Obstacles to Christian Proselytization in India: Thread

There were three fundamental obstacles for the conversion of natives into Christianity: the nature of Hinduism; the structure of social life; and the role of the ‘priests’ of Hinduism (Brahmins).

Hinduism, the religion of the Hindus, was amorphous. It was very difficult for the Christian missionaries to target their attack:

Such a Hinduism appeared to ‘resist’ the onslaught of foreign religions, "anarchy and persecution”, and hold grounds for ages.

Conversion of the heathens of India, as the missionaries painfully discovered, did not depend so much on winning
the allegiance of a prince or the king as it did on converting the Brahmins. As Xavier saw the Brahmins:

The missionaries failed abysmally. They couldn't persuade Brahmins to give up Hinduism. Why? Xtianity believed that practices were guided by beliefs & criticizing practices would work. But Brahmins were unimpressed by the theological sophistication of Xtian critique of paganism

Due to the inability of Christianity to gain a serious foothold in the Indian society, William Hastie remarked that he saw Hinduism itself as:

However, what has changed over time, is the set of ‘wrongs’ identified by the intellectuals who 'critique' Hinduism. Christian priests moralized & seized the discourse about Brahmins and the caste system. 'Social scientists' of today draw from these same colonial lenses.

The problems that the Christian missionaries faced in India were the eternal problems faced by any proselytising religion: how best to root out erroneous beliefs and replace them with correct ones? Persecution and criticism of beliefs. Eg Portugese declared a war on Hindu priests

Notwithstanding persecution, Hinduism appeared difficult to eradicate. One could, and did, ban festivals, burial of the dead according to 'heathen’ practices, etc. As Massarella formulated:

Thus, an important weapon in Christianising the Roman Empire – the backing of political power with its attendant economic and coercive power – did not deliver the goods that it did once.

Forced thus to take the second route – criticism of beliefs
– Christianity began creating the Gestalts that we recognise today: Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. the hunt was on to locate the ‘Holy Book’ of the Hindus.

With overwhelming monotonicity in declaring our religion 'false'- missionaries began to ‘debate’ with the Brahmins on the consistency of their scriptures. But given the lack of mastery of Sanskrit or vernaculars, the texts were acquired through theft & forgery, though to no avail

Hinduism's absence of structure and having a fully organized and articulate social system, acted as the primary deterrents to Christian proselytization. Not to mention, with an inability to decipher the sheer complexity of our देव भाषा , Dharma remained elusive and impenetrable.

All passages are excerpts taken from S.N. Balagangadhara's "The Heathen in His Blindness"