10 CHAPTER 10: SOCIAL REFORMS AND CHALLENGE TO THE CASTE SYSTEM
**Learning Objectives**
By the end of this chapter, you should be able to:
– Analyse the missionaries’ theological and practical responses to the caste system
– Understand how education functioned as a tool of social transformation
– Describe the mission’s outreach to marginalised communities in Travancore
– Evaluate the relationship between Christian conversion and social mobility
– Assess the opposition that missionary social reform provoked and its lasting effects
—
### 10.1 Missionary Attitudes toward Caste
The caste system that Benjamin Bailey encountered in Travancore was among the most rigid and elaborate in India. It governed not only occupation and marriage but the most intimate details of daily life: who could eat with whom, who could enter which spaces, whose shadow could fall upon whom without causing pollution. The system was sanctioned by religious tradition, enforced by social pressure, and policed by violent punishment for those who transgressed its boundaries. For the missionaries, caste represented both a theological challenge and a practical obstacle to their work.
The evangelical theology that animated the CMS mission was, in principle, fundamentally opposed to caste distinctions. The New Testament declared that in Christ there was “neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female”—a vision of human equality before God that was incompatible with a system that ranked people by birth. The CMS missionaries believed that all human beings were equally sinful and equally in need of salvation, equally capable of receiving divine grace, and equally valued as bearers of the divine image. These convictions made caste discrimination, in theory, indefensible.
In practice, however, the missionaries’ response to caste was more complex and more cautious than their theology might suggest. The Syrian Christian community, which was the mission’s primary constituency, had long observed caste distinctions. Syrian Christians considered themselves to be of high status, comparable to Nairs, and they maintained purity practices that distanced them from lower-caste communities. To challenge these practices too directly would be to risk alienating the very community the mission was trying to reform.
The missionaries themselves were not entirely free from assumptions of social hierarchy. As 19th century Britons, they inhabited a society structured by class distinctions, and they did not always recognise the parallels between the hierarchies they had left behind and those they encountered in India. Some missionaries were more egalitarian in their instincts than others; some were more willing to accommodate local customs for the sake of maintaining relationships. The mission’s approach to caste evolved over time, shaped by experience, by the influence of indigenous converts, and by the broader currents of evangelical thought.
Bailey’s personal attitude toward caste appears to have been one of principled opposition tempered by practical caution. He did not make dramatic public gestures of caste defiance, but neither did he endorse the system. In his educational work, in his employment practices, and in his personal relationships, he gradually and quietly challenged caste boundaries, creating spaces where people of different backgrounds could interact on terms of greater equality than the wider society permitted.
—
### 10.2 Education as Social Liberation
The most powerful tool Bailey wielded against the caste system was not preaching or polemic but education. The mission schools, by their very existence, challenged the caste-based monopoly on knowledge. When a child from a marginalised community learned to read, when she encountered the same texts that high-caste students studied, when she demonstrated that intellectual ability was not determined by birth—the ideological foundations of caste were weakened.
Bailey’s commitment to universal education, rooted in his evangelical conviction that all people should read the Bible, had social implications that went far beyond the religious. Literacy was a form of power. In a society where knowledge was hoarded by elites, the spread of literacy to previously excluded groups was a redistribution of cultural capital. The school became a site of social levelling, a place where the hierarchies of the wider society were, if not overturned, at least temporarily suspended.
The curriculum of the mission schools reinforced this levelling tendency. Students studied the same texts, regardless of their caste background. They sat in the same classrooms—a practice that was itself a breach of caste protocol, which required physical separation to prevent pollution. They were evaluated by the same standards. The implicit message was that worth was determined by effort and ability, not by birth—a message that was profoundly subversive of caste ideology.
This is not to say that the mission schools were utopian spaces of perfect equality. Prejudices persisted among students and sometimes among teachers. Families from higher castes sometimes objected to their children studying alongside those they considered inferior. The missionaries themselves, products of a class-stratified society, did not always live up to their own ideals. But the direction of travel was clear, and its cumulative effect over decades was transformative.
