letters, one attributed to Pontius Pilate — called the ruler (hakim) of Bait al-Muqaddas — and the other to a certain Lentulus, allegedly

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sent to Tiberius Caesar and the Senate at Rome are produced. The one by Lentulus reads in part as follows: There appeared a man in these days who is yet living among us. His name is Yeshua [Jesus], the Messiah, and people consider him a prophet with supernatural powers. His disciples consider him Son of God. He raises the dead to life. He possesses power to cure those afflicted with sickness and disease. A man of stature somewhat tall, and comely with a very reverent countenance such as the beholders may both love and fear. His hair, ruby-coloured, shiny and lustrous [betab, lit., ‘restless’] comes right down to his ears and from there straight down [musalsal] below his shoulders. In the manner of the Nazarenes [Nasriyan], his hair is parted in the middle of his forehead. His forehead is plain and very delicate, and his face is without any blemish . . . In reproving hypocrisy, he is terrible; in admonishing, courteous and fair-spoken; his conversation is pleasant, mixed with gravity. It cannot be remembered that any have seen him laugh, but many have seen Him weep.45

Mirat al-Quds and the Indo-Mughal Elite Last night I saw three faces, each one beautiful, majestic and luminous. Each one held a burning candle in his hands. I have seen paintings of Jesus Christ (Hazrat-i-Isa) often, and on repeated reflection and focusing I realised it was none other than Jesus himself. All three faces had the same noble, other-worldly quality, each a replica of the other.46

Emperor Jahangir’s knowledge of and involvement with the person of Christ and Christianity was quite deep, as shown in this passage from Majalis-i-Jahangiri. Significantly Majalis-i-Jahangiri (majalis, lit., ‘assemblies, sessions, conversations’), modelled on Sufi malfuzat (table-talk), supplements as well as corroborates Jesuit views of Mughal perception and interpretation of Christ and Christianity (Guerreiro 1930). At least nine out of 122 nocturnal conversations recorded by Abd al-Sattar in his Majalis-i-Jahangiri, involving key participants, are concerned with debates between the Jesuits and the Mughal courtiers on various aspects of Christianity. This rare and valuable Mughal document provided intimate views of verbal face-to-face exchanges between the Jesuits and the Mughal court. This is the only contemporary Persian chronicle that explicitly mentions the translation of European works into Persian by the Jesuits. Abd al-Sattar, acting as the main disputant, possessed a comprehensive knowledge of the biblical texts and was equally well-informed about Islam. For Xavier, despite claims of proficiency in Persian, verbal communication nevertheless

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remained problematic, not only because of lack of knowledge of his opponents’ religious texts but also because he faced linguistic obstacles. Xavier’s knowledge of Persian was never adequate; lack of proficiency in Persian, the language of politics, administration, belles lettres, and also the transmission of ideas obstructed his communication in the courtly debates.47 In the Mirat al-Quds, Xavier conveyed a purely Catholic vision and interpretation of Christ and Christianity. But for the Mughal intellectuals and scholars, the Christian Injil was neither a revealed nor an inspired word of God. Rather, they sought to explain it as a human document and applied critical tests to the sacred work as though it were merely a human production. Therefore, the text of Mirat al-Quds was subjected to critical analysis by the Indo-Mughal elite who pointed out what they judged to be inventions, exaggerations and alterations, in opposition to the Jesuits, who maintained that the Gospels were the inerrant and revealed word of God. What they had in mind was the question whether the Christians possessed a standard text of the Injil. Tahrif, the accusation that both Jews and Christians had falsified their respective divine scriptures and traditions, was a widespread polemical motif in the Islamic world (Lazarus-Yafeh 1992: 50–74). The allegation of tahrif against the Bible was based on their understanding and comparison with the Qur’an, which for them was the eternal and immutable word of God. Therefore, Abd al-Sattar, the co-translator, maintaining that it was a tampered text, proclaimed that: ‘[T]he Muslims (Islamiyan) considered Injil a distorted book (muharraf). They do not consider it a book of God (Kitab-i-Khuda). But for you it is the book of God and the genuine Gospels (Injil-i-durust)’ (Naushahi and Nizami 2006: 31–32).48 He reiterated that Muslims regarded it as the story of the Messiah (Qissa-i-Masih) (ibid.: 32). In another debate, Abd al-Sattar reported that Khan-i-Azam Mirza Aziz Koka, a leading courtier and foster brother of Emperor Akbar also expressed similar views. To quote Abd al-Sattar: Khan-i-Azam represented that if the book you have (which you claim) is Injil, then surely it did not have the characteristics of being a divine book. It was no more than a book of history (tarikh). It is like many other books written by Muslim scholars about their saints and holy persons. The Padre represented that Taurit was also a similar book. Would you not regard it as a revealed book? Khan-i-Azam said that we held a similar opinion about Taurit, as it too had been altered (tahrif) by the Jews. Jahangir turned towards the priest and asked courteously (iltifat ba Padre) whether this was the same Injil which was compiled during the life of Jesus Christ or not? The priest represented that it was written [by a man called] Matthew (mati) two years after the event of the Ascension of

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Thus, Jahangir questioned the mode of transmission used. Abd al-Sattar further noted thus: The priest explained that Jesus Christ (Hazrat-i-Isa) appeared to Matthew and instructed him to write down whatever he saw and heard from him. The emperor said that if it happened in a dream then the divine authorship of the text is doubtful. Later on, the emperor addressed similar questions to the nobles present in the assembly. He sought to know the opinion of Muslims in this regard. Qazi Isa of Agra, Maulana Shakrullah Shirazi, Maulana Ruzba Shirazi, Maulana Taqiya Shushtari came forward and stated that we [Muslims] did not say that. We believe that the Injil was [available] during the time of Jesus, as it was revealed to him. They came forward with many points. But whatever statement the priest made was nothing but weak and feeble (ibid.: 47).49

Therefore, while for Jahangir the sacred book of the Christians was a revelation about Jesus to Matthew, his courtiers thought of it merely as a book of stories. Abd al-Sattar, quoting from Mirat al-Quds passages that he thought would strengthen his argument, succinctly narrated the birth and infancy of Jesus Christ from Mirat al-Quds up to the beginning of his Galilean ministry, to prove his assertion that it was not a divine book but one which provides an organic story of his preaching and teaching. He spoke of how the Christian Bible begins with the genealogy of Jesus, which traces his lineage up to Abraham, with 14 links to David and another 14 links from David, and so forth. The information is elaborated with the Annunciation, the Virgin birth in Bethlehem, the visit of Magi from the East (Padshah-i-munajjim), the visit to Egypt, Herod’s murder of innocent children, and life in Nazareth with Joseph and Mary. He spent 30 years of his youth amongst his people, suffered hardships, and was of the faith of Moses. Thus went the story (qissa) of Jesus, with various and numerous details added (ibid.: 28; cf. pp. 74–75). At this point, Abd al-Sattar asked whether it was new when Jesus had already lived 30 years of his life. After all, many things were better known to his mother and other relatives. His relatives would have been eyewitnesses to the events he sought to narrate after 30 years. Given the case, what was the use of narrating such things? Implied in this critique is that the Gospels did not contain the true

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Injil revealed to Jesus, and that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John could not be considered revelations. Second, adducing evidence from Mirat al-Quds, Abd al-Sattar argued that the Christians believed (as also reported in the Gospels) that on the very first day when Christ began to preach, he said: ‘Repent, the kingdom of heaven is near. And believe in my Gospels (Injil).’ Now I would ask the priest, Is this the same Injil which contains the story of his life, death and Ascension? Or was this Injil written fifteen or twenty years after his death? If it was written after his death, what is the meaning of the above sentence, ‘Believe my words’? This sentence shows that there was an Injil which Jesus wanted people to believe in. What happened to that Injil? (ibid.: 75)

Furthermore, Abd al-Sattar noted to the emperor: Your Majesty, Mark, who was one of the scribes of the Gospels, wrote that he had recorded whatever he saw and heard from his predecessors. The Apostles of Jesus and scribes of this book called it the story of Jesus (qissa). They call it Injil and a book of God. Your Majesty, such things had no relation whatsoever with the religion as propagated by Jesus. If any of their practices and beliefs, including fasting and prayer, are to be proved from the Injil and [practices of] Jesus, all my assertions would be false . . . The justice-loving Emperor approved of all I said. Trapped in the war being waged against falsehood (shokh batil sitez), [Jesuit Francis Corsi (1573–1635)] felt ashamed; with dry lips and sweating profusely, he went back (ibid.).50

However, more than the authenticity of scriptures, it was the Trinity and Incarnation that remained the central issues of debate in Jahangir’s court (ibid.: 29–37, 72–75, 86–87).51 There was no disagreement on the possibility of Jesus performing miracles as the Holy Qur’an also refers to some of them (ibid.: 86, 116, 118–119). But how many miracles Jesus Christ performed and which ones are recorded in the Bible was also an important issue for Jahangir (ibid.: 116). The major objection to the divinity of Christ was based on the classical premise of Wajib al-wujud (‘Necessary Existence’) as articulated by Avicenna. Xavier sought to explain the trinity and divinity of Christ as a divine mystery, revealed by God in scripture and the life of Christ. Xavier maintained that Jesus was only divine, although he possessed a human nature as well. Maulana Taqiya Shustari and other scholars reiterated that the attribute of self-existence for a mortal is impossible. The Mughal intellectuals argued that:

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 Gulſshan Khan In contrast to God, who is self-existent (wajib al-wujud), ancient (qadim) and eternal (la-yazal), Hazrat Isa (Jesus Christ) was born to Mary only yesterday. Hence, he must be mortal (hadis). And considering a mortal to be immortal is clearly false (batil). Whatever is based on the foundations of falsehood is false (Naushahi and Nizami 2006: 29–30).

Significantly, Abd al-Sattar’s refutation of Christ’s divinity was derived from his reading of the Mirat al-Quds, citing the example of Jesus’s humility in praying to God for Lazarus’ life (ibid.: 31).52 Second, he quoted passages from the Injil that showed how Jesus put himself on a par with the Apostles with respect to his human aspect (bashariyat) and devotion to God (ubudiyat) (ibid.: 32).53 Third, again drawing from Mirat al-Quds, Abd al-Sattar put forward as a proof of Christ’s humanity his invoking of God the Almighty while on the cross: ‘My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?’ (ibid.: 33).54 The Immaculate Conception of Mary was also the subject of courtly discussions, with Jahangir defending the virginal conception and birth of Christ as enshrined in the Holy Qur’an. To him, the very idea of a married Mary was far removed from her transcendent majesty and purity (ibid.: 76–77). And besides the strictly theological issues discussed, one finds an interest in, for instance, intra-Christian doctrinal differences, the roots of Jewish–Christian rivalry (ibid.: 5–6, 216–218), the Crusades (without using the actual term) (ibid.: 3), the non-observance of the prescribed provisions of Idda (a waiting period) before the remarriage of a widow, non-permissible and permissible foods (halal wa haram), all of it premised on the Muslim understanding of law as enshrined in the Islamic Shariat (ibid.: 3–4, 117–118). One even finds discussion on the propriety of black-coloured caps as opposed to the colourful red and yellow ones worn by the Europeans living in Agra (ibid.: 46). Thus, the composition of the Mirat al-Quds under the court patronage of Akbar was a significant intellectual achievement in the history of interfaith dialogue. Written for the Islamicate audience, it became a seminal text in the religious refashioning of the Mughal court’s discourse on Judaism and Christianity. The courtly debates and the critique that ensued were based on profound knowledge of what they considered the Christian faith to be. The Indo-Mughal critique of the Injil proceeded from the assumption that it was a human document and therefore subjected the text to treatment as a historical document. The Indo-Islamic intellectuals’ critique of the various aspects of the person of Christ and Christianity was based on their traditional understanding of Christianity as well. They also drew on the enormous wealth of Islamic exegetical genres embodied in Tafsir, Hadith (Traditions of the Prophet), Tarikh

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(history), Adab (belles lettres), as well as Qisas al-Anbiya (Tales of the Prophets); literature likewise provided its own shafts of light by which to illuminate the arguments (Tottoli 2002). There was, for instance, the Rauzat al-Safa, a universal history by the Timurid historian Mir Khwand (d. 1498), which provided a detailed account of earlier revealed faiths, including a comprehensive account similar to the one discussed here.55 Similarly, there was the Subh i Sadiq of Sadiq Isfahani (b. 1609), completed in 1638–1639 at the court of Emperor Shahjahan (1628–1658), which provided an excellent picture not only of the life of Christ but also the whole story of the Christian faith; the text is profusely interspersed with Qur’anic verses and its account of Mary and the birth of Christ is refreshing and well-documented.56 Significantly, in the Mughal court culture it was not only the Qur’anic view of Christ and Christianity that prevailed. On the contrary, Indo-Mughal views of Christian faith were influenced by their access to new knowledge as contained, for example, in the translated text of Mirat al-Quds, which provided Catholic images of Christianity in their own lingua franca. Mirat al-Quds was quoted as a reference work by both parties involved in Agra’s interfaith exchanges — Jesuits as well as the Indo-Islamic elite. Abd al-Sattar and other Mughal nobles’ intellectual formulations of beliefs and Christian practices, as well as their pronounced polemical assertions against the Christian conception of God, were largely based on first-hand knowledge of the same authoritative text. The use of new knowledge, derived primarily from this very text, remains the most distinguishing feature of the imperial interreligious discussions held under Jahangir.

Notes 1. The classic study on Mughal–Jesuit relations remains Maclagan (1932). For recent research, Bailey (1998) and Flores (2004) are excellent. 2. Author’s translation from Persian, based on Fazl (1853: 26–27). 3. All references to the Majalis-i-Jahangiri of Abd al-Sattar bin Qasim Lahori come from Naushahi and Nizami (2006). 4. A Latin translation by Lodewijk de Dieu was printed with the Persian text in 1639 in Leiden, the Dastan i Masih, Historia Christi Persice. See Blochmann (1870), where the preface is translated and the chapters are summarised, as well as Beveridge (1889). For a summary, see Rogers (1890). A more recent study is

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5.

6.

7. 8. 9.

10. 11.

12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

 Gulſshan Khan Chaghtai (1994). Illustrations of the Lahore Mirat al-Quds have been discussed by Ali and Ahmed (1995); for detailed analysis, see Bailey (1997). Mirat al-Quds, no. 649 HL 174, Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Public Library (Patna), fol. 6. All subsequent references to the Mirat al-Quds are from the Khuda Bakhsh manuscript. For this, I have used Abd al-Sattar bin Qasim Lahori, Samarat al-falasifa (University Collection Zamima 28), Manuscript Division, Maulana Azad Library (Aligarh Muslim University), fol. 52. See also Khan (2009–2010). Mirat al-Quds, fols 28–29. Mirat al-Quds, fol. 6. In this regard, I have checked a number of colophons, including Mirat al-Quds, Bodleian Library, Pers. MS. Fraser 256, ff. 199b–200a. The Khuda Bakhsh manuscript (see n. 5, this chapter) bears the same colophon, fols 178–179. Another copy of the manuscript consulted — M-645/MSS–46, Lahore Museum (Lahore) — is incomplete and bears no colophon. Other copies examined are British Library, Harl 5455, dated 1027/1618 ah; and British Library B.L.I.O. Islamic 940, copied in 1771–1772 in Calcutta for Richard Johnson by Shaikh Ifazatullah, which does carry the same colophon. The transcripts of the manuscripts sent by Xavier are preserved in the National Library of Portugal (Lisbon), Codex 7964, Codex 7965. Xavier’s transcriptions are preserved in the Academy of Sciences (Lisbon), red manuscript 623; Casanatense Library (Rome), 2322; Gregorian University Library (Rome), 86; Cambridge University Library, Gg. 5.26. For details on holdings, see Gulbenkian (1981: 7–11). The original manuscript — Laud OR. 2 — preserved in the Bodleian (Oxford), belonged to William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury (1639–1642), and was donated when a chair of Arabic was endowed in 1634. Mirat al-Quds, fol. 4. See also Maclagan (1932: 191). Mirat al-Quds, fols 146–151. Ibid., fol. 4; cf., fols 132–133. Ibid., fol. 4. Ibid., fol. 4. Ibid., fol. 4. Ibid., fol. 5. Ibid., fol. 5. Ibid., fol. 5. Ibid., fol. 5. Ibid., fol. 6. Ibid., fols 6–46. Ibid., fol. 7. Ibid., fols 7–8. Ibid., fol. 8.

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27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50.

51.

52. 53. 54.

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Ibid., fols 9–10. Ibid., fol. 10. Ibid., fol. 11. Ibid., fol. 14. Ibid., fol. 14. Ibid., fol. 15. Ibid., fol. 24. Ibid., fols 22–42. Ibid., fol. 22. Ibid., fol. 24. Ibid., fol. 42. Ibid., fols 42–161. Ibid., fol. 51. Ibid., fol. 56. Ibid., fols 161–184. Ibid., fol. 185. Ibid., fols 199–200. Ibid., fols 189–190. Ibid., fols 199–200. Emperor Jahangir to Murtaza Khan and Khwaja Abul Hasan, in Naushahi and Nizami (2006: 215). See the comment of Abd al-Sattar in Naushahi and Nizami (2006: 31). Here, Mirat al-Quds, fol. 133, is quoted. The entry corresponds to 29 October 1610. On Fr Corsi, a Florentine who came to India in 1599 and to Agra in 1600, see Maclagan (1932: 75–76). According to Naushahi and Nizami (2006), his exchange with Abd al-Sattar occurred in May 1610, and was marked by extraordinary tension. Unlike his confrères, Corsi had a reputation for being truculent; of him, the Majalis says that he was notorious for ‘bigotry, harsh speech and a sharp temper’. And on the occasion of this particular exchange in 1610, he is said to have ‘praised his own faith at the same time that he began to make accusations against the faith of Islam’. As the exchange became heated, it stands to reason that he may have manifested symptoms of acute anxiety (‘dry lips’, etc.). The language of Badauni’s eyewitness account of the Ibadat Khana debates suggests that the concept of Trinity was a hotly debated issue: ‘They forwarded proofs for the Trinity (salis salasa) and sought to unfold the tenets of the Christian faith and thus to spread the Christian faith (nasranyat)’ (Lees 1865–1869: 260). For Lazarus, see Mirat al-Quds, fols 133–135, based on John 11:1–53. Mirat al-Quds, fol. 188. Mirat al-Quds, fol. 182.

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55. For an English translation of the section on earlier revealed faiths in Mir Khwand’s Rauzat-us-Safa, see Rehatsek (1892: 146–190). 56. Sadiq Isfahani, Subh i Sadiq, Bodleian Persian, MS. Ouseley 292, ff. 53b–62b.

References Alam, Muzaffar and Sanjay Subrahmanyam. 2009. ‘Frank Disputations: Catholics and Muslims in the Court of Jahangir (1608–11)’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 46(4): 457–511. Ali, Nusrat and Khalid Anis Ahmed. 1995. ‘Mirat ul-Quds (The Mirror of Holiness) or Dastan-i-Masih, A Manuscript in the Lahore Museum, Lahore Pakistan’, in Khalid Anis Ahmed (ed.), Intercultural Encounters in Mughal Painting: Mughal-Christian Miniatures, pp. 79–91. Lahore: National College of Arts. Bailey, Gauvin Alexander. 1997. ‘Lahore Mirat al-Quds and the Impact of Jesuit Theatre on Mughal Painting’, South Asian Studies, 13(1): 95–108. ———. 1998. The Jesuits and the Grand Mogul: Renaissance Art at the Imperial Court of India, 1580–1630. Washington DC: Freer Gallery of Art. ———. 1999. ‘The Truth-Showing Mirror: Jesuit Catechism and the Arts in Mughal India’, in John W. O’Malley, Gauvin Alexander Bailey, Steven J. Harris, and T. Frank Kennedy, S. J. (eds), The Jesuits: Cultures, Sciences, and the Arts 1540–1773, pp. 381–401. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Beveridge, Henry (trans.). 1889. ‘Father Jerome Xavier’, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 57(1): 33–39. ———. 1897. The Akbarna¯ma of Abu-l-Fazl, 3 vols. Calcutta: Asiatic Society. Blochmann, H. 1870. ‘Note on a Persian MS. Entitled Mir’at ul Quds, a Life of Christ compiled at the request of the Emperor Akbar by Jerome Xavier’, Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (May): 138–147. Camps, Arnulf. 1957. Jerome Xavier, S.J., and the Muslims of the Mogul Empire: Controversial Works and Missionary Activity. Schoneck-Beckenried: Neue Zeitschrift für Missionswissenschaft. ———. 1961. ‘Persian Works of Jerome Xavier, A Jesuit at the Mogul Court’, Islamic Culture, 35: 166–176. Chaghtai, Muhammad ‘Abdullah. 1994. ‘Mirat ul-Quds: An Illustrated Manuscript of Akbar’s Period about Christ’s Life’, in Anjum Rehmani (ed.), Lahore Museum Heritage, pp. 179–188. Lahore: Lahore Museum. Ernst, Carl W. 2003. ‘Muslim Studies of Hinduism? A Reconsideration of Arabic and Persian Translations from Indian Languages’, Iranian Studies, 36(2): 173–195. Fazl, Abul. 1853. Har Sih daftar-i Abu al-Fazl. Lucknow: Bayt al-Saltanat. Fischel, Walter J. 1948–1949. ‘Jews and Judaism at the Court of the Moghul Emperors in Medieval India’, Proceedings of the American Academy of Jewish Research, 18: 137–177.

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Fischel, Walter J. 1952. ‘The Bible in Persian Translations: A Contribution to the History of Bible Translations in Persia and India’, Harvard Theological Review, 45(1): 3–45. Flores, Jorge. 2004. ‘Two Portuguese Visions of Jahangir’s India: Jerónimo Xavier and Manuel Godinho de Erédia’, in Jorge Flores and Nuno Vassallo e Silva (eds), Goa and the Great Mughal, pp. 44–67. Lisbon and London: Calouste Gulbenkian Museum and Scala Publishers. Guerreiro, Fernão. 1930. Jahangir and the Jesuits, trans. C. H. Payne. London: Routledge. Gulbenkian, Roberto. 1981. The Translation of the Four Gospels into Persian. Immensee: Nouvelle Reuve de Science missionnaire. Hosten, Henry. 1914. ‘Fr. Jerome Xavier’s Persian Lives of the Apostles’, Journal and Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, n.s., 10(2): 65–84. Husain, S. M. Azizuddin. 2004. ‘Ibadat Khana, Mahzar and Sulh-i-kul: An Examination’, in M. Haider (ed.), Sufis, Sultans and Feudal Orders: Nurul Hasan Commemoration Volume, pp. 189–209. Delhi: Manohar. Khan, Gulfishan. 2009–2010. ‘Text in Focus: Samarat al-falasifah’, Kriti Rakshana [National Commission for Manuscripts], 4(5–6)–5(1–4): 7–21. Lazarus-Yafeh, Hava. 1992. Intertwined Worlds: Medieval Islam and Bible Criticism. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Lees, William Nassau (ed.). 1865–1869. The Muntakhab al-tawáríkh of Abd al-Qádir bini Malúk Shah al-Badáoni. Calcutta: College Press. Maclagan, Edward. 1932. The Jesuits and the Great Mogul. London: Burns, Oates & Washburne. Naushahi, Arif and Mu’in Nizami (eds). 2006. Maja¯lis-i Jaha¯ngı¯rı¯: Majlis’ha¯-yi shaba¯nah‘i-darba¯r-i Nu¯r al-Dı¯n Jaha¯ngı¯r: az 24 Rajab 1017 ta¯ 19 Ramazan 1020. Tehran: Miras-i Maktub. Rehatsek, Edward (trans.). 1892. Rauzat-us-Safa; Or, Garden of Purity, Containing the Histories of Prophets, Kings, and Khalifs by Muhammad bin Khavendshah bin Mahmud Commonly Called Mirkhond, ed. F. F. Arbuthnot, part 1, vol. 2. London: Royal Asiatic Society. Rizvi, Saiyid Athar Abbas. 1975. Religious and Intellectual History of Muslims in Akbar’s Reign with Special Reference to Abul Fazl. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal. ———. 1999. ‘Dimensions of Sulh-i Kul (Universal Peace) in Akbar’s Reign and the Sufi Theory of Perfect Man’, in I. A. Khan (ed.), Akbar and His Age, pp. 3–20. New Delhi: Indian Council of Historical Research. Rogers, A. 1890. ‘The Holy Mirror; or, the Gospel according to Father Jerome Xavier, From the Original Persian’, The Asiatic Quarterly Review, 10(19): 184–200. Thackston, Wheeler M. 1999. The Jahangirnama: Memoirs of Jahangir, Emperor of India. New York: Oxford University Press. Tottoli, Roberto. 2002. Biblical Prophets in the Quran and Muslim Literature. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon.

5

Authority, Patronage and Customary Practices Protestant Devotion and the Development of the Tamil Hymn in Colonial South India HEPHZIBAH ISRAEL

Ideas of devotion and devotional practices have been contested at various points in the Protestant Tamil context in South India. From the early 18th century onwards, Protestant missionaries, converts and church congregations in the region have each disputed how far Protestants ought to separate themselves from non-Protestant religious traditions. Since both Protestant missionaries and their converts sought to create a separate and distinct space for Protestant Christianity within the diverse and sophisticated world of Tamil religious culture, it meant that a range of cultural practices — linguistic, literary, ritual, and even lifestyle — were demarcated as ‘Protestant’ and ‘non-Protestant’. When faced with the question — ‘What is Protestant devotion?’ — the difficulty lay in both the lack of consensus amongst missionaries as to what was acceptable and in the lived experiences of Protestant converts who often blurred the lines between their past religious affiliations and their new ones. The extent to which Protestant converts borrowed or rejected elements from the existing Tamil religious cultures and practices depended on the hierarchies of caste, gender and the religious sect that they came from. In effect, different forms of authority were claimed by different sections in order to define what each thought was truly Protestant — scriptural authority, systems of patronage and ‘customary practice’ drawing on Tamil literary

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and religious traditions. For the purposes of this essay, there are four main players — Vedanayaka Sastri (1774–1864), an established Protestant poet; Protestant missionaries (‘old’ and ‘new’); the king of Tanjore (d. 1832); and the Evangelical Lutheran congregations of the early 19th century. Although late 18th-century Lutheran missionaries had been open to Protestants borrowing some elements of Hindu cultural practices, early 19th-century Anglican missionaries tended to support a sharper distinction between Tamil Hindu devotional cultures and Protestant devotion. However, high-caste Protestant poets and the Lutheran church congregations that supported them were eager to continue to draw on what they saw as existing Tamil/Hindu culture after the shift of authority from Lutheran to Anglican missionaries. This paper focuses on one such point of conflict — Protestant devotional songs. Controversies over Protestant Tamil devotional songs also point to wider conflicts between Protestant missionaries and Protestant converts in early 19th-century South India and I hope to show how new religious identities can simultaneously antagonise and share in the network of overlapping identities. Focusing on the Lutheran Evangelicals1 of Tanjore, and in particular, Vedanayaka Sastri, who is the most recognised of Protestant poets in early 19th-century South India, I examine conflicts over the translation of devotional songs between Protestant missionaries and Protestant Tamils. This paper examines several related issues regarding Protestant poets’ harnessing of Tamil bhakti traditions for Protestant use at three levels — the emotive power of Tamil bhakti; the location of the poet; and the singing and performative context of Protestant poetry. I suggest that by bringing these modalities of devotion from the Tamil bhakti traditions into the Protestant context, Protestant poets were forging local religious, linguistic and community affiliations that pushed at the boundaries of what could be accepted as ‘Protestant’.

I Protestant devotional songs in Tamil consist of two kinds: English and German hymns translated into Tamil by the missionaries and Tamil lyrics composed by Protestant Tamils. Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg (1682–1719), the first Protestant missionary in South India, started translating German hymns into Tamil soon after his arrival in Tranquebar in 1706. By the time he published his second edition of hymns, he had 48 hymns in Tamil, most translated by him and some composed by Protestant Tamil converts. The German missionaries

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who followed him and were also Bible translators — Benjamin Schultze (1689–1760) and Johann Phillip Fabricius (1711–1791) — continued to add to this collection in subsequent decades until there was a sizeable collection of hymns in the Tamil language. By the late 18th century, the Lutheran church in Tamil Nadu had at least 300 Tamil hymns. In the 19th century, the Christian Literature Society published several such collections of hymns translated mainly from the German and English. A brief examination of the translated hymn is in order at this point. While songs composed by Tamils drew from the musical and poetical traditions of Tamil culture, the hymns translated directly from European hymns followed in Tamil, the rhythm, metre and tune of the original. The translations of German and English hymns were written in a rhythmic Tamil prose that was sometimes lineated in a manner resembling poetry, but as Indira Viswanathan Peterson (2004) points out, they did not conform to the metrical, prosodic or musical criteria of a Tamil song. These were sung to European melodies. There were no attempts at rhyme through alliteration and assonance, fundamental elements in Tamil verse. Instead, there were frequent attempts at giving end-rhyme to the hymns although this was unnatural to Tamil poetry. Often words were either split ungrammatically for the sake of fitting a particular metre or tune; or, vowels were lengthened, thus distorting the meaning of the word (Selvamony 1999: 364). These hymns were constrained by the Western musical tradition of clean-cut notes instead of the open-ended notes generally followed by the Tamil style of singing. Further, Western musical instruments such as the organ or piano mostly accompanied the hymns, thus moulding congregational singing to patterns that were unnatural to Tamil poetry or singing. Even Sastri, who otherwise greatly admired Fabricius’s translations, is said to have re-composed his translated hymns so that they fit Tamil poetic conventions better. Besides this body of translated hymns, a parallel tradition of Protestant Tamil songs evolved. Evidence of early compositions by Protestant Tamils comes from manuscripts collected by James Hough in the 19th century of songs composed by the 18th-century Kanapati Vattiyar (ca. 1685–1740), one of Ziegenbalg’s converts, who wrote the story of Christ and other biblical episodes in song which were then used in Tranquebar to attract crowds as a prelude to street preaching (Baskaran 1986: 86; Young and Jeyaraj 2006). By the late 18th century, hymns composed by Protestant Tamils began to be sung as part of church worship. Sastri’s early 19th-century documents reveal that devotional songs composed by him and other Protestant Tamils were sung by Tanjore congregations: he mentions Rahel Naick, Gabriel catechist

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and Raphael Naick, three generations of a family who ‘have made tolerable and various Pathams [a kind of musical composition] and Pulembles [pulampal: song of lamentation] according to Tamil tunes’.2 Songs composed by Catholics3 were also available to Protestant Tamils but not very welcome: ‘We did not at all make use of Popish songs on such occasions: for though part of them are of an excellent metre and systematical structure, yet they contain many errors with regard to the principles of Religion’ (Pandegey Perasda¯bam, in Sastri 1829). Although devotional folk songs have not usually been included in church hymnals, they have continued to be sung at festive occasions and have influenced the style and form of hymns composed for church worship. However, according to Bayly, this began to decline with the onset of the 19th century when ‘like Hinduism, South Indian Islam and Christianity were becoming increasingly formalised in the period of British rule’ (Bayly 1989: 429). Despite this process, it is possible to trace links between popular Protestant Tamil songs from before the 19th century and developments in Protestant devotional practices in the 19th century. One of the strongest links is the continued Protestant Tamil harnessing of the bhakti genres as a means to articulate Protestant devotion in the 19th and 20th centuries. But we will return to the subject of Tamil bhakti a little later in this section. Despite evidence of a growing body of Protestant hymns composed by Protestant converts, it is only in the middle of the 19th century that songs composed by Protestant Tamils began to be printed as part of the church hymnals of various mission societies. The Rev. E. Webb (1819–1898), of the American Madurai Mission, seems to have advanced the cause of introducing ‘native metres’ into public worship. Rev. Webb spent some time in Tanjore studying Tamil music and in 1853 a volume containing the hymns he selected were printed at Madras for the Madurai Mission.4 Until then, according to Murdoch, there had been resistance to Tamil hymns from the missionaries: ‘Their use in public worship was at first opposed by many Missionaries. The associations were said to be bad in many cases; the absence of a devotional spirit was alleged; the music was said to be tame and wanting in character’ (Murdoch 1865: 11). However, Murdoch records divided opinion on this with those who were open to Tamil hymns, believing that ‘soon the associations would be Christianized; that many hymns expressed deep religious feeling; that some of the tunes were very beautiful, and that whatever might be their relative merits as musical compositions, the taste of people should be consulted’ (ibid.). Going by Murdoch’s documentation, this first collection of hymns was so popular that a competition was held to invite more hymns on various

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Christian subjects. Webb made selections from the 400 entries and along with the previous collection, printed a new volume containing 281 Tamil hymns in 1860. There is further evidence that not all Protestant missionaries favoured translations or compositions using Western rules. A few missionaries, who recognised the power of Tamil poetry and music in the Protestant Tamil church, advocated the use of Tamil songs rather than translated ones. Rev. J. P. Jones wrote in 1895, It should be remembered that a century and less ago the attitude of Christian scholars in India towards a strictly Hindu terminology was practically the same as their attitude towards Hindu music. To touch and use either was pollution. The consequence, in the case of native music, was that no mission deigned to use it. It was all western music—heavy, clumsy and utterly foreign to the life and spirit of the people (1895: 50).

H. A. Popley, an early 20th-century missionary who was engaged in what he terms ‘musical evangelism’, wanted to see the Christian gospel linked to expressions of ‘India’s religious devotion’ because, For depth of feeling, power of appeal and beauty of expression, there is very little in Tamil Christian literature to compare with the wonderful devotional literature of the Saivites and Vaishnavites of South India. The best of our Tamil Christian literature has drunk deep of these Hindu works and is often consciously modelled upon them (Popley and Stephen 1914: 3).

However, this support for original Protestant compositions in Tamil in the style of Saivite or Vaisnavite Tamil devotional hymns or for non-Western practices of singing devotional music was rare. As we will see later, both the writing as well as performance of Protestant Tamil hymns using alternative traditions on occasion became points of considerable disagreement with some of the missionaries. Webb’s publication certainly did not put to rest the issue of whether European or Tamil hymns should be encouraged to develop as part of Protestant worship in Tamil churches. A series of articles exchanged on the issue of singing Tamil hymns which appeared in a missionary periodical called the Morning Star (Tamil title, Utayata¯rakai) from Jaffna in Sri Lanka5 the year following the publication of Webb’s collection of hymns, is one of many mid19th-century public discussions that occurred on the subject. In the January

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issue of 1854, a correspondent whom we know only as ‘H___s’ (Morning Star 1854a) wrote an article on the subject of replacing European music with Tamil music, entitled ‘Are Native Christians to have any Psalmody in their celebration of divine worship? If so what is it?’ initiating a lively exchange until July of the same year when the editors of the newspaper firmly ask that the controversy be ‘dropped’. ‘H___s’ is very concerned with what he terms a ‘movement going on’ to introduce ‘another system more congenial to the national tastes of native Christians, viz.: one based upon the system of versification found in Tamil books and capable of being sung to the chants in common use among the people’ (ibid.). To him this implied that every Tamil hymnbook that had been in use until then had been a ‘positive barrier to the adoption of a system more calculated to improve the taste of the people, elevated [sic] the heart in divine worship and advance the great cause of Christian truth’ (ibid.). In his opinion, however, this movement would inflict ‘a serious evil upon our rising Christian population in taking from them one of the most effectual means of magnifying the divine Being in a manner suitable to his majesty’ (ibid.). However, three correspondents — ‘David on the Coast’, ‘Oppidan’ and ‘Felix’ — reply in subsequent issues defending the introduction of Tamil music in the church. David and Felix defend Tamil music energetically. In their opinion there is a clear case for a shift to Tamil music as ‘native Christians every where, if left to their free choice, seem to prefer [Tamil music]’. Oppidan does not support Tamil music as emphatically but is convinced that current practices need reviewing: Whatever differing views may be taken of the subject, one thing seems very evident both from the letter and our own knowledge of the matter, that the present state of sacred music, as used in congregational worship, is far from satisfactory. We have heard Europeans and Tamulians [sic] alike find fault with it (Morning Star 1854b).

David enquires, ‘Is it not because the tunes introduced from the west are unknown and uncongenial, that so little interest is taken in the singing . . . ?’ (Morning Star 1854c). His argument suggests that the wider choice now available was ample justification for the adoption of Tamil songs: ‘[Until] a few years [ago] suitable hymns for singing in Tamil metre were not found, but now we have them and we have the liberty of choice between the two kinds. This was not the case some years ago’ (ibid.). Felix asserts that:

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 Hephzibah Israel Our tunes . . . are unintelligible and distasteful to Asiatics . . . [L]et natives and Europeans be content to sing each in the way he likes best, . . . and since we have at last discovered that our music is distasteful to the former, let us not continue the system because it has been followed since the days of [Christian Frederick] Schwartz [1726–1798] (Morning Star 1854d).

‘H___s’ rebuts their arguments forcefully and in the following exchanges they challenge each other to a competition to judge the merits between European and Tamil singing, ‘H__s’ claiming that the latter, ‘whatever it might appear, it would not appear “discoursing sweet music”’ (Morning Star 1854e). It is clear from these articles that it was not only the content of the Tamil hymns that was in dispute but also their performance. ‘Good singing’ associated with ‘European’ hymns is repeatedly contrasted with ‘bad singing’ of Tamil songs (described as chants, undecided tone, strumming, lack of harmony, and use of Tamil instruments) that prevented the ‘carrying out the great purpose of Christianising the people’ (ibid.). Like ‘H___s’, some others even suggested that Tamil poets should learn to compose in Western tunes and metre: ‘some well educated native Christians with a turn for poetry should be let into the mysteries of English metre and accent, and be asked to compose new hymns’ (Annual Report, Madras Religious Tract and Bible Society [hereafter, MRTBS] 1875: 43). But this particular project never materialised in any organised fashion. Tracing the entire history of this particular debate is not within the scope of this work but arguments such as these point once again to the unease with which Tamil devotional poetry was viewed within the Protestant devotional space in South India. In the last quarter of the century, the MRTBS initiated a formal debate on the kinds of hymns that were to be published in the hymnbook, extending the debate on Bible translation that took place around the same time in South India. It is apparent that the hymns were perceived as playing a vital and supportive role, reinforcing acceptable Protestant concepts that the Protestant Tamil community was to be grounded in. In keeping with trends in issuing ‘uniform’ translations of the Bible, the MRTBS in the 1870s planned a common hymnbook for all churches in the Tamil area: a ‘Union Tamil Hymn Book’ to complement the ‘Union Version’ of the Bible. Most missionaries writing in response to an appeal for suggestions acknowledged that Tamil hymns were more popular than translations of European ones but nevertheless advised that the collection should include only one-third or half the number of translated hymns (Annual Reports, MRTBS, 1874–1877).

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This organisational scheme, of dividing the hymn book into two sections with the first entitled ‘hymns’ comprising Tamil translations of German and English hymns and the second section, entitled ‘lyrics’, containing original Tamil compositions, is still apparent in late 20th-century Tamil hymnals. Lyrics are still half the number of hymns in a standard Tamil Anglican or Lutheran anthology. The Tamil titles for the two sections — pa¯ma¯lai (garland of hymns) and kı¯rttanai 6 — remain the same in the current church hymnal of the Church of South India. Comparing the print history of official hymnals with those of popular Tamil hymn collections offers further insight into the development of an independent Protestant hymn tradition in Tamil. Theodore Baskaran’s research into Christian folk songs reveals that in the last few decades of the 19th century, a large number of song and ballad books on Christian themes were published. He found that the format of the Christian songbooks was very similar to that of Hindu devotional songs and the manner in which they were printed: ‘The words Yesu thunai (Jesus helps) were printed on top of the opening page, in the place of Pillaiyar suzhi (the sign of Ganesa). A small picture of a cross, flanked by two kneeling angels, was printed below this sentence’ (Baskaran 1986: 88). According to him, these books were priced very low and were popular enough to make their publication a viable commercial proposition for small presses such as the Albion and the Arch. Sosaiyappan Press in Madras. However, there is much that is as yet unknown about the nature of popular 19th-century Protestant hymns in Tamil, which remains a rich area deserving of scholarly attention. What we do know more about is what has survived as part of mainstream Protestant Tamil hymns sung in worship services. For instance, Vedanayaka Sastri’s kı¯rttanai , which have been featured prominently in Lutheran and Anglican hymnals, are much better documented. Sastri’s kı¯rttanai were songs in a new genre that was developed and perfected in Tanjore in the 18th century (Peterson 2002, 2004). The adoption of South Indian music and bhakti traditions to express Protestant and Catholic faith came mostly from singer poets who converted to Christianity in the 18th and 19th centuries. Apart from Sastri in Tamil Nadu, the Telugu Purushothama Chaudhari (1803–1890) and the Malayali Mosavalsalam Sastrikal (1847–1916) are the better known vernacular poets who created a vast corpus of Christian poetic literature in Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam: they composed poems following the kı¯rttanai of Karnatak classical music, using the tripartite structure — pallavi, anupallavi and caran.am. Their poems have continued to feature prominently in church worship until the present despite the critique offered of this particular genre

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as participating in Tamil high culture by 20th-century Protestant Dalit theologians such as Theophilus Appavoo (Sherinian 2002). We will now consider the second important context mentioned here — the tradition of bhakti that had developed into a popular and effective generic vehicle for expressing sacred devotion. Tamil bhakti or devotional poetry was written by Tamil Saiva and Vaisnava poet-saints from the 6th to the 9th centuries. This devotional poetry in Tamil was composed contemporaneously with Buddhist and Jain literature for some time and was written at a time of intense Saiva and Vaisnava revival in Tamil society to counter Buddhist and Jain claims in South India. The bhakti poetry of the Saiva sect is a large body of heterogeneous literature held by tradition to have been produced by 63 na¯yanma¯rs (Tamil Saiva saints) and is known as the Tirumarai, that is, the ‘Holy Book’. The bhakti poetry of the Vaisnava sect is believed to have been composed by 12 a¯lva¯rs (Vaisnava saints) and two other poets. According to Zvelebil, the earliest of these poet-saints, Poykai, Putam and Pey, probably date to around 650–700 ce. While Manikkavacakar’s Tiruva¯cakam (the Holy Verses; c. 9th century) is the most popular of the Saiva bhakti tradition, its Vaisnava counterpart is the Tiruva¯ymoli (‘holy’ or ‘sacred words’), one of the four works of Namma¯lva¯r, a poet-saint who lived between the 8th and 9th centuries ce. The second significant phase of Tamil bhakti occurred in the second half of the 19th century as a result of another ‘revival’ within Hinduism, attributed in no small part to its encounter with Western Christianity. The religious context within which Tamil bhakti traditions developed clarifies why it became such a powerful instrument for Protestant poets as well. Much bhakti poetry was written in a competitive vein in which ‘the superiority of one sect, tradition or lineage over another [was] strongly asserted’ as offering a uniquely correct perception of divine truth (Callewaert and Snell 1994: 5, 6). In fact, most histories of Tamil literature, as Richard Davis (1998) has shown, present the encounter between Buddhism or Jainism on the one hand, and medieval Tamil Saiva philosophy, Saiva Siddhanta, in confrontational terms: as a Hindu triumph after the threat posed by the two heterodox faiths. However, the conflict was both intra-sectarian, between Tamil Saivism, Vaisnavism and the Sanskritic tradition of Vedantic Hinduism, and inter-sectarian between Tamil Saivism and its Buddhist and Jain rivals in medieval Tamil culture. Therefore, bhakti poetry became a means to reassert a Tamil Saiva or Vaisnava identity and proved successful in suppressing rival religious movements on several fronts. However, there are two important qualifications to bear in mind. First, that although these forms of poetic devotion were often presented as exclusive to

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one sect, there was also an interchange of ideas between religious sects. Davis (1998), for example, has argued convincingly that although Tamil bhakti poetry was presented in opposition to Buddhism and Jainism, it was more a case of Saiva Siddhanta’s borrowing and reformulation of the Buddhist and Jain notions of piety and devotion. Second, Tamil religious communities have claimed superior status by their use of a particular genre for expressing religious devotion: ‘[w]riting a counter-poem in a shared genre was one way to declare equal or superior status in relation to the rival sect, and a good way to subvert the influence or challenge the authority of the rival’s text’ (Peterson 2004: 42). By writing in Tamil poetic genres of bhakti, Sastri and other poet converts were participating within long-established existing networks of religious appropriation and competition. In appropriating elements of existing poetic genres from Tamil literary culture, they show an appreciation for the close relationship that had historically been accepted between writing poetry and defining one’s religious identity in the Tamil context. Further, both medieval Saiva bhakti poetry and the Tiruva¯ymoli were canonised as the ‘fifth Veda’ or the ‘Tamil’/‘Dra¯vida Veda’ within the Saiva and Vaisnava traditions in later centuries, thus giving them equal status with the four in Sanskrit.7 This meant that these poems have been recited as part of temple ritual worship, and it is this body of medieval Tamil bhakti poetry that was powerfully deployed by non-Brahmin high castes from the late 19th century, to assert a Tamil, non-Brahmin identity over the Brahmanic Hinduism associated with the Sanskrit traditions. It is important to take note that the majority of the 19th-century Protestant poets belonged to these same high, non-Brahmin castes which were predominantly responsible for the mobilisation of different phases of the assertion of Tamil identity through the century. The close linking of Tamil bhakti with Tamil Saiva and Vaisnava traditions meant that Protestant Tamil poets could engage with bhakti genres both to speak to rival religious traditions and speak of their Tamil identity.

II Vedanayakam Pillai (known from 1815 as Vedanayaka Sastri) was born into the Vellala caste, one of the higher non-Brahmin Tamil castes and the chief upholder of both Saiva and Vaisnava religious traditions. The son of a Saiva Vellala who had converted first to Catholicism and in 1785 to the Evangelical church of the German missionaries, Sastri was given traditional Tamil schooling in his early years (Gnanadickam 1987 [1899]). Though he was placed under the missionary Christian Frederick Schwartz (1726–1798) for

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instruction when he was 11 years old, he spent the next four years in Tanjore, which in the 18th century was an important centre of Tamil and South Indian literature and arts. In 1794, he was appointed head of the Tanjore Mission School that was set up by Schwartz to train Tamil catechists but lost his position in 1829. He was then appointed court poet by the king of Tanjore, Serfoji II, in 1829 but was later dismissed by Serfoji’s son when Sastri refused to compose poetry in honour of the king’s deities. As mentioned previously, the Tanjore court in the late 18th century was multilingual, bringing together Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, and Sanskrit. Sastri’s literary choices as a Protestant poet were thus directly influenced by the literary conventions he shared with Tanjore poets and pundits of other faiths. Accordingly, he created a body of Protestant Tamil poetry that combined Hindu religious and literary conventions with his Protestant belief and devotion. Although Vedanayaka Sastri wrote several prose works, these were mainly polemical or philosophical treatises. He is celebrated by the Protestant Tamil community predominantly for his poetical compositions of which there are 500 devotional songs alone. Of a total of 120 Tamil works, the majority are in verse. He used various Tamil traditional as well as folk verse forms: the pirapantam, anta¯ti, kuravañci, kummi, and the newly-introduced kı¯rttanai. He composed an alternative liturgy in Tamil for use in the church and for personal devotion: a combination of prayers and hymns for the morning and evening, called Jepama¯lei. He used his most elaborate and dramatic composition in verse, Bethlehem Kuravañci, as a platform to describe the histories of the Bible and the spread of Christianity, and a new cosmology in place of the Hindu one (Peterson 2004).8 He also composed polemical works, such as Ca¯stirakummi — an attack on Saivism, in verse. Kurut..tu vali (Blind Way), a tract that he wrote to explain Christianity to potential converts, was also in verse. Many of his songs or kı¯rtanai continue to figure prominently in Tamil Church hymnals today. As Peterson observes, Sastri was able to give Tamil congregations what the missionaries had not: ‘a body of comprehensive, wide-ranging, original sacred poetry in Tamil idioms which in their eyes surpassed the religious literature of the Hindus, especially the Saiva and Vaisnava Vellalas’ (Peterson 2002: 16). However, in adopting bhakti genres for Protestant devotion, Sastri’s literary choice challenged some Protestant boundaries that led to several disputes with contemporary missionaries. His quarrels came to a head in 1829 when he was both removed from his teaching post at the Mission School and expelled from the Evangelical Church. Thereafter, he held his own church services at alternative venues. His disagreements with the missionaries, primarily over

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observation of caste distinctions and Bible translation, also included quarrels over the writing of hymns, the performance of Protestant songs, the musical instruments to accompany singing, and the organisation of religious festivals. Of these, we will discuss three main points of contention that might indicate why bhakti poetic genres — both bhakti as a genre for writing devotion and as a performance mode — had become sites of conflict.

The Emotive Contours of Bhakti First, the intense emotion that is intrinsic to bhakti devotion was viewed with suspicion by mainstream Protestant missions in South India. J. P. Jones, one such missionary at the end of the 19th century, had misgivings about the act of faith that was exalted by bhakti, such that it acquired mystical potency. He thought Protestant Tamils ‘need to be weaned from this false view of faith, or piety’ (Jones 1900: 52). Bhakti’s emphasis on the sufficiency and power of emotion seemed dangerous to missionaries who were aware of the skirmishes between the institutional Anglican Church and dissenting groups in 18th- and 19th-century England over religious ‘enthusiasm’. Since the late 17th- and 18th-centuries in Britain, religious and poetic enthusiasm had already been linked rather negatively and had been the subject of debate in political and religious polemics. Even missionaries in India who were themselves from dissenting or non-conformist traditions in Britain would not have been too keen on what was understood as poetry’s encouragement of ‘enthusiasm’ in the context of the intense devotional emotionalism of Tamil bhakti. The bhakti paradigm of the visceral experience of God, of unmediated relationship and of the ability to give spontaneous, dramatic expression to emotional love (Peterson 1994: 224) when transferred into the Protestant context hints at the displacement of the authority of the church and clergy. Although 19th-century Protestant missionaries loved to distinguish themselves from their Catholic counterparts on the ground that every Protestant convert was encouraged to read and interpret the Bible for himself or herself, they also felt a paternal compulsion to curb the emotionalism of their flock. Thus, the ‘rational’ missionary viewed their ‘emotional’ and ‘high-strung’ converts at times with indulgence but more often with dismay. This may have been why Charles T. E. Rhenius (1790–1838) sought to diminish the festival calendar and to reduce the ‘sensual aspects’ of celebration, something that Sastri and fellow Evangelical Lutherans bitterly resented (this will be discussed further subsequently).

