Honoring historian Robert Eric Frykenberg--arguably the historian most responsible for promoting studies of intercultural and interreligious interactions in the South Asian context--the essays in this collection avoid the pitfall of Eurocentric, top-down historiographies and instead adopt and adapt Frykenberg's own Eurocentric, bottom-up approach, this accentuating indigenous agency in the emergence of Christianity an as Indian religion. The book features first-time case studies on Christianity in a variety of unusual Indian settings, including tribal societies, and offers original contributions to an understanding of how Indian Christianity was perceived in the post-Independence period by India's governing elite. Several essayists draw heavily on rare archival documentation in the United Kingdom, Germany, and India. The wealth of material and the perspectives gathered here constitute a remarkable volume--a credit to the historian who inspired it--from back cover.

Christians form the third largest religious community in India. How has this come about? There are many studies of separate groups: but there has so far been no major history of the three large groups - Roman Catholic, Protestant and Thomas Christians (Syrians). This work attempts to meet the need for such a history. It goes right back to the beginning and traces the story through the ups and downs of at least fifteen centuries. It includes careful studies of the political and social background and of the non-Christian reactions to the Christian message. The narration is non-technical and should present few difficulties to the thoughtful reader; the more technical matters are dealt with in notes and appendices. This book will be of interest to all students of Church History and will also prove fascinating to many who are concerned with the development of Christianity as a world religion and in the dialogue between different forms of faith.

Popular Christianity in India explores Indian Christianity as crafted and expressed through lived experience, providing an important balance to currently available, typically theological, studies. Drawing from many disciplines, this volume unearths the multifaceted terrain of festivals, rituals, saints, miracle workers, missionaries, and visionaries in Christian India, providing a wonderful glimpse of its richness and complexities. The contributors reveal the ways in which local Christian traditions deftly challenge assumed divisions and power imbalances between East and West, Hindu and Christian, foreign and indigenous, and elite and local expressions. Whether forging complicated religious, caste, and national identities, employing religious hybridity to promote well-being, or asserting autonomy within oppressive social and religious structures, local Christianity provides a crucial means for its participants to manage their earthly needs and desires.

The Christian community in India emerged from an Indian rather than a foreign or an imperial context. Its internal dynamics were shaped far more by Indian social realities than by missionary designs. This book presents a comprehensive social history of Christianity in north-west India, comprising Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, the Union Territories of Delhi and Chandigarh, and the Pakistani Punjab and North-West Frontier Province. The book discusses significant events in the history of the north-west up to 1947, after which it focuses only on India. These events left a lasting impact on Christianity and shaped its future course, culminating in the transfer of churches’ power from foreign missionaries to Indians and proliferation of churches, and the ongoing struggles of the Christian community. The author pays special attention to the Christian community’s caste composition—how caste status and social mobility affected intra- and inter-community relations—religious diversity, uneven demographic distribution, and development, as well as Christianity as a religious movement in the region.

The assumption that Christianity in India is nothing more than a European, western, or colonial imposition is open to challenge. Those who now think and write about India are often not aware that Christianity is a non-western religion, that in India this has always been so, and that there are now more Christians in Africa and Asia than in the West. Recognizing that more understanding of the separate histories and cultures of the many Christian communities in India will be needed before a truly comprehensive history of Christianity in India can be written, this volume addresses particular aspects of cultural contact, with special reference to caste, conversion, and colonialism. Subjects addressed range from Sanskrit grammar to populist Pentecostalism, Urdu polemics and Tamil poetry.

Jones recounts his experiences in India, where he arrived as a young and presumptuous missionary who later matured into a veteran who attempted to contextualize Jesus Christ within the Indian culture. He names the mistake many Christians make in trying to impose their culture on the existing culture where they are bringing Christ. Instead he makes the case that Christians learn from other cultures, respect the truth that can be found there, and let Christ and the existing culture do the rest.