In Between Hindu and Christian: Khrist Bhaktas, Catholics, and the Negotiation of Devotion in Banaras, Kerry P. C. San Chirico offers an outstanding study of a liminal group of Indian Dalits, known as Khrist Bhaktas, who are active in a Charismatic Roman Catholic ashram in north India yet remain unbaptized and so formally Hindu rather than Christian. Khrist Bhaktas is a designation used mostly by outsiders; “they are known among themselves simply as viśvāsī (‘believers,’ ‘faithful’), prabhu svīkār karne vale (lit. ‘acceptors of the Lord’), and by those who do not worship Yesu, simply as Īsāī (‘Christians’)” (11).
Ironically, the church and ashram leaders prefer not to baptize these zealous disciples of Jesus because “the Church fears precipitate baptism is deleterious to growth in ‘authentic faith’” (11), plus there is concern about opposition from Hindus to conversion activities. Later discussion of this issue points out the tension between baptism as a “social identity marker” and as a Christian sacrament, and San Chirico concludes that the meaning of baptism is thus “overdetermined and transvalued” (217). There is the traditional Christian concern for unworthy motives for baptism, mixed with political meanings in Indian law, resulting in misunderstanding and the practical neglect of baptism.
San Chirico presents excellent background to the story, both in terms of trends in Indian Christianity and related Dalit movements in India. According to the author, the postmodern problem of “religion” and its multiple meanings is compounded by India’s identity concerns: “I have long found that primary identity—usually a religious or caste identity (typically implicit in the religious identity)—to be a kind of cage out of which South Asians cannot easily escape. Again and again, it is forced back on one like skin that cannot be shed” (23).
A strength of the book is the amount of personal interaction that frames the narrative, including extensive transcriptions of interviews with key interlocutors. Finding these people was a unique challenge, San Chirico writes; “Like the guru-disciple relationship, most never bent over backward to give me information, but when I had arrived at the right questions, I met with answers—which often led to meeting people” (100).
Despite thousands of devotees gathering regularly, the movement that began in the early 1990s is fragile and its future is unknown. San Chirico wonders if the future will be in the Roman Catholic Church that has nurtured it, and yet also kept it at a distance. “It is possible to see how the goodwill currently enjoyed between the Khrist Bhaktas and Catholic religious could sour if leaders among them [the Khrist Bhaktas] come to feel mistreated, taken for granted, or simply neglected” (219). It is also possible that the movement would shift out of the Roman Catholic sphere and find a home in Indian Pentecostalism (219-23). A third option is the developing of a more distinctly Hindu movement, somewhat in line with developments surrounding the great 15th-century saint Kabir, but with distinctly Roman Catholic elements incorporated. “I suggest that Kabir’s co-optation by religious communities to fit their own worldviews is a telltale sign that religious indeterminacy cannot and will not obtain in the long term” (231). But currently the Khrist Bhakta movement maintains its indeterminate status on the edge of Roman Catholicism. Although not incorporated into sacramental Catholicism, “each of the sacraments of which a typical Catholic layperson in India or elsewhere may partake has a corollary rite that is employed in ministering to the Khrist Bhaktas” (207).
San Chirico references the demise of the Catholic inculturation movement, which was inspired by Vatican II, but undermined by its perceived focus on Brahminical traditions at the expense of Dalit concerns. Ironically, the subaltern Khrist Bhaktas have embraced a Sanskritized vocabulary learned from their elite South Indian mentors (154). n the end San Chirico voices a fear that “the Khrist Bhaktas would facilely be written off as ‘basically Christians’” (261). But this misses the many ways that they remain deeply Hindu, as well as a fear that this liminal movement will be simplistically ignored as a new expression of Christianity.
Referencing academic suggestions that Christian theology needs to get out of academic institutions and be done among and by Dalits and women and subalterns, San Chirico suggests that the Khrist Bhaktas, mostly village women, are indeed contextualizing the message and way of Christ without any awareness of wider Christian academic discussions and debates over this topic. Their attitudes and practices resonate with popular Hindu bhakti, yet are so fused into Charismatic Catholicism that it is not possible to differentiate what is “Hindu” and what is “Christian.”
As the Khrist Bhakta movement continues to develop and change, we can only hope for further information and analysis as astute and insightful as presented in this book.
H.L. Richard is an independent scholar.
Richard Hivner
Date Of Review:
September 3, 2024
