Indian culture "castes" his shadow over christianity
In predominantly Hindu India, the number of Christians is on the rise. Despite being a child of the West, Christianity in India is growing with its own identity.
“Indian Christians, because they live in close proximity to other religions, tend to take other religions seriously and carry them into their theological discourse, which Western Christians don’t need to do,” said Kuruvilla Pandikattu, a Jesuit priest and physicist. . “In general, the outlook is similar,” Pandikattu said.
Certain areas of India have always been strongholds of Christianity, such as Goa, a former Portuguese settlement on the west coast, and Kerala in the east, where the Apostle Thomas is believed to have settled in the first century.
While Thomas’s landing is hard to prove or disprove, “there is definite evidence of a thriving Christian community in Kerala in the third century, largely due to Syrian spice traders staying in Kerala and intermarrying,” he said. Corrine G. Dempsey, an associate. professor of religious studies at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.
“A conservative estimate is that 60 percent of all Christian Indians come from Dalit and lower classes,” said Selva Raj of Albion University.
Missionaries, though banned by the government, are gaining ground thanks in large part to the entrenched caste system in society. Although casteism has been officially prohibited since the 1950s, rural society follows strict caste lines. the lowest caste, dalits gold harijansformerly called “untouchables,” they face widespread discrimination along with economic and educational disadvantage.
India has a quota system, similar to American affirmative action, but the realities of rural life are removed from it. Sociologists and anthropologists agree that a casteless religion is therefore attractive to indigenous tribes.
However, it is difficult to determine if faith precedes the desire for socioeconomic mobility or vice versa, Raj said.
Evangelicals also influence Christians from mainline churches or from other sects, said Rowena Robinson, an associate professor of sociology at the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay. “It is difficult to judge from attendance at evangelical ceremonies, the measure of actual conversions. The two should not be confused. Many are able to attend healing rituals etc. without more permanently aligning themselves,” continued Robinson, author indian christians and Religious conversions in India: ways, motivations and meanings.
Those who convert soon discover that Christianity is also riddled with discrimination, Raj said. Even after adopting Christian names that do not have obvious caste markers like Hindu names, it is still obvious that they are converts and therefore one step below. “Until 30 years ago, Christian cemeteries had separate cemeteries for Dalit converts,” said Raj, whose forthcoming book is titled Dealing with the Deities.
Converts tend to retain their pre-conversion rituals, traditions, and unconverted relationships. “In all conversions, almost everywhere, the past is unlikely to be completely eradicated. The cultural holds are always there, including in terms of kinship structures, marriage patterns and ritual elements,” Robinson said.
Even in educated circles, the influence of pre-conversion and the Hinduism of their neighbors abounds. Christian brides in India wear white but avoid wearing sarees. At Syrian Christian weddings in Kerala, the climax of the event is tying the thali around the bride’s neck, much like Hindu weddings, Dempsey said. The thali is an ornament in the form of gold leaf worn on a gold chain. Christian tallis often have crosses to distinguish them from Hindu tallis. “Syrian Christian churches often prominently have golden lamps, similar to lamps seen in Hindu temples,” she said.
Furthermore, “the saints’ festivities closely resemble the festivities in Hindu temples, particularly when it comes to processions in which the statue of the saint, like the murti or Hindu statue, brings up the rear.”
Syrian priests even used to provide astrological advice, though Dempsey said this has fallen out of favor over the past half century. However, “some Christians still calmly visit astrologers and pay attention to muhurtham, or the right time, when it comes to traveling or organizing important events like weddings,” he said.
“Kerala Christians don’t see themselves clinging to Hindu practices as a sign of semi-conversion,” said Dempsey, who co-edited with Raj. Folk Christianity in India: Rites Between the Lines. “Rather, they understand that their Christianity is embedded in the culture, and they are proud of the fact that their Christianity is ancient, integrated, and different from that of more recent converts.”
Sonjharia Minz, a professor of theoretical informatics at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, is the daughter of a Christian pastor, but her family hails from the indigenous Oraon tribe in the northern state of Jharkhand. Minz has been exploring the similarities between the tribal religion and Christianity, focusing on the elements that facilitated conversion. “The rituals leading up to salvation are very similar,” she said, “as are the myths, practices, and attitudes toward all of creation.”
“Theology emerges from concrete, lived reality,” Raj said. “For [Indian Christians]these are discrimination and poverty.”
“Westerners are more radical,” said Ram Surat, a convert from a middle-class Hindu family who works as an evangelical social worker with a “holistic ministry for people dealing with AIDS, castism and sexism.” “Our psyche is different.”
