Dalit Theology and Dalit Liberation

Problems, Paradigms and Possibilities

Peniel Rajkumar

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317154921
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Religione

In fulfilling the long-awaited need for a constructive and critical rethinking of Dalit theology this book offers and explores the synoptic healing stories as a relevant biblical paradigm for Dalit theology in order to help redress the lacuna between Dalit theology and the social practice of the Indian Church. Peniel Rajkumar's starting point is that the growing influence of Dalit theology in academic circles is incompatible with the praxis of the Indian Church which continues to be passive in its attitude towards the oppression of the Dalits both within and outside the Church. The theological reasons for this lacuna between Dalit theology and the Church's praxis, Rajkumar suggests, lie in the content of Dalit theology, especially the biblical paradigms explored, which do not offer adequate scope for engagement in praxis.

Chapter 1
Answering Some Questions – The Why, What and How of Dalit Theology

Why did Dalit Theology emerge? What are its objectives? How does Dalit theology attempt to achieve these objectives? These three questions which interrogate the origins, objectives and approaches of Christian Dalit theology constitute the grid within which the structure of the present chapter is worked out. This chapter not only seeks to furnish a general overview of Dalit theology by way of ‘answering these questions’ but also sets the scene for the next chapter which specifically attempts to interrogate the nature of the relationship between theology and social practice as envisaged and imagined in Christian Dalit theology by ‘questioning the answers’, with the anticipation that such an inquiry can adequately foreground any subsequent discussion on the practical efficacy of Dalit theology.

Why Dalit Theology?

It has been acknowledged that Christian Dalit Theology emerged due to ‘the insensitivity of the Church and Indian Christian theology to Dalit concerns and the deeper dimensions of their struggle and aspirations for fuller humanity, despite the majority of Christians being of Dalit origin’.¹ This insensitivity, of which both Indian Christianity and Indian Christian Theology are held guilty, can only be understood in the wider context of the development of Indian Christianity and Indian Christian Theology.

Dalits and Indian Christianity

The story of Dalits and Christianity is to a great extent also the story of caste within Christianity. Therefore, in order to understand Christianity and its attitudes towards the Dalit Christians it is pertinent to delve into the different attitudes to caste that prevailed, and continue to prevail, among some ‘main-stream’ church traditions – the Syrian Christians, the Roman Catholic Missions and the Protestant Missions (which can be further divided broadly on a denominational basis into the Lutherans, the Baptists and the Anglo-Saxons).

Syrian Christians The Syrian Christians, who trace their origins to Apostle Thomas, have been ‘for centuries encapsulated within the caste society. They have been regarded by Hindus as a caste society, occupying a recognized (and high) place within the caste hierarchy.’² The reasons for this are not clear. According to James Massey around 1020 AD the Syrian Christians along with the Jewish community were accorded the status of caste Hindus. They were given a list of 72 privileges including the right to ride an elephant, to be preceded by drums and trumpets and to have criers announcing their approach so that the people from ‘lower’ castes could withdraw from the streets. Gradually it became inevitable for them to internalize caste influences by which they sought to provide legitimization for their status.³ The Syrian Christians have ever since functioned as a caste community in the South Indian state of Kerala,⁴ and, even today, to a large extent, remain as a ‘close endogamous upper-caste group’⁵ Along with the Roman Catholics, the Syrian Orthodox Churches have largely adopted an ‘organic view’ of caste which treats the caste system as a system of social classification.⁶ In comparison with other Christian denominations, the Churches with Syrian Christian background are generally considered to be more rigid in observing caste discrimination.

Roman Catholic Missions The Portuguese, who were the first Roman Catholic missionaries, experienced success of ‘caste-conversions’ with the mass conversions of two fishing jatis – the Paravars (of the south-eastern tip of India) in 1535–37, and the Mukkuvars (of the south-western tip of India) in 1544.⁷ The two communities resorted to conversions as an avenue of protection from local oppression.⁸ Later, Francis Xavier, a Jesuit priest, is believed to have baptized several thousand people belonging to different caste groups, the majority however being the ‘outcaste’ Pariahs in south-east India. This ‘caste-conversion’ method strongly influenced later Roman Catholic missionary thinking.⁹ These conversions triggered problems regarding the incorporation of the converts into the so far ‘upper-caste’ Church, which resulted in separatism. The ‘new Christians’ (who also included the Dalit Paraiah converts apart from the two ‘low caste’ jatis) followed the Latin rite used by the Portuguese. They were thus segregated from the ‘upper-caste’ Thomas Christian descendants who followed the Syrian rite.¹⁰ It was the difficulty associated with handling the entry of different castes into the Christian faith which led to caste divisions within the Church.