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Second, the metaphor of erotic love in bhakti poetry, ‘the dark, dangerous side of the sacred as erotic’ (Peterson 1994: 224), would have been considered inappropriate to Protestant devotion. Sastri avoided explicit sexual connotations in his poetry and Protestant literary critics from the 19th century onwards have taken care to point out that there are no unseemly erotic references in Protestant Tamil poetry even though they followed bhakti patterns of devotion. In this they seem to be missing the point that it was not erotic content that was being objected to but bhakti as form, perceived as a genre which by its very nature embodied the possibilities of erotic communion between the devotee and his or her god. As Peterson (2004) has argued, Sastri was able to transform the eroticism implicit in the kuravañci (fortune-teller) genre through the use of allegory to present Christ’s love for his church as bride. Through the allegorical mode, Sastri was able to draw on the erotic and love mysticism which was a part of classical and bhakti Tamil traditions and re-use them in a Protestant context to convey the mystical union envisaged between Christ and his church. Despite this, according to new rules imposed by certain missionary societies in the 1820s, the Tamil congregations had to refrain from singing hymns in the Tamil performance forms since the modes and effects of these forms were considered too sensuous and too close to Hindu models, to be fit for use in the Protestant Tamil church. Moreover, with relation to the erotic aspects of bhakti poetry, its performance as part of the temple ritual of worship and association with the devadasi (female temple dancers) performance tradition, meant that bhakti was unfavourably linked in the missionary imagination to notions of immoral and licentious sexual acts allowed by southern temple practices. Significantly, Sastri often held public performances of his compositions with his children and professional singers forming a repertoire of performers in imitation of temple performances. However, Peterson (2004) has argued that Sastri was aware of the association with devadasi performances, and therefore presented his compositions more as sung or lyric poems. Clearly, although he shared in the aesthetic and devotional discourses of Tamil bhakti traditions, Sastri also wished to distance himself from elements that might be construed as emotional or erotic excess.

The Location of the Poet Sastri self-consciously locates himself at two levels: first, he locates himself in terms of the figure of the ‘poet-saint’; and second, he locates himself historically in the context of existing traditions of Protestant missions and churches in

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South India as well as the systems of patronage available to him at different points in his career. In order to represent himself as a Protestant poet(-saint) Sastri exploits existing traditions within bhakti where the poet and the poem become the medium of contact between the devotee and God, and the bhakti poem acts as a context for direct religious experience. In his landmark study of Tamil bhakti, Norman Cutler has argued that: [b]hakti poems transmute the poet’s experience into the devotee-audience’s experience, and in this way the audience is brought into the kind of close proximity to divinity that distinguishes the saints from ordinary mortals. The blurring of the boundary between saint and god and between devotee and saint is basic to the poetics of bhakti (1987: 112).

Cutler’s argument (2003) that poem, poet, patron, and audience participate in a single performance event with the poet’s position as central, so much so that the performance is incomplete without the presence of the poet, seems to offer the Protestant poet pre-eminence over the object and act of devotion. Cutler’s further contention (1987: 51) that in bhakti, devotion engenders divinity in the poet devotee where the perfected devotee or saint is treated as a divine being is a rather touchy issue in the Protestant context. The rejection of the power of the saint and clergy as mediator between congregation and deity had after all held a significant place in Protestant iconoclasm; bhakti performances which at times rendered the poet devotee ‘divine’ through the act of devotion would be reinstating the figure of the ‘saint’ through the bhakti poet. Moreover, in the bhakti context there is a suggestion that the devotee’s experience of the hymns gains such importance that it may seem to take precedence over the attention due to the divine object of devotion. Such elements in the bhakti tradition may have seemed to missionaries as a potential threat to the balance of power in the devotee–deity relationship within the Protestant paradigm. Sastri was asked to remove from his hymns all ‘signature verses’ that carried his name.9 Conflict arose between some missionaries and Sastri over this point as early as 182710 and came to a head in 1858. In his ‘Humble Address’ Sastri protested, defending his practice as part of an established Tamil tradition of writing sacred poetry: As the names of David, Asaph, Solomon, Moses, Ethan, Eman, are mentioned in the beginning of the Psalms so the name of the author occurs in the end of every Padam or song notwithstanding this was done according to the rule of the ancient Sastrees and to the principles of religion, he [Rev. L. P. Haubroe] says that this is pride and blasphemy’ (Sastri 1829).

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However, G. U. Pope, an eminent Tamil missionary-scholar, thought that naming oneself in the context of church worship went against the ideal of glorifying none but God (Peterson 2004: 50). Although Sastri attempts to respond to missionary authority by citing customary Tamil literary practice as counter-authority, his hymns included in published anthologies were printed without his signature verse. Collections of Tamil hymns, such as Webb’s, published without these verses reveal that missionary opposition to this practice was serious. In the context of these disputes, it is useful to analyse where and how Sastri locates himself in the course of his career as Protestant poet. Sastri situates himself in relation to three distinct sources of authoritative patronage. Protestant missionaries, in particular the Evangelical Lutherans of the 18th century whom he refers to in his writings as the ‘old missionaries’, remain a primary source of authority. However, with the passing of power and influence from the ‘old’ Lutheran missionaries to the ‘new’ Anglican missionaries, he can only cite the former as symbolic patrons. In their stead, he turns to two alternative sources for patronage. The first, a familiar form of patronage in the Tamil context, is from the court. Serfoji II (ruler of Tanjore from 1799 to 1832) appointed Sastri as court poet in 1829 after the latter’s expulsion from the church. Sastri and Serfoji had spent several years as pupils under the care of the Lutheran missionary Schwartz and seemed to have maintained their friendship until Serfoji’s death in 1832. Dismissed by Serfoji’s son later on, Sastri continued to receive sporadic patronage from Hindu and Muslim landowners and merchants in the following years. The second alternative form of patronage is from a more unusual source in the early 19th-century Protestant Tamil context. Support and recognition come to Sastri from the Vellala sections of the congregations of the Evangelical churches of Tanjore, Madras, Madurai, Palayamcottai, Trichinopoly, and Tranquebar. These congregations publicly awarded Sastri several testimonials for his contribution to Protestant Tamil literature.11 The Tanjore and Tranquebar Protestant Tamil communities awarded him the title ‘cuvice¯sha kavira¯yar’ or the ‘Evangelical Poet’ in 1808. The Tamil congregation at Vepery felicitated him with the title ‘Ña¯nateepa kavira¯yar’, that is, ‘the poet who is the light of wisdom’, with several ceremonial honours and a testimonial signed by 40 members of the congregation in 1809 (Devanesan 1956: 32). The Madras congregation recognised that Sastri had succeeded in his attempts to expound Christian doctrine in verse that outshone ‘all worldly poets’ since it was written ‘according to the grammatical and poetical prosodical rules’ (Gnanadickam and Noah 1987: 105). Their praise reveals how his poetry

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had proved advantageous to the community: ‘We are very much honoured and praised before the pagans, which is a great advantage to our children’ (ibid.). The emphasis that the testimonials lay on Sastri as a poet underscores the significance attached to Sastri’s Protestant poetry rather than to his prose works. I agree with Peterson’s analysis (2004: 32) that ‘the testimonials affirm that, in the early 19th century, the cultural identity of a Tamil religious community was intimately linked with its possession of a body of poetic works that shared in the common discourses of secular and sacred poetry in Tamil’. Moreover, Peterson’s reading that ‘[e]ach of the testimonials was signed by leaders and members of the local congregation, indicating that . . . the Tamil congregations were the real patrons and audience of Sastri’s works’ (ibid.: 30) suggests that despite missionary disapproval of Sastri, the congregations were willing to lay claim on Sastri’s poetry in order to speak their new religious persuasion to their non-Protestant, fellow-Tamils in the language and traditions of Tamil religious culture. Sastri was able to make the leap from the prose translations of the Bible and other Protestant literature to the poetic traditions of sacred literature that he and his fellow Protestant Tamils required in order to establish a Protestant place in the existing patterns of rivalry between various religious sects. The patronage of the congregations reveals that they saw Sastri’s poetry as a body of Protestant Tamil literature that successfully combined Tamil literary traditions with their Protestant faith. It is significant that Sastri’s Protestant patrons honoured him in the same way that pulavars or poets were traditionally honoured in Tamil society — conferring elaborate titles with public display and ceremony. It also reveals that they were willing to signal their allegiance to Tamil aesthetic conventions and literary traditions to counter the institutional authority claimed by Protestant missionaries when it was necessary. In doing so, they locate Sastri the poet as central to early 19th-century Protestant Tamil self-perception.

The Performative Context Where, how and in fact whether the performance of Tamil hymns and Tamil music was to be at all part of Protestant worship was a contentious issue in the mid-19th-century Tamil context. The inclusion of Tamil music, by which I refer not so much to the contents of the songs but to their metre, tune, accompanying instruments, and the mode of singing, was both the subject of public debate in Protestant journals (as shown here) and a matter of personal concern to Sastri. The publication in 1853 of E. Webb’s collection of Tamil hymns Ña¯nakı¯rttanai was a decisive but in some respects divisive moment in

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the history of Protestant Tamil worship. The first appearance in print of Tamil music formalised aspects of popular culture within the Protestant Tamil community which had hitherto existed in parallel to institutionalised Protestant worship within the Tamil church. The change introduced by the circulation of Webb’s collection and its immense popularity triggered discussion on what forms of music were to be performed as part of Protestant church worship. Sastri had of course already been raising this issue as one of the four ‘cruelties’12 and the type of performances he staged as well as the inclusion of his hymns in the printed collection led to further conflict with contemporary missionaries. Sastri acquired status as the foremost Protestant Tamil poet because he not only composed hymns but actively organised the performance of his hymns and poetry. During Sastri’s lifetime, his poetry was sung both within as well as outside the Tamil church services. Sastri held annual religious festivals and travelled to various Tamil cities to perform his poetry. He held special services at his residence during Christmas and Lent. He held musical discourses which were Protestant events similar to the popular ka¯laks.¯e pam, the Tamil equivalent to the harikatha.13 Through his investment in oral performance and the staging of these performances outside the controlled environment of the traditional church service, Sastri created a wider public space for Protestant poetry. However, such performances did not enjoy missionary patronage in the early 19th century.14 From several of Sastri’s letters of petition it is clear that modes of Tamil performance were a sensitive issue between the Evangelical churches and the missionaries. It seems that the ‘new’ missionaries (he specifically names the Reverends Rhenius and Haubroe) were objecting to the presence of Tamil religious practices, which they saw as ‘sensuous’ and ‘heathen’, in Protestant worship. It appears that these missionaries were attempting to curtail ‘feast days’, that is, annual festivals in the Lutheran church calendar, both for its visual (floral decoration of the church) and aural (Tamil music) excess. Terming it ‘The Third Cruelty: Corruption of Festivals’, Sastri complains of how earlier ways of celebrating sacred occasions were no longer ‘permitted’: The Rev. Mr [John Caspar] Kohlhoff [1762–1844] also, without considering the reasons being on his part, prevented us from celebrating the festivals of our Lord gladly, according to our former custom and locked up the gates of the church on new years day of 1827 and directed the people to put up a prayer in the school and ordered to cut off the garlands of flowers which adorned the church saying that it was an heinous sin (Sastri 1829).

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Here, however, it is the dispute over Tamil singing that concerns us more. Sastri sets out in great detail his anxiety over the ‘Fourth Cruelty: Tamil Divine Song’ where he recalls past Lutheran practices with nostalgia. Not only had the missionaries encouraged Tamil singing but listened to it ‘joyfully’ and approved of the training of Tamil youth in singing (ibid.). Composition of new Tamil songs was encouraged according to Sastri because ‘[t]he former missionaries at the first commencement of their receiving gentiles into Christianity found that the Tamilians were offended at the tunes of the European Hymns and performed the divine service by singing a few divine songs composed by the Roman Catholics’, and so ‘the Missionaries themselves gave them prose to versify, and used them always in the divine service’ (ibid.). Sastri offers evidence of print history from the Lutheran almanacs ‘where 10 stanzas were composed and added to the end . . . and sent to the Tamilians every year’ as proof that another system had existed previously (ibid.). In Sastri’s understanding, Rev. Haubroe influenced Rev. Kohlhoff ‘in order that we should not use at all Tamil songs since 1827’ (ibid.). First, the new missionaries had re-translated the ‘agreeable translations’ of the former missionaries, finding ‘faults captiously in the correct words of the Tamil songs . . . [and] affixing [their, i.e., the new missionaries’] erroneous meanings to them’ (ibid.). Second, Sastri moves on to the main point: there is dispute over how these Tamil songs were to be sung and with what instruments. He argues that musical preferences were a matter of cultural not spiritual difference, speaking out compellingly in favour of not objecting ‘to the standing rules of the country’: As Europeans like decent music such as organ, violin, flute etc harmoniously suiting the tunes of hymns and use them in divine service, so we like a decent musics which suits our Tamil songs such as Harp, Guitar, Timbral, Cymbal etc. and use them in such time thinking that it will be acceptable to God and agreeable to the tenor of the 150th Psalm (ibid.).

Once again, Sastri differentiates Lutheran from Catholic practice as a means to demonstrate the former’s commitment to ‘praise the Lord by divine songs’ in an appropriate manner. So he claims for instance: ‘[b]ut we have never used those riotous musics which the Roman Catholics use in their festivals . . . and we wish neither to use them’ (ibid.). It is clear that even this restriction to the use of small cymbals was linked too closely to ‘heathen’ practices by the new missionaries: ‘He [Rev. Kohlhoff] not only forbids us obstinately to use any decent instruments even Cymbal with our songs saying that it is

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heathenism, but also uses what device soever he can in order that we ourselves may put an end to the Tamil singing’ (Sastri 1829). However, while limiting the accompaniments to the small cymbal — ‘we sing to the Lord in our festivals only by small bell Cymbal rejecting even those musical instruments which we might use reasonably for fear of their loudness and this we do after the divine service is over at the church and sing only the songs without any music’ — Sastri does not take into account that the cymbal was the standard instrument used in ritual singing at Saiva temples (ibid.). In Sastri’s reading this kind of restraint not only ‘spoiled the pleasures of the Tamilians’ but had more serious consequences such as being ‘a great obstacle to the propagation of true Christianity’ (ibid.). Significantly, it is to the congregations that he appeals to as the real arbiters of this issue: ‘The respected congregations and their superiors will consider according to their great wisdom and deliberately judge whether this my performance is unreasonable or not’ (ibid.). This call to rally fellow-Evangelicals points us towards the wider Tamil literary and religious contexts within which to view the circulation and performance of Sastri’s devotional hymns. The performance of devotional poetry played a significant part in Tamil religious culture. Norman Cutler (2003), while discussing the context in which T. Mı¯na¯tcicuntaram Pillai (1815–1876) a 19th-century Saiva poet, composed and performed his poetry, points out that it is not so much the appearance of poems in print that marks their entry into the public sphere as their first official performance. Known as the aran.ke¯rram, this official debut was the oral recitation of the text by its author, or one of his pupils before a public audience. If the text was a long one, the recitation was usually conducted on a daily basis over a period of weeks or even months, and Cutler points out that this was a cultural event that ‘casts light on the nature of literary composition, performance, and patronage’ (ibid.: 283). It is most probable that until 1853 Sastri’s hymns primarily circulated through the performances he held and through manuscript copies. Known to have first performed many of his lengthy compositions at his religious festivals, Sastri participates in this distinctive feature of Tamil literary tradition. For instance, the premiere of his Gnanath Thatcha Nadagam (‘Drama of the Divine Carpenter’), completed in 1830, was held before Serfoji II who is mentioned in the 10th and 17th songs of the second section of the book entitled ‘Noah’s Ark’. Such public performances gave Sastri and his Protestant audience the opportunity to display Protestant flair and repertoire. Speaking of the 19th-century Saiva context, Cutler has argued that public recitations

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provided a context for audience members to participate in the poet’s genius: ‘It is an occasion for the poet’s patron(s) to claim a position of prestige within the community’ (Cutler 2003: 284). These alternative modes for the transmission and consumption of Protestant songs (from those permitted by the institution of the 19th-century Protestant Tamil church) reveal Sastri’s flair for appropriating elements he considered useful for Protestant purposes. Ironically, despite his several disagreements with the new set of missionaries over composing and performing Protestant devotion, he shares with them the identical goals of ‘propagating Christianity’.

III Significantly, it is not Sastri’s prose works but his devotional poetry and its performance that became sites of contest between the missionaries and the Protestant Tamil congregations. It is clear that for the early 19th-century Lutheran congregations, Sastri’s poetry effectively represented their religious identity as a Protestant community. His poetry, appropriating Tamil bhakti genres for Protestant devotion, kept the community in touch with their Tamil devotional past in ways that the translated prose Bible and hymns could not. It is through his poetry and its performance that the Protestant Tamil community was speaking to rival religious communities. Sastri’s ability to translate Protestant tenets into the language and poetic conventions from contemporary Tamil bhakti traditions that enjoyed high ritual and literary status in Tamil cultural consciousness was an attempt to re-draw the boundaries of distinction between the Tamil ‘Protestant’ and ‘non-Protestant’. However, it is also important to keep in mind that Sastri and his fellow-Evangelical Lutherans who supported him belonged to elite social castes who were constructing a Protestant identity based on high-caste perceptions of Tamil cultural and religious symbols. Further, while Sastri shared the new missionaries’ evangelistic zeal and their commitment towards separating Protestant from non-Protestant elements of faith, it is in the writing and performing of his devotional poetry that one begins to see diverging views. Protestant poetry, if written according to the literary conventions and rules that governed Tamil literary practice in his day, was not so much following ‘heathen’ religious rules but literary rules that could transform the very act of writing or translating into an appropriate act of Protestant devotion.

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Notes 1. The connotation of the term ‘evangelical’ is different in the German context from the English; that is, it was used to refer to the Lutheran church to mark a contrast with ‘Roman Catholic’, whereas in Britain it is usually used to refer to revival movements that from the early 18th century onwards have ‘spanned the gulf between the Established Church and Nonconformity in England and Wales’ and have ‘consisted of all those strands in Protestantism that have not been either too high in churchmanship or too broad in theology to qualify for acceptance’ (Bebbington 1989: ix). The congregations that early 18th-century German Lutheran missionaries established in various towns of Tamil-speaking South India were named after each town (so, for example, ‘Tanjore Evangelical Lutheran Church’ or ‘Madras Evangelical Lutheran Church’) and these formally came together as the ‘Tamil Evangelical Lutheran Church’ in 1919. 2. Vedanayaka Sastri’s Pandegey Perasda¯bam, or Pan.tikaippirasta¯pam (Festival Eulogy) was Sastri’s response to the revised Order of the Lord’s Supper published in 1825 by the Church Missionary Society in Madras. A portion of the manuscript is found in the collection of documents (OR.11.742) entitled Ja¯ti-tiruttalin payittiyam (Sastri 1829), preserved in the British Library, Oriental Printed Books and Manuscripts. 3. Sastri does not elaborate on whether these were composed by Catholic missionaries or Catholic Tamils. 4. Although not explicitly stated by John Murdoch (1865: 10), it is possible to infer from his description that Webb spent time with Vedanayaka Sastri in Tanjore to learn more about hymns in Tamil metre. This correlates with the fact that most of the hymns in this collection were authored by Sastri. 5. The Jaffna and Madurai missions both belonged to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), and personnel moved back and forth between these two centres, which explains why Webb’s initiatives in Madurai aroused attention in Jaffna. I am grateful to Richard Fox Young for pointing this out. 6. According to Peterson (2004: 39), the kı¯rttanai was a new 18th-century song form developed and perfected in Tanjore. Using simple lyrics and usually focusing on divine themes, the kı¯rttanai was a flexible form ranging in musical complexity from ones that could only be performed by classically trained musicians to those that could be sung by congregations in the bhajana style. 7. See Cutler (1987) and Carman and Narayanan (1989) for a discussion of the belief that the Tamil Vedas were not a translation or imitation of the Sanskrit Veda but revealed in Tamil as parallel to the Sanskrit Veda. 8. For a detailed examination of Sastri’s Bethlehem Kuravañci, see Peterson (2002, 2004).

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9. According to Cutler, the ‘signature verse’ was usually the 11th one called phalasruti, and operated on a different rhetorical register from the other verses. A phalasruti brings the verses it follows into ‘earshot’ of a historical audience, and it makes an explicit connection between the narrative voice heard in the poems and a quasi-historical author. ‘This author, the saint-poet, is a persona who stands somewhere at the boundary between “real-life” author, in the Western critic’s sense of the word, and an “implied author” who exists solely in the words of his composition . . . The phalasruti, which invariably includes the name of the poet and of his native village or town, “historicises” the voice heard in bhakti poetry’ (1987: 28). 10. Sastri (1829) mentions this issue as one of his complaints in his ‘Humble Address’. The manuscript is found in the collection of documents (OR.11.742) entitled Ja¯ti-tiruttalin payittiyam (1828), preserved in the British Library, Oriental Printed Books and Manuscripts. 11. Three of Sastri’s biographers give an account of the honours conferred upon him by Protestant Tamil congregations (see Devanesan 1956; Gnanadickam and Noah 1987; Manasseh 1975). 12. Sastri (1829) mentions ‘four cruelties in Saditeratoo (‘Explaining Caste’), a preface to Ja¯ti-tiruttalin payittiyam. The other ‘cruelties’ are: first, the revision of the Tamil Bible which he discusses at greater length in Noise of New Corrections [Pututtiruttalin ku¯kural] (unpublished manuscript dated 1825 and preserved in the archives of the United Theological College, Bangalore [VPC-VNS 27]); second, missionary disapproval of maintaining caste distinctions within the church; third, the banning of Tamil worship practices; and, last, the prohibiting of Tamil hymns and music as part of church services (ibid.). 13. This is the art of extempore storytelling, lasting three to four hours, introduced into Tamil Nadu from Maharashtra by the Mahratta rulers of Tanjore. Music played a very important role and the poet’s success depended on his knowledge of a wide range of subjects and the ability to create the necessary impact on the audience through music, gestures, voice, an intimate knowledge of religious texts and folklore, a packing of interesting bits of latest information into legends, and a command over words. 14. It is possible that this shift in Anglican missionaries occurred at a time when a similar change was taking place in British Anglican churches. Similar moves in favour of establishing a more formal type of Western church music occurred in the early 19th century. Roy Strong has argued that a new-found Catholicity in the Anglican Church meant that village bands and singers vanished and in their place a fully-robed choir and the organ were introduced: ‘the arrival of the barrel organ, the harmonium and the pipe organ made the old village orchestra and singers led by the parish clerk redundant and . . . extinguished a certain kind of communal exuberance in worship’ (2007: 217–218). Strong also provides

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evidence of parishioners objecting to the sound of the ‘sonorous and decorous organ’ that was very different from that of the old village band. I am grateful to Dermot Killingley for pointing me to these similarities in Strong’s study of the English country church.

References Archival Sastri, Vedanayaka. 1829. Ja¯ti-tiruttalin payittiyam (‘The Foolishness of Amending Caste’, with ‘A Humble Address’, and ‘Festival Eulogy’). British Library (London), Oriental Printed Books and Manuscripts, OR.11.742. Published Baskaran, Theodore. 1986. ‘Christian Folk Songs of Tamil Nadu’, Religion and Society 33(2): 83–92. Bayly, Susan. 1989. Saints, Goddesses and Kings: Muslims and Christians in South Indian Society 1700–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bebbington, D. W. 1989. Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s. London and New York: Routledge. Callewaert, Winand M. and Rupert Snell (eds). 1994. According to Tradition: Hagiographical Writing in India. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Carman, John and Vasudha Narayanan. 1989. The Tamil Veda: Pilòlòan’s Interpretation of the Tiruvaymoli. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Cutler, Norman. 1987. Songs of Experience: the Poetics of Tamil Devotion. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ———. 2003. ‘Three Moments in the Genealogy of Tamil Literary Culture’, in Sheldon Pollock (ed.), Literary Cultures in History: Reconstruction from South Asia, pp. 271–322. Berkeley: University of California Press. Davis, Richard H. 1998. ‘The Story of the Disappearing Jains: Retelling the SaivaJain Encounter in Medieval South India’, in John E. Cort (ed.), Open Boundaries: Jain Communities and Cultures in Indian History, pp. 213–224. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Devanesan, D. V. 1956 [1947]. Tancai Vedanayakam Sastriyar. Madras. Gnanadickam (Sastriar) and V. Noah. 1987 [1899]. Life of Vedanayagam Sastriar: The Evangelical Poet of Tanjore. Tanjore: V. S. Vedanayagam Sastriar. Jones, J. P. 1895. ‘The Need of a Revision of the Tamil Bible’, Harvest Field, 6: 41–51. ———. 1900. ‘Present Remnants of Hinduism in the Protestant Native Christian Church in South India’, Harvest Field, 2: 49–64.

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Manasseh, Dayaman. 1975. Ve¯tana¯yaka Ve¯tasa¯stiri. Madras. Morning Star. 1854a. ‘Are Native Christians to Have Any Psalmody in Their Celebration of Divine Worship? If So What Is It?’ 26 January, 14(2): 12. ———. 1854b. ‘Oppidan’, Letter to the Editor, 9 February, 14(4): 24. ———. 1854c. ‘David on the Coast’, Letter to the Editor, 23 February, 14(4): 24. ———. 1854d. ‘Singing for Native Christians’, 9 March, 14(5): 28. ———. 1854e. ‘Are Native Christians to Have Any Psalmody in their Celebration of Divine Worship? If So What Is It?’ 8 June, 14(11): 51–52. Murdoch, John. 1865. Classified Catalogue of Tamil Printed Books, with Introductory Notices. Madras. Peterson, Indira Viswanathan. 1994. ‘Tamil Saiva Hagiography’, in Winand M. Callewaert and Rupert Snell (eds), According to Tradition: Hagiographical Writing in India, pp. 191–228. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. ———. 2002. ‘Bethlehem Kuravanci of Vedanayaka Sastri of Tanjore: The Cultural Discourses of an Early-Nineteenth-Century Tamil Christian Poem’, in Judith M. Brown and Robert E. Frykenberg (eds), Christians, Cultural Interactions, and India’s Religious Traditions, pp. 9–36. London: RoutledgeCurzon. ———. 2004. ‘Between Print and Performance: The Tamil Christian Poems of Vedanayaka Sastri and the Literary Cultures of Nineteenth-Century South India’, in Stuart Blackburn and Vasudha Dalmia (eds), India’s Literary History: Essays on the Nineteenth Century, pp. 25–59. Delhi: Permanent Black. Popley, H. A. and L. I. Stephen. 1914. Handbook of Musical Evangelism. Madras: Methodist Publishing House. Selvamony, Nirmal. 1999. ‘Tamil Christian Hymn: A Postcolonial Critique’, in M. Valarmathi (ed.), On Translation, pp. 357–372. Chennai: International Institute of Tamil Studies. Sherinian, Zoe C. 2002. ‘Dalit Theology in Tamil Christian Folk Music: A Transformative Liturgy by James Theophilus Appavoo’, in Selva J. Raj and Corinne G. Dempsey (eds), Popular Christianity in India: Riting Between the Lines, pp. 233–254. New York: State University of New York Press. Strong, Roy. 2007. A Little History of the English Country Church. London: Jonathan Cape. Young, Richard Fox and Daniel Jeyaraj. 2006. ‘Singer of the Sovereign Lord: Hindu Pietism and Christian Bhakti in the Conversions of Kanapati Vattiyar, Tamil Poet’, in Andreas Gross, Y. Vincent Kumaradoss, Heike Liebau and Franckesche Stiftungen (eds), Halle and the Beginning of Protestant Christianity in India, vol. 2, pp. 951–972. Halle: Verlag der Franckeschen Stiftungen.

6

From Christian Ashrams to Dalit Theology — or Beyond An Examination of the Indigenisation/Inculturation Trend within the Indian Catholic Church XAVIER GRAVEND-TIROLE

By the time of the Vatican II Council, creative renewals in the so-called ‘inculturation’ movement were already well underway in India. But these renewals were invigorated by the Council’s relatively positive valuation of the diversity of cultures and religions, as demonstrated, for example, in the Dignitatis humanae Declaration’s acceptance of religious freedom for all humankind.1 Because of this, in the 1970s and 1980s, the inculturation project thrived in India, manifesting itself in different ways, such as in the Catholic ashram movement, Indianised liturgies and the development of different types of dialogue. By the late 1980s, however, the movement was beginning to run out of steam. The inculturation project came to be seen by some Indians as something artificial and imposed, and ferocious critiques against its putatively ‘imperialist’ origins and tendencies emerged. As we shall see, non-Christian critics like

Production of this paper was made possible by the Trudeau Foundation. Many thanks as well to Chad Bauman, Deenabandhu Manchala and Michael Amaladoss. My conversations with them significantly enhanced the quality of this chapter. Any remaining shortcomings are of course my own.

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Sita Ram Goel (1988) deemed Catholic Ashrams sinister and predatorial, while within the Church, theologians began to be more vocal about ‘the need for a reinterpretation of the Gospel in tune with the requirements of radical social action’ (Kappen 1985: ii). Thus, liberation, Dalit, tribal, feminist, and ecological theologies progressively gained momentum, and came to be seen as the new theological vanguard. In this context, intercultural and interreligious initiatives began to languish and lose energy, it seems, while these newer innovative theological movements took the initiative.2 But is the inculturation project now moribund? Are indigenisation and inculturation ventures now irrelevant, nothing more than a passé fad of a bygone era? This chapter examines the curious process by which inculturation became tremendously problematic for many (though not all) Indian Christians. My intent is not to critique the theological bases of inculturation in a normative way, but rather to articulate and enumerate the factors that explain its historical decline. The analyses focus mainly on inculturation in the Roman Catholic context, though I will also attend occasionally to Protestant voices. The structure of this chapter is quite straightforward. At the beginning, I define the boundaries of my analysis, clarify what is meant by the (Catholic) notion of inculturation (and similar concepts such as ‘indigenisation’), and present a short historical review. Afterwards, I examine the factors involved in the decline of inculturation, focusing both on social/political and theological factors.

Inculturation? Indigenisation? A Critique of the Concept ‘Culture’ is a polysemic term, ambiguous and difficult to define. Not surprisingly, then, the missiological enterprise of ‘inculturation’ is itself also, for both semantic and theological reasons, ambiguous, contested and difficult to delimit. Some theologians argue that the term is outdated and needs to be replaced by something more appropriate, like ‘interculturation’ (Amaladoss 2005: 1–17; Neelankavil 2010) or ‘contextualisation’ (Bevans 2010: 26–27). And as we shall see, for some Dalit theologians, the insensitivity Indian Christian theology historically showed toward Dalits made the inculturation project suspect from the very start (Clarke 1999: 35–43; Rajkumar 2010: 25–40). Yet, other Christian authors continue to publish books on the matter (e.g., Anthony 1997; Dias 2001, 2005; Peelman 2007) and, for Peter C. Phan (2003), a prominent and forward-thinking Catholic theologian, ‘the most urgent and controversial issue in mission for decades to come will be inculturation’

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(Phan 2003: xii). Phan argues that concepts like ‘indigenisation’, ‘inculturation’, ‘acculturation’, ‘interculturation’, ‘adaptation’, and ‘accommodation’ are merely ‘[d]ifferent terms, of varying degrees of appropriateness, [that] have been used to describe the process of introducing the Christian faith into a local culture’ (ibid.: 4). In my view, these terms are indeed related, but not identical. When used by Christian missiologists, they all refer to the attempt to translate the Gospel into an alien (i.e., previously un-Christianised) culture so that the ‘Good News’ might be (or appear to be) more relevant, appealing and ‘natural’ within a particular cultural context. Because ‘inculturation’ remains the chief term used for such missiological endeavours in Catholic circles, I shall mainly focus on that, though it should be kept in mind, for the reasons just articulated, that we are also indirectly discussing projects that have appeared under other names, which despite their subtle but important different semantic nuances, refer to more or less the same thing. According to Prudhomme (2005), ‘inculturation’ was a neologism first coined by Pierre Charles, a Belgian Jesuit missionary. Charles had been inspired by Melville J. Herskovits’s Man and His Works: The Science of Cultural Anthropology (1948), which was translated into French under the title Les bases de l’anthropologie culturelle (1952). In it, Herskovits presents different terms pertaining to the education and learning of culture such as ‘enculturation’, ‘acculturation’ or ‘transculturation’. Drawing on Herskovits, Charles (1956) articulated the notion of ‘inculturation’ as a combination of enculturation and the core Christian doctrine of incarnation. However, it was only in 1959, during the ‘29th Week of Missiological Studies’ conference in Louvain, that the term began to be used as a theological concept in official Catholic circles (Masson 1960). The term did not gain immediate popularity among Asian Catholics. For example, in the ‘Message and Resolutions of the Asian Bishop’s Meeting’, following their gathering in Manila in 1970, the first priority of the church identified was ‘to be more truly “the Church of the poor”’ (FABC 1982: 4, §19).3 Only at the end of the list of tasks did the bishops eventually call for interreligious dialogue and acknowledge that local cultures should be respected as well, so that Asian Christians might remain ‘truly Asian’: In the inculturation of the life and message of the Gospel in Asia, there have been hesitations and mistakes in the past, but we are more than ever convinced that dialogue with our fellow Asians whose commitment is to other faiths is increasingly important. We also urge on all a deep respect for the culture

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and traditions of our peoples, and express the hope that the catholicity of the Church, the root of our diversity in the oneness of faith, may serve to help Asians remain truly Asian, and yet become fully part of the modern world and the one family of mankind (ibid.: 5, §24).4

Three years later, during its first meeting as the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (FABC) in Taipei in 1974, the inculturation motif gained a significantly new status. After an earnest reflection on the proclamation of the Gospel, the bishops declared in the third section of their letter, ‘Evangelisation in Modern Day Asia’, that ‘[t]he primary focus of our task of evangelisation . . . is the building up of a truly local church’ where ‘the local church is a church incarnate in a people, a church indigenous and inculturated’ (Rosales and Arévalo 1984: 29). And, reversing the priorities implied by the 1970 ‘Message’, in the 1974 document, ‘dialogue with the poor’ appears only in the fifth section, where a ‘genuine commitment and effort to bring about social justice’ is advocated (ibid.: 31). From the time of Matteo Ricci’s arrival in China in 1582, and Roberto De Nobili’s in India in 1605, the Society of Jesus has often been boldly (if not uncontroversially) accommodationist in the way it viewed evangelisation. The importance of the fact that Charles and many others at the Louvain conference were Jesuit priests should not be underestimated. The concept of inculturation was widely discussed, and the missiological methods it implied were supported in Jesuit circles.5 Eventually the term achieved broader international currency and was popularised in theological circles by Pedro Arrupe, the Jesuit Superior General, in his momentous ‘Letter to the Whole Society on Inculturation’ (1978). Arrupe’s definition of ‘inculturation’ has been often quoted: Inculturation can be looked at from many viewpoints and seen at different levels, which must be distinguished but cannot be separated. Yet, amid the multiple formulations of the problem which we have to reckon with, the fundamental and constantly valid principle is that inculturation is the incarnation of Christian life and of the Christian message in a particular cultural context, in such a way that this experience not only finds expression through elements proper to the culture in question (this alone would be no more than a superficial adaptation), but becomes a principle that animates, directs and unifies the culture, transforming and remaking it so as to bring about ‘a new creation’ (ibid.: 1–2).

Already an implicit desideratum in Paul VI’s encyclical letter ‘Evangelii Nuntiandi’ (1975),6 inculturation became an explicit goal for the first time

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in Roman Catholic doctrine through John Paul II’s Apostolic exhortation letter ‘Catechesi Tradendae’ (1979): As I said recently to the members of the Biblical Commission: ‘The term “acculturation” or “inculturation” may be a neologism, but it expresses very well one factor of the great mystery of the Incarnation.’ We can say of catechesis, as well as of evangelisation in general, that it is called to bring the power of the Gospel into the very heart of culture and cultures. For this purpose, catechesis will seek to know these cultures and their essential components; it will learn their most significant expressions; it will respect their particular values and riches. In this manner it will be able to offer these cultures the knowledge of the hidden mystery and help them to bring forth from their own living tradition original expressions of Christian life, celebration and thought (§53.1).7

Later, in his encyclical letter, ‘Slavorum Apostoli’ (1985), the Pope defined ‘inculturation’ simply as ‘the incarnation of the Gospel in native cultures and also the introduction of these cultures into the life of the Church’ (§21.1).8 ‘Inculturation’ thus suggests that the Gospel has to be ‘incarnated’ in cultures the same way Christ incarnated himself within one specific culture at one certain time. Since Christianity claims universal legitimacy, it needs to take into account and honours the plurality of cultures in which the Catholic Church exists. The world’s various cultures, Roman Catholic theology asserted after Vatican II, cannot be subsumed within an abstract Christian philosophy, but the ‘Good News’ must reach, enter and transform each and every culture in its own singularity, through the work of local churches: In harmony with the economy of the Incarnation, the young churches, rooted in Christ and built up on the foundation of the Apostles, take to themselves in a wonderful exchange all the riches of the nations which were given to Christ as an inheritance (cf. Ps. 2:8). They borrow from the customs and traditions of their people, from their wisdom and their learning, from their arts and disciplines, all those things which can contribute to the glory of their Creator, or enhance the grace of their Saviour, or dispose Christian life the way it should be (Ad Gentes — Decree on the Mission Activity of the Church, §22.1).9

In the end, Vatican II not only augured the end of the Christendom model in which it was presumed that the Church would play a central and dominant role, but also introduced the possibility of thinking more substantially about cultures (note the plural). In so doing, the Vatican II documents helped to demarcate a new view where the anthropological and sociological aspects of

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faith were taken to be of great significance, leading to a respect for the diversity of cultures. Yet by taking the cultural dimension of religious faiths seriously, Vatican II raised new, fundamental questions about the relationship of faith, religious institutions and culture. Even today these questions have not been answered to everyone’s satisfaction. ‘Inculturation’, as I use the term, refers to how Christians, most of them theologians, have endeavoured to incarnate Christian thoughts and traditions within an indigenous system of world representation. As it is understood by its proponents, building a symbolic Christian language within a new cultural context constitutes both an act of resistance against alien elements of discourse and an act of fidelity to the Gospel itself. Since the Gospel has been understood in the light of Plato or Aristotle, goes the argument for inculturation, why not attempt to understand it in the light of the Upanishads, for instance, or through the logic of the 8th/9th-century Hindu philosopher Shankara. In the words of Jules Monchanin, another important pioneer of indigenisation, in 1939: ‘[t]he graft of the revelation that Greek Fathers have made on the Hellenic thoughts has to be attempted on Indian thought’ (Monchanin 1985: 194–195).10 Although there are some important exceptions, European Christian clerics during the colonial era were often deeply (and often unconsciously) affected by their sense of cultural and religious superiority, such that they considered as fundamentally flawed, deficient or inimical to Christian dogmas the local cultures which they encountered (for just one example among many that could be given as evidence, see Clarke 1999: 12). Therefore, to evangelise meant, among other things, to educate in a Western fashion. This created social, psychological and conceptual problems for those who became Christian. In the words of Duraiswami Simon Amalorpavadass, one of the most influential advocates of inculturation: The Gospel had the trade-mark of western Christianity. Correspondingly it contributed to the elimination or disparaging of the local cultures of the people evangelised. Christianisation meant westernisation in terms of sociocultural life. Its consequence was alienation of Christian people from their own culture, social milieus and religious traditions, and evasion from their people’s historical adventure and drifting away from the mainstream of national life. The Christians were considered as aliens or at least as second class citizens and a marginal group living in a ghetto of their own (1985: 11).

Therefore, Amalorpavadass continues, ‘missionary activity was looked upon as an act of spiritual aggression’ (ibid.) and the Church as an extraneous

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and potentially dangerous body. To avoid such problems, Amalorpavadass suggests, indigenous expression of Christianity must involve ‘the incarnation of the Gospel in concrete life situations and in every sphere of personal and family life, work and profession, involvement in social and civic activities, economic and political systems, and the cultures of each country, region and place’, as well as ‘the use of various arts like architecture, sculpture, painting, decoration, music, dance and drama’ in the ministry of the church (Amalorpavadass 2004: 52).

Overview of the Context: Inculturation in the Indian Churches I have insufficient space here to fully illustrate how ‘Indian’ the Church had already been even before efforts to indigenise the Church had come forth as an official theological goal, so I will therefore provide only a few telling and hopefully evocative examples of inculturative efforts. I will focus on more modern examples, with only a nod towards earlier attempts. The first European Catholic to express a deep, abiding and earnest interest in Hinduism was surely Roberto de Nobili (1577–1656), who was greatly inspired by his fellow Jesuit in China, Matteo Ricci (1552–1610). De Nobili desired to live, dress and eat (and think?) like an Indian, but had difficulties defending his adaptatio method before Rome and other clerics in India (who were mainly Franciscan), though not so much with local Christians, who apparently considered him a strange albeit interesting figure (Amaladoss 2007; Clooney 1988, 2009; Collins 2007; Nobili et al. 2000). Because of the Chinese and Indian Rites controversy (17th–18th centuries), however, the methods utilised by Ricci and de Nobili fell out of favour within the Catholic Church, and no significant developments in the theory or practice of inculturation were made until the turn of the 20th century. It is not clear, however, to what extent those Catholics in India who embarked again on a project to Indianise Christian realised that the renewed impulse to do so came not from Christians, but from Hindus attempting to assimilate Christian ideas. The historiography of that period is quite telling: after Raimundo Panikkar published his The Unknown Christ of Hindusim (1981[1964]), which got quite a positive reception thanks surely in part to the Vatican II renewal, Madathilparampil Mammen Thomas felt the need to respond with a no less significant book, The Acknowledged Christ of the Indian Renaissance (1970). The title clearly indicates the argument Thomas, a Protestant theologian, was making in response to Panikkar’s book.11 The fact

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that Panikkar did not acknowledge the legacy to which Thomas pointed was a symptom, it seems, of the fact that Catholics were somewhat unaware of developments in Protestant circles. Catholic historiography of inculturation, through Amalorpavadass for instance, did at first not connect the project to earlier efforts. The fact that ecumenical contacts between Protestants and Catholics were noticeably scarce before Vatican II accounts, perhaps, for some of the silences. But it seems that, at the beginning, at least, some Catholic theologians showed more condescension towards than knowledge about their Protestant counterparts. Yet, as Thomas and other historians have shown, during the Indian renaissance in the second half of the 19th century, figures such as Ram Mohan Roy, Keshub Chunder Sen and Pratap Chandra Mozoomdar, among others, became quite interested in the figure of Christ (Baagø 1969; Clarke 1999; Sumithra 1990; Thomas 1970; Thomas and Thomas 1998). Their work frequently reflected on the complementarity of the Hindu and Christian spiritual heritages. In so doing, according to Thomas, reflecting later on their work, ‘[t]hey not only challenged Christian thinking both western and Indian, to make Christian theology indigenous, but they also produced some of the seminal Indian categories in which such theologisation could be pursued’ (Thomas and Thomas 1998: 4). Among Catholic theologians, Brahmabandhab Upadhyay (1861–1907) appears to be one of — if not the foremost — ‘inspiration in the process of developing an Indian Christian theology [and] a pioneer in developing an indigenous theological methodology’ (Painadath 2008: vii). Profoundly influenced by Sen in his youth, and a convert to Catholicism in 1891, he went so far as to delineate explicitly how a Hindu Christian theology might be articulated: Our thought and thinking is emphatically Hindu. We are more speculative than practical, more given to synthesis than analysis, more contemplative than active. It is extremely difficult for us to learn how to think like the Greeks of old or the scholastics of the middle ages (sic). Our brains are moulded in the philosophic cast of our ancient country. We are Hindus so far as our physical and mental constitution is concerned, but in regard to our immortal souls we are Catholic. We are Hindu Catholic (quoted in ibid.: 94).

Brahmabandhab’s thoughts were seriously misunderstood and rejected in his own time. Although ‘Upadhyay felt let down by the ecclesiastical hierarchy in India and he was disappointed by the ethical values pursued in European Christianity’ (ibid.: 88), the Indian theological association made a point

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to acknowledge his utmost significance during its 30th annual meeting in Bangalore in 2007 — the 100-year anniversary of Upadhyay’s death — by stating in their conclusion: ‘The pioneering attempt he made to develop an Indian Christology is an inspiration for us Indian theologians to share the liberative story of Jesus in ways that are appealing to our people with diverse religio-cultural background’ (Painadath 2008: 201). Among Protestants, K. T. Paul, from Tamil Nadu, was one of the most important figures in the history of the inculturation movement. Along with other young men, Paul founded the National Missionary Society in 1905 and got greatly involved in the Indian national movement, thereby forcefully insisting on the Church’s indigenisation. In addition, and similarly, the Madras group — also known as the ‘Rethinking Group’ because of the Rethinking Christianity in India (Devashyam and Sunarisanam 1938) volume it published in 1938 — argued extensively for the indigenisation of the Christian faith at the International Missionary Council held in Tambaram in 1938. Meanwhile, theologians like Pandipedi Chenchiah (1886–1959) argued for the centrality of Jesus rather than the Church, writing with disappointment that, ‘[t]he Christian does not go to Jesus direct, but clings to the Church as the author of his salvation’ (quoted in Thangasamy 1966: 26). Nevertheless, the majority of those attending the conference continued to insist on the essential role of the Church and were not ready to consider the latter as a mere vehicle that could be modified (read: indigenised) according to time and place. It would take too much space to list all the different actors who were, in their own fashion, serious proponents of the so-called inculturation trend; several books have already been written on the topic (see, among other extended reviews, Amaladoss 2005; Baagø 1969; Boyd 1989; Mundadan 1998; Sumithra 1990; Thomas and Thomas 1998; Wilfred 1993). But one important locus of inculturation must still be examined: the Catholic ashram movement. Christians and Hindus understand the term ‘ashram’ differently. While for Hindus, an ashram is founded when a guru settles in a place with at least one disciple, for Christians an ashram refers more generally to any kind of hermitage where either an ascetic monk can withdraw or a community can gather. And of course for Christians, the ‘real’ guru is most of the time absent, or perhaps present only in the veneration of the Christian sadguru (‘true guru’) himself, i.e., Jesus (on this, see Grant 1987: 119). Although the famed experience of Shantivanam, started by Jules Monchanin and Henri le Saux in 1950, is often taken as the first ashram founded by Christians, other non-Catholic ashrams had already been founded earlier than many realise and in the same spirit of conforming the church to local

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practices and customs. The first Christian community gathered under the ashram label was the Christa Prema Seva Ashram. Founded in Pune by the Anglican priest Jack Winslow in 1927, who had been drawing Indians and non-Indians together since 1922, the ashram was turned over to women in 1972. In an ecumenical spirit, Sisters of the Anglican Community of St Mary the Virgin (CSMV) and Roman Catholic sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus congregation ran the ashram under the leadership of Sister Vandana.12 Once an important point of convergence for Indian Christians seeking inculturation in their church, the ashram, although still open, no longer has any permanent residents. On 1 January 1936, the Anglican Bishop Herbert Pakenham Walsh (1871–1959) and his wife, along with their Syrian Orthodox Christian students and friends, opened the Christa Sishya Ashram in Tadagam, near Coimbatore (Varghese 1961: 82–111). They modelled their ashram after Shantiniketan, the university for the arts — but at that time also a meditation centre — founded by Rabindranath Tagore in 1863. The ashram was meant for families and did not encourage celibacy. Although he could have been considered the guru of the ashram, the bishop was affectionately called ‘Papa’ (and his wife, ‘Mama’), giving the ashram a very familial atmosphere. When the French Catholic priest, Jules Monchanin, came to India in 1939, it seemed clear to him that Christianity had to be fully translated into its ‘Indian’ version. In an interview on the boat just before leaving France, he asserted that the time was ripe to ‘rethink all India as a Christian, and the whole Christianity as an Indian’ (Monchanin 1985: 194–195). Together with the French Benedictine monk, Henri le Saux, who joined him nine years later, Monchanin founded the Saccidananda Ashram in Shantivanam near Tiruchirappalli in 1950. The Saccidananda Ashram would become the model for many other Catholic ashrams around India. Today, the Catholic Ashram Association counts about 80 different affiliates.13 All these examples demonstrate that Indians did not await the official permission from the Catholic Church before seeking ways to Indianise the church. Yet of course, thanks to Vatican II, several ecclesiastical domains were (re)organised within the Indian Catholic Church so that churches could strive more thoroughly toward a truly Indian Christianity. For example, the Indian Theological Association was founded by Constantine Manalel in 1976, the National Biblical Catechetical Liturgical Centre (NBCLC) in Bangalore was created for renewing catechesis and liturgy around India, and the Catholic Ashrams Association also came into being at around the same time. By the 1970s, then the Indian inculturation movement was well-established, and

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seemed to have a great deal of momentum. Yet by the end of the 1980s, it had seemed to run out of steam. Why was this so?

