29 - Christians and religious traditions in the Indian empire

Summary

The story of most Christians in India begins in the south. For others, the story begins later, and elsewhere. Each Christian community has had its own separate lineage (vamshāvali), or tradition. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, three main streams of Christian tradition – Orthodox (Syrian/Thomas), Catholic (Roman) and Protestant (pietist/evangelical) – existed and can be followed. Hundreds of new communities, mainly Catholic and Protestant, came into being, in processes of proliferation that were increasingly complex. Scattered far and wide, to the farthest corners of the sub-continent, and beyond, these communities evolved within the dynamics of a Hindu and imperial matrix.

The Hindu Raj

During the first half of the nineteenth century, as processes of imperial integration reached completion, all principalities within the sub-continent were brought together under the shadow of a single overarching political system. Under the East India Company, a partnership of Europeans and Indians gathered enough resources to make this possible. This system, known as the Indian empire’ or the Raj’, coined the twin concepts ‘Hindu’ and ‘India’, signifying things that had never before happened.

This empire was, in many respects, a ‘Hindu Raj’. Beneath the euphemism of ‘religious neutrality’ (or ‘non-interference’) was a clear-eyed logic of power. The entire structure–vital flows of information and revenue – depended upon collaboration with ‘Hindu’ or ‘native’ elites belonging to the highest castes. It was these elites who, working alongside European scholars and thinkers, and missionaries, collaborated in the making of what would later become known as ‘Hinduism’.