11 July 2005 – HIST 533 –Nelson Suen

This paper will briefly examine Bishop V.S. Azariah’s engagement the caste system.

Missionary Engagement with the Caste System

In spite of the long tradition of Christian presence in India, significant confrontation

with the caste system does not take place until the arrival of the Protestant missions in
the late 18th century with missionaries like William Carey. The ancient Syrian church in
India was integrated into the caste system and was itself divided into castes. 1 The
Catholic mission to India of the 16th century accommodated the caste system and
worked along side it, considering it a religiously neutral institution. The Lutheran pietist
missions of the early 18th century considered it merely secular, with no bearing on
religious practice.

In contrast, the Baptist Bengel mission in the north associated with William Carey took a
hard line against the caste system. Carey saw it as an enemy of conversion, genuine
community, the building of the church, self-improvement, and social progress. He
required converts to make a complete break with caste. 2 However, during the early 19th
century in the south, the Anglican missions opted for an approach of toleration, in line
with the Lutheran position.3 Debates and controversies ranged over the caste issue until
mid-century with the emergence of a unanimous consensus among Protestant
missionaries that viewed the caste system as a ‘great evil that must be ruthlessly
uprooted from the Church.’4

Azariah’s View on the Caste System

V. S. Azariah, the first Indian Anglican bishop of the Dornakal Diocese, shared the
Protestant consensus against caste. 5 His reasons are that the system produced disunity
and discord, impeded economic progress, promoted endogamy and child marriages,
suppressed individuality and independence, and legitimized the hegemony of the
Brahmins.6

The Western influence on Azariah was obvious. He was raised in the Indo-Anglican
Tinnevelly district that had been ‘Christianized’ since the 18 th century with arrival of
Lutheran pietist missionaries. Azariah’s family was Tamil belonging to the semi-
untouchable Nadar caste. By 1851 the Nadars of Tinnevelly and an adjacent district
comprised more than half of the Protestant mission converts in all of India. 7 Azariah’s
1
Forrester, 14.
2
Bengel’s ‘hard line’ limited the number of converts but produced a greater impact of Christian
ethical ideas resulting in far less number of caste controversies than in South India (Forrester, 27).
3
However, evangelical chaplains and civilians in the Anglican camp aligned themselves with
attitudes of the north, in opposing the caste system.
4
Forrester, 40. This consensus was virtually unanimous including all American and British
Protestant missions. Only the Leipzig Mission held out to a moderate position regarding caste.
5
I.e. Vedanayagam Samuel Azariah. He was the only Anglican Indian bishop during his lifetime.
He was ordained in 1912 and served as bishop until his death in 1945.
6
Azariah, India, 7-8.
7
Harper, In the Shadow, 12.

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father was educated in a British missionary school and eventually became an Anglican
ordained priest and village pastor. The religious practice of his father’s congregation
was thoroughly Anglican imported via the CMS.8 The Holy Trinity Church which he
built was in a European semi-Gothic style. Azariah was himself educated in a CMS high
school and later in Madras Christian College, the product of the Scottish Church’s
education missionary initiative.9 It appears that all the significant mentors in Azariah’s
life throughout his life were Westerners.

In spite of all this, Azariah was not an uncritical sympathizer of the West. After all, his
life’s work is closely identified with the establishment of the indigenous Indian church.
He was sandwiched between the Christianity from the West, part truth of the Gospel
and part accretion of Western cultural, and Hinduism of the East, part truth as
preparation for the Gospel and part antithesis to the Gospel. Azariah’s vision was to
create a genuine form of Indian Christianity from these two, by weighing the positive
and negative of both sides. His famous speech at the missionary conference in
Edinburgh in 1910 highlights his awareness of the weaknesses of the Western
missionary enterprise.10

