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Book Review: Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies Volume 22 Article 21 January 2009 Book Review: "Christianity in India: From Beginnings to the Present" Kristin Bloomer Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/jhcs Part of the Religion Commons Recommended Citation Bloomer, Kristin (2009) "Book Review: "Christianity in India: From Beginnings to the Present"," Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies: Vol. 22, Article 21. Available at: https://doi.org/10.7825/2164-6279.1448 The Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies is a publication of the Society for Hindu-Christian Studies. The digital version is made available by Digital Commons @ Butler University. For questions about the Journal or the Society, please contact [email protected]. For more information about Digital Commons @ Butler University, please contact [email protected]. Bloomer: Book Review: "Christianity in India: From Beginnings to the Present" Book Reviews 63 Christianity in India: From Beginnings to the Present. Robert Eric Frykenberg, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2P08, 564 pp. UNTIL now, no one book in English has informative for the beginner, they seem to want attempted to cover the vast topic of Christianity to belong to another book. The effect of these in India.! Robert Frykenberg's recent work does early, seventy pages on the narrative frame, so in a manner that is not only timely and useful however, is strong: Christianity did not enter for scholars of Indian history and religion; it is India in a vacuum, nor did it steamroll in, also ambitious, to which its heft and length leveling everything in its path. it entered a attest. The author, a prof~ssor emeritus of specific geography, politics and culture through' history at Northwestern University, has spent the individual Christians who interacted with other past fifty years of his life studying Christianity individual Christians and non-Christians from a in India. As one of a generation of scholars - wide variety of communities. The encounter along with Lamin Sanneh, Andrew Walls, with people from such a vast number of jatis Lionel Caplan and others - who arguably including those belonging to the Brahman varna pioneered the growing field of "world (category, lit. "color"), avarnas (those outside Christianity," he is an expert to whom we should the four-fold varna structure), and adivasis closely attend. (tribal people), and with what later emerged as Frykenberg is sympathetic to missionary modem Hinduism and Islam, shaped activity; he himself was one. But he is Christianity, Frykenberg argues, more than sympathetic in an interesting way. The book, he Christianity shaped them. tells us in the Preface, "aims to provide a The effect of the missionary encounter, in comprehensive and fresh understanding of the other words, was not hegemonic. To the history of Christims, Christian communities, . contrary, he suggests: the Christian encounter and Christian institutions within the 'Indic' countered hegemony. This counter-hegemonic world. It is an attempt to do this by means of an drive is apparent throughout several examples. approach' which is at once 'Indocentric,' In an extensive treatment of Pandita Ramabai integrative, and contextual - something which . Saraswati, for example, Frykenberg highlights has hitherto never been accomplished in a single the ways in which Ramabai's mission both volume." (vi) Rather than attempt an exhaustive countered violently misogynistic and hegemonic study - impossible for a single volume -­ forms of Hinduism and also avoided various , , Frykenberg succeeds in offering a suggestive, Christian leaders' attempts to control her. The '. holistic picture representative of various forms dual identities of Christians in India is another of Christianity as they have developed in India. well-developed theme throughout the book. The work is chronological. Frykenberg's Unfortunately, Frykenberg works hard in his gesture toward Indocentricity leads him to. spend introduction and conclusion to frame his book the first two chapters, after the introduction" theoretically with the term "primal," resulting in engaged in painting a picture of pre-Christian some confusion. "Primal religion," he tells us, India. These two chapters are entitled posits the existence of something universal "Contextualizing Complexity I: India's Lands, within all humans: Peoples, and Social Structures" and "Contextualizing Complexity II: India's This presupposition holds that there is no Dominant Religious Traditions: Sanatana­ person or people, anywhere in the world or Dharma and Dar-ul-Islam." The chapters at any time' in the past, that has not had to assume that the reader knows nothing about the respond, in one way or another, to deeply subcontinent. (Indeed, Frykenberg