Brothers and Sisters
on Earth and in Heaven:
Kerala’s Hindu-Christian Coexistence
Dr. Corinne Dempsey
Corinne Dempsey’s presentation
takes us to the southwestern state of Kerala, home to a religiously diverse population approximately 19% Christian, 24% Muslim,
and 56% Hindu. Roughly two-thirds of Kerala’s Christians trace the origin of their faith to Thomas the Apostle
who, according to tradition, traveled by sea to Kerala’s coastline soon after the end of Jesus’ earthly career.
Today this ancient Christianity consists of two eastern-rite Roman Catholic branches, two Eastern Orthodox branches,
and one Protestant branch. Amid their diversity, Kerala’s St. Thomas Christians take collective pride in their
culturally assimilated, socially elite religious heritage.
Based on field research at Kerala’s Hindu and Christian pilgrimage and festival
sites, Dempsey explores interreligious exchanges “on the ground,” arising from long-term, largely peaceful coexistence
between the two communities. Shared architecture and ritual practices – material evidence of Hindu-Christian family
resemblances – support the proudly stated, often-heard saying that “We live like brothers and sisters in Kerala.”
Village folklore furthermore assigns sibling roles to church saints and temple deities, adding a healthy dose of realism to
the sibling theme. Depicting heavenly siblings as rivalrous yet reliant, these stories mirror the lived realities of earthly
communities who, while facing the challenges of cohabitation, value cooperation above all else.
Corinne Dempsey is Associate Professor
of Religious Studies at Nazareth College in Rochester, New York. She received an M.A. in systematic theology from the
Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in South Asian religions from Syracuse University. Her first book, Kerala
Christian Sainthood: Collisions of Culture and Worldview in South India (Oxford University Press,
2001), features her work on Hindu-Christian ritual exchange in Kerala. In The Goddess Lives in Upstate
New York: Breaking Convention and Making Home at a North American Hindu Temple (Oxford University
Press, 2006), Dempsey details an innovative Hindu goddess temple located near Rochester. Bringing the Sacred
Down to Earth: Adventures in Comparative Religion (Oxford University Press: 2012) juxtaposes
the ways Hindus and Christians use folklore, theology, sacred land, and spiritually adept bodies to bring the sacred down
to earth. Her current book project is on Icelandic trance mediums and healers in the Spiritualist (andlegmál) tradition.
Dempsey is past president of the Society for Hindu-Christian Studies and is currently Director of the Asian Studies Program
at Nazareth College. She teaches courses on Hinduism, religion and gender, comparative mysticism, and religious war
and peacemaking. She recently led a group of twelve on a three-week tour of Kerala’s religious sites, offering students
firsthand exposure to the tangible intricacies of interreligious exchange.
At the Limit of Understanding:
The 17th Century Jesuit Critique of Rebirth (punarjanma)
Dr.
Francis X. Clooney, S.J.
The
encounter of the newly formed Society of Jesus (founded, 1540) with the cultures of India and Tibet, Japan and China, is one
of the great intellectual dramas of early modernity. Jesuit scholars were pioneers in learning the languages, observing first
hand the practices of religion, and studying the great texts, always with care for detail and curiosity about new, unfamiliar
ideas, even when ultimately hoping to refute them. In the Indian context, these Jesuits were among the first to study Sanskrit,
Tamil, Malayalam, and other regional languages, the first to print Christian books and to write catechisms, explanatory treatises,
and apologetic texts in the vernacular. As a case study of strengths and weaknesses of this learning, this paper discusses
several 17th-18th century instances in which
Hindu views of rebirth were recounted, interpreted, and subjected to critique by Jesuit scholars such as Jacobo Fenicio, Roberto
de Nobili, Jean Venance Bouchet, and Gaston-Laurent Coeurdoux. Their work, impressive for the time as it was, shows also the
limits of their enterprise, their lack of solid information on Hindu views, mingling of popular religion and theory, relying
on more familiar Greek views of metempsychosis, and judgment Indian views simply by Aristotelian definitions of body and soul
and Christian expectations regarding salvation.
