Being Tamil is my God-given ethnic origin. I am thankful to God for such an ethnic race with a beautiful language, culture, habits, talents …For many thousands of years, Tamils have lived as Hindus - a religion born out of the revelations God has made to people of this region in the Indian subcontinent. From this religion and its practices, Tamils grew up in a culture strongly influenced by Hinduism. The culture and habits of Tamil life were deeply rooted in Hinduism.
Christianity is a religion, born from God's revelation to humanity through the people of Israel. It came to India and Sri Lanka after many centuries of growth elsewhere in middle east, Roman empire and the western world, loaded with its own cultural values of those countries. The first missionaries who came to us at the beginning of the 16th century were sons and daughters of a church of their times. And the time was the counter reformation period. when Roman catholic churches were countering the reformation started by the reformers after reading the bible newly translated from latin into the vernacular. The churches founded by the missionaries on our soil were actually transplanted churches. That is like transplanting a grown up tree into a new place/soil/surrounding!
The conversion of Tamils in India and in Sri Lanka which took place during the 16th and 17during the Portuegese colonial rule was essentially a conversion to a new religion that promised salvation rather than a conversion by convictions of the new religion. Christianity then being a religion that had a long growth in Europe with Latin as its language and the European missionaries were not conversant with Tamil, lay catechists helped in the teaching of basic truths and some prayers enabling new converts to participate in the liturgies.
The radical challenges of this new religion Christianity was not accepted by the new converts the Tamils. Tamils were for centuries deeply rooted in Hinduism which was dominated by Brahmins who claimed themselves to be of divine origin or priestly caste. The Tamil people had a system of caste divisions or gradings according to the different jobs done for the high caste Tamils. In short Tamils were living with the belief that the caste divisions in life were divinely instituted and dominated by the highest cast the Brahmins.
Christianity that started after divine revelations made to the Jewish people. God became man in Jesus and through Jesus revealed God's plan of salvation. God's revelation through Jesus that God is the Father of all humans and consequently all human beings are equally children of God without any division or discrimination.
Missionaries of the 16th century coming from the latin counter/reformation churches, transplanted the churches of their motherland among the Tamils who were deeply rooted in a Hindu Brahministic culture. New converts anxious to be saved through the new religion, did not have the Bible in Tamil nor understood the faith formula of the church, they only learnt a few prayers in Tamil.
A key element of this new religion started by the disciples of Jesus Christ was based on the Jesus revelation that God was the creator and father of all creation including humanity. If God is addressed as our father, in the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples, then all human beings are his children. That is why Jesus taught to love one another as equal brothers and sisters.
And again Jesus' insistence on a radical notion of love and forgiveness, makes Christiantity a unique religion compared to others. Both love and forgiveness are like two coins with double sides. The coin on love has on one side says love yourself and the other side says love your neighbour as yourself.
Similarly in the prayer Jesus taught his disciples, forgiveness has two sides of the same coin - forgive the other as God forgives you. This unique commandments about love and forgives makes Christians to live always as communities with other human beings. Solidarity love forgiveness are essential elements of Christianity.
But for the new Tamil converts, who prayed to God as their Father, accepting all human beings as children of God, with equal dignity was a challenge. Brought up in Brahministic Hinduism, which said that caste system is by divine will, accepting all human beings as equal and to be loved without discrimination was a challenge. In spite of the missionaries trying to teach them to love all equally, Tamil Christians could not be rooted away from their deep rooted caste conscious. Hence the missionaries built different churches for different castes and had a special column in baptismal registers to indicate the cast of the new born child. In short, the Tamil Christians prayed to God as their Father, but did not accept the under-side of that reality, namely that all human beings are equal brothers and sisters. Hence they practiced a comfortable but discriminating Christianity. I call it a compromising Christianity.
