Christians and Public Life in Colonial South India, 1863-1937: Contending with Marginality, by Chandra Mallampalli (IFJM 27:2, Summer 2010 pp. 305+xiv)—Reviewed by H. L. Richard
This excellent historical study outlines the roots of the marginality of Christianity in India, opening up many issues for discussion on what Christianity is and should be in India today (the book does not even hint at what the author thinks on these current issues). As Mallampalli himself introduces,
How different streams and offshoots of Christianity within the Madras Presidency came under the umbrella of a single “Indian Christian community” is a question that pervades this study. (pg. x)
The book is in three parts, the first looking at legal constructions of religious identity in India. The second considers how differently Roman Catholic and Protestant Christians reacted to political trends and how they positioned themselves in emerging India. Caste and conversion and community are the focus of the third section.
Section one highlights how three major pieces of legislation by the British government and their interpretation by colonial courts contributed to the marginalization of Indian
Christians. Mallampalli points out that
while missionaries attempted to appropriate British liberal values to the cause of converts, princes and British officials were far more concerned about protecting Hindu institutions from the potentially disruptive effects of conversion. (pg. 21)
Laws related to converts were first about the loss that high caste Hindus endured due to social ostracism after conversion. The Lex Loci act of 1850 was ostensibly to protect the civil rights of those who renounced or were excluded from their religion. The Indian Succession Act of 1865 brought Indian and European Christians into the same legal category. As Mallampalli points out,
It was not merely by grouping them with Europeans, however, that the Succession Act marginalized Christians from Hindu society. by treating them as a homogeneous group, the judiciary denied to Christians what would eventually become a defining characteristic of Hinduism, unity in diversity. As the legal definition of “the Christian community” became increasingly narrow, the legal definition of “Hindu” became increasingly elastic.(pg. 51)
The Indian Christian Marriage Act of 1872 was the third legislative enactment that guided the courts towards establishing Christianity as a religion in contrast to Hinduism and Christians as a separate community, despite evidence to the contrary.
Efforts to regulate Indian Christian marriages by means of a single Anglican law often violated the actual consciousness of Christian converts from villages. Such Christians, often having converted in groups, retained many features of their caste community. . . The Madras High Court’s application of the Indian Christian Marriage Act, as we shall see, had the effect of separating a “Christian community” from the domain of the “Hindu caste society” recognized by the courts. (pg. 61)
Mallampalli does an excellent job of illustrating and demonstrating his points by analysis of various court rulings.
Section two focuses on political developments, highlighting the marginalization of Protestants from political involvement while Roman Catholics gained a political voice by emphasizing their status as a separate community. Chapter six on the “Protestant Disavowal of Christian Communalism, 1910 to 1933” gives a survey of a seminal chapter in Protestant history in India, the marginalization of Protestants is especially ironic in that
A survey of the principal Christian newspapers of the early twentieth century reveals two dominant concerns among Indian [Protestant] Christians : the desire to Indianize Christianity, and the call to a greater degree of Indian patriotism. (pg. 111)
A critical issue that needs to be addressed is how and why in South India, Indian Protestant elites had come to be excluded from the very imaginings of cultural identity to which missionary labor had contributed (pg. 110)
One major problem, Mallampalli identifies is that Protestants focused on all-India Sanskritic developments to the neglect of local vernacular affairs, which were the driving force in South India were Christianity was strongest. Protestants took the seemingly high road and refused to seek communal representation in politics, yet this contributed to their becoming voiceless. International Christian notions of a unified church and a spiritual calling also contributed.
Indian Protestant notions of what it meant to Indianize Christianity were centered upon forms of worship, control over church administration, and theological issues. Far less did they advocate a Christian vernacular tradition as a means to Indianization. In this respect, Protestant elites even departed from the groundwork laid by prominent Indian Christians of the previous century. (pg. 116)
This project of trying to appear more Hindu remained a largely cosmetic one, since it lacked a vernacular base upon which to nurture it truly translated religion. In spite of the homage they paid to national culture and national issues, educated Indian Protestants remain enclosed within the scope of their own concerns, which were defined by church structure, ecumenical networks, and church related activities. (pg. 118)
Roman Catholic Christians took almost the exact opposite approach of the Protestants.
Catholic leaders stressed the distinctiveness of their culture, the strength of their community boundaries and the need to organize themselves for political action (pg. 134)
Initially Protestant Christians were deemed among the chief enemies of the Catholics, but eventually situations forced compromise in this area. Yet at the Round Table Conference in London in 1932 there was a total division in Christian objectives. The Protestants as already noted, refused communal representation. Mallampalli summarizes the Catholic position.