The economic impact of education further undermined caste. Literate graduates of mission schools could access employment in the colonial administration, in commercial firms, and in mission institutions—employment that was based on qualification rather than birth. A person from a traditionally disadvantaged community who secured such employment achieved a measure of economic independence and social status that the caste system was designed to prevent. The connection between education and economic mobility, once established, created a powerful incentive for families to seek schooling for their children, regardless of traditional restrictions.
—
### 10.3 Outreach to Marginalised Communities
While the mission’s primary focus was on the Syrian Christian community, its educational and evangelistic work extended to groups that occupied much lower positions in the caste hierarchy. The Ezhavas, a large community traditionally associated with toddy-tapping and agriculture, were among those who benefited from mission education. So too were various communities classified as “untouchable” under Brahminical norms—Pulayas, Paraiyars, and others who faced the most severe forms of social exclusion and economic exploitation.
Outreach to these communities was fraught with difficulty. The missionaries risked alienating their Syrian Christian base, who might not wish to be associated with a mission that welcomed lower-caste people. They risked provoking the hostility of upper-caste Hindus, who saw any challenge to caste hierarchy as a threat to the social order. And they faced the practical challenge of reaching communities that were often impoverished, geographically dispersed, and understandably suspicious of outsiders offering help.
Yet the logic of the gospel, as the missionaries understood it, compelled them to reach out to all people, regardless of social status. The message of salvation was for everyone; the benefits of education should be available to everyone; the dignity of bearing God’s image belonged to everyone. These convictions, consistently applied, led the mission into relationships with communities that had been systematically excluded from education, from economic opportunity, and from the basic courtesies of social interaction.
Bailey’s personal involvement in this outreach is difficult to document in detail. The mission records tend to focus on institutional developments rather than individual interactions. But we know that the CMS schools enrolled students from a range of caste backgrounds, that the press employed workers from various communities, and that the mission’s preaching reached audiences that included people of all social levels. The quiet, persistent inclusiveness of the mission’s institutions was, in its own way, as radical as any public denunciation of caste.
—
### 10.4 The “Equality of Souls” Doctrine in Practice
The theological basis for the mission’s challenge to caste was what might be called the “equality of souls” doctrine: the conviction that all human beings, regardless of their social condition, possessed souls of equal value in the sight of God. This doctrine had deep roots in Christian tradition, but it had often been honoured in the breach rather than in practice. The evangelical revival of the 18th and 19th centuries had given it new emphasis, linking it to the anti-slavery movement and to campaigns for social reform in Britain.
In the Travancore context, the equality of souls had specific and radical implications. If a Pulaya labourer and a Nambudiri Brahmin were equally valuable in God’s sight, then the elaborate system of purity and pollution that separated them was a human invention, not a divine ordinance. If Christ had died for all, then all had equal access to salvation and equal standing in the community of faith. The logic was inescapable, even if the missionaries did not always follow it to its most radical conclusions.
The practice of baptism embodied this equality in a particularly powerful way. In baptism, all converts—regardless of their previous caste status—became members of the same spiritual family. They confessed the same faith, received the same sacrament, and were welcomed into the same community. The baptismal font was, in theory, a place where caste distinctions were washed away. This was the theological ideal, even if the lived reality of the church often fell short of it.
The Eucharist, or Holy Communion, reinforced the message. At the communion table, all believers knelt together and received the same bread and wine. The symbolic significance of this shared meal was immense in a society where eating together was one of the most sensitive markers of caste boundaries. The mission’s insistence that all communicants receive the elements together, without discrimination, was a direct challenge to caste protocols that regulated commensality.
—
### 10.5 Opposition from Upper Castes and Social Tensions
The mission’s challenge to caste did not go uncontested. Upper-caste Hindus viewed missionary activity with suspicion, seeing it as an attack on the religious and social foundations of their world. Complaints were made to the Maharaja’s government; attempts were made to restrict missionary access to certain areas; social pressure was brought to bear on those who associated with the missionaries or enrolled their children in mission schools.
