Privileged Minorities: Syrian Christianity, Gender, and Minority Rights in Postcolonial India

223 Pages·2018·7.945 MB·English

by  Sonja Thomas

Padma Kaimal
K. Sivaramakrishnan
Anand A. Yang
Series Editors

Privileged
Minorities
Syrian Christianity, Gender, and
Minority Rights in Postcolonial India
Sonja Thomas
University of Washington Press
Seattle
Privileged Minorities was made possible in part by a grant from the Association for
Asian Studies First Book Subvention Program.
Copyright © 2018 by the University of Washington Press
Printed and bound in the United States of America
Composed in Minion Pro, typeface designed by Robert Slimbach
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any
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information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
University of Washington Press
www.washington.edu/uwpress
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Thomas, Sonja, author.
Title: Privileged minorities : Syrian Christianity, gender, and minority rights in postcolonial
India / Sonja Thomas.
Description: Seattle : University of Washington Press, 2018. | Series: Global South Asia |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2018002613 (print) | LCCN 2018004513 (ebook) | ISBN 9780295743837
(ebook) | ISBN 9780295743820 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780295743844 (paperback :
alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Syriac Christians—India—Kerala—Social conditions. | Minorities—India—
Kerala—Social conditions. | Women—India—Kerala—Social conditions. | Kerala
(India)—Social conditions.
Classification: LCC DS432.S965 (ebook) | LCC DS432.S965 T47 2018 (print) |
DDC 305.6/8154095483—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018002613
Cover photograph: Annamma Vellaplamuryil. Photograph by Thomas Matthew
Theempalangad.
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction .................................................. 3
1 Syrian Christians and “God’s Own Country” .....................20
2 Clothes Reading: Communal and Secular Clothing
“Choices” and Women’s Mobility in Kerala ......................35
3 Aryans and Dravidians: Syrian Christian Mythistories
and Intersectional Racialized Oppression ........................67
4 Who Are the Minorities? Gender, Minority Rights
Protesting, and the 1959 Liberation Struggle ......................90
5 A Life without Religion: Textbooks, Morality,
and Protesting across Religious Divides .........................115
Conclusion: Postsecular Feminisms
and the Charismatic Movement ...............................147
Notes 157
Bibliography 185
Index 201

