Catholic shrines in Chennai, India: the politics of renewal and apostolic legacy

<p>This thesis investigates the phenomenon of Catholic renewal in India by focussing on various Roman Catholic churches and shrines located in Chennai, a large city in South India where activities concerning saintal revival and shrinal development have taken place in the recent past. The thesis tracks the changing local significance of St. Thomas the Apostle, who according to local legend, was martyred and buried in Chennai. In particular, it details the efforts of the Church hierarchy in Chennai to bring about a revival of devotion to St. Thomas. In doing this, it covers a wide range of issues pertinent to the study of contemporary Indian Christianity, such as Indian Catholic identity, Indian Christian indigeneity and Hindu nationalism, as well as the marketing of St. Thomas and Catholicism within South India. The thesis argues that the Roman Catholic renewal and "revival" of St. Thomas in Chennai is largely a Church-driven hierarchal movement that was specifically initiated for the purpose of Catholic evangelization and missionization in India. Furthermore, it is clear that the local Church‘s strategy of shrinal development and marketing encompasses Catholic parishes and shrines throughout Chennai‘s metropolitan area, and thus, is not just limited to those sites associated with St. Thomas‘s Apostolic legacy.</p>

Catholic shrines in Chennai, India: the politics of renewal and apostolic legacy

<p>This thesis investigates the phenomenon of Catholic renewal in India by focussing on various Roman Catholic churches and shrines located in Chennai, a large city in South India where activities concerning saintal revival and shrinal development have taken place in the recent past. The thesis tracks the changing local significance of St. Thomas the Apostle, who according to local legend, was martyred and buried in Chennai. In particular, it details the efforts of the Church hierarchy in Chennai to bring about a revival of devotion to St. Thomas. In doing this, it covers a wide range of issues pertinent to the study of contemporary Indian Christianity, such as Indian Catholic identity, Indian Christian indigeneity and Hindu nationalism, as well as the marketing of St. Thomas and Catholicism within South India. The thesis argues that the Roman Catholic renewal and "revival" of St. Thomas in Chennai is largely a Church-driven hierarchal movement that was specifically initiated for the purpose of Catholic evangelization and missionization in India. Furthermore, it is clear that the local Church‘s strategy of shrinal development and marketing encompasses Catholic parishes and shrines throughout Chennai‘s metropolitan area, and thus, is not just limited to those sites associated with St. Thomas‘s Apostolic legacy.</p>

Antiquissima Christianità: Indian Religion or Idolatry?

The Jesuit mission among the “ancient Christians” on the Malabar coast in today’s Kerala was one of the watershed moments—as I argued a decade ago—in their global expansion in Asia in the sixteenth century, and a prelude to the method of accommodation as it had been theorized and practiced in Asia. In this article I want to emphasize the invocation of comparisons with and the use of Mediterranean antiquity in crafting the identities, memory, and history of Indian Christianity. Jesuit ethnographic descriptions concerning the liturgy, rites, and customs of māppila nasrānikkal, also known as St. Thomas Christians, triggered a series of debates involving various missionaries, Catholic Church authorities in Goa and Rome, as well as Syrian bishops and St. Thomas Christian priestly families. Caught up in the contrary efforts at unifying and homogenizing Christianity under two distinct helms of the Portuguese king and the Roman pope, the missionaries generated different intellectual tools and distinctions, all of which contributed to further jurisdictional struggles. The St. Thomas Christian community became a model of “antique” Christianity for some and a heretical or even idolatrous sect for others. It became a mirror for the divided Christianity in Europe and beyond. In India, it was precisely the vocabulary and the historicizing reasoning that was invested in analyzing and defining these Indian homegrown Christians that would be subsequently applied by comparison, analogy, or contrast to formalize and reify other Indian “religions.” The dating and the autonomous or derivative status of Indian (“pagan”) antiquities emerged, a century later, as a major orientalist problem.

Bhakti and Christian Missions

Both bhakti and Christian missions have a long history in India, dating back to the beginning of the Common Era (or perhaps before, in the case of bhakti). The earliest text that uses bhakti as a technical term, describing it as a path for salvation, is the Bhagavad Gita, which many scholars date to the 1st century ce. On the other side, the most ancient Indian Christian traditions date their origins to the arrival of the missionary St. Thomas in 52 ce, although historians are more confident assigning a somewhat later date, perhaps the 3rd century, to the genesis of Indian Christianity. The St. Thomas or Syrian Christian communities were nourished for well over a millennium by fellow believers from Mesopotamia. The Roman Catholic Church commenced the first Western (as opposed to Middle Eastern) Christian missions to India around the year 1500. Protestants began missions to India around 1700, sponsored by the king of Denmark. The advent of Pentecostal and Charismatic missions, which were initiated by Indian Christians, can be dated to approximately 1900. While the first Western Christian missionaries were Europeans, Indians have always been deeply involved in the missionary movement, and were actually more effective and successful than Europeans in mission work. Almost all contemporary Christian missionaries in the subcontinent are Indian. Due to the nature of scholarly literature on bhakti and Christianity, this bibliography focuses on the interaction between bhakti and Western Christian missions: Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Pentecostal/Charismatic. Definitional problems immediately present themselves when one starts to delve into this literature: How are bhakti and Christian missions to be identified? Indeed, the understanding of neither has been static for the past five centuries; both have been variously interpreted by those who have practiced and studied them. The multiplicity of definitions and perceptions continues, and even proliferates, today. For the purposes of this article, bhakti will be understood as devotional movements with origins in Hinduism, but permeating—and being influenced by—other religious traditions in India. Bhakti places an emphasis on the affective dimensions of religious devotion, and on popular religiosity. Christian missions will be understood as the many and diverse attempts—with varying degrees of success and a variety of positive, negative, and mixed results—to spread Christian beliefs, practices, and benevolence in every human culture and language. Both bhakti and Christian missions involve practices of body, mind, and emotions. This bibliography is restricted to English-language materials. Moreover, it does not employ diacritical marks except when they are included in titles of works.

Indian Christian Spiritual Autobiography

Krupabai Satthianadhan’s Saguna (1887–88), initially serialised in the Madras Christian College magazine is rightfully regarded as the first Indian spiritual autobiographical novel. Any study of this narrative compels one to explore the influence of the Evangelical autobiography on this genre in nineteenth century India as well as to engage with the distinctive aspects of an Indian Christian woman’s spiritual quest in British India. This study also argues for focus on the spiritual life of Indian Christianity as a valid way of according recognition to the experiences and struggles of the life of a religion that is outside of mainstream religious discourse in contemporary India.

Christian Devotional Poetry and Sanskrit Hermeneutics

This paper focuses on exploring dhvani as a hermeneutical tool for reading Christian devotional literature. Dhvani is a theory of poetic suggestion proposed by Ānandavardhana in the eighth century and elaborated upon by Abhinavagupta in the eleventh century that posits layers of semantics in poetic language. By focusing on the devotional poetry of the seventeenth-century religious poets of England, this paper argues for Ānandavardhana’s proposed poetics of suggestion as an enabling way of reading and cognizing devotion as a psycho emotive process. In the context of Indian Christianity, dhvani has been suggested by certain scholars as also enriching the possibilities of interfaith dialogue. This paper argues for incorporating poetic frameworks like dhvani as modes of interfaith dialogue, especially when reading Christian texts in India.