Christianity in India

Christianity is not a recent comer to India. Some of the oral traditions in the South like Margamkalipattu, a folk-song of the Knanite Christians, place Christianity as early as the first century AD. One can always question the credibility of these oral traditions. According to some of the copper plates preserved to this day, Christianity came to South India before the fifth century AD. Over the centuries, the Christians in India were articulating the nature and content of their faith. This discussion, on the one hand, served as the foundation while they related themselves to their world. On the other hand, on the basis of this discussion, different Christian communities developed their own distinct identities. These identities, in turn, regulated the co-operation, competition and conflict while they interacted within themselves and with the world outside.

The oral traditions affiliate Christianity with the higher stratum of the Hindu caste hierarchy. Many Christians from Kerala hold strong to this affiliation. Recently, I offended a schoolteacher for being critical of the St. Thomas tradition. She was offended not so much because I had questioned the St. Thomas tradition, but that I had questioned her caste affiliation. Hence, the legacy of a sizeable number of Christians proudly affiliating themselves with the most powerful among the caste hierarchy, still continues.With the arrival of Robert de Nobili in the early seventeenth century, there was an attempt to place Christianity within the Vedic tradition. He took pains to translate Christianity into a tradition that would appeal to the higher stratum of the caste hierarchy. The Nobilian legacy still continues. One can comfortably say that de Nobili triggered a process of placing Christianity in a Vedic pot. Even today many Christian theologians would readily articulate Indian Christianity in terms of the Vedic tradition. Over the centuries, the Christian theologians have adopted the signs and symbols of the Vedic tradition to articulate their faith in the Indian context.

The Vedic tradition is the greatest melting pot even for Christianity. Consciously or unconsciously, the Vedic tradition in Christianity was not sensitive to the diversity within its folds. It tried to assimilate the differences and make Christianity look uniform. The modern Vedic tradition glorifies the past and insists that every Indian should affiliate with this sense of a common past. This means to identify Indianness with the mythological past of the Vedas and recreating the single common past through rituals and symbols.

On a conceptual level the Christians affiliate themselves with the caste hierarchy and adopt the Vedic signs and symbols. On the other hand, the Christians incur the wrath of the self-proclaimed guardians of Vedic tradition when they confront the caste hierarchy and anything that represents the oppression of the caste hierarchy.

Isn8217;t the diversity within the Indian Christian community reason enough to disassociate from the Vedic tradition and to become more inclusive? There is no single tradition that can be used to Indianise Christianity. Christianity in India is segmented and diverse. It is time that the Christian theologians took a stand and accepted the fact that the Vedic tradition is not the melting pot to make Christianity Indian. A self-critical attempt at cultural appropriateness will be a process of defining and redefining Christianity in relation to life experiences and the Indian social context. Any tradition for making Christianity Indian should be tested to see if its effects are oppressive or liberative, alienating or humanising. The content of Christianity must transform into inclusive relationships of freedom, equality and justice.

In order to make Christianity relevant in India today, we need a spirituality that assesses the past to evolve an amended future.