In the Shadow of the Mahatma

Bishop Azariah and the Travails of Christianity in British India

Susan Billington Harper

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136832642
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christianity

This is a biography of Vedanayagam Samuel Azariah (1874-1945), bishop of the Anglican Church in India from 1912 until his death in 1945. His life sheds new light on the challenges and opportunities faced by religious minorities throughout the world today. As a Christian leader in a non-Christian culture, he negotiated complex cultural, social, political, and economic pressure with exceptional skill and diplomacy. As the first Indian bishop of an Anglican diocese, and as modern India's most successful leader of depressed class and non-Brahmin conversion movements to Christianity, Azariah was equally at home with the untouchables of rural India and the unreachables of the British Empire. From this platform Azariah inevitably came into contact - and, ironically, also into conflict - with the dominating presence of Mahatma Gandhi.

Susan Billington Harper here reconstructs major events and issues of Azariah's public life, including a previously unstudied controversy with Gandhi over the issue of conversion and relgious freedom in the 1930s. Based on hitherto untapped primary sources, including diocesan records and vernacular oral histories expressed in both stories and songs, this fascinating volume not only provides the first critical study of Bishop Azariah's life but also offers important - at times challenging - insights for those interested in modern India and the place of Christianity within it.

PART I

THE RISE

Late nineteenth-century India was the crown jewel within the global empire of Queen Victoria. However, the British Raj was more a continent than a country. It included today’s Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka, along with the many regions and languages of present-day India. India was itself an empire dominated by two of the world’s major non-western religions: Hinduism and Islam. And what seemed to be a dominant Hindu majority contained within itself yet another bewildering array of minority castes and ethnicities.¹

Nowhere were these social and religious groupings more varied and complex than in South India, where caste divisions were complicated and reinforced by racial distinctions between darker-skinned, indigenous Dravidian peoples of the lower castes and lighter-skinned, Aryan peoples of the invading higher castes. Here, in a small Tamil village composed mainly of Dravidian groups, Vedanayagam Samuel Azariah was born — the man destined to become the leading Christian statesman of India and the most successful Christian evangelist among the untouchables.

The secret of his success lay in his spiritual purity and personal humility, and his stunning achievements were all the more remarkable for having occurred in a time of terrible tensions and unprecedented change. At every stage, he was a man with a mission. But he was at the same time a mediator in the middle. He was unique among successful Indians of his time in being able to communicate effectively with both the agrarian untouchables of India and the Oxbridge-educated elite of the British Raj.

To understand this unjustly neglected figure, we must re-create the remarkable community of Tinnevelly (Tirunelveli)²amid the arid plains of Tamil country and the life of his distinctive caste in the multi-ethnic patchwork of southern India.

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1. Hinduism has assumed a denominationalist or world-religion character through a complex process of cultural, social, political, and religious construction over the last two hundred years. For guidance on conceptual problems inherent in the contemporary use of the term ‘Hinduism,’ and in the use and abuse of the concept of a ‘Hindu majority,’ see R. E. Frykenberg, ‘Constructions of Hinduism at the Nexus of History and Religion,’ Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XXIII, 3 (Winter 1993), pp. 523–50; The Emergence of Modern “Hinduism” as a Concept and as an Institution: A Reappraisal with Special Reference to South India,’ in Hinduism Reconsidered, ed. Günther D. Sontheimer and Hermann Kulke, South Asian Studies No. XXIV (New Delhi, 1989), pp. 29–49; ‘The Concept of “Majority” as a Devilish Force in the Politics of Modern India,’ Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, XXV, 3 (Nov. 1987), pp. 267–74; and Romila Thapar, ‘Syndicated Moksha?’ Seminar, CCCXIII (1985), pp. 14–22.

2. As I explained in the opening note, I have chosen the archaic usage over the contemporary usage to maintain consistency with the historical sources. I recognize, regret, and apologize for the jarring anachronisms: for those of us accustomed to contemporary terminology it is difficult to revert to the older terms, with their highly British connotations. However, maintaining consistency with historical usage seemed a higher priority for this book than satisfying contemporary preference.

CHAPTER 1

Local Background: Secure Roots and a Spiritual Core

Aspectacular breed of palm trees, the palmyras, dominate this otherwise dry land south of the Tambiravarni River (‘copper-colored’ river) on the southeastern tip of the Indian subcontinent. The people who scaled the palmyras, known as ‘toddy-tappers’ from the intoxicating alcohol made from the trees, came from the Shanar (now, Nadar) caste who spoke the poetic, ancient Tamil language of the region. On these red, sandy plains, one British missionary quipped, ‘We have not the alternatives of being roasted one part of the year and frozen the other, but gently simmer over a slow fire the whole year round.’¹

In this hot and sparse natural environment Protestant, or non-Catholic, Evangelical Christianity planted some of its deepest Indian roots. Christian missionaries arrived in Tinnevelly District before the British established direct political control over the area in 1801. Christianity was introduced in the eighteenth century by German Lutheran missionaries of the North European pietist tradition (in collaboration with the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, or SPCK), and was further strengthened in the nineteenth century under the Anglican auspices of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG).² Both were voluntary societies for mission to non-Christians: the CMS expressed the ‘low-church’ Evangelical side of Anglican spirituality and the SPG expressed the ‘high-church’ Anglo-Catholic side. They worked side by side in Tinnevelly, where, despite their common evangelistic goals, they often fell prey to disagreements and rivalries. (Thus, their growing congregations tended to identify themselves as ‘CMS Christians’ or ‘SPG Christians.”)