Catholic opinion surrounding the Round Table Conference was marked by three dominant features. These were: (1) anxieties over the preservation of Catholic identity; (2) a desire to emulate the politics of Indian Muslims, and (3) an acceptance of communal politics as a mode of political engagement that was as legitimate and just as “Indian” as Indian nationalism itself. (Pg. 144)
Mallampalli demonstrates that the high minded Protestant position led to even greater marginalization than the Catholic position as the latter joined the fray with many other interest groups seeking the best outcome for their particular community.
Section three takes developing arguments into more deeply complicated and convoluted fields. Gandhi, Ambedkar and debates on religion and conversion are helpfully surveyed The closing chapter of the book analyzes the Dalit situation.
. . . in the case of Catholics, a high emphasis on communal and institutional boundaries and belief and legit in the legitimacy of communal, electorates appears to have coincided with a tendency among Adi-Catholics [Dalit Catholics] to press for integration within the structures of the Church. By contrast, the weakening of communal boundaries and the disavowal of communalism by Protestant elites in the name of nationalism, seems to have coincided with the emergence of a separate Dalit consciousness. (pg. 172)
Mallampalli shows how elite Catholics resisted the efforts of Dalit Catholics, by far a majority, for equal status. Cases were taken to court and the courts tended to rule that Christianity does not even recognize caste so no complaints on that basis are valid.
Protestants claimed to uphold the anti-caste position, but an influx of Dalit converts and the politicizing of conversion created many tensions. Mallampalli focuses on the complex struggles of bishop V. S. Azariah and the situations of backslidden converts. For Azariah.
The universality of Christian beliefs remain in constant tension with particularities of caste, regional and national identities. The pan-Christian solidarity nurtured by his ecumenical involvement tempered his enthusiasm for Indian nationalism. (Pg. 186)
The Dalit poet Gurram Joshua exemplifies the post Christian experience that molded Dalitism.
In such cases, Dalit converts to the Christian religion, neither reverted to past ritual observances nor fully appropriated the Christian identity engendered by ecclesiastical structures. Instead, their persistent experience of untouchability than them into a social space that was marginal to both “Sanskritic” and “Christian” worlds.(pg. 188)
Unable to identify themselves completely with the agenda of any particular religion, they remain nested in the consciousness of their backward status. When the Christian ethos of their post-baptismal experience “receded” from the picture ,what remained were not devotees of a different “religion”, but persons shaped by many systems, none of which had fulfilled promises of its own rhetoric. This journey from “Christian consciousness” to a particular jati [caste] (for example, “Madiga”) or “Dalit” consciousness was fueled by the failure of both church and government to recognize and respond to the disadvantages faced by Dalit Christians. (pg.190)
In a succinct and impressive, conclusion, Mallampalli summarizes his findings. The dynamics of religious change and debates on conversion as carried on in India today are thoroughly colonial. “Ironically, it was courts of law established under British rule, which solidified the very prejudices against Christians that are invoked by the Hindu Right today.” ( pg. 196). “Civil disabilities” of high caste converts had first led to laws that identified a separate Christian community; the influx of Dalits changes the parameters. Now
It was not the loss of status but the supposed acquisition of status through the active conversion [to Christianity] that disqualified them [Dalits] from obtaining state assistance. (Pg. 200)
His closing comments highlight the difference of Christianity in teaching no set system of personal law.
The absence of fixed cultural criteria, which defined a Christian, has greatly enhanced of potential for Christians to adapt to any variety of cultural, linguistic, or societal contexts. This process of that adaptation, however, has been undermined whenever imperial structures, whether the colonial or nationalistic, have instituted false assumptions about the cultural fit of a given Class of people. It is hoped that this book will serve as a case study of the institutional sources of marginality and alternative strategies for political integration of many classes of disadvantage minorities. (Pg. 202)
Article Pull Quote
Protestants took the seeming high road and refused to seek communal representation in politics, yet this contributed to their becoming voiceless… Roman Catholics took almost the exact opposite approach of the Protestants.
- H. L. Richard is an independent researcher focused on the Hindu-Christian encounter. He has published numerous books and articles including studies of key figures like Narayan Vaman Tilak (Following Jesus in the Hindu Context, Pasadena: William Carey Library, 1998) and Kalagara Subba Rao (Exploring the Depths of the Mystery of Christ, Bangalore: Centre for Contemporary Christianity, 2005).
