Panel No. 48

Panel Title: Christians, Cultural Interactions, and India's Religious Traditions

Convenor: Richard Fox Young, Ph.D, Elmer K. and Ethel R. Timby Associate Professor of the History of Religions, Department of History, Princeton Theological Seminary, New Jersey, USA
Co-convenor: Daniel Jeyaraj, Ph.D, Judson-De Frietas Associate Professor of World Christianity, Andover Newton Theological School Newton Centre, Massachusetts, USA

    Friday 9 July, 8–12 & 13–18

Panel Abstract: Recognizing that Indian Christianity is a distinct form of Christianity and that interaction with India’s cultures and religions is essential to any characterization of Christianity as ‘Indian,’ the panel invites exchange between intercultural studies scholars, mission studies scholars, and religious studies scholars who address any of the many phenomena associated with the historical emergence and contemporary character of Indian Christianity.

Papers accepted for presentation in the panel:

Paper Giver 1: Peter B Anderson, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Paper 1 Title: The Construction of an Anti-colonial Discourse in the Kherwar Movement, 1871-1910

Paper Abstract: The Kherwar movement tried to unite a number of tribes and low-caste groups in joint protest against the social and economic policy of the colonial Government of India. It has often been dismissed as a social force due to the fact that the leaders, the babajis, legitimised their authority on religious claims or due to the fact that they borrowed freely from Hindu and Christian religious repertoires. This fact was interpreted along the lines of classical concepts of syncretism and imagined as destructive for the continuous existence of any cultural or political entity (as by different authors like P.O. Bodding and J. Troisi). The paper approaches the Kherwars in another way namely as an attempt to create a new political and social identity and it identifies how far the possible loans from other cultures were selected as expressions of power.

      Full paper to be downloaded (as a pdf-file)

Paper Giver 2: Torkel Brekke, University of Oslo, Norway

Paper 2 Title: Immersion, Conversion and Confusion: The Concept of Religion and the Politics of Translation in the 19th-Century Baptist Mission to India

Paper Abstract: When the great Baptist missionary William Carey started his first translation of the Bible, he chose for the Bengali translation of baptism a word meaning immersion. The choice of this word would soon produce strong reactions among other Christian missionaries both in India and in Britain. In fact, this little word resulted in a serious conflict between the Baptists and other Christian missionary societies. In this conflict, which lasted for at least a century, hundreds of letters and reports were produced and sent back and forth between the parties, fiery lectures were given in different organizations, friends became enemies, and economic sanctions were imposed on the Baptists to make them replace the word meaning immersion with something else. They refused to oblige with the orders of the Bible Translation Society because it was theologically crucial for them to convey what they saw as the essence of religious conversion and the true meaning of baptism to Indian converts.
In this paper, I will take a closer look at the conflict over the translation of baptism by the early Baptist missionaries. There are two reasons why I believe an investigation of this controversy might be interesting. Firstly, this conflict, which was so important to the missionaries of the nineteenth century, has not been documented in earlier historical works on the Baptist Missionary Society. Secondly, and more importantly, I believe that a closer look at this seemingly bizarre story will yield some interesting perspectives on some fundamental questions in the study of the meeting of Christianity and Indian religions. What was the concept of religion brought to India by Christian missionaries? How was this concept transformed when it encountered the world of Indian religions? How was the concept transformed over time from the early to the late colonial period and what were the consequences of these transformations?