Socio-Political Factors The socio-cultural realities of India are part of the answer. The project of inculturation assumes, if only implicitly, that India is culturally monolithic. But this is, in fact, an untenable assumption. How can one speak of a single Indian culture, for example, when Indian reality is clearly characterised by a mosaic of cultures, languages and symbolic representations? And how then is it possible to talk about a common indigenised Christian rite for all Indians when the people of Tamil Nadu do not speak the same symbolic language as those in Kerala, Orissa or Gujarat (see Amalorpavadass 1976: 175). It is not merely a question of linguistic translation that is at stake here, but also of symbolic reference. And the attempt to accommodate Christianity to Hinduism, or even to dialogue with Hindus, rests on similarly faulty assumptions about ‘Hinduism’.14 Moreover, not only are there different active languages and cultures in India, there are also diverse subcultures shaped and determined by the social status, employment, age, etc., of those influenced by them. When India’s diverse cultural contexts get multiplied by the varied experiences of different caste communities, the picture becomes astoundingly complex. In the direction of which ‘Indian culture’ should Indian Christianity be Indianised? Until recent years, most Indian Christians have inculturated Christianity by adopting the Sanskrit scriptural symbolic referents of upper-caste Hinduism. But this has led Dalit theologians to contest and sometimes reject indigenisation projects like that of the National Biblical Catechetical & Liturgical Centre (NBCLC) or the Christian ashram movement, claiming that they wrongly confuse Sanskritisation with Indianisation or Hinduisation (or, more fundamentally, that they wrongly presume that a single ‘Indian culture’ can be identified to which Christianity might be inculturated). Treating upper-caste, Sanskritic Hindu culture as if it represents and can stand for all of ‘Indian’ and ‘Hindu’ experience is considered by many Dalit and tribal Christians to be insensitive at best, and at worst a kind of continued expression and assertion of upper-caste cultural hegemony. Mathew N. Schmalz provides a vivid account of his observation of an Indian Rite Mass with his Dalit friend, John Masih, who was ‘scandalised’ by it: John Masih saw inculturation as an adaptation to Brahmin religiosity, something he believed had oppressed his caste fellows for generations. Indeed,

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he converted to Catholicism precisely to resist caste distinctions and their legitimating Brahminical ideology. In John Masih’s view, the recitation of Brahmin mantras in a Catholic church not only compromised Christian truth claims but also showed a callous disregard for the sensibilities of Untouchable converts (2000: 175).

Sathianathan Clarke identifies three main sources of the antagonism between Dalits and tribal peoples, on the one hand, and the dominant mode of Indian theologising, on the other: First, the foundation of Indian-Christian theology was laid by and for the elite minority of caste Hindus and caste Christians. Theology, thus, was done from the perspective and for the welfare of the caste Christians by drawing from their religious and cultural brahminic traditions. Second, it prevented theology from being interactive with the dialogical symbolic intercourse of the whole community. The reflective and critical construals of the vast majority of its constituents were not brought into the discursive arena. In so doing, it invalidates and repudiates the culture and religion of the Dalits . . . Third, the conscious forging of a unitary national movement and ideology tended to encourage hegemonic propensities. In the name of nationalism, the experiences and yearnings of the subaltern communities were sacrificed for the universal concerns of the nation as envisioned by caste communities (1999: 40).

Agreeing with Clarke, and with Arvind P. Nirmal (1994), who had earlier made similar claims, Peniel Rajkumar adds, ‘[t]he fact that no attention was paid to the oppression, sufferings, aspirations and cultural expressions of Dalits as ingredients of a truly indigenous theology was an important contributory fact to the emergence of Dalit theology’ (2010: 36). A second factor in the decline of inculturation is related to the first. The inculturation project attempts to articulate Christian doctrine, faith and practice using Indian cultural and symbolic referents. But many lower-caste Indian Christians experience ‘Indian’ culture and its symbolic referents as oppressive and inegalitarian. Why then, should Christianity be inculturated on Indian terms at all? In fact many Dalits converted from Hinduism to Christianity or Buddhism precisely to escape from what they perceived to be ‘Indian’ or ‘Hindu’ culture, that is, as a strategy to gain more freedom, to enhance their social status and to create greater opportunities for gaining material wealth. This creates a conundrum for Dalit and tribal Christians, according to Amaladoss: ‘[Christian] culture is seen as modern, attractive insofar as it is the bearer of science and technology, but problematic insofar

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as it disrupts traditional worldviews and ways of life’ (1990: 122). Moreover, the promise of Christianity is often greater than what it is able to deliver in reality. In his study of the Satnamis of colonial Chhattisgarh, Bauman notes that converting to Christianity improved the social status of some members of the community by, among other things, enhancing their educational opportunities. Nevertheless, he argues, ‘[t]his improvement in status appears to have been limited to prominent and respected members of the community, whereas for the great majority conversion brought little appreciable short-term difference’ (Bauman 2008: 89). Similarly, Webster contends that the fact that Christian Dalit groups continue to ask that they be granted reservations like non-Christian Dalits suggests in fact that ‘conversion has brought about very little socio-economic change in their lives’ (2007: 351). The question of how Christian churches should deal with caste division within their own ranks has by and large accompanied questions about inculturation from the very beginning (Clémentin-Ojha 2008). The question that many Dalits therefore ask is whether the Christian church ought not to fight for the eradication of the social and economic disadvantages suffered by Dalits due to what they perceive to be the dominant Indian culture before attempting to inculturate Indian Christianity. Should not the Church act prophetically here, they ask, and contradict current modes of social alienation rather than ignore (or worse, integrate) oppressive socio-cultural structures as many pioneers of inculturation did in the 1960s–1970s? Let me provide just one example of how this debate has proceeded. After George Soares-Prabhu wrote ‘From Alienation to Inculturation: Some Reflections on Doing Theology in India Today’ (1991: 96), wherein he contended that ashrams ‘are not appropriate centres for theologising in India today’ (ibid.), Vandana Mataji invited him to a satsang where Christian ashramites from all over India gathered in the Himalayas to reflect on the relevance of Christian ashram life to Indian Christianity. Soares-Prabhu could not attend the satsang, but he nevertheless summarised his ideas in a letter to Vandana Mataji. The [following] remark has been inspired in part by my growing concern for the dalits, who, I feel, along with the two other marginalised groups, the tribals and women, should be the focus of Christian theology in the India of tomorrow. My experience with the dalits has convinced me that brahmanical Hinduism (as it exists today) is highly oppressive. It is a primary source of the oppression of dalits, tribals and women in India, and, I believe, one of the principal causes of our poverty and backwardness. What is worse is that it

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seems to be quite unrepentant of the damage it is doing. I have yet to hear of a Shankaracharya or the head of an ashram stand up and publicly condemn the hundreds of atrocities against the dalits or the scores of dowry deaths that are being perpetrated all over India today (Soares-Prabhu 1993: 153).

Hinduism, Soares-Prabhu argued, has to undergo some sort of reformation from within, where exclusion and violence against so-called untouchables would be revoked and Hinduism restructured in a (more) humanising way. Until the day when that reformation had occurred, the inculturative project of the Christian ashram movement, with its obvious preference for the symbolic universe of upper-caste Hinduism and its tendency to withdraw from, rather than engage with society and its problems, would be suspect. Yet, he acknowledged later in his letter that: If . . . Christian ashrams could foster such a reformation and such an enlightenment, they have I believe a future. If they can communicate to Hinduism something of the painful purification Christians have undergone because of the challenge of the reformation and the fires of humanist and Marxist criticism, they would be doing a great service to our people (ibid.: 155; emphasis added).

His critique was taken very seriously by people involved in the ashram movement and considered a ‘real challenge’ (Mataji 1993: 157). In response, and by way of reporting on conversations at the satsang, Vandana Mataji made two important points: (1) There was unanimous agreement that ashramites are part of the human race and cannot escape the obligation to take very seriously our responsibility to be in solidarity with the poor and the oppressed. Our lives must be profoundly marked by this solidarity . . . It was incidentally noted that many of us are already involved, perhaps not in spectacular ways, but effectively, in such action . . . (2) Casteism came in for special mention as a problem of the Church in many places, and a point on which we should take a vigorous stand in our own communities (ibid.: 158).

A third factor in the waning popularity of Christian inculturation is Hindu nationalism. Hindu nationalists of various kinds have frequently been suspicious of, if not outright opposed to, Christians adopting Hindu symbols. No public intellectual has voiced this opposition more consistently or fiercely than the author, writer, activist, and frequent opponent of Christianity Sita Ram Goel. In his influential article, ‘Catholic Missionaries Who Try to Pass

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as Hindu Sannyasins’ (Goel 1988: i), and in several books (e.g., Goel 1988, 1994a, 1994b, 1996), Goel vehemently denounces the Catholic ashram movement and other inculturation projects, calling indigenisation ‘a predatory enterprise’ (Goel 1988: x–xiv) and the whole movement ‘an imperialist hangover’ (ibid.: lxv–lxvii). Reading Bede Griffiths’s Christ in India (1986), Goel concludes that indigenisation remains little more than a missionary enterprise designed to convert Hindus by disguising itself as an ‘indigenous faith’ and by inventing ‘spurious labels which can hoodwink Hindus into believing that they are purchasing a brand new product’ (Goel 1988: viii–x). Since the end of the 20th century, voices like Goel’s have risen in prominence. And in some cases, the critique of indigenisation comes from within. For example, many Christian ashramites have adopted the saffron (kavi) colour associated with sadhus, sages and other Hindu (and Buddhist, etc.) holy men and women. But this colour has increasingly come to be associated not just with Hinduism, but with nationalist forms of Hinduism, particularly their more aggressive and violent manifestations (which frequently symbolically deploy saffron flags), such that Hindu nationalists are sometimes synecdochically called ‘saffronites’, and Hindu nationalism the ‘saffron wave’. Because of this, the saffron robes of Christian ashramites have suddenly come to be looked upon with contempt and/or suspicion by other Christians. If Indianisation implies the adoption or acceptance of this kind of bigotry, the argument grossly goes, then Christian communities would be better off sticking with their own symbolic apparatus, ‘foreign’ as it might in origin be. And as indicated earlier, many new converts intentionally shift to the European Christian cultural configurations in order to mark their departure from Hinduism and affirm their solidarity with Christianity as they perceived it from their (formerly) external perspective.15 The European Christian cultural space therefore represents, for some, a kind of exotic land where the agent can integrate a new community of cultural forms, thus at least symbolically leaving his or her former coreligionists. A fourth factor in the decline of Christian inculturation efforts is that while some Hindus have been suspicious of, and some have even acted violently towards Christians, many Christians — Catholics certainly among them — remain themselves suspicious or dismissive of Hinduism. When the rector of a highly-respected Christian seminary in India can aver, as one did to me in no uncertain terms, that India was poor, developmentally stunted and unfair to its citizens because Hinduism had deeply hurt Indian society in shaping it, one can understand why Indianisation has not advanced in some Christian communities. It is not just Dalits, then, who question the inculturative project,

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but elite and upper-caste Christians as well, many of whom have assimilated or come to agree with the colonialist denigration of Hinduism as barbaric and intolerant, or even with the common early Christian missionary characterisation of Hinduism and/or ‘Indian’ culture as demonic. The mutual distrust of many Hindus by many Christians and of many Christians by many Hindus establishes a check from both sides on the Christian inculturation project, and therefore accounts in part for its decline in popularity. As Michael Amaladoss puts it: ‘[I]nculturation is not an abstract encounter between two systems, but a dialogue between groups of people, who are the bearers of these cultures’ (1990: 123). If Christians and Hindus in any particular social space are unable to speak to each other or are even antagonistic, then in that space ‘indigenisation’ potentially takes on new, more negative connotations.

Theological Issues Although the socio-political factors described here remain important vectors that have influenced and will continue to influence the course of indigenisation, there are other, more specifically theological issues which must be discussed. Their influence, though rooted more in theory than in practice, had nevertheless a quite concrete effect on many inculturative projects. The first problem arising immediately from inculturation projects has to do with the fact that cultures and religions are intertwined, mutually informing and reinforcing each other. Therefore, expressing Christianity using the structural and symbolic references of a non-Christian context inevitably mingles it with local non-Christian religious traditions as well. No amount of effort will succeed in perfectly determining where culture ends and religion begins. More categorically, Stephen B. Bevans concludes, after several decades of reflection, that ‘we should not speak of “gospel and culture”, but “gospel and context”’, since culture is also ingrained in the Gospel (2010: xvii). There is simply no way to define precisely, and theologically, what pertains to culturality and what pertains to religiosity. Anthropologists have of course long been aware of this problem, but missiologists and theologians have also been involved in reflecting on the issue.16 Yet, while social scientists may look at religious artefacts as natural productions of a cultural system, Christian theologians do not, generally speaking. Either culture is envisaged as a vessel, or receptacle for the Gospel seed, or there is a fear of syncretism the very moment Christianity gets too close to another religious tradition. As Vatican II documents stated, cultures or traditions — the word ‘religion is’ (deliberately?) not used — are

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understood as ‘seeds of the Verb’ (‘Ad Gentes’ §11 and 15),17 ‘rays of the truth’ and ‘spiritual values’ (‘Nostra Ætate’ §2),18 or ‘precious religious and human elements’ (‘Gaudium et Spes’ §92.4).19 However, nowhere is it possible to find a clear doctrinal affirmation on the parity of religious traditions since only Christianity is understood as the unique and complete religious tradition. If Christianity is in any sense unique and superior, then it becomes imperative, for some theologians, that Christianity should not be diluted by being intermingled with the ‘inferior’ truths of other religious traditions. And since it is impossible to distinguish ‘religion’ from ‘culture’ in any particular context, the entire project of inculturation falls, for many, under a pall of suspicion. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI had gone even a step farther. In his much disputed discourse in Regensburg in 2006, the Pope insisted that deHellenization had reached a (dangerous) third stage. Theologians who were trying to separate the New Testament message from its Greek matrix were wrong to do so, he asserted. Although the Pope Emeritus here only reflects on the relationship between faith and reason, the argument he brings to bear against de-Hellenization goes further than reason itself. It suggests in fact that, in his view, at least, Greek culture cannot be compared, nor replaced, by another, no matter what the relationship of culture and religion really is, and no matter how ambiguous the distinction turns out to be: In the light of our experience with cultural pluralism, it is often said nowadays that the synthesis with Hellenism achieved in the early Church was an initial inculturation which ought not to be binding on other cultures. The latter are said to have the right to return to the simple message of the New Testament prior to that inculturation, in order to inculturate it anew in their own particular milieux. This thesis is not simply false, but it is coarse and lacking in precision. The New Testament was written in Greek and bears the imprint of the Greek spirit, which had already come to maturity as the Old Testament developed. True, there are elements in the evolution of the early Church which do not have to be integrated into all cultures. Nonetheless, the fundamental decisions made about the relationship between faith and the use of human reason are part of the faith itself; they are developments consonant with the nature of faith itself.20

Mathew Schmalz (2000) is therefore right to point out the ‘paradoxes’ of inculturation in his admirable study ‘Ad Experimentum: The Paradoxes of Indian Catholic Inculturation’. Theologians, though aware of the different theoretical spaces of culture and religion, have not been fully able to understand the anthropological implications of inculturation endeavours. I

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would not go as far as Schmalz, however, in asserting that theologians have shown a ‘consistent refusal to engage any discipline beyond the confines of theology’ (ibid.: 170). Doing so would contradict many historical facts, among them that the very term ‘inculturation’ derives, as indicated earlier, from the work of an anthropologist. Yet, the author perceptively underlines some of the limits of inculturation. Amalorpavadass, Schmalz argues, for example, still appears quite unaware of the ‘strong Orientalist resonances’ he (re-)produces by introducing Hindu symbols within the Catholic Indian Rite Mass (ibid.: 173). Moreover, he adds, Hindu symbols cannot merely be transposed from one cultural matrix to another, since, as Dan Sperber shows in his Rethinking Symbolism (1975), ‘culture in and of itself does not provide a coherent framework for interpreting symbolic materials’ (Schmalz 2000: 171). This is why Schmalz underlines the limits and paradoxes of inculturation, which, he contends, ‘raise questions of ultimate meaning in the face of social scientific doubt and suspicion (ibid.: 177). Yet, while Schmalz seems to place the project of inculturation in doubt once again, the real problem that arises is not whether inculturation can or should be done, but rather how it is to be done. As Catherine Clémentin-Ojha (1993: 114) shows from her anthropological standpoint, theologians generally work with abstract and idealised conceptions. This makes it challenging, then, for theologians to approach issues more inductively, that is, without preconceived notions about how the inculturation project will turn out in a particular context. A second theological factor in the decline of inculturation is related to the first, but has to do with theology of religion rather than questions of culture. The fulfilment theology model — also called the ‘inclusivist model’ — which was put forward at Vatican II as the main Catholic approach to other religions, moved the Catholic Church toward a more positive view of non-Christian religions. Yet in that model, Christianity remains the unique (i.e., sole) religious tradition in which all means of salvation can be found. Other religious traditions, though possessing some good values and spiritual insight, still have to be perfected by Christ.21 Christians who think along these lines put Christ at the top of the religious pyramid and consider other religions ultimately flawed and incomplete, forcing them into a Christocentric model. This contributes to the development, among such Christians, of a patronising attitude toward other religious traditions, which obstructs endeavours to create an Indian Church, if by ‘Indian’ some accommodation of non-Christian ideas is implied. Acknowledging this challenge, the Indian Theological Association stated, at the end of its 23rd meeting on Hindutva: ‘The Church should also make all efforts to remove every trace of triumphalism, exclusivism and any attitude

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of superiority in its teachings, structures, evangelising activities and the styles of the functioning of its institutions’ (Indian Theological Association 2002a: 308). As long as Catholic doctrine does not recognise the equal value of other religious traditions, inculturation and indigenisation efforts will not only remain merely superficial, they will also be met with great suspicion, or even animosity, by non-Christians. Because it is impossible for theologians with an ‘inclusivist model’ in mind to look at other cultural and/or religious traditions in their own right, and recognise in such traditions full symbolic autonomy, their work more regularly ends in antagonism than in dialogue. Theologians have tried to get around this obstacle in a variety of ways. Some, for example, have insisted on turning towards a more theocentric (as opposed to Christocentric) model (cf., among others, Amaladoss 2008; Dupuis 2002; Knitter 1996). Meanwhile, some bishops have tried to allow more leeway in the interpretation of Christ’s significance.22 Yet the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s August 2000 pronouncement, ‘Dominus Iesus’, officially reemphasised that Christ remains the sole door by which salvation can be found,23 thus reinforcing in Catholic theological circles this patronising tendency. The Congregation’s subsequent ‘Doctrinal Note on Some Aspects of Evangelization’ (2007) adopted a more Trinitarian approach, however, highlighting the function of the Holy Spirit along with that of Christ. But the fact that the Gospel is said, in this document, to be ‘independent from any culture’ (§6.2) highlights the limits of the approach.24 A third point deriving from the previous one relates to missiology. So far in Catholic discussions, interreligious dialogue and indigenisation have been intertwined with and subject to missionary horizons. Yet, indexing dialogue and indigenisation to evangelical goals undermines the religio-cultural parity implied by interreligious dialogue and inculturation efforts. If elements of Indian culture and Hindu religion can be used in the articulation of Indian Christianity, so the logic goes, then why attempt to convert Indians to Christ? It is for this reason that critics of Christian missionaries like Sita Ram Goel and Arun Shourie suspect indigenisation efforts to be little more than a sinister missionary strategy, evangelisation by other means. Yet there are Catholic theologians who would also agree with this critique, and who have altered their understanding of ‘mission’ accordingly. For example, when Peter Phan (2003: 61) argues that mission should not be a monologue but a dialogue, he implicitly utilises and endorses a pluralist method in which one does not instruct others, but rather engages in mutual learning one’s dialogue partners:

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Christians and non-Christians can turn together, with one another, not toward a particular religious organisation or church but toward the kingdom of God, and they can and must help each other in doing so. Just as in ecumenism, the model of ‘returning’ of the ‘separated brethren’ to the Catholic church is no longer adopted as the goal of church unity, so in mission in the future, especially in Asia where religious pluralism is the fact of life, conversion is not sought as the joining of the Christian church by, for example, ex-Buddhists or ex-Hindus or ex-Muslims (though that may happen from time to time, just as the other way around is also possible), but as the ‘turning’ of all humans, together and with reciprocal assistance and encouragement, toward Christ, that is, to the way of life and the values that he embodied in his own person, and the ‘taking up of his mission’ in the service of the kingdom of God (ibid.: 61).

Sentiments like these are rarely forcefully expressed, particularly in the context of Roman Catholicism, because they run counter to official Catholic doctrine on missionary work. For example, while Phan does not advocate conversion and baptism within the Church, the official teaching remains quite strict about it, as in ‘Redemptoris Missio’ (1990: §46.1): ‘The proclamation of the Word of God has Christian conversion as its aim’.25 It is interesting to note here that the official commentary on this text, written by Cardinal J. Tomko, who was at the time in charge of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, explicitly pointed to ‘some Indian theologians’ as the ‘epicentre’ and source of theses with ‘disastrous consequences’ regarding missiology (ClémentinOjha 1993: 120). Views like those of Amalorpavadass are in fact relatively common in India. Although he desires to avoid portraying Indian culture as a mere receptacle for the Gospel, and wants to honour Hinduism as much as he can, he offers no theological argument against the attempt to convert Indians to Christianity. In this way, then, he exhibits the very same paradoxical thinking criticised by Goel and Shourie. And the problem is not unique to Amalorpavadass. So long as theologians of religion/culture are unable to employ a pluralist view they will be unable to dissociate evangelisation from indigenisation. If the culture is fundamentally flawed, then Christ’s Good News must appear as the expected — and unique — remedy for its healing.

Conclusion For reasons articulated earlier, Catholic theologians find themselves between a rock and a hard place. Pursuing the inculturation of Christianity, particularly through the use of Sanskritic and upper-caste Hindu symbols and practices

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(as it generally has been done) is perceived by many Dalits as giving Christian sanction to an oppressive, inegalitarian and evil culture. Conversely, Christian social work seeking justice for Dalits and other oppressed communities would appear, on the surface at least, to require the rejection of Hinduism-reinforced Indian culture and therefore the project of inculturation itself. Moreover, the underlying theological premises of inculturation, trapped as they are within an evangelising project that reproduces condescending or even denigrating attitudes towards non-Christian religious traditions, prevents the inculturation endeavour from achieving its occasionally stated ideal of equality between different cultures and religions. How then are the goals of inculturation and social justice to be prioritised? In recent years, theologians have shifted their focus in the direction of social justice, and this shift has led to a kind of balance between the two poles. For example, in the concluding tasks enumerated by the Indian Theological Association’s 24th Week on Inculturation meetings, social and cultural challenges are addressed with equal priority: As we conclude our reflection on the need and urgency for an authentic and on-going Gospel-culture encounter in India, the following tasks seem to be a priority for the Indian Church: (a) At all levels, the Church — especially her leaders — needs to be conscientised about the need and importance of promoting a relevant Gospel-culture encounter in India as an essential element of her mission. In doing so, an essential element of her self-identity as an Indian-Church will be realised. (b) People at all levels must be encouraged to affirm and celebrate their diverse cultural identities in dialogue with those of other religions. The BHCs [Basic Human Communities] should act on behalf of the poor and the marginalised for their well-being, and oppose dehumanising globalisation. (c) Special attention must be paid to promote the many subaltern groups that are rediscovering their cultural identities. (d) Theological research in India must be supported and encouraged especially in its quest for reinterpreting the Gospel and re-expressing its challenges for promoting peace and freedom, fellowship and justice in our country and in the world (Indian Theological Association 2002b: 323–324).

When Dalit theologians appeal to and align with the rejected side of society, as Jesus himself had done, they implicitly contest what they perceive to

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be the elitist Brahmanical hegemony, as well as the entire caste system. By doing so, they do indeed reject certain elements of Indian culture (though they are elements that many contemporary Hindus themselves would reject). What they are up to is not, for this reason, inculturation in the traditional (Sanskritic) sense of the term. That said, if Dalit theology is a way of doing theology from, with and for oppressed (Indian) people — using concepts such as disdain, rejection, fragility, marginality, or powerlessness — then indigenisation seems quite alive, albeit in another mode, that is, one which employs the religious and cultural forms of a different, lower-caste, but still obviously Indian (sub)culture. The recent historical shift might not represent, then, a shift from inculturation to Dalit theology, but rather to the development of a new contextual theology, one which encompasses both upper-caste and Dalit terms, as well as others deriving, for example, from feminist, liberation or ecological theologies. In this vein, then, I would like to give Samuel Rayan the final words, as he describes quite well, in my view, what is meant by context with regard to ‘Doing Theology in India’: The theology we do in India is Indian, local, and contextual. It takes our Christian faith and our concrete historical situation seriously. This situation has many dimensions: social, cultural, intellectual, political, economic, aesthetic, cosmic and religious. We know that these act on us, shaping our perceptions and sensibilities, affecting our responses and decisions. They cannot but be an ingredient of our theological reflection and of its articulation. Theology is understood as reflection on our faith-experience in the light or shade of life lived in its actual context, with its problems, struggles, tears, and hopes; or conversely, it is a reflection on life in the light of faith. We bring the two — life and faith — to face each other and to dialogue, questioning and critiquing each other, exploring each other’s depths and enriching each other, challenging each other. Theology is the spark that leaps up at the point of their encounter. Or, it is the light that beams where faith braves our endeavours to become authentically human with and within the community of fellow human beings. The fact is that theology anywhere, any time, is born of two interlacing experiences: of the faith and of the reality of life. Presupposed here is a commitment on our part to justice and freedom for all and God’s purposes for our earth and our history (Rayan 2002: 11).

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Notes 1. The text can be found at http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651207_dignitatis-humanae_ en.html (accessed 6 January 2014). 2. The most emblematic (Indian) example of this languishing was surely Shantivanam, the ashram founded by Jules Monchanin and Henri le Saux (Abhishiktananda) and taken over by Bede Griffiths. After Griffiths’s death in 1993, the ashram slumbered for more than a decade, and still awaits a new ‘guru’. 3. The ‘§’ stands for the paragraph number. 4. Thus, in their 13th paragraph in the ‘Resolution of the Meeting’ section, the Bishops ‘pledge [themselves] to develop an indigenous theology’ (FABC 1982: 9). The whole Message and resolutions can be found in Rosales and Arévalo (1984: 11–23). 5. The 32nd Congregation of the Society of Jesus, which took place from December 1974 to April 1975, used the actual word ‘inculturation’ fairly frequently in its texts, and included a decree on inculturation (Shorter 1988: 10). 6. http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/apost_exhortations/documents/ hf_p-vi_exh_19751208_evangelii-nuntiandi_en.html (accessed 6 January 2014). 7. It is noteworthy that in this, the term’s first official appearance in a papal communication, the notion of inculturation is clearly equated with the notion of acculturation. They are used as synonyms. The text of Catechesi Tradendae is available at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/apost_exhortations/ documents/hf_jp-ii_exh_16101979_catechesi-tradendae_en.html (accessed 6 January 2014). 8. http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_ jp-ii_enc_02061985_slavorum-apostoli_en.html (accessed 6 January 2014). 9. http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/ vat-ii_decree_19651207_ad-gentes_en.html (accessed 6 January 2014). 10. Author’s translation, from the original French. 11. In his preface, the author explains: ‘Raymond Panikkar has spoken of the Unknown Christ of Hinduism, and as a parallel to it, I am speaking in this book of the Acknowledged Christ, not of Traditional Hinduism but of renascent Hinduism, seen as part of the total renaissance of India’ (Thomas 1970: xiv). 12. For an account of her experiences in the ashram, see ‘Reflections on HinduChristian Dialogue in an Ashram Context’, in Grant (1987: 107–127). 13. For descriptive information, see the work of Michael O’Toole, who visited around 40 Catholic and non-Catholic ashrams in India researching his guidebook, Christian Ashrams in India (1983). 14. For critiques of the term ‘Hinduism’, cf., for instance, Bloch et al. 2009; King 1999: 96–117; Thapar 2000: 1025–54; also see the conclusion of Chapter 2, this volume.

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15. Cf. the case of Jyoti Sahi, a world renowned artist, who had taken part in the inculturation movement since its inception in the 1960s, but who noticed that his art — a blend of indigenous Indian and Christian symbols — while much appreciated in Europe (especially Germany), did not touch or appeal to his fellow compatriots and coreligionists, who seemed to prefer typical neo-gothic Christian artistic representations. 16. See, for example, Amalorpavadass (1985: 45): ‘due to the mutual influence of religion and culture, it is difficult to find a culture completely impervious to religion, or to keep a religion unaffected by culture’. See also Amaladoss (1990: 122–123). 17. http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/ vat-ii_decree_19651207_ad-gentes_en.html (accessed 7 January 2014). 18. http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/ vat-ii_decl_19651028_nostra-aetate_en.html (accessed 7 January 2014). 19. http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/ vat-ii_cons_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html (accessed 7 January 2014). 20. ‘Faith, Reason and the University. Memories and Reflections’. http://www. vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2006/september/documents/ hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_university-regensburg_en.html (accessed 7 January 2014). 21. For an explanation of the threefold model of exclusivist-inclusivist-pluralist theology of religion, see Knitter (2002). 22. Cf. Cardinal Julius Darmaatmadja who ‘pointed out to the pope after the synod of Asian bishops [that] Asians prefer to speak about Jesus not as the “one and only Son of God and Savior” but as the “Teacher of Wisdom, the Healer, the Liberator, the Compassionate Friend of the Poor, the Good Samaritan.” These titles point to the specialness of Jesus without necessarily negating the specialness of others and the possibility of both learning from and cooperating with these others’ (Knitter 2002: 98). 23. ‘It is necessary above all to reassert the definitive and complete character of the revelation of Jesus Christ. In fact, it must be firmly believed that, in the mystery of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Son of God, who is “the way, the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6), the full revelation of divine truth is given’ (§5). The entire pronouncement is available online at http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/ documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20000806_dominus-iesus_en.html (accessed 7 January 2014). 24. The whole letter is available at http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/ congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20071203_notaevangelizzazione_en.html (accessed 7 January 2014). 25. The entire text is available online at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/ john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_07121990_redemptorismissio_en.html (accessed 7 January 2014).

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References Amaladoss, Michael. 1990. Making All Things New: Dialogue, Pluralism, and Evangelization in Asia. New York: Orbis Books. ——— (ed.). 2005. Indian Christian Thinkers. Chennai: Satya Nilayam Publications. ———. 2007. ‘Fr. Roberto De Nobili’s Interpretation of Indian Texts and Culture’, in Ignatius Puthiadam (ed.), Fr. De Nobili a Trendsetter: Life, Work and Spirituality, pp. 5–20. Bangalore: Asian Trading Corporation. ———. 2008. Beyond Dialogue: Pilgrims to the Absolute. Bangalore: Asian Trading Corporation. Amalorpavadass, D. S. (ed.). 1976. Ministries in the Church in India: Research Seminar and Pastoral Consultation. Delhi: Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India Centre. ———. 1985 [1978]. Gospel and Culture: Evangelization and Inculturation. Bangalore: National Biblical Catechetical & Liturgical Centre. ———. 2004 [1989]. Theological Reflections on Inculturation. Mysore: Anjali Ashram. Anthony, Francis-Vincent. 1997. Ecclesial Praxis of Inculturation. Roma: Libreria Ateneo Salesiano. Arrupe, Pedro. 1978. ‘Letter to the Whole Society on Inculturation’, in Pedro Arrupe and Jerome Aixala (eds), Other Apostolates Today, vol. 3, pp. 172–181. St Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources. Baagø, Kaj. 1969. Pioneers of Indigenous Christianity. Bangalore: Christian Institute for the Study of Religion and Society. Bauman, Chad M. 2008. Christian Identity and Dalit Religion in Hindu India, 1868–1947. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Bevans, Stephen B. 2010 [2002]. Models of Contextual Theology. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Bloch, Esther, Marianne Keppens and Rajaram Hedge (eds). 2009. Rethinking Religion in India: The Colonial Construction of Hinduism. New York: Routledge. Boyd, Robin H. S. 1989 [1969]. An Introduction to Indian Christian Theology. Delhi: Indian Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. Charles, Pierre. 1956. Études Missiologiques. Bruges: Desclée de Brouwer. Clarke, Sathianathan. 1999. Dalits and Christianity: Subaltern Religion and Liberation Theology in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Clémentin-Ojha, Catherine. 1993. ‘Indianisation et enracinement: les enjeux de l “inculturation” de l’Église en inde’, Bulletin de l’École Française d’Extrême-Orient, 80(1): 107–133. ———. 2008. Les chrétiens de l’Inde – entre Castes et Églises. Paris: Albin Michel. Clooney, Francis X. 1988. ‘Christ as the Divine Guru in the Theology of Roberto De Nobili’, in Ruy O. Costa (ed.), One Faith, Many Cultures: Inculturation, Indigenization, and Contextualization, pp. 25–40. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.

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Clooney, Francis X. 2009. ‘From Apologetics to Indology: A Case Study in the Scholarship of Roberto De Nobili, SJ’, Toronto Journal of Theology, 25(1): 41–56. Collins, Paul M. 2007. ‘The Praxis of Inculturation for Mission: Roberto De Nobili’s Example and Legacy’, Ecclesiology, 3(3): 323–342. Devashyam, D. M. and A. N. Sunarisanam (eds). 1938. Rethinking Christianity in India. Madras: Hogarth Press. Dias, Maria Saturnino. 2001. Evangelisation and Inculturation. Bombay: Pauline Publications. ——— (ed.). 2005. Rooting Faith in Asia: Source Book for Inculturation. Bangalore: Claretian Publications. Dupuis, Jacques. 2002 [2001]. La rencontre du christianisme et des religions — de l’affrontement au dialogue. Paris: Éditions du Cerf. Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (FABC). 1982. ‘Searching out the Future for the Church in Asia’. http://www.fabc.org/fabc%20papers/fabc_paper_28. pdf (accessed 6 January 2014). Goel, Sita Ram (ed.). 1988. Catholic Ashrams: Adopting and Adapting Hindu Dharma. Delhi: Voice of India. ——— (ed.) 1994a [1988]. Catholic Ashrams: Sannyasins or Swindlers? Delhi: Voice of India. ———. 1994b. Jesus Christ: An Artifice for Aggression. Delhi: Voice of India. ———. 1996 [1986] History of Hindu–Christian Encounters (AD 304 to 1996). Delhi: Voice of India. Grant, Sara. 1987. Lord of the Dance and Other Papers. Bangalore: Asian Trading Corporation. Griffiths, Bede. 1986 [1967]. Christ in India: Essays towards a Christian–Hindu Dialogue. Springfield: Templegate. Herskovits, M. J. 1948. Man and His Works: The Science of Cultural Anthropology. New York: Knopf. ———. 1952 [1948]. Les bases de l’anthropologie culturelle. Paris: Payot. Indian Theological Assocation. 2002a. ‘Challenge of Hindutva: An Indian Christian Response’, in Jacob Parappally (ed.), Theologizing in Context. Statements of the Indian Theological Association, pp. 290–309. Bangalore: Dharmaram Publications. ———. 2002b. ‘Inculturation and Its Practical Consequences’, in Jacob Parappally (ed.), Theologizing in Context. Statements of the Indian Theological Association, pp. 310–324. Bangalore: Dharmaram Publications. Kappen, S. (ed.). 1985. Jesus Today. Madras: All India Catholic University Federation. King, Richard. 1999. Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India and ‘The Mystic East’. New York: Routledge. Knitter, Paul F. 1996. Jesus and the Other Names: Christian Mission and Global Responsibility. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.

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Knitter, Paul F. 2002. Introducing Theologies of Religions. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Masson, Joseph (ed.). 1960. Missions et cultures non-chrétiennes. rapports et compte-rendu de la XXIXe semaine de missiologie, louvain, 1959. Paris-Louvain: Desclée de Brouwer. Mataji, Vandana. 1993. Christian Ashrams: A Movement with a Future? Delhi: Indian Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. Monchanin, Jules. 1985. Théologie et spiritualité missionnaires. Paris: Beauchesne. Mundadan, A. M. 1998. Paths of Indian Theology. Bangalore: Dharmaram Publications. Neelankavil, Tony. 2010. ‘From Inculturation to Interculturality: A Methodological Move in Asian Churches’ Encounters with Cultures’, in Paul Pulikkan and Paul M. Collins (eds), The Church and Culture in India, Inculturation: Theory and Praxis, pp. 11–24. Delhi: Indian Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. Nirmal, Arvind P. 1994. ‘Toward a Christian Dalit Theology’, in R. S. Sugirtharajah (ed.), Frontiers in Asian Christian Theology: Emerging Trends, pp. 27–40. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Nobili, Roberto de, Anand Amaladass, and Francis X. Clooney (eds). 2000. Preaching Wisdom to the Wise: Three Treatises. Saint Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources. O’Toole, Michael. 1983. Christian Ashrams in India. Pune: Ishvani. Painadath, Sebastian. 2008. ‘Brahmabandhab Upadyay’s Inspiration for Intra-Religious Dialogue and Inculturation’, in Sebastian Painadath and Jacob Parappally (eds), A Hindu-Catholic: Brahmabandhab Upadyay’s Significance for Indian Christian Theology, pp. 87–99. Bangalore: Asian Trading Corporation. Panikkar, Raimundo. 1981 [1964]. The Unknown Christ of Hinduism: Towards an Ecumenical Christophany (Revised and Enlarged Edition). Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Peelman, Achiel. 2007. Les nouveaux défis de l’inculturation. Ottawa: Novalis; Bruxelles: Lumen Vitæ. Phan, Peter C. 2003. In Our Own Tongues: Perspectives from Asia on Mission and Inculturation. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Prudhomme, Claude. 2005. ‘L’inculturation: réponse à l’universalisation du christianisme ou mirage? Théophilyon, 10(2): 283–307. Rajkumar, Peniel. 2010. Dalit Theology and Dalit Liberation: Problems, Paradigms and Possibilities. Farnham: Ashgate. Rayan, Samuel. 2002. ‘Doing Theology in India’, in Jacob Parappally (ed.), Theologizing in Context: Statements of the Indian Theological Association, pp. 11–22. Bangalore: Dharmaram Publications. Rosales, Gaudencio B. and C. G. Arévalo (eds). 1984. For All the Peoples of Asia: The Church in Asia: Asian Bishops’ Statements on Mission, Community and Ministry, 1970–1983. Volume One: Texts and Documents. Manila: IMC Publications. Schmalz, Mathew N. 2000. ‘Ad Experimentum: The Paradoxes of Indian Catholic Inculturation’, in Michael Barnes (ed.), Theology and the Social Sciences, pp. 161–180. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.

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Soares-Prabhu, George M. 1991. ‘From Alienation to Inculturation: Some Reflections on Doing Theology in India Today’, in T. K. John (ed.), Bread and Breath. Essays in Honour of Samuel Rayan, pp. 55–99. Anand: Gujarat Sahitya Prakash. ———. 1993. ‘Letter from Fr G. Soares-Prabhu to Vandana Mataji’, in Vandana Mataji (ed.), Christian Ashrams: A Movement with a Future? pp. 153–156. Delhi: Indian Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. Shorter, Aylward. 1988. Toward a Theology of Inculturation. London: Chapman. Sperber, Dan. 1975. Rethinking Symbolism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sumithra, Sunand. 1990. Christian Theology from an Indian Perspective. Bangalore: Theological Book Trust. Thangasamy, D. A. 1966. The Theology of Chenchiah with Selections from His Writings. Bangalore: Christian Institute for the Study of Religion and Society. Thapar, Romila. 2000. Cultural Pasts: Essays in Early Indian History. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Thomas, Madathilparampil Mammen. 1970. The Acknowledged Christ of the Indian Renaissance. Madras: Christian Literature Society. Thomas, M. M. and P. T. Thomas. 1998. Towards an Indian Christian Theology: Life and Thought of Some Pioneers. Tiruvalla: Christava Sahitya Samithi. Varghese, K. 1961. Herbert Pakenham Walsh: A Memoir. Delhi: Indian Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. Webster, John C. B. (ed.). 2007. A Social History of Christianity: North-West India since 1800. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Wilfred, F. 1993. Beyond Settled Foundations: The Journey of Indian Theology. Madras: Department of Christian Studies, University of Madras.

7

Taking the Cross and Walking from Subalternity to Modernity JAMES PONNIAH

[M]odernity as a complex of processes, institutions, subjectivities, and technologies challenges the more familiar history of linear temporalities and progressive transformations. The fruitfulness of seeing modernity, as much as other historical periods, as hybrid assemblages in a state of flux is that it draws attention to the heterogeneity and processual nature of cultures and feeds into the possibility of the critique of the present (Venn and Featherstone 2006: 457). If ‘religious language’ is reserved by hegemonic powers to maintain the subaltern’s subjugation, then it seems logical even when different from Western logics and epistemology that subalterns use this very language to reaffirm themselves and their human dignity (Zene 2011: 91; emphasis added).

Based on the phenomenon of Dalit Christianity in a village named Siluvaipuram, approximately 50 kilometres from Salem in Tamil Nadu, South India,1 this essay demonstrates that for Dalits such religious practices and religio-cultural performances as Mastraratham (‘Innocent Blood’ — the ‘passion play’ performed in this village) are coeval with the struggles and victories of their journey from subalternity to modernity. Here, ‘subalternity’ refers to the age-old situation of oppression and marginalisation in which the Dalits of India find themselves. And ‘modernity’ refers to what Couze Venn and Mike Featherstone (2006) understand as the multiplicity, specificity and mobility of the assemblages that sustain real communities and ways of life, while also providing spaces

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and resources for alternative socialities and for resistance to hegemonic forces (ibid.: 461). The alternatives for resistance are provided to the subalterns through the concrete effects of modernity such as secularism, democracy, technology, the nation-state, citizenship, industrialisation, urbanisation, the autonomy of reason and law, the existence of a public sphere, human rights, and a number of fundamental freedoms such as individual ownership of property and individualism. Although it is true that Dalit access to such resources still remains limited as they are controlled and monitored by the dominant castes, access to them is not totally denied either, as was the case in the traditional feudalistic agrarian economy. Thus, the Dalits find in modernity a competing space, however limited it may be, to empower themselves through the various resources made available to them through the project of modernity, to overcome subjugation and claim equality with others.

Voices in the Journey towards Siluvaipuram Having said this, let me begin the exposition of my field by describing an experience I had one summer (April 2010) when I visited Siluvaipuram. On the first day of the month, when I was travelling in a bus from Salem to Siluvaipuram, I was struck by the behaviour of two men who entered the bus at two different places complaining to the bus driver, ‘Why don’t you stop the bus for a while for the poor people like us to get in. You gave me only a little time to get in and I was about to fall down from the bus’. Interestingly, both passengers got down at Siluvaipuram after me. And both got into the bus from the rear door and walked right through to the front and made their presence felt. They made similar complaints that the bus had not stopped long enough for them and both were given the same reply by the bus driver, that it was their responsibility to learn to get into the bus quickly. The incident that took place in the bus is very much indicative of how the Dalits of Siluvaipuram encountered modernity. Though they got into the bus at their own pace, these two men preferred a place right in the front and thus asserted their position; yet they complained for a while that the bus driver had not done enough to provide a safe entry. Similarly, it is held that the state machinery has not done enough to get the Dalits on board in the project of modernity. However, grudgingly and resentfully, the Dalits have in fact got into the process of modernity a bit late, but now that they are on board they do not want to be left behind. That is why they make deliberate efforts to avail themselves of the benefits of modernity and to occupy its frontiers and assert themselves. They want to be seen and heard in the civil spaces created

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by modernity. Sophisticated forms of illumination and life-size images of local Dalits on flex hoardings (in some of which the deity’s image was smaller than the sponsor’s picture) which I witnessed in 2008 on the occasion of the golden jubilee celebration of the Grotto in honour of Our Lady of Lourdes prove this point. Indeed, the establishment of the grotto over the Massabielle Hill2 on the outskirts of this village has always been acclaimed as a big achievement because the Dalit Christians of Siluvaipuram had to fight a decisive battle to take possession of the hill, which was known as Mallika Arjun Hill until it was renamed by the Dalits. To mark the 100th anniversary of Christianity at Siluvaipuram in 1958, they established a shrine for Our Lady of Lourdes at the foot of this hill, exploiting its geographical location, which is similar to that of Lourdes in France. The construction of the Grotto elicited unprecedented local cooperation from the Dalit Christians as it became a matter of great pride and an identity marker for the Dalit Christians to possess a lofty hill in an area surrounded by high-caste Hindus.

Christianity and Christians in Siluvaipuram In fact, like other stories of conversion in India, the Pariah Dalits of this village turned to Catholic Christianity for liberation from oppressive and de-humanising conditions. Speaking about the degraded conditions of the Dalits in the village, a Mr Peter (age 84) recalled: My grandfather used to tell us about how they suffered at the hands of highcaste landlords. They were treated worse than animals. They did not have proper clothes to cover themselves and food to survive. They had to live outside the village. They were allowed to walk only through certain streets. Not allowed to wash clothes and bathe using public ponds. Not allowed to sit in front of high-caste people and enter their temples. But they were forced to do scavenging, removing carcasses and working in the fields [of the high-caste Hindus].3

‘In such inhuman conditions, vellakarasamiyarkal [lit., the “white” priests or fathers] gave us life and showed us mercy and treated us as human beings’, said another man, a Mr Ambrose.4 But the clergymen who worked among the Pariahs had to face many hardships, not only because the Pariahs of this area were considered untouchables by the high-caste Hindus but also because their colleagues in the clergy looked down on them as inferior. Mission historian Domenico Ferroli’s The Jesuits in Mysore (1955: 132–140) mentions that among

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the Jesuits working in this area, there existed a clear segregation between the ‘Brahmin missionaries’ and the ‘Pariah missionaries’ who were instructed to conceal their identity in every possible way: ‘The new missionaries were differently clad and shod, they wore a different turban; and were not accompanied by caste Catechists and servants’ (ibid.: 132). They were asked to abstain from using the names and from maintaining the habits of the nobility (from which they often came) and to hide their equality with the Brahman missionaries, as they were afraid that if the ‘Gentiles’ (caste Hindus) come to know of it, they would be killed and the mission destroyed (ibid.: 135). Such practices and fears clearly point to the determination of the dominant castes to maintain the oppressive social system of caste and untouchability. The distressed Pariah masses, however, longed for liberation from this inhuman social and material condition that the Christian missionaries provided. Speaking about conversion among the socially disadvantaged, Rowena Robinson notes that their conversion was not only for improvement in social and material terms but also for dignity and self-respect: Groups in a condition of social and religious disadvantage may have perceived that they had much to gain by adopting Christianity; the satisfaction of receiving instruction from educated and sympathetic white clergymen and of obtaining new skills and educational opportunities to be able to pursue a better life (2003: 61).

As far as the history of Christianity in Siluvaipuram is concerned, the presence of Christianity in this village goes back to the 18th century. The Golden Jubilee Souvenir of the Diocese of Salem published in 1980 mentions that Siluvaipuram was under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of Laligam (Nelliam) when Rev. Timothy Xavier, S.J., was its parish priest in 1750. Ferroli informs us that Timothy Xavier was asked by a senior missionary to become the missionary for the Pariahs while he was studying theology at Rachol seminary in Goa because he was told: ‘You have Fuscum Vultus Colorem (the colour of your face is dark)’ (1955: 133). Ferroli goes on to mention that the church Fr Timothy Xavier built in Nelliam was destroyed in a war (whether by the Marathas or Muslims is unclear) and that he fled to the Alambari hills to save his life (ibid.: 187).5 That is why there is a long gap in the Jubilee Souvenir before the village is again mentioned, saying that seven of its families were baptised in 1858 by Rev. Gouyon, the then parish priest of Kovillor, under which Siluvaipuram has belonged since 1843. Today, 1858 is taken as the birth of the Catholic church in the village,6 and to mark 100 years of Christianity

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at Siluvaipuram in 1958 the Dalits of this village built the aforementioned shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes. As far as missionary work of the Catholic priests in this village is concerned, people have a very high opinion of the much-venerated Rev. Charles Davin, a missionary of the Missions Étrangères de Paris (MEP), who built the first primary school in this locality back in 1932. Its evolution into a middle school in 1952 and a higher secondary school in 1992 has been instrumental in imparting good education to more than 10 large villages in this area. The Dalit Christians take great pride in saying that their school always holds the record for the highest percentage of passes in the board examinations of classes 10 and 12. The school recorded a 100 per cent pass rate many times. In the year 2007–2008, the primary was given the best school award by the Tamil Nadu government. But in the years when the school failed to maintain its record, the local Dalit Christians registered their protest and demanded change in the leadership. In 2010, for instance, when the villagers were up in arms against the school principal in whose administration 20 out of 70 students in Class 10 and eight out of 54 in Class 12 failed, they forced the bishop to transfer him out of the area. As one of the villagers, a Mr Anand, told me over the phone, The school is the most important thing in our village. If it goes down, we all will go down. That is why one businessman from this village, settled in Pondichery, gives a lump sum of money every year to pay the salary of higher secondary school teachers.7

This statement clearly indicates that the Dalits of this village have taken cognizance of the value of education in their struggle for emancipation. They consider education the basis for social transformation and to be ‘a tool in the on-going social struggles against poverty, stigma and oppression’ (Jeffrey et al. 2005: 6). Various studies conducted on the disadvantaged sections of Indian society show how these groups aim at improving their social position through seeking to acquire education as a form of cultural capital (Bara 1997; Ciotti 2002; Dube 1998; Gooptu 1993; Osella and Osella 2000; Parry 1999a, 1999b). As far as Siluvaipuram is concerned, in the last 10 years, hundreds of men and women from this village have become teachers, central and state government employees, and three of them have become doctors. In fact, many of the trained Dalit catechists in this area have recently given up their professions to become teachers in high schools. All this speaks highly of the Pariah Dalits’

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conscious efforts to rise up, excel and stay in parity with other high castes by availing themselves of the benefits of modernity. Their aspirations resonate with those of the Chamars who ‘value education as a source of cultural distinction, a sign of their modern status, and means of challenging caste-based notions of difference’ (Jeffrey et al. 2005: 1). The Dalits of this village are also very pragmatic in their approach towards exploitation of the opportunities provided by the government for their upliftment on the basis of their social status as Scheduled Castes (SCs). It is to be noted that according to the state regulation, a Dalit will lose his or her SC status when he or she becomes a Christian. That is why many of the Dalit Christians in this village want to have what they call Thamizhpeyar (Tamil name) — a general local Tamil name that will hide their Christian identity and pass for a Hindu name, even though, officially, they may not have discontinued their membership in the Catholic church. This explains why the Dalit SC population of this village, according to the government census records, went up — unbelievably — from 21 persons in the 1991 census to 769 in 2001, although the total village population had only increased from 2,042 in 1991 to 3,945. This growth in the SC population is intriguing and mysterious as all Dalits (SCs) in the village were and always have been Catholics, except for six Hindu Dalit families. The mystery, however, is solved by the comment of one of the pastors who told me that since the emergence of Dalit consciousness in the 1990s, many of these villagers have enrolled themselves as Dalits, not as Christians, so that they might be eligible for the reservation benefits provided by the state and the central governments. In fact, the real figures for the Catholic population in this village had always been on the higher side. The Golden Jubilee Souvenir of the Diocese of Salem published in 1980 puts the Catholic population of this village at 2,255. According to the 2009 local estimation of the villagers, out of 874 households in the village, 584 are Catholics, constituting almost 67 per cent of the village population. That is why Siluvaipuram is primarily known as a Dalit Christian village. Here, however, the Dalits live their Christianity on their own terms, not according to the norms of the official church. They take a less active part in the celebration of the Eucharist and other liturgical events than they do in their own religious pieties (veneration of the cross, etc.). For instance, attendance for the Maundy Thursday service was very thin; later on, only a few attended the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament after the mass, indicating that this kind of traditional worship practice has very little significance for the Dalit Christians in this village. Besides, both on Maundy Thursday and on Easter Sunday, Dalits were more often seen offering candles than money

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in the church. Thus, they expressed their agency in rejecting the traditional mode of putting money into the collection-box on feast days. As there have been accusations in the past that a number of former parish priests were not accountable to the villagers for the funds collected for developmental work in the parish, they preferred a mode of donation that would ensure a direct offering to God instead of through the church’s official representatives. That is why the local parish priest was highly critical of their religiosity when he said, ‘Their devotion (bhakti) is only an “acting” (nadippu). Their religion is also a drama (natakam). Their relationship with God is profit-oriented. If you pay money, they will come to the church’.8 The opposite, however, was the truth. Interestingly, people were ready to pay substantial amounts of money for the token to carry the cross on their shoulders through the streets of the village on Good Friday in the scorching heat of the midday sun. It only indicates that the Dalit Christians in this village were ready to pay for the type of religiosity they want to practice while they demonstrate their indifference to the religion that the hierarchical church expects them to emulate. Special devotional practices related to the cross are very much a part of the religious ethos of this village. The Silver Jubilee Souvenir, released in 1983 to commemorate 25 years of the Grotto’s existence in Siluvaipuram, states that Fr T. C. Joseph conducted the Stations of the Cross on the hill every Friday and that people showed tremendous enthusiasm by actively participating in this religious ritual.

