Short Essay on the features of Christianity in South India Since 1500

The establishment of Portuguese power in India in the beginning of the sixteenth century ushered in a new era in the history of Christianity. Their patronage infused a new spirit into the Christian Church and it became very active in propagating the faith. The Popes repeatedly exhorted the Portuguese kings to make it their duty to send missions to newly discovered area.

The latter who were all truly devout Catholics responded to this by sending a number of secular and religious priests to India, either as chaplains or further apostles to spread Christianity. When the Portuguese kings had their power recognised in India, the relations between church and state were quite good and it was precisely during those years that the foundations of the Latin Church were laid here and the “padroado” (patronage) jurisdication established.

The Portuguese were not reluctant to use their political power to make converts to Christianity. Josephus Wicki in his Documenta Indica 1540-1549 says; “It is now fifty years since the Portuguese started inhabiting these parts of India, among whom the first to come were the soldiers. These soldiers went about taking lands and making men prisoners, and started baptizing them without any respect or reverence for the sacrament and without catechising them or teaching them the Christian doctrine”.

These converts were mainly from Islam and it produced much havoc among them Zinadim, an Arab writer of the sixteenth century, exclaims in his Historia dos Portuguese no Malabar (History of the Portuguese in Malabar); “Oh, how many women of distinction were captured by them and violated till they bore them Christian sons, enemies of the faith of God and so lustful to Muslims! How many gentlemen of science as well as chiefs, were captured by them and maltreated till they were killed! How many true Muslims, men as well as women, were converted to Christianity!”

The Hindus, who formed the majority of the population, were also not left undisturbed. Many Nairs and other caste Hindus were brought into the fold of Christianity. This made the Hindu rajas, especially the king of Cochin; oppose the conversion of their subjects to Christianity. But their opposition was fruitless before the powerful Portuguese and before 1527 some ten to twelve thousand Hindus were converted to Christianity in Cochin and in its surroundings alone. Before the Jesuits actively took over the work from the year 1559, the missionaries were chiefly secular priests, Franciscans and Dominicans.

Even before 1527 the Portuguese turned their attention to the lower classes and the historical documents of the period indicate that a large number from among them were converted. To join Christianity then was a privilege and several temporal motives urged the common people to become Christians

Lancillottus in a letter to Ignatius Loyola dated 10th October 1547 deplored this state of affairs. He said: “The people of this country are very bad, and almost never use their reason. Those who get converted to Christianity do so purely out of a desire for temporal gain and many of them come to an evil end.

As invariably in these lands some people take others as prisoners; those who are slaves of moors and gentiles make themselves Christian to achieve freedom; others to obtain protection against tyrants; others still do so, if any one given them a cap or a shirt or some little things; others to prevent being persecuted, and still others make themselves Chris­tians, in order to be able to converse with Christian women, so that blessed indeed in the man who makes himself Christian out of pure virtue:

The acceptance of baptism made the convert cut off his ties that were holding him to his former faith and the membership of the church made him forfeit the membership of the caste into which he had been born, and this was a sure guarantee of his perseverance in the new religion and sticking to the new society that he had joined.

The Christian church in South India got a new life with the arrival of St. Francis Xavier in 1542. He moved from village to village, converting thousands to his faith and maintain­ing the closest contact with them. He was unsparing in his service to them and won their hearts. He healed their sick, buried their dead, baptized their new born, catechised the children as well as the grown-ups, gave them counsel and asked them not to drink arrack. The motto of Xavier was to convert them, ameliorate their social condition and raise their standard of life and see that, in course of time, they were ranked among the very best people in their country.

In Travancore itself he converted more than 10,000 Mukkuvar fisher folk, and added them to the ranks of Christians. He served the cause of Christ faithfully and inspired others to follow his footsteps, thus becoming the pioneer of the more recent missions to India. Besides his efforts to spread Christianity, he contributed also to the spread of education in South India by founding various schools at important places. Christian teachings he tried to impart in the local languages, Tamil and Malayalam.

His concern for the growth of a local clergy and an increase of catechists indicated his wide vision. Wicki says: “The great shrines in Goa and Kottar, the many churches, colleges and institutions spread all over India that is named after Xavier proves that the country remained faithful and grateful to the saint.”

