Download pdf
The Integration of Indian Christians into India Leading up to the Partition of 1947
- 1 Morrissey School of Arts and Sciences, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, US
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
As one of Great Britain’s main oversea assets going into the 1900s and with its rich traditions and diversity, India and its road to independence have drawn much scholarly interest. Studies of pre-independence modern India have always centered around the development of Indian nationalism that became the backbone of the Quit India movement, eventually leading to the establishment of a new nation and exit of its colonizer. Almost inseparable from India’s independence is the Partition of 1947 that witnessed the formation of two sovereigns which, in existing works and research, features the culmination of religious conflicts between the two largest religious groups in the peninsula. This hyper-focus on the main players has led to gaps in comprehending the roles of other minority groups that shared the stage alongside Hindus and Muslims. While these groups did not and could not become as politically influential as the political triangle among Hindus, Muslims, and the British, their struggles and mere existence helped shape the political landscape within the region and paved the foundation to India’s path in becoming a secular state. This paper explores the discourse of Indian Christians, the nation’s third largest religious community, leading up to the fateful summer day in 1947. Using primary sources as evidence and secondary sources as guidance, it examines the majority vs. minority dichotomy within pre-independence India under a hypersensitive religious context and how Indian Christians maneuvered the political waters to achieve social integration. In doing so, it attempts to explore the prospect and methodology of achieving religious coexistence between a religious majority and religious minorities in the nation-building process.
Keywords
Indian Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Indian Nationalism, Partition, Majority vs. Minority, Religion, Integration
[1]. Tej Bahadur Sapru, “Sapru Committee Report,” 1945.
[2]. Constituent Assembly Debate, Vol. 7
[3]. Bauman, Chad M. “Hindu-Christian Conflict in India: Globalization, Conversion, and the Coterminal Castes and Tribes.” The Journal of Asian Studies 72, no. 3 (August 2013): 633–53.
[4]. Beaglehole, J H. “The Indian Christians—A Study of a Minority.” Modern Asian Studies 1, no. 1 (1967): 59–80.
[5]. Bauman, Chad M. “Hindu-Christian Conflict in India: Globalization, Conversion, and the Coterminal Castes and Tribes.”
[6]. The Guardian, 30 June 1932, cited in Geoffrey A. Oddie, “Indian Christians and National Identity, 1870-1947,” Journal of Religious History 25, no. 3 (October 2001): pp. 346-366.
[7]. Geoffrey A. Oddie, “Indian Christians and National Identity, 1870-1947,” Journal of Religious History 25, no. 3 (October 2001): pp. 346-366
[8]. Abraham Vazhayil Thomas, Christians in Secular India (Rutherford, New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1974), 98.
[9]. P. Chenchiah, “Problems of Indian Christian Community”, the Guardian, Jan 22nd, 1942, P.28, cited in George Thomas, Christian Indians and Indian Nationalism 1885-1950: An Interpretation in Historical and Theological Perspectives (Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang, 1979), 122.
[10]. Constituent Assembly Debate, Vol. 2.
[11]. Constituent Assembly Debate, Vol. 4.
[12]. Constituent Assembly Debate, Vol. 1.
[13]. The South India United Church Herald, Vol. XXXIX, June, 1947.
[14]. The Young Men of India, Burma, and Ceylon, Vol. LVI. November, 1944.
[15]. The Young Men of India, Burma, and Ceylon, Vol. LV. November, 1943.
[16]. The Young Men of India, Burma, and Ceylon, Vol. LVI. February, 1944.
[17]. Constituent Assembly Debate, Vol. 8
[18]. The National Christian Council Review, Vol. LXIV, April, 1944
[19]. The National Christian Council Review, Vol. LXVII, August, 1947.
[20]. Charles Amjad-Ali, “From Dislocation to Dislocation: The Experience of the Christian Community in Pakistan,” International Review of Modern Sociology 41, no. 1 (2015): pp. 1-28.
[21]. Constituent Assembly Debate, Vol. 3.
[22]. The National Christian Council Review, Vol. LXV, October, 1945.
[23]. The National Christian Council Review, Vol. LXV, June-July, 1945.
Cite this article
He,Z. (2023). The Integration of Indian Christians into India Leading up to the Partition of 1947. Communications in Humanities Research,2,110-118.
Data availability
The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study will be available from the authors upon reasonable request.
Disclaimer/Publisher's Note
The statements, opinions and data contained in all publications are solely those of the individual author(s) and contributor(s) and not of EWA Publishing and/or the editor(s). EWA Publishing and/or the editor(s) disclaim responsibility for any injury to people or property resulting from any ideas, methods, instructions or products referred to in the content.
About volume
Volume title: Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Educational Innovation and Philosophical Inquiries (ICEIPI 2022), Part III
© 2024 by the author(s). Licensee EWA Publishing, Oxford, UK. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and
conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license. Authors who
publish this series agree to the following terms:
1. Authors retain copyright and grant the series right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this
series.
2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the series's published
version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial
publication in this series.
3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and
during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See
Open access policy for details).