Christianity in India — A Historical Survey

Christianity in India is one of the world's oldest non-Western Christian traditions, tracing its origins to the apostolic mission of St. Thomas in 52 CE and later shaped by Portuguese missionaries, Jesuit experiments in inculturation, and colonial-era Protestant missions that transformed Indian education and catalysed far-reaching social reform.

The Thomas Christians: How Did Christianity First Reach India?

According to a tradition preserved across South Indian communities for nearly two millennia, the Apostle Thomas arrived on the Malabar Coast (present-day Kerala) in 52 CE, landing at the ancient port of Muzuris (Kodungallur). He is said to have converted several merchant and high-caste families, thereby establishing the kernel of what became the Syrian Christian (also called Thomas Christian or Nasrani) community. Thomas subsequently moved to the east coast, where he was martyred near Mylapore (modern Chennai) around 72 CE; the San Thomé Cathedral stands on the supposed site of his tomb.

The Syrian Christians maintained liturgical links with the Patriarchate of Antioch and used Syriac as their ecclesiastical language. They occupied a respected social position akin to upper-caste Hindus, wore the sacred thread, and participated in certain Hindu festivals — an early and sustained example of religious syncretism on Indian soil. For over a millennium they remained one of the oldest unbroken Christian communities in the world, largely untouched by European ecclesiastical authority until the arrival of the Portuguese in the 16th century.

Portuguese Missions: What Changed with European Contact?

Vasco da Gama's landing at Calicut in 1498 inaugurated an entirely new phase. The Portuguese Estado da India aggressively pursued padroado rights — royal patronage over Catholic missions throughout Asia — and sought to subsume the Thomas Christians under Roman authority. This produced lasting ruptures within the community; some accepted union with Rome (giving rise to the Syro-Malabar and Syro-Malankara Catholic Churches) while others retained their ancient communion with Antioch.

The most celebrated Portuguese missionary was St. Francis Xavier, who arrived in Goa in 1542. He baptised thousands along the Fishery Coast (Parava fishermen of Tamil Nadu), conducted missions across South and Southeast Asia, and died off the coast of China in 1552. His remains are enshrined at the Basilica of Bom Jesus in Old Goa, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of India's most visited pilgrimage centres.

A darker chapter was the Goa Inquisition (1560–1812), established to enforce Catholic orthodoxy among converts and suppress crypto-Hinduism and crypto-Islam. Over its 252-year course the tribunal tried thousands of cases, imposing penalties ranging from penance to confiscation of property and, in extreme instances, execution. It was formally abolished in 1812 under pressure from liberal opinion in Portugal. The Inquisition remains a contested episode: critics regard it as an emblem of colonial religious coercion, while some historians note that its scale was considerably smaller than the concurrent Spanish and Portuguese inquisitions in Europe.

Jesuit Inculturation: The Robert de Nobili Experiment

A pioneering attempt to reconcile Christianity with Indian culture came from the Italian Jesuit Robert de Nobili, who arrived at Madurai in 1606. Rejecting the prevailing association of Christianity with Portuguese colonial culture, de Nobili adopted Brahmin dress (saffron robes, the sacred thread), learnt Sanskrit and Tamil, composed devotional texts in both languages, and presented himself as a Roman sannyasi. He argued that Hindu social customs — caste markers, dietary norms, head-shaving — were civil rather than religious observances and therefore compatible with Christian faith.

His approach, termed accommodation or inculturation, attracted upper-caste converts but provoked fierce controversy among fellow missionaries. Rome initially condemned certain practices, then permitted them in 1623, only to reverse that decision in the 18th century. De Nobili's Madurai mission nonetheless established a lasting template for indigenised Christianity that influenced 20th-century theological thinking, including the Second Vatican Council's openness to cultural adaptation in liturgy and worship.

Protestant Missions in the Colonial Era

British and German Protestant missions dramatically extended Christianity's geographic and social reach across India. Key milestones included:

Danish-Halle Mission (1706) — German Lutheran missionaries Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg and Heinrich Plütschau arrived at Tranquebar (a Danish enclave in Tamil Nadu), completing the first Tamil New Testament (1714), establishing schools, and inaugurating systematic vernacular Bible translation in India.
Serampore Trio (from 1800) — William Carey, Joshua Marshman, and William Ward set up the Serampore Mission near Calcutta. Carey translated the Bible into Bengali, Sanskrit, Marathi, Telugu, Punjabi, and over two dozen other languages, and co-founded Serampore College (1818), one of India's earliest degree-granting institutions.
London Missionary Society and Church Missionary Society — Active across Bengal, Bombay, and Madras Presidencies, these societies established schools, hospitals, and printing presses that shaped colonial civil society.
Basel Mission (1834) — German missionaries concentrated on the Mangalore and Coorg region, generating notable educational institutions and industrial cooperatives.