The religious and humanitarian work of Xavier was continued by very able and efficient missionaries with the assistance of the Portuguese. In 1555 the mission work was properly organised. In that year the Viceroy entrusted Salsette to the Jesuits and Bardez to the Franciscans. It was followed by conversion on a large scale and the establishment of a network of parishes. Goa became the chief ecclesiastical centre.

The different Christian missionary groups-Franciscans, Jesuits, Dominicans, Augustinians, Carmelites, and Theatines-established their principal residences or provincialities and their houses of formation at Goa, and from there they dispatched their men as missionaries not only to various parts of India, but also to other regions such as Ceylon, Burma, Malaya, Indonesia, Vietnam, China and Japan.

The most controversial, and at the same time the most famous mission in India was also established under the aegis of the Portuguese by the Jesuit, Robert do Nobili, (1577- 1656). It was inaugurated at Madurai, one of the ancient centers of Tamil culture. He launched a programme of converting the higher castes on his arrival in Madurai in 1606, one that was not attempted till then by any other missionary.

He concluded that the failure of Christian missions in reaping rich fruits was because of the inseparable attachment of the missionaries with things foreign. They wore an alien garb, used signs and symbols incomprehensible to the people and the doctrine they proclaimed was formulated too much in accordance with the genius of the west and overstressed those aspects of the eternal truths which appealed only to the occidental.

A change was required to make the Gospel attract the masses and de Nobili decided to exert himself heart and soul for that. He took up his abode in a simple house, addressed and comported himself as a member of the ‘Rajah Caste’, wearing the thread, the Kudumai, and other marks of this caste. He reformulated Christianity in terms and thought-patterns more in accordance with the social set-up of the country. This change of his led to the conversion of many from the privileged classes, including even kings.

The most important defect in his programme was that he recognised the caste distinctions maintained by the privileged classes, and did nothing to better the lower classes that formed the majority of the population. Lo Cinnami, a Jesuit of the Goa province, the founder of the Mysore mission, discarded his cassock, adopted the sanyasi-robe and de Nobili’s approach and penetrated into Mysore and reaped a measure of success. In course of time the Madurai mission founded by de Nobili spread over a wide area in Trichinopoly, Dindigal, Tanjore, and the Marava country and influenced the cultural history of South India considerably.

The decline of Portuguese power greatly affected the spread of Catholic Christianity. Most of their former trade came into the hands of the Dutch and the English. The Portuguese were confined to their possessions of Goa, Bassein and Daman and the two isolated forts in Chaul and Diu. This fall in the political status Of the Portuguese made them unable to offer the same support to the Church as they used to provide in the past. As a result, the zeal of the missionaries sent by Portugal to India had waned considerably.

The establishment of the Portuguese power had affected the life and thought of the St. Thomas Christians or Syrian Christians, who formed the oldest Christian community in South India. For them the arrival of Vasco da Gama marked the beginning of a new epoch of tremendous impact, the entering into a new world of existence. Their relation with the Portuguese has been dealt with elsewhere.

The Church under the Portuguese Padroado appeared very much like the spiritual appendage of the Portuguese empire. The missionaries were looked upon by other nation­als as the functionaries of the colonial state. They built churches, founded benefices and endowed them generously.

The flourishing Christian settlements on the Indian seaboard stand out as shining examples of the crowning glory of the Padroado; the Jesuit Mission of Madura, immortalized by the names of de Nobili, Baschi and de Britto, was an achievement without parallel in the Christian annals anywhere in the world. By presenting Christianity through Hindu lives the Jesuits brought to the Christian fold a large number of castes Hindu within a hundred years. In 1758 the Jesuit in Portugal

In the seventeenth century the Popes did not fall astern in taking steps to form missionary organizations and sending missionaries abroad even to the Portuguese colo­nies. A decisive step toward evangelizing work of the Church was taken by Pope Gregory XIV on 22nd January 1622-the foundation of the Congregation de Propaganda Fide, or commonly known as Propaganda. Its aims were to organize and unify the work of evangelization and to promote the adequate formation of future missionaries.

The decline of Portuguese power brought with it a loss of prestige for its missionaries and priests in India and they remained isolated in their enclaves without taking an active role in evangelizing the country. The Thomas Christians who wanted to remain in the Catholic Church were reluctant to be under the Jesuits and they requested the Pope to send other missionaries to preach among them. The appearance of other European powers, Holland, England and Denmark, on the political scene made the situation bad in regard to the possibility of evangelization by the Padroado (Portuguese Patronage) personnel.

