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Caste as an Anti-Christian proposition: A Biblical Mandate for Savarna Christians

Caste as an Anti-Christian proposition: A Biblical Mandate for Savarna Christians

By Preethish Raja

Dalit Christian dilemma and Savarna Christian apathy

The number of violent incidents that were orchestrated recently in the light of Christmas 2024 on Christians in various parts of North and Central India by right-wing Hindutva forces, followed by the casual usage of the derogatory ‘rice-bag’ terminology slammed at Christians, both in real life and social media, is indeed a reflection of the deep-seated hatred that the Caste society has on Christians; particularly on its lower-caste converts. It is an uncontested fact that majority of the practitioners of the Christian faith, across both the Catholic and Protestant denominations belong to the oppressed sections of the Caste-Hindu framework: Dalits, Bahujans and Adivasi communities; and to demean them as ‘rice-bags’ strips them of their very decision-making agency as ‘thinking human beings’, and reduce them to humiliating sub-human parameters. Simultaneously, many of the oppressed converts (especially Dalit Converts) to Christianity also face discrimination from Dominant Caste/Savarna Christians (especially in South) within and outside church premises (either subtle or blatant).
As a Dalit Christian, witnessing such incidents of subtle casteism within the Church from Dominant Caste Christians and blatant aggression of Caste Hindus outside the Church has not been new to me; derogatory comments about being rice-bag converts and how ‘foreign’ missionaries ‘fooled’ the ‘naïve’ Dalits to accept the Christian faith comes up almost naturally in most of the conversations that Savarnas used to have- something which has always made me feel uncomfortable, and more importantly, humiliating: Are Dalits truly agency-less humans to embrace a faith without having any say in it?
Thus, there exists a conundrum in which the Dalit Christian encounters: Blatant hatred from the Caste-Hindu forces outside, and the subtle and backhand discrimination from Savarna Christians. However, contrary to major casteist narratives that Dalit conversions to Christianity was solely materialistic and nothing else, Christianity, in addition to educational and employment opportunities (in certain contexts) does offer spiritual liberation (in terms of psycho-social emancipation), and simultaneously the ‘democratic space’ for its Dalit converts to question and counter hegemonic caste-based practices from Savarna Christians; and it is precisely this ‘space’ which I wish to use in order to ponder upon a particular question which has indeed bothered me for a very long time, albeit, hardly addressed in Academic circles: Why Savarna Christians are practising/observing Caste? What do they gain from maintaining their caste pride and ‘rich ancestry’ under the garb of culture/history, when their identity of a ‘Christian’ is a complete contradiction to holding any sort of pride based on someone else’s oppression?