Mission Schools and Colleges: A Permanent Legacy

Mission institutions fundamentally shaped modern Indian education at a time when public schooling barely existed. Notable examples include:

Wilson College, Mumbai (1832) — founded by the Scottish missionary John Wilson; one of the premier arts and science colleges of western India.
Madras Christian College (1837) — among the oldest existing Christian colleges in Asia, producing generations of Indian scholars and administrators.
St. Stephen's College, Delhi (1881) — established by the Cambridge Brotherhood; one of India's most prestigious liberal-arts colleges to the present day.
Isabella Thoburn College, Lucknow (1886) — founded by American Methodist missionaries as the first women's college in Asia, symbolising the missions' commitment to female education.

Role in Social Reform: How Did Christianity Influence Indian Society?

Christian missionaries frequently allied with Indian reformers against caste discrimination and practices harmful to women and marginalised communities:

Opposition to untouchability — Mass conversion movements among Dalit communities in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Punjab offered an escape from ritual degradation; converts gained access to literacy and social mobility through mission schools and hospitals.
Women's education — Missionaries established girls' schools at a time when female education was socially stigmatised. Zenana missions sent female missionaries into secluded upper-class households to educate women who could not attend public schools.
Medical missions — Mission hospitals and dispensaries introduced Western medicine to rural India; leprosy asylums in particular became sites of social inclusion and care for the most marginalised.
Anti-sati and widow remarriage advocacy — Missionary voices reinforced and amplified the arguments of indigenous reformers such as Raja Ram Mohan Roy, contributing to the legislative abolition of sati (1829) and wider campaigns for widow remarriage.
Regional language development — Bible translations and mission-press grammars standardised orthography and vocabulary for dozens of Indian languages, effectively founding modern Indian vernacular scholarship.

Frequently Asked Questions

When did Christianity first arrive in India?

According to ancient tradition, the Apostle Thomas arrived on the Malabar Coast of Kerala in 52 CE, making the Indian Christian community one of the oldest in the world — pre-dating the Christianisation of most of Europe. The Thomas Christians have continuously preserved this apostolic origin claim across nearly two thousand years.

Who were the Syrian Christians and why are they historically significant?

Syrian Christians (also called Thomas Christians or Nasranis) are descendants of communities founded by St. Thomas's mission. They used Syriac liturgy and maintained ties with the Patriarchate of Antioch. Occupying a social standing equivalent to upper-caste Hindus, they represent one of the earliest sustained examples of Christianity adapting to a non-Semitic, non-Roman cultural context anywhere in the world.

What was the significance of Robert de Nobili's mission at Madurai?

Robert de Nobili (from 1606) pioneered the strategy of inculturation — adopting Brahmin dress, learning Sanskrit and Tamil, and presenting Christian teachings within a Hindu philosophical framework. His approach directly challenged the prevailing equation of Christianity with Portuguese colonial culture and provided an enduring model of contextualised evangelism that influenced global Catholic mission theology well into the 20th century.

How did Protestant missionaries contribute to Indian languages?

Beginning with Ziegenbalg's Tamil New Testament (1714) and culminating in William Carey's translations into over two dozen Indian languages, Protestant missionaries produced the first printed grammars, dictionaries, and scriptural texts for many regional languages. These works standardised orthography and vocabulary, making missions inadvertent but significant founders of modern Indian linguistic and literary scholarship.

What was the Goa Inquisition and what was its lasting impact?

The Goa Inquisition (1560–1812) was a tribunal established by the Portuguese to enforce Catholic orthodoxy in their Indian territories. It prosecuted converts suspected of secretly practising Hinduism or Islam, with penalties ranging from penance to death. Abolished in 1812, its legacy remains debated: it is widely seen as a symbol of colonial religious coercion and deeply affected the cultural memory of Goa's Hindu and Christian communities alike.

Sources and Further Reading

This article draws on IGNOU BHIC-133: Medieval and Modern India, which addresses the social and cultural transformations of India from the medieval period through the colonial era, including the role of Christian missions in reshaping education, language, and social structure.

Bayly, Susan. Saints, Goddesses and Kings: Muslims and Christians in South Indian Society 1700–1900. Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Neill, Stephen. A History of Christianity in India: The Beginnings to AD 1707. Cambridge University Press, 1984.
Frykenberg, Robert Eric. Christianity in India: From Beginnings to the Present. Oxford University Press, 2008.
Kooiman, Dick. Conversion and Social Equality in India. Manohar, 1989.
NCERT Class XI: Themes in World History — Chapter on religious traditions and their spread.