The Breakdown of Consensus
The Breakdown of Consensus
Azariah's and Gandhi's alliance in opposition to the Communal Award was shattered by the destabilizing consequences of the Award itself, which became progressively more apparent by the mid-1930s. The provisions of the Award were incorporated in the Government of India Act of 1935, which greatly increased Indian self-government on the provincial level, expanded some reforms at the Center, and extended the franchise to 30,000,000 Indian voters. The age of political democratization in India, which had begun in earnest with the Government of India Act of 1919, was now fully underway. The elections of 1937 gave Congress control over nine provincial governments in India, although this era of regional self-determination ended prematurely with the outbreak of war in 1939.
The new electoral arrangements made conversion, or more often the threat of conversion, a powerful political tool for depressed class leaders to gain concessions from dominant caste groups. Threats of conversion made in western India by B. R. Ambedkar (first in 1935)40 and in Travancore by leaders of the Izhava community (especially in 1936)41 gained widespread attention during this period. Azariah, as a committed and well-known evangelist and senior native churchman, encouraged each of these movements and thereby placed himself in a position of direct opposition to Gandhi and the Hindu nationalists with whom he had formerly been allied.
Azariah's assessment of Ambedkar's motive for seeking a new faith was also informed, however, by a broad understanding of Christian history in which tribes and even entire nations had been converted en masse at the behest of political leaders acting with `impure' motives.45 Azariah was therefore not willing to discount the importance of Ambedkar's action, nor the possibility that his seemingly political defection from modern India's newly invented brand of monolithic Hinduism, like other spiritually ambiguous events in history, might play a positive, even providential role in the Christianization of India.
To those who criticized mass movements for bringing in more people than the church could handle, Azariah responded, At Pentecost they baptized three thousand people in one day.'47 He agreed with Bishop Pickett, author of the 1933 mass movement study, that group conversions were the most `natural' way for India,48 and campaigned vigorously in the West for assistance with the mass movement work.49 In 1937, Azariah estimated that the rate of church growth would double in the Dornakal diocese if more workers and financial support could be made available for the instruction of catechumens.so
Azariah recognized the sociopolitical dimensions of Ambedkar's efforts for the depressed classes and of reformist Hindu campaigns against untouchability, but saw them as reflections of God's activity on behalf of the oppressed:
Azariah was not trying to steer the church away from evangelism and into politics by distinguishing between `materially' motivated conversion and conversion by spiritual conviction. Rather, he argued that in the 1930s, political and social forces external to the church had unwittingly created a unique opportunity for new mass conversions. In a 1937 letter to John Mott, Azariah identified three factors contributing to this new evan gelistic opportunity: (i) political ambitions generated by the 1935 Government of India Act, (ii) the universal spirit of nationalism producing new social unrest aimed at changing existing authorities and traditions, and (iii) striking examples of Christian under-class uplift. These factors combined to produce `Public anti-Hindu declarations of recent years by whole classes of people' - in particular, the Mahars (led by Ambedkar) and Izhavas. Azariah believed that the new situation created a favorable evangelistic opportunity `unsought, unprompted and uncreated by us' which Christian missionaries should nevertheless utilize.52
Azariah also published a statement in response to Ambedkar describing the benefits Christianity had obtained for untouchables.54 In his Open Letter to Our Countrymen Who Are Classified as Belonging to the Depressed Classes, Azariah affirmed that the new religion had `lifted us socially ... raised our womanhood ... removed the customs and habits that have been the causes of our past degradation,' such as drink, and given converts new self-respect.55 Fortified by such an understanding of Christianity's beneficent social influence, Christians should `testify boldly to what Christ has done to us and seek to win those that are now on the look out for a new religion.'56
Azariah privately circulated an additional encyclical to heads of churches and missions urging vigorous witness-bearing to the untouchables but stressing the new and heavy pedagogical responsibilities that mass conversions would place on the churches.57 This letter expressed again the widespread view that, although the motives for conversion of the depressed classes were `mixed,' they were nonetheless bona fide `salvation' movements in view of the oppressive nature of the caste system.
Depressed class protest in the 1930s was frequently likened to earlier movements of untouchables to Christianity and to other religions in Indian history: Islam, Sikhism, and the Arya Samaj variety of Hindu reform. With the exception of certain elements from among the educated urban Indian Christian elite,59 Azariah was joined by most of the Christian establishment in contending that evangelism to depressed class leaders and their followers was as legitimate a project in the 1930s as it had been in previous, less politically charged times. The results of Pickett's study quelled remaining doubts within the NCC.
