The unexpected defeat of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and the meteoric rise of newcomer Chandrashekar Joseph Vijay, arguably Tamil Nadu’s biggest film star, is like a lightning bolt in state politics. While the political ramifications of Vijay’s newly formed Tamil Vetri Kazhagam (TVK) rule over the state are debated, the star’s mixed religious heritage, kept in the background, informs us of the deep history of Christianity in south India.
It is generally believed that Christianity in India dates back to the 16th century when the Portuguese established their rule in Goa. In northeastern India, Christianity spread only during the colonial period but its history in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and other parts of peninsular India is nearly 2,000 years old.
It is believed that Saint Thomas, one of the twelve apostles of Jesus Christ, arrived on the West Coast via ancient trade routes in the first century AD. This makes the presence of Christianity in southern India older than many early kingdoms.
Many apocryphal legends accompany Saint Thomas. The Internal Histories of Saint Thomas Christians tell of his arrival from the Arabian Peninsula to Malankara Island located within a lagoon near the Kodungallur seaport near the mouth of the Periyar river delta.
Through different periods of history, this seaport has been known by different names such as Muziris, Cranganore, Chinkley and others. Christianity spread rapidly across the western and eastern coasts where it attracted fishing communities. It also spread inland across Malabar and also upward towards Chennai and parts of present-day Andhra Pradesh.
The new religion survived by adopting local customs, adapting to cultural contexts and with maritime trade as an important enabler. Even as Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms were fighting each other over territory and trade, the Malankara Church or Thomas Christians also known as Syrian Christians remained well established and growing in influence.
Robert Freckenberg writes in his book Christianity in India: Beginnings to the Present, “The indigenous accounts relating to the traditional origins of Thomas’s Christian community contain, divided into their essentials, the following elements: that the messenger landed either on the island of Malankara or on the mainland adjoining the Malabar coast; that he lived and labored there for a number of years; that he sailed round Cape Comorin (Kanya Kumari) and up the Coromandel coast; that he stopped at Mylapore (or Mailapur; that after going to China, he returned to Malabar (ca. 58 AD); and settled at Tiruvanchikkulam (near Kodungalur or Cranganore, also known in ancient times as Muziris) where he remained long enough to strengthen the original seven congregations: Malankara, Chayal, Kotamamgalam, Niranam, Paravur (Kottukkayal), Palayur, and Quilon.
Freckenberg added: “… that after training leaders (akaryas and gurus) from among the converts from upper-caste families to lead each congregation, the Apostle left Malabar for the last time (about the year 69 AD), leaving behind him a strong, self-sufficient and self-sufficient Christian community; and finally, after traveling widely, he made converts at Mylapore (Mylapore), now a suburb of the southern suburbs of the state of Madras (now renamed) in Chennai).
Mount St. Thomas in Chennai near Fort St. George is still revered as the site where he was first buried, and is perhaps the most important Christian site outside Europe and what is now Turkey, the Levant and Arabia. The Santum Church in Chennai is one of only four known churches built over the burial sites of the Apostles, the other three being the Church of St. Peter in Rome, the Church of James the Greater in Turkey, and the Church of St. John in Spain.
While Christianity only survived the first millennium of the Common Era, it began to flourish in the second millennium. Even before the establishment of the Portuguese state of India in Goa in 1514, a thousand years of existence, renewed by the arrival of wave after wave of Syrian and Persian Christians, had led to the creation of various communities such as Nestorians or Christians associated with the Syrian Church and subdivisions within the Malankara Christians.
Purity of lineage and elite status were the basis of these divisions, for example those who converted from elite classes such as Brahmins or those descended from ancestors who came from Syria claimed a higher status. Therefore, class discrimination crept into Christianity from an early stage. Later, when the Portuguese Catholic Church realized that Indian versions of Christianity were being practiced in India, it resorted to forced purges and purges, alienating the indigenous Christians of Tamil Nadu and Kerala.
In the subsequent period, the arrival of British, Danish, Dutch and French colonial trading companies provided a more stable foothold for church missions of various denominations and denominations.
“Asylum villages”
Turnulveli, Kanyakumari and Thoothukudi districts have large Christian populations due to major missionary activities that have taken place here over the past several centuries. Missionaries came and settled, learning the local languages and customs and basing them on the messages of the Bible. Among these missionaries was Christian Friedrich Schwarz. Frickenberg writes: “By the time of his death in 1798, after 48 years of sustained effort, Tamil congregations and schools were firmly established as far south as Kanya Kumari (Cape Comorin), and beyond, in the Travancore ranges. Much, if not most of this record of achievement, was due to the work of those who were disciples or Sishya (Chillas) Schwartz.”
Inevitably, there was opposition and active persecution of new converts from so-called lower caste communities such as Nadar (formerly Chanar), Palar, Bariyahs, Sakeliyar, Simar and others. To escape this persecution, particularly following the annexation of the Nawabi territories by the East India Company in 1801, exclusively Christian colonies were settled in what became known as villages of refuge. This idea was so influential that, for example, in the Tirunelveli district, the culture changed irreversibly with the appearance of the first refuge villages or colonies there. The most prominent of these are Anandapuram, Samaria, Galilee, Nazareth, Meghnapuram, Nazareth and Surirpuram. Despite this, Schwartz’s student, David Sundarananda, settled the first refuge village at Muddallur in Thoothukudi district in 1799 with only twenty Christian converts who had fled from Palayamkottai.
(HistoriCity is a column by Valai Singh that tells the story of a city featured in the news, by going back to its documented history, legends and archaeological excavations. The opinions expressed are personal.)