The Syrian Christian community, while benefiting from mission education, was often resistant to the missionaries’ more egalitarian impulses. Syrian Christians had achieved a respected place in Kerala’s social hierarchy over many centuries, and they were not eager to see that status undermined by association with lower-caste converts. Tensions arose within congregations when converts from disadvantaged backgrounds sought full participation in church life. Some Syrian Christians withdrew their support from the mission, preferring to maintain their social standing rather than embrace the missionaries’ vision of an inclusive church.
The Maharaja’s government was caught between competing pressures. On one hand, the British Resident supported the mission and its educational work, which the government recognised as beneficial. On the other hand, the government was responsible for maintaining social order in a society where caste was a fundamental organising principle. The result was a policy of cautious tolerance: the mission was permitted to operate, but its more provocative challenges to caste norms were sometimes restrained.
Bailey navigated these tensions with characteristic pragmatism. He did not abandon the principle of human equality, but neither did he make it a point of public confrontation that would have jeopardised the mission’s broader work. His approach was incremental rather than revolutionary—creating spaces where caste boundaries were softened or ignored, trusting that the cumulative effect of education, economic opportunity, and Christian teaching would gradually erode the system from within.
—
### 10.6 Conversions and Community Formation
The most visible outcome of the mission’s outreach across caste lines was the formation of new Christian communities composed of converts from disadvantaged backgrounds. These communities, sometimes called “mission converts” to distinguish them from the ancient Syrian Christian community, represented a new social formation in Kerala—groups of people who had, through conversion, stepped outside the Hindu caste system and into a new identity defined by faith rather than birth.
The experience of conversion was complex. For some, it was a genuinely spiritual experience—an encounter with Christian teaching that transformed their understanding of themselves, their relationship with God, and their place in the world. For others, conversion was also, or primarily, a social strategy—a way of escaping the disabilities of caste, accessing education and employment, and achieving a measure of dignity and security that was unavailable within the Hindu social order. In practice, these motivations were often intertwined, and it would be simplistic to separate them.
Conversion carried costs as well as benefits. Converts often faced rejection from their families and communities. They lost the social networks that had provided support in times of need. They became, in some sense, strangers to their own past, inhabiting a liminal space between the community they had left and the Christian community they had joined. The mission provided some support—education, employment, a new community—but the psychological and social costs of conversion were real and lasting.
The formation of these new Christian communities changed the demographics of Kerala Christianity. What had been, at the beginning of the 19th century, a predominantly Syrian Christian community became, over time, a more diverse body that included people from a range of caste backgrounds. This diversity brought both vitality and tension, as the church struggled to reconcile its theological commitment to equality with the persistent reality of social hierarchy.
—
### 10.7 Bailey’s Personal Relationships Across Caste Lines
The archival record gives us only glimpses of Bailey’s personal relationships with people of different caste backgrounds, but those glimpses are suggestive. His closest working relationships were with Syrian Christians and with converts who served as language informants, translators, teachers, and press workers. These relationships, built over decades of daily collaboration, transcended the formal distance that often characterised European-Indian interactions in the colonial period.
Bailey’s willingness to learn from his Indian colleagues—to be corrected by them on matters of language and cultural understanding—implied a respect for their knowledge and judgment that was not always characteristic of colonial relationships. The missionary who sits at the feet of a native informant, struggling to master a difficult language, is in a position of dependency that complicates the colonial hierarchy. Bailey spent years in this position, and the relationships he formed during that time appear to have been genuine and mutually respectful.
This is not to romanticise Bailey as a proto-egalitarian who was free from the prejudices of his time. He was a product of early 19th century Britain, and he undoubtedly carried assumptions about the superiority of British civilisation and evangelical Christianity. But his life’s work—the schools he founded, the press he established, the translations he produced—created opportunities for people across caste boundaries that they would not otherwise have had. The effects of his work were more egalitarian than his personal attitudes may have been.