Azariah’s condemnation of the caste system did not imply a blanket condemnation of
Hinduism or the Indian culture. He subscribed to the moderate position of ‘fulfillment
theology’ which saw Hinduism as preparatory for the arrival of the Gospel and that
there are legitimate religious aspirations in Hinduism which were to be fulfilled by the
Gospel.11 This view was not unique to Azariah which has it roots in a liberal corrective
movement in Western Christianity against the purely denunciatory position against
other religions, the dominant view of the early decades of the 19 th century Protestant
missions.12

Consequently, Azariah’s engagement with Hinduism on his diocese at Dornakal was

rather nuanced, ‘a pragmatic balancing of change and continuity, of innovation and
accommodation. His solutions were neither purely western nor purely indigenous, but a
creative adaptation of grassroots cultural expressions to universalized Christian
values.’13 Unlike his father’s semi-Gothic cathedral, Azariah’s cathedral at Dornakal
would be a fusion of indigenous styles.

Azariah’s vision for Christianity appears to be centered on two three interrelated

concepts. First is ‘universal unified brotherhood,’ an influence perhaps beginning from

8
Church Mission Society.
9
Connected with the famous Alexander Duff.
10
Azariah addressed the largely Western contingent at the mission conference with this stirring
speech, highlighting the problem of missionary paternalism: ‘Through all the ages to come the
Indian Church will rise up in gratitude to attest to the heroism and self-denying labours of the
missionary body. You have given your goods to feed the poor. You have given your bodies to be
burned. We ask also for love. Give us friends!’ (Harper, In the Shadow, 148).
11
This view is connected with scholars like John Muir, Max Muller, Monier Monier-Williams, B.F.
Westcott, and especially, J.N. Farquhar, notably all Westerners, all connected with the U.K.
12
The liberalizing trend was in part spearheaded by scholarship which provided better
understanding of other religions.
13
Harper, In the Shadow, 244.

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his days at the YMCA.14 For Azariah this was an essential part of the Christian message
and explains well his appeal at the Edinburgh conference to his Western ‘brothers’ as
well as his involvement in the unification of the churches in South India among his
Indian ‘brothers.’ Second is evangelism, which Azariah would define as the
proclamation of the Gospel, related to the first because it is the instrument for the
formation of genuine Christian community. Third is social transformation. While
Azariah rejected a purely ‘social gospel,’15 social transformation was nevertheless central
to his vision. Such change was seen as the result of gospel message and critical to
evangelism, testifying to the truth of the message.

Azariah’s theological vision and his careful attempts filtering out negative aspects of the
West and Hinduism would probably have been successful in moving toward his vision
of Christian community, perhaps given a long period of adjustments and corrections to
his theological understanding and praxis, towards indigenization. After all, much if not
all of his existing imperatives appear to strongly influenced by Western theological
initiatives.16

Azariah’s understanding seems to envision a one way flow of the gospel from west to
east, with its Western accretions filtered out and what is left being adorned with positive
Indian elements. In reality if Walls is correct, the gospel is more intimately meshed to the
‘originating’ culture. Thus, the transmission of the gospel message might not be a pure
pristine core with the cultural specific bits filtered out, but a process of translation. 17
While the ‘core’ model is not totally invalid, it is at times helpful to think of core ‘facts’
about the Christian faith, e.g. the divinity of Christ or the Church’s creeds, 18 it might not
be sufficient in either understanding or facilitating indigenization. For a true
indigenization of the gospel in India, what was perhaps needed was a fuller translation
of a Western gospel into the Indian context. This means that as a missionary, I cannot
assume that I already have in my possessing a complete working engine of the gospel
but rather, through subsequent corrections and refinements of translation, a more fully
indigenized version of the gospel is realized. Such an approach would take more
seriously the indigenous context, not as merely a source of cultural adornment for the
gospel but the very ingredients through which indigenization is realized. Consequently,
indigenization must be a thoroughly indigenous process!

It is no surprise that Azariah’s attempts at rooting out the caste system were largely
unsuccessful, because after all, this once foreign Aryan imposed system has been fully
indigenized into Indian life over the course of centuries. To effectively engage this
system one needs a fully indigenized Gospel, which can only come through time,
adaptation and most importantly, Indian Christian ownership. Unfortunately, the
historical currents in Azariah’s time made a gradualist approach very difficult.