Acknowledgments
I finished the bulk of this manuscript during the 2015–2016 academic
year, when I was also fortunate enough to be caring for my aging father,
Dr. Thomas Matthew Theempalangad. My dad was once a seminarian; later
he studied to be a doctor. He had a deep appreciation for the Aramaic lan-
guage and Eastern rite Christian traditions. When I was a child, after eve-
ning prayers and the rosary, we’d read from the Bible. My dad would then
quiz us on passages or ask us theological questions. My five siblings and
my mother would often tire of the back-and-forth debates, but I never did.
I know now that he was the reason I chose to study issues of religion and
secularism in South Asia. My dad passed away in February 2016. This book
could not have been written without his insights, his help with translations,
or his incredible photo archive. Dad, I miss you terribly.
During the same academic year, I was fortunate to be a visiting scholar at
Lehigh University in the Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality
Studies and the Department of Religion Studies. To Monica Miller and
Chris Driscoll, I am in awe of your collaborative spirit and have benefited
immensely from our conversations on how to translate interdisciplinarity
to the discipline-structured academy. To Chiara Minestrelli, Michael Raposa,
Ben Wright, Rob Rozehnal, Khurram Hussain, Jodi Eichler-Levine, Anna-
bella Pitkin, Nandini Deo, and Marian Gaumer, every conversation I had
with each and every one of you was so insightful. I am grateful to have met
and collaborated with you. A special thank you to all those involved with the
Religion Studies Brown Bag Series; the Women, Gender and Sexuality Stud-
ies lunch lectures; and the Feminisms Beyond the Secular conference.
To my mentors at Rutgers University—Jasbir Puar, Elizabeth Grosz, and
Ethel Brooks—I am amazed at how your guidance during my graduate
school years continues to shape me. I am proud to be your student. To
Kathleen Powers, I miss you and our conversations, and I wish I could tell
you how much your insights shaped this project and continue to shape my
other research as I go forward. To Radhika Balakrishnan, thank you for the
work that you do; I am forever grateful for the opportunities you’ve opened
up for me, and for the mentorship you offer to women of color in academia.
vii
viii Acknowledgments
Mona Bhan, you are the scholar I aspire to be! I cannot tell you how much
your friendship and your collaboration mean to me, and I’m looking for-
ward to many a future South Asia conference.
I first began envisioning this project in the fall of 2011 at the American
Institute of Indian Studies workshop. I’d like to thank the AIIS and all
involved in the workshop. Thanks to Paul Josephson, John Holt, Jason
Petrulus, Sharleen Mondal, Chris Driscoll, David Stroll, Megan Cook, Paula
Harrington, and SherAli Tereen for feedback on chapters. Thanks also to
my feminist collaborators in the Women’s Studies PhD group, including
(but not limited to) Jenny Musto, Ashley Glassburn Falzetti, Vange Heiliger,
Andrea Breau, and Laura Foster. I remember a time, years ago, when we
voiced our hope that, with our first collaborative conference, we were mak-
ing lifelong scholarly connections. I’m so incredibly happy to know that this
has indeed been the case. I’m grateful to all of you for your continued efforts
to help build antiracist feminist spaces for Women’s Studies PhD graduates.
To Keely Sutton, thank you for your help in understanding caste and class
dynamics within the Mappila Muslim community. And to Swapna Thot-
tathil, I so appreciate your insights into the Syrian Christians in Malabar
and the class disparities within the community. Thank you all.
At Colby College, I have thrived under the mentorship of Lisa Arellano,
Walter Hatch, Nikky Singh, Anindyo Roy, Mark Tappan, and Lyn Mikel
Brown. Thank you for making this job worth every minute. Thank you to
my research assistant, Mansi Hitesh, for your keen eye. Thanks as well to
my friends and colleagues Dean Allbritton, Bibiana Fuentes, Elsa Fan, Urmi
Engineer, and Sahan Dissanayake. And I am grateful for my endless con-
versations with Elizabeth LaCouture and Jason Petrullis about this project
and so much more. You make Maine winters bearable.
In India, I benefited from the guidance of J. Devika and the Centre for
Development Studies. Thanks to P. T. Chacko’s family for access to his pri-
vate library; to my immediate and extended family, especially the Ampala-
thumkal family; to Joy Theempalangad for help in locating members of the
community who were integral to my research; and to the Kananthanam
family. I thank all of you for letting me into your lives and for your help in
making this book a reality. I am especially grateful to the Ampalathumkal
family, the Powathil family, the Moolayil family, the Theempalangad family,
and the Pulickal family for letting me use their family photos. To Serin
George, I want to say that your photographs are beautiful, and I am so in
awe of your work. To the faculty of the AIIS program in Malayalam—Arun,
Bindu Teacher, and Prema Teacher—thank you for putting up with my
Acknowledgments ix
whining over reading and writing Sanskrit-based Malayalam words and for
encouraging me to work on those verb endings to get my conversational
skills up to damn-near-native-speaker quality. Thanks to two brilliant lin-
guists, S. Prema and Sri Kumar, for help in translating the circular letters,
work that I could not have done myself—you do know that I tend to com-
plain and get very frustrated with the Sanskrit-based words that no one uses
in colloquial Malayalam.
To Larin McLaughlin, Mike Baccam, Laurel Hecker, and Julie Van Pelt
at the University of Washington Press, thank you for your patience and
guidance through this process. And to all involved in the Global South Asia
series, I’m so very honored to be a part of this.
Thank you to my siblings, Diana Thomas, Helen Davis, Aisha Thomas,
Tommy Thomas, and Mallika Towne, and to my mother, Mary Thomas.
Yes, I’m the only “nonsciencey” one, but I do appreciate all your feedback.
And, finally, to my daughter, Thresia Mary Reddy: You are the best thing
that ever happened to me. I love you so much.