Identifying with the Suffering Deity Dalit Christianity in this village is best witnessed during the seasons of Lent and Easter during which Catholic residents display their attachment to the cross through special acts of piety and veneration towards the Holy Cross. In fact, the village collectively begins Good Friday by listening to the song Kalvaarikku Pohalam vaareer (‘Come let us go to Calvary, the place where Jesus was crucified’), which is blasted through the sound system from early morning. From then on, a mood of melancholy for the day looms over the life of the village. Everybody looked as sad and sombre as if a death had occurred in their home. And at noon all people, men and women, young and old, Christians and Hindus, nearly 2,000 of them gather in the church premises to perform the ritual called the Stations of the Cross through the streets of the village. Six crosses — three big and three little — are carried by the people during this ritual. Each station witnesses a change of the crosses from one set of people to another, who carry them on their shoulders until the next

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station. Unlike other religious processions, this one took the unprecedented route of going through the lanes and by-lanes of the village, cutting across the main roads but mainly going through the small inner streets where the Dalits live, as if to proclaim that the places where the oppressed people live and share their hardships with others on a day-to-day basis are indeed the locations where the sufferings of Jesus take place today. In other words, the Dalits of the village literally identify the suffering and passion of Jesus with their immediate lives. When I asked the people why they carried the cross on their shoulders, they said that they were either fulfilling a vow or asking for a special favour through this act, while a couple did admit that they were just carrying out their family tradition of doing the same thing each year. Probed as to why they show special devotion to the cross, a Mr James said, Adithattu makkaluku ithu rathathila uripona anupavam (‘For the downtrodden people, it is part and parcel of their blood’). Asked to explain this, he said, ‘Just as one cannot survive without blood, so too the people of this village cannot survive without the cross. Just as blood is the source of life, so too the cross is the source of life for us’.9 This statement points to the inseparable connection that the Dalits make between the cross and the people’s lives in this village. He went on to say: The cross is a powerful symbol of identification with Jesus for various people. The poor see in Jesus’s siluvai anupavam (Jesus’s cross-experience) a reflection of their day-to-day life struggle. For those who have risen out of poverty (varumaikodu) recently, the way of the cross helps them to look back on the hardships they underwent and thus remain grateful to God. For the middle class, which wants to come up in life like the rich, the cross mirrors the struggles they undergo in the process.

In spite of the tremendous improvement in education and economic status of this village in recent years, the fact that the number of people carrying the cross has not decreased but only increased indicates how the ‘cross’ is very much a part of people’s lives in this village and how much they want to partake in the passion of Jesus, observed Mr Raja, a retired teacher.10 And, as a Mr Arulraj put it, People believe that ‘[i]f I partake in Jesus’s suffering, my own suffering will be lightened. The more pain I undergo in practicing my piety towards the cross, the more pain in my real life will be wiped out’. That is why they crawl on their knees to climb the steps on the grotto hill to make the stations of the cross.11

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People identify themselves so much with Jesus that some of them tend to break down and weep during the ritual performance of the way of the cross. ‘Learning from us, in other Dalit parishes and villages like Dharmapuri and Krishmagiri, the Dalit Christians, of late, have started the practice of conducting this ritual, and in Arur they perform the ritual of wailing and mourning over the death of Jesus on Good Friday’, said another informant.12 As a mark of repentance, penance and holiness most of the Dalits wear white clothing on Good Friday. Besides Lent and Easter, people also perform a special devotion towards the cross at other times of the year. One such occasion is when a death occurs in a household. ‘When a person dies, the Dalits of the village carry a special cross from the church and place it in front of the dead at home and return the cross to the church after three days’, shared an informant.13 Generally speaking, the people of this village always venerate and respect the cross, regardless of the form and condition in which they see it. Never, for instance, do they touch the old broken crosses found in the Christian cemetery, while in most other villages the common folk collect them for firewood. By attributing unique importance to the veneration of the cross during Lent, the marginal people of this village read into the cross a surplus of meaning by identifying their experiences of pain, suffering and marginality with those of the marginal Jew, Jesus. Thus, the symbol of the cross no doubt plays a significant role in the religious culture of the Dalit Christians.

Celebration of the Triumphant Deity Nevertheless, the Dalits of this village would not remain content merely with finding solace in the cross for their suffering. They want to move on and join Jesus in his experience of transcending death through resurrection. Just as Jesus overcame death through resurrection, they want to annihilate marginality through modernity. That is why their identification with Jesus does not stop with the cross but finds its culmination in his resurrection. This explains why already on Maundy Thursday I saw some people worshipping, praying and offering something or the other to the statue of the risen Lord, while giving less significance to the traditional adoration of the Blessed Sacrament after the mass. Besides, during the Easter vigil, as soon as the statue of the resurrected Jesus was unveiled after the Gloria, a sizeable number of Dalit Christians rushed to the statue to garland their triumphant deity. Further, on the Massabielle Hill they have built 15 stations of the cross, the culmination of which is not the traditional 14th station of the laying of the defeated

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Jesus in the tomb but the portrayal of the resurrected Jesus, the celebration of a victorious event. Thus, the Dalits value the link between crucifixion and resurrection, and see both as parts of one narrative. Their identification with Jesus in passion and resurrection means so much to the Dalit Christians of this village that that they want to proclaim its significance to the neighbouring villages by performing a passion play every year on the second Sunday after Easter. The introduction to this play given in 2008 called this event a Maraiparappupani (a work of evangelisation). That is why one director was quite boastful of this event when he said, ‘In one night, we can spread the Good News to nearly one lakh people [100,000] who come to witness our play, while great saints like St Paul could preach only to a maximum of 3,000 people at one time’. The title of their passion play is Mastraratham (‘Innocent Blood’). Explaining its significance, the director, a man named Ruben, said, The innocent blood that other children had to shed when the child Jesus was sought to be killed by Herod is now experienced in the lives of so many child labourers employed in the stone-cutting industry and in the life-struggles of millions of poor Dalits who have to ‘shed’ their blood for their survival.14

By this very title, the Dalits want not only to underline the theme of ‘Jesus as victim’ but also to highlight its meaning as their own ‘victimhood’ by performing the drama of Jesus on a stage and by re-enacting it in the lifestories of the Dalits who have gathered there to witness the performance. The passion play, which was begun in this village in 1960 by Anandarayan, a local teacher, has undergone change over the years. That which started on the road-junction like a street-play was later performed on a stage; nowadays, it is performed by 300 actors on 33 stages at different locations on the Massabielle Hill. Recalling its evolution, one former director observed, ‘As our social and economic situations went up, so too our passion play performance reached higher levels’.15 In 2004, the Dalits of this village began their passion play with the thematic song of eraiarasu malaratume inthnattulae atharku nakalumtham karuviam irruppamae inthamanila (‘Let the Kingdom of God bud forth in this country, and for this we will be the agents on this soil’). This lyric was followed by a scene in which interreligious harmony was depicted as the marker of the Kingdom of God, at a time when India was witnessing many incidents of communal violence. Further, they also portrayed on the stage such hardships of the poor as rockcutting, cart-pulling and heavy load-carrying as the experiences of innocent

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blood (mastraratham) being shed. Thus, the subaltern Christians of this village spontaneously equated their daily agonies, hardships and helplessness with those of their suffering god, Jesus. However, in their song there was realism when they sang of Umathu arasku¯ valitherialiaye, meaning, ‘We do not know the way to your kingdom’. By pointing to the signs of the resurrection of Jesus in such changes as the upliftment of the downtrodden, the education of the poor and the hospital care of ordinary people at the end of the play (capitalising on the traditional Christian belief that the resurrected Jesus abides in our midst until the end of the world), they not only unfold some of the things God is using for the realisation of His Kingdom, they also highlight some of the characteristics of the Kingdom as they experienced it in their own life situation. By portraying their sufferings and hardships right at the beginning, they have equated their subalternity with the concept of mastraratham (innocent blood). By mapping out the contemporary experiences of the resurrection of Jesus in schemes such as education, healthcare, etc., at the end of the play, they also propose to the audience concrete remedial measures to compensate for the brutal act of mastraratham. While their description of the resurrection experience in terms of a general humanism definitely had a universal purport applicable to all, the Dalits of this village were obviously the ones who were thought of as benefitting the most. As one informant pointed out, it is in these little realities that they see concrete ways to end their sufferings, which make them the signs of the flowering of the Kingdom of God. As the former directors of the play opined, these benefits were made accessible to the Dalits of this village only through the project of modernity inaugurated by the Christian missionaries and the British, and nowadays carried out by the independent nation-state. For the Dalits of this village, the journey from mastraratham to ooiurpu (resurrection) involves a turbulent journey from subalternity to modernity, characterised by stops and breaks, dissents and discontinuities. These dissents and discontinuities in the journey are innovatively introduced as problematics in the narration of Jesus’s life-story during the play wherein marginal characters such as the shepherds and ordinary soldiers provide inputs to the theme of mastraratham from their experience. For instance, as an antecedent to the appearance of the angel to the shepherds to announce the birth of Jesus, the shepherds engage in a conversation in which one shepherd mentions that he was falsely accused of stealing and was tied to a tree and beaten up until a man came to free him. And another says, ‘If you are poor, the only reward that you get is the title conferred upon you that you are bad, ignominious and

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a thief’. Further, the soldier who requests Jesus to come to the Centurion’s house to heal one of his soldiers sings the praises of his master. He says that unlike others his boss is a good man who always cared for the poor and was always compassionate towards his poor soldiers — which explains why he sent for Jesus. Another scene that seemed to touch the audience very deeply was the enactment of a story involving leprosy. While narrating his pain and suffering very deliberately in a way that highlights social exclusion and untouchability — the situation in which Dalits find themselves in India, like the lepers of Jesus’s time — the leper goes on to ask a thought-provoking question: Sattama va¯zha vaikuthu (‘Can law give you life?’). Ordinarily, on seeing someone coming towards him, he would shout Theetu! Theetu! (‘Untouchable! Untouchable!’) and Asutham! Asutham! (‘Impure! Impure!’), so that people can safely stay out of the leper’s way. On this occasion, however, when he sees a man coming close to him in spite of his shouting Theetu!, he is taken aback by this unbelievable act and jumps for joy when this man, Jesus, touches him, cures him and embraces him — a scene during which the whole crowd remained spell-bound. By curing his leprosy, Jesus removes his untouchability,16 overcomes his marginality and provides him an entry into a full-fledged social existence — a scenario that depicts a journey of emancipation and resonates with the life experiences of the Dalit audience, the erstwhile untouchables of India. In the village’s re-enactment of Jesus’s life story they also brought in the theme of displacement, which amounts to an innovative attempt to highlight those dimensions of the past that pertain to the (in)significant moments of the present from a subaltern perspective. The Dalits who stayed on the margins of Indian society for many centuries always live with a feeling that they have been displaced by the powerful from their land and from society. Hence, they often tend to interrogate and contest any experience that would imply or result in displacement. For instance, at one point in Mastraratham, they act out a scene — an extra-Biblical scene — in which the Jewish religious authorities ask the followers of Jesus to quit the place where they had gathered to listen to Jesus. While a Jewish leader claims that the place belongs to the clergy (gurkulam) and asks them not to pollute it, the followers gathered there oppose this view quite vehemently and argue boldly that the place belongs to the ‘people’, not to the priestly class. Finally, they manage to chase the Jewish leader away and take control of the locality so that Jesus can begin to preach. One of the factors that contributed to the marginalisation of the Dalits was their displacement from public social locations due to the concepts of impurity and pollution associated with the religious ideologies that such religious

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leaders perpetuated. By subduing the figure who argues for the same in the drama, they in fact attempt to interrogate, subvert and defeat the very thesis of pollution and marginality. And by regaining a place for Jesus’s activity in the drama, the marginalised Dalits of the village indirectly and subtly reinstate a place for themselves in the middle of society. Accordingly, one sees that the Dalits want to proclaim, publicly, that even the most commonplace Christians are capable of demonstrating, argumentatively, not only that they have a knowledge of Jesus’s teachings but that they also have an ability to defeat those who would oppose him (the Pharisees and the Jewish priests). In the passion play enacted by the dominant Vanniyar caste in the neighbouring village of Pa¯nur, the mockery of Jesus by the Roman soldiers and the Jewish leaders was elaborately described by the actors. In Siluvaipuram, on the contrary, the powerful Jewish religious leaders are ridiculed and mocked at by the simple followers of Jesus during the course of their conversation, which covers religious and theological issues. This scene clearly highlights the emergence of ordinary people from being mute spectators to assertive social actors, who are transformed and empowered by the teachings of Jesus to interrogate and subdue powerful rulers and religious leaders. The witnessing of such conversations can ignite the subaltern audience to be empowered like the actors on the stage to challenge and change the powers-that-be both within and outside the church. To return to the history of the village, one of the former directors of the passion play had come under the influence of the Dalit Christian movement that became famous in Tamil Nadu in the 1990s. Among other activities, he pressed for the implementation of a 10-point agenda (approved by the regional bishops’ conference) for Dalit liberation in the Catholic Church that included giving free education to the Dalit children in Christian schools. When the local administration, both in his parish and in the diocese, was not all that willing to implement the 10-point programme, he along with others organised protests in that area. As a result, the members of that administration were excommunicated by the local Church. The fact that some Dalit Christian families criticised the church leadership at the time, as well as the fact that the local Christians managed to transfer a priest in 2009 for his failures in school administration are indications that the Dalits of this village have imbibed the prophetic side of Jesus’s message to interrogate the centres of power for being unjust and unaccountable. The Dalits of this village also displayed their creativity and ingenuity by extrapolating and reinterpreting certain episodes in the life of Jesus to

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highlight Dalit values and ideals such as solidarity and sharing. For instance, the episode of the woman caught in adultery was depicted in a remarkable way. Rescued by Jesus, she is not left alone; other members of the community were with her all the way through — that is, from being accused by the Jews to being rescued by Jesus. This underlines the communitarian dimension of the Dalits’ life-world. Praise or blame, success or failure, the Dalits face the challenges of life more collectively than individually. There is a strong ‘we’ feeling among the Dalits of this village as evidenced by such often-heard expressions as ithu namma uru (it is our village) and sirappa seianum (we must do our best). This collective sense does get translated into concrete actions and examples are not difficult to adduce. No less than 140 government employees from this village managed to pool their resources to erect at the Grotto a permanent structure worth `150,000. Forty families from this village, settled in Bangalore, always take care of the expenses of the car-procession. The Dalits settled in Krishnagiri bear the expense of fireworks every year worth thousands of rupees. Selvaraj, a successful businessman from the village, is nowadays constructing a huge open hall (mandap) costing `3 million, and Karunaidasan, another businessman, has sponsored the building of toilets, bathrooms and a bore-well, all by himself. Similarly, the Dalits here have also creatively reinterpreted the famous miracle of Jesus’s multiplication of the loaves and fishes to feed 5,000 men. The play shows that Jesus persuades the audience who had come to listen to him to share with one another what they had brought for themselves, and thus performs the miracle of sharing that feeds them all. In this way, they make a subaltern exegesis of biblical passages and communicate to their audience the Dalit value of community sharing. It is this active engagement with scripture that not only enables them to reinterpret and re-appropriate its teachings for the purpose of propagating their vision and values, but also gives them confidence to claim that the very play is itself an act of evangelisation (maraiparappupani). In sum, the Dalit Christians of Siluvaipuram see Jesus as an empowering deity because they can draw inspiration from him and likewise from his cross to endure and overcome their marginality. Not only is that why they tend to give unique importance to the veneration of the cross during Lent, it is also why they re-contextualise their life-experiences in the realm of victory and celebration when they enact the passion-event of Jesus after Easter. In doing so, they exercise their subaltern agency in subtle and invisible ways, finding the passion experience of Jesus meaningful only when they can discern its relevance

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within the context of Jesus’s triumph over death in resurrection. By glorifying and reinterpreting the resurrection of Jesus in the play or otherwise, the Dalits of this village celebrate their own victory over marginalisation through the project of modernity.

Agency Exercised, Subalternity Countered and Modernity Attained The description in the previous section and its interpretation show how the Dalit Christians of Siluvaipuram ‘express themselves in order to manifest and overcome their subalternity through their own means and their meta-language’ (Zene 2011: 91), which include passion plays, carrying the cross and other religious practices. By undertaking various initiatives of the kind that Giovanni M. Boninelli (2007) calls ‘Gramscian paths’ (quoted in Zene 2011: 91), the Dalit Christians of this village exercise their agency to overcome subalternity through various strategies and tactics. Through this they display a deeper understanding of the issues of discrimination and thus strike at their root cause. For instance, since at the basis of their subalternity lies an ideology of untouchability and impurity that defines them as less than human (which is then translated and ramified in concrete forms through various practices in the daily life of the Dalits), the problem has to be located and solved at the ontological level, not merely socially and economically. The Dalits of this village have taken the right steps in this direction by carefully and powerfully depicting on the stage both the untouchability and its annihilation through the story of leprosy that touches and heals ‘the order of being’ not only of the untouchable leper on the stage but of the thousands of Dalits (the erstwhile ‘untouchables’ of India) gathered there. Further, as we have seen previously, in their depiction and treatment of related themes during the play, the Dalits of this village first reveal their understanding of subalternity as ‘spatial/territorial, economic, social, educational, and, above all, religious/ontological segregation’ (Zene 2011: 88). Second, by demonstrating their proactive struggles in overcoming it, they also leave behind them ‘traces’ that will allow us to recognise elements of resistance (ibid.: 90). Thus, they ‘manifest moments and “traces” of self-consciousness of their subaltern condition’ and ‘offer palpable examples of resistance and a willingness to overcome subalternity at different levels and to varying degrees’ (ibid.: 90–91). To further understand the Dalits’ exercise of subaltern agency, I would like to interpret their passion play at Siluvaipuram as a testimonio17 (testimonial narrative) that documents trauma and strategies of survival. By exploiting

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their literary knowledge, economic resources and their bodily experiences of ‘untouchability’, the Dalits of this village exercise their agency to conceive, create, script, and perform the text of Mastraratham (‘Innocent Blood’) as a Dalit testimonio that narrates ‘trauma and pain, resistance, protest and social change’ (Nayar 2006: 83). In the conventional sense, trauma refers to the destruction of subjects and of the self. Cathy Caruth, however, argues that ‘trauma is not simply an effect of destruction but also, fundamentally, an enigma of survival’ (quoted in ibid.: 84). Hence, trauma should be treated ‘as a structure that induces this destruction and provokes a reconstruction of the Dalit self’ (ibid.). A Dalit performance such as Mastraratham ‘reveals the structure of the traumatic experience (caste in India) while also gesturing at the ways in which the victims have fought, overcome and survived the event’ (ibid.), resulting in the process of recovery and self-discovery of Dalithood. By interweaving the Dalits’ experience of false accusation, untouchability and the hardships of daily labour into the plot of the passion narrative of Jesus, the testimonio places Dalit issues in the public domain, in a discourse that makes the stories shareable with others. This involves a process that aims at breaking the distinction between private and public by moving the pain outward from the narrator to the narrator’s community. Further, Nayar’s description of testimonio as a narrative of witnessing assumes significance for our context in other ways as well. First, the testimonio is the voice of the one who witnesses for the sake of another, who remains voiceless. That is, the speaking subaltern subject of the narrative gives voice to the lived experiences of oneself and of those who are the victims of social marginalisation (ibid.). Second, the testimonio calls for the responsibility of ‘bearing witness’ on the part of an audience. ‘Testimonio, like the genre of legal testimony, is evidence that asks readers/viewers/listeners to bear witness’ (ibid.: 91) by using specific rhetorical strategies to create a space of intersubjectivity, of bearing witness. Here, one can discern two levels of witnessing at work in the Dalit testimonio: the primary witnessing by the narrator and the secondary witnessing by the audience or reader. The primary witness is the victim, a witness to oneself, who engages in a retrospective testimonial act. But the victim also has a social identity and thus metonymically stands for the entire community. The actor indeed becomes ‘a speaking subject who needs to be identified as one voice that stands alongside several thousand Dalit voices that do not speak’ (ibid.: 96). Such a speaking subject obtains the power to turn listeners, viewers and readers into ‘secondary witnesses’ demanding an empathetic response and rhetorical listening to the stories of trauma. ‘Rhetorical listening involves

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paying attention to a discourse beyond the immediate referentiality of the text to those absences whose trauma achieves a presence in the actor’ (Nayar 2006: 96). Thus, what ‘secondary witnessing’ forges is solidarity between the Dalits (victims, primary witnesses) and audiences and readers (secondary witnesses). ‘The solidarity axis can be forged only through secondary witnessing, paying attention to the sheer heterogeneity of Dalit space, empathizing with it, but never hoping/seeking to stand in for the victim’ (ibid.: 94–95). Thus, the enactment of Mastraratham by the Dalits does not merely mirror the Dalits’ concerted efforts to interrogate and subvert different forms of subalternity; it also echoes their voices and deflects their concerns into the alterity of the subaltern and non-subaltern audience so that the later can be turned into ‘interlocutors’ in the subaltern’s struggle for emancipation. Along this line, shifts in context and meaning from the ‘drama of stage’ to the ‘drama of life’ were designed not only to evoke subaltern experiences of trauma but also to provoke an end to them by pinning their hopes on the project of modernity and its benefits as described here in the climax of the play in the year 2004. This, along with the growing impact of their socio-political activities as Dalits, shows them being transformed into historical agents. Thus, the Dalits of this village reveal their understanding of modernity as a heterogeneous process that offers a set of values, practices and opportunities, mediated through institutions (the nation-state, etc.) and movements (Dalit movements in the present and the Dravidian movement in the past) that offer a range of possibilities for the realisation of their emancipation from the ageold oppression of the hierarchical caste-system.18 It is this positive side of modernity and its multiplier effects experienced and described by the Dalits that continue to enable them to overcome subalternity. It was the modern processes unleashed by British rule and continued by the democratic Indian state and its benefits (the language of rights, the democratisation and secularisation of public space, Western education, etc.) that provided the main ingredients of the Dalits’ emancipatory struggle (Nigam 2000: 4259). On this, V. Geetha and S. V. Rajadurai observe: If the declaration of certain spaces as public rendered them open and free in terms of approach and use to subaltern groups, a language of rights, which western education and an acquaintance with political liberalism had provoked into existence, came to structure and direct subaltern aspirations for equality and justice (1998: 56).

Further, in the context of Tamil Nadu, Kalpana Ram (2009) has shown that it is Tamil modernism — championed by the ‘Self Respect’ Dravidian

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movement and spread through the flow of language, imagery and music and the discourse of egalitarian humanism and rationalism — that enabled subalterns to give new meaning to the values and practices of modernity and thus overcome different forms of oppression and discrimination. Another area of possibility which modernity and globalisation offer educated Dalits is to become a separate Dalit constituency within the emerging Indian middle class. As such, Dalits might live in the cities and still intervene constructively in shaping the micro-reality of village life, or they might live abroad as part of the Indian diaspora, playing an important role as an ‘international voice’ against anti-Dalit discrimination back home. What was said of the Dalits here in relation to modernity by Geetha and Rajadurai is likewise true of the Dalit Christians in Siluvaipuram: through education and employment opportunities and performance narratives such as Mastraratham, they manifest — to put the same point in more Gramscian terms — the different stages and degrees of self-consciousness that are everywhere evident in the process of overcoming subalternity.

Notes 1. The field data for this study was gathered from the religious rituals witnessed during the Holy Week of 2010, the Passion Plays performed there in the years 2004 and 2008 and the interviews conducted during my fieldwork. 2. Massabielle (‘old mass [of rock]’) is a hilly place where the famous Grotto of Lourdes in France is located. According to Catholic tradition, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared here 18 times to a young girl called Bernadette. 3. Interview with Mr Peter in Siluvaipuram, Tamil Nadu, 3 April 2010. 4. Interview with Mr Ambrose in Siluvaipuram, Tamil Nadu, 5 April 2010. 5. Although the parish records from this period appear to have been lost, the popular memory of the village has it that the village was plundered a number of times by the robbers called theevatti kolaiar. 6. According to the Jubilee Souvenir, however, the 1840–1850 census records mention 288 Catholics in this village. It is very likely that some ex-Jesuits, with the support of Fr. Timothy Xavier, the administrator of the Archdiocese of Cranganore in 1780 (Ferroli 1955: 133) after the suppression of the Society of Jesus, and the French Missions Étrangères de Paris (MEP) priests who came as missionaries in 1800 to serve in Salem (CDI 2005: 473), would have taken care of the Dalit families that survived the wartime destruction of churches.

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7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

Telephonic interview with Mr Anand, Pune, 5 June 2010. Interview with Rev. Fr Arumai, Siluvaipuram, Tamil Nadu, 7 April 2010. Interview with Mr James, Siluvaipuram, Tamil Nadu, 5 April 2010. Interview with Mr Raja, Siluvaipuram, Tamil Nadu, 6 April 2010. Interview with Mr Arulraj, Siluvaipuram, Tamil Nadu, 3 April 2010. Interview with Mr Anthony, Siluvaipuram, Tamil Nadu, 4 April 2010. Interview with Rev. Sr Pushpa, Siluvaipuram, Tamil Nadu, 5 April 2010. Interview with Mr Ruben, Siluvaipuram, Tamil Nadu, 10 April 2010. Interview with Mr Mariadas, Siluvaipuram, Tamil Nadu, 11 April 2010. Commenting on the liberative praxis of Jesus, Soares-Prabhu (2001: 239) notes, ‘With supreme freedom, he [Jesus] challenges the most sacred institutions of his people when his concern for his fellowmen impels him to do so. He breaks the Sabbath (Mk. 7:1–15), touches lepers (Mk. 1:42), dines with the socially out-caste and with sinners (Mk. 2:15–17)’. 17. I have taken my cue for this analysis from Pramod K. Nayar’s interpretation (2006) of Bama’s Tamil novel Karukku as a testimonio of a Dalit’s autobiography. 18. It cannot be denied, however, that modernity also excludes and creates new hierarchies on the basis of older relations of power (see Niranjana et al. 1993; Rajan 1993; Ram 1996, 2001; Sangari and Vaid 1989; Uberoi 1996).

References Bara, J. 1997. ‘Western Education and the Rise of New Identity: Mundas and Oraons of Chotanagpur, 1839–1939’, Economic and Political Weekly, 32(15): 785–790. Boninelli, Giovanni M. 2007. Frammenti Indigesti: Temi Folclorici Negli Scritti Di Antonio Gramsci. Rome: Carocci Editore. Catholic Directory of India (CDI) 2005. The Catholic Directory of India 2005–06. Bangalore: Claretian Publication. Ciotti, Manuela. 2002. ‘Social Mobility in a Chamar Community in Eastern Uttar Pradesh, Northern India’. Unpublished PhD Dissertation, London School of Economics and Political Science. Diocese of Salem. 1980. Souvenir: Golden Jubilee of the Diocese of Salem. Salem: Diocese of Salem. Dube, Siddarth. 1998. In the Land of Poverty: Memoirs of an Indian Family 1947–1997. London: Zed Books. Ferroli, Domenico. 1955. The Jesuits in Mysore. Kozhikode: Xavier Press. Geetha, V. and S. V. Rajadurai. 1998. Towards a Non-Brahmin Millennium: From Lyothee Thass to Periyar. Calcutta: Samya. Gooptu, Nandini. 1993. ‘Caste, Deprivation and Politics: The Untouchables in U.P. Towns in the Early Twentieth Century’, in Peter Robb (ed.), Dalit Movements and the Meaning of Labour in India, pp. 277–298. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Jeffrey, Craig, Patricia Jeffery and Roger Jeffery. 2005. ‘When Schooling Fails: Young Men, Education and Low-Caste Politics in Rural North India’, Contributions to Indian Sociology, 1(39): 1–38. Nayar, Pramod K. 2006. ‘Bama’s Karukku: Dalit Autobiography as Testimonio’, The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 41(2): 83–100. Nigam, Aditya. 2000. ‘Secularism, Modernity, Nation: Epistemology of the Dalit Critique’, Economic and Political Weekly, 35(48): 4256–4268. Niranjana, T., P. Sudhir and V. Dhareshwar (eds). 1993. Interrogating Modernity, Culture and Colonialism in India. Calcutta: Seagull. Osella, Filippo and Caroline Osella (eds). 2000. Social Mobility in Kerala: Modernity and Identity in Conflict. London: Pluto Press. Parry, Jonathan P. 1999a. ‘Two Cheers for Reservation: The Satnamis and the Steel Plant’, in Ramachandra Guha and Jonathan P. Parry (eds), Institutions and Inequalities: Essays in Honour of Andreì Beìteille, pp. 128–169. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. ———. 1999b. ‘Lords of Labour: Working and Shirking in Bhilai’, Contributions to Indian Sociology, 33(1–2): 107–140. Rajan, Rajeswari Sunder. 1993. Real and Imagined Women: Gender, Culture and Postcolonialism. London and New York: Routledge. Ram, Kalpana. 1996. ‘Cultural Nationalism and the Reform of Body Politics: Minority Intellectuals of the Tamil Catholic Community’, in Patricia Uberoi (ed.), Social Reform, Sexuality and the State, pp. 291–318. New Delhi: Sage Publications. ———. 2001. ‘Modernity and the Midwife’, in Linda Connor and Geoffrey Samuel (eds), Healing Powers and Modernity: Traditional Medicine, Shamanism and Science in Asian Societies, pp. 64–84. Westport and London: Bergin and Garvey. ———. 2009. ‘Modernity as a “Rain of Words”: Tracing the Flows of “Rain” between Dalit Women and Intellectuals in Tamil Nadu’, Asian Studies Review, 33(4): 501–516. Robinson, Rowena. 2003. Christians of India. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Sangari, Kumkum and Sudesh Vaid (eds). 1989. Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial History. New Delhi: Kali for Women. Soares-Prabhu, George. 2001. ‘The Kingdom of God: Jesus’ Vision of a New Society’, in Francis X. D’sa (ed.), Theology of Liberation: An Indian Biblical Perspective, pp. 223–251. Pune: Jnana-Deepa Vidyapeeth. Uberoi, Patricia (ed.). 1996. Social Reform, Sexuality and the State. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Venn, Couze and Mike Featherstone. 2006. ‘Theory, Culture and Society’, Modernity, 23(2–3): 457–476. Zene, Cosimo. 2011. ‘Self-Consciousness of the Dalits as “Subalterns”: Reflections on Gramsci in South Asia’, Rethinking Marxism, 23(1): 83–99.

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PART 3

Can Christianity be Indian?

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8

Times of Trouble for Christians in Muslim and Hindu Societies of South Asia GEORG PFEFFER

Anthropologists are expected to conduct empirical research with at least one technical and one theoretical presumption in mind. Their interpretations should come only after an extended stay among ordinary members of the foreign culture under study and should question the established wisdom within and beyond the particular society. Under these premises I approached the Punjabi urban Sweepers of Lahore in 1968–1969 (Pfeffer 1970), though altogether I spent some seven years in this province of Pakistan. In 1980–1981, I explored the other South Asian regional focus of my research, highland Orissa (now Odisha), for half a year. Thereafter I regularly visited most of the tribal regions of the Eastern Ghats and the southern extensions of the Chota Nagpur Plateau in the spring months — February to April — of the subsequent two decades. In India and Pakistan, Punjabis form a caste society, while the highlanders of Orissa belong to the tribal type, though the administration of this state is run by caste Hindus of the densely-populated lowlands. In both Punjab and Orissa I met members of the Christian minority, though my research projects did not focus upon their specific issues. However, what is called the communal question in South Asia can hardly be avoided. I should also mention that the reference to Punjab in Pakistan cannot hide the long history of changing state boundaries of this ‘Land of the Five Rivers’. Irrespective of

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their passports, the Punjabis of the two contemporary republics, along with the many migrants to Britain and North America, share multiple cultural features. Until the Partition in 1947, the Christians of east and west Punjab were a single religious community. Two decades later, extended stays in Indian Amritsar, the traditional twin city of Pakistani Lahore, informed me about diverging developments after independence. While the ‘other’ side of the hermetic new border (see Map 8.1) remains on the minds of Punjabis on both sides of it, they know very little about Orissa, let alone its cultural particularities.1 No significant historical influence between these two ancient Indian provinces has been recorded. This chapter will thus introduce two types of Christian minorities within two rather different socio-cultural environments of the Indian tradition. Even the Punjabi kind of Hinduism, which has been strongly influenced by the sobriety of the Arya Samaj reform movement, has little in common with the spectacular cult of the ‘Lord of the World’ in the grand Jagannath temple of Puri, Orissa, one of the most sacred sites in Hindu India. My comparison will thus refer to rather different socio-cultural complexes within the sub-continental spectrum of values. Christians follow a universalist religion and have because of this adapted themselves to multiple cultures in the course of history. For example, the Christian way of life in today’s Nazareth will differ from that in North America or the Philippines. The present chapter will describe rather divergent historical conditions prevailing in two types of Christian communities, as well as the varying forms of discrimination faced in Muslim-ruled Punjab and in Hindu-dominated Orissa. In recent years, both regions have witnessed anti-Christian violence.

Punjab2 The ‘Land of the Five Rivers’ in the northwest of the subcontinent is the region where, millennia ago, the Vedas were composed. Two Punjabi cities, Lahore and Kasur, were named after the twin sons of the Hindu god Rama. In 1947 these locations and the entire west of the region became the dominant province of Pakistan. The largest symmetric population transfer of human history forced some 9 million non-Muslims to leave this newly-conceived state for India and about the same number of Muslims to seek shelter in Pakistan.3 When the two countries obtained independence, religious affiliation determined nationality and — not infrequently — the question of life and death. At least 200,000 civilians were killed in the months before and

Source: Prepared by the editors.

Map 8.1 The Two Provinces Named Punjab in Pakistan and India

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after Partition. People who used to belong to the same village and even to the same caste and clan group of a single neighbourhood were, on account of their respective religion, made citizens of different states. In the subsequent 65 years very little peaceful interaction has been permitted between Indians and Pakistanis. Forming about 5 per cent of the Punjab population on either side of the new border, the lowest among the large castes is known as ‘Chuhra’,4 a term usually translated as ‘Sweeper’. Either of these designations may be taken as an insult in polite contexts, though on many informal occasions, I have heard people refer to themselves as ‘we Sweepers’. Since all other names of the caste indicate the irony or the euphemism of the speaker, I will retain these rather harsh appellations. Most Punjabi Sweepers used to work as agricultural labourers in the rural province, though in recent decades, after the ‘green revolution’5 — i.e., the modern transformation of the cultivation process — many have moved into urban industrial jobs. In the cities, this caste is traditionally monopolising all work involving the removal of human excrement. Many Sweepers are employed by the municipal sanitary departments or as lower hospital staff. The private homes of Lahore’s bustling and congested Old City, or huts of the many slums, are serviced on daily rounds of self-employed Chuhra women holding the only independent jobs available for females within the traditional caste system. In practical terms, all latrine cleaners remain untouchable though they are irreplaceable within urban society. This given occupation is degrading and leaves little room for social mobility, since even educated members of the caste find jobs only within the Christian community or in ‘disreputable’ sectors such as the film industry. Being officially opposed to the idea of caste, Pakistan is without the kind of quota reserving scholarships and government jobs of the different grades for the Scheduled Castes (SCs) in India. Inter-marriage and even commensality with others of any religion is out of the question for Sweepers in Pakistan. As elsewhere in regional caste societies of the subcontinent, the lowest segment of Punjabis includes two major units conceived of as mutual rivals. The second large and low caste, colloquially known as ‘Chamar’,6 is that of the slightly higher ranking Tanners who are, like the Sweepers, mostly employed as agricultural and industrial labourers. I mention this rivalry because, from late 19th century onwards, a mass movement to Christianity attracted many Sweepers and may thus have discouraged Tanners from conversion. The Chuhra caste was responsible for the rather sudden and rapid expansion of Christian churches in the province during the last 80 years of colonial rule, while only very few higher-caste

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individuals converted. In the territories directly administrated by the British the number of Christians rose from 3,351 in 1881 to 395,629 in 1931 (Khan 1931: 314). For contemporary Pakistanis, the term ‘Christian’ is a polite reference to Sweepers, even though many of the urban cleaners have never been baptised. Comparable religious mass movements on the basis of caste have been known throughout Indian history. In the case of Punjabi Christians the initial impetus came from a small businessman dealing in hides. He had been impressed by European missionaries. After conversion he taught the Bible to his caste fellows on his extended business tours through the villages. In the subsequent decades, families, local clans and village associations of the Chuhra entered the established Euro-American churches. However, a comparative look at the figures of the Census of India in its first six decades (ibid.: 335) reveals that the change of religion within the lowest caste was not confined to the rise of Christianity. In fact, during this period more Sweepers adopted both Sikhism and Islam than Christianity. Significantly, these other two mass movements (to Sikhism and Islam) have, as far as I know, never been analysed by historians within or beyond the respective religious communities. Obviously more than half of all Punjabi Chuhras demonstrated a preference for belonging to any of the three explicitly egalitarian religions rather than to Hinduism, when the general conditions of the British Raj permitted such a change. The newly-converted Muslims and Sikhs attracted little attention, but the Christians of Pakistan, though not those in Indian Punjab, became one of the conspicuous ‘others’ to their Muslim neighbours. Whereas the at least half a million Hindu Sweepers remaining in Pakistan have to this day kept a very low profile, without publicly visible temples or congregations, Punjabi Christians took over major British cathedrals and churches within the heart of various cities and constructed conspicuous new ones, just as they continued, improved and added Christian hospitals, schools and colleges of national renown. Ever since the earliest days of conversions, the situation of Punjabi Christians has also been the cause of some soul-searching among EuroAmerican missionaries who could, on a rather large scale, continue to work in newly-formed Pakistan because, unlike India, for decades the Islamic Republic had been a close international ally of the United States. As early as 1937, the rather well-known book of J. C. Heinrich called The Psychology of a Suppressed People articulated what other Western preachers of the Gospel — then and now — reveal only in private conversation: the day-to-day behaviour of ordinary Punjabi Christians did not, and still does not correspond with missionary expectations. Some rather widely-spread vices of the locals are

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not really of major concern to the missionaries. Christians’ drinking and foul language, conjugal irregularities and occasional participation in rituals deemed ‘heathen’ are, of course, noted and duly condemned by the missionaries. But the general attitude of many Punjabi Christians causes the missionaries more significant, and more lasting, irritation. Even adult Punjabi Christians frequently fail to speak up in a straightforward manner when conversing with their foreign coreligionists. Missionaries, such as those coming from the American Midwest, do not like the servile gestures and elaborate flattery they encounter among Punjabi Christians, and cannot help being annoyed when these mannerisms go together with skilful manoeuvres to obtain material advantage or to manipulate situations in other ways. The pious guides from overseas perceive among Punjabi Christians a lack of confidence, self-reliance and assertiveness coupled with an overdose of self-pity, dependency and immobility. In short, the Westerners dislike (or simply fail to understand) such tendencies. Yet many of the scenes described by Heinrich resemble passages of James Scott’s book (1985), written half a century later and without any reference to Christianity. To this day Western missionaries in Punjab in fact experience the standard ‘Weapons of the Weak’, though they do not, perhaps, recognise them as such. Heinrich blames the age-old suppression of the Sweepers for problems arising when Punjabis of the lowest status meet down-to-earth and immensely confident Western women and men of God. Not infrequently, the latter pray for the eventual and ‘real’ liberation of those who had been down-trodden over several millennia. Such a vision implies a life of liberty, equality and fraternity, i.e., specifically Western convictions regarding the dignity of an individual. Punjabi Sweepers may have accepted the sacraments, but were probably unaware of, or less open to, several ordinary conventions of the apparently benevolent Euro-Americans. The joy over their new communion with powerful outsiders left little room, among the Christianised Sweepers, for behavioural forms that could have been conceived of as connoting disrespect towards their new patrons or as ingratitude towards the messengers of hope who had so much in common with the Christian rulers of colonial days. In fact, a new haven had been created by the missionaries for these lowest of the low, a small and insulated world in which they were the insiders and other Punjabis remained outside. In its optimal version this new social cosmos consisted of two castes only, that of affluent, informed and benevolent foreign patrons, and that of their grateful and ever more successful local clients. To this day Christian villagers of the Punjab continue to submit to their traditional landlords and baptised urban Sweepers meet the same disregard

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from others as had been their fate in earlier times. But the church has also created a kind of asylum, a space of independent action that includes possibilities of a new socio-political contest. This specifically Christian space offers access to scholarships and educational institutions for all who are confident enough to explore novel professional avenues. Initially, the lower positions in Christian hospitals and other health services presented new vocational opportunities for the Christian Punjabis. Later, Christians came to be preferred as well for administrative and clerical jobs in the mission schools. Since the 1960s, even doctors, professors and business administrators within the Christian subculture have tended to come from the Sweeper caste, though their background is never mentioned publicly. Within the community, it is as if the term ‘caste’ does not even exist, though even the bishops and others in charge of church-associated ventures have local roots. Only the very high Catholic clergy are known to be of high caste. Their family background, their names and sometimes their own clear statements as well, indicate ancestry from the elite of the Konkan coast in South India. All of them carry Pakistani passports and have a long record of earlier pastoral work in Pakistani slums, and yet their different, higher-caste background is an open and widely-accepted secret. In the larger world of the Punjab the local Christians for the most part remain ‘Sweepers’ irrespective of their manual labour in cotton mills or work in white-collar professions with international connections. Within their own limited social sphere, however, the followers of Christ can abandon the cleaning of latrines and sanitary canals once and for all to become — immediately or after a generation or two — nurses and doctors, catechists and accountants, teachers and bishops, and thereby to obtain prestige among their peers. Perhaps more than any other caste, the traditional Sweepers have been sharply segregated internally. They have always had a rather elaborate selforganisation, including sub-caste segments, such as barbers, who are of relatively lower status and who do not have marriage links to the non-barber Chuhras. The hereditary (and mutually inter-marrying) caste leaders had been and remain to this day fairly rich and influential. Such so-called Chaudharies help their followers by settling conflicts within the particular village or urban quarter, and by representing the locality when decisions on municipal matters must be made, or in negotiations with comparable leaders of other castes. Though no hard evidence is available, this segment of caste leaders appears to have been among the most eager to adopt the new trend of becoming educated in Christian institutions. The advances achieved in this way would then have instigated a more general upward professional mobility among them. In Lahore’s old city I came into contact with hereditary Chaudharies whose

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source of income had never been derived from manual labour, but rather from the influence they could wield in the course of manifold social and professional dealings. Some of their sons had studied in colleges and found jobs in Christian hospitals or educational institutions. Later I learned that some of their grandchildren had even emigrated to North America. The other upwardly mobile section of Punjabi Christians in Pakistan is composed of peasants who had received small holdings from the British. Their transformation from day-labourers to landowners occurred at the turn of the 20th century, when the canal colonies were founded in the western steppes between the major rivers. The establishment of what was then the world’s largest irrigation system coincided with elaborate feats of social engineering on the basis of caste and religion (Pfeffer 1979). The British settlement policy privileged many communities, especially Rajput horse-breeders (many of whom later became national leaders of Pakistan). Since the so-called ‘evangelicals’ within the British parliament and administration wielded considerable influence, they saw to it that recently converted Christians (at least those qualified by adequately admirable conduct) also received small portions of the newly-irrigated land. Some of the current church leaders have this kind of family background in the rural areas. More ancient mechanisms of the caste system also became rather evident within the life of the Christian minority. Traditionally Indian politics revolve around the strategies of either fission or fusion. One segment of a local caste group, or any modern interest group for that matter, will on occasion take issue with others and pursue their own unique interests, while under other circumstances bygones are treated as bygones and formerly fractious segments will reunite to meet a common challenge as a united front. In Punjab, Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs all have an extended record of religious or sectarian strife leading to similar instances of fission and fusion. For example, the Ahmadiya movement founded by affluent landowners of Punjab (Lavan 1974) opted for Pakistan at partition but was later persecuted in that country and eventually declared non-Muslim by the state. Parallel developments, e.g., those involving the Nirankari sect among Indian Sikhs, have been a regular feature. After the initial decades of peace within and between the traditional denominations, Punjabi Christians too had their sectarian controversies. From the 1960s onwards, several new evangelical movements from North America gained a foothold in Pakistan, instigating extended periods of strife within the Christian community. The organisation of ‘evangelist’ Patrick McIntyre probably invested more financial resources than any other among the Punjabi Christians, with the result of exacerbating fissiparous tendencies within almost

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all of the local Protestant parishes, as well as within a good number of Catholic communities. With their vast resources, the new Christian patrons propagated an explicit fundamentalism, that is, a message that Punjabi Christians could easily understand and disseminate. In many conversations I was told by the Punjabi McIntyre camp that the Bible, in its English version, was, like the Arabic Koran of Punjabi Muslims, the literal word of God and needed to be defended as such. If, for example, some modern theologians dared to analyse Mary’s putative virginity at some length and by reference to more complex levels of logic and textual criticism, these deviants were to be condemned for blasphemy and, once and for all, excluded from Christianity in every formal and personal respect. Throughout the 1960s and the 1970s such controversies marred the harmony of social life in innumerable parishes. The fundamentalist challenge also had material consequences. Since quite a few local churches were attached to prime urban property, or compounds that could be let out for impressive rental returns, Christian factional disputes developed into endless property litigation in the courts of the Islamic Republic. However, the government of General Zia-ul-Haq (1977–1988) reversed the secular tone of the earlier rulers and openly advocated the Islamisation of all institutions. In due course of time, the external pressure exerted upon Christians by the programme of Islamisation led to a general fusion of movements within the Christian minority. Accordingly, the internal strife has now mostly been overcome. The extreme measures of the national government at that time included laws decreeing capital punishment for blasphemy. Ever since then these legal prescriptions have remained, and occasionally their application has been a cause of national and international controversy. Some cases involved quarrelling children or neighbourhood strife that led to police reports and subsequent court action. All of the publicised accusations included Christians as alleged culprits. Over the past three decades the increasingly popular demand for further Islamisation, whatever it may have meant in practical terms, has occasionally led mobs to attack churches on Christian holidays or burn the village quarters of the Christian minority. Though the police, and even sometimes the army, are put on special alert now during Christmas and Easter, riots leading to the deaths of Christians and the destruction of their property cannot always be prevented. Over the past 150 years the history of Punjabi Christianity has witnessed the emancipation of many persons or, much more frequently, families from the degraded positions of agricultural day-labourers or urban latrine cleaners. Such upward mobility may be contrasted with the unchanged status of the many

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Hindu Sweepers in urban Pakistan who — even in times of war with India — have always remained inconspicuous and been left alone. Hindu Sweepers have never been exposed to major harassment by the majority community. The Christians, however, having developed significant ambitions that involved foreign contacts, have definitely been exposed to persecution,7 even though the various governments of Pakistan have always claimed to safeguard minority rights. Determined intra-Christian efforts to expunge from the community any remaining markers of low-caste status, to leave polluting occupations in favour of more respectable jobs and to insulate their little world of specialist institutions against the majority concerns created a certain unique profile for this community — a profile which, in turn, may have become prestigious or even enviable enough to turn Christians into a target of attacks by Muslim extremists. Despite the reservations of foreign missionaries, the Pakistani Christians developed into the kind of unit that has, even in its internal sectarian differences, become an ordinary community according to the socio-religious standards on the subcontinent. Having created a formal distance from their particular (or caste) status in order to rise to a general (or community) level identity, the Christians, like others, have been exposed to violence of the communalist kind. Since the regime of General Zia-ul-Haq, bloody conflicts between Sunni and Shia Muslims have haunted Pakistan, just as extensive pogroms against the Ahmadiya minority have marred public peace for months on occasions. As neither the Shia nor the Ahmadiya minority is associated with disreputable castes this aggression could not be based on status differences. It should, on the contrary, be conceived of in terms of competitive units and mutual fears. The Pakistani Christian community has apparently become a part of this scene of inter-community tension, an entity among others that must fear arson and death at the hands of extremists. This fate is a consequence of Christian upward mobility, and of their empirical success that derives in part from their adoption of the behavioural norms of higher castes. Rather than emulating the individualism of their Euro-American missionaries, the Punjabi Christians adhere to South Asian notions of a respectable collective existence. Their conversion had been a mass movement and their multiple efforts to obtain more reputable sources of livelihood could only be implemented through methods following regionally accepted values. Thus, Christians, like all other Punjabis, utilise their family networks to advance ‘brothers’, in the regional sense of the term, and support ‘sisters’ in efforts to improve the family status through prestigious marriages. In the standard cases of such collectively arranged alliances Christian denominational differences

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become secondary. I have witnessed Presbyterian missionaries in desperation over a follower’s marriage with a Catholic, a marriage which had been at least partially arranged pragmatically, in order to improve the family’s status. In the same familial spirit, educational institutions of a particular Protestant church often prefer to offer scholarships to ‘their own’ young people. In all South Asian religious communities, nepotism and patron–client relationships are prevalent features. Status can never be an individual affair. It is always certified by proven responsibility in matters of fraternal relations and marriage and proven competence to gain the favours of powerful patrons or the following of loyal clients. In a unique historical development after 1947, substantial church property gradually came under the direct influence of Punjabi Christians. Foreign links mediated to Christians the power to allocate scholarships and established positions in educational and public health institutions, and they could do so more directly in their churches. The community therefore developed a visible profile and, as a price, had to suffer from envy and persecution, even if the on-going drama called ‘communal violence’ features inner-Muslim bloodshed front and centre and leads to Christian suffering only relatively rarely.

