South Asia's Christians

In South Asia’s Christians: Between Hindu and Muslim, Chandra Mallampalli presents the broad sweep of Christian history in the subcontinent as an integrated story, not compartmentalized along confessional, colonial or caste lines. The book brings together the Thomas Christian and colonial Christian strands; places Catholic and Protestant knowledge creation, ideologies, missionaries, and converts into dialogue, together with colonial and post-colonial politics; foregrounds the agency and voices of Indian converts; handles the complexities of caste; and links past and present in the lives of South Asia’s Christians. Mallampalli’s thesis, that Christians find themselves “between Hindu and Muslim,” is borne out in various ways: as interlocutors with these two larger theological/textual traditions, in relation to sectarian political power, and integrated into local social orders they do not control. This brings the reader to appreciate that Christianity in South Asia is uniquely South Asian, and diversely so.

The Introduction presents the project as an attempt to break from the “colonial model” in favor of a “World Christianity” paradigm. It aspires to be true to the historical development of Christianity in all its diversity (and interconnectedness), as well as to its practitioners. The first chapter treats the beginnings of Christianity in the subcontinent, with the Apostle Thomas and Christian community he founded with transregional links of liturgy and authority (earning them the title “Syrian Christians”). Mallampalli suggests these origins show us that Christians negotiated their beliefs, practices, and social location in dialogue with Muslims and Hindus, as well as with Christians outside India. He helps the reader imagine this form of Christianity developing at a moment prior to western domination of Christianity, and in an India before caste stratified Brahminism or bhakti devotional Hinduism were the primary religious expressions.

Chapter 2 focuses on the 16^th-century Jesuit engagement with the Mughal emperor Akbar, which exemplifies Christian-Muslim dialogue on a theological and intellectual plane, and an Indic tradition of religious disputation for its own sake, against a European one aimed at persuasion and. Chapter 3 develops how Iberian Catholicism accommodated and clashed with the South Indian religious landscape. Mallampalli exposes the Inquisition’s exclusivity and violence towards Muslims and Hindus inPortuguese centers of power such as Goa. At the same time, he shows examples of (controversial) adaptation and accommodation in ritual and theology in places far from Portuguese power, particularly the Malabar Rites and the accommodation of Jesuit missionary Robert DeNobili..

In chapter 4, Mallampalli discusses how Europeans interpreted Hinduism and Islam in the subcontinent, with a variety of approaches over time. Initially European myths of a lost Christian kingdom and Portuguese experiences of Muslims in Iberia seeded the prejudices underlying a combative approach towards Muslims and an initial misinterpretation of Hindus as Christians. Indian experience, in time, also shaped these interactions, and a project to translate western Christianity into Indian idioms and cultures began, by both Catholics and Protestants. A complex picture emerges of how Christianity indigenized during the colonial period, much as it had done over two millennia for the Syrian Christians.

Chapter 5 is about the effects of Protestantism under British rule and Protestant European and Indian argumentative traditions in dialogue. Although missionaries could not operate freely in British India until 1813, the power of colonial law and institutions soon made missionaries highly effective in discourse with Hindus and Muslims, placing Christianity in effect between these two major traditions and profoundly impacting their self-perceptions and inner reform movements.

Chapter 6, “Upper Caste Converts to Protestantism,” echoes the discussion in chapter 3 of Jesuit accommodation and discourse with brahmins, but also notes a difference in the kind of Orientalism that Protestant textual primacy enabled. Mallampalli grapples with the problem that Christian orientalists engaged with the Sanskrit Hindu texts as the presumed basis of Indian identity and society, and yet most of those who converted to Christianity were dalits (formerly called “untouchables”) and adivasis (tribals); as such they did not belong to this elite Sanskritic, Brahminical world. Mallampalli also highlights rare high-caste conversions because their converts left influential writings that reveal how Indian Christians were “between Hindu and Muslim high traditions and foreign missionary networks” (145); that “conversion yields a distinct form of consciousness that complicates both missionary and nationalist agendas” (145).

In chapter 7 Mallampalli turns to mass conversions of Dalits and tribals in the19^th and 20^th centuries. Led by native Christian catechists, preachers, and translators, the mass movements show that Indian agency drove the most successful conversion. He critiques the burden often laid upon these converts to prove the authenticity of their motives because of the supposed material and social inducements that conversion would bring. He argues that converting often increases the disdain converts face from their neighbors.

Chapter 8 assesses Gandhi’s legacy with respect to Christianity. While sympathetic to Christian values, he viewed Christianity as a foreign import incompatible with the principle of swadeshi (of one’s own country), a judgment he notably did not render upon Islam. Christian reactions to Indian nationalism varied, with Protestants more overtly backing national aspirations in exchange for protection through secular governance, and Catholics focusing more on protecting their interests as a minority group with legal claims and institutions. Finding no ally in Gandhi, chapter 9 explores Dalit Christians' appropriation of the liberative and egalitarian dimensions of Christianity, the broader movement of the depressed classes under B. R. Ambedkar, Dalit theologies of liberation, and explores the legal risks of conversion.

Finally, chapter 10 explores the more recent rise in Pentecostalism alongside a sectarian nationalist turn in Indian politics. Pentecostal commitment to preaching among non-Christians, an emotive spirituality emphasizing experiences of the supernatural, the language of conversion as “rupture” from one’s past, and its success attracting high and low caste converts, have excited the ire of Hindu nationalists, erupting in violence against Christians in recent decades.

Mallampalli writes clearly and accessibly, presumes a non-specialist reader and efficiently and fairly provides all relevant background information. This book certainly could anchor a course in the history of South Asian Christianity, yet it does much more than a textbook, by advancing a distinct thesis: that South Asia’s Christians are historically best understood to be situated between Hindu and Muslim, which is elaborated in every chapter. Mallampalli makes a particularly poignant contribution at a moment when the place of Christians and other religious minorities in South Asian political and social life is quite tenuous due to majoritarian Hindu nationalism, which promotes false historical narratives aimed at exclusion.

Brent Howitt Otto is a PhD candidate in history at University of California, Berkeley.

Brent Otto

Date Of Review:

August 2, 2024