Paper Giver 3: Daniel Jeyaraj, Andover Newton Theological School, USA

Paper 3 Title: Indian Participation in Enabling, Sustaining and Promoting Christian Mission in India

Paper Abstract: Missionary historiography, written from the perspective of a sending agency, has a tendency to highlight the “heroic achievements” of its self-sacrificing missionaries, who mastered the languages of another people, studied their literature, documented their customs and thus excelled in every aspect of their cross-cultural work. Generally, this kind of missionary literature minimizes the contributions of the natives by portraying them as being illiterate, naïve, spiritually blind, stubborn, uncivilized and wavering in their Christian faith. But a fresh look from the perspective of those, who received the missionaries and did more missionary work than the missionaries themselves, shows the major actors in the mission field. These actors were those who permitted the “aliens” to share their socio-cultural space, taught them the local language, explained them the complexities of the local culture, and above all bridged the gap between the missionaries and the people. Thus, these “hosts” ensured the very survival and “success” of their “guests.” These hosts were no mere objects and passive receivers of an alien mission, but they were the major players in the execution and extension of the mission work. Their involvement determined the constancy and influence of the “missionaries.”
In order to illustrate this point, the proposed lecture will draw our attention to some significant contributions of a select group of Indian Christian leaders who played a decisive role in the emergence of an Indian church in the Tamil speaking region of South India. These leaders were associated with the Royal Danish-Halle Mission (1706–1845, also known as the Tranquebar Mission). In 1717 Savarimuthu, an evangelist from Tranquebar, started a school in the British colony of Cuddalore and trained the first Protestant Pastor Aaron (ordained in 1733). Rajanaikkan, a soldier in the army of the King of Tanjore, founded the first Protestant church in Tanjore (in 1728) and thus contributed to the strengthening of Protestant Christianity in the capital of the “Hindu” Kingdom of Tanjore. Clarinda, a Marathi Brahmin widow in Tanjore, became the founder of the Protestant Church in Tirunelveli (in 1785), helped her converts (from thirteen different caste groups) to overcome caste differences. Sathianathan, a catechist in the service of Christian Friederich Schwartz, the most famous missionary in eighteenth-century South India, developed the church founded by Clarinda, and thus contributed to the mass conversion of a particular people group. Beside these luminaries there were numerous unnamed Indian Christians who facilitated the expansion of Christian faith in different villages and cities of India. Thus, these Indian Christians were no mere recipients of the European missionaries, but they facilitated, sustained and expanded Christian mission in India.

Paper Giver 4: Geoffrey Oddie, University of Sydney, Australia

Paper 4 Title: The Role of Pandits in the Construction of Missionary Knowledge and Interpretations of ‘Hinduism’ in the Nineteenth Century

Paper Abstract: The paper, which restricts its attention to British Protestant missionaries, begins with a discussion of the different missionary sources of information, including indigenous sources, such as the views of Hindu pundits. Pundits (or munshis) were valued as translators and language teachers in the different missions, while the pundits themselves could rely on the mission for a regular (if moderate) source of income. Their knowledge of Indian religion was usually specialized, being restricted to their own particular tradition and reflecting their caste background. While the majority appear to have been brahmans, some influential teachers were non-brahmans. But whatever their background, their opinions usually mirrored a view of Indian religion from the top down. The free flow of ideas was also affected by the relationship which developed between the missionary and pundit, and by missionary attempts at conversion which increased the pundits defensive posture and could affect what he was prepared to divulge about his own tradition. The paper concludes with a discussion of ways in which the pundits ideas and information affected the views of influential missionary commentators on Hinduism in the nineteenth century.

Paper Giver 5: George Oommen, United Theological College, Bangalore, India

Paper 5 Title: Paradigms of Missionary and “Native” Interaction in the First Protestant Mission in India: A Postcolonial Search

Paper Abstract: The first Protestant missionaries in Tranquebar, both Bartholomew Ziegenbalg and Henry Pluetschau, arrived into a situation of several pioneering challenges. They had to deal with both the foreigners of European origin and the Indians. During the process of their evangelistic task, they had to deal with local languages, ideas and a complex social system, which were overwhelming for them at times. However, locals and the indigenous realities were very crucial components in the shaping of their attitudes and policies. The Christian interaction of the first converts, who were dubbed as fanam-Christians, lasted only for short periods. Munshies and translators, who were also potential converts, were all part of the complex network of interactions in the first missionary encounters.
This paper will attempt to look at the various layers and webs of the interactions of the missionaries with these “natives,” especially in the shaping of mission theologies and their missionary activity. For instance, Kanambadi Vathiar, one of the most notable converts of the Tranquebar mission was involved in determining the language of interaction of the mission itself. Texts of these interactions and the perceived experiences and realities which determined the way Protestant missions functioned in India will be considered in the analysis. The main aim of the paper will be to seek to bring out the subjectivizing and subordinating discourses and practices at work in the shaping of the initial missionary interaction with the Indians.

