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Swami Vivekananda became famous in the West for his speech to the Parliament of Religions held in Chicago in 1893. There he praised the noble and rich spiritual heritage of India and persuaded his audience to recognize and elevate "Hinduism" into the rank of a "world religion." His mission to plant exotic notions of an exalted "Hindu" spirituality in the minds of Westerners remains active today in countless Vedanta Societies.

Vivekananda came to America in order to "correct" the impression given by his contemporary Pandita Ramabai, a well-known Christian convert and reformer who had been sending a very different message. Ramabai contrasted Vivekananda's "poetry" of sentiment with her "prose" of harsh reality. She wrote, "I beg my western sisters not to be satisfied with looking at the outside beauty of the grand philosophies, and not to be charmed with hearing the interesting discourses about educated men, but to open the trap doors of the great monuments of ancient Hindoo [sic] intellect and enter into the dark cellars where they will see the real workings of these philosophies." Ramabai, who passionately ministered to India's destitute women and children, knew only too well how ugly Hindu life could look in practice. She had lived in its strongholds, and she observed Hindu priests "oppress the widows" and "trample the poor, ignorant, low-caste people under their heels."

No one better represents the high tradition of Christian scholarship in India than the Italian Jesuit Constanzo Guiseppe Beschi (1680-1747). His long list of writings—epic poems written in the classical style, philosophical treatises, commentaries, dictionaries, grammars, translations, and polemical tracts—put him at the very forefront of Tamil scholars. His lavish lifestyle also made quite an impression. Traveling in state, he wore a long tunic bordered in scarlet, covered by a robe of pale purple, with ornate sandals or slippers, white and purple turban, pearl and ruby earrings, rings of heavy gold, and a long carved and decorously inlaid staff. He was carried in a sumptuous palanquin that had a tiger's skin for him to sit upon, two attendants to fan him, someone holding a purple silk parasol surmounted by a golden ball to shield him from the sun, and a spread tail of peacock feathers going before him. In short, Beschi's circuits assumed all pomp and pageantry with which Hindu gurus usually traveled.

India has had an important impact on Christianity worldwide. Frustrated by the doubly divisive impact of caste and denomination on the church's witness to Hindu-Muslim culture, Indian Christians joined with missionaries to create the Church of South India (CSI) in 1947 and the Church of North India (CNI) in 1948. This was the first unification of Episcopal and non-Episcopal Protestant churches since the Reformation and provided an important model for the emerging ecumenical movement in the West.

Still, the majority of non-Catholic and non-Thomas Christians in India do not belong to either of these groups. Today, the largest and most rapidly growing Christian movement in India is Pentecostalism.

Contributed by Steven Gertz, Robert Eric Frykenberg, Susan Billington Harper, and Keith J. White.

Copyright © 2005 by the author or Christianity Today International/Christian History & Biography magazine.
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