Anglican Missions and `Mass Movements' in Andhra

Government officials played an important role in bringing the first Anglican missions to Andhra. Both the CMS and the SPG sent their first missionaries to Telugu-speaking regions at the request of civil servants bent upon the evangelization of India.12 Anglican missions proved as unsuccessful in Andhra as they had been in Bengal in converting the society's elites through educational institutions.13 The English school established in Masulipatam, like the great Scottish colleges in the Presidency cities, provided high-quality education but few conversions. The school's academic success led to its elevation in 1893 to college rank, but its illustrious founder Robert Noble lived to see only eleven students baptized.I4

The rising and sizable non-Catholic, Evangelical communities in Andhra, as in other parts of India, depended on conversions from the lowest ranks of the social hierarchy.15 These so-called `mass movements'16 of depressed classes to Christianity across India swelled the total Indian Christian population from 1,862,634 in 1881 to 6,290,292 in 1931.17 In both the eastern and western portions of Azariah's future diocese, group conversion movements of outcaste Malas and Madigas were sparked largely by newly converted Indian Christians and spread through local networks of family and jati.18

The movements in Azariah's future diocese took place within the broader context of similar group movements to Christianity which were sweeping through Telugu country under the auspices of both American Baptist and American Lutheran missions. By 1912, the American Baptist Telugu Mission reported 61,687 church members on its rolls, almost all of them former Madigas brought into the Christian fold through the initial leadership of leather worker and agricultural laborer Yerraguntla Periah of Ongole. This mission alone baptised between 1,500 and 3,500 Madigas an- nually.19

The mass movement in the CMS territory of the Krishna-Godavari delta, which increased Christian membership from 260 in 1861 to 11,356 in 1894, began with the conversion of a Mala headman named Pogolu Venkayya, who was known for daring exploits of highway robbery before his baptism in 1859. His testimony regarding the claims of Christianity set into motion the conversion movements that eventually brought thousands of Malas and, later, Madigas into the church.20

Conversions to Christianity occurred in Andhra at a faster rate than in almost any other South Asian region during Azariah's lifetime. During the first four decades of the twentieth century, the Indian Christian population grew at a faster rate than other major communal groups. Between 1921 and 1931, an average of 12,855 converts joined the church each month. The Indian Christian population of India and Burma increased at a rate of 32.5 percent during this decade, with Protestant Christians increasing at a rate of 41 percent.23

The rate of growth in Telugu-speaking areas was among the fastest on the subcontinent.24 The total Anglican Christian population in the Dornakal Diocese increased from 56,681 in 1912 to 225,080 in 1941, a number which exceeded the total number of Anglican converts for all of Japan, Korea, and China combined.25 In 1932, the Dornakal church baptized a record number of 11,532 converts and sustained this general level of accession throughout the decade.26 In 1936, about 200 converts were baptized each week, for an annual total of 11,400.27

Protestant missionaries greeted the mass movements with mixed emotions. Although aiding the church quantitatively, the movements brought in hordes of uneducated, poor converts whom many missionaries felt ill equipped to serve. By 1933, roughly 80 percent of India's Protestant Christians were mass movement converts from depressed class back- grounds.28 In Telugu regions, group conversions of outcaste Malas, Madigas, and, in later decades, low-caste non-Brahmins accounted for almost all of the Anglican church's growth.

The Malas were traditionally weavers, although competition from industrial mills had forced most of them to become agricultural workers by Azariah's time. The Madigas were traditionally leather workers engaged in the tanning of skins and the making of leather articles. Certain other social functions were exclusively performed - but never shared - by these two castes. They dug graves and monopolized two key roles in festivals for village goddesses: cutting the neck of the sacrificial animal and sprinkling blood-soaked grain in the fields. They provided village officers with manual assistance, beat drums, and provided trumpets and fanfare on festive occasions. Both castes also had the `right' to eat the carrion of village cattle, and they performed other specialized communal tasks in certain villages such as neerukattu (watering the fields).

Since the Malas and the Madigas occupied the lowest status in society, they were prohibited from drawing water from common wells and from living in the main village. Their touch was considered to be pollut ing, and washermen and barbers would not serve them. In addition, these two untouchable groups had a long-standing rivalry over which occupied the higher position in the social hierarchy, causing them to observe strict segregation even among themselves, living in separate hamlets and refusing to share the same food or the same wells.29

Among the non-Brahmin castes susceptible to Christian conversion in Andhra were the Telagas, Kammas, Kappus, and Reddis (landowners and farmers), and Yadowas (shepherds, or Gollas).30 The Telugu missions were even more successful in converting substantial numbers of borderline and tribal groups such as Waddars (stonecutters and diggers, also known as Vadderas or Oddars), Yerukalas (pig traders, basketmakers, and soothsayers, also known as Erukalas and Erkalas), Lombadies (nomadic gypsies or `carriers,' also known as Banjaras, found throughout western and southern India),31 and Mandulas (another nomadic tribe of snake charmers and swine traders many of whom apparently converted to Christianity to obtain protection from their ruthless headman, Kunda Puchiah of Masulipatam).32

To appreciate fully the size of the rising mass movements, however, it is important to remember that collective accessions of Malas, Madigas, Adivasi (tribals or aboriginals), and non-Brahmin castes to Christianity occurred not only in the Anglican church but also in each of the other prominent churches and missions in Andhra: the United Lutheran Church, the American Baptist (or "Lone Star") Telugu Mission, the Canadian Baptist Mission, the London Missionary Society, and the Wesleyan Methodist Church of Medak. Azariah estimated in 1935 that there were roughly 800,000 Christians in the Telugu country, as compared to roughly 200,000 in the Dornakal Diocese.33 Regarding non-Brahmin caste conversions, he estimated in 1932 that a total of 26,000 `Sudras' - mainly Kammas - from 41 subcastes had joined the major Protestant churches in Andhra, almost half of them converting during the previous five years.34 Reports made during an annual united evangelistic campaign by the Anglican, Methodist, and (London) Telugu Missions concluded in 1935 that `the movement to Christ among the caste people in the villages is so strong, well established and growing that there can be no doubt about the issue.'35 Shortly afterwards, Azariah wrote: `I believe we have about 50,000 Christians of caste origin in all missions of the Telugu coun- try'36

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