Francis X. Clooney,
S.J., came to Harvard Divinity School in 2005. He is Parkman Professor of Divinity and Professor of Comparative Theology and,
since 2010, Director of the Center for the Study of World Religions. After earning his doctorate in South Asian languages
and civilizations (University of Chicago, 1984), he taught at Boston College for 21 years, until coming to Harvard. His primary
areas of scholarship are theological commentarial writings in the Sanskrit and Tamil traditions of Hindu India, and the developing
field of comparative theology, a discipline distinguished by attentiveness to the dynamics of theological learning deepened
through the study of traditions other than one's own. He has also written on the Jesuit missionary tradition, particularly
in India, and the dynamics of dialogue in the contemporary world. Clooney is the author of numerous articles and books, including
Beyond Compare: St. Francis de Sales and Sri Vedanta Desika on Loving Surrender
to God (Georgetown University Press, 2008), The Truth, the Way, the Life: Christian Commentary
on the Three Holy Mantras of the Srivaishnava Hindus (Peeters Publishing, 2008), and Comparative
Theology: Deep Learning across Religious Borders (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010). His latest book, His
Hiding Place Is Darkness: A Hindu-Catholic Theopoetics of Divine Absence (Stanford University Press, forthcoming),
is an exercise in dramatic theology, exploring the absence of God in accord with the biblical Song of Songs
and the Hindu Holy Word of Mouth (Tiruvaymoli). He is a Roman Catholic priest and
a member of the Society of Jesus. In July 2010 he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy.
Anglicanism
and 'The Lutheran Aggression':
Conflicts over Caste, Class, and Conversion in South India
Dr.
Robert Eric Frykenberg
In 1833, Daniel Wilson, first Metropolitan Bishop of India, issued a decree to Anglican clergy and
missionaries. Distinctions of caste among Indian Christians would no longer be recognized.
Members of congregations insisting on taking Holy Communion, sending their children to church-mission schools, or eating
food and drinking water separately would be expelled and excommunicated. Thousands of upper-caste Christians
in South India left churches and withdrew their children from schools. Their champion, Nellaiyan Vedanayagm
Sastriar, renowned Tamil poet laureate of Thanjavur, eloquently defended hallowed traditions that harked back to the early
18th century. George Uglow Pope, S. P. G. missionary in Thanjavur removed Vedanayagam Sastriar from famous
schools, founded by C. F. Schwartz, over which he had presided as principal for sixty years. Recalcitrant
“Hindu Christians” of Thanjavur who turned to Tranquebar were flogged. Pope’s 1853 pamphlet
against Tranquebar missionaries cannot be understood without examining historical contexts, and ramifications of this conflict.
.
Professor Emeritus of History & South Asian Studies, Robert Eric Frykenberg has been at University
of Wisconsin-- Madison since 1962 (Chair/Director of South Asian Studies: 1970-1973). Born and reared in South India; graduate
study at Minnesota (MA: 1953), Bethel (MDiv: 1954); California (1954-58), and London (SOAS Ph.D. 1961). Publications include:
Guntur District, 1788-1848: A History of Local Influence and Central Authority in South India
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1965), Land Control and Social Structure in Indian History (Madison: UWP,1969;
Delhi: Manohar,1978), Land Tenure and Peasant in South Asia (Delhi: Manohar, 1977, 1981), Delhi
Through the Ages (Delhi OUP, 1986, 1993), History & Belief: Foundations of Historical Understanding
(Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans, 1996); Christians and Missionaries in India (Eerdmans, 2003); Christianity
in India: Beginnings to the Present (Oxford: OUP, 2008 & 2010); some sixty articles, chapters,
and essays; co-general-editor of Eerdmans series (24 + vols.), and editorial board of half dozen journals.
Social
and Religious Experience of Dalit Christians in Kerala:
A Historical Analysis
Dr.
P. Sanal Mohan
The proposed paper will address the history of Dalit Christians in Kerala from the mid
nineteenth century onwards. The paper will commence with an analysis of the social relations in the traditional caste society
in Kerala and the power relations that sustained them. The pre-colonial social conditions are discussed
in order to provide an essential background of the Dalit communities that joined the missionary Churches in a later period.
In this paper I will look into the activities of both protestant and Catholic missions and their interface with Dalits.