14
Azariah served as a secretary of the YMCA of South India for 13 years, in his early years
beginning at the age of 21.
15
Harper, In the Shadow, 247.
16
E.g. fulfillment theology and ironically, even the initiative to ‘Indianize’ (one wonders of an
Indian would ever choose such a name!).
17
Walls, 3-14; 43-54.
18
We might note however that even the Creeds are highly contextualized and one might argue
whether these are comprehensive enough to cover all critical aspects of the Christian faith.

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Mass Movements

Azariah lived in the time of the ‘mass movements,’ the large-scale group conversions of
untouchables to Christianity beginning in the 1860/70s, initially, especially to the
Protestant missions.19 Although similar movements have occurred in the past, these
were ‘only in isolated and not numerically significant.’ 20 The scope of this phenomenon
was not limited to defections to Christianity alone, but also other religions and Hindu
reformist sects.21 Against this context, the Protestant missions all across India
experienced unprecedented growth (census data of Christians in India increased from
1.9 million in 1881 to 6.2 million in 1931.22 The Dornakal Diocese exceeded the average
growth during Azariah’s lifetime. The diocese grew from 57,000 to 225,000 between 1912
and 1941. Over the decade starting in 1932, the number of conversions was about 11,000
per year.23

The motives of these ‘mass-conversions’ was hotly debated, ranging from the suggestion
of pure opportunism to genuine religious motivations. Pickett’s nationwide sociological
study in 1933 of mass movements based on 3,947 interviews concluded that 8.1 percent
had converted for purely secular reasons (education, social status improvement, etc) 34.8
percent for spiritual reasons, and 22.4 for social reasons (because family and friends
converted). The remainder said they were Christians by birth. 24 Pickett himself was
skeptical of mass movement conversions prior to the study and changed his mind
subsequently.25 His study cautions against a categorical dismissal and the complex
motives behind the movements.

Contemporary authors tend to criticize the inappropriate Western-centric categorization

of ‘religious’ and ‘secular.’ This is not a problem unique to Pickett but one which was
pervasive among Western missionary outlooks. The indigenous Indian worldview
simply does not see a dichotomy between the too. While Pickett’s categories might be
guilty of this Western-centrism, his study nevertheless suggests the possibility of
‘shallow’ conversions, that is, ones that have not produced a significant change in
anything (worldview, attitude, etc). Azariah was well aware of this problem associated
with group conversions. He warned, ‘there are, however, dangers in group movements
that have to be constantly watched and remedied. Personal experience and individual
conversion is apt to be neglected.’26 He envisioned a remedy for this problem through
preaching, education and the disciplines of the church.27

Azariah was in fact an ardent defender of the mass movements primarily because he
viewed them as ‘the most natural way of approach to Christ [for Indians]’ over against
the individualistic way of the West. Further, they minimized the destabilizing effects of

19
Forrester, 69,73.
20
Ibid. 69.
21
Ibid. 73.
22
Harper, In the Shadow, 181-2.
23
Ibid. 184-5.
24
Ibid. 281.
25
Ibid. 281 n.149.
26
Ibid.
27
Ibid.

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social dislocation.28 Ironically it seems that the mass conversions literally overwhelmed
Azariah’s vision of Christian community (an alternate community governed by
Christian principles which transcends and resists the caste system). 29

‘Azariah presented Anglican Christianity to Andhra’s depressed classes as a dramatic

alternative to their former religious practices and was often frustrated by the tendency of
converts to treat the new faith and its practices as complements to the old.’ 30

While Azariah required converts to make a decisive break with Hinduism, the struggle
to sever converts from prohibited practice associated with Hinduism and the caste
system became perhaps the greatest struggle at the Dornakal Diocese. The myriad of
excommunications of the period in the diocese underlines the severity of the problem. 31

Conclusion

Being an cultural outsider to the Indian context, I conclude with a few tentative
comments regarding Azariah’s struggle with the caste system. First, mass conversions
are not new to Christianity. Given the Christendom context of Western Europe, many of
the renewal movements were addressing exactly this problem of ‘shallow’ conversions. 32
If John Wesley railed against false confidence in baptism for those who were born into
the church, one possible adjustment for Azariah might be to make the entry into the
church far more difficult. Since he was neither indiscriminately baptizing converts nor
lenient in what was expected of the Christian life, 33 time might have been the crucial
vehicle of delay.