Paper Giver 6: Avril Powell, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, UK

Paper 6 Title: Creating Christian Communities in Agra in the Early Nineteenth Century

Paper Abstract: Agra, capital city of Mughal India, drew Christian settlement in its vicinity, including evangelists (Jesuits) and traders (Armenians and Portuguese) from the sixteenth century. The emphasis in this paper will be on the Indian Christian communities and ‘Christian villages’ that responded to subsequent European stimuli in the nineteenth century, following the East India Company’s annexation of the region. The paper will begin with a brief discussion of the Roman Catholic communities that had resulted from Jesuit and Capuchin settlement in Agra from the late sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. There will then be two main foci. First, the community of Anglican Christians that resulted from the settlement in Agra of Abdul Masih, an Indian convert from Islam, in 1813. Discussion will include: the influence on Abdul Masih’s understanding of Christianity and evangelistic methods of his own contacts with, and conversion by, the first generation of British Protestant evangelicals in north India (notably, Henry Martyn and Daniel Corrie); indigenous and local ingredients in his evangelism; examination of his own converts from Muslim and Hindu backgrounds; the characteristics of his Christian community in Agra, 1813- late 1820s. Second, the revival, after a ten year lapse following Abdul Masih’s death, of Christian community-building in this region. Discussion will include: the relationship between famine and conversion (following the 1837 Agra famine); the Sikandarabad Christian village community near Agra (its schools, orphanage, press and workshops; intermarriages among converts); educational and intellectual advances among Christians in Agra city (St John’s College and the city churches; some leading Indian Christians considered); Christian diaspora from Agra after 1857. The conclusion will place these episodes in the longer term and comparative perspective of Christian community building in India, with a particular emphasis on cross cultural influences and problems of indigenization.

Paper Giver 7: Selva J. Raj, Albion College, USA

Paper 7 Title: Deity Hunting and Temple Crossing: The Ritual Tradition at the Shrine of St. Antony in South India