Orissa During my first stay in the central Kandhamal district of Orissa in 1980–1981 no kind of anti-Christian agitation had ever been heard of, but problems did arise during my later visit in 1990. In 2000 and 2002 police asked me to leave the Tumudibandh block where I had conducted my earlier ethnographic work, stating that they could not guarantee my safety.8 In 1999 the Australian missionary Dr Graham Staines, along with his two small sons, had been burnt to death9 in the highland Keonjhar district, and this event had led to major public controversies all over India. Since the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was the dominant party in the central government between 1998 and 2004, and shared power in Orissa for the subsequent four years, more Hindu temples were constructed in the highlands during this period than in the entire earlier history.10 As discussed by Chad Bauman in this volume (Chapter 9), the climax of the anti-Christian agitation was reached in August 2008, when Swami Lakshmanananda, the most vociferous of the Hindu nationalist agitators in the region, was murdered. The left-wing extremists of the so-called Naxalite movement assumed responsibility for the crime, but the so-called ‘Sangh Parivar’, the ‘family’ of Hindu nationalist organisations, pointed the finger towards prominent

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Oriya Christians and proclaimed that a coalition of militant communists and fundamentalist North American missionaries was behind the attack. In a turbulent year of national and provincial elections, such accusations led to arson and violence, with many Christians being murdered and even more being driven out of their village homes.11 At the time this chapter was being written, many of the latter had to remain in inner-Oriya refugee camps. According to multiple press reports in March 2011, local efforts of Christian villagers to rebuild their destroyed homes in the Tikabali subdivision were being prevented by violent interventions of neighbours and, at times, of local authorities, even though over the past years several police officers and BJP politicians, along with others, have been sentenced to prison terms while other known agitators have been acquitted by the courts. Since highland Orissa, a so-called ‘remote area’,12 is next to unknown to most other Indians, the national and provincial news coverage of these riots and their background has been marred by major mistakes. An abundant number of internet reports, including that of Wikipedia, have published the most serious forms of libel and slander. Under these circumstances the following overview is necessary to clarify some of the socio-cultural patterns, historical processes and local developments leading to the bloody excesses. Highland Orissa was never really administrated by any state until the British colonial forces conquered the hills from 1830 onwards. Earlier local or foreign adventurers may, on occasions, have built mud forts to exert tribute in their neighbourhood, just as Mughal and Maratha governments, and even Emperor Asoka in the 3rd century bce, claimed sovereignty in the area. Such formal declarations were of little practical consequence in the forested mountains. Under British indirect rule, 24 micro-kingdoms of the hills became the so-called ‘Tributary Mahals’ in 1888, headed by Rajas of doubtful lineage who were able to live in colonially-sponsored peace and prosperity until the final ‘merger’ of their domains with the newly-created province of Orissa in 1936. The tribal way of life in the inaccessible hills hardly changed until the 1970s when extended national and provincial development policies began to display their effects.13 To be more precise, the relative autonomy of tribal peoples in Orissa up until the 1970s was actually enjoyed only by the tribal populations of Mayurbhanj and Keonjhar in the northeast and those in the central and southern districts of Orissa (see Map 8.2).14 Unlike them, the northwestern districts were culturally and historically linked to those of neighbouring Jharkhand province on the Chota Nagpur Plateau, which had been conquered during the early rule of the British East India Company. From the 19th century

Source: Prepared by the editors.

(BASED ON 1991 CENSUS DATA)

Map 8.2 Tribal Population in Orissa, by District (in percentage)

50

Low Medium High Highest

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onwards, Chota Nagpur, because of its extensive mineral resources, became India’s centre of heavy industries which involved an influx of outsiders at the expense of the indigenous population consisting mainly of the allied Kharia, Munda and Oraon tribes, and of the Santal in the districts presently adjoining West Bengal. In that period, established Christian missions, beginning with the German Gossner Mission of Berlin in 1845 (Pierard 2000: 497), moved in to support the indigenous peoples in many ways. At the most, 10 per cent of the tribal units mentioned previously subsequently converted to Christianity during the colonial period, becoming inhabitants of what is today Jharkhand and the northwestern districts of Orissa. These tribal Christians have not (or not yet) been affected by the recent anti-Christian agitation. That agitation, however, has overshadowed normal life in the central Kandhamal district of Orissa and, to a lesser extent, in Koraput further south. Irrespective of the historically contingent modern provincial boundaries, all middle Indian tribal communities in the highlands between Ganges and Godaveri have a similar social structure that existed before the advent of any kind of state and has remained to this day (Pfeffer 1997). Independent landowners who use the plough and practise shifting cultivation on the steep slopes form the dominant section of any village. Such a settlement is much more than an assemblage of houses. It is rather a sacred entity of the tribal cult and as such it also includes landless others, normally called weavers, who are involved in crafts and petty credit operations. Normally weavers (referred to as ‘Panas’ by Chad Bauman in Chapter 9 of this volume) comprise roughly a third of any village’s inhabitants. Throughout tribal Western Orissa, and under one name or another,15 such weavers operate as craftsmen and petty commercial agents for the dominant cultivators of a village. Everywhere in the province, tribal society could not survive without them. On a commission basis the weavers sell the surplus produced by the cultivators and buy all necessities on behalf of their patrons either at the nearby weekly markets or in the distant towns of the lowlands. The established patron–client relationship used to be, and frequently still is, articulated in the language of gift exchange. Significantly, anthropological research on the tribal areas of Orissa has almost completely ignored these many millions of weavers, or mentioned them only in passing. For example, one of the famous monographs by Verrier Elwin refers to them only in a short, uninformed and derogatory note (e.g., 1950: 21). Much more elaborate and conscientious are F. G. Bailey’s classic studies (1957, 1960) on the region around Phulbani, though — and in spite

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of valuable ethnographic details — the author’s emphasis upon questions of the political economy cause him to associate the local Pano (or Panas) with the SCs in India. Niggemeyer’s Kuttia Kond (1964) is probably the first to pay detailed attention to the weavers and discover their central role in the ‘total social fact’ of the meria, the buffalo (and formerly human) sacrifice. Similarly, the closely-intertwined ritual,16 social and economic coexistence of Pano and Kond in the Western Hills is described at length in the recent post-doctoral thesis of Roland Hardenberg (2006) based on two years of participant observation in the mud-huts of a Kond village. Among the Kond17 in the Kandhamal district this symbiosis of equally poor cultivators and craftsmen is an aspect of the cult of the omnipotent Earth Goddess and her spouse, the withdrawn Lord of the Highest Peak. The plants of the Earth, such as millet, vegetables and even the cash crop turmeric, are Her gifts to humanity. The cultivators must encourage Her generosity with advance offerings, i.e., sacrifices of flesh and blood, in the weeks before the rainy season.18 Human victims used to be offered until the mid-19th century when British intervention enforced the substitution of buffaloes. The supreme God also receives a cow sacrifice after the rainy season. Both cultivators and petty commercial agents figure in the cult and its mythical foundation, since weavers have always provided the victim and to this day receive portions of the sacrificial flesh. No evidence whatsoever is available to indicate that either of the two categories of indigenous villagers arrived ‘earlier’ or ‘later’ in the highlands, although the concept of seniority is generally a tribal marker of relative status. Applied in this transferred sense, the weavers are the relative juniors of the cultivators and tribal segments of any kind, or even entire tribes and tribal federations, and are differentiated and interconnected by the concept of relative seniority, even though this status is established irrespective of power and wealth. All indigenous people of the Kandhamal district, whatever their religion may be, share the same exogamous totemic clans, though the cultivators mostly use the Dravidian Kui language and the weavers use the Indo-European tongue, Oriya, for the same totemic objects. All indigenous hill people in the region, with the occasional exception of a few cultivator women, are in command of both languages. After what the British called the ‘Meria Wars’ to abolish human sacrifice (Campbell 1864; Macpherson 1852) the colonial government also interfered massively in the traditional economic pattern of life by confiscating all forests through the Indian Forest Act of 1878, leaving to the villagers

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only the already cultivated land (Jewett 1998: 147). Later, various regional legal arrangements of the British were unified in the Government of India Act of 1935, which for administrative purposes defined and differentiated the so-called Backward Classes into SCs, Scheduled Tribes (STs) and Other Backward Classes (OBCs). The constitution of independent India adopted this so-called ‘protective discrimination’ with far-reaching consequences for highland Orissa. Earlier, all land had been owned by the Goddess, cultivated by the patrons among the highlanders and linked with the economy of the lowlanders by the indigenous female and male craftspeople of client status. The modern administrative intervention ensures that cultivators, whether from a ST or OBC, and irrespective of their religion, are the private owners of agricultural land. Only those weavers who have not converted to Christianity can receive SC status to obtain reserved seats in the parliaments as well as the special scholarships and jobs of the government. But they can never ‘alienate’ land or become the formal owners of any immobile ST property, though OBC land may be bought by anyone. In short, the divine regime of the Goddess has been succeeded by the general property laws of the modern state which, at the same time, introduce the formal restriction disallowing land of an ST individual to be sold to one of any other status. The state understands this intervention as a measure of protecting the supposedly ‘innocent’ cultivators from the designs of the supposedly ‘cunning’ craftspeople. What had worked for millennia as divine law was formally abandoned in favour of legal constructions that, although designed for the emancipated modern individual, officially introduced stereotypical notions of allegedly dominant character traits associated with hereditary social units. From the very start, then, modern legalism offered an essential self-contradiction. More than ever before in history the reforms of 1935 gave weight to the idea of hereditary caste qualities. At the same time, the legitimising notion of ‘protecting’ the tribal land through state intervention was undermined by the fact that everywhere such land had been alienated by the government on a large scale to be utilised by national and multinational companies for the uncontrolled application of the most polluting industrial ventures.19 Since the 1970s, other development policies have introduced primary schools, cooperative societies and village dispensaries of basic healthcare to the highlands, though studies on the success or failure of these measures are yet to be published. The construction of intra- and inter-state highways seems to be more important, which initiated a massive influx of lowlanders who created new bazaars on the roadsides and next to the established police stations.

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In 1980–1981, for example, I could reach a certain isolated station in the forest only after a six-hour hike across a mountain range from the nearest road. A decade later the bus needed only half an hour for the very same tour, and the station was at the centre of a large, new bazaar populated by lowlanders. Among the indigenous hill people, the weavers were better prepared than the cultivators to cope with the multitude of novel opportunities and risks, since these intermediaries had always been involved in the petty business of the plains. Weaver children survive in formal schools, though these are run in an authoritarian style that includes regular corporal punishment and many forms of drilling and outrageous neglect. The children of cultivators, however, acquainted with a non-authoritarian education (Pfeffer 2010) find it difficult to suffer this form of education for longer than a week. Similarly, the handling of money is familiar to the weavers but an unusual and controversial experience for the landholders who normally stand above business operations. As a consequence of such modernisation, land is formally mortgaged to weavers on a long-term basis though even more frequently cultivators are made to work on their own land for lowland shopkeepers and other outsiders to cover the regular interest instalment due on permanent debts. The personal relationship between powerful patrons and resourceful clients is gradually giving way to contracts involving legal documents that can be bought and sold on the market or introduced in the course of litigation against illiterate cultivators. The central highlands of the tribal Kond were subjected to the provincial administration only as late as 1936, and only then did Christian missionaries begin to enter the field. As far as I know from personal encounters, the present Kandhamal district (see Map 8.3) became the zone of Spanish Benedictine and Scottish Methodist missionaries who opened schools and hospitals in the 1930s. These institutions were later taken over by Oriya Christians. I met the Catholics in the Daringbadi and the Tikabali subdivisions (see Map 8.4), where not more than 5 per cent of the local weavers have become Christians in the last 75 years, and communicated with Methodists in the Raikia and the Baliguda subdivisions. They had converted some smaller segments — though still not more than 5 per cent — of the Kond cultivators. In Baliguda, all Malia Kond seem to have become Methodists. In short, the SC converted in some parts of the district and the ST in others, but, as far as I know, joint parishes or even denominations have never been realised, though both Christian units have become publicly visible through church constructions and regular parish activities. In the Tumudibandh subdivision, where I stayed longer than elsewhere, only a few isolated individuals here and there have converted without losing their regular positions in the village.

Source: Prepared by the editors.

Map. 8.3 Kandhamal District in Central Orissa

Source: Prepared by the editors.

Map 8.4 Subdivisions of Kandhamal District

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The massive influx of lowlanders in the course of multiple development projects includes ardent members of the so-called ‘Sangh family’ of Hindu nationalist organisations. For them the material motives to obtain land and commercial influence in the highlands frequently coexist with religious ambitions of ‘bringing back’ the highlanders into the fold of Hinduism. This is not called ‘conversion’, since anyone who can be linked genetically to natives of the subcontinent is understood to be a Hindu. Some of these ‘natural Hindus’, however, are said to have been led astray by external Christian, Muslim or Buddhist temptations. Steering these ‘lost sheep’ back to their ‘real’ faith constitutes the pious momentum of these organisations. Though they are opposed to the Abrahamic religions, they follow comparable policies of inclusion and exclusion. Long before the existence of Christianity and Islam, Brahmanism in coastal Orissa had been well-known for a tradition of conflict with Buddhism. Ancient temples, depicting griffons on top of elephants, have preserved this tradition in iconographic form. The ‘recovery’ strategy, however, is difficult where highlanders continue with their own religion, including their own rituals of central importance such as the buffalo and cow sacrifice among contemporary Kond. In the Census of India, this tribal religion is generously entered as ‘Hindu’ though these cults, like the widely-spread habit of secular beef consumption, are thoroughly condemned by the imported staff of the many new schools and offices in the highlands. In their daily educational routine, teachers insist on lowland Hindu rituals and practices without much ado. In the course of ‘uplift’ operations to ‘advance’ the people of the forest, the latter are made to abandon their ‘primitive’ cults. The open confessions of Christianity, however, i.e., the crosses and churches, processions and congregations, cannot be removed as a part of supposed ‘development’ operations. They must be attacked frontally. Under the given conditions of social disintegration such aggression is coupled with the stigmatisation of one of the two indigenous hereditary social categories. The weavers are quite openly denounced as untouchables. All reports from Tikabali and Daringbadi, both situated on new highways, indicate that weavers are maligned as untouchables when they happen to be Christians. Their alleged role as ‘exploiters’ of the ‘innocent’ ST cultivators is also frequently asserted. For the immigrant shopkeepers the weavers are the top-ranking business rivals. The removal of the old patronage bond between cultivators and craftspeople would greatly enhance the lowlanders’ business prospects. In Baliguda and Raikia, however, the alleged arrogance of the ST landowning patrons is associated with their objectionable and foreign Christian

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convictions. Threatening the cultivators with violence or the destruction of property in order to chase them away in turn introduces the tantalising prospect of actually grabbing their land once and for all, especially since the police, forest rangers and even magistrates, being lowlanders themselves, when in doubt tend to connive with the attackers and arsonists so that only army regiments from beyond the province and under the command of the central government can stop the on-going riots that ensue. To conclude, the Christian population in most of the Kandhamal subdivisions is negligible in number. Wherever a visible number of locals have been baptised, the Hindu nationalist organisations, all organised by lowlanders whatever their title, try to exploit the growing distance between ST cultivators and SC craftspeople. This gradually increasing mutual disenchantment between the two equally indigenous sections of inhabitants is a direct outcome of the specific colonial and postcolonial policies of state interference. Such policies imply an imbalance in favour of the clients within the millennia-old system of patronage in the hills. State intervention ostensibly intends to protect the land of the patrons against the commercial ambitions of the clients. The hollowness of these stated intentions is demonstrated whenever wide tracts of tribal land are alienated and transformed through governmental intervention. Colonial interference and the later policies of development have opened the Oriya hills for the missionaries and for the massive influx of lowlanders in search of land and commercial gains. The immigrants’ demonstrative outrage over minor successes of the missionaries is very much a part of this search.

Comparison The anti-Christian pogroms in Pakistani Punjab and the recent rioting against the small Christian minority of the Kandhamal district of Indian Orissa both involved and drew upon a form of communication that is normally ignored in academic quarters, since the pamphlets composed in indigenous languages or heated sermons recorded and circulated on tape cassettes — which are much more common today — are not recognised sources of scholars. But they are very effective instruments of propaganda and thus widely employed. In the given two case histories these devices must have played their technical role, even if I can only refer to them in general terms. As for the socio-cultural preconditions of the observed excesses in Muslim Punjab and Hindu Orissa, major differences exist. The Punjabi Christians had been converts of the large Sweeper caste and, as long as they remained what

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they had been, were not worthy of notice by the Muslim majority. But their socio-economic transformation during the last decades made the difference. Urbanisation on a massive scale uprooted caste in the countryside. Pakistan had been a rural country until the 1970s when, under the auspices of the ‘green revolution’, small farmers, agricultural labourers and the mass of traditional village servants moved into the cities to become ‘free’ labourers. During the same period the indigenous Punjabi Christians had completed the process of staffing the inherited and newly-developed educational and public health institutions, just as a growing number of Christians had acquired primary, secondary and college degrees as well as respectable positions within churchrun institutions. The regime of General Zia-ul-Haq very deliberately sponsored Sunni–Shia riots and had come to power in 1977 on a wave of anti-Ahmadiya mob excesses. Public rioting against minority communities was no longer, after that time, forcefully condemned. To the extent that the Christian community had reached some degree of respectability, this minority had to suffer acts of aggression such as arson and murder on holidays, and in churches, or being involved in cases of alleged blasphemy which entailed the possibility of a death sentence. For the local Muslim fanatics, the Russian communists, as the invaders of Afghanistan at that time, certainly figured as a ‘Christian’ power just as more recently North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) troops in the neighbouring country of Afghanistan have been endowed with putative religious motives. Their presence is somehow, in the minds of many, linked to the activities of the Christian minority. Had the latter, like the remaining Hindu latrine-cleaners of the big cities in Pakistan, remained inconspicuous, they might have been saved from entering the prominent ranks of ‘objectionable’ communities within the multiplex policies of religious hatred in Pakistan. I see few opportunities for the Punjabi arsonists attacking churches or individual Christians to reap significant material reward from their activities, though the general milieu in that province, which combines an obscene display of wealth by a substantial minority and the extremes of poverty among the vast majority of the population, is likely to encourage a spirit of social envy. In highland Orissa, the development policies of the state in the last decades primarily created an infrastructure of roads and institutions where before none at all had existed. These changes brought pioneers from the lowlands in search of new opportunities to obtain land or extend business. In the Kandhamal district, both motives have facilitated the browbeating of the indigenous minority in the course of the unending riots of recent years. The traditional tribal nexus, i.e., that between the local cultivator–patrons

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and their clients — the male and female petty traders of the hills — impeded the lowlanders, and they accordingly sought to break it up. Since Christian converts appear to be on the side of the landholders in some subdivisions and the craftspeople in others, the anti-Christian riots could exploit the (statesponsored) growing antagonism between the two by polemicising accordingly against the influence of untouchables in some districts or against the arrogance of landowners in others. In conclusion, the Punjabi violence indicates that local Christians have reached the standing of respectable ‘other’ religious communities, whereas the Oriya excesses in the name of religion demolish the traditional order of the hills in favour of experienced and modern seekers of fortune moving in from the plains. The state reacted very late to the Oriya devastations in the name of a Hindu supremacy, and the state does not dare to speak up, leave alone act, against the Muslim extremist in Pakistani Punjab. In both regions, the openly-professed goals of mutual tolerance and individual liberty have lost much of their significance in view of the officially camouflaged but factually extensive traditional policies of communal antagonism by those in power.

Notes 1. Eschmann, Kulke and Tripathi (2005) have edited a useful introduction to Orissan culture. Their emphasis upon coastal Orissa was somewhat reworked in Kulke and Schnepel (2001). 2. Amazingly, little anthropological research has been conducted in Punjab. The most sophisticated publications are probably those of Tom G. Kessinger (1974), Joyce Pettigrew (1975) and Paul Hershman (1981). Zekiye Eglar (1960) is the most notable anthropologist to conduct fieldwork in Pakistani Punjab. 3. The Partition of Punjab, especially the rupture between the twin cities of Lahore and Amritsar (on which, see Talbot 2006), has been studied at length in all of its consequences by Ian Talbot and his students at Exeter University (United Kingdom [UK]). 4. The most important and scholarly work on the Chuhra is Juergensmeyer’s historical account (1982) of the 1920s’ Ad Dharm movement against untouchability in the Jalandhar region. The work shows clearly how flexible the socio-cultural boundaries between Hindu, Sikh, Christian, and Muslim Chuhra were in that context. The American edition is based on the author’s unpublished PhD thesis at the University of California in 1974.

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5. For the Indian side, the socio-cultural changes in rural Punjab have been studied by B. L. Abbi and Kesar Singh (1997). 6. Still one of the best among many accounts on the Chamar, and frequently reprinted, is that of Bernard S. Cohn (1959). 7. Shahbaz Bhatti, the Christian minister of minority affairs in the national cabinet, was assassinated by unknown assailants on 2 March 2011 because he had publicly criticised the blasphemy laws. 8. Whereas the (immigrant) policemen hinted that the tribal Konds might endanger my life, my former Kond hosts received me as amicably as ever. 9. Dara Singh, of the militant Hindu nationalist outfit Bajrang Dal, has been convicted of this murder. The sentence was finally confirmed by the Supreme Court of India in 2011. 10. Between 1970 and 2005, Heinrich von Stietencron conducted an extended survey of all Oriya places of worship, and noticed this rapid spread of concrete Hindu temple constructions in the highlands. 11. Whereas numerous publications of all sides have raised rather irresponsible allegations or were quite uninformed, Bauman’s article (2010) is equally balanced and concerned. 12. An essay on recent German research in the area — Pfeffer (2012) — offers anthropological and historical details. 13. Then a sizeable budget was additionally allocated for the ‘uplift’ of some Scheduled Tribes defined by the administration as ‘Primitive Tribal Groups’. The national highway from Mumbai to Kolkata (NH 6) was constructed right through the Juang territory and that from Delhi to Vishakhapatnam (NH 217) through that of the Kuttia Kond. These measures affected regularly worshipped sacred grounds of the concerned communities and disrupted multiple aspects of their respective inner-tribal classification. 14. Map 8.2 indicates only indigenous people formally defined as ‘Scheduled Tribes’ by the administration. The so-called ‘Scheduled Castes’ and ‘Other Backward Classes’ are equally indigenous so that the real percentage of highlanders lies far above the given numbers. 15. Most common are the names Pan/Pano/Pana, Dom/Dombo or Ganda. 16. In 2002, in a village of the Rayagada district, at a performance of the major meria (buffalo) sacrifice ritual, I witnessed a cross-dressing male weaver shaman perform one of the most prominent functions of the ritual on behalf of both Kond and Pano. Similarly, I have witnessed Kond participating in the buffalo sacrifice of a purely weaver village. 17. This term is spelled in several varieties, since the Oriya language of the coastal administrators differs considerably from the lingua franca in tribal Orissa (which is better known to me). In their own Kui language, the Kond call themselves ‘Kui’.

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18. While Roland Hardenberg’s recent monograph (2006) was based on ethnographic fieldwork, the publications of Felix Padel (1995) and Barbara Boal (1997, 1999) on Kond sacrifice in the context of colonial encounters draw upon written sources of the past. More recently Hardenberg (2009) has also written on Kond classification. Prasanna Kumar Nayak’s work (1989) on Kond feuding is, like Hardenberg’s, builds on extended primary research. 19. I have personally seen the effects of paper mills and aluminium companies and the eternally grey sky above Rourkela Steel Plant. At present, the government wants to sell an entire mountain range in the Keonjhar district to the POSCO company of South Korea.

References Abbi, B. L. and Kesar Singh. 1997. Post-Green Revolution Rural Punjab: A Profile of Economic and Socio-Cultural Change (1965–1995). Chandigarh: Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Development. Bailey, Frederic G. 1957. Caste and the Economic Frontier: A Village in Highland Orissa. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ———. 1960. Tribe, Caste and Nation: A Study of Political Activity and Political Change in Highland Orissa. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Bauman, Chad M. 2010. ‘Identity, Conversion and Violence: Dalits, Adivasis and the 2007–08 Riots in Orissa’, in Rowena Robinson and Joseph Marianus Kujur (eds), Margins of Faith: Dalit and Tribal Christianity in India. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Boal, Barabara. 1997. Human Sacrifice and Religious Change: The Kondhs. New Delhi: InterIndia Publications. ———. 1999. Man, the Gods and the Search for Cosmic Wellbeing: Over One Hundred and Fifty Years of Kondh Rites, 1835–1992. Bhubaneswar: National Institute of Social Work and Social Sciences. Campbell, John. 1864. A Personal Narrative of Thirteen Years Service amongst the Wild Tribes of Khondistan for the Suppression of Human Sacrifice. London: Hurst and Blackett. Cohn, Bernard S. 1959. ‘Changing Traditions of a Low Caste’, in Milton B. Singer (ed.), Traditional India: Structure and Change. Philadelphia: American Folklore Society. Eglar, Zekiye. 1960. A Punjabi Village in Pakistan. New York: Columbia University Press. Elwin, Verrier. 1950. Bondo Highlander. Bombay: Oxford University Press. Eschmann, Anncharlott, Hermann Kulke and Gaya Charan Tripathi (eds). 2005. The Cult of Jagannath and the Regional Tradition of Orissa. New Delhi: Manohar. Hardenberg, Roland. 2006. ‘Children of the Earth-Goddess: Society, Marriage and Sacrifice in the Highlands of Orissa (India)’. Unpublished Post-Doctoral Habilitation Thesis, University of Münster.

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Hardenberg, Roland. 2009. ‘Categories of Relatedness: Rituals as a Form of Classification in a Central Indian Society’, Contributions to Indian Sociology, 43(1): 61–87. Heinrich, J. C. 1937. The Psychology of a Suppressed People. London: Allen & Unwin. Hershman, Paul. 1981. Punjabi Kinship and Marriage. Delhi: Hindustan Publishing Corporation. Jewett, Sarah. 1998. ‘Autonomous and Joint Forest Management in India’s Jharkhand: Lessons for the Future?’ in Roger Jeffery (ed.), The Social Construction of Indian Forests, pp. 145–168. New Delhi: Manohar. Juergensmeyer, Mark. 1982. Religion as Social Vision: The Movement against Untouchability in 20th-Century Punjab. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kessinger, Tom G. 1974. Vilayatpur, 1948–1968. Berkeley: University of California Press. Khan, Ahmad Hassan. 1931. Census of India (1931) Vol. XVII, Punjab (I) Report. Lahore: Civil and Military Gazette Press. Kulke, Hermann and Burkhard Schnepel (eds). 2001. Jagannath Revisited: Studying Society, Religion and the State in Orissa. New Delhi: Manohar. Lavan, Spencer. 1974. The Ahmadiya Movement: A History and Perspective. New Delhi: Manohar. Macpherson, S. C. 1852. ‘An Account of the Religion of the Khonds in Orissa’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 13(2): 216–274. Nayak, Prasanna Kumar. 1989. Blood, Women and Territory: An Analysis of Clan Feuds of the Dongria Kondhs. New Delhi: Reliance Publishing House. Niggemeyer, Hermann. 1964. Kuttia Kond: Dschungel-Bauern in Orissa. Munich: Renner. Padel, Felix. 1995. The Sacrifice of Human Being: British Rule and the Konds of Orissa. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Pettigrew, Joyce. 1975. Robber Noblemen: A Study of the Political System of the Sikh Jats. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Pfeffer, Georg. 1970. Pariagruppen des Pandschab. Munich: Renner. ———. 1979. ‘Die Entwicklung der “Canal Colonies” in Westpanjab’, Indoasia, 2: 166–175. ———. 1997. ‘The Scheduled Tribes of Middle India as a Unit: Problems of Internal and External Comparison’, in Georg Pfeffer and Deepak Kumar Behera (eds), Structure and Process, pp. 3–27. New Delhi: Concept. ———. 2010. ‘Jugend und Gender: Schlafhäuser der mittelindischen Stammesgesellschaften’, in Dorothea Schulz and Jochen Seebode (eds), Prisma und Spiegel: Ethnologie zwischen postkolonialer Kritik und Deutung der eigenen Gesellschaft: Festschrift für Ute Luig, pp. 242–257. Hamburg: Argument Verlag. ———. 2012. ‘“In the Remote Area”: Recent German Research in Tribal Orissa’, in Marine Carrin and Lidia Guzy (eds), Voices from the Periphery: Subalternity and Empowerment in India, pp. 75–102. London: Routledge.

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Pierard, Richard V. 2000. ‘The Preservation of “Orphaned” German Protestant Missionary Works in India during World War I’, in Ulrich von der Heiden and Jürgen Becher (eds), Mission und Gewalt: der Umgang christlicher Missionen mit Gewalt und die Ausbreitung des Christentums in Afrika und Asien in der Zeit von 1792 bis 1918, pp. 495–507. Stuttgart: Steiner. Scott, James. 1985. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Talbot, Ian. 2006. Divided Cities: Partition and its Aftermath in Lahore and Amritsar, 1947– 1957. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

9

The Interreligious Riot as a Cultural System Globalisation, Geertz and Hindu–Christian Conƀict CHAD M. BAUMAN

The increased global flow of peoples and ideas brings religious people more regularly into contact with people who adhere to religions other than their own. And while that does mean that the nature of interreligious violence is now different — local disputes are now more frequently linked with national and global problems and concerns — it does not necessarily mean that we are in a period of more regular than usual interreligious violence. Nor does it mean that interreligious riots are actually interreligious in the narrowest sense. In fact, it seems to be infrequent indeed that people actually clash violently over differences in religious practice or doctrine. Rather, interreligious violence generally involves conflict among communities whose competing identities are differentiated along religious lines. Interreligious violence might in many cases be better described as ethnic violence, or as majority–minority violence. And if this is true, then it becomes clear why we might speak of the cultural aspects of interreligious conflict.

The author would like to thank Butler University, the John Templeton Foundation and the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of Southern California for generous grants that supported this research.

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Much has been written about interreligious violence around the world, and theorists have attempted to account for it with reference to economic, political or even psychological causal factors. Paul R. Brass, who has written extensively about Hindu–Muslim conflict in India, worries that by focusing on causal factors like these, academics essentially exculpate violent criminals by suggesting that their environment (or biology) is to blame for their actions. Moreover, in blaming certain kinds of actors — those, for example, who act violently against members of a religious group because of a specific grievance against them — one essentially exonerates others who participate in religious violence for different reasons, such as to enact interpersonal vengeance, or merely to loot, rape or vandalise. For these reasons, Brass prefers to focus on whose interests interreligious violence serves (Brass 2003: 11, 15, 20). I am sympathetic to Brass’s views, and so this chapter will focus not on the causes of interreligious riots but rather on how they function or work. That said, the line between causal factors and interests or function is a blurry one, and discussions of the latter very often lead back, by necessity, to the former (as they do in this chapter). It is the argument of this chapter that the interreligious riot functions as a cultural system. The language here intentionally harkens back to Clifford Geertz’s seminal essay, ‘Religion as a Cultural System’ (1973: 87–125), which suggested that religion, among other elements of culture, serves to sure up and perpetuate certain cultural arrangements by fusing, in a mutually reinforcing way, the ‘world as lived’ (or a cultural ‘ethos’) with the ‘world as imagined’ (a ‘worldview’). In what follows, I argue that the interreligious riot does the same, that is, that it insists upon certain ways conceiving of the world (in ideal terms) and then produces (or reproduces) on the ground a world that corresponds to and supports that ideal. It is therefore more likely to be perpetrated by groups for whom that basic correspondence (between the world as lived and the world as imagined) has been lost or ruptured, such as those most negatively affected by intrusive social forces like colonisation or globalisation. Geertz’s theory has of course been criticised by Talal Asad, practice theorists like Sherry Ortner, and others. And yet, in my view, while these critics offer a useful corrective for Geertz’s theory, they do not convincingly refute it. In what follows, therefore, I will suggest that a Geertzian framework, expanded in ways suggested by his critics, remains a useful tool for helping us understand the interreligious riot. And I will do so with reference to recent Hindu–Christian violence in India.

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The chapter begins by describing this violence, both in general and with regard to the recent series of anti-Christian riots in Kandhamal, Orissa (2007–2009). It then moves on to an analysis of anti-Christian violence, paying particular attention to its cultural aspects. Finally, after developing the argument that the interreligious riot functions as a cultural system, I will, in the conclusion, argue, if only tentatively, that this theoretical framework might be fruitfully applied to other incidences of interreligious violence.

Hindu–Christian Violence in India Anti-Christian violence in India has been increasing since the late 1990s (Froerer 2007: 2; Sarkar 1999: 1691), and after 1998, for a brief period, at least, Christians began to rival Muslims as the primary targets of antiminority activists associated with the Sangh Parivar (Sarkar 1999: 1691).1 In that year, mobs in Gujarat attacked Christians as they celebrated Christmas. No Christians were killed in the attacks, but dozens of houses and places of worship were burned to the ground or otherwise vandalised (Gonsalves 1999). The year 1998 also marks a sharp surge in everyday acts of violence against Christians. According to one record, only 34 incidents of violence against Christians occurred between 1964 and 1996. But then in 1997 alone there were 48 incidents, and another 65 in 1998 (Mustafa and Sharma 2003: 168–169). According to the United Christian Forum for Human Rights, the numbers were even higher: 90 incidents in 1998, and 116 between January 1998 and February 1999, 94 of them in Gujarat (Aaron 2002: 47). It is difficult, of course, to pinpoint the exact reasons why violence against Christians began to increase in the 1990s. The Sangh Parivar did suffer a disapproving public backlash after the destruction of the Babri Masjid in 1992, and some have claimed that Sangh affiliates believed their anti-Muslim rhetoric was bringing them increasingly diminishing electoral returns (ibid.: 44). At the same time, anti-Christian propaganda was gaining political traction, in large part due to the political rise of Sonia Gandhi, assassinated former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s Italian- and Christian-born wife. In 1998, Sonia Gandhi became President of the Congress Party (the primary opponent of the BJP). Her foreignness was a perennial issue, raised repeatedly by her nationalist critics and opponents, and her Christian faith was seen as a symbol of her non-native status. The stoking of anti-Christian sentiment not only helped the BJP burnish its nationalist credentials, therefore, but also implied a critique of the Congress Party and reinforced the BJP’s contention that the Congress was a party that pandered to foreigners and minorities.

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Another reason for the increase in anti-Christian violence may have been the impression, among Sangh Parivar affiliates, that Christian missionary activity was increasing in the last decade of the millennium. Many were aware, for example, of efforts such as AD2000 and Beyond and the Joshua Project, which set ambitious and quite public evangelical goals to be achieved by Christians, with the help of rational, calculating targeting and cooperation, by the turn of the century (Zavos 2001: 75). Still others have suggested that the rise in anti-Christian violence was related to the growing spread of globalisation in the 1990s, which provoked in many circles a nationalist and xenophobic response. Whatever the cause, anti-Christian rhetoric and sentiment did increase significantly during the 1990s, and especially after 1998. Around the turn of the century, for example, VHP General Secretary Giriraj Kishore asserted that Christianity constituted ‘a greater threat [to India] than the collective threat from separatist Muslim elements’ (Aaron 2002: 31). It is perhaps no surprise, then, that anti-Christian violence should increase at around the same time. And it did. Between 1998 and the 2007 riots in Kandhamal, Orissa, the annual number of incidents of violence against Christians continued to rise (reaching, in recent years, about 250–300 per annum).

The Anti-Christian Riots in Kandhamal, Orissa Many reports on the Orissa riots in district Kandhamal begin with an attack, by Christians, on the car of Swami Lakshmanananda Saraswati, a regionally popular and well-known Hindu reformer and anti-conversion activist. And certainly this event did, more than anything else, energise anti-Christian forces. But the origins of the riot violence appear to lie several hours earlier, and elsewhere, in the small village of Brahmanigaon. In preparation for Christmas celebrations, Christians in Brahmanigaon had with permission from local authorities constructed a pandal (a long, cloth-covered scaffolding into which a nativity scene had been incorporated) over one of the town’s roads (National Commission for Minorities 2008).2 In previous years, low-caste Pana Christians in Brahmanigaon had built the pandal in the same spot. But this year things were different. The Kui Samaj, a Kond adivasi3 organisation, had called for a state-wide bandh (strike) on 24 and 25 December 2007, to press its pro-Kond political agenda. Given the strained relations between the mostly non-Christian Konds and their substantially Christianised Pana neighbours, Christians took the planned Christmas bandh as an intentional provocation. And then, on 23 December, a group of

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Hindus in Brahmanigaon warned some Christian women and young people not to continue erecting the pandal, which they argued desecrated the site of a recent Durga Puja (National Commission for Minorities 2008; VHP 2008). Sensing trouble, Christian delegations visited local officials responsible for law and order and requested extra protection. But many local police officers had been called to the capital of Orissa, Bhubaneswar, where the Biju Janata Dal (BJD), which ruled the state in coalition with the BJP, was to celebrate the 10th anniversary of its founding on 26 December. The Christmas celebrations began, therefore, without an extra police presence. On the day before Christmas, Christians asked Brahmanigaon police officers to officially open the local market, despite the Kui Samaj’s strike, so they could prepare for Christmas celebrations. The police did so at around 7 am. An hour or two later a group of Hindus led (according to Christian eyewitnesses) by a prominent local RSS leader, Bikram Raut, arrived and attempted to intimidate merchants into closing their shops. But the police managed to keep the market open. Sometime later, however, the group returned and began physically abusing Christians in the market. According to one Christian eyewitness, Christians responded by looting the stalls of Hindu merchants. The market closed down (Pati 2008). Later, at around 10 am, a larger mob arrived in town, set the Christmas pandal ablaze and attacked and destroyed Christian shops. One Christian teenager was shot (not fatally), and the town’s Christians fled in fear to the jungle (Anand 2008). Then, at around 10.45 am, en route to Brahmanigaon where he had for some time, it appears, planned to conduct a public Hindu ritual, Swami Lakshmanananda Saraswati’s car got stuck in traffic in Dasingbadi. As the swami and his entourage waited for a broken-down vehicle to be cleared from the road, there was an altercation between his body guards and Christians at a church along the road. Accounts of the altercation (and who provoked it) differ, but Saraswati asserts that the Christians damaged his car and attacked its occupants, causing injury to Saraswati and his driver. Pictures of Saraswati looking tired but not showing any evident sign of injury in the hospital bed he rushed to afterwards were quickly picked up and published by local media outlets. National television stations also began broadcasting a video of him speaking from his bed, saying (in Hindi and Oriya) ‘When people become Christians, they become enemies . . . of the nation. I will not tolerate this’ (Dayal 2008). In response to the attack on Saraswati, who had ties to various Sangh organisations, the RSS, VHP and Bajrang Dal4 jointly called a fourhour bandh for the next day (Christmas day).

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As news of the day’s events was broadcast, the violence spread rapidly. Churches and Christian homes were destroyed in two more towns by the end of the 24th (Christmas Eve). On Christmas day itself, the violence continued, with attacks in more than half a dozen villages. The state government directed a thousand police officers to the riot-stricken areas, but logs downed across main roads by miscreants obstructed their progress. By Christmas evening, the government had imposed a curfew on several towns in Kandhamal, including the district capitol of Phulbani. Despite this, and the eventual arrival of members of the better-trained Central Reserve Police Force, the destruction continued until 27 December. The riots affected an area of around 600 square miles, and affected towns in at least six different Kandhamal district blocks. Estimates differ, but the All-India Christian Council and the National Commission for Minorities assert that mobs destroyed 95 churches, several convents, mission schools and parish houses, and 730 homes, around 120 of which were Hindu homes destroyed by Christians (All-India Christian Council 2008). Six people were seriously wounded, several women were molested or raped and at least four people were confirmed dead. Of these victims of physical assault, all or almost all were Christian. As a result of the violence, around 3,000 Christians entered refugee camps established by the government. And just when the last of them began to feel it safe to return, in August of 2008, a second round of violence began when Saraswati was assassinated in his ashram, in the middle of a religious service celebrating the birth of Krishna (Krishna Janmashtami). Anti-government but pro-minority Naxalites5 who may or may not have been Christian and who may or may not have had the financial or logistical support of Christians — the public, and the courts, are still debating, and a lower court conviction of seven Christians has been appealed — claimed responsibility for the assassination. This second and much more violent round of violence, which sputtered to an end in the last months of 2009, led to more than 50 deaths (and probably a great deal more), the destruction of thousands of homes and the displacement of over 5,000 people. As in the first round of violence, most (though not all) of the victims were Christian. Many contributing factors combined to extend and exacerbate the violence in Kandhamal, among them pervasive conditions of general poverty, unemployment and discontent, the slow and ineffective response of a reduced and obstructed police force, the retaliation of Christians, and the possible involvement in or exploitation of the violence by Naxalites. But for the purposes of developing this chapter’s thesis I will focus on two contributing factors — Kond–Pana relations, and the involvement of regional and national Sangh Parivar leaders.

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Kond–Pana Relations For some time there had been tension between the Dalit Panas and the adivasi Kond (or ‘Kandha’, ‘Kondh’) community, despite the fact that both groups speak the same language (Kui) and both have experienced a similar history of marginalisation and exploitation by higher-caste and more dominant groups in the region. (For more on this, see Chapter 8, this volume.) The reason for the tension is twofold. The first is that a high percentage of Panas (whom Pfeffer refers to in Chapter 8 as ‘weavers’ or ‘Panos’) have converted to Christianity, whereas very few Konds have (except in a few areas), creating somewhat of a cultural rift between the two communities. The second reason follows from the first, and has to do with the fact that the Government of India considers the Panas a ‘Scheduled Caste’ (SC) and the Konds a ‘Scheduled Tribe’ (ST). This is significant because STs who convert to Christianity remain eligible for ST reservations whereas SC converts to Christianity become ineligible for SC reservations.6 In the months before the riots, the Pana community had been agitating to have the government change its classification of the Pana community from SC to ST. Their demand was made on the basis of earlier ambiguous government proclamations about the status of the entire Kui-speaking community. The Orissa High Court had taken up the matter and had directed the Government of India to investigate it further. But at the time of the riots, the issue remained unresolved (National Commission for Minorities 2008; Pati 2008; Samantaray 2008). If it had been successful, the change would have allowed Pana converts to Christianity to remain eligible, even after conversion, for the economically quite important reservations. But it would also, of course, have placed all Panas in direct competition with all Konds for reserved ST seats in the region. Many Konds already resented the Pana Christian community for the fact that it had become, over the years, noticeably more prosperous than the Kond one. In addition, some within the Kond community believed Pana Christians used their greater wealth and education to exploit Konds and expropriate their lands. And so, not surprisingly, many Konds viewed the Pana petition as yet another cynical ploy by the Pana community to improve its economic position still further. The secretary of the Kui Samaj declared in September 2007 that the Kond community opposed the proposed change, and insisted, with ominous prescience, that if the ‘Government accepted Pana harijans as tribals then it would lead to violent clashes between the two communities’ (The Hindu 2007). It was in protest against the proposed change in Pana status that the Kui Samaj called for the bandh on 24–25 December.

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The story of anti-minority violence in India is often told as if it is directed by upper-caste members of the Sangh Parivar, who manage to dupe, provoke or perhaps employ members of lower castes and adivasi groups to do their grizzly bidding. And certainly, as I will argue here, members of Sangh Parivar organisations did in Orissa (as they do in other places) find ways to encourage and exacerbate the violence for their own nationalistic ends. But it is worth noting here the existence of significant tensions between the Christian community in Kandhamal and other low-status communities (most notably the tribal Konds). Konds were active participants in the anti-Christian violence, and were involved afterwards in its indirect justification. For example, Lambodar Kanhar, Chairman of the Kui Samaj, asked a reporter, ‘How can we get along with Christians? It’s like cat and mouse. We don’t like the ways of even those who are Christians among the Kandhas’ (Anand 2008).

Sangh Parivar Involvement Many Christians, activists and other commentators ignored the role of local Konds in the Kandhamal riots, and blamed Sangh Parivar affiliates like the VHP, the RSS, the Bajrang Dal, and Orissa’s Sangh-affiliated political parties — the BJP and the BJD. Some, for example, suggested that nearly all of the rioters were members of Sangh Parivar organisations brought in from outside of Kandhamal. Others suggested that the Sangh was not only involved in the violence, but also organised, pre-planned and intentionally provoked it. The role of individuals and groups affiliated with the Sangh Parivar in pre-planning the riots has probably been exaggerated. But their role as actual participants in the violence is undeniable, as is their role in providing rhetorical encouragement and justification for the violence once it began. That participation was particularly important after the attack on Saraswati’s car, which Sangh leaders used to provoke indignation among those who supported and respected the Swami. Sangh leaders also insisted that the attack on the Swami’s car was the first and precipitating event, which allowed them to portray (and others to justify) the violence as retaliatory. (That said, in a context like this where ‘everyday’ violence against Christians was so common, it is indeed difficult to pinpoint the ‘initial’ event in any riot. Were the early attacks in Brahmanigaon the beginning of the riot, or just another more isolated attack on Christians?) They also frequently tried to portray the clashes as an exclusively Kond–Pana affair, and denied Sangh involvement. Some even denied that Christians had been targeted, suggesting instead that only Hindus had been injured or killed, or that Christians had in fact burned down their own homes and churches to reap a whirlwind of sympathetic

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international charity, or that Christian aid organisations like World Vision had orchestrated the riots to encourage donations (VHP 2008). Sangh leaders also mounted a campaign against what they viewed as the pro-Christian bias of English-language news outlets, which a BJP journal called the ‘24×7 secular media’ (R. P. Tripathy 2008). For example, Ram Madhav, a former RSS spokesperson, wrote: [We] have created a funny nomenclature in our country: if you are a Hindu and defend your faith, you are a ‘Hindu nationalist’ . . . But if you are a Hindu and use your lung power to loudly attack Hinduism and Hindus for crimes they never committed, then you are a great “secularist”’ (Madhav 2008).

For the purposes of this chapter, it is also important to point out that Sangh leaders in Orissa and elsewhere regularly portrayed the violence as a ‘natural response’ to long-term ‘conversion activities’ of ‘missionaries’ in Kandhamal. The BJP, for example, claimed that the initial violence in Brahmanigaon had been triggered by a ‘conversion convention’ organised by missionaries. When Hindus protested against this convention, the BJP alleged, Christians attacked them (D. Tripathy 2008). The justification of anti-Christian violence as a ‘natural response’ to the conversion activities of missionaries is a common one today, and draws upon the anxiety felt by some Hindus (and purposively stoked by others) about the possible extinction of Hinduism itself.7 During the Kandhamal violence, Sangh sources regularly inflated the number of Christians, and the growth of the Christian community in Kandhamal (and India more generally) to play upon these fears. In fact, Sangh sources quite commonly portrayed the Hindu community as a minority in Kandhamal, or in certain parts of Kandhamal (see, for example, VHP 2008). The Christian community had been growing relatively rapidly in Kandhamal, but not, it seems, as quickly as many Sangh sources asserted. And the Hindu community was certainly not a minority in the region as a whole. In addition to playing upon fears of Hindu extinction, the Sangh’s regular references to ‘missionaries’ were clearly meant to provoke a basic nationalistic response by implying that foreign missionaries were active in India. (There are still foreign missionaries working in India, but the vast majority of ‘missionaries’ today are Indian, and no more ‘foreign’ than a Malayali is to Orissa — though there is some significant cultural difference even there.) Others focused instead on foreign money. After the first round of riots, for example, one editorial suggested that:

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For decades the Christians [Kandhamal] have used American and European money to allure citizens into the church and convert them into Christianity . . . it is certainly non-religious to pay money and promise all kinds of things like better education, higher standard of living and so on to convert naïve Hindus into Christianity (Reddy 2007).

Such accusations often lead rhetorically to claims of conversion by ‘force, fraud and allurement’ (where ‘force’, in a strained kind of usage, means the same thing as ‘fraud’ or ‘allurement’). Later on in the same article, for example, the author implicitly justifies the anti-Christian violence by saying, ‘[c]ommunal riots are deplorable. But the forced conversion into Christianity is more deplorable’ (ibid.). As I have argued elsewhere, there is some merit in the assertion that the great wealth associated with global Christianity has benefitted and does still trickle down and benefit India’s Christians (Bauman 2010). And even if those benefits are not held out as an explicit allurement to potential converts, the very assumption that they exist may indeed ‘allure’ some converts to the faith. But that is a discussion for another time and place. The point to be underscored here is that Sangh leaders played a conspicuous role in the Kandhamal riots by regularly and systematically linking local politics and the clashes themselves to broader national fears about the possible extinction of Hinduism or even of the nation itself (by way of a Christian demographic or even military coup), and thereby not only providing justification and cover for those involved in the violence, but also issuing a broader, national ‘call to arms’ in defence of Kandhamal Hindus. The rhetorical linkage, by Sangh leaders, of local and national concerns is not unique to Kandhamal, or to anti-Christian violence, but is, rather, a regular feature of communal riots in India. Stanley Tambiah has described the process as ‘transvaluation’ (1997: 81), and Paul R. Brass (1997: 16) has termed those who engage in it ‘conversion specialists’ (because they ‘convert’ all the peculiarities of localised conflicts into broader, more general and national terms).

