LANGUAGE IN INDIA

IN SEARCH OF IDENTITY
A CASE STUDY OF TAMIL CHRISTIANS
M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.

CHRISTIANS IN INDIA

Christians in India number over 24 millions according to Census of India 2001. They form the third largest religious community in India, but make up only 2.3% of the total population. The Southern States of Kerala, Tamilnadu, and Andhra Pradesh account for a little over 50% of Indian Christians. Various religious groups, including Christians, have questioned census figures for 2001.

CHRISTIANS IN TAMILNADU

In Tamilnadu, there are nearly 4 million Christians. An analysis of district-wise distribution would indicate that the Christian population is rather well spread out in all the districts of Tamilnadu. The earlier concentration of Christianity in the southern districts of Tamilnadu and in the coastal belt has given place to widespread dispersal Christians in urban centers of Tamilnadu. In the past, the intensity of early missionary work in the southern districts and the coastal areas as well as the prevalent social and economic conditions of some of Hindu castes were associated with the growth of Christianity in these parts. A majority of the converts came originally from a community called NaaTaar (Nadar) and the minority from other so-called touchable and untouchable castes.

While some may claim continuity for the Tamil Church as far back as the advent and martyrdom of St. Thomas, one of the twelve disciples of Jesus Christ, near Chennai, large-scale conversion to Christianity became a reality only after the arrival of European merchants and political power since the eighteenth century of the Christian era.

SOCIAL COMPOSITION OF TAMIL CHRISTIANS

The contribution of Christians—both native and European and in all walks of life—is immense, but does not receive our attention here. The Tamil Christians are not a single group except otherwise under the language banner. The major cleavage is between the Catholic and Protestant churches. Most of the Protestant churches come under the wellorganized and established Church of South India, patterned more or less on the basis of the methods of worship of the Anglican Church. However, in recent decades the spur in t he growth of Christianity among Tamils is due mainly to the spread of independent and Pentecostal churches.

A CHRISTIAN DIALECT OF TAMIL?

While it is possible to establish to some extent a Muslim dialect of Tamil, it is not possible to establish a separate Christian dialect of Tamil. The “Christian dialects” of Tamil are easily grouped under various caste and regional dialects. However, we notice a phenomenon of adoption of the dialect of the majority in a church by the minority of that church — a switchover from one’s own dialect to the dialect of the majority.

This switchover is preceded, in the speech of the majority, by a switchover to an urban form of language, showing an avoidance of regional markers. For instance, we notice that many non-Nadar Christian families native to the district/city of Coimbatore do no more exhibit their caste and regional markers and have switched over completely to the Nadar dialect of the Church.

TAMIL CHRISTIANS IDENTITY VIS-À-VIS LANGUAGE MECHANISMS

We shall now see the trends in the maintenance of identity by Protestant Tamil Christians and the language mechanisms that are cultivated to maintain the identity.

We shall do these under the following heads:

(i) Translation of the Bible into Tamil,
(ii) Religious practices,
(iii) Praise and Worship Songs, and
(iv) Pure Tamil.

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M. S. Thirumalai

The Morphodynamics of Bengali Compounds - Decomposing Them for Lexical Processing | The Ringed Realities | In Search of Identity - A Case Study of Tamil Christians | Practicing Literary Translation: A Symposium Round 9 | The English Language Teacher's Awareness and Perceptions | Technology for Indic Scripts - A User Perspective | HOME PAGE OF JULY 2006 ISSUE | HOME PAGE | CONTACT EDITOR