<i>South Asia’s Christians: Between Hindu and Muslim</i>, by Chandra Mallampalli

A persisting concern among South Asianists working on Christianity in the subcontinent is that despite a proliferation of nuanced scholarship on the multifaceted nature of the subject in recent decades, the historiography of South Asian Christianity remains missions-centric; the dominant portrayal of missions as handmaiden of colonialism continues to shape both popular and academic common sense. Chandra Mallampalli’s recent work addresses this problem. It serves as a general introduction to this ever-expanding field and an accessible synthesis of its key debates written by a scholar equally at home in South Asian Studies and the field of World Christianity.To address the immense temporal and spatial scope of the subject—an aspect that challenges any synthetic work on South Asia—Mallampalli employs the overarching framework of “cross-cultural and interreligious interactions” in the domains of knowledge production, debate, and conversion. This framework, which avoids downplaying differences in power or disagreement between the agents involved, is complemented by a modified version of the traditional approach tracing the trajectories of Thomas Christians, Catholicism, Protestantism, and Pentecostalism. This frame-within-a-frame approach allows the author to use a chronological method without being overly constrained by it. It also highlights interactions not only between Christians and Hindus or Muslims, as suggested by the subtitle, but also among diverse South Asian Christians themselves. The first two chapters introduce Thomas’s Christianity from ancient times and the entry of Catholicism in the early modern period, while most of the book focuses on developments from the colonial era to the present day. The result is a single-volume introduction unparalleled in its ability to present a wide range of essential themes and the histories of different groups of South Asian Christians, elite and otherwise.Each chapter or section introduces its own set of framing debates and details the arguments of significant contributors. This structure occasionally tests whether the overarching frames can fully accommodate the diversity of material. Combined with the fast-paced geographical transitions in some chapters, this might initially leave readers new to the study of South Asia feeling unmoored as they move from one developed debate to another. Nevertheless, patient readers will be rewarded. While the chapters stand alone, they connect in intriguing ways. For instance, the chapter on “Upper Caste Converts to Protestantism” details the great costs at which elite converts, such as Pandita Ramabai, resisted colonial forms of Christianity to make room for its Indianization. Subsequent chapters present readers with Dalit theologies, which critique Sanskritizing Christianity as perpetuating their marginalization. These tensions are allowed to stand, showcasing the strengths of Mallampalli’s work: its irenic tone and judicious handling of key debates while leaving the author’s preferred positions subtly evident in the text.There is an implicit dialogue responding to critiques of Christianity’s relationship with colonialism, particularly in the wake of Edward Said’s Orientalism. Mallampalli’s careful historical treatment of knowledge formation and interreligious debate in the colonial era highlights for readers familiar with postcolonial literature the centrality of claims about Christianity in South Asia within that scholarship, even when it is not thematized as such. Without dismissing the validity of these critiques, Mallampalli complicates and deepens the picture constructively. For instance, in a chapter on the effects of Protestant usage of print in interreligious debate, Mallampalli notes the usefulness of the concept of “Protestantization” to describe the impact on the reconfiguration of South Asian religious traditions while pointing to the limits of this conceptualization. Similarly, the first chapter demonstrates how, at times, South Asian Christians were “not agents of imperialism but victims of it” (2). The chapter on accommodation and difference challenges conventional understandings of Catholic and Protestant approaches to culture by narrating the very real tensions within South Asian Catholic history, illustrating how power and sensitivity to difference intersect in unexpected ways (87).Despite the centrality of this implicit dialogue to this work, while Said is mentioned more than once, there are no direct citations. This choice—possibly made to keep the text manageable and approachable—sometimes makes it difficult to connect the subsequent scholarship, presented in impressive detail, to the specific claims and critiques that might have sparked their inquiries. For some, this might make Mallampalli’s engagement with critiques of Christianity as an instrument of imperialism seem somewhat oblique. Including select bibliographies at the end of each chapter would have benefited readers seeking to delve deeper into specific debates, but these issues are minor.The book is a major achievement, with the final section on the legacy of minoritization of Christians across South Asia by a variety of majoritarian religious nationalisms shedding light on an important aspect of contemporary reality with implications beyond scholarship. Mallampalli’s nuanced approach ensures that even readers who may disagree with his conclusions or language will appreciate the sensitivity and precision with which he presents discussions and their supporting evidence.In sum, Mallampalli’s book is an essential contribution to the study of South Asian Christianity, offering a rigorous and accessible account of the field’s key debates and challenges. It will undoubtedly serve as a valuable resource for scholars of religion, World Christianity, and South Asian studies alike.