Incident at Antioch: Relationship between Jewish and Gentile Christians

To address the blatant hypocrisy of Savarna Christians, and how the very behaviour to ‘observe’/’practice’/’engage’ in Casteism (which axiomatically is a by-product of the Brahminical Hindu society) is not just un-Christian but Anti-Christian in nature, ie, going completely against the Gospel of Christ, it is imperative to trace back to the earliest social history of Christianity in the setting of first century Roman Empire with focus on two major churches: The earliest Church in Jerusalem, comprising of the earliest followers of Christ, being Jewish Christians, and secondly that of the Church in Antioch (current day Antakya in modern-day Turkey).
While Christianity as a faith-based religion originally started out as a ‘sectarian group’ within the latter-years of the Second-Temple Judaism (1st Century AD) with members mostly comprised of Jewish followers (Jewish Christians), subsequent missionary activities across the Syrian-Palestinian region and the Greco-Roman world ensured that the Non-Jewish populace begin to embrace the faith very rapidly; all the while, the religio-political turmoil between the Jewish populace (including both Palestinian and diasporic Jews) and Imperial Rome was becoming rapidly unstable. Multiple contemporary historians of the said period (Flavius Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius) detail the persecutions and rebellions of the Jewish populace against Rome, for religious and political interference; in this context, the earliest Jewish Christians particularly those hailing from Palestine, who were in a double persecution, from both the Non-Christian Jews and the Roman Empire, were under immense pressure, as James Dunn (1983) points out, to hold strictly to their nationalistic identities as ‘Jews’ while trying to hold onto their newfound Christian identity; and this attempt to ‘retain’ the ‘Jewish religiosity’ of the Jewish-Christians (because of the existing socio-political pressure of the time) can be well reflected in the Jewish culture of Dining, or Table-fellowship, in which Non-Jews were vehemently restricted from not partaking.
Contrastingly, among the Diasporic Jewish Christians particularly in Antioch, a very relaxed attitude was taking place: Jews and Gentiles were indeed partaking in Table-fellowship without any major Pharisaic or legalistic restrictions, under the guidance of Apostle Paul, who himself was a diasporic Jew. In this context, when a delegate from the Jerusalem Church comprised of Jewish Christians visited the Antiochian Church, they were shocked by the leniency in the social intercourse between the Diasporic Jews and Gentiles; and the Apostle Peter, being a Palestinian Jew himself who used to earlier observe Table-fellowship with Gentiles, succumbed to the socio-political pressure of the Jerusalem delegate; this internal discordance among Palestinian Jewish Christians, as to not observe the Table-fellowship among the uncircumcised Gentile believers, angered Paul and he vehemently and explicitly rebuked the hypocrisy of Peter and the other delegates from Jerusalem. According to Paul, what separates the Christian faith apart from Judaism is its ‘proselytizing’ nature to accept converts from all backgrounds, ‘all under Christ Jesus as one’ (Galatians 3:28); and as mentioned above, the existing socio-political turmoil taking place between the Jewish populace and Rome did affect the Jewish Christians as well, to hold on to their ‘Jewish pride’ of being distinct from Non-Jewish Christians. Yet Paul’s rebuke of Peter and the Jerusalem delegate’s Anti-Christian-like behaviour (Galatians 2:13-14) and the latter’s subsequent acknowledgement of error resulted in historically shaping Christianity as no longer ‘another’ Jewish sect, but as a distinctively new religion with more Gentile practitioners, and Paul’s role distinctively shaped more as the Apostle to the Gentiles from there on.

Savarna Christians: Being true to Gospel or being loyal to Caste?