Paper Abstract: The shrine of St. Antony at Uvari on the Pearl Fishery coast—thirty miles north of Kanya Kumari at the tip of the Indian peninsula—is a popular Catholic shrine in south India. Known as the “Padua of the East,” Uvari, whose landscape is dominated by four towering churches built on the shores of the Bay of Bengal in a relatively nondescript, poor, rural area, is a reputed site for various miracles. Once a simple way-side shrine (kurusadi) cared for by a Hindu family, this shrine is now under the jurisdiction of the local Catholic priest. From its modest beginnings, it has grown into a famed regional pilgrim center supported by the local Catholic diocese. Today the shrine attracts thousands of Hindu and Catholic devotees of diverse caste groups who go on pilgrimage to this shrine to fulfill vow rituals collectively known as asanam that include—but not limited to—hair-shaving, ear-piercing, elaborate ritual bathing, animal sacrifices, and communal meal. Not only are these rituals Hindu in content and appearance but the vast majority of pilgrims are Hindus. According to a conservative estimate, over 40 percent of the devotees are Hindus. Uvari Antony ‘s Catholic clients in south India are unlike Catholics in other parts of the world. Their religious identities and ritual practices are deeply enmeshed in and profoundly shaped by indigenous—more precisely Hindu—religio-cultural assumptions and practices.
The centerpiece of the asanam rite, which invariably involves the slaughter of goats or fowls, is the festive ritual meal prepared by devotees and dedicated to St. Antony and his “honored” earthly representatives as a thanksgiving gesture for favors already received or as a promissory offering for specific blessings hoped for. After performing such preliminary rituals as hair-shaving, ear-piercing, and ritual bathing, the family sponsoring the asanam goes about preparing the ritual meal. A crucial part of the ritual meal is the rubrics and etiquette governing the feeding of thirteen beggars—a number significant to St. Antony—selected by the church authorities as the honored recipients of the ritual feast. When the meal is ready, the sponsor family, more precisely, the primary vow-taker, is obligated to serve the meal first to thirteen beggars of various caste and religious identities (Hindus, Muslims, and Christians). Once the meal is served on banana leaves and before the honored beggars begin eating the ritual meal, the primary vow-taker kneels in front of these 13 beggars, offers a prayer to St. Antony, and begs for a handful of food from each of the thirteen beggars to whom he has just served the meal. With the food collected through ritual begging, he sits beside the thirteen beggars for the ritual feast. Only after the beggars are fed to their satisfaction, can family members partake of this ritual meal.
Another striking feature of the Uvari ritual tradition regards the special sacral powers of the shrine. St. Antony who is known throughout the Catholic world for recovering lost items is renowned in South India for his extraordinary sacral powers—attributed by his local clients, Hindu and Catholic, using indigenous religious categories—to heal those afflicted with various psychic disorders and demonic possessions. Thus, a significant number of devotees who undertake pilgrimage to this shrine do so to pray for and obtain healing from St Antony for various psychic disorders and demonic possessions. Interestingly, the vast majority of these devotees are Hindus seeking healing from demonic possessions caused by Hindu deities at the hands of a indigenized European Catholic saint through the mediation of Catholic priests.
Based on extensive field-research, this paper will explore the logic and grammar of the asanam rite and delineate the social themes embedded in the consumption of food prepared and consumed in a ritual context. I argue that one of the social functions served by the asanam rite, which evidently entails some form of role reversal, is its ability to provide the devotees a religious context and ritual platform to temporarily transcend the neatly defined social, caste, and religious identities and strictures that normally define human relationships in south India and to experiment with socially tabooed antistructural interactions and reciprocities in an attempt to temporarily level social and religious differences in order to gain certain earthly benefits from a spiritual patron. Through a careful investigation of the Uvari ritual tradition and St. Antony’s cultic constituency with special reference to those seeking healing from demonic possessions, this paper will also explore the dynamics of the existential, living, ritual dialogue occurring in the realm of popular religiosity as well as the complicated identities and complex negotiations devolving on south Indian Catholics.

Paper Giver 8: K.S. Shivanna, University of Mysore, India

Paper 8 Title: The Basel Mission’s Interaction with Religious and Cultural Traditions of Karnataka

Paper Abstract: This paper makes an attempt to focus the process of Interaction with Religious and cultural traditions in parts of Karnataka where the Basel Missionaries operated from 1831-1913. Religion as a social variable has always been a dominant force in molding the thinking and behavioural pattern in human society. Religion was and is a way of life in India. Antiquity and diversity have been two major characteristic features of Indian society. Generally interaction and not conflict had always been at the root of intellectual traditions of India. Before the advent of Christianity the Indians had interaction not only within Hinduism, but also Jainism, Buddhism, Charvaka traditions as well as Islam. Likewise, Indians had extremely fascinating interaction with Christianity in modern times.
The advent of the Basel Mission, Basel, Switzerland (a German Protestant Mission), in the early part of the 19th Century paved the way for a very interesting religious dialogue in Karnataka. Equipped with the linguistic ability the Basel missionaries interacted with the Kannadigas at the grass-root level which included villages, village fairs, sacred towns, marriage halls, village temples and coffee-plantations, as well as Kannadiga-Lingayats, Brahmin Pundits, Muslim mullahs, Jain-gurus and Roman Catholic priests were involved. Mostly migrant labourers from Tamilnadu working in the coffee and tea-plantations of Karnataka also participated in this interaction. When the Basel missionaries approached Kannadiga-society, it was generally rural, agrarian and illiterate. But these features of society were not barriers for the Kannada speaking folks to interact with the missionaries and the catechists from the Basel Mission. This paper makes an attempt to find out the ultimate impact of such interaction on the heritage of Karnataka.
An attempt will also be made to approach the study of Christianity in Karnataka, not from Euro-Centric but from Indo-Centric perspectives. Its focus will be Christianity in Karnataka history and not mere history of Christianity in Karnataka. In this paper missionary activities would be presented as an inter-cultural dialogue indicating along with its consequence and relevance to non-Christian society. The paper is based on the sources collected at the Basel Mission Archives, Basel, Switzerland.