Culture and Anti-Christian Violence Hindu nationalism gained momentum just as globalisation picked up speed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and there is, no doubt, a link. Globalisation threatened to diminish the economic opportunities and cultural hegemony of the middle and upper castes and classes while at the same time it threatened traditional and more local status hierarchies (among and within all castes and communities) by introducing new avenues to wealth and power. Members

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of the lower castes and tribes who could gain an education became thereby increasingly upwardly mobile. And all of this was perceived by the old elite as a threat to the ‘traditional’ social order (Lobo 2002: 38). The economic effects of globalisation were therefore seen not only as an economic challenge, but also (and perhaps more importantly) as a cultural challenge to the traditional Indian (or Hindu) ‘way of life’. Similarly, the political effects of globalisation — the sense of lost sovereignty and anxiety about the integrity of the nation — were experienced as a challenge to the nation of India, conceived of not just in political but also (and, again, just as importantly) in cultural terms. It is no surprise, then, that the response to these challenges should in significant ways have been a cultural one. A political response to the effects of globalisation, that is, to the loss of sovereignty entailed in taking loans from international lending agencies, would have been more or less impossible. India desperately needed the international funding and was therefore forced to open up its markets to foreign control and investment. And even if Hindu nationalists had wanted to contest the forces of globalisation economically, they would have been unable to do so as a nation because the national economy had been effectively dismantled. Moreover, the foreign nations and entities responsible for globalisation were effectively untouchable, and there was little interest in stemming the flow of foreign investment, once it began, by targeting the multinationals directly. Resistance to the effects of globalisation therefore shifted, out of necessity, to the cultural plane, as it did in other postcolonial contexts. What is somewhat unique about India is the way in which Christians appear to have been targeted as proxies for the forces of globalisation as part of this cultural contestation. But the targeting makes sense according to a certain logic. In addition to being members of a cultural minority (and therefore inherently a threat in the view of nationalists who believe a unified, national response to globalisation is required), Christians were, because of their presumed connections to Western countries and their putative access to Western wealth and education, seen not only as purveyors of globalisation, but as its primary beneficiaries. And so, while acronymed entities like the US (United States), the IMF (International Monetary Fund), the WTO (World Trade Organization), or KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken are more responsible for globalisation in India, India’s Christians are a more accessible and convenient (and therefore more regular) target (Sarkar 1999: 1698). The irony, of course, is that when it took power at the centre in 1998, the BJP was quite friendly to multinationals because of its somewhat recentlyembraced free-market orientation, while all the while its Sangh Parivar

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associates were enthusiastically engaged in anti-globalisation efforts. For Sangh affiliates like these, attacks on Christians became ‘a symbolic means of resisting the “foreign hand” and so reaffirming the indigenist credentials of Hindu nationalism’ (Zavos 2001: 78). The shift was therefore complete from politics and economics to culture, such that ‘the destruction of mosques and churches . . . [was presented as an act] of redemption of the national honour precisely at the time when the nation’s publically owned assets [were] being sold to foreign investors and domestic capitalists alike, for a song’ (Ahmad 2007: 117). Through this process, local threats (e.g., ‘foreign religions’) become homologous with foreign threats to the nation (e.g., Islam for Pakistan, Christians for globalisation). The mode of contesting globalisation, therefore, is largely a cultural one. And all contestations require unity. But cultural unity is somewhat difficult to come by in a country as diverse as India. The fundamental basis of unity as constructed by Hindu nationalists is clearly Hinduism, or Hindutva (conceived of broadly, as a ‘way of life’), and Hindu nationalists claim the right to rule on the basis of the Hindu majority. But many of these same Hindu nationalists conceive of Hinduism in rather traditional terms, with upper-caste Hindus still the guiding social and ideological force. The paradox, however, is that upper-caste Hindus are a distinct minority in India, constituting well under 10 per cent of the population (Schermerhorn 1978: 16–19). Not only do upper-castes constitute a minority, their minority is a fractured one. In 1978, the sociologist Richard A. Schermerhorn identified two primary groupings of upper-caste Hindus, which he called the ‘parochial neo-traditionalists’ and the ‘conditionally westernised’. The parochial neotraditionalists tended to be educated in vernacular languages; to embrace local culture and entertainment; to prefer Indian garb (even for men); to be vegetarian; to observe caste in the home (if not outside); to consult gurus, rishis, swamis, and astrologers; and to be suspicious of the patriotism of Muslims and Christians. The ‘conditionally westernised’ tended to be inclined towards western languages, sartorial styles, entertainments, and culinary preferences (e.g., for meat-eating) and away from observing caste regulations and religious practices deemed ‘popular’ or ‘superstitious’. The ‘conditionally westernised’ tended, as well, to be politically oriented towards an inclusive secularism, and only mildly patriotic (ibid.: 20). Active members of Sangh Parivar organisations tend to be drawn from the former group, because of its greater support for the Sangh’s Sanskritic, upper-caste Hinduism-inflected vision for India’s socio-economic order. The statistics and proportions might be slightly different today (Lobo 2002: 48–49),8 as would the extent to which members of upper-caste

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communities dominate high-level positions in the public and private sphere (their reach is declining). But the reality of their being a rather small and ideologically divided minority remains, and accounts for some of the difficulties they have had forging national integration on the grounds of a Hinduism conceived of in these terms. Upper-caste Hindus can no longer be considered an undisputed hegemonic community, and those who continue to assert that they are (or should be) are essentially fighting a rear-guard action against social processes that have already occurred, which have begun if not to marginalise them, at least to undermine their traditional status and authority. Yet Hindu nationalists know that for Hindu nationalism to succeed culturally, ideologically and politically, Hindus must retain something akin to a majority. Retaining such a majority would require that Hinduism be defined broadly enough to include Dalits and adivasi communities. Because of this, there is a fundamental tension within the Hindu nationalist movement between, on the one hand, the desire of many upper-caste nationalists to retain for themselves certain traditional social and cultural privileges and, on the other hand, the fact that they are a minority and must therefore, to construct a majority, find ways of including within the Hindu fold a vastly larger number of Dalit and adivasi communities who might contest or reject their privileges. Uppercaste Hindu nationalists are therefore not so much fighting to regain a lost majority as they are to retain a formerly somewhat more compliant coalition of castes low and high (and many adivasi groups as well) who accepted, at least in practice if not ideologically, their pre-eminence. Their de facto minority status and declining influence, therefore, accounts for the obsession of upper-caste Hindu nationalists with numbers (Appadurai 2006: 74). Christians become targets of Hindu nationalist ire because they threaten the Hindu nationalist coalition in two primary ways. The first is statistical. Conversions to Christianity threaten to weaken the coalition by removing members of the lower-caste and adivasi communities (from which Christian converts most regularly come). The reduction of Hindu numbers is particularly concerning to many Hindu nationalists because of the rather widespread belief that Hinduism is a non-proselytising religion with no exact equivalent of a conversion ceremony. By this logic, then, there is no way for Hinduism to regain numbers lost by conversion to other religions (Mustafa and Sharma 2003: 22).9 And this, at root, is the source of the aforementioned anxiety about Hindu extinction. Moreover, many Hindus believe that proselytisation is at best an act of intolerance, and at worst a kind of violence (Sridhar 1999). Conversion

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therefore constitutes a threat, and the much-publicised mass movements of conversion that occur from time to time even more so. The discourse of Hindu nationalism is constituted partly through the need to articulate what it means to be a Hindu — a process of definition, of establishing the boundaries of Hindu-ness. From the experience of mass movements, a critical nexus is established between this need, the threat of conversion and the vulnerability of the Hindu margins (Zavos 2001: 82).

It is little wonder, then, that Hindu nationalists seeking to mobilise their constituents often cite questionable or even clearly false and exaggerated statistics about the growth of Christianity in India (Sridhar 1999), as was the case in Kandhamal. Conversion to Christianity threatens the Hindu nationalist coalition ideologically as well. The mere existence of Christianity, of course, constitutes within Hindu communities an alternative to the Hindu social order. But more importantly, Christians are perceived by many Hindu nationalists to be in a variety of ways intentionally provoking members of lower-caste and adivasi communities to reject Hindu social structures. For example, Christian educational efforts among such communities are not only perceived by Hindu nationalists as a kind of allurement to the Christian faith, but are also believed to give rise to social aspirations that breed discontent with traditional Hindu social structures. Moreover, in a very practical sense, education (or even literacy itself) also decreases the exploitability of the lower castes and classes, and increases their economic competitiveness, which is perceived as a threat by the traditional elites (Aaron 2009: 111; Mustafa and Sharma 2003: 151; Viswanathan 2007: 346, 348). Christians and Christian missionaries have also at various times and places gotten involved in the mobilisation of lower-caste and adivasi communities for better treatment or greater autonomy, such as in the Jharkhand movement and the Dalit rights movement, and such movements threaten to overturn entrenched social arrangements as well (Aaron 2007: 17; Lobo 2002: 19; Zavos 2001: 73–74). The work of Christians also threatens the Hindu nationalist coalition by competing with the Hinduisation or Sanskritisation projects that have been increasingly established by Sangh affiliates among rural lower-caste and adivasi communities since the late 1990s (Aaron 2007: 8; Hardiman 2002: 175; Lobo 2002: 57, 68). Such projects are intended, of course, to bring greater unity to ‘Hindus’ by homogenising their religious and cultural beliefs, practices and symbols. The fact that Christian workers have the loyalty of many of the

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marginalised communities targeted by these projects presents an obstacle to their success, and creates resentment. In Kandhamal, for example, Saraswati’s distaste for Christianity was surely related to the fact that Christians represented a hindrance to his work and goals (the feeling, the evidence suggests, was mutual). On the surface, it might seem somewhat odd that Christianity, which has for decades constituted only 2–3 per cent of the national population, should be seen as such a threat. And if the concern were merely about the survival of Hinduism qua religion, there would be little need to worry. But this contestation is not just about religion, or at least not about religion conceived of as a set of doctrines (which is the way that many Westerners understand the term). Rather, many Hindus, particularly Hindu nationalists, conceive of ‘Hinduism’ broadly, as a way of life, and understand Christianity in the same way. The contestation is therefore a cultural one, and on those terms the perceived threat of Christianity becomes, perhaps, more clear. In India today, Christianity is associated symbolically (if not in reality) with everything that threatens the ideal society as is articulated by many Hindu nationalists. Through its association with educational opportunity, Christianity symbolises modern merit-based (as opposed to ascriptive) status systems. Through its attempts to increase literacy (particularly literacy in English), Christianity comes to be associated with modern (and ‘foreign’) meaning-making systems. Because of its development and elevation of historically marginalised communities, Christianity represents an inversion of traditional caste/class hierarchies. Because of its demand for recognition and free religious expression, Christianity manifests a clear bias for secularism and religious freedom as understood in the West, and asserts that the Indian nation cannot and should not be a Hindu nation. By arguing that Dalits who convert to Christianity continue to be Dalits, and should therefore receive all the reservation benefits available to non-Christian Dalits, the Christian community implicitly suggests that the Dalit community is not Hindu (a suggestion which, if accepted as true, would divide and diminish the Hindu community). Because of its putative connections and greater access to Western wealth and power, the Indian Christian community is presumed to reproduce the inequities of global commerce on location, so to speak, and comes therefore to be seen as a symbol of globalisation itself. As such, it represents a threat to the sovereignty, integrity, survival, pride, and self-determination of India itself. That threat may seem to many Hindu nationalists a genuine one because of the aforementioned divisions within Hinduism itself, which mean that in

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this contestation a great mass of Hindus, perhaps even a majority (not to mention other minorities in India) are allied with the Christian community in opposition to Hindu nationalism, or at least in opposition to the kind of Hindu nationalism that leads to violence against minorities. And on top of all this, by allying with their Western (read: ‘foreign’) co-religionists, India’s Christians could, in the views of many Hindu nationalists, become part of the Western hegemonic capitalistic alliance whose culture and way of life will, it is feared, swamp that of ‘traditional India’. In a rather simplistic rendering, then, ‘Hinduism’ (or, rather, ‘Hindu-ness’) represents for Hindu nationalists the way things were and should be, and Christianity represents all that threatens that order.

The Riot as a Cultural System In Clifford Geertz’s seminal article, ‘Religion as a Cultural System’, the late anthropologist argues that: Sacred symbols function to synthesize a people’s ethos — the tone, character, and quality of their life, its moral and aesthetic style and mood — and their world view — the picture they have of the way things in sheer actuality are, their most comprehensive ideas of order. In religious belief and practice a group’s ethos is rendered intellectually reasonable by being shown to represent a way of life ideally adapted to the actual state of affairs the world view describes, while the world view is rendered emotionally convincing by being presented as an image of an actual state of affairs peculiarly well-arranged to accommodate such a way of life. This confrontation and mutual confirmation has two fundamental effects. On the one hand it objectivizes moral and aesthetic preferences by depicting them as the imposed conditions of life implicit in a world with a particular structure, as a mere common sense given the unalterable shape of reality. On the other it supports these received beliefs about the world’s body by invoking deeply felt moral and aesthetic sentiments as experiential evidence for their truth. Religious symbols formulate a basic congruence between a particular style of life and a specific (if, most often, implicit) metaphysic, and in so doing sustain each with the borrowed authority of the other (Geertz 1973: 89).

This synthesis, according to Geertz, is generated through sacred ritual, in which ‘the world as lived and the world as imagined, fused under the agency of a single set of symbolic forms, turns out to be the same world’ (ibid.: 112). In other contexts, Geertz speaks of the synthesis as a ‘magical circle’, arguing that ‘[i]t is when this magical circle is broken and religious concepts lose

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their air of simple realism, when the world as experienced and the world as imagined no longer seem to be mere elucidations of one another, that perplexities ensue’ (Geertz 1968: 39). At all times and for all peoples, the world is constantly changing. The magic circle is therefore in need of constant and assiduous maintenance. But there are moments of significant social and cultural change that threaten to or succeed in rupturing the circle altogether. I have argued elsewhere that colonisation represented one such rupture (Bauman 2008: 13). But surely the period of hyper-globalisation beginning in the 1990s represents another.10 Geertz has been often criticised, most notably by Talal Asad (1993), for neglecting to acknowledge that religious symbols are created and interpreted in the context of hierarchical social structures in which certain people and groups have more power than others to create and interpret religious symbols as they see fit, and to impose their creations and interpretations on others. Surely this is a blind spot in Geertz’s theory. However, he does not deny this point; he simply focuses his attention elsewhere. And so, in my view, Asad’s critique represents a corrective, not a refutation, of Geertz’s theory. Similarly, practice theorists have shifted our attention from symbols and sacred activity (that is, religious ritual) to the way that seemingly habitual or everyday activity inscribes, enacts, revises, or perpetuates culture. The fundamental assumption of practice theory is that culture (in a very broad sense) constructs people as particular kinds of social actors, but social actors, through their living, on-the-ground variable practices, reproduce or transform — and usually some of each — the culture that made them (Ortner 2006: 129).

Practice theorists have therefore complained that Geertz’s theory focuses too exclusively on religious ‘symbols’ and ‘meanings,’ and on grand cultural performances rather than everyday activity and ‘on-the-ground’ practices. Here again, however, there is nothing in Geertz’s theory that would prevent the expansion of it in the direction of practice, and in fact Jason Springs (2008) has recently argued that one can profitably read Geertz as a practice theorist, and that doing so contributes not only to the improvement of Geertz’s theory, but also redounds positively to practice theory itself. Bringing Geertz into conversation with practice theory, and with critics like Talal Asad, therefore, creates a theoretical space which is greater, in my view, than the sum of its parts. And expanded as a result of this conversation, Geertz’s theory becomes even more useful in helping us think about the

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interreligious riot. By analysing the interreligious riot as a collection of acts of cultural production we are, I think, realising the potential of practice theory. And if we analyse these riots by asking Paul R. Brass’s question (discussed previously) — ‘Whose interests are served by the interreligious riot and what power relations are maintained?’ — then we are essentially asking a question about power.11 What I propose here is that the interreligious riot is in fact involved in a contestation about power between Hindu nationalists, on the one hand, and minorities and Hindus in agreement with the assumptions of Western-style secularism, on the other, in a context where neither group is clearly, mostly or irreversibly in control. For those who provoke, condone or participate in it, the interreligious riot is an attempt to re-establish a certain, distinctive but now ruptured circle, one in which the world as they live and experience it — the ‘ground reality’, so to speak — once again supports and is supported by the world as they imagine it, ideally, to be. The point, in short, is that this is not a story about elite communities reproducing the structures of their own hegemony. Rather, it is a story of small groups within the traditional local, regional and national elite having recognised, unconsciously at least, that a good deal of their former hegemony is already lost and trying therefore to re-establish and reproduce the conditions of their traditional power. There is, therefore, some discipline in the interreligious riot — some logic and intention (Das 1990: 27; Das and Nandy 1986). The riot does a certain kind of work. However, the power of those who provoke, condone and participate in riots is not complete. I have already noted, for example, that the interreligious riot is not an expression of hegemony, but an assertion of it, one which, it is important to remember, is contested. No hegemony is ever complete (Ortner 2006: 6–7), let alone one, like this, in so divided a society. Moreover, one must keep in mind that once a riot begins, people join in for many reasons unrelated to the original provocation — fun, profit, sexual pleasure, personal vengeance, etc. ‘There is no way’, asserts Horowitz, ‘to convert the riot into a wholly instrumental activity’ (2001: 537). Or, to put it in the terms Mark C. Taylor (2009) has used (though not for the riot specifically), the riot is a network of individual and communal actions that take place within and are influenced by many other networks: biological, psychological, technological, economic, political, social, cultural, etc. It is, in this sense ‘virtual’, like the internet, structured but uncontrollable and unpredictable (ibid.). So the interreligious riot will have many effects. But an important one, I contend, is cultural.

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As indicated here, it is ritual, for Geertz, which fuses the world as lived with the world as imagined. And the interreligious riot, in my view, is a ritual;12 it is, as Geertz (1973) might put it, a ‘cultural performance’. And this resonates, of course, with Brass’s assertion that anti-minority riots are ‘produced’ (Brass 2003). The interreligious riot, therefore, is a performance (or a series of discrete performances) that enacts for those who participate in it a lived world which is once again consistent with the world as they imagine it should be. The question, therefore, is what exactly is performed, that is, what does the world produced by the anti-Christian riot look like? To begin with, the world produced by the anti-Christian riot is one in which Hindu (and, more generally, Indian) men assert their virility, manliness and vigour by dominating others, a world which inverts the colonial-era hierarchy of ‘martial races’ by placing Christians (as proxies for the colonial and globalising other) at the bottom, and proves false the colonial accusation of Hindu effeminacy (Kesavan 2001: 95). It is a world where Christians become scared of and are forced to respect Hindus (if only for their aggression). It is a world where Hinduism is rescued from its association with putatively passive and impotent models of leadership like Gandhi’s, who, according to Hindu nationalists (e.g., Savarkar), emasculated Hinduism through his ‘mealy-mouthed formulas of Ahimsa and spiritual brotherhood’ (Pandey 2006: 127). In addition, the world created by the anti-Christian riot is one in which the privilege of traditional elites, whether local, regional or national, remains unchallenged by upstart members of formerly marginalised or minority religious communities. It is, in addition, a world where Hindu sacred space remains unchallenged (Das 1990: 15). (Remember, for example, the initial complaint in Orissa, that the Christmas pandal had been erected in or was near the space only recently used for a Durga puja.) It is a world where Christian possessions are destroyed and where the Christian community can therefore no longer pose a competitive economic threat to others. It is a world where Hindu assertions about the uniquely tolerant nature of Hinduism cannot be challenged or called into question by the existence of an evangelical religious other (because that other has been removed, destroyed or emasculated). The world created by anti-Christian riots is also one in which traditional sources of authority retain their authority, and where ascriptive (rather than merit-based) and local status systems obtain (which is of interest not only to upper-caste Hindus, but also to the lower-caste and adivasi communities that compete most directly with convert communities). It is a world, then, where the incursion of modernity is literally reversed. Riots turn back clocks. They

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wipe out infrastructure, forestall and reverse technological development, and reduce the ideological, religious and economic influence of the outside world by destroying or downgrading avenues of communication and transportation. Finally, the world created by the anti-Christian riot is one in which there is no uncertainty about identity. One of the most fundamental aims of ‘deadly ethnic riots’, according to Horowitz, is the ‘reduction of ethnic heterogeneity’ (2001: 424). ‘Homogeneity is what rioters want, and growing homogeneity is what they get . . . By far the most common consequence of the riot, apart from death, is the production of refugees’ (ibid.: 438). Increasing homogeneity was a significant result of the Orissa riots, and therefore the desire for homogeneity appears to be an element, as well, in the interreligious riot. Hyphenated citizens, argues Gyanendra Pandey, ‘have very often lived in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries — the centuries of nationalism — under the sign of the question mark’ (2006: 129). The question mark points not only to the ambiguous status of the minorities who bear it, but is also a constant reminder of the impurity of dominant (or formerly dominant) communities, or even of the nation itself. As indicated here, Kond leaders in Kandhamal expressed distaste even (or perhaps especially) for Christians even within the Kond fold, and certainly for Pana Christians (who, as Christians, represented the dilution of greater Kui identity. And Sangh leaders portrayed Kandhamal Christians as an anti-national threat. This threat to the purity of the nation is particularly strong in the case of Christianity because of its success among members of lower-caste and adivasi communities and the symbolic importance of these groups in the attempt, by Hindu nationalists, to forge a strong, unified Hindu majority (Zavos 2001: 73). Anti-Christian violence therefore creates and reformulates the world in significant ways, and thereby, for those who participate in it, establishes a world as lived more consonant with the world as imagined. And lest one think that the effects of this created world are only temporary, it is important to keep in mind the longer-term effects of an interreligious riot. The displacement of large number of Christians in Kandhamal, for example, has forever altered the region’s demographics (in the direction of homogeneity). Forcing minorities into refugee camps means that their power to dilute the purity of other communities is quite literally contained. And the fear still felt even by those who have returned (a much smaller number than originally left) will surely affect their behaviour in the future. Moreover, those who participated are affected over the longer term as well. Perpetrators are more likely to act aggressively in the future just as victims will for some time (if not forever) be more likely to keep their heads down and eschew evangelism,13 to know and

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respect ‘their place’. In addition, concerned citizens and scholars from abroad and elsewhere in India will think twice before visiting the region in the pursuit of justice, truth, business, or recreation. The interreligious riot therefore is a performance, a kind of social practice that produces and reproduces certain (older, more traditional) kinds of social and cultural constraints — constraints more hierarchical and less democratic than those they replace, and not just for the riot moment, but for some time afterwards as well. The riot, therefore, works.14 It does cultural work; it is culturally meaningful. But that is not the same as saying everyone involved is fully conscious of the work they are doing. If we ask, with Paul R. Brass, ‘Whose interests do antiChristian riots serve?’ the answer is simple. They serve the interests of those who participate in them. But in asserting this I insist upon a Weberian notion of interests which includes not only material interests but also ideal ones. And I also insist upon an argument I’ve made elsewhere (Bauman 2008: 75) that interests are often intuited as much as known, felt more than rationally articulated. It is quite possible, therefore, that many of those who participate in anti-Christian riots do so largely without having some rational goal clearly in mind, but merely because it feels right to them on some basic level.

Conclusion I have argued in this chapter that the anti-Christian riot in India can be understood as a cultural system, one which for many participants asserts the continuing meaningfulness and vitality of a particular fusion of the world as lived with the world as imagined, a fusion threatened by the forces of globalisation, democratisation and Western-style secularism. Though space constraints prevent me from doing so fully, there is reason to believe that the same could be said of violence against other religious minorities as well, such as Sikhs in India, Muslims in India and Thailand or Hindus in Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bhutan. In each of these cases, anti-minority violence takes place in a postcolonial context. To the many threats and anxieties facing postcolonial nations, globalisation adds yet more. These threats, in the view of nationalists of all stripes, require decisive and unified action. ‘Above all’, writes Arjun Appadurai, ‘the certainty that distinctive and singular peoples grow out of and control well-defined national territories has been decisively unsettled by the global fluidity of wealth, arms, peoples, and images’ (2006: 7). And in the context of the uncertainty caused by that fluidity ‘violence can create a macabre form of certainty and can become a brutal technique (or folk discovery-procedure)

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about “them” and, therefore, about “us”. This volatile relationship between certainty and uncertainty might make special sense in the era of globalization’ (ibid.: 6). In the face of such threats, uncertainty about the identity of the nation must be eschewed and real or imagined challenges to that identity (in the form of religious, ethnic and other minorities) must be removed or neutralised. The ‘implosion of powerful national economies’ throughout the developing world, ‘has been accompanied by the rise of various new fundamentalisms, majoritarianisms, and indigenisms, frequently with a marked ethnocidal edge’ (ibid.: 23). In such situations, minorities come to symbolise external threats, either because they have or are assumed to have connections to foreign threats, or because they represent an impediment to the ostensibly necessary unity and homogeneity of the nation, a denial of the nation’s presumed national genius. ‘[V]iolence against minorities enacts a deep anxiety about the national project and its own ambiguous relationship to globalisation. And globalisation, being a force without a face, cannot be the object of ethnocide. But minorities can’ (ibid.: 44). In many cases the threat posed by minorities is framed in numerical or statistical terms, but at root, as I have argued, the concern about minorities and the response to that concern is generally cultural in nature. One must be careful not to assume without investigation that the theory outlined here could be more widely applied. In each of the aforementioned situations of anti-minority violence (in India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Bhutan), religious differences run along ethnic lines as well, which is not the case, in the same way, with Christians in India (or at least with Christians outside of Northeast India). Moreover, in each of these other cases, the government itself has been more clearly and regularly involved in anti-minority violence. Despite this, it seems rather clear, as well, that anti-Christian violence in India is by no means of a unique species, and that Geertz may be of some use in these other situations as well.

Notes 1. The Sangh Parivar, or ‘Family of the (Rashtriya Svayamsevak) Sangh’, comprises dozens of loosely affiliated national, regional and local organisations that work for the strengthening, reform or defence of Hinduism, and to realise the political agenda of the Hindu majority in India. All groups have a tendency towards Hindu

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nationalism, and a good deal of sympathy for the ideology of Hindutva (‘Hinduness’), that is, for the notion that the special genius and unity of India as a nation rests on the fact of its being Hindu, defined quite broadly as a cultural essence (but not broadly enough, generally speaking, to include adherents of ‘foreign’ religions like Islam or Christianity). Groups associated with the Sangh Parivar, or ‘Sangh’, pursue their work differently. On the one end of the spectrum are those that tend towards militancy and violence; on the other are groups that pursue their agenda through legitimate (if conservative and majoritarian) politics. The best known of the Sangh’s national organisations are the Rashtriya Svayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which focuses on social and cultural issues, the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), primarily a Hindu reform and defence movement, and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), currently the largest of India’s national opposition parties, and occasionally the party in power. Sangh-affiliated groups work for similar goals, but not always in perfect harmony. In particular, the BJP has a tenuous and often strained relationship with other Sangh groups that form the core of its constituency because these other groups are often more radical in their politics and militant in their tactics than the BJP can afford to be. For a more detailed account and analysis of the Orissa riots, see Bauman (2010). The erection of pandals in prominent public spaces has long been a way for various communities to assert or contest their social position. On this, see Bayly (1989: 31). I use adivasi only in preference to the mildly pejorative and baggaged term, ‘tribal’ (or the clunky official designation of ‘Scheduled Tribes’), but not to declare my position in the debate about the ancient origins of India. (Many Hindu nationalists prefer the term vanvasi (forest-dweller) to adivasi because they contend that IndoAryan Hindus were the ‘original inhabitants’ of India.) A sizeable, influential and often aggressive national youth organisation associated with the VHP. The Naxalites are a vaguely Maoist insurgency group that now operates actively (as the de facto government) or surreptitiously over vast swathes of Indian territory (by some estimates 40–50 per cent of it). The Naxalites operate particularly in under-developed areas (areas where adivasis and Dalits are prevalent) in a ‘red corridor’ that stretches from Nepal and West Bengal in the north, to Andhra Pradesh in the south. Their reach is such that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently declared them India’s greatest internal threat. For an excellent firsthand journalistic account of the Naxalites, see Chakravarti (2008). In a system akin to affirmative action, a certain number of seats are reserved for STs and SCs in Indian government bureaucracies, legislative bodies and educational institutions. The trope of Hindu extinction has been around, and influentially, for quite some time, at least as far back as U. N. Mukherji’s Hindus — A Dying Race (1909). For an overview of the development of this trope, see Datta (1993).

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8. Lobo both discusses Schermerhorn and updates his numbers. 9. Many scholars have questioned this logic, and have asked how it was that Southeast Asians became Hindu, or what happened to all of the Buddhists in India, some of whom, at least, appear to have been assimilated by Hinduism (Pati 2003: 1–3; Sarkar 2007: 358). 10. In addition to the problem with Geertz’s theory (with regard to power) noted here, the cyclical nature of Geertz’s theory (which he inherits from Émile Durkheim), makes it difficult to explain religious change. The problem is diminished, however, in the context of major social ruptures initiated largely by outsiders, such as colonisation and globalisation. 11. Though I might replace ‘maintained’ with ‘asserted’. 12. I am certainly not the first to suggest that riots are in some ways like rituals. See van der Veer (1996). 13. Since the Dangs riots, for example, ‘Christians do not dare to organize public meetings across the state as they used to . . . This is a successful enforcement of cultural illegitimacy on evangelicalism in the public sphere’ (Aaron 2002: 79). 14. As it does in other Indian riot situations. See Basu (1995: 73–75).

References Aaron, Sushil. 2002. Christianity and Political Conflict in India: The Case of Gujarat. Colombo: Regional Centre for Strategic Studies. ———. 2007. ‘Contrarian Lives: Christians and Contemporary Protest in Jharkhand’. Working Paper no. 18, Asia Research Centre, London School of Economics and Political Science. ———. 2009. ‘Emulating Azariah: Evangelicals and Social Change in the Dangs’, in D. H. Lumsdaine (ed.), Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in Asia, pp. 87–130. New York: Oxford University Press. Ahmad, Aijaz. 2007. On Communalism and Globalization: Offensives of the Far Right. Gurgaon: Three Essays Collective. All-India Christian Council. 2008. ‘Research and Fact Finding Report Based on Visits to Kandhamal, Orissa in the Aftermath of Anti-Christian Attacks’. http:// indianchristians.in/news/content/view/1826/45/ (accessed 5 June 2009). Anand, S. 2008. ‘Next Stop Orissa’. Tehelka (Online), 19 July. http://www.tehelka. com/story_main37.asp?filename=Ne190108next_stop.asp (accessed 26 June 2008). Appadurai, Arjun. 2006. Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger. Durham: Duke University Press. Asad, Talal. 1993. Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Basu, Amrita. 1995. ‘Why Local Riots Are Not Simply Local: Collective Violence and the State in Bijnor, India 1988–1993’, Theory and Society, 24(1): 35–78.

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Bauman, Chad M. 2008. Christian Identity and Dalit Religion in Hindu India, 1868–1947. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. ———. 2010. ‘Identity, Conversion and Violence: Dalits, Adivasis and the 2007–08 Riots in Orissa’, in Rowena Robinson and Joseph Marianus Kujur (eds), Margins of Faith: Dalit and Tribal Christianity in India, pp. 263–290. Washington DC: Sage Publications. Bayly, Susan. 1989. Saints, Goddesses, and Kings: Muslims and Christians in South Indian Society 1700–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brass, Paul R. 1997. Theft of an Idol: Text and Context in the Representation of Collective Violence. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 2003. The Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence in Contemporary India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Chakravarti, Sudeep. 2008. Red Sun: Travels in Naxalite Country. New Delhi: Penguin. Das, Veena. 1990. ‘Introduction: Communities, Riots, Survivors — The South Asian Experience’, in Mirrors of Violence: Communities, Riots, and Survivors in South Asia, pp. 1–36. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Das, Veena and Ashis Nandy. 1986. ‘Violence, Victimhood and the Language of Silence’, in Veena Das (ed.), The Word and the World: Fantasy, Symbol and Record, pp. 177–195. Delhi: Sage Publications. Datta, Pradip Kumar. 1993. ‘“Dying Hindus”: Production of Hindu Communal Common Sense in Early 20th Century Bengal’, Economic and Political Weekly, 28(25): 1305–1319. Dayal, John. 2008. ‘White Paper on Hindutva’s Anti-Christian Violence in Orissa, India, During Christmas Week 2007’. http://aicu.blogspot.com/2008/01/ white-paper-on-hindutvas-anti-christian.html (accessed 30 May 2010). Froerer, Peggy. 2007. Religious Division and Social Conflict: The Emergence of Hindu Nationalism in Rural India. New Delhi: Social Science Press. Geertz, Clifford. 1968. Islam Observed: Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia. New Haven: Yale University Press. ———. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books. Gonsalves, Francis. 1999. ‘Grisly Christmas for Christians in Gujarat’, Communalism Combat, January, pp. 11–14. Hardiman, David. 2002. ‘Christianity and the Adivasis of Gujarat’, in Ghanshyam Shah, Mario Rutten and Hein Streefkerk (eds), Development and Deprivation in Gujarat: In Honour of Jan Breman, pp. 175–195. London: Sage Publications. Hindu, The. 2007. ‘Communal Trouble Brewing up in Kandhamal Dist.’, 22 September. http://www.thehindu.com/2007/09/22/stories/2007092252750300.htm (accessed 26 June 2008). Horowitz, Donald. 2001. The Deadly Ethnic Riot. Berkeley: University of California Press. Jaffrelot, Christophe. 1996. The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India. New York: Columbia University Press.

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Kesavan, Mukul. 2001. Secular Common Sense. New Delhi: Penguin. Lobo, Lancy. 2002. Globalisation, Hindu Nationalism and Christians in India. New Delhi: Rawat Publications. Madhav, Ram. 2008. ‘Local Factors Led to Kandhamal Violence’. Rediff News (Online), 8 January. http://rediff.com/news/2008/jan/08guest.htm (accessed 26 June 2008). Mukerji, U. N. 1909. Hindus: A Dying Race. Calcutta: Mukerjee & Bose. http://babel. hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015012964774;view=1up;seq=7 (accessed 28 February 2014). Mustafa, Faizan and Anurag Sharma. 2003. Conversion: Constitutional and Legal Implications. New Delhi: Kanishka Publishers. National Commission for Minorities 2008. ‘Report of the NCM Visit to Orissa, 6–8 January 2008’. http://ncm.in/pdf/orissa%20report.pdf (accessed 7 October 2008). Ortner, Sherry. 2006. Anthropology and Social Theory: Culture, Power, and the Acting Subject. Durham: Duke University Press. Pandey, Gyanendra. 2006. Routine Violence: Nations, Fragments, Histories. Delhi: Permanent Black. Pati, Biswamoy. 2003. Identity, Hegemony, Resistance. Delhi: Three Essays Collective. ———. 2008. ‘Re-convert or Die’. Tehelka (Online), 19 January. http://www.tehelka. com/story_main37.asp?filename=Ne190108re_convert.asp (accessed 26 June 2008). Reddy, Balaji. 2007. ‘Communists Cash on Rising Communal Violence in Orissa — Who to Blame? Hindu Hardliners or Christian Mechanism of Forced Conversion?’ India Daily (Online), 30 December. http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/18847. asp (accessed 26 June 2008). Samantaray, Maitreya Buddha. 2008. ‘Ethnic Violence and Communal Polarisation in Orissa’s Kandhamal District’. The Daily Star (Online), 12 January. http://www. thedailystar.net/story.php?nid=18808 (accessed 26 June 2008). Sarkar, Sumit. 1999. ‘Conversion and Politics of Hindu Right’, Economic and Political Weekly, 34(26): 1691–1700. ———. 2007. ‘Christian Conversions, Hindutva, and Secularism’, in Anuradha Dingwaney Needham and Rajeswari Sunder Rajan (eds), The Crisis of Secularism in India, pp. 356–368. Durham: Duke University Press. Schermerhorn, Richard A. 1978. Ethnic Plurality in India. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Springs, Jason. 2008. ‘What Cultural Theorists of Religion Have to Learn from Wittgenstein; Or, How to Read Geertz as a Practice Theorist’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 76(4): 934–969. Sridhar, V. 1999. ‘Communalism: A Numbers Game’. Frontline (Online), 16, 27 November–10 December. http://www.thehindu.com/fline/fl1625/ 16250930.htm (accessed 24 May 2010).

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Tambiah, Stanley J. 1997. Leveling Crowds: Ethnonationalist Conflicts and Collective Violence in South Asia. Berkeley: University of California Press. Taylor, Mark C. 2009. ‘Refiguring Religion’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 77(1): 105–109. Tripathy, Debasis. 2008. ‘Christmas Day Terror: Hindus Protest Attack on Swami Laxmanananda’. The Organiser (Online), 6 January. http://www.organiser.org/ dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=217&page=14 (accessed 12 June 2008). Tripathy, R. P. 2008. ‘Pseudo-Seculars Deliberately Trying to Shun Facts’, Kamal Sandesh, 1–15 February, pp. 20–22. van der Veer, Peter. 1996. ‘Riot and Rituals’, in Paul Brass (ed.), Riots and Pogroms, pp. 154–176. New York: New York University Press. Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP). 2008. ‘Christian Atrocities in Kandhamal, Orissa (Press Release, 14 January)’. http://www.sanghparivar.org/blog/indiaputr/ christian-aggression-in-kandhamal-orissa-vhp-press-release (accessed 11 June 2008). Viswanathan, Gauri. 2007. ‘Literacy and Conversion in the Discourse of Hindu Nationalism’, in Anuradha Dingwaney Needham and Rajeswari Sunder Rajan (eds), The Crisis of Secularism in India, pp. 333–355. Durham: Duke University Press. Zavos, John. 2001. ‘Conversion and the Assertive Margins’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 24(2): 73–89.

10

Studied Silences? Diasporic Nationalism, ‘Kshatriya Intellectuals’ and the Hindu American Critique of Dalit Christianity’s Indianness RICHARD FOX YOUNG AND SUNDER JOHN BOOPALAN

This chapter engages in an act of concerned scholarship under three headings. The first, ‘Intellectual Kshatriyas and a Hinduism That Can Just Say “No”’, provides an overview of the rise of Hindu American public intellectuals — self-described ‘intellectual kshatriyas’ — proponents of an assertive form of diasporic nationalism. The second (in two parts), ‘India’s American “Education Wars”’ (I and II), explores the attempted erasure of Dalits from South Asian Religious Studies curricula by specific cohorts of the diaspora living in the United States (US). And the third, ‘Selfhood, Agency, Indianness’, rectifies certain caricatures of Dalit Christianity prevalent in those same cohorts of the diaspora. First, though, we provide a dispatch from ‘the front’ (as it were) about an incident that initially aroused our apprehensions. Ironically, the atmosphere at Friend Center on the campus of Princeton University was anything but friendly on a chilly night in March 2011, when a book launch organised by the Religious Life Office’s Coordinator of Hindu Life, Vineet Chander, turned absolutely arctic. The week before, posters had announced the evening’s topic — ‘Are Western Forces Conspiring to Destroy India from the Inside Out?’ The featured speaker was Rajiv Malhotra, a prominent Hindu American public intellectual and (co-)author of the

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newly-released Breaking India — a hefty 650-page book (Malhotra and Neelakandan 2011).1 Taking the ‘yes’ side, and with cameras rolling, Malhotra spoke of ‘Western forces’ — a nexus of evangelical Christians, left-wing academicians and government officials — all bent on India’s disintegration, as a state and a civilisation. On the ‘no’ side, was Nehemiah Thompson, a Christian Dalit from Nagercoil in Tamil Nadu and a Princeton-area minister of the United Methodist Church. Recalling his father’s conversion (in the pre-Independence, princely state of Travancore), Thompson quietly scoffed at the notion that American financial inducements might have been involved; at this, an audience member called out ‘Are you sure?’2 More certain of his family history than of ancient India’s, Thompson blundered onto the minefield of India’s ‘History Wars’.3 Out of his depth, Thompson trotted out a discredited theory — popularised by yesterday’s Dravidian nationalists — of dark-skinned (Tamil-speaking) aboriginals being driven-out of Harappa by fair-skinned (Sanskrit-speaking) Aryans. A proponent of Aryan autochthony, Malhotra traced Thompson’s racialised (and purportedly ‘racist’) understanding of Indian antiquity back to the same ‘Western forces’ — colonial-era Christian missionaries, above all — whom he faults for India’s contemporary travails as well. Debunking Thompson’s follies proved easy and needed doing (Malhotra’s own brand of historical revisionism will be discussed further later in the chapter); it was not this, however, that constitutes our cause célèbre as much as the frothy tone of alarm in which Malhotra went on to denounce Christianity as ‘a cancer’.4 Afterwards, a woman interviewed by Malhotra’s staff for an audience reaction, spoke exasperatedly of Thompson as a ‘traitor to India’5 — from one émigré to another, surely an eyebrow-raising allegation! Actually, the trope of betrayal was first voiced at a Breaking India publicity forum in New Delhi more than a month earlier; there, in a more vernacular idiom evocative of India as janmabhumi (motherland), Malhotra spoke of conversion to Christianity — Dalit converts were the implied target — as being tantamount to filial impiety (or, in Hindi street-talk, to abandoning one’s ma-bap [mother-father]).6 Before drawing our dispatch to a close, mention must be made of another casualty of the crossfire that evening, a Dalit named Yogeshwar from New York City who described himself as an activist inspired by the ideals of B. R. Ambedkar (1891–1956), India’s Dalit activist par excellence. Although not self-identified as a Christian, Yogeshwar piggybacked on Thompson’s account of his father’s conversion as a segue into a discussion of an outrage — one of the most heinous of recent years — perpetrated in 2006 upon a Dalit family in Khairlanji, a village in Maharashtra. Launching into his peroration,

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Yogeshwar had the microphone wrested from him by Chaplain Chander. Ostensibly, Yogeshwar had overshot his time; even so, and despite a difficult judgement call, Chander’s failure to police hecklers in the audience who interrupted — ‘Where’, one demanded, ‘is the evidence?’ — made Yogeshwar’s maltreatment all the more conspicuous.7 Pushed beyond endurance, Yogeshwar fled the auditorium, hurling insults on his way out: ‘Hinduism stinks’, he shouted, ‘it is destroying my people’. With cameras still rolling, the episode was filmed and posted on the Breaking India website where it bears the label ‘Unfortunate Incident’. When Breaking India relentlessly hammers away at ‘atrocity literature’ and snorts at ‘Dalit victimhood propaganda’ (Malhotra and Neelakandan 2011: 156, 182–185, 278, 302), one suspects that Yogeshwar’s performance was less a misfortune than a fillip, as Thompson’s also was. In this light, Yogeshwar’s fate seems broadly emblematic of Dalits everywhere — Indian or Diasporic — of being spoken of or spoken for, without being heard, and of being drowned out in the public square (on the campus of a leading American institution of higher education, no less).8

Intellectual Kshatriyas and a Hinduism That Can Just Say ‘No’ Prema Kurien, an astute observer of American Hinduism, has said of its nationalism that while it is ‘often hidden’, it has in recent years acquired a more ‘public face’, becoming in the process ‘an important way for Indians from a Hindu background to counter their relative invisibility within American society and to obtain recognition and resources as American ethnics’ (2007: 184). Herself the target of Malhotra’s barbs, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) historian Romila Thapar, would agree with Kurien on the emergence of a robust diasporic nationalism. Thapar, however, adds a barb of her own on the driving force behind it, alluding to ‘monetary wherewithal’ (Thapar 1999: 28) without compensatory ‘social and political recognition’ (ibid.: 29). Our submission would be similar in that we too see empowerment and disempowerment at the microphone (understood synecdochically) as a high-stakes contest waged by public intellectuals (the Thompsons and Yogeshwars, no less than the Malhotras) who claim to speak for India or on behalf of Hinduism (or Christianity, as the case may be), the better to overcome the handicap of social ‘invisibility’. Thapar says something close to that when she makes note of what a ‘telling gesture’ it is ‘in the relatively nascent society of the U.S.’ when an immigrant Hindu claims to be a ‘descendent of the [world’s] oldest and purest civilization’ (ibid.).9 Still, to be absolutely fair, one has to acknowledge,

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as sociologists of immigration do, that diasporic populations are much preoccupied — and understandably so — with how they are to ‘reproduce their ethno-religious identity in new surroundings’ (Yang and Ebaugh 2001: 262). While that is undoubtedly true, recent studies differentiate by age-cohort and suggest that reproduction of the traditional templates for being Hindu (or Christian, for that matter) is of less concern to the emerging category of ‘Desis’ (Americans of South Asian descent), who in the eyes of their elders may only be ‘almost’ Hindu (‘almost’ Mar Thoma, etc.).10 An emic dimension might be the most glaring omission from the analysis here; while we subscribe to that analysis for its etiological value, Hindu American public intellectuals will not recognise themselves in it, nor should they be expected to. What it lacks is an insider-specific idiom of self-expression, and for that an excursus into the ideal Gita-like world of the ‘intellectual kshatriya’ will be helpful. As a term of self-reference, those in the know (as it were), such as N. S. Rajaram, a mathematician and veteran of the ‘History Wars’ (who will be discussed later in the chapter), trace the coinage back to the 1990s and David Frawley (Vamadeva Shastri), a convert to Hinduism and himself a proponent of Aryan autochthony.11 More than anyone else, however, Rajaram lays claim to actually being one; while crediting Frawley with originality, his hermeneutic for interpreting the Bhagavad Gita comes straight out of Sri Aurobindo in the pre-Independence era: ‘What India needs especially at this moment is aggressive virtues, the spirit of soaring idealism, bold creation, fearless resistance, courageous attack; of the tamasic inertia we already have too much’ (Rajaram 1998: viii).Translated into a public-square ethic (as it were), ‘intellectual kshatriyas’ are individuals who hurl themselves into the cognitive battle of ideas, selflessly, in defence of dharma (dharma raksha); like Arjuna, they are detached and heedless of either victory or defeat. What matters is the normative performance of dharma, in the sense of transmundane duty. Playing on the infinite plasticity of dharma, the wars they wage are thought of as dharmayuddhas — ‘just wars’ — pitting dharma against adharma, its antithesis.12 In the clash, one hears a more thunderous ‘No!’ to the one (adharma) than its ‘Yes!’ to the other (dharma), but the relative absence of a positive vision for Hindu revitalisation seems to not effect a brake on the rising influence of ‘intellectual kshatriyas’ in the diaspora. On the contrary, the key to success may lie more in their tenacity, spunk, and defiance.13 It goes without saying that today’s ‘Mind Warriors’ employ cyber-weapons and the guerrilla tactics of blogger provocateurs.14

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India’s American ‘Education Wars’ (I) Despite being the denizens of an acephalous, transoceanic, iHindu empire of the mind, ‘intellectual kshatriyas’ are by no means either clones of each other or centrally coordinated. And while their virtual presence on the internet (and in ‘critical mass’ in metropolitan America: Chicago, Dallas, New York, etc.) makes for rapid mobilisation when the cause is right (or the moment opportune), internecine rivalry reveals how tenuous the alliances sometimes are. At the time this chapter was being written, one found Rajiv Malhotra locking horns with Delhi-based Radha Rajan, herself a ‘shastrically’-informed and formidably analytical ‘intellectual Kshatriya’.15 As the name implies, Mind Warriors are, if nothing else, activist agitators or agitated activists, persons who are not only cognitively-inclined but personally ready to sally forth into the long war of the dharmayuddha. On many occasions since 2000, action has occurred in concert against the main target of that decade — ‘Hinduphobia’ in the academy — and the casualties have been high. Accused of tarnishing Hinduism’s lustre, ancient and modern, some of America’s most eminent South Asian Religious Studies scholars have been relentlessly hounded and harassed. Perceived as deficient in the kind of epistemic integrity ‘intellectual kshatriyas’ pride themselves on having, such scholars are said to lack the essential virtue of a¯rya-hood. This is not a flattering chapter in American academe, but instead of being side-tracked by it, all we can do is draw attention to the burgeoning literature inscribing the academy’s understanding of how it all transpired.16 Chronologically, an assault on pre-tertiary public education occurred in tandem with the one on American academe. Rumbling began in 2000 when Malhotra’s Princeton-based Infinity Foundation filed complaints with the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The bone of contention was that the NEH had financed curricula on the Ramayana that included a lesson (one out of 40) developed by Syracuse anthropologist Susan Wadley, based on a Dalit source deemed irreverent of a Hindu sacred text. While crosscultural sensitivity in a multireligious America requires due vigilance from a concerned Hindu American public (as of any other), what happened was ominously prescient of Dalits having their public-square microphone wrested out of their hands.17 Pitched battles over middle-school curricula broke out at mid-decade in California. There, diaspora organisations, inspired in no small measure by David Frawley, N. S. Rajaram, and other revisionist ‘historians’ (proponents, inter alia, of Aryan autochthony), took umbrage at textbook characterisations of Hinduism deemed unflattering, including those alluding

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to Dalit stigmatisation.18 Now dubbed the ‘California Textbook Controversy’, this was truly a brawl, involving rancorous public hearings of the State Board of Education, court subpoenas, and a broad coalition of opponents, including ‘secular Hindus, South Asian progressives, and academics specializing in South Asian Studies’.19 Since California, no other campaign has so visibly roiled America’s ‘intellectual kshatriyas’; still, minor convulsions of indignation constantly recur, and a quick review of the recent past will acquaint us with a few of the more commonplace grievances. First and foremost would be anti-defamation crusades: a prime example was the protest — surprisingly successful for a city like New York — against a showing of the animated movie Sita Sings the Blues at a film festival in Queens.20 That same summer, Mind Warriors grew exercised over the Huffington Post’s honouring of Anju Bhargava, a Hindu American, in a feature article entitled ‘10 Inspiring Women Religious Leaders’ (Huffington Post 2011).21 Instead of applauding Bhargava, she was cyber-rebuked for not measuring up to the high calling of an ‘intellectual kshatriya’, the idiom that suffused her detractors’ criticisms. Concurrently, a flap broke out over Sanskritist Sheldon Pollock’s endowment of the Ambedkar Sanskrit Fellowship Program at New York’s Columbia University. As quoted by the Chronicle of Higher Education, Pollock did this so that Sanskrit might be more open of access to the ‘historically underprivileged’ (Neelakantan 2011; indeed, the first recipient is a Muslim, a woman, and, presumably, a Dalit). Umbrage, though, was taken at Pollock’s characterisation of Sanskrit as ‘belong[ing] to everyone’ and of how it might ‘empower the oppressed’ (ibid.). Immediately reacted to, Pollock’s interview in the Chronicle elicited the following (uncorrected) comment from Malhotra: Pollock’s well articulated mission is said to be to ‘expand the appreciation for Sanskrit’ among non-brahmins, such as shudras, Muslims, Christians, etc. This is cover for training the next gen of Sanskrit leaders in the academy who will give the ‘dalit perspective’ or ‘muslim perspective’ etc. on the shastras.22

Momentarily, we will have more to say on the anxiety voiced here over issues having to do with hermeneutical privilege; suffice it to say, however, that Malhotra is absolutely right: social location makes a world of difference to how a sacred text is read. The irony to be highlighted here is that having declared the generative cultural properties of India’s Sanskritic heritage to be unparalleled, he would then want the door of opportunity to be slammed shut, lest anyone Dalit (non-Brahmin, Shudra, Muslim, Christian, etc.) actually walk through it.

