HistoryCity | Tamil Nadu’s Christian roots are two millennia old

THe unexpected licking of Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and the meteoric lift of debutant Chandrashekhar chief joseph Vijay, arguably the biggest shoot asterisk in Tamil Nadu, is like a bolt from the blue in the state’s politics. While the political implications of Vijay’s newly formed Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) ruling over the state are being debated, the mixed religious heritage of the superstar, which has remained in the background, tells us the profound history of Christianity in south India.It is a generally held belief that Christianity in India dates back to the 16th century when the Portuguese established their rule in Goa. In the north-east of India, Christianity spread only during the colonial period but its history in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and other parts of peninsular India is nearly 2000 years old.St Thomas, one of the 12 apostles of Jesus Christ, is believed to have arrived on the western coast via ancient trade routes in the 1st century CE. This makes the presence of Christianity in south India older than many early kingdoms.Several apocryphal legends accompany St Thomas. ‘Internal histories of St Thomas Christians’ speak of his arrival from Arabia to the Malankara island located inside a lagoon near the seaport of Kodungallur close to the deltaic mouth of the Periyar river.Through different times in history, this seaport has been known by various names such as Muziris, Cranganore, and Shinkli among others. Christianity spread fast through the western and eastern coasts where it won over fishing communities. It spread inland as well through the Malabar and also upwards towards Chennai and parts of present-day Andhra Pradesh.The new religion survived by adopting local customs, adapting to cultural contexts and with sea-based trade and commerce as an important enabler. Even as Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms fought amongst and with each other over territory and trade, the Malankara church or the Thomas Christians also known as Syrian Christians remained embedded and grew in influence.Robert Frykenberg writes in Christianity in India: Beginnings to the Present, “Distilled to their essentials, indigenous narratives relating to the traditional origins of the Thomas Christian community contain the following elements: that the Apostle landed either on the Island of Malankara or on the adjacent mainland of coastal Malabar; that he lived and worked there for a number of years; that he sailed around the Cape of Comorin (Kaniya Kumari) and up the Coromandel coast; that he stopped at Mylapore (or Mailapur; that, after going on to China, he returned to Malabar (c. Ad 58); that he settled in Tiruvanchikkulam (near Kodungallur or Cranganore, also known in ancient times as Muziris) where he remained long enough to strengthen the seven original congregations of Malankara, Chayal, Kotamamgalam, Niranam, Paravur (Kottukkayal), Palayur, and Quilon”.Frykenberg added: : “…that having trained leaders (acharyas and gurus) among converts from high-caste families for the leadership of each congregation, the Apostle departed from Malabar for the last time (c. Ad 69), leaving behind a strong, self-propagating, and self-sustaining community of Christians; and, finally, that having travelled widely, he made converts in Mylapore (Mailapur), now a suburb on the southern outskirts of Madras (now renamed Chennai)”.St. Thomas’s Mount in Chennai close to Fort St. George remains revered as the site where he was first buried, it is probably the most important Christian site outside of Europe and what is now Turkey, the Levant and Arabia. The Santhome Basilica in Chennai is one of only four known churches to be built over the burial sites of apostles, the other three are St Peter’s in Rome, James the Greater’s in Turkey and St John’s in Spain.While Christianity only held out in the first millennium of the common era it started thriving in the second. Even before the creation of the Portuguese Estado da India in Goa in 1514, a thousand years of existence, which was renewed by the arrival of wave after wave of Syrian and Persian Christians, had created different communities such as the Nestorian or Nasranis linked to the Syrian church and sub-divisions within the Malankara Christians.Purity of lineage and elite status were the basis of these divisions, for example those converted from elite castes such as Brahmins or those descended from ancestors who came from Syria claimed higher status. Therefore, caste discrimination crept into Christianity from an early phase. Later, when the Portuguese Catholic church realised that bespoke and Indianised versions of Christianity were being practiced in India they resorted to purges and forced purificatory campaigns which alienated the indigenous Christians of Tamil Nadu and Kerala.In the later period, the arrival of the British, Danish, Dutch and French trading- cum- colonising companies provided stabler footholds for the ecclesiastical missions of various denominations and sects.‘Villages of Refuge’ Tirenulveli, Kanyakumari, Thoothukudi districts contain large Christian populations owing to major missionary activities that took place here over the last several centuries. Missionaries came and settled, learned the local languages and customs and adopted them to the messages of the Bible. Leading among these missionaries was Christian Friedrich Schwartz. Frykenberg writes: “By the time of his death in 1798, after 48 years of unceasing efforts Tamil Pietist congregations and schools were becoming firmly established as far south as Kaniya Kumari (Cape Comorin), and beyond, into the domains of Travancore. Much, if not most of this record of accomplishment was due to the work of those who were the disciples or sishiyas (chelas) of Schwartz”.Inevitably, there was opposition as well as active persecution of new converts from so called lower caste communities such as Nadars (earlier Shanars), Pallar, Pariahs, Sakkiliyars, and Semmars among others. To escape this oppression, particularly in the wake of the annexation by the East India Company of Nawabi areas in 1801, exclusively Christian colonies were settled in what came to be known as Villages of Refuge. So seminal was this idea that, for example, in Tirunelveli district the culture changed irreversibly as the earliest villages of refuge or colonies came up there. Notable among these were Anandapuram, Samaria, Galilee, Nazareth, Megnanapuram, Nazareth and Sawyerpuram. The first village of refuge though was settled by Schwartz’s disciple, David Sundarananda at Mudalur in Thoothukudi district in 1799 with just two dozen Christian converts who had escaped from Palayamkottai.(HistoriCity is a column by author Valay Singh that narrates the story of a city that is in the news, by going back to its documented history, mythology and archaeological digs. The views expressed are personal.)