encourages embedded r,eligious impulses. Whether fully readers who already know som.ething to jump articulated or not, any individual or straight to chapter four.) While these early two community that feels anxiety, panic, or chapters (of a total of fifteen) may be threats to survival instinctively resorts to Published by Digital Commons @ Butler University, 2009 1 Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies, Vol. 22 [2009], Art. 21 64 Book Reviews primal religion. Primal responses ... may be to indigenous religions, is not clear. The involuntary. (10) situation seems to elude binaries. Why stick to them? To his credit, he distinguishes "primal" as a The Epilogue packs a punch. Christianity positive category, not to be confused with seems to be becoming ever-more powerful, if we "primitive" or even "animist" - terms that have measure by numbers. Today, given the rise of often been imposed on subjugated peoples Pentacostalism, there are ten to fifteen times considered by colonizers to be uncivilized. All more Christian missionaries in India than ever people then, he goes on to say, are primalists - before in its history. According to the World even atheists. "As applied to specific religions," Christian Database, the Christian popul"ation in he writes, referring to Andrew Walls' 1996 use 2005 was 68.189 million - the seventh largest in of . the term "primal," "it denotes a basic, the world, after the USA, Brazil, Mexico, China, elemental impulse within human experience that Russia, and the Philippines. Though these is anterior, in time, place, and status, to any estimates are controversial, they suggest that the superimposed religious impulses or subsequent percentage of Christians in India has risen from religious institutions" (10).2 Christianity is 2.7 in 1995 to 6.7 in 2005. Frykenberg distinctively not a primal religion, by these highlights a tension: while nowhere else have standards. Yet all Christians, by his use of the missionary movements begun earlier, lasted term, are primalists. longer, or become more highly developed, For this reader, such terms hang onto an old nowhere too has opposition or resistance to precipice, teetering into dangerous territory. It is Christianity become more powerful, or subtle; not entirely clear how the term "primal," when and nowhere are threats to the very survival of used in conjunction with the term "religion," Christians more serious. escapes the derogatory valence of "primitive" - However true these figures may be, and a termon which Freud and many early scholars however real the threats of Hindutva violence, of religion relied heavily. 3 If primal is a Frykenberg also comes dangerously close to temporal term simply meaning "pre­ triumphalism, though he explicitly tries to avoid intellectualized," "pre-institutionalized," or "pre­ it. Christianity not only reshapes the host priestly," why not just say "archaic" or "prior"? culture, he seems to argue, but redeems the host And yet Christianity, Frykenberg repeatedly culture .as it transcends national and cultural asserts, is not something alien to India, borders. However, he seems to ignore certain implanted or imposed by foreigners. It grew "sins" that Christianity may have promulgated. within India almost from its own beginning - For example, other than a brief mention of the not with western discovery of India, but with existence of the Goan Inquisition on pages 348 indigenous discovery of Christianity. From the and 360, he completely leaves out its horrors. emergence of Saint Thomas legends and lore (if Another picture is possible. To the extent not the arrival of the man in the flesh; the jury is that Christianity itself is a culture, one could still out on that) soon after 54 AD among coastal argue, indigenous and other forms of Indian elite; to Pfarangi Portuguese fleets and the religion and culture have transcended borders Padroado Real's interactions with Thomas (or transgressed them) to transform and redeem Christians; to Evangelical Christians' Christianity. dependence on local dubashi agents (cultural translators) who helped them; to Indian Notes Christians' resistance to the "Hindu Raj," 1 Stephen Neill wrote a two-volume History of Christianity in India both resisted forms of Christianity in India, up to 1858; the third volume domination and played a role in their was never completed. James Hough wrote a five­ development. Certainly, it became its' ~ own volume set published 1839-60 (the last volume edited animal (or, plural, animals) on the Indian posthumously by his son), and the Bangalore Church History Association has also published a five-volume subcontinent as nowhere else in the world. How set, yet to be completed. But no single volume by a it avoids being primal, however, when growing single author on this subject has
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