An evangelistic campaign was independently planned and initiated by the NCC before Ambedkar made his 1935 declaration.60 In April 1935, the Council's Executive Committee launched a five-year `Forward Move ment in Evangelism' program.61 As chairman of both the governing Executive Committee and an advisory planning committee established in the previous year, Azariah played a leading role in crafting this project. Its central features - an annual `week of witness' and an emphasis upon ongoing local, church-based missions in preference to `spectacular' traveling crusades - echoed Azariah's previous strategies for the Dornakal diocese.62
To combat rising suspicion that there were political motives for Christian evangelism, the NCC argued that it had launched the movement without any intention of increasing the Christian community's political or communal rights. It is unfortunate that such a religious classification for political purposes is imposed upon us under existing circumstances. We are not for such privileges and we wish our fellowChristians would never advance their claims upon religious census fig- ures.'63 The NCC Council argued that its mission to and for the depressed classes was inspired only by pan-communal and pan-Indian patriotism.64
Ultimately, Azariah had more confidence in the effectiveness of long-term, ecclesiastically based missionary endeavors than in the superficial promise that untouchables might be brought en masse into the church by the persuasive power of any political leader.65 This view was reinforced with ironic consequences in 1936 after a personal interview with Ambedkar which deeply embarrassed and disturbed Azariah, and plunged him back into renewed efforts at ecumenism and reform within the church. Ambedkar criticized the church for denominational disunity which impeded the political objectives of the untouchables en bloc, as well as for the persistence within it of caste prejudice. Azariah recalled later that Ambedkar asked him the question: If we become Christians can we all be united in one Church wherever we live? And will we be entirely free from all Caste prejudice?' To which Azariah responded: `I have never felt so ashamed in my life because I couldn't say YES to either question - I could only come away in disgrace.'66 Azariah often recalled Ambedkar's criticism of Christianity when seeking support in his later years for the unification of churches in South India
Ambedkar's declaration created much anticipation that there would be mass depressed class conversions, but it did not significantly influence those communities in South India already inclining towards Christianity, such as the Malas, Madigas, or Izhavas. The church in the Dornakal diocese continued to grow at a steady pace, but without dramatic increase in 1936 and 1937.67 Despite two depressed class gatherings in his bishopric affirming Ambedkar's declaration, Azariah noted that the Diocese cannot be said to have come under the spell of Dr. Ambedkar.'68
Azariah assisted in leading the missionary response to Izhava unrest by visiting Travancore in February 1936 for four Izhava meetings (attended by 500 to 800 people each), during which the community's leaders denied that their actions were related to Ambedkar's Mahar movement in western India.70 As Azariah traveled, he urged churchmen, missionaries, and Izhava leaders to evangelize more aggressively. The Dornakal Diocesan Magazine noted in April that the Mar Thoma Church and the Church of India, Burma, and Ceylon in Travancore had arranged to send two hundred workers to evangelize the Izhavas. The June issue carried a special prayer for the conversion of the Izhava community, along with a vigorous defense by Azariah of Christian mission to depressed class groups in response to critics both inside and outside the church.71
Azariah thus refused to slow down, let alone stop, his energetic mission to the depressed classes. This brought him into direct conflict with Gandhi, who by now was deeply hostile to Azariah's evangelism. Gandhi refused Azariah's repeated invitations to visit Dornakal to observe Christian work among the untouchables firsthand,72 and became Azariah's most powerful and vehement critic.
Gandhi's activities were followed attentively by other depressed class leaders, such as Ambedkar, who jealously wondered if Gandhi's movement was simply an effective power play for mobilizing mass rural support and moral credibility.74 Despite his differences of opinion with Christian missionaries over the legitimacy of conversion and baptism, Gandhi used relatively little anti-missionary rhetoric during the early 1930s and tended to blame depressed class conversions on the oppressive practices of Hindus.75
This situation of relative peace disintegrated in the mid-1930s as the implications of the constitutional reforms became apparent, and Christian leaders found themselves forced to defend missionary motives in a newly politicized context where they faced fresh challenges over the nature of religious loyalty.76 In 1936 and 1937, Gandhi's criticisms of Chris tian missionary activity increased in both frequency and bitterness. (He rarely mentioned the activities of Muslims or Sikhs.77) His specific charges focused on the allegedly unfair methods and exaggerated claims of Christian missionaries. These widely publicized indictments frequently drew on the reports of A. V. Thakkar, an opponent of Christian conversion who was both Secretary of the Harijan Sevak Sangh and a member of the Servants of India Society.78
Several of the charges published in the Harijan were directed specifically against Azariah and the evangelistic work within his diocese. Gandhi accused Azariah of falsely exaggerating the number of people in his diocese coming forward for baptism. Quoting from a CMS pamphlet which claimed that In the CMS area of the Dornakal Diocese there are no less than three hundred villages appealing for teachers; they represent forty thousand people definitely asking for baptism. The Bishop reckons that probably about a million people in his diocese are moving Christward'; Gandhi responded, `Though I have traveled in the Telugu area often enough I have never heard of forty thousand Harijans asking for baptism or any figure near it.'79 Gandhi also challenged the validity of similar claims made by both Bishop Pickett in Bombay and the CMS concerning the nature and scale of untouchable and low-caste movements in the Telugu area and in Travancore.80 But Gandhi saw the Indian Azariah as a particularly vulnerable target and accused him of dishonorably offering `baits' to the depressed classes in his Open Letter responding to Ambedkar's declaration.81
Azariah did not publicly answer Gandhi's published accusations against him, but Gandhi's more general criticisms of Christian missions had already caused widespread irritation in Dornakal. In November 1935, Azariah reported that at a recent meeting of Dornakal diocesan organizations, `Mr. Gandhi's public pronouncement on the work of Missions, in which he wished that the Christian movement would confine itself to activities for the amelioration of the physical and social conditions of the people without disturbing their religious faiths, was still fresh in our minds.' In response, the meeting passed unanimously the following resolution:
The bishop interpreted invective by Indian national leaders against Christian missions in general as the sad outcome of the communal franchise which had politicized the whole issue of conversion. In the Dornakal Diocesan Magazine of May 1937, he wrote:
Azariah avoided the temptation to blame Gandhi personally for the increasing attacks on conversion, placing the onus instead on the political system put into operation by the British as they extended the franchise and representation to increasing numbers of Indians.