Thus by the second-half of the seventeenth century the Padroado extended over vast regions where the Portuguese had no hold and the Padroado clergy, especially the Portuguese nationals, were looked upon by other European powers as unwanted elements. It was in this circumstance that the ‘Propaganda’ began the missionary work in South India.

The new colonizing powers were opposed to missionaries of Portuguese origin and therefore, Propaganda used to send apostolic missionaries and Vicars belonging to other nationalities. The Capuchins, the Discalced Carmelites, the Theatines, and later on the Foreign Missionary Society of Paris, which were the Religious Orders of recent origin, and which had not been very much connected with the Padroado, were particularly utilized by Rome for the missionary work here. This complementary intervention of Propaganda later turned into a kind of permanent conflict with the Padroado.

The Portuguese disliked the activities of the Propaganda and opposed it tooth and nail. In the face of opposition from the Portuguese Padroado, the Propaganda worked hard, built churches, ordained priests, founded seminaries and converted thousands to Christianity. The propaganda reaped rich fruits in South India, especially in Malabar, Cochin, Canara, Madras and Pondicherry.

One of the missionaries of this group excelled himself as a keen observer of local customs and manners. His name was Abbe Dubois, who, after the fall of Tipu Sultan visited the Christian communities of Mysore, Coimbatore and Salem, and wrote his monumental work Hindu Customs and Manners. Between 1637 and 1838 the Propaganda laboured in South India actively and brought many to the fold of Christianity.

The struggle between the Padroado and the Propaganda forms one of the worst chapters in the history of Catholic Church in India. The charges brought against the Padroado by the Propaganda were severe, the most important being the alleged failure of the missionaries of the former to venture into the interior of India. The struggle continued till 1857, when a Concordat was issued by the Pope, which confirmed the Portuguese Padroado in the metropolitan and premarital sea of Goa and ad honorem in the Episcopal see of Cranganore and in the Episcopal sees of Cochin, Mylapore ad Malacca.

The Concordat normalized the strained relations between the Padroado and the Propaganda, which resulted in a revival of the Catholic missionary activities. It was a triumph for the Padroado, because it was a solemn recognition by the Holy See of the right of the Padroado. The Concordat inaugurated an era of peace in Catholic Christian fold in South India. After the independence of India the Portuguese patronage was confined to the territory of Portuguese India, i.e., Goa, Daman, and Diu.

Both Padroado and Propaganda were deadly opposed to the Catholic Thomas Chris­tians resuming their past links with East-Syrian or Chaldaean Church. From 1838 the gulf between the Padroado and the Propaganda widened and produced a situation which favoured once more the idea of resuming the former bonds with Mesopotamia. Some bishops came to Kerala to control the Thomas Christians and to give them a new life. While such were the conditions, Rome was roused to take concrete steps toward granting self- government to the Eastern Catholics of India.

Later Indian bishops were appointed and under them the Catholic Thomas Christians progressed rapidly. On 20th December, 1923, the Catholic Thomas Christians obtained their autonomy under a metropolitan see at Ernakulam, with three suffrage eparchies, Trichur, Kottayam and Changanacherry. The Catholic Thomas Christians progressed further, and today they are gathered under two metropolitan archbishops, i.e., Ernakulam with Tellicherry, Trichur and Kothamangalam as suffragans, and Changanacherry with Kottayam and Pala.

The autonomy and self-government granted to the Catholic Thomas Christians pro­duced extraordinary results in the field of education, vocations to the priesthood and religious life and all round progress. They were late comers in the field of liberal education, which in those days was closely bound with the English system. But in the twentieth century they made a quick and remarkable progress toward building up a whole system of education from the primary school attached to each parish church up to the college. They also developed their traditional professions i.e., farming and trading.

A reunion movement was started by the Syrian Catholic party, either supported by the Latin missionaries or independently, to bring their separated brethren back to the Catholic faith. This movement got crowned with success on September 20, 1930, when Mar Ivanios, the Jacobite bishop, and his suffragan bishop, Mar Theophilos made their profession of faith in the presence of bishop Benzieger at Quilon and were received into the Catholic Church, which made possible for the dissident Christians of South India to come into Union with the Catholic Church without sacrificing any of their cherished liturgical traditions and practices. The Church founded as a result of the reunion, Catholic Syro-Malankara Church, is growing tremendously attracting the dissident Christians and the depressed classes. According to the census of 1961 Kerala alone has 151,010 Harijan Catholic Christians.