The mission can still nevertheless receive the groups seeking ‘conversion’ into its
protection and engage in social uplift as part of its evangelistic witness, but fall short of
immediate baptism. The increased barrier of entry allows for the safeguarding of a
‘converted’ community, enabling Azariah to fuller realize his vision of Christian
community without the need for excessive use of church discipline. This baptized ‘core’
community then would serve as a evangelizing witness to those outside. This model is
perhaps similar to the monasteries which became the social/cultural/economic cores of
communities in Western Europe after the collapse of the Roman Empire. 34

Second, Azariah’s preoccupation with building his community ironically seem to retard
the drive for indigenization. While his achievements for Dornakal must be fully
acknowledged, especially the phenomenal social uplift in education, medical care, etc.
However, there was dissention in the diocese over the bishop’s policy of preventing
young men from pursuing higher education. 35 It is not apparent why he did this. While

28
Azariah, India, 65. See other reasons as well.
29
Unlike early Christianity in India which was absorbed into the caste system.
30
Harper, In the Shadow, 252.
31
Ibid. 252, 254, 269.
32
E.g. Early monastic movements, German Pietism and Wesley’s Methodism.
33
Graham, Bishop of Dornakal, 86-7.
34
Settlements of ordinary folk began to cluster around the monasteries, for security, economic
and religious reasons. The difference of the Christendom context needs to be duly noted; as
everyone, including those inside and outside the monastery was assumed Christian.
35
Harper, In the Shadow, 34, 170.

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Azariah maintained a course for the local training of indigenous teachers and leaders, he
never entrusted the highest leadership of the diocese to Indians. It appears that he
thought there were no qualified individuals to take up these roles. 36 Harper points out
the irony that the bishop failed to take the risk of indigenous leadership, the very risk
that his foreign mentor took in fighting for Azariah’s episcopal appointment.37

Was Azariah perhaps guilty of the same paternalism characteristic of the missionary
movement of the period against which he had so vehemently protested? The leadership
of the diocese does appear to be characterized by ‘top down’ initiatives. In the end, for a
true indigenization of the gospel, what is perhaps needed is a new generation of Indian
leaders including pastors and scholars, at least at the caliber of Azariah who would enter
into a communal Indian dialogue over the issue of the caste system and what it means to
be authentically Christian. By preventing higher education, Azariah in effect impedes
this process from going forward.

36
Ibid. 170.
37
Ibid.

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Bibliography

It was difficult to acquire primary source materials for this paper. Harper’s monograph is the
first attempt at a critical biography as the older ones are hagiographic in nature. I have relied
heavily on her quotations and analysis. This is the great weakness of this paper.

Azariah, V.S. India and the Christian Movement. New York: The National Council,
Protestant Episcopal Church, Church Missions House, 1938.

Forrester, Duncan B. Caste and Christianity. London: Curzon Press, 1979.

Graham, Carol. Azariah of Dornakal. London: S. C. M. Press, 1946.

Graham, Carol. ‘The Legacy of V. S. Azariah.’ International Bulletin of Mission Research 9

no. 1 (1985) 16-18.

Hodge, J. Z. Bishop Azariah. Madras: The Christian Literature Society for India, 1946.

Harper, Susan Billington. In the Shadow of the Mahatma. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,
2000.

Pickett, J. Waskom. Christian Mass Movements in India. New York: Abingdon Press, 1933.

Walls, Andrew. The Missionary Movement in Christian History. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis,
1996.