Paper Giver 9: Will Sweetman, University of Newcastle, UK

Paper 9 Title: The Curse of the Mummy: Egyptians, Hindus and Christians in the Lettres édifiantes et curieuses and La Croze’s Histoire du Christianisme des Indes

Paper Abstract: Although paganopapism had been a feature of intra-Christian polemic since at least the Reformation, the advent of the first Protestant mission in India in 1706 provided both new material and renewed motivation for Protestant and Catholic polemicists of the early eighteenth century. This paper will examine the use of Hinduism in works which drew on reports from the Indian missions, and attempt to explain the curious role that Egypt played in such works.

Paper Giver 10: Richard Young, Princeton Theological Seminary, USA

Paper 10 Title: Empire and Disinformation: A South Indian Hindu Perspective (ca. 1804) on Christianity’s Civilizing Mission and the Production of Colonial Knowledge

Paper Abstract: Using manuscripts from the Mackenzie Collection (OIOC, London), I reconstruct a contemporaneous perspective from South India in the early 1800s on British Orientalism and the phenomenon that came to be called “the Bengal Renaissance.” The little-known author of these manuscripts, a Telegu brahmin named Partheputt Ragaviah [sic], was an English-educated “native” informant involved in the Mysore survey project of his mentor, Holt Mackenzie, an early graduate of the EIC’s Fort William College (Calcutta) and a pioneer Orientalist. One manuscript in the Mackenzie Collection details Ragaviah’s clumsy attempt at reconciling Puranic cosmography with Western astronomy, a knowledge of which he appears to have acquired in mission schools. Evidently ill at ease in Sanskrit and ill-informed about the astronomy of antiquity, Ragaviah evinces an unusual openness toward Western science that contrasts with that of traditionally-educated pandits whose writings on the subject are also included in the Mackenzie Collection.
That Ragaviah, a liminal figure who straddled two worlds, read Asiatick Researches avidly, and depended on Europeans for his livelihood, might have been predisposed to uncritically accept the Orientalist interpretation of “Hinduism” (past glory, present degradation) is proven wrong by another Mackenzie manuscript. In this, Ragaviah defends “Hinduism” against the inferiorizing rhetoric of Thomas Newnham, himself an early graduate of Fort William whose essay on “The Character and Capacity of the Asiaticks” was published by the College in 1802. Taking umbrage at Newnham’s characterization of India as “uncivilized” and therefore in need of Christianity’s ameliorating influence, Ragaviah endeavors to rectify India’s reputation in European circles as a society of sati, infanticide, and other “horrid” practices.
In a third manuscript, Ragaviah proposes to Mackienzie that the formation of a literary society in Madras would provide a forum for interaction with “natives” and help Europeans avoid “superficial” judgments like Newnham’s. Rebuffed by Mackenzie, Ragaviah disappears from the archives with a final manuscript that outlines a rather outlandish and desperate project designed to interest Europeans in studying classical Indian dance as a way to woo them away from the “nautch” dances to which many were addicted. However idiosyncratic, Ragaviah is an intriguing figure who envisioned and exemplified an Indian-initiated dialogical exchange with Europe. My presentation will conclude with some reflections on prevalent assumptions about Orientalism as a totalizing, hegemonic enterprise.