As much as one should be careful not to superimpose or parallelly associate non-caste labels of social stratifications on a caste society to understand its social dynamics, (associating ‘Caste’ as ‘Race’ and vice-versa) neither do I wish to blatantly ‘superimpose’ the Jewish-Gentile relations of first century Palestine/Roman Empire on an Indian-based Savarna-Avarna Christian dynamic; however, it is also necessary to understand that within an Indian Christian worldview, a good knowledge of the social history of the earliest Christians and their churches abroad is necessary to question the prevalence of Casteism within the Christian faith. Taking cue from the very question which Apostle Paul laid on the hypocritical behaviour of the Jewish Christians, an Anti-caste rendering of the same message can be applied on the hypocritical behaviour of Savarna Christians. By taking pride in their own Savarna lineage Savarna Christians not only behave in a manner which is ‘less-Christian’ and ‘more-Hindu’ like, but also it is more ‘Anti-Christian’ to practice the same. This view goes in tandem with how Dr Ambedkar viewed Caste in other religions, especially Christianity, as compared to Hinduism: “Caste among the non-Hindus has no religious consecration; but among the Hindus most decidedly it has. Among the non-Hindus, caste is only a practice, not a sacred institution. They, did not originate it.” (Ambedkar, 2014, pg.65).
If caste does not have any scriptural sanction from Christianity, then what basis do the Savarna Christians practice Caste? What gives them the need to uphold caste-based customs and pride when their religion inherently forbids its followers to unite as one under Christ? Is it because of their misunderstanding of the Gospel or are they just being Savarna Hindus within a Christian uniform?
While there are multiple historical processes for Caste to permeate within the Christian fold, such as the improper approach of Missionaries to get ‘easy converts’ among Savarnas ( a good example would be the attempt to ‘Brahminize’ Christianity by the Italian Jesuit, Robert de Nobili of the Madurai Mission in 17th century), there also has been a vast history of missionary activities (both Catholic and Protestant) among lower-caste converts; For example, in the Tamil-speaking southern India, some of the most notable activities were that of the Portuguese Missionary John de Britto in south-eastern Tamil Nadu, the German Missionary William Tobias Ringeltaube of southern Tamil Nadu (erstwhile south Travancore) and the Danish Missionary Bartholomaus Ziegenbalg, of the Tranquebar Mission reflected an array of attempts to bring and evangelize the Christian faith among the groups of people who were deemed as outcastes. Similar missionary activities could also be observed over a period of colonial history, in Northern and Central India as well, where the subjects of evangelization were mostly from the ex-untouchable communities. Hence, to view ‘caste-within-Christianity’ conundrum from a present-day time and space in the light of mere blame-shifting towards an improper approach of certain missionaries to ‘indigenise’ Christianity for the ‘ease’ of Savarna conversions, would be an overstatement to make. Why? Because when Dr Ambedkar showed concern about the lack of organized movements among Dalit Christians to raise their concerns, the concern was located within a context of pre-independent India; however even after 77 years of Indian Independence and with many movements of Dalit Christians to raise concerns regarding their socio-political rights, a very dead-ended result is what mostly can be witnessed; from raising concerns regarding the inclusion of Dalit Christians into the Scheduled-Caste category, to facing brutal atrocities from Hindutva groups, it is they, who have truly faced the brunt of Brahminism. Meanwhile, the silence, or more particularly, the ‘apathy’ of many Savarna Christians, to deliberately ‘ignore’ or be ‘completely’ ignorant to such situations, should provoke a very fundamental question here: Are you being true to Christ, or are you being true to your caste?

Theological-discursive interventions in Churches are necessary

From lived experience, a definitive fact that I can attest is, a very thought-provoking and hypocrisy-attacking sermon in a church service is a very good step initially to address any social issue. Churches, theologians, and the clergy should take courage to address the uncomfortable fact: that caste-pride attitudes and legacies goes inherently against the Gospel, and that practicing caste, observing it, maintaining the status quo (whether subtly or explicitly) is not just ‘non-Christian’ but very much an ‘Anti-Christian’ practice, and that observers of such practices and offenses should be asked to question if they are really Christian in being or in just mere identity. Moreover, it is also important that Churches (both denominational and non-denominational) should also discursively include subjects of casteism and communalism faced by Dalit Christians in various parts of the country, not to merely ‘sensitize’ but to ‘provoke’ the ugly conscience of Savarna Christians, that they too have a ‘biblical mandate’ to stand in solidarity with their ‘fellow-Christians’ from Dalit and other Lower caste backgrounds. Simultaneously, theologians and clergy-people also carry a duty to discursively inform a congregation regarding the difference between being ‘Caste-blind’ and being ‘Anti-Caste’; while the former has a very patronizing and condescending tone, the latter is very much fraternity-inducing, as reflected from the Antiochian incident of Paul. Moreover, it is also important for Churches to expect opposition, resistance, or even mere expression of discomfort from Savarnas; yet it is also a biblical mandate for Churches to counter such oppositions in the same biblical manner which Paul countered in Antioch, by staying true to the Gospel. Ultimately it all comes down to a very simple ‘proposition’ which Churches must ask Savarna Christians: “If you are a Casteist, don’t call yourself a Christian and if you are a Christian, try to be Anti-Caste and stand with your fellow Christians”.

Preethish Raja

Preethish Raja is currently a PhD Scholar at TISS Mumbai. His area of interests are situated around Caste, Religion and History

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