Robert de Nobili, a Roman Catholic priest who started the Madurai Mission in 1606, recognized the success of Christianity among the ‘low castes’ and was resolved to change this. Hence de Nobili and his associates addressed their mission predominantly to the ‘high castes’, declaring themselves as ‘new Brahmins’.¹¹ They even sought the permission of the Church to accommodate caste practices, and the Bull of Pope Gregory xv, ‘Bulla Romanae Sedis Antistes’ acceded to their requests. They were allowed the use of traditional customs and usages under the consideration that certain external rites like the use of the sacred thread, sandal and ablutis by the Brahmin converts could be interpreted as denoting nobility and function and hence tolerable.¹² This accommodation of caste on ‘social’ lines also resulted in policies of discrimination as de Nobili’s Madurai Mission did not merely allow caste-based distinctions to continue in the church. Rather, the Mission itself was divided. While Brahmin sanyasis exclusively ministered to the ‘high castes’, there were another category of priests – the pandaraswamis – who ministered to the ‘low castes’.¹³

We can say that in general the Catholics followed a policy of adaptation and ‘chose to work within the caste system’.¹⁴ Right from the beginning they regarded the caste system ‘as the given and religiously neutral structure of Indian Society within which evangelization, understood as the conversion of individuals without detaching them from their social context, and also the conversion of whole caste groups, might proceed.’¹⁵

The Protestant Missions – Lutheran Pietists The first Protestant Missionaries to India, Ziegenbalg and Plutschau, were the pioneers of the Tranquebar Lutheran Mission (1706). Their theological rootedness in evangelistic pietism (they both studied in the University of Halle) led them to focus on individualistic Lutheran pietism, and on spiritual rebirth (weidergeburt).¹⁶ Their emphasis on the Lutheran doctrine of the two kingdoms rendered politics and culture irrelevant to faith.¹⁷ For them, addressing the issue of caste was secular work which did not fall under their gamut of ‘spiritual work’ but was subordinate to it.¹⁸ According to Duncan B. Forrester, the Lutherans fluctuated between two possibilities in treating caste:

On the one hand, they could treat caste as being irrelevant to their efforts, seeking to convert individuals, whose keeping or breaking of caste would have no relation to their religious profession …. The other possibility was that India might be evangelized through the conversion of caste groups – roughly the position of Xavier and de Nobili.¹⁹

Both these approaches engendered the accommodation of caste within the Lutheran Missions.

The Protestant Missions – The Anglo-Saxons The Anglo-Saxon Protestant Missions were different from the other missions because they were the most outspoken in their critique of caste. Along with the Baptists they reached a consensus about the incompatibility of caste with Christianity by the mid-19th century.²⁰ Argument, however, existed over the tactical question of how to deal with caste as an institution, which ‘as it stood, virtually all Christians found offensive to a greater or a lesser degree’.²¹ Therefore Protestants resorted to different ways of dealing with caste, like the enforcement of strict discipline which made churches ‘communities of the economically and socially underprivileged’.²² Though the Protestant missions were naïve, unrealistic and unsuccessful (in terms of their stated objectives) in their attacks on caste in the society at large, they achieved in some instances ‘protection against indignities and oppression of low-caste people’.²³ The most significant achievement of the Protestant critique of caste was the major contribution it made in the radical transformation of the opinion of the educated in India.²⁴

The Protestant Missions were popular with Dalits and witnessed many mass movements in the late nineteenth century and the twentieth century. This altered the face of Indian Christianity by bringing converts from many Dalit communities, like the Chuhras in Punjab, the Mazhabi Sikhs, the Bhangis or Lalbegis, and to a lesser extent the Chamars in Uttar Pradesh, the Dheds in Gujarat, the Mangs and Mahars in Maharstra, the Malas and Madigas in various parts of Andhra Pradesh, the Paraiyars as well as Madharis (Chakkiliyar) in Tamil Nadu, the Paraiyars and Pullayars in Kerala.²⁵ By the mid-20th century, the Dalit proportion among Indian Christians escalated and almost two-thirds of Indian Christians were Dalit....