From time to time, when this column irritates some sort of patriots, they call me “sack of rice” on X.com. By this they imply that I had converted to Christianity in exchange for a bag of rice offered by a missionary. “offended by this high-carb insult; I would rather be accused of giving up my religion for a bag of avocados, or even some asparagus. The insult is also strangely funny, and it would have been particularly hilarious for my grandparents parents. Many people who called me “rice bag”, otherwise their ancestors would not have been allowed into my grandparents’ house, at least through the front door. My people, although some of them were poor landowners, considered themselves high caste, and looked down not only on other Christians, but also on most Hindus.
Unlike most Indian states, Christians in Kerala are part of the social and economic elite. Many consider themselves “upper castes”, although a portion of them believe that their ancestors were the first Christians who came from the Middle East and settled in Kerala around 2 CE. But some Kerala Christians are specific about their lineage: they say they were converted Brahmins. There are also “Brahmin Christians” in Goa and Mangalore. In case you haven’t guessed, they love the idea that they were once Brahmins. I don’t find this very interesting. But what is fascinating is this question: why did the high-caste Indians of old give up their exquisite privileges for Christianity?
Recently, a bishop in Kerala had a run-in with Christians who claimed Brahmin heritage. He lamented that they held parties to rejoice their lineage and invited him as well. He said their claim was false; The Christians of Kerala were not Brahmin converts.
Some historians who sympathize with the bishop’s claim have argued that the fact that there were Christians in Kerala in 2 CE meant that they predated the Brahmins as we know them today because they did not ‘had not yet reached the top of the caste structure. (The hierarchy of the three main castes was constantly changing in ancient India until the priestly class somehow won out.) However, there is evidence that some people in Kerala identified with the They were considered Brahmins at the time and were in fact Christians. There are ancient historical accounts that mention it. And there is also Brahmanical behavior, which is even more convincing. In The Ivory Throne, Manu S. Pillai writes that a few centuries ago in Kerala, “…there were temples where only oil ‘purified’ by the touch of a Malayali Christian could be used to light sacred lamps and fires. » This appears to be a continuation of Brahmin privilege, which was not affected by their connection with Christianity. Moreover, in ancient and medieval Kerala, a place as bad for the “lowborn” as the rest of India, where Brahmins considered it tragic even to have seen the “low castes”, there were joint processions of Hindu deities and an image of Saint Thomas. This was not a sign of secularism, but of cosmopolitan cooperation between the upper castes. Some of this Brahminical behavior among Christians has carried over into modern times. Sujatha Gidla, in her memoir about her childhood as a Dalit, mentions that a young Malayalee Christian girl who was having an affair with her uncle used to smuggle the man into her house, but only through the back door because that he was “an untouchable”. “So there are indicators that Brahmins and other upper castes have converted to Christianity, but there is no historical certainty as to why the greatest beneficiaries of Hinduism renounced their faith.
There are some weak explanations. That a Semitic or European evangelist came to Kerala and dissuaded the Brahmins from their religion, which gave them exclusive lifetime membership in the club. This is not convincing. I also wonder what language was used. Another explanation is that as Europeans became influential in India, their Christian evangelism also became more convincing. But this does not explain why there were Brahmin Christians long before the first Europeans arrived in Kerala, towards the end of the 15th century. The Christians of Kerala probably predated the advent of Christianity in Europe. In fact, when the Portuguese landed in Kerala, they found among the local elite Christians who had neither heard of the Pope nor the Vatican. Over the centuries, something pushed some Brahmins to become Christians and they did not have the same emotional or economic logic as the lower caste Hindus who converted.
My theory is that Brahmins did not “convert” to Christianity. “Conversion” is a new term. They simply adopted Christianity because it was new and exotic. Just like how Tom Cruise, born a Christian, “became” a Scientologist. Hinduism was so deeply rooted that the adoption of Christianity, although it came with a little water, did not change it much. It certainly did not change the caste of the elite. Furthermore, on a global scale, polytheism preceded monotheism. The many gods of Hinduism evoke an ancient polytheistic society. In the past, it was no big deal for people to have more than one faith.
In Gem in the Lotus, Abraham Eraly notes that the early success of Buddhism and Jainism in India was due to the fact that their founders were upper-caste Hindu elites, like their followers, who did not think of renouncing their faith; certainly not their castes. Formerly in India, people were rigid in matters of caste and broad-minded in matters of religion. “Conversions” happened over time, with new generations, in later eras, when people began to take religion seriously and everyone had to choose what they were.
