South Asia's Christians

South Asia is home to more than a billion Hindus and half a billion Muslims. But the region is also home to substantial Christian communities, some dating almost to the earliest days of the faith. The stories of South Asia's Christians are vital for understanding the shifting contours of World Christianity, precisely because of their history of interaction with members of these other religious traditions. In this broad, accessible overview of South Asian Christianity, Chandra Mallampalli shows how the faith has been shaped by Christians' location between Hindus and Muslims. Mallampalli begins with a discussion of South India's ancient Thomas Christian tradition, which interacted with West Asia's Persian Christians and thrived for centuries alongside their Hindu and Muslim neighbours. He then underscores efforts of Roman Catholic and Protestant missionaries to understand South Asian societies for purposes of conversion. The publication of books and tracts about other religions, interreligious debates, and aggressive preaching were central to these endeavours, but rarely succeeded at yielding converts. Instead, they played an important role in producing a climate of religious competition, which ultimately marginalized Christians in Hindu-, Muslim-, and Buddhist-majority countries of post-colonial South Asia. Ironically, the greatest response to Christianity came from poor and oppressed Dalit (formerly "untouchable") and tribal communities who were largely indifferent to missionary rhetoric. Their mass conversions, poetry, theology, and embrace of Pentecostalism are essential for understanding South Asian Christianity and its place within World Christianity today.

Chandra Mallampalli is Fletcher Jones Foundation Chair of the Social Sciences at Westmont College and in 2021-22 was Yang Visiting Scholar of World Christianity at Harvard Divinity School. He is the author of Race, Religion and Law in Colonial India (2011) and A Muslim Conspiracy in British India? (2017).

- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 The Thomas Christians: Paradoxes of Being Pre-European
- 2 Jesuits and the Emperor Akbar, 1580-3
- 3 Cultural Accommodation and Difference in South Indian Catholicism
- 4 Early European Encounters with India's Hindus and Muslims
- 5 The Argumentative Protestant: Religious Exchanges Under British Rule
- 6 Upper Caste Converts to Protestantism
- 7 Mass Conversion Among Dalits and Tribals: Rupture, Continuity, or Uplift?
- 8 Nationalist Politics and the Minoritization of Christians
- 9 Dalits and Social Liberation
- 10 Pentecostalism, Conversion, and Violence in India
- Conclusion
- Glossary
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index