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India’s American ‘Education Wars’ (II) In the years of relative quiet since the ‘Academy Wars’, Malhotra has effected a notable U-turn, from overseer of American South Asian Religious Studies scholarship to prophet of a Huntingtonesque vision of an imminent clash of civilisations where Hinduism and India are the victim and Christianity and America the victimiser. Currently, videos on the Breaking India website show him on the lecture circuit holding forth in front of audiences unlike any he had ever addressed in America (brigadiers, political dignitaries, assorted brokers of power, mostly retired). That is to say, a nexus of support is being forged, the exact opposite of the one denounced in Breaking India (Malhotra and Neelakandan 2011) — described in our dispatch from the front, appropriate adjustments considered — of intellectual kshatriyas, saffron academicians, and Indian government officials. Of the stock-in-trade talking points — announced in the subtitle as ‘Western Interventions in Dravidian and Dalit Faultlines’ — the first we leave aside as a re-tread of blogs grown stale; in any case, reference can easily be had to a substantial body of depolemicised, non-reductionistic studies on the emergence of Dravidian nationalism and of the European role in its racialisation (and purported ‘racism’).23 As a genre, conspiracy literature fails the test of logic by assuming that which it must demonstrate (the fallacy of the petitio principii); Breaking India (Malhotra and Neelakandan 2011) is overburdened with the same implausibility. Consider, for starters, what happens when the talk turns from Dravidianism to Dalits. Much lather, for instance, is worked up over the scholarship of a certain M. Deivanayagam, a Chennai-based Christian ‘intellectual’, who espouses the novel theory that Thiruvalluvar (a revered Hindu figure in Tamil gnomic literature) was converted by the Apostle Thomas (Deivanayagam 1969).24 Scoffed at by professional historians, Indian and European, from the time it was first put forward in the 1960s, it has been utterly eschewed by mainstream scholars who have consigned it to the crackpot fringe. Lopsidedly focused on Dalit and other Christian follies, Breaking India turns 650+ pages of lower-case ‘truths’ into the one overriding upper-case ‘Truth’ about Indian Christianity, imbuing the book with a transparent and troubling veneer of truthiness, as American political humourist Stephen Colbert might say.25 Like all scholarship, even the humbug variety has an intellectual genealogy, although the origins of Deivanayagam’s need not delay us. Still, the 1950s — when, coincidentally, Nehemiah Thompson was a youth being socialised into Dravidian Nationalist historiography — were the decade when the Vaimanikashastra, a Sanskrit text purportedly of hoary antiquity on the ‘science of aeronautics’, replete with blueprints for helicopters and triple-decked

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aircraft, was announced to the world by a Mysore pandit-scholar named G. R. Josyer (1973). ‘There was proof in the Vedas’, Josyer claimed, according to a journalist by whom he was interviewed, ‘that [India] was a highly civilised society and that its scholars were brilliant . . . far more brilliant than we are today’ (Lyon 1954: 197–202 passim). When Deivanayagam and Josyer are nothing less than mirror-image parodies of each other, one understands why, analytically, Breaking India has to be lopsidedly selective, circular, and irresponsibly ahistorical in order to succeed. Were we bent on countering Malhotra’s conspiracy theory with one of our own, we might play the game of guilt by association and make a fuss over the fact that Josyer authored a tract on ‘Brahmanophobia’ and wrote a glowing forward to a Mysore edition of the works of American Freethinker Robert Ingersoll, known for his anti-Church diatribes. Instead, we simply observe that, dialectically, a Josyer eventually begets a Deivanayagam; indeed, that was how the pendulum swung from the 1950s to the 1960s.26 Not only are Josyer and Deivanayagam a parody, they warn of how ‘History Wars’ often become intractable, and of how easily they spiral out of control, when the parties involved stoop to inferiorisation of the ‘Other’, the better to vaunt, respectively, their self-ascribed superiority. Then, too, they remind us that a grab at the microphone in the Indian public square is just as effective a way of overcoming ‘relative invisibility’ as it is in America, whether one fears a loss of prestige or aspires to have more of it. That is why it will not be enough just to drum one’s fingers on the table while proponents of Aryan autochthony have their say. Bruce Lincoln has a wonderfully trenchant way of characterising the revisionist histories of Frawley and Rajaram when he calls them ‘myth + footnotes’ (1999: 215), although surely they are the more dangerous for being so transparently pre-emptive. At the microphone, autochthony cannot be trumped. From this angle, one understands why Breaking India (Malhotra and Neelakandan 2011) relentlessly harps on the historical improbability of the Apostle Thomas being the founder of Indian Christianity; with obvious relish, Malhotra calls it a ‘hoax’, not once acknowledging the antiquity of Kerala’s Syro-Malabar Orthodoxy despite its existence from at least the middle of the 4th century, if not earlier. Why, though, would it make a difference when Vedic civilisation was (allegedly) already in full bloom in the 4th millennium before Christ? For reasons like these, Breaking India (ibid.) contributes, ideologically, to a fracturing of India into further India-s, making the possibility of continuing fragmentation all the more real. To see how this happens, one could strip

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this hefty tome of its ample girth and read no further than the first paragraph of the first page: A civilization provides a shared identity composed of the images that we have of ourselves, as a people, with a collective sense of history and a shared destiny. It gives a definite sense of who ‘we’ are, and ensures a deep psychological bond among ourselves, along with the feeling that the nation is worth defending. Without this bond, who is the ‘we’ to be defended and what are the sacrifices for? (ibid.: 1; emphasis added)

A more glaring instance of homogenising essentialism, couched in tendentious prose, is hard to imagine, unless one follows its antecedents back into the RSS ideology of the first half of the 20th century when it was first articulated in the writings of V. D. Savarkar and M. S. Golwalkar (vide n. 14, this chapter). On hearing a unity of ‘civilisation’, ‘identity’ and ‘destiny’ proclaimed, when whole populations are disenfranchised, trapped in the dilemma of remaining on the periphery of that ‘civilisation’ or of subalternising themselves before its imagined ‘identity’ and ‘destiny’, one could simply grumble and grind one’s teeth. Or, one could answer back, invoking the self-understandings of Dalit Christians, of themselves as Indians (or Americans) who are Christians and as Christians who are Indians (or Americans).27

Selfhood, Agency, Indianness Of three topics that we identify as crucial to an understanding of Dalit Christians — that are constantly talked about, or talked around, defensively, by diasporic nationalists — ‘caste’ and what it means in the discourse of ‘kshatriya intellectuals’ would be first and foremost. No human being, of course, is fully transparent, even to himself or herself, and so we cannot say whether Kancha Ilaiah is on the right track or not when he speaks of this as a strategy of avoidance — a ‘studied silence’, as he calls it — or an unacknowledged anxiety that ‘[o]nce [caste] is made a subject of theoretical discourse, it will begin to be deconstructed’ (2009: 216). From a Dalit perspective, however, that kind of avoidance amounts to denial; for, as Dalit theologian Peniel Rajkumar observes, ‘[u]nderstanding Dalits inevitably entails understanding the Indian caste system’ (Rajkumar 2010: 4). Without this, such is the ambiguity that inverted commas must be used around the word ‘caste’. Breaking India (Malhotra and Neelakandan 2011), however, provides only a cursory — indeed, a sanitised and rehabilitated — glossary definition, which, s.v., jati, reads in part as, ‘[a] community based mainly on profession and work roles,

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also kinship’ (Malhotra and Neelakandan 2011: 554).28 How this helps when virtually all human social groups fit the same description is really quite breath-taking. From a Dalit standpoint, what irks is Breaking India’s trivialisation of marginalisation, stigmatisation and victimisation (Khairlanji being a prime instance of an atrocity story that dare not be named). As an explicit acknowledgement of these bedrock Dalit realities, Breaking India only gets as close as this (ibid.: 2): ‘There are social injustices that are partly historical and partly modern. Some have originated within the Indian society, while others are bred and fed by foreign influences to gain leverage in India’. Again, with telling lop-sidedness, the indigenous is ignored and the exogenous (the nexus of Christians, leftist academicians and government officials) exclusively held responsible for India’s worsening fragmentation. Of the ‘social injustices’ alluded to, nothing more is said; of social apartheid and its consequences, one has to go outside Breaking India altogether to hear of stories like Nehemiah Thompson’s of growing up Dalit in Nagercoil. Such experiences cast a shadow long enough that it reaches into the diaspora; as Rachel McDermott comments (2008: 239): ‘Persecution of Dalits in India . . . is not a thing of the past, a bad memory in the lives of middle-aged immigrants in the United States. It is on-going’. Until ‘caste’ is subjected to a more rigorous analysis, a cloud of uncertainty will overhang the believability of Breaking India’s handwringing over India’s widening fault lines. To segue into the subject of ‘conversion’, another contentious topic and the second of the three most assiduously avoided in the American public square,29 an excursus into Malhotra’s idiosyncratic understanding of the category ‘minority’ will put us on a good trajectory. Here, though, we find a number of analytically unhelpful assumptions; that said, more than was the case with ‘caste’, Breaking India draws attention right away to the importance of a proper definition. 650+ pages later, however, ‘minority’ remains undefined (Malhotra and Neelakandan 2011: 7). Evidently, when Dalit Christians, as such, belong to a ‘global majority’, as the same passage declares, who would need one? A third of the way through, Malhotra adduces the reason why (ibid.: 190): One must wonder if the vulnerable third-world ‘minorities’ could end up as unwitting agents for imperialism and as the new global ‘coolies’ and ‘sepoys’. Where a foreign nexus exerts strong influence, should the ‘minorities’ perhaps be reclassified as branch offices of a multinational enterprise? It is appropriate to ponder over the definition of a minority. If someone in India goes to a local McDonald’s restaurant that may be run by a few natives from the lower strata

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of Indian society, one does not conclude that it is a ‘minority’ or ‘subaltern’ establishment just because the local employees are minorities. One clearly recognizes that it is the local presence of a global giant.

One might wish for a less denigratory tone, but the unworkability of the church-as-multinational analogy is that which stands out as most unhelpful, analytically. Simply put, talk of a ‘Generic Church’, as some ‘intellectual kshatriyas’ are wont to do (Radha Rajan for one, although not Malhotra, as such) fails to fathom what it means, polity-wise, to be, say, Baptist or even Roman Catholic, ecclesiologically, institutionally, or even organisationally, not to mention proudly self-financed mainline denominations such as the Churches of South and North India (inter alia).30 Yet again, lop-sidedness transforms an important public issue — foreign funding of religious organisations, whichever nation might be affected — into a symptomatically Christian propensity. Where Saffron Hinduism in America and elsewhere overseas is concerned, similar grounds for alarm about ‘network[s] engineered in and managed from India’ could be voiced.31 A vocabulary limited to ‘coolie’ and ‘sepoy’ for talking about Dalit Christians does no justice at all to their self-understanding as converts and is sadly not even on a par with ‘rice Christian’; while the fiercely urgent needs of the body were at least acknowledged by the latter (older) epithet (which referred, derogatorily, to conversions during a time of famine), the ones found in Breaking India fail more because of their denial of Dalit agency than for the contempt they are intended to convey. Here, we are confronted with a remarkably durable (mis)perception of ‘conversion’ to Christianity (or of conversion to other religions, including Hinduism): such a thing cannot happen, so the story goes, without being masterminded from afar and imposed ‘from above’ upon hapless victims, trapped in webs of conspiracy hatched by Vatican prelates and American presidents. Historiographically, such disdainful disregard of indigenous agency has nothing at all fashionably postcolonial about it, as Malhotra might think. Rather, the nub of the matter is a reprise of colonial disempowerment, of being overawed by ‘White Power’. Accordingly, converts can only be acted upon, manipulatively, in (ostensibly) the worst interests of alien outsiders who control the purse strings. One heard the same theme being reiterated at the Breaking India book launch in New Delhi. There, in an idiom as archaic as it is contemporary, Malhotra spoke of converts to Christianity (Dalits were the target) as being no better equipped to make their own religious choices than the ‘old’, ‘the sick’ and the ‘mentally incompetent’ to sign a life insurance policy.32 Grounded in a notion

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of adhika¯ra and only partly translatable as ‘authority’, the ‘truth’ that lies behind the analogy is that Dalits need shielding and sheep dogging; on their own, they simply do not have the cognitive wherewithal (or, in all likelihood, according to this view, the karmic entitlement or eligibility for comprehending uppercase shastric ‘Truth’).33 Running though it all, however, is the same trope we heard embedded in the audience interjection — ‘Are you sure?’ — shouted out when Nehemiah Thompson talked of his father not being converted because of American financial inducements. That is, while Dalits may labour (as it were) under cognitive handicaps, they are at least shrewd, for they know a good franchise when they see one — Christianity, say, or McDonald’s.34 Were Malhotra’s rhetoric merely a reprise of immemorial (although invidious) Dalit stereotypes, one might shrug it off; when, however, the subtext of passages where they occur appears to rationalise (although not justify) reprisals against them, the role of an ‘intellectual kshatriya’ appears more questionable than ever. As an example, Breaking India identifies conversion, monocausally, as the cause of ‘social tension’ (Malhotra and Neelakandan 2011: 295) and ‘social turbulence’ (ibid.: 334–376 passim, especially 336) whenever and wherever Christian communities are engulfed by violence, from Orissa to Gujarat.35 Not only between the lines but in them, the text itself, a few pages after voicing its vision of an Indian concord — one in ‘civilisation’, one in ‘identity’, and one in ‘destiny’ — betrays a note of discord, sounding openly undemocratic and intolerant (ibid.: 3): ‘One wonders if India has too little or too much democracy — or, at least, too little governance’. Dalit theology is a theology that pronounces, unequivocally, a resounding ‘No!’ to this or any other ideology that perpetuates injustice in defence of someone else’s prerogatives and privileges (whether called dharma, as such, or by another name). And that, theologically, is why, unmistakably, the tone of our essay has an edgy, oppositional quality. Unlike Malhotra’s mischaracterisation of Dalit theology as a clone of Black Theology (that of the early — and angrier — James Cone, in particular), Dalit theology has always been and will continue to be a theology that can and does say ‘Yes!’ to Indiannness. Here at the end, Malhotra’s caricature of Dalit theology’s foreignness brings us to the third and last of the topics most assiduously avoided by diasporic nationalists — the importance of a non-saffronising engagement with Dalit theologians on their turf and terms, dialogically, and without a predetermined outcome.36 Consider the following (ibid.: 206): While Dalits certainly have legitimate grievances that need to be addressed, the true application of the spirit of Black Theology would be for oppressed Indians to find similar resources in their own classical narratives, such as Puranas, Kural,

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Saiva Siddhanta, etc., and thereby do what black theologians have done, i.e. to use internal spiritual resources for their own socio-political empowerment.

The ‘Yes!’ of Dalit theology to this admonition (patronising though it sounds) would not be unconditional; here, it will not do to declare that venerable Vyasa was a ‘Dalit’ (a rishi with whom portions of the smriti literature alluded to here are traditionally identified), when Dalits themselves have never enjoyed unrestricted access to textualised Hinduism, Sanskritic or High Tamil. As a non-Dalit, to speak of texts of these kinds as constituting Dalit ‘classical narratives’ is both patronising and misleading. One only needs to read Malhotra’s blogs, as we have, and hear them raise a hue and cry over the Ambedkar Fellowship in Sanskrit at Columbia University to see that this is so. Alternatively, one can have a look at lived Dalit experience through the lens of Dalit literature, which has burgeoned in recent decades but remains shrouded in obscurity. Consider, for instance, Ka¯nal (‘Mirage’, 1993 [1986]) by K. Daniel, a Sri Lankan Tamil Dalit. In this novel about Jaffna in the 1930s, a time when large numbers of Nalavars turned Catholic (Nalavars are called ‘Nadars’ on the Tamil mainland), one of Daniel’s most interesting characters, called Suppar, is a Nalavar hungry of access to the Sanskritic epics. Sitting apart, but within earshot, Suppar listens in on the lessons given on the Mahabharata at the veranda school of a certain Kumaraswamy Pulavar, a much-revered Tamil pandit. Such mastery over the epic does he attain, without being allowed to sit with the others, that he earns the soubriquet of ‘Mahabharata Suppar’ (ibid.). The rub, though, is hermeneutical, and proof again that social location makes a world of difference to how a sacred text is read, whether the readers are Black Americans or Tamil Dalits (Latin American indigenous peoples, Korean Minjung, etc.). For Suppar, the Mahabharata becomes a tool for the unmasking of prerogative and privilege, a source of inspiring resistance for the Nalavar downtrodden, before, during, and also after their conversion to Catholicism (ibid.).37 While too much of the Indianness of Dalit Christianity remains hidden from sight in the writings of local authors undeservedly unknown, nationally and internationally, it is more than passing strange that Breaking India would ignore the growing cohort of Dalit theologians, not naming a single one, and instead harp so insistently on the crackpot theories of a Dalit ‘intellectual’ like Deivanayagam of Chennai. Here is where the unconditional ‘Yes!’ of Dalit theology to Dalit ‘classical narratives’ (as it were) can be heard most resoundingly, not to the exclusion of others but with due deference to Indianness in the most quintessentially Dalit meaning of the word — that is, of Indian indigeneity at the margins. For that, however, a representative resource is not

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all that easy to choose, given the change, growth and development of Dalit theology over the many years of Breaking India’s incubation.38 For present purposes, the individual we find most emblematic of the Dalit Indianness of Dalit theology is the Church of South India’s James Theophilus Appavoo, a theologian on the faculty of the Tamil Nadu Theological Seminary (TTS) in Madurai. An unassuming presence in classroom and countryside, he has never had a book launch or videos of his lectures posted online; a composer of liturgical music (in a non-Carnatic, folk style), Appavoo does theology at its most local, most grassroots level, with and through Dalit students and villagers. For Appavoo, the transformation of marginality into solidarity is one thing (laudable and achievable), communion quite another. Through his advocacy of a Eucharistic theology of the oru olai (‘one pot’), village folk celebrate intraand inter-communal meals, as frequently as possible, sharing what they grow together, unafraid of the mixing, and in their modest way re-enacting a feature of Christianity’s earliest Jerusalem-based gathering of believers. Still modestly practised in Tamil Nadu and in no sense a mass-phenomenon, oru olai is accompanied by a liturgy for celebration of the Eucharist. While a hybrid, linguistically, and by no means destitute of Sanskritic components, the Dalit Indianness of the Giramiya isai vari pad, as the liturgy is called (‘Worship in Folk Music’), is what stands out. On its Indianness being at the very least acknowledged, if not actually admired, affirmed, and appreciated, a good deal hangs. Zoe Sherinian (2011: 256) explains: ‘In Tamil Nadu, in order for the [Dalits] to be liberated, their cultural resources must also be liberated from hegemonic associations of inferiority, degradation, and inauspiciousness’. Surely, though, the Indianness of Appavoo’s theology is not that hard to recognise, even without Sanskrit shlokas (stanzas). There is more, though: oru olai’s non-confrontational, peaceable, un-kshatriya-like way of enabling the (re) making — instead of the breaking — of India. That alone should be reason enough why Dalit theology deserves a turn at the microphone in public-square debates, Indian or diasporic American. [I]t is my conviction that my countrymen will gain truly their India by fighting against that education which teaches them that a country is greater than the ideals of humanity. Rabindranath Tagore (1917: 127)

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Notes 1. As for Breaking India’s (co-)authors, we consider Aravindan Neelakandan as the deuteragonist; hereafter, ‘the author’ shall be understood as Rajiv Malhotra. 2. The ‘Are you sure?’ audience interjection (speaker unidentified) can be heard at ‘Reverend Thompson, Part 1’ (06:50), http://www.breakingindia.com/ princeton-video-5/ (accessed 20 November 2012). The trope embedded here, is that of the adharmic Dalit, unprincipled and avaricious. At the time of writing this chapter, full video coverage of the Princeton book launch (31 March 2011) remains available on the Breaking India website. 3. On these, see the magisterial survey in ‘The Assault on History’ (Chapter 7) and ‘The Education Wars’ (Chapter 8) in Nussbaum (2007). Although contested by Malhotra in some of Breaking India’s most fiery ad hominem passages (Malhotra and Neelakandan 2011: 251–257, 516–517 especially), Martha Nussbaum’s analysis finds overall confirmation in Guichard (2010). 4. The Malhotra ‘cancer’ comment can be heard at ‘Questions and Answers, Part 1’ (03:54), http://www.breakingindia.com/princeton-video-9/(accessed 20 November 2012). 5. The ‘traitor to India’ comment (speaker unidentified) can be heard at ‘Audience Reactions after Event’ (07:02), http://www.breakingindia.com/princeton-video11/ (accessed 20 November 2012). At cyber-speed, the Princeton book launch morphed into a ‘debate . . . at Princeton University’ with Hindu nationalist commentators characterising Thompson as a ‘padri’ [sic] and accusing him of mendacity. See Vivekajyoti (2011). Clerical duplicity is a common trope in the history of Hindu apologetics. For The Padris’ Deceits Disclosed, a typical tract from colonial Madras in the 1840s, see Young and Jebanesan (1995: 83–87). Note, however, that in the interval until Malhotra, Hinduism and India have become conflated. 6. The ma-bap infidelity metaphor can be heard at ‘Author’s Address’ (01:10), http://www.breakingindia.com/videos?id=81 (accessed 20 November 2012). This, too, has a time-worn feel and was perhaps first inscribed in a tract from colonial Bombay in the 1830s; there, a Maratha revivalist, Morabhatta Dandekara, portrayed conversion in a similar idiom: ‘The man who could idly suspect his mother of adultery, when he himself was conceived in her womb, is the only man fitted to suspect and object to his own religion’ (cited in Young 1981: 28). 7. The ‘Where is the evidence?’ outburst can be heard at ‘Questions and Answers, Unfortunate Incident’ (02:18) and Yogeshwar’s parting insults at 03:27, http:// www.breakingindia.com/princeton-video-10/ (accessed 20 November 2012). Yogeshwar’s surname remains unknown. On the incident he attempted to narrate, unsuccessfully, see Teltumbde (2008). 8. Kamath and Mathew (2003: 13) shed light on how this happens: ‘Hindutva travels from India down 5th Avenue in New York City as part of a multicultural

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parade on the streets. It circulates back homeward as an ideology that is now a legitimate part of U.S. society. A point we wish to emphasise is that fundamentalist ideologies, rather than being opposed to liberalism, are able to find a niche for themselves within liberal-democratic politics’. Note that Malhotra (Malhotra and Neelakandan 2011: 259) indicts Thapar for having subverted ‘the historical and cultural continuities that unite India and its civilization’. ‘“Desi” [lit., ‘of the land’] is an inclusive category that supersedes potentially divisive categories of nation, religion, caste, ethnicity, language, and numerous other differences’ (Shankar 2008: 4). For confirmation of the coinage, see Frawley (2007: 101–102). For an Indian contrarian’s sulfurous musings on ‘intellectual goondas’, persons who ‘want to talk in the voice of the other’, see Ilaiah (2009: 210). Not at all a nice term, goondas are bullies, petty villains, and riff-raff. That the temerity to just say ‘no’ counts for a great deal in the cyber-world of ‘intellectual kshatriyas’ comes through loud and clear in the following (anonymised and uncorrected) email distributed by the Yahoo discussion group on Breaking India: ‘I have found . . . that Hindus lack a fundamentally strong identity about their own selves, and it comes from a lack of knowing anything in strong terms about a proper history or anything in terms of their past ways or a culture that will make them proud, and where they can then provide the other [‘mainstream’ Americans?] with a confidence of “now please listen to me, I can tell you something different”’. For insight into the ethos and inner workings of iHinduism, see Lal (1999); on ‘cyber-Hindutva’, see Jaffrelot (2010: 704). Here, note may be made of how Diasporic Nationalists feel uncomfortable about being identified as Hindutvavadis (that is, as proponents of an India-as-a-Hindu-nation ideology originating in the writings of V. D. Savarkar and M. S. Golwalkar, the founding ideologues of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh [RSS]). Despite the ideological affinities, there are those — Malhotra would be one — who speak of themselves, self-referentially, as ‘non-Hindutva Hindus’. The apparent disaffection with the RSS in the diaspora, Jaffrelot argues, has much to do with diminished cachet (ibid.: 705): ‘There was no way that business executives . . . were going to get up at dawn to salute the saffron flag reciting a Sanskrit anthem —and even less do calisthenics in khaki shorts’. Malhotra and Rajan differ on their views of Swami Nithyananda, founder of the Dhyanapeetha Ashram outside Bangalore (with an American counterpart in California, the Life Bliss Foundation), who in 2010 was accused of sexual improprieties. Dismayed by Malhotra’s defense of Nithyananda, Rajan denounced his ‘self-arrogated authority to comment on and influence Hindu issues on Hindu bhumi [i.e., soil]’. See the fur fly at http://bharatabharati.wordpress. com/2010/03/25/hindu-dharma-acharya-sabha-heading-the-way-of-gandhisinc-part-1-radha-rajan/ (accessed 20 November 2012).

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16. A representative academy account is Taylor (2011); for a view critical of the academy, see Tilak (2006). On how the ‘Academy Wars’ have objectively altered how South Asian Religious Studies scholarship is now being done, see Grieve (2008). McGill University’s Arvind Sharma (2004: 16–17) argues — sagely — that ‘the cause of civilized intellectual discourse’ is not advanced when Western academics ‘decline to respond to informed critiques simply because the critics do not happen to be academics’. An untiring advocate of interreligious amity, Sharma’s Christianity for Hindus (2010) undercuts the a prioristic conviction, pervasive throughout iHinduism, that Christianity is a monolith bent on the substitution of itself for other religions. 17. For background, context and consequences, see Kurien (2006: 128–129). 18. On the ‘phony Dalit websites’ fronted by radical elements among the prorevisionists to counteract Dalit inclusion in the textbook hearings, see Farmer (2006). Steve Farmer, a historian, was a consultant for the anti-revisionist coalition. 19. Like the ‘Academy Wars’, the California imbroglio is now the subject of a burgeoning literature. The best one among these is Bose (2008); see also Visweswaran et al. (2009). Perhaps the most high-profile academic involved was Michael Witzel, holder of the Sanskrit chair at Harvard; for his account, see Witzel (2006). Citing an illuminating observation by Vinay Lal, Bose writes (2008: 20): ‘[T]he postindustrial civilization of North American Hindus is paradoxically also a “Vedic civilization”, in which the conception of India is largely derived from the texts and practices of remote antiquity, which supposedly furnish us with a vision of Hinduism in its pristine state’. Many of the most colorful imaginings of Hinduism’s ‘pristine state’ are traceable to Frawley and Rajaram, whose revisionist ‘histories’ were debunked even before the California Textbook Controversy revived their claims to credibility. On this, see Witzel and Farmer (2000). 20. On the Sita uproar, see Tripathi (2011). Queens, it should be noted, is a borough with a high concentration of Hindu Americans. A seasoned observer of Diaspora propriety crusades (protesting everything from Madonna’s wearing of a bindi to the films of director Deepa Mehta), Tripathi comments (2004: 174–175): ‘Many Hindus in the West . . . believe Hinduism is being taken for granted because, unlike Muslims or Christians, both of whom react noisily when their religious susceptibilities are offended, it is an easy, safe option. There is guilt, too, in having let things come to such a pass’. 21. For Malhotra’s criticism of Bhargava, see Malhotra and Neelakandan (2011: 296), where he castigates her as an example of Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) ‘jockeying for position[s] to get their names into high-profile posts’. While Malhotra inadvertently confirms our analysis of grabbing the microphone as a way of overcoming ‘relative invisibility’, the Yahoo discussion thread on Bhargava couched itself in the idiom of the ‘intellectual kshatriya’. N. S. Rajaram, whose popularisation of the term has already been noted, contributed this (from ‘Selling out to the Establishment has its Rewards’ [from an email distributed by the

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Breaking India Yahoo discussion group, 17 August 2011]): ‘Sometimes a political leader has to undertake unpleasant tasks for the good of society. As Bhima told Drona in the Mahabharata[,] “We as kshatriyas incur no sin by killing for we kill to protect others”’. Rajiv Malhotra, ‘More Applause for Sheldon Pollock’, comment on a posting by Koenraad Elst (Belgian advocate of Hindu Nationalist causes; much-published by Voice of India, New Delhi), distributed to the Breaking India Yahoo discussion group (10 August 2011). Representative of this expanding corpus are Bergunder (2004), Ramaswamy (2001) and Trautmann (2004). Although critical historiographically, Ashish Chadha (2011) takes a more contextual approach to understanding the emergence of revisionist histories of Indian antiquity. For Malhotra’s criticism of Deivanayagam, see ‘Digesting Hinduism into “Dravidian Christianity”’(Chapter 8) in Malhotra and Neelakandan (2011: 88–124 passim). ‘truth· i· ness (n. informal) the quality of seeming or being felt to be true, even if not necessarily true’. New Oxford American Dictionary, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). The Vaimanikashastra in toto can be found at http://bibliotecapleyades.net/ vimanas/vs/default.htm (accessed 20 November 2012). The journalist who interviewed Josyer in 1952 was American Jean Lyon. The quotation from their conversation may be found in ‘Science by Sutras’ (Lyon 1954: 197–202). Josyer’s foreword may be found in Gopal (1931). Here, ‘Dalit’ (lit., ‘broken, but, by extension, ‘oppressed’ or ‘downtrodden’) is used as ‘a self-ascribed political term seen as representing those who are traditionally viewed as belonging outside the caste system’ (Ethnic and Racial Studies 2000: 402). While we take for granted a certain pre-knowledge of India’s Dalit populations, Dalits of the diaspora have not yet attracted a great deal of scholarly attention. On the United Kingdom (UK), Paul A. Singh Ghuman’s British Untouchables (2011) can be recommended. For the US, much about Dalit Christians can be culled from McDermott (2008). From her, one learns that diaspora Protestants are predominantly Tamil Dalits of the Church of South India from dioceses such as Tirunelveli; less commonly, for socio-economic reasons, are Dalit Christians from the Church of North India; Pentecostals and Independents are generally Dalit, whatever region they emigrate from; lastly, the Roman Catholic Church is home for many Dalits, New York City in particular, as many as half of the whole. In the absence of census data, McDermott acknowledges that the profile remains impressionistic, although based on extensive interviews. Also unknown is how America’s Dalit population, Christian or otherwise, compares with the size of its Hindu counterpart. In all likelihood, the one is so dwarfed by the other that Dalits as a whole are ‘relatively invisible’.

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28. In full, after the line quoted, the glossary says (Malhotra and Neelakandan 2011: 554): ‘Often [Jati] is termed as caste. A Jati is mostly a localized community which is more like a vast extended family than a guild. In colonial Indology as well as social studies, Jatis are often depicted as fixed, rigid and stratified. However, post-colonial researches have shown that Jatis have dynamic maneuverability within the varna matrix and they are not as stratified as previously depicted’. Here, M. N. Srinivas’s theory of ‘Sanskritisation’ may be the one alluded to as ‘postcolonial’; indeed, it can be analytically helpful for understanding ‘the dynamic maneuverability’ of ‘caste’. Still, Sanskritisation occurs only at the expense of Dalit particularity; conversely, downward mobility occurs when those same particularities are emulated by others perceived as being superior to them. Most conspicuously avoided is the question of stigmatisation; without this, being a Dalit might be no different than, say, being a Japanese peasant before the abolition of feudalism or a Russian serf before the Revolution of 1917. 29. Mehta (2011: 196) throws a helpful light on why the topic is so contentious: ‘Given the freedom of belief and action that is available within [Hinduism], the only explanation for conversion can be some extraneous political or economic motive. So paradoxically, the very ideas that make Hindu groups so receptive to the freedom of religion make them suspicious of the need to change religion’. Insofar as it goes, this is lucidly said. Freedom of belief, however, may be overstated (action, or practice, too); opponents of ‘conversion’ employ the idiom of ‘apostasy’. 30. Despite the poor analogy, concerned Christians must ponder the continued growth of American financial influence over churches around the world, a phenomenon explored by Robert Wuthnow’s Boundless Faith: The Global Outreach of American Churches (2009). Non-denominational Indian-initiated churches, often the products of entrepreneurially-gifted individuals, are very likely the primary source of Malhotra’s agitation, although he tars all Christians with the same brush. For reporting on one such Christian independent, see Radhakrishnan (2011). Going back at least to the mid-2000s, high-level inter-church consultations have poured a good deal of effort into a common code of ethics for witness and evangelism in a multireligious world. Though this predates Breaking India, no mention whatsoever is made of it, or in the book’s Yahoo discussion group after the common agreement of the World Council of Churches, the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, and the World Evangelical Alliance was widely reported in the international press. See, for example, Christian Century’s ‘Historic Consensus on Proselytizing’ (Rocca 2011). 31. ‘Network[s] . . . from India’ is a subheading in Jaffrelot and Therwath (2011). 32. Malhotra’s ‘old’, ‘sick’ and ‘mentally incompetent’ comment can be heard at ‘Author’s Address’ (02:22), http://www.breakingindia.com/videos?id=81 (accessed 20 November 2012).

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33. Here, ‘caste’ appears to be conceptualised, as it long has been, as intrinsic to the stuff and substance (as it were) of individuals and communities, independent of and prior to behaviour; or, as it has been said, ‘A donkey, even a good one, can never become a horse’. That is to say, each birth group is less like a species or family than an altogether different genus. Accordingly, the adhika¯ra of the one — in the broad semantic range of the term, classically: competence, eligibility, entitlement — may not be the adhika¯ra of the other. For more on adhika¯ra, pertinent especially because of Malhotra’s self-ascription of an Advaitic (Non-Dualistic) orientation, it is helpful to digest Chapter 10, ‘Homo Hierachicus: The Conceptualization of the Varna System in Indian Thought’, in Halbfass (1991: 347–405). 34. Further analysis along these lines will be found in Bauman and Young (2012). Of the burgeoning literature on ‘conversion’ in the South Asian context, we recommend Heredia (2004). 35. Another prime subtext site is the following (Malhotra and Neelakandan 2011: 335): ‘[A]ggressive conversion often provokes violent reactions from the local populations who try to protect their culture and traditions from the onslaught’. Invoked here is a stereotype that enjoys remarkable durability; this, and others like it, as Mrinalini Sebastian (2010: 112) observes, ‘are often accepted as the natural and unproblematic representation of Christians in India’. ‘For those who resent Christians in India’, she argues, ‘the knowledge generated by popular stereotypes that they are different (which is metonymically understood as “they are the West”) offers enough justification for an easy identification of the minority subjects as the aliens and the enemies in our midst’ (ibid.). When conflict breaks out, Hindu–Christian or Christian–Hindu, the probability of multicausality will make who-started-what less than immediately obvious. The rationalisation of conflict that we find in Breaking India will therefore have to come under especially careful scrutiny; as Sebastian (ibid.: 111) observes, the ‘potential to recast irrational acts of violence against groups as rational, make it a strong tool of the dominant in a multicultural context’. 36. For a sobering account of one such politically-motivated exchange, culminating in co-optation, see ‘Saffronisation of a Dalit Hero: The Story of Salhes of North Bihar’ (Chapter 7), in Narayan (2009: 158–174). 37. On Daniel, see Geetha (2011). As of now, Ka¯nal (‘Mirage’), the novel referred to, remains unavailable in English. Our reference is to the Colombo edition of 1993. 38. For an excellent overview of current and foreseeable trajectories, see Clarke et al. (2010). Demographically, Indian Christianity is overwhelmingly Dalit, and this is why we put forward a Dalit theologian as well as one who theologises in an Indian vernacular as well as English. Malhotra must be aware of the already venerable and sizeable body of shastrically-informed, Sanskritically-articulated Indian Christian theology, prominent until relatively recent years. On this, a classic introduction is Boyd (1974); also, on the corpus of Indian Christian writings in Sanskrit, see Amaladass and Young (1995).

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References Amaladass, Anand and Richard Fox Young. 1995. The Indian Christiad: A Concise Anthology of Didactic and Devotional Literature in Early Church Sanskrit. Anand: Gujarat Sahitya Prakash. Bauman, Chad M. and Richard Fox Young. 2012. ‘Minorities and the Politics of Conversion’, in Rowena Robinson (ed.), Minority Studies, pp. 185–203. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Bergunder, Michael. 2004. ‘Contested Past: Anti-Brahmanical and Hindu Nationalist Reconstructions of Indian Prehistory’, Historiographia Linguistica, 30(1): 59–104. Bose, Purnima. 2008. ‘Hindutva Abroad: The California Textbook Controversy’, The Global South, 2(1): 11–34. Boyd, Robin H. S. 1974. India and the Latin Captivity of the Church: The Cultural Context of the Gospel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chadha, Ashish. 2011. ‘Conjuring a River, Imagining Civilisation: Saraswati, Archaeology and Science in India’, Contributions to Indian Sociology, 45(1): 55–83. Clarke, Sathianathan, Deenabandhu Manchala, Philip Vinod Peacock (eds). 2010. Dalit Theology in the Twenty-First Century: Discordant Voices, Discerning Pathways. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Daniel, K. 1993 [1986]. Ka¯nal [Mirage]. Colombo: Poobalasingham Book Depot. Deivanayagam, M. 1969. Was Thiruvalluvar a Christian? Madras: Meporul Publishers. Ethnic and Racial Studies. 2000. ‘Terminology and Glossary’, 23(3): 401–406. Farmer, Steve. 2006. ‘Hindutva Wolves in Dalit Clothing’, 21 January. http:// groups.yahoo.com/group/Indo-Eurasian_research/message/2872 (accessed 20 November 2012). Frawley, David. 2007. How I Became a Hindu: My Discovery of Vedic Dharma. New Delhi: Voice of India. Geetha, K. A. 2011. ‘In Need of Translation: An Analysis of Sri Lankan Tamil Dalit Literature’, Ariel: A Review of International English Literature, 41(3–4): 33–44. Ghuman, Paul A. Singh. 2011. British Untouchables: A Study of Dalit Identity and Education. Burlington: Ashgate. Gopal, Ram (ed.) 1931. Selections from Ingersoll. Bangalore: Bangalore Press. Grieve, Gregory Price. 2008. ‘Staking Out the Field: A Henotheistic Review of Supplemental Readers for the Study of Hinduism’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 76(3): 716–747. Guichard, Sylvie. 2010. The Construction of History and Nationalism in India: Textbooks, Controversies and Politics. New York: Routledge. Halbfass, Wilhelm. 1991. Tradition and Reflection: Explorations in Indian Thought. Albany: State University of New York Press. Heredia, Rudolf C. 2004. ‘No Entry, No Exit: Savarna Aversion towards Dalit Conversion’, Economic and Political Weekly, 39(41): 4543–4555.

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Huffington Post. 2011. ‘10 Inspiring Women Leaders’, 15 August. http://www. huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/15/women-religious-leaders_n_924807. html#s327551&title=Anju_Bhargava (accessed 20 November 2012). Ilaiah, Kancha. 2009. Post-Hindu India: A Discourse on Dalit-Bahujan, Socio-Spiritual and Scientific Revolution. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Jaffrelot, Christophe. 2010. ‘The Sangh Parivar and the Hindu Diaspora in the West: What Kind of “Long-Distance” Nationalism?’, in Christophe Jaffrelot (ed.), Religion, Caste and Politics, pp. 695–716. Delhi: Primus Books. Jaffrelot, Christophe and Ingrid Therwath. 2011. ‘Western Hindutva: Hindu Nationalism in the United Kingdom and North America’, in Deana Heath and Chandana Mathur (eds), Communalism and Globalization in South Asia and its Diaspora, pp. 44–56. London and New York: Routledge. Josyer G. R. (trans.). 1973. Vimanika Shastra. http://bibliotecapleyades.net/vimanas/ vs/default.htm (accessed 20 November 2012). Kamath, Sangeeta and Biju Mathew. 2003. ‘Mapping Political Violence in a Globalized World: The Case of Hindu Nationalism’, Social Justice, 30(3): 4–16. Kurien, Prema. 2006. ‘“Mr. President, Why Do You Exclude Us from Your Prayers?” Hindus Challenge American Pluralism’, in Stephen Prothero (ed.), A Nation of Religions: The Politics of Pluralism in Multireligious America, pp. 119–138. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. ———. 2007. A Place at the Multicultural Table: The Development of an American Hinduism. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Lal, Vinay. 1999. ‘The Politics of History on the Internet: Cyber-Diasporic Hinduism and the North American Hindu Diaspora’, Diaspora, 8(2): 137–172. Lincoln, Bruce. 1999. Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Lyon, Jean. 1954. Just Half a World Away: My Search for the New India. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co. Malhotra, Rajiv and Aravindan Neelakandan. 2011. Breaking India: Western Interventions in Dravidian and Dalit Faultlines. New Delhi: Amaryllis. McDermott, Rachel Fell. 2008. ‘From Hinduism to Christianity, from India to New York: Bondage in the Lives of Indian Dalit Christians in the Diaspora’, in Knut A. Jacobsen and Selva J. Raj (eds), South Asian Christian Diaspora, pp. 223–248. Burlington: Ashgate. Mehta, Pratap Bhanu. 2011. ‘Hinduism and the Politics of Rights in India’, in Thomas Banchoff and Robert Wuthnow (eds), Religion and the Global Politics of Human Rights, pp. 193–212. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Narayan, Badri. 2009. Fascinating Hindutva: Saffron Politics and Dalit Mobilisation. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Neelakantan, Shailaja. 2011. ‘Columbia U. Professor Broadens Access to Sanskrit, Ancient Language of the Elite’. Chronicle of Higher Education, 7 August. https:// chronicle.com/article/Columbia-Professor-Broadens/128546/ (accessed 20 November 2012).

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Nussbaum, Martha. 2007. The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India’s Future. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Radhakrishnan, M. G. 2011. ‘Freelancers of God’. India Today International, 9 May. Rajaram, Navaratna Srinivasa. 1998. A Hindu View of the World: Essays in the Intellectual Kshatriya Tradition. New Delhi: Voice of India. Rajkumar, Peniel. 2010. Dalit Theology and Dalit Liberation: Problems, Paradigms and Possibilities. Burlington: Ashgate. Ramaswamy, Sumathi. 2001. ‘Remains of the Race: Archaeology, Nationalism, and the Yearning for Civilisation in the Indus Valley’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 38(2): 105–145. Rocca, Francis X. 2011. ‘Historic Consensus on Proselytizing’. Christian Century, 128(15): 14. Sebastian, Mrinalini. 2010. ‘Vamps and Villains or Citizen Subjects? Converting a Third-Person Self-Conception of the Indian Christians into a First-Person Narrative’, Studies in World Christianity, 16(2): 109–125. Shankar, Shalini. 2008. Desi Land: Teen Culture, Class, and Success in Silicon Valley. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Sharma, Arvind. 2004. ‘Hindus and Scholars’, Religion in the News, 7(1): 16–17, 27. ———. 2010. Christianity for Hindus. New Delhi: D. K. Agencies. Sherinian, Zoe. 2011. ‘Dalit Theology in Tamil Christian Folk Music: A Transformative Liturgy by James Theophilus Appavoo’, in Elizabeth Koepping (ed.), World Christianity: Critical Concepts in Religious Studies, vol. 4, pp. 242–261. London and New York: Routledge. Tagore, Rabindranath. 1917. Nationalism. New York: Macmillan. Taylor, McComas. 2011. ‘Mythology Wars: The Indian Diaspora, “Wendy’s Children” and the Struggle for the Hindu Past’, Asian Studies Review, 35(2): 149–168. Teltumbde, Anand. 2008. Khairlanji: A Strange and Bitter Crop. New Delhi: Navayana. Thapar, Romila. 1999. ‘Some Appropriations of the Theory of Aryan Race Relating to the Beginnings of Indian History’, in Daud Ali (ed.), Invoking the Past: The Uses of History in South Asia, pp. 15–35. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Tilak, Shrinivas. 2006. ‘Hinduism for Hindus: Taking Back Hindu Studies’, in J. S. Hawley and V. Narayanan (eds), The Life of Hinduism, pp. 271–287. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Trautmann, Thomas R. 2004. ‘Discovering Aryan and Dravidian in British India: A Tale of Two Cities’, Historiographia Linguistica, 30(1): 33–58. Tripathi, Salil. 2004. ‘Ganesha’s Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat’, Index on Censorship, 33(4): 172–177. ———. 2011. ‘Animated Film Roils Hindus in Queens’. The Daily Beast, 24 July. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/07/24/sita-sings-the-blueshindu-film-causes-a-stir-in-queens.print.html (accessed 20 November 2012).

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Visweswaran, Kamala, Michael Witzel, Nandini Manjrenkar, Dipta Bhog, and Uma Chakravarti. 2009. ‘The Hindutva View of History: Rewriting Textbooks in India and the United States’, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, 10(1): 101–112. Vivekajyoti. 2011. ‘Padri’s Mendacious Attempt to Equate Caste with Skin Colour/ Race’, 26 March. http://www.vivekajyoti.blogspot.com/2011/03/padrismendacious-attempt-to-equate.html (accessed 20 March 2012). Witzel, Michael. 2006. ‘Rama’s Realm: Indocentric Rewritings of Early South Asian Archaeology and History’, in G. G. Fagan (ed.), Archaeological Fantasies: How Pseudoarchaeology Misrepresents the Past and Misleads the Public, pp. 203–232. New York: Routledge. Witzel, Michael and Steve Farmer. 2000. ‘Horseplay in Harappa: The Indus Valley Decipherment Hoax’, Frontline, 13 October, pp. 4–14. Wuthnow, Robert. 2009. Boundless Faith: The Global Outreach of American Churches. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Yang, Fenggang and Helen Rose Ebaugh. 2001. ‘Transformations in New Immigrant Religions and Their Global Implications’, American Sociological Review, 66(2): 269–288. Young, Richard Fox. 1981. Resistant Hinduism: Sanskrit Sources on Anti-Christian Apologetics in Early Nineteenth-Century India. Vienna: Institut für Indologie der Universität Wien, Sammlung De Nobili. Young, Richard Fox and S. Jebanesan. 1995. The Bible Trembled: The Hindu–Christian Controversies of Nineteenth-Century Ceylon. Vienna: Institut für Indologie der Universität Wien, Sammlung De Nobili.

Afterword I ANNE E. MONIUS

This rich volume of essays brings the study of South Asian Christianities into the broader currents of scholarly conversation and debate first sparked over thirty years ago by the publication of Edward W. Said’s Orientalism (1978). Like the recent works of Brian K. Pennington (2005), Esther Bloch (et al. 2010), Donald S. Lopez (1995) and Heather Blair (2010) — on the problematics of colonial scholarship, on the complexities, local particularities and internal diversities of ‘Hinduism’ and ‘Buddhism’ — these essays eloquently attest to the wide range of Christian lives, histories and practices in South Asia, to the pressures and divisions both within Christian communities and without, to the porousness of religious boundaries and to the sometimes dangerous politics of religious identity. That the study of India’s Christianities necessarily focuses on some of the subcontinent’s poorest, most marginalised and thus most vulnerable communities lends a palpable urgency to the efforts here to understand the theological and practical resources available to Christian Dalits (Chapters 3 and 7) and to make sense of escalating anti-Christian violence (Chapters 8 and 9) and anti-Christian rhetoric (Chapter 10). Indeed, recent discourse surrounding the presence of Christian communities on the South Asian religious landscape has become so fraught — even in the global diaspora (Chapter 10) — that simply discerning what actually happened to spur riots, church-burnings and widespread violence involving Christians proves a formidable scholarly task (Chapters 8 and 9). Each essay included here provides fascinating glimpses of the complex practices of Indian Christian life, from the role of godparents (Chapter 1) and the devotional rituals of bhakti (Chapters 2 and 5) to alternative village organisation schemes (Chapter 3), and the performance of cross-veneration and Christian plays (Chapter 7) in the Hindi-speaking belt, the Punjab, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh,

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Kerala, and Tamil Nadu. Fissures along caste lines (Chapters 6 and 8), between Indian and non-Indian (Chapters 5 and 6), and among religious communities (Chapters 4, 8, 9 and 10) amply attest to the ‘contested’ nature of Christian identity and community both today and in history, from an impressively wide range of methodological perspectives (textual, historical, anthropological, theological, theoretical). Given both the diversity of the essays included in this volume and the status of Christianity as a relatively new topic in the study of South Asian religions, this brief Afterword outlines several possible avenues for future research on the Christianities of India, all implicit in the excellent essays offered here.