The paper will emphasize the significance of new religious ideas among Dalits in the course of their interaction with
Christianity in addition to the social and economic changes taking place in that period.
I wish to proceed with
empirical case studies of missions and the setting up of new congregations by the missionaries. This is
important to provide a historical appreciation of the subsequent changes that Christianity brought about in the life of Dalits. It will also enable us to focus on micro narratives that are crucial
in understanding the perceptions of the people who joined missions. In other words, our focus is on the
changes that the ‘converts’ have undergone as a result of their interactions with Christian missions.
Until now historians of missions have been concerned more with the socio-economic changes
that the missions have brought about in the life of Dalits and ‘converts’. Quite often they seem to thrust aside
the inner transformation of the people and their communities. The narratives that we deal with help us
to locate people in their social world with all its complexities; they help us to have a critical history of Dalit Christians
in Kerala that have not been attempted so far.
Sanal Mohan is currently an Associate Professor
in Ethnography in the School of Social Sciences of Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, India. In April 2013 he has been a
Post Doc Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity. In September 2012 he has been
awarded a Research Grant by SSRC, New York to work on ‘From the Lord’s Prayer To Invoking Slavery through Prayers:
Religious Practices and Dalits in Kerala, India’. He was a Graduate School Postdoctoral Fellow
in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies at the Department of History and ICIS/RDI Research Fellow, Emory University, Atlanta
in 2008. During 2002-2005 he was a Fellow in History at CSSS Calcutta
and was Charles Wallace India Fellow in History, SOAS, and University of London. He also worked as Honorary Research Associate,
Social Anthropology Programme, and Massey University, New Zealand in 2004. His
thesis, ‘Imagining Equality: Modernity and Social Transformation of Lower Castes in Colonial Kerala’ analyzes
history of agrestic-slavery and one of the powerful religious and social movements of Dalits in early twentieth century, Prathyaksha
Raksha Daiva Sabha. He has published research articles on the discourses and practices of the movement. He
combines history and ethnography in his research. His areas of research interest include colonial modernity,
social movements and questions of identity, Dalit Movements and Christianity in India. Currently he is engaged in completing
a monograph on the history of Dalit movements in Kerala, India.
How Should We Understand
Caste Oppression?
Indian Elites, Missionaries, and Dalits
Dr. Rupa Viswanath
The ways
in which historical actors have chosen to struggle against the oppression of Dalits all depends on what they think the source
of that oppression is. So, for instance, if it is assumed that being a Dalit is principally defined by being a subordinated
member of the Hindu religious community, it might seem conversion, or religious reform, would be the best route to take. Ironically,
given their ideological opposition on many matters, both caste Hindu reformers in the colonial period—the time when
“untouchability” was first understood as a national problem requiring a solution—and Protestant missionaries,
who were instrumental in bringing Dalit oppression to the attention of the colonial state, shared this religious interpretation
of Dalit subordination. By paying attention to indirect evidence provided by accounts of the actions of ordinary Dalit
men and women, we can find alternative ways of understanding caste, which, nevertheless, have been entirely sidelined today.
This paper, in short, points up how the combined effects of Protestant mission activity and high caste Hindu reformism in
the 19th century continue to impact the plight of Dalits, including
Dalit Christians, today.
Rupa Viswanath has been Professor of Indian Religions at the Centre for Modern Indian
Studies (CeMIS) at the University of Goettingen since January 2011, and was also Director of CeMIS until August 2012. Prior
to arriving in Goettingen, she was Assistant Professor of South Asian Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Viswanath
also currently serves as Chair of the Hinduism Group of the American Academy of Religion.
Viswanath's research and
writings address the practices of secular regimes, histories of slavery in colonial South Asia, the political economy and
politics of caste, and the problems of translation in Christian mission history. Her book, The 'Pariah Problem':
Caste, Religion and the Social in Modern India, addresses many of these topics and is forthcoming from Columbia University
Press. More recently she has conducted research on Tamil migrants in western India who have embraced Pentecostalism,
continuing her engagement with minority religions and modes of belonging. She is also engaged in a project that examines how
the concept of a democratic “people” emerged in the vernacular in late colonial and postcolonial south India,
and the kinds of reconfiguration this required of both religion as well as concepts of society.
