A High Christian Caste

What is beyond any doubt is that over the course of centuries, before the arrival of the Portuguese, Thomas Christians attached great importance to rajah-granted privileges and attained high status. Royal grants were, in effect, their charters for a place, and a high place at that, in the caste system of south India, a system more intricate in that region than in any other.

 A small number of Brahmins, roughly two percent of the population, had established themselves as the dominant caste by about the eighth century. Shankaracharya, the founder of the monist Hindu school of Advaita Vedanta, the dominant Brahminical philosophy for many Indians, was an eighth-century Keralite. He is credited with having displaced Buddhism and Jainism from their earlier dominance in the southwestern corner of India. The Thomas Christians' legends of the apostle's mission among them emphasize Thomas's conversion of Nambudiri Brahmins, but this caste only reached ascendancy many centuries after Thomas lived.

 Next in rank were the Nayars, or Nairs, famous as warriors, from whose numbers the rajahs came. Below them was a complicated hierarchy. At the bottom were untouchable outcastes, some of whom were considered so degraded in status that the very sight of one of their unfortunate members would pollute a Brahmin. Such were required to shout their group name when walking on the road, to allow caste Hindus to take cover.

 In the course of time, Thomas Christians won a place for themselves at least as high as that of the Nairs. And like that warrior caste, they were highly prized for their martial skills in the local rajahs' armies. The two communities took part in each other's processions, visited each other's holy places. The Thomasites' claims of status akin to that of Brahmins would come later, in the days of the British Raj, when clumsy British policy (as we shall soon see) broke their links with Nayars.

 The historical folk songs that describe the apostle's mission put great emphasis on the his conversion of Brahmins. The literature of Thomas Christians came to emphasize the customs and rituals they share with Brahmins: for example, bestowal of a sacred thread (with cross added) on infants, adornment of children with gilded mongoose teeth and panther toes, similar marriage rites, descent of property through a patriarchal line (unlike Nairs, who have a matriarchal system), wearing a long tuft of hair on the head. In marriage processions a Christian bridegroom, like a prince of the land, could ride an elephant, the bridal party could be sheltered by a canopy, and members of the procession could carry silk umbrellas.

 Many of the Christians' rites -- in ceremonies celebrating birth, coming of age, marriage -- closely followed those of high-caste Hindus. "Mappila," an honorific in the Malayalam tongue, became a common appendage to Christian names. Nasrani Mappila (Respected Nazarene) became a frequent appellation. An old Malayalam proverb says that "Flies, cats, dogs, and Nasranis have no pollution" -- a saying with an edge, perhaps, but one recognizing that to touch a Thomas Christian is not polluting for high-caste Hindus. Thomas Christians were given right of access to Hindu temples. They themselves observed untouchability. In later centuries, when proselytizing European missionaries began converting low-caste Indians, Thomas Christians still banned social intercourse with converts of base degree. They were not themselves proselytizers. Like a caste Hindu, a Christian was born to his status.

 Before the arrival of the Portuguese at the beginning of the sixteenth century, Thomas Christians had become, in effect, a closed caste within the Indian social structure. They received their bishops and liturgy, and Syriac as the liturgical language, from a foreign church. Few parishioners knew much of the language in which they worshipped. There was no bible in Malayalam, the local language, until the nineteenth century.

 But the bishops supplied from Mesopotamia did not assert detailed control over Indian churches. An Indian archdeacon was the administrative head of the church on the Malabar Coast. Thomas Christians could claim to be as Indian as any Hindu. Had not Brahmins been among the apostle's original converts? St. Thomas Christians had achieved honor, respect, and prosperity.