Thomas who was a Jew by birth came in search of Indian Jews, after years of evangelism the apostle was martyred and his remains were buried at the St Thomas Mount in Mylapore, Chennai (Madras).

The Acts of Thomas mention that the first converts were Malabarese Jews, who had settled in India before the birth of Christ. Following the discovery of the Cape route by the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama in the 15th century, Western Christian communities of Latin Christians and Protestants formed in the cities of Portuguese Goa and Damaon, British Bombay, French Pondicherry etc. As a result Malankara Nasranis (Thomasine Christians) have a unique Syro- Malabarese culture which includes Christianised Jewish elements with some Hindu customs and values as well. There is a general scholarly consensus that Christian communes were firmly established on the coast of Kerala by the 6th century AD, these were Eastern Christians of the Church of the East in India, who worshipped in Syriac. The written records of St Thomas Christians have it that Christianity was introduced to the Indian subcontinent by Thomas the Apostle, who sailed to the Malabar region in 52 AD, the present-day Kerala state. As such, it will be of great interest to scholars of Religion in India, World Christianity, Religion and Politics and Interreligious Dialogue, as well as Religious Studies and South Asian Studies.Christianity is the third-largest religion after Hinduism and Islam, just ahead of Sikhism and Buddhism with about 27.8 million adherents, making up 2.3 percent of the population as per the 2011 Census of India. This book gives an important insight into the link between language and religion in India. Examining the content and context of Christian attention to Hindi, it is shown to have been deployed as a political and cultural tool by Christians in India. These works are written to sway public perceptions by promoting particular forms of citizenship in the context of fostering the use of Hindi. Using three case studies, the book demonstrates how Hindi Christian writing strategically presents Christianity as linguistically Hindi, culturally Indian, and theologically informed by other faiths. However, this book shows how Christian writers in India have adopted Hindi in order to promote a form of Christianity that can be seen as Indian, desī, and rooted in the religio-linguistic world of the Hindi belt.

In public portrayals, Hindi has been the language of Hindus and Urdu the language of Muslims, but Christians have been usually been associated with the English of the foreign 'West'. However, this book shows how Christian writers in This is the first academic study of Christian literature in Hindi and its role in the politics of language and religion in contemporary India.

This is the first academic study of Christian literature in Hindi and its role in the politics of language and religion in contemporary India.

Hindi christian