The testimony of those who worked with him is suggestive. Indian colleagues described Bailey as patient, fair, and genuinely interested in their welfare. He was known to advocate for his workers, to support them in times of difficulty, and to treat them with a dignity that was not always extended to Indians by Europeans. These personal qualities, as much as any theological principle, shaped the character of the mission community and its relationships across lines of caste and race.
—
### The Long Arc of Social Change
The challenge that Bailey and his colleagues mounted to the caste system did not, in their lifetimes, achieve anything like its dismantling. Caste persisted in Kerala, as it persisted throughout India, adapting to new circumstances and finding new forms of expression. Even within the Christian church, caste distinctions did not disappear; they were modified, softened, but not eradicated.
Yet the trajectory that Bailey helped set in motion had lasting consequences. The mission schools demonstrated that intellectual ability was not the monopoly of any caste. The mission press produced texts that could be read by anyone, regardless of birth. The mission congregations created spaces where, however imperfectly, people of different backgrounds worshipped together. The economic opportunities that education opened were available to those who had traditionally been denied them.
Over the decades and generations that followed, these small beginnings contributed to larger transformations. The social reform movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, led by figures like Sri Narayana Guru among the Ezhavas and Ayyankali among the Pulayas, drew on the language of human dignity and equality that the missionaries had helped to circulate. The struggle against caste discrimination, which continues in Kerala and throughout India to this day, has deep roots that include, among many other sources, the quiet, persistent witness of the CMS mission schools and their founder.
—
**Key Takeaways**
– CMS missionaries were theologically opposed to caste distinctions but navigated the issue cautiously to maintain relationships with the Syrian Christian community.
– Education was the most powerful tool for challenging caste, as it distributed knowledge and economic opportunity across social boundaries.
– The mission extended its outreach to marginalised communities, including Ezhavas and groups classified as “untouchable,” despite the risks this posed.
– The doctrines of baptism and Eucharist embodied an ideal of spiritual equality that challenged caste protocols of purity and commensality.
– Upper-caste Hindus and some Syrian Christians opposed the mission’s egalitarian tendencies, creating tensions that missionaries had to manage.
– Conversion created new Christian communities outside the caste system, though social hierarchies persisted even within the church.
– Bailey’s personal relationships with Indian colleagues demonstrated a degree of mutual respect that softened colonial hierarchies.
—
**Discussion Questions**
1. Why did the missionaries not mount a more direct and public challenge to the caste system? What constraints shaped their approach?
2. How did education function as a tool of social transformation, even when it was not explicitly framed as such?
3. Consider the motivations of converts from disadvantaged backgrounds. Were they primarily spiritual, primarily social, or an inseparable mixture of both?
4. In what ways did caste distinctions persist within the Christian community despite theological opposition to them?
5. What is the relationship between Bailey’s social reforms and the later social reform movements in Kerala led by figures like Sri Narayana Guru and Ayyankali?
—
**Primary Source: Bailey on the Equality of Believers**
*”In the house of God, there is no distinction between high and low, rich and poor. All come as sinners to the throne of grace; all receive the same pardon through the blood of Christ. The distinctions that prevail in the world have no place in the church, where we are all one body, members of one another. This is the teaching of scripture, and it must be the practice of the people of God.”*
*(CMS Archives, C I1/M9, Bailey to Secretary, 10 November 1835. Spelling and punctuation modernised.)*
—
**Further Reading**
Bayly, Susan. (1989). *Saints, Goddesses and Kings: Muslims and Christians in South Indian Society, 1700-1900*. Cambridge University Press. (For the social context of religious identity in South India.)
Forrester, Duncan B. (1980). *Caste and Christianity: Attitudes and Policies on Caste of Anglo-Saxon Protestant Missions in India*. Curzon Press. (The definitive study of missionary approaches to caste.)
Jeffrey, Robin. (1992). *Politics, Women and Well-Being: How Kerala Became a ‘Model’*. Palgrave Macmillan. (For the long-term trajectory of social change in Kerala.)
—