As Christians First and Foremost In the preceding chapters, the nature of an explicitly Christian identity, community and set of practices is the primary object of study, from Benteler’s (Chapter 1) examination of Christian godparenthood to Ponniah’s discussion (Chapter 7) of the Dalit Christian Tamil drama, ‘Innocent Blood’. What makes each community or practice unique are its explicitly Christian associations, whether in the bhakti poetry of Vedanayaka Sastri, stripped of any eroticism (Chapter 5), or in the Dalit identification with the suffering of Jesus or with the infants killed at the order of King Herod (Chapter 7). These essays thus join a growing body of literature that seeks to document both based on region, caste, gender, socio-economic status, and denomination. Certainly that work must continue, expanding and deepening scholarly understanding of the rich complexities Christian histories and the lives of Christians living in South Asia today, pointing to variations and particularities of Indian Christian life in all its regions and at all levels of caste and class. Yet several of the essays also point to the inadequacy or vagueness of labels such as ‘Christian’, as in the case of unbaptised Khrist bhaktas (Chapter 2) or the political conditions that compel some South Indian Christians to selfidentify publicly as ‘Hindu’ (Chapter 3). While the ‘Christian’ label inevitably links South Asian histories to those of Euro-America — and draws out the scholarly concerns for social justice so in evidence throughout this volume — what exactly does it mean to be ‘Christian’ in contemporary South Asia? Is baptism a necessary rite of initiation, separating the Khrist bhaktas from ‘true’ Christians (Chapter 2), despite their obvious practices of devotion to the figure of Jesus, seemingly no less genuine or authentic than those of the villagers of Siluvaipuram (Chapter 7)? Does public masking of Christian identity (Chapter 3) render one a lesser Christian in any way? Does being ‘Christian’ entail

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obedience to — or, at the very least, engagement with — sources of Christian authority elsewhere in the world (Chapters 5 and 6)? Or is it simply enough to be named ‘Christian’ by others (Chapters 8 and 10)? Does being ‘Christian’ merely amount to self-identification as such, or is one’s own identity — as has been well-documented in the study of other South Asian religious communities — socially constructed on the basis of those with whom one lives, eats, marries, and interacts on a daily basis? In other words, the study of Indian Christianities — in all their contestations — offers a unique opportunity to examine in detail the religious, political, economic, and social dynamics of identity (both individual and communal) in South Asia today. Not only does the bulk of Christian history, life and practice in India still await scholarly exploration, but the complex ways in which personal and communal identities are constituted as ‘Christian’ warrant much further investigation.

As South Asians (Who Happen to be Christian) Issues of religious identity are obviously of great concern to all scholars of religion in South Asia; the precise nature of such identities and the processes of identity and community formation often remain persistently elusive, particularly in the pre-colonial period. Yet the resources available for the study of Indian Christianities might well illumine the complex ways in which other religious identities are formed in South Asia, both today and in history. To borrow Lévi-Strauss’s celebrated phrase, each of the essays in this volume demonstrates the rich ways in which Indian Christian histories, lives and practices are ‘good to think’ (1963: 89) with about wider patterns in the diverse religious landscapes of South Asia. Benteler and San Chirico (Chapters 1 and 2), for example, each show in different contexts the shared formal structures of ritual among Hindu and Christian communities, and the ways in which specific rites alter their ultimate orientation through substitution (of persons and images, respectively). Israel’s essay (Chapter 5) explores the fraught process of composing Christian devotional poetry deploying the formal poetics of S´aiva bhakti literature. Kumar (Chapter 3) examines the close parallels between the traditional panchayat and the new village Sangham melding caste and congregation. Somewhat more directly, Pfeffer (Chapter 8) suggests that Punjabi Chuhra conversions to Christianity should be studied in the context of even larger numbers turning to Islam or Sikhism. Many of the preceding essays might be recast, in other words, as studies of South Asian religious, social and cultural lives whose primary religious identity

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is ‘Christian’ but whose wider spheres of daily engagement share much that is culturally South Asian. Ajantha Subramanian’s recent work (2009) on the Catholic Mukkuvar fishing communities of coastal Tamil Nadu — framed not as a study of ‘Indian Christianity’ but as a rethinking of Indian democracy, citizenship and environmentalism — for example, points to the many significant contributions that studies of Indian Christianities might make to wider scholarly conversations in South Asian Studies. In addition to issues of religious identity raised here, and as Pfeffer’s essay (Chapter 8) strongly suggests, the study of South Asian Christianities offers rich fields of investigation and comparison with other types of conversion, including those to Muslim, Sikh and even Buddhist allegiances. Khan’s examination (Chapter 4) of the fascinating work of a Portuguese Jesuit in the Mughal court provides a glimpse of the very beginnings of a new religious community on the South Asian landscape, and the processes of royal sponsorship, adaptation and exchange that echo other such communal births, from the Mauryan adoption of Buddhism to the Gupta sponsorship of Vais.n.ava worship and the medieval Chola assumption of a lineage extending back to S´iva himself. Leaving aside the world of royal elites, do the Khrist bhaktas perhaps represent the kinds of ‘mixed’ practice without formal initiation (dı¯ks.a¯) in which most non-elite South Asians have engaged throughout history? The politically and socially contested nature of Christian identity in colonial and more recent times, in a similar way, may well shed light on the complex relationship of caste and social status to religion in other contexts, from the early devotional or bhakti communities in India to the war of words between Buddhists and Vais.n.avas, Jains and S´aivas — amid obvious intellectual exchange and appropriation — over the past two millennia.

As ‘Global’ Christians While the essays in this volume suggest multiple routes forward in expanding scholarly understanding of the many forms South Asian Christianity takes, they no less reveal the complex ways in which Christianity is but one religious community among many in South Asia; several essays (particularly Chapters 5, 6 and 10) also point to the powerful forces beyond South Asia that shape India’s Christianities. On the one hand, the sheer diversity and complexity of the material presented here belies the easy labels of ‘World Christianity’ or ‘Global Christianity’ that now identify numerous journals, books, institutes, degree programmes, and faculty positions. Indeed, what unites all the topics considered here remains somewhat elusive, apart from the ‘Christian’ label

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and a thematic focus on contested boundaries and identities. Can one truly speak of an Indian or South Asian ‘Christianity’ in the singular, much less a global or world ‘Christianity’? Yet, as Gravend-Tirole’s examination (Chapter 6) of Indian Catholic responses to the Vatican II project of inculturation demonstrates, the lives and practices of South Asian theologians, activists and villagers are invariably shaped by global forces and at times distant sources of authority. Israel’s discussion (Chapter 5) of the controversies surrounding Vedanayaka Sastri’s innovative poetic work and its performance speaks directly to the close association of Christianity with Euro-American aesthetics; Ponniah’s study (Chapter 7) of Christian cross-veneration and dramatic performance argues for Christianity as a force of liberative modernity in Dalit village lives. Caricatures of ‘global’ Christianity aligned with the forces of capitalism stoke the fires of Hindu nationalist rage against Christians, Muslims and other non-Hindu groups (Chapter 10). The study of South Asian Christianities, in other words, provides a rich field for rethinking scholarly understandings of the local in relation to the transregional, the ever-shifting dynamic of religious lives and commitments in a globalising economic, social and political world with all its attendant economic and social inequities. Indeed, if the referent of ‘Global Christianity’ is ever to be more than simply the sum of all Christian lives and histories outside North America and Europe, then several essays here point to India as a productive place to begin theorising the relationship of local to global histories, institutions and sources of authority.

As Religious People For those who study Indian Christianities in the context of Religious Studies or any other field of the humanities and social sciences, Indian Christians — their communities, their histories, their practices, their struggles — present rich opportunities to explore the lives of religious people and potentially to expand or rethink the paradigms, frameworks and theoretical lenses that scholars have developed to explain them. Virtually all of the essays in this volume, beginning with Benteler’s nuanced engagement with the scholarship on godparenthood (Chapter 1), point to the study of Indian Christians and Christian communities as a rich theoretical resource for scholarly fields beyond those focused only on South Asia or Christianity. Kumar (Chapter 3) and Pfeffer (Chapter 8), for example, both draw strong connections among religion, economics and social mobility — and the tensions that such mobility

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creates — that might well serve to expand the current ‘religion and economics’ discussion.1 Both Ponniah’s and Young’s and Boopalan’s essays (Chapters 7 and 10) point, albeit in very different ways, to the close (and much disputed) relationship of Christian forms of religion to the ideals of ‘modernity’, long a topic of scholarly concern that has only gained momentum since the publication of Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age (2007). Bauman (Chapter 9), Pfeffer (Chapter 8) and Young and Boopalan (Chapter 10) all gesture towards the importance of understanding contemporary forms of Indian Christianity in terms of a wider discussion of religion and politics; Bauman analyses antiChristian rioting using Geertz’s model of religion as a cultural system, while Ponniah, Gravend-Tirole, and Young and Boopalan all attempt to walk the line between scholarly engagement and sympathetic concerns for social justice. Each of the essays in this volume, in other words, reveals tantalising possibilities for the study of South Asian Christianities to contribute to, even rethink or reshape, any number of contemporary conversations in the study of religion and the humanities more broadly: the topics and modes of analysis in religion and economics; alternative forms and experiences of modernity outside Euro-America; religion in relation to politics, particularly among those so long denied access to political processes; models for understanding religious violence; and the ethics of scholarship. In addition to expanding and considerably deepening understanding of South Asian Christianities, the material presented here also pries open the door to full inclusion in the rich trove of theoretical resources that inform the study of religion.

Note 1. The recently published Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Religion, edited by Rachel M. McCleary (2010), for example, largely applies economic concepts (such as supply and demand) and market models to the study of religion.

References Blair, Heather. 2010. ‘Buddhism as Local Religion’, in Oxford Bibliographies Online. http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195 393521/obo-9780195393521-0090.xml?rskey=5N9hDE&result=1&q=bu ddhism local religion#firstMatch (accessed 23 November 2012).

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Bloch, Esther, Marianne Keppens and Rajaram Hegde (eds). 2010. Rethinking Religion in India: The Colonial Construction of Hinduism. London: Routledge. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1963. Totemism, trans. Rodney Needham. Boston: Beacon Press. Lopez, Donald S. (ed.). 1995. Curators of the Buddha: The Study of Buddhism under Colonialism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. McCleary, Rachel M. (ed.). 2010. Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Religion. New York: Oxford University Press. Pennington, Brian K. 2005. Was Hinduism Invented? Britons, Indians, and Colonial Construction of Religion. New York: Oxford University Press. Said, Edward W. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books. Subramanian, Ajantha. 2009. Shorelines: Space and Rights in South India. Stanford: Stanford University.

Taylor, Charles. 2007. A Secular Age. Cambridge: Harvard University.

Afterword II ROWENA ROBINSON

Less than two decades ago, sociologists and anthropologists working on Christianity in India struggled to create a discursive space within which their work could be located as well as deliberated. At the time I began my work on popular Catholicism in Goa, there were just a handful of ethnographic monographs available, which included Lionel Caplan’s Class and Culture in Urban India: Fundamentalism in a Christian Community (1987), Kalpana Ram’s Mukkuvar Women: Gender, Hegemony and Capitalist Transformation in a South Indian Fishing Community (1992), Susan Visvanathan’s The Christians of Kerala: History, Belief and Ritual among the Yakoba (1993) and the early study by Clement J. Godwin, Change and Continuity: A Study of Two Christian Village Communities in Suburban Bombay (1972). In fact, Caplan records in his book his felt need to justify his research. At the same time, Susan Bayly’s significant historical study Saints, Goddesses and Kings: Muslims and Christians in South Indian Society, 1700–1900 (1989) had begun to rouse considerable interest. The Presence of a Field Today, the presence of such volumes as Selva J. Raj and Corinne Dempsey’s Popular Christianity in India: Riting between the Lines (2002), Rowena Robinson and Josephy Marianus Kujur’s Margins of Faith: Dalit and Tribal Christianity in India (2010) as well as the collection of papers in hand, testify to the radical shift since that time. Further, mission and religious studies scholars, theologians with a bent towards anthropology, as well as several other historians of contemporary India have entered and enriched the field — for we can now speak of the presence of a field — and several refined and multi-layered analyses of both Protestant and Catholic groups in different parts of the country have become available.

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Scholars in the initial period had both to define their subject — the Christian community — as well as bend to accommodate the prevailing preoccupation with Hinduism. In a sense, there was an emphasis on the idea of the ‘community’, and, in my perception, this idea was understood, more-or-less, in accordance with a Durkheimian framework. Hence, studies were deeply concerned with how boundaries between religious ‘communities’ were drawn but also with questions of what Christianity ‘borrowed’ from Hinduism. Thus, caste was important as an object of study among Christians, as well as ritual practices, which — as was shown — drew a great deal from regional Hindu culture. The relationship between ‘text’ and ‘context’ was always at the root of such explorations. At the same time, the relationship between anthropology and the other social sciences, particularly history, was already re-drawn and the freedom to think about different kinds of associations (across religious traditions and across castes) as well as shifts (over time and across political regimes) was inaugurated. In the current phase of work, as in this volume, one finds that some of these questions re-emerge, and are brought into relation with newer and emergent concerns. One sees this, for instance, in the chapter by Ashok Kumar M. (Chapter 3), who looks at the merger of caste and congregation among Mala Lutherans in coastal Andhra Pradesh. He is concerned both with the relationship between Christianity and Hinduism and also with how a Christian identity feeds the Malas’ engagement with the contemporary Dalit movement in Andhra Pradesh. What is clear is that there is certainly no need any longer to defend the study of Christianity. Moreover, the earlier interest in understanding religious boundaries, in a sense, as corridors rather than walls (Uberoi 1978: 73) extends itself even further — this volume includes a study, by San Chirico (Chapter 2), of a group of largely unbaptised bhaktas (devotees) who follow Christ from the ‘heart’ and are, in fact, considered ‘Hindu’ by the Catholics ministering to them.

One among Many Christianity is one among many religions in a plural context such as India. Thus, any understanding of relationships across margins should be freed from a perspective that ‘centres’ one religion and places the other on the ‘periphery’. In fact, Christianity may be viewed as ‘new’ or just as a local religion competing with other local religions within the shared space of the sacred. It may make Christians, and especially Catholics, uncomfortable to see how symbols and

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myths can leak across boundaries, without ‘conversion’ of any kind — even nominal — taking place. Yet, as San Chirico’s narrative reminds us, access to the divine or to the symbols of sacred power is hardly tightly controlled, either by priestly sanction or by the assumed limits of community. Once it is realised that one is in a world in which plurality complicates the possibility of neatly ordering ‘centre’ and ‘margins’, one may perceive how Christianity and Hinduism may simultaneously impact a third and different religious and cultural environment. In India, this occurred, for instance, among some tribal communities in the country’s Northeast — an area where more careful research will yield much fruit. Thus, the study of these different worlds renders topsy-turvy Western scholarship’s presumptions regarding the analysis of religion in general, and of Christianity in particular. Improvisation and ambiguity replace certainty and order, ‘big’ issues appear ‘little’, and similarities do not reduce to sameness; yet, at the same time, religious differences may not emerge as divides. This volume evidences that the question regarding how any religion — particularly Christianity — can, in Peter Beyer’s words (2003: 357), ‘be thought of or lived as a singular identity’ across the globe, is being taken very seriously. The number of scholars brought together for this volume is testimony to the fact that the study of non-Western Christianities was not a flash-in-the-pan phenomenon, but is, rather, here to stay. As another example of this consolidating interest, I would like to point to the ‘Catholics and Cultures’ programme initiated by the College of the Holy Cross (Worcester, Massachusetts, United States [US]), which aims to bring together scholars from across the world to explore Catholic beliefs, ritual practices and ethical concerns in different cultural locations. This volume has brought together both historical and ethnographic materials and, as I have pointed out as typical of the research on Indian Christianity, its contributors are from different disciplinary backgrounds. Gulfishan Khan (Chapter 4), for instance, takes us back in time to Akbar’s and Jahangir’s reign, to understand the conversations across religious communities initiated in the royal Ibadat Khana. The richness of the dialogue in this period is a confirmation of how embedded Christianity is on the Indian subcontinent and how it has been engaging with Islam and Hinduism (and other religions) intellectually long before the era of British colonial rule. It is worthwhile for us to be reminded that Christianity has been steeped for centuries in Indian culture not just at the level of practice, but also in art, philosophy, literature, and scriptural translation. This is an area of research that certainly merits greater attention.

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One of the interesting and novel aspects of one of the chapters in this collection is its attention to how inter-denominational differences and differences between Christianity and non-Christian religious traditions may intersect. Israel (Chapter 5) has shown that from the early 18th century onwards, Protestant missionaries, converts and church congregations were each disputing how far Protestantism should go in order to separate itself from other nonProtestant religious traditions. In the course of this debate that is examined with regard to devotional poetry, the Protestant Tamil congregations clashed with the missionaries. The former felt that Tamil poetry in the bhakti genre appropriately expressed their religious identity, while the latter were opposed to it, as ‘sensuous’ and ‘heathen’. It has been acknowledged, of course, in the literature on Indian Christianity, that missionaries were always more concerned with denominational difference than those they converted. At the same time, the careful understanding of how these differences worked themselves out at various points in time bears examination. During the course of this particular debate over devotional music described in Israel’s chapter, there also arose questions concerning the distinguishing of appropriate Protestant practice from that of Catholics, and there was the added layer of the divergent views of the Anglican Church, as opposed to those of the dissenting or non-conformist traditions. Interestingly, it was the composer of the bhakti songs, Sastri, who was concerned with separating his Protestant music from the ‘riotous musics’ of the Roman Catholics. At the same time, as the author has shown, the relationship between the Anglican and dissenting churches in England at the time altered the attitudes of even non-conformists in the colony towards music which had earlier been considered relatively inoffensive.

The Meaning(s) of Being ‘Indian’ and ‘Christian’ As a product of the turbulent history of ethnic relations of our times, there is also the focus in this volume on inter-community strife and violence. Both Bauman (Chapter 9) and Pfeffer (Chapter 8) have turned the lens on these complex issues, which are gradually gaining importance in the literature as a result of the increasing incidents of violence against Christians in recent years. This means also that attention must be directed towards the turn, in the late 1990s, in the politics of Hindu nationalism from an anti-Muslim agenda to an active anti-Christian one. Bauman suggests several reasons for this shift: electoral returns on the anti-Muslim platform were diminishing, and Sonia Gandhi — both foreign and Christian — had taken over as Congress

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Party President. Anti-Christian propaganda could serve the dual purpose of taking on the Congress as well as emphasising the nationalist credentials of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the explicitly political affiliate of Hindu nationalist forces. The violence in Orissa is only one face of the increasingly tense relations between religious groups in contemporary India and, in fact, as Pfeffer rightly argues, in South Asia as a whole. The chapters by Gravend-Tirole (Chapter 6) and Young and Boopalan (Chapter 10) are testimony to the increasingly difficult questions facing Indian Christians today, both within India itself and in the diaspora. Gravend-Tirole has raised the particularly intriguing issue of the apparent failure of official inculturation in a country that has nonetheless produced some of the most remarkable theological innovations from the second half of the 19th century onwards. The antagonism of Kshatriya nationalist intellectualism in the US towards Dalit Christians’ self-identity is central to the unsettling themes of the last chapter. This section of the book is of particular relevance for any study of Indian Christianity today, or in the future. Contemporary scholars of Indian Christianity have to come to terms with the charged atmosphere surrounding debates about caste, reservations, Dalits, religious identity, nationalism, and secularism. Even the idea of indigenisation is not uncontroversial. These contestations, as the volume has shown, are not limited to India but may seep into the diaspora as well. The questions raised are both troubling and exciting. For instance, what does it really mean to Indianise Christianity? Who has the right over religious symbols or what they mean? Christianity has had a particularly self-absorbed understanding of its own origins and celebrates its capacity to incorporate elements of what existed before it — pre-Christian traditions and symbols — and to make them its own. In relation to the colonies where Christianity spread, this adaptive ability is stressed to show its flexible adjustment to a range of cultures. Today, this self-proclaimed right of appropriation is strongly challenged, and perhaps not without some legitimacy. For some critics, the question that is important is: Does Christianity have the right to appropriate Hindu symbols, when it might only use them as insidious weapons of conversion? There are, however, other questions that are equally if not more significant. How does a religion which spent much of its history demonising Hinduism now turn around and lay claim to its symbols and mythological referents? Indeed, how can the project of inculturation and the project of mission be championed simultaneously? Even more crucially, as long as Christianity

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continues to refuse to accord equal value to all religious traditions do such attempts at indigenisation through the mediation of Hinduism not amount to condescension and arrogance? Is it surprising that such efforts might be met with animosity by non-Christians, even those who do not perceive in them the sinister design of conversion?

On the Boundary with Theology To conclude, in the past, the study of Christianity in India suffered because of the overriding emphasis on Hinduism. At the same time ‘Christianity’ itself has had a fraught relationship with anthropology and sociology. These disciplines are supposed to have an elective affinity with the ethos and the premises of secularism. It is thus no surprise that Christianity was perhaps the last world religion to be taken up by them as a legitimate field of enquiry. Anthropologists, in particular, searched for the exotic and could deal with beliefs — so long as these were the beliefs of the Other. Thus, tribal cosmological beliefs as well as the worldviews of Hinduism and Islam could far more easily be enfolded within the scope of these disciplines than something as close and familiar as Christianity. Once Christianity entered the field of anthropology, however, it might well have posed hardly any difficulties — so vastly different were its manifestations from anything familiar in the West. Some tensions remain: for instance, regarding the recognition of the work of ‘committed’ practitioners in the field. Many Western and Indian students of Christianity are Christian themselves. At the same time, some of Christianity’s most cherished theological notions are contested by the study of theological beliefs and syncretic practice in India. What will be significant for studies of Indian Christianity in the future — and, in fact, Western Christianity as well — is the continuing refusal of many Indian Christians, theologians and lay alike, to accept a model of religious traditions that places Christianity in triumphal position at the top. Asian, and Indian, perspectives stress the recognition of the equal worth of all religions. This is a terrain on which the negotiations and struggles promise to be stimulating, and it seems to me possible to assert that studies of Indian Christianity will be pivotal to defining the future of the relationship between anthropology and theology.

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References Bayly, Susan. 1989. Saints, Goddesses and Kings: Muslims and Christians in South Indian Society, 1700–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Beyer, Peter. 2003. ‘De-Centering Religious Singularity: The Globalization of Christianity as a Case in Point’, Numen 50(4): 357–386. Caplan, Lionel. 1987. Class and Culture in Urban India: Fundamentalism in a Christian Community. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Godwin, Clement J. 1972. Change and Continuity: A Study of Two Christian Village Communities in Suburban Bombay. Bombay: Tata-McGraw Hill. Raj, Selva J. and Corinne Dempsey (eds). 2002. Popular Christianity in India: Riting between the Lines. Albany: State University of New York Press. Ram, Kalpana. 1992. Mukkuvar Women: Gender, Hegemony and Capitalist Transformation in a South Indian Fishing Community. New Delhi: Kali for Women. Robinson, Rowena and Josephy Marianus Kujur (eds). 2010. Margins of Faith: Dalit and Tribal Christianity in India. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Uberoi, J. P. S. 1978. ‘The Structural Concept of the Asian Frontier’, in Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya (ed.), History and Society: Essays in Honor of Niharranjan Ray, pp. 67–77. Calcutta: K. P. Bagchi. Visvanathan, Susan. 1993. The Christians of Kerala: History, Belief and Ritual among the Yakoba. New York: Oxford University Press.

About the Editors Chad M. Bauman is Associate Professor of Religion at Butler University, Indianapolis, Indiana, United States. His work focuses on the interaction of Hindus and Christians in colonial and postcolonial India. His first book was Christian Identity and Dalit Religion in Hindu India, 1868–1947 (2008). He is currently conducting research for a second book on conversion controversies and Hindu–Christian conflict in contemporary India with support from the John Templeton Foundation and the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of Southern California. Richard Fox Young holds the Timby Chair in History of Religions at Princeton Theological Seminary, United States. His publications on the encounter of Hindus and Buddhists with Christian missionaries in 19thcentury South Asia include Vain Debates: The Buddhist-Christian Controversies of Nineteenth-Century Ceylon (1996) and The Bible Trembled: The Hindu-Christian Controversies of Nineteenth-Century Ceylon (1995). His areas of interest are the history of the encounter between Christianity and various religions of Asian origin, the place of Christianity in non-Western pluralisms, and contemporary understandings of interreligious dialogue.

Notes on Contributors Miriam Benteler, a social anthropologist, is presently Scientific Assistant at the Education Department of the State Museums of Berlin (Museum of Anthropology and of Asian Art), Germany. Her regional focus is on South Asia/India, and on Kerala in particular. Areas in which she does research include kinship, gift exchange, the caste system, and Christianity in India. Her dissertation will soon be published as Shared Values: Hierarchy and Affinity in a Latin Catholic Community in South India. Sunder John Boopalan is currently pursuing his PhD in Religion and Society at Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Before coming to Princeton he served as a Research Associate with the Collective of Dalit Ecumenical Christian Scholars (CODECS) in India. Kerry P. C. San Chirico is Assistant Professor of Religion at the University of Hawai’i at Mânoa, United States, teaching Global Christianities, South Asian religions and world religions. He has an ongoing interest in Indian popular culture and religion, religious interaction and exchange, and theory and method in the study of religion. His recent publications include the South Asia chapter for Religion and Every Day Life and Culture, edited by Richard Hecht and Vincent Biondo (2010). Xavier Gravend-Tirole is currently finishing his PhD on the issues around mestizaje/creolisation in various Hindu–Christian contexts in contemporary India, co-supervised by the Universities of Lausanne (Switzerland) and Montreal (Canada). A recipient of the renowned Trudeau Scholarship, his different articles examine issues emerging from human rights, identity politics, religious pluralism, interreligious dialogue, and cultural and postcolonial studies.

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Hephzibah Israel is Lecturer in Translation Studies at the University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom. Her area of research interest is the interface between language, translation and religion, especially in the South Asian context and she has published extensively on this subject including the book, Religious Transactions in Colonial South India: Language, Translation and the Making of Protestant Identity (2011). Apart from this, she has also published translations of Tamil short stories in English. Gulfishan Khan is Associate Professor in Medieval Indian History at the Centre of Advanced Study, Department of History, Aligarh Muslim University, India. A historian by training, she works on the intellectual history of Islam in South Asia and other contiguous areas. Her recent publications include a book, Indian Muslim Perceptions of the West during the Eighteenth Century (1998), and she is at present working on historiography, architecture, Sufism, and interfaith dialogue primarily from the perspective of Mughal court culture during the 17th century. Ashok Kumar M. is Assistant Professor of Sociology in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Mandi, India. He earned his PhD from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India. His research interests include sociology of religion, caste, Christianity, and religious minorities in India. Georg Pfeffer held the chair of Ethnology at the Free University in Berlin until 2008. His early field research focused on the sweepers of the Punjab in 1970; later, he went on to study the other extreme of the caste hierarchy, the highest Brahmin cohort in the population of coastal Orissa. Since 1980, his field research and publications have focused on the social structure and value-ideas of the indigenous highlanders of western Orissa. James Ponniah is Associate Professor at Jnana Deepa Vidyapeeth, Pontifical Institute of Philosophy and Religion, Pune, India. His areas of research and teaching include Indian religions, folk religions of India, modern and contemporary Indian thinkers, subaltern studies, and Dalit Christianity. He is the author of The Dynamics of Folk Religion in Society: Pericentralisation as Deconstruction of Sanskritisation (2011) and co-editor (with Kuruvilla Pandikattu) of Dancing Peacock: Indian Insight into Religion and Redevelopment (2010).

Index 29th Week of Missiological Studies (conference), Louvain, 112 Acknowledged Christ of the Indian Renaissance, The (Thomas), 116 AD2000 (Christian Evangelisation Plan), 191 ‘Ad Gentes’ — Decree on the Mission Activity of the Church (1965), 114, 126 Adivasis (indigenous peoples), 174, 210, 227 agency: as a threat to missionary authority, xiii, 38, 40, 51, 53, 100, 198– 203, 206–207, 209; in conversion, 122, 129, 140–141, 164–165, 170, 180, 194, 196–197, 200– 201, 216, 224–227, 241–242, 248, 250–251 Agra (Mughal capital), xvi–xvii, 33, 66–67, 78, 80–81 Agu¯¯as (Catholic Catechists), 32, 42n5 Ahmadiya (Ahmadiyya) Movement, 168 Akbar, xvi, 61–63, 65–69, 77, 80, 248 Akbarna¯ma of Abul Fazl, 61 al-Sattar, Abd (Persian translator), 63–68, 76–81 Ambedkar, B. R. (Dalit leader), 216

Amalorpavadass, Duraiswami Simon (theologian), 115–117, 120, 127, 129 Andhra Evangelical Lutheran Church (AELC), 55n1 Anthony, Fr Prem (director of Viswajyoti Gurukul at Christnagar), 34–35 Appavoo, James Theophilus (theologian), 94, 228 ¯artı¯ (in Christian worship), 31 Arya Samaj, 162 ashrams, Catholic, 37, 111, 118, 123; Catholic Ashram Movement/ Association, 119; criticism of, 122–123 Aurobindo, Sri, 218 Badauni, Abdul Qadir (Mughal chronicler), 62–63, 83n51 Bailey, F. G. (anthropologist), 55n2, 174 Basic Human Communities, 130 bhakti (see also ‘devotion’): Christian forms of, xvii–xviii, 29, 97–98, 240–242, 249; Tamil Hindu varieties of, 87, 89, 93–95, 97–98, 105 Bhargava, Anju (Hindu American civic leader), 220, 231n21 Bhojpuri, 23, 25, 30–33, 37

Index

Bible, 25, 30–31, 42, 63, 65, 67–68, 77–79, 88, 92, 96–97, 101, 105, 107n12, 165, 169 Bible Mission Church, 51, 56n8 Biju Janata Dal, 192 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), 171, 210n1, 250 Brahmans, 46 Brass, Paul (political scientist), 189, 197, 205–206, 208 California Textbook Controversy, 220, 231n19 Canadian Capuchins (missionaries), 32, 43n18 Canon Law, Catholic, 11, 14–15 caste: alignments of congregations with, 45-47, 54; and untouchability, 141; discrimination, based on, 45–47, 143; missionary attitudes toward, 46–47; Scheduled Castes (SCs), 27, 143 Catechism of the Catholic Church (Roman Catholic Church), 39 ‘Catechesi Tradendae’ (1979), 114 Catholicism (Indian): Latin Catholics/ latinkaar, 3–4, 6–16; charismatic movement of, 28, 38, 40 Chamars, 143, 164; conversion to Christianity of, 164 charismatic Catholicism (see ‘Catholicism [Indian]’) Charles, Pierre (missionary), 112–113 Chaudhari, Purushothama (Telugu Christian poet), 93 Chellanam, Kerala (Ernakulam District), 7 Chenchiah, Pandipedi (theologian), 118 Chinese and Indian Rites Controversy, 116 Christa Prema Seva Ashram, 119

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Christa Sishya Ashram, 119 Christianity (Christianities): anthropology of, 247; cross-cultural translatability of, ix–x, xii, 239, 243; ethnographic studies of, in South Asia, xii–xiii, xv, xix, 4, 6, 10, 15–16, 19n15, 171, 175, 185, 246, 248; foreign image of, xiii–xv, xvii, xix, 33, 38, 90, 124, 199; Indianness (indigeneity) of, 215, 223–228; methodologies for study of, ix–xi; Mughal views of, xvi–xvii, 62–81 ‘Christians’ (cross-culturally conceptualised), ix–x, xii Chuhras (Punjabi Christian community), xxi, 165, 167, see also, ‘Pakistani Christianity’; attacks upon Christians among, 169–170; conversion to Christianity of, 165–167; conversion to Islam/ Sikhism of, 165; divisions within, 167; low status of, 164, 166; putatively servile nature of, 166; traditional vocation of, 164, 167; work in hospitals and schools of, 165, 167 Church of North India, 232 Church of South India, 232 civilisation (nationalistic concepts of), 217, 223, 231n19 Clarke, Sathianathan (theologian), 121 Colbert, Stephen (American humourist), 221 colonisation, 189, 204, 211n10 Communion, Holy (see ‘Eucharist’) compadrazgo, 5 Congregation of the Society of Jesus (see ‘Jesuits’) contestation (conceptions of), xvi, 61–81, 198, 241, 250 contextualisation (see ‘indigenisation/ inculturation/Indianisation’)

258

 Index

conversion, xii–xiv, xx–xxi, 6, 10, 12, 14–15, 40, 63, 74, 87–88, 97, 121, 123–125, 129, 164–165, 170, 174, 183, 204, 224–225, 241, 248–249; and reconversion, 180; as a process, xii, xiv; disabilities resulting from, xiii–xiv; improvements related to, 122–123, 140, 194, 202; materialism and, 33, 38, 196–197, 216, 226; nationalistic understandings of, 38–39, 46–47, 200–202, 224–226 Corsi, Francis (Jesuit), xvii, 79, 83n50 Council of Trent, 15, 18n1, 62 cross (crucifixion, etc.; symbolic power of), 75, 80, 93, 143–146, 151– 152, 180 culture: and acculturation, xii–xiii, xv, xviii, 112, 114; and inculturation, xi–xii, xv–xvi, xviii, xix, xxiin3, 110–131, 243, 250; polysemic nature of the term, 111 Dalits, xv, xviii, xix–xxii, 26, 38, 41n1, 45–48, 50, 52–53, 121, 140, 223–228; definition of, 27; hermeneutics of, 220, 227; stereotypes of, 226; theologies of, and theologians, 94, 111, 228 Dangs, Gujarat, attacks on Christians in, 211n13 Daniel, K. (Sri Lankan Dalit author), 227 Dayal, Fr Deen (early leader at Ma¯tr. Dha¯m Ashram), 29, 31–36 Dayananda, Swami (see ‘Griffiths, Bede’) De Nobili, Robert (Jesuit), 46, 113, 116 Deivanayagam, M. (Tamil Christian ‘intellectual’), 221–222, 227 devadasis (temple dancers), 98

devotion (Protestant practice of), 86–105 (see also bhakti) Dev, Swami Anil (current ¯aca¯rya of Ma¯tr. Dha¯m Ashram), 23, 35–37 dharma, 33, 218, 226; nationalistic concepts of, 218 Dharmasastra (Dharmas´a¯stra), 23 diaspora (Hindu, beyond India), xx, xxii, 155, 215, 218–219, 224, 230n14, 231n20, 232n27, 239, 250 Dignitatis humanae (1965), 110 ‘Doctrinal Note on Some Aspects of Evangelization’ (2007), 128 ‘Dominus Iesus’ (2000), 128 Dumont, Luis (anthropologist), xv, 11–14, 19n11, 46, 55n2 Durga¯, 27, 192, 206 Easter (Dalit observance of), xx, 143– 144, 146–147, 151 ecological theology, 111, 131 Elwin, Verrier (anthropologist), 174 Eucharist (Christian sacrament), xix, 43n17, 45, 75, 143, 228 Evangelicals, xix, 26, 87, 104, 168 ‘Evangelii Nuntiandi’ (1975), 113 ‘Evangelisation in Modern Day Asia’ (1974), 113 Evangelism: and common code of ethics, 233n30; and social work, 130; triumphalism in, 127 Fabricius, Johann Phillip (Lutheran missionary), 88 Federation of Asian Bishops Conference, 113 feminist theology, 111 Frawley, David (Vamadeva Shastri; ‘intellectual kshatriya’), 218–219, 222 fulfilment theology, 127

Index

Gandhi, Sonia, 56n7, 190, 249 Geertz, Clifford (anthropologist), xxi, 189, 203–204, 206, 209, 211n10, 244 Globalisation: Christians perceived as purveyors of, 198; violence against Christians and, 190–193, 195, 249 Goa, xvi, 62, 141, 246 godparenthood (among Kerala Catholics), xii, 3–18; affinity and, 11–14; child baptism and, xiii, 6–11, 15–16; consanguinity and, 13–14, 17–18; father’s sister in, 7; Malayalam terms used in, 7; marriage and, 8–14, 16; mother’s brother/avunculate in, xii, 11–14; Portuguese influence on, 10, 15; responsibilities of godparents in, 12–14 Golwalkar, M. S. (Hindu nationalist), 223 Good Friday (Dalit observance of), 144, 146 Gospels: authenticity of, in Muslim perspective, 79; Persian translation of, 62–66 Gossner Mission of Berlin, 174 Griffiths, Bede (Benedictine monk), 124, 132n2 Gudeman, Stephan (anthropologist), 5–6, 9, 15–17, 18n2 Guntur District (Andhra Pradesh), xv, 45 Hadith, 65, 80 Hanuman (Hanuma¯n), 27 Haubroe, L. P. (Lutheran missionary), 99, 102–103 healing and exorcism, xiii, 23, 32, 36–37, 41, 43n17, 51, 129 Heinrich, J. C. (missionary), 165–166

 259

Herskovits, Melville J. (anthropologist), 112 Hindutva (see ‘nationalism [Hindu]’) Hindu nationalism (see ‘nationalism [Hindu]’) historiography (theory and methodology), 116–117, 221 Humble Address, A (Sastri), 99, 107n10 hymns (Christian; composition and translation of), xvii–xviii, 24, 31, 87–93, 96–105, 106n4, 107n12 Ibadat Khana (House of Worship), 61, 83n51, 248 Ilaiah, Kancha (social critic), 223, 230n12 indigenisation/inculturation/Indianisation, 110–131; appropriateness of the terms, 111–116; caste and, 121–123; Catholic movements of, 118–119, 123; Congregation of the Society of Jesus/Jesuits and, 132n5; Dalits and, 121–122; Hindu nationalism and, 123–124; missiology and, 128–129; missionisation/evangelisation and, 113– 116, 124; problematic assumptions of, 111, 121–122; reasons for the decline of, 121, 124–125, 127; sanskritisation and, 120–121; tribals and, 121–122 India: as janmabhumi, 216; history of, and nationalistic revisionism Indian Missionary Society (IMS), 24, 28, 43n18 Indian Theological Association, 117, 119, 127–128, 130 ‘intellectual kshatriyas’, 215, 217–221, 223, 225–226, 230n13, 231n21, 250 International Missionary Conference (Tambaram, 1938), 118

260

 Index

ishtadevata¯ (chosen deity), 26 Islam, 52, 61, 64–65, 67, 76–77, 80, 83n50, 165, 169, 180, 199, 210, 241, 248, 251 Jagannath Temple (Puri), 162 Jehangir (Jahangir), xvi–xvii, 62–66, 76–81, 248 Jesus Christ, xiii–xiv, xx, 10, 64–67; image of, in Persian texts, vivii, 67–69, 71–81; in Indian Christianity, 23–25, 27, 29, 31, 33–34, 37, 39–40, 41n1, 43n15, 43n17, 93, 113, 118–119, 133n22, 133n23, 144–153, 156n16, 240 Jesuits, xvi–xvii, 62, 64, 66, 68, 76–77, 81, 140–141 Joshua Project (Christian Evangelisation Plan), 191 Josyer, G. R. (Mysore pandit), 222, 232n26 Judaism (and Jews), x, 61–63, 80 Kanapati Vattiyar (Tamil convert), 88 Kandhamal Highlands (Orissa), xxi, 171–183 (see also ‘Kandhamal Riots’); conversion of tribals to Christianity in, 174; development in, 174; history of, 175–176; Hindu nationalism in, 180; lowlanders in, 176–177, 180–181; reconversion to Hinduism in, 180; social structure of, 174; violence in, 171–172, 181 Kandhamal Riots (see also ‘Kandhamal Highlands’): criticisms of Christian evangelism and, 206–207’; Hindu nationalism and, 180; Pana–Kond relations and, 194–195; reservation system and, 194–195; violence against Christians in, 171–172, 194–195

Kandhas (see ‘Konds’) Kanhar, Lambodar (Chairman of the Kui Samaj), 195 Kashi Vishwanath (Ka¯s´¯ı Vis´vana¯th) (Hindu temple in Varanasi), 25 Kedar (Keda¯ r) (Hindu temple in Varanasi), 25 Kerala, x, xii, 4, 6–7, 15, 17–18, 29, 35, 46, 120, 222, 240 Khairlanji (atrocity site), 216, 224 Khrist Bhaktas, xiii–xiv, 23–41, 43n17, 240, 242 Kishore, Giriraj (VHP General Secretary), 191 Kohlhoff, John Caspar (Lutheran missionary), 102–103 Konds: evangelisation of, 194; history of, 175; socio-religious practices of, 175 Kudumbi, 7, 11 Kui Samaj (Kond organisation), 191– 192, 194–195 Lahore, Pakistan, 66–68, 161–162, 164, 167, 183n3 Latin Catholics/latinkaar (see Catholicism [Indian]’) le Saux, Henri (Catholic priest), 118– 119, 132n2 ‘Letter to the Whole Society on Inculturation’ (Arrupe), 113 Madhav, Ram (former RSS spokesperson), 196 Madras Group, 118 Madras Religious Tract and Bible Society (MRTBS), 92 Majalis-i-Jahangiri (record of Muslim– Christian debates), 64, 76 Malas (Telugu caste community), xv, 47–51, 53–55, 55n1, 247

Index

Malhotra, Rajiv (author of Breaking India), 215–217, 219–222, 224– 227, 230n15, 233, 234n38 Manalel, Constantine (theologian), 119 Mandelbaum, David (anthropologist), 28 Manikkavacakar (author of Tiruva¯cakam), 94 Mary, the Virgin, 68, 71 Masih, John (Dalit Christian), 120–121 Mastraratham (‘Innocent Blood’; see also ‘passion plays’), 138, 147–149, 153–155 Matr Dham (Ma¯tr. Dha¯m) (Abode of Mary) Ashram, xiii; baptism at, 26, 34; Dars´an (seeing and being seen by the deity) at, 24; healings and Can. ga¯¯ı (healing testimonies) at, 23, 35, 42n6; history of, 28–37; satsangs at, 25; singing/bhajans at, 25, 31–32; veneration of Mary (Mata Mariam) at, 24–25 Mauss, Marcel (anthropologist), 17 McIntyre, Patrick (missionary), 168–169 minorities (nationalistic concepts of), xxi, 162, 190, 203, 205, 207–209, 214, 224–225 missions, missionaries and missionary societies, 46 Mirat al-Quds (‘Mirror of Holiness’), xvii, 64–66, 76–81, 82n5 modernity and modernisation, xx, 138– 140, 143, 146, 148, 152–155, 206, 243–244 Monchanin, Jules (Catholic priest), 115, 118–119, 132n2 Morning Star (Utayata¯rakai; Jaffna missionary periodical), 90

 261

Mosavalsalam Sastrikal (Kerala Christian poet), 93 Mozoomdar, Pratap Chandra (Brahmo Samaj leader), 117 Murdoch, James (Scottish missionary), 89, 106n4 National Biblical Catechetical Liturgical Centre (NBCLC, Bangalore), 119 nationalism (Hindu), xxii, 121, 123– 124, 197, 199–201, 203, 207, 210, 217, 249–250 Naxalites, 171, 193, 210n5 Na¯yanma¯rs (Tamil Shaiva saints), 94 Nirankari Sect (Sikh), 168 Nithyananda, Swami, 230n15 Nussbaum, Martha (American intellectual), 229n3 Orissa, highlands of (see ‘Kandhamal Highlands [Orissa]’) Our Lady of Lourdes (Tamil Catholic shrine), 140, 142 Pakistani Christianity (see also, ‘Chuhras’), 162–171, 181–183; attacks on, 170–171; blasphemy laws and, 169, 184n7; conversions of, 164–166; Presbyterian missionaries among, 171 Panas (see ‘Panos’) panchayat (governing body), xv, 46–49, 52, 55, 241 Panikkar, Raimundo (theologian), 116, 132n11 Panos: attacks upon, 194–195; Christianity among, 194; competition with lowlanders of, 176–177, 180–181; occupations of, 174; reservations among, 194 Paul, K. T. (theologian), 56n7, 118

262

 Index

Paravas (Tamil Christian community), 54, 56n11 Partition (of British India), 162, 164, 168, 183n3 passion plays (in Tamil Nadu), xx, 138, 147, 150, 152, 155n1 Paul, the Apostle, xi, 114 Pentecostalism, 26, 39 Peter, the Apostle, x–xi, 75 Phan, Peter (theologian), 111, 128 Pietism (in Lutheranism), xvii–xviii Pollock, Sheldon (Sanskritist), 220 Pope, G. U. (Anglican missionary), 100 Pope Benedict XVI, 126 Pope John-Paul II, 114 Pope Paul VI, 113 Portuguese missionaries, 6, 242 Practice Theory, 204–205 Prasa¯d (in Christian worship), 31–32, 42n5, 43n17 Prudhomme, Claude, 112 Princeton University, 215, 229n5 Punjab (region)/Punjabis, xxi, 161– 162, 164–171, 181–183, 239; Green Revolution in, 164 Qur’an, 65, 77, 79–81 Rajan, Radha (Hindu public intellectual), 219, 225, 230n15 Rajaram, N. S. (‘intellectual kshatriya’), 218–219, 222, 231n21 Rajasekar Reddy, Y. S. (ex-chief minister, Andhra Pradesh), 56n7, 56n8 Rajkumar, Peniel (theologian), 121, 223 Rashtriya Svayamsevak Sangh (RSS), 230n14 Rayan, Samuel (theologian), 131 reconversion (see ‘conversion’)

‘Redemptoris Missio’ (1990), 129 religious identity (fluidity, indeterminacy of), 52, 95, 105, 218, 239, 241–242, 249–250 Rethinking Christianity in India (Devashyam and Sunarisanam), 118 Rethinking Group (see Madras Group) Rhenius, Charles T. E. (Lutheran missionary), 97, 102 Ricci, Matteo (missionary), 116 ritual and ritual practices, xix, 3, 9, 11, 13–16, 42n6, 48, 55, 86, 98, 104–105, 144, 146, 175, 192, 203–204, 206, 241, 247–248 Roy, Ram Mohan (reformer), 117 Saccidananda Ashram (Shantivanam), 119 Sacred Heart of Jesus (Catholic congregation), 119 Sahi, Jyoti (artist), 133n15 Saiva Siddhanta (Tamil Hindu philosophy), 94–95, 227 Sangham (governing body, in Andhra Pradesh), xv, 45, 47–50, 52–53, 55, 241 San.kat Mochan (Hindu temple in Varanasi), 25 Sangh Parivar (see ‘Nationalism [Hindu]’) Saraswati, Swami Lakshmanananda (Hindu reformer/activist), 191; attacks on/murder of, 192–193 Savarkar, V. D. (Hindu nationalist), 223 Schmalz, Mathew (religious studies scholar), 42n6, 120, 126–127 Schultze, Benjamin (Lutheran missionary), 88 Schwartz, Christian Frederick (Lutheran missionary), 92, 95–96, 100

Index

Scottish Methodist missionaries, 177 Second Vatican Council (see ‘Vatican II’) Sen, Keshub Chunder (Brahmo Samaj leader), 117 Serfoji II (ruler of Tanjore), 96, 100, 104 Sharma, Arvind (religious studies scholar), 231n16 Shankara (Hindu philosopher), 115 Shantivanam ashram (see ‘Saccidananda Ashram’) Shiva (S´iva), 48 Shourie, Arun (Indian journalist/politician), xix, 128–129 Shudras, 27, 220 Sita Ram Goel (author), 111, 123, 128 ‘Slavorum Apostoli’ (1985), 114 Soares-Prabhu, George (theologian), 122–123 Spanish Benedictine missionaries, 177 Staines, Graham (missionary), 171 Stirrat, Roderick (anthropologist), 3, 5–6, 8, 15–16, 18n2 St Mary the Virgin (Anglican community), 68, 71, 155n2 subalternity and subaltern studies, xx, 138–155 syncretism, 38, 125 Syro-Malabar churches, xiv–xv, xviii, 29, 222 Tagore, Rabindranath, 119 Tanjore, xviii, 87–89, 93, 96, 100, 106n6 testimonio (testimonial narratives), 152–153 Thapar, Romila (historian), 217, 230n9 theology (and study of religion), 6, 39,

 263

41, 106n1, 117, 121–122, 127, 131, 141, 226–228, 244, 251 Thomas, the Apostle, 221–222 Thomas, Madathilparampil Mammen (theologian), 116–117 Thompson, Nehemiah (Indian-American Christian minister), 216–217, 221, 224, 226 Tomko, J. (Catholic cardinal), 129 Tranquebar (Danish Lutheran mission station), xvii, 87–88, 100 tribal theology, 111 Trinity (Christian doctrine), xvi, 79, 83n51 Unknown Christ of Hinduism, The (Panikkar), 116 untouchability (see ‘caste’) Upadhyay, Brahmabandhab (theologian) 117–118 Upanishads, 115 Vaimanikashastra (Sanskrit text), 221, 232n26 Vandana, Sister/Vandana Mataji (nun), 119, 122–123 Varanasi, xiii, 24–25, 28–29, 41 Vatican II, xix, 26, 34, 37, 110, 114– 117, 119, 125, 127, 243 Vedanayaka Sastri (Tamil Christian poet), xvii–xviii, 87, 106n2, 240, 243 Vedanta (Advaita), xxiin3, 234n33 Veerendre, Fr (Indian Missionary Society priest), 30–33, 36 Vellalas (Tamil cultivator caste), xviii– xix, 96 violence (interreligious): as a ‘cultural system’, 203–209; effects of, 207–208; evangelism and, 207; globalisation and, 197–199, 202; Hindu nationalists and, 197–203;

264

 Index

Sanskritisation/Hinduisation and, 120, 201, 233n28; statistics on, 190–192; upper-caste Hindus and,199– 200, 206 Vishnu (Vis.n.u), 27 Viswajyoti Gurukul (Christnagar), 34 vis´va¯s (faith), 40 Vishva Hindu Parishad, 210

Webster, John C. B. (mission historian), 41n1, 54, 122 Winslow, Jack (Anglican priest), 119 World (or Global) Christianity (as a field of study), ix, 197, 242–243 World Vision (Christian charitable organisation), 196 Xavier, Jerome (Jesuit), 62–71

Walls, Andrew F. (scholar of World Christianity), xxiin1 Walsh, Herbert (Anglican Bishop), 119 Webb, E. (American missionary), 89–102

Zia-ul-Haq, Muhammad (Pakistani General/President), 169–170, 182 Ziegenbalg, Bartholomäus (German missionary), 87–88