Those most receptive to the Christian message in Tinnevelly were the semi-untouchable Shanars (now called Nadars, or ‘lords’), an energetic one-fifth of the district’s population whose hereditary occupation was bringing down the sap of the lofty palmyras.³ By 1851, the Nadars of Tinnevelly and neighboring Travancore comprised more than half of the nearly 100,000 Christian converts registered with Protestant missions in India.⁴ Conversion to Christianity was part of a rising aspiration in India to change status in the caste-dominated South Indian social hierarchy. The Nadar caste community and its strong Christian core were to be key agents of this change.

Azariah’s paternal grandfather, a Nadar merchant known as Gnaniyar (or ‘man of wisdom’), traveled through the countryside in a wagon, or bandi, drawn by bullocks or donkeys trading the coarse brown jaggery sugar from the local palmyra trees for grain and cotton.⁵ Although relatively poor,⁶ he was a link between the rustic villages of Tinnevelly and the newly installed English cotton companies in the larger city of Tuticorin and the more distant metropolis of Madras.⁷

Gnaniyar and his fellow Nadars occupied a middle position of ‘semi-untouchability’ in the caste system: between ‘outcastes’ and ‘Sudras’ (pro-nounced ‘Shudras’) in the caste hierarchy. Like the untouchables (here called Pallans and Paraiyans), they were barred from entering temples or courts of justice, and required to follow dress regulations forbidding women to cover the upper parts of their bodies. They were also forbidden the use of public wells and were subject to various prohibitions regarding spatial distance. Nadars were required to stay thirty-six paces away from high-caste Brahmins; their houses were limited to one story; they were forbidden to carry umbrellas and to wear shoes and gold ornaments. They could not milk cows, and Nadar women were not allowed to carry pots on their hips. Unlike the outcastes, however, many Nadars abstained from liquor and beef and disapproved of the remarriage of widows.⁸

As a merchant, Gnaniyar was not directly involved in the traditional, ritually polluting occupation of climbing and cultivating palmyra trees, and it is likely that his family held a relatively elevated position in the ranking of subgroups within his community.⁹ Nevertheless, in the eyes of other communities, he would have shared with all members of his caste the stigmas associated with their traditional ooccupation.

During succeeding generations, the Nadars became one of South India’s most rapidly changing communities. By the year of Azariah’s death in 1945, this formerly impoverished, semi-untouchable community had been transformed into one of the most economically and politically successful communities in the South.

The distinctive work of Protestant Christian missionary societies (the above-mentioned CMS, SPG, and the London Missionary Society, or LMS) spurred much of this change. Already by 1857, 43,000 converts had been received by the CMS and SPG missions in Tinnevelly alone.¹⁰ As one missionary observed of these predominantly Nadar converts:

Christianity and the palmyra have appeared to flourish together. Where the palmyra abounds, there Christian congregations and schools abound also; and where the palmyra disappears, there the signs of Christian progress are rarely seen.¹¹

By the end of the nineteenth century, Tinnevelly had more Christians than any district in the Madras Presidency; and, among the Protestants, 95 percent were from the Nadar caste. Historian Robert Hardgrave has shown that the missions inspired spiritual and organizational unity in the previously fractionated community. Non-Christians joined Christian pacesetters in bringing political consciousness to the caste and uplifting it to take advantage of economic and educational opportunities in British India.¹²

The Nadar converts in Tinnevelly came primarily neither from the lowest sections of the caste (Kalla Shanars) nor from the highest (Nadans), but rather from the middle subgroups and particularly the climbers.¹³ Conversion provided a pathway to caste advancement for middle-ranking Nadars, who, after receiving Christian education, were able to leave their former, polluting occupation in great numbers.¹⁴ Christian missions helped Nadar women gain the right to cover their upper bodies during the violent breast-cloth controversy of the early- to mid-nineteenth century. Nadar women were frequently attacked, stripped, and beaten — and chapels and schools were burned — for the offense of wearing the breast cloths previously worn only by higher-caste Nair women. The position and influence of the missionaries helped Nadars to challenge their indigenous superiors, and Nadar Christian converts became leaders in the movement for social change.¹⁵

Economic and political conditions in the wake of British victory in the Mysore and Poligar (Palaiyakkaram) Wars (1755–1801), which subdued the power of feudal chiefs, were also favorable to Nadar advancement. Nadar merchants (like Azariah’s grandfather) and moneylenders were better able to take advantage of improved transportation and communication created by the Pax Indika than were the relatively disadvantaged and locally bound palmyra tree climbers.¹⁶ Trading cotton and tobacco, Nadar merchants established prosperous communities farther north and generally sought to disassociate themselves from members of the same caste in southern Tinnevelly. From about the 1860s, they frequently tried to lift their social status simply by adopting higher-caste manners and attributes, a process known as Sanskritization.¹⁷ Although they were a family of merchants, Azariah’s relatives did not seek advancement through Sanskritization but instead chose the different route of Christianization.

Like most of the palmyra-climbing Nadars, Azariah’s a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Maps and Illustrations
• Abbreviations
• A Note on Transliteration
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I: The Rise
• Part II: The Reign
• Part III: The Resolutions
• Part IV: The Rift
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index