Christmas: How India's pluralistic past shows the way forward
On December 1, 1581, a rather gruesome spectacle played out in the manor of Tyburn in Middlesex County, England. Three Catholic Jesuit priests, the most noteworthy among them being the future Saint Edmund Campion, were dragged out, then 'hanged, drawn and quartered' — a phrase that implied hanging and brutalisation of the body. If you watched Mel Gibson's Braveheart and how his character, William Wallace, is executed, you will have some idea how that went.
They were the latest (but not the last) victims of Queen Elizabeth Tudor's zealous persecution of Catholics in her realm. At the same time, half a world away in Fatehpur Sikri, the court of Emperor Jalaluddin Muhammad Akbar was engaging with Portuguese Jesuit priests to understand and appreciate their faith even as the imperial ateliers were busy painting Nativity scenes on canvas. What resulted from this was an amazing cultural efflorescence that fused the traditions of the two most dominant world religions—Christianity and Islam—and, as one historian put it, "the most visually potent figural iconography ever devised by a Muslim power".
Christianity had been in India for much longer — since 52 AD when Thomas the Apostle landed in what is today Kerala and converted people to the new faith and established churches, going by the Catholic tradition. Historians often doubt this story about Doubting Thomas, but the historical record seems to suggest the presence of Christian settlements in India by the fourth century AD.
The Catholic tradition also tells us that Saint Thomas was martyred about 20 years after he first arrived in India at a place in modern-day Chennai that is now called St Thomas Mount, and his mortal remains were entombed at Santhome (Mylapore) where a grand church, the San Thome Basilica, stands today. The Portuguese built it in the 16th century, replacing another older church that had somehow become a revered place for not just Christians but also Muslims and Hindus. The Venetian traveller Marco Polo had, in the 13th century, written that the Muslims revered St Thomas as one of their own and a great prophet. About 30 years later, Italian Franciscan friar Odoric of Pordenone, visiting St Thomas Mount, found the church filled with Hindu idols. Then in the 16th century, before the Portuguese took over the place and built their church, one of their pastors, Duarte Barbosa, found the church deserted except for a Muslim fakir who was managing the place and lighting a lamp there every day.
It's not known if Barbosa appreciated the fact that a Muslim fakir was taking care of a Christian shrine. But less than a century later, another Portuguese would record for posterity how Christian celebrations were flourishing in the court of the Muslim Timurid emperor, who called himself Shahenshah-i Hindustan, and whose Hindu subjects had started seeing him as an avatar of Vishnu.
Jesuit priest Jerome Xavier was in Lahore, the new capital of the Mughal Empire, in 1597 when he documented how Christmas was celebrated by the Mughals: a description that someone sitting in Lahore, or Delhi, or Guwahati today will be able to relate to in some ways. "At Christmas [1597] our brother Bendict de Goes prepared a manger and cradle as exquisite as those of Goa itself, which heathens (read Hindus) and Muhammadans, as well as Christians, thronged to see. In the evening masses were said with great ceremony, and a pastoral dialogue on the subject of the Nativity was enacted by some youths in the Persian tongue, with some Hindustani proverbs interspersed (adjunctis aliquot Industani sententiis)," Xavier wrote.
He continued: "At the conclusion of the sacred office, the gates were opened to all: and such was the piety of the throng of Heathen and Muhammadans that on seeing the child Jesus lying in the cradle they bowed themselves to the ground in worship. Such was the crowd of spectators in those days that the cradle was kept open till the eighth day after Epiphany—the fame of the spectacle spread through the town and brought even outsiders to see the sight."
Xavier also observed that more Hindus were coming with offerings, and at least one woman he had spoken with had said she was blessed with a son as she had asked "Bibi Mariam" (Mother Mary) to bless her with one and had come to return thanks. This cross-faith appeal of Christian holy figures has only grown over the centuries, as has the popularity of Christmas in India. In his last post on Facebook in April this year, my father, Surendra Kumar Sharma, shared a photo of Christ and asked the Lord to save us all from the pandemic. I had tested positive for COVID then and my father was very worried. Days later, he himself succumbed to it. But that a Hindu man turned to the Christian 'Son of God' to save his family says something about the syncretic tradition of this country.
Today, the popularity of Christmas has grown so much that it has almost attained a secular character. It's common for non-Christians to sign off with a 'Merry Christmas' greeting or install the Christmas tree and the star at their homes. Even when these are missing, eating a special dinner on the day, or hanging decorative lights from balconies is common.
A lot of it has to do with pop culture and mass media. After all, Hollywood taught us to say "Jesus Christ!" in unpleasant or difficult situations; or long for a serendipitous meeting with that special someone on Christmas like in the nineties hit, Serendipity; or nurse heartbreaks by listening to George Michael's Last Christmas. For so many of us, this has been part of our growing-up experience.
Unfortunately, this syncretism built over centuries is now under attack from a virulent politics of hate. It sees pluralism as an albatross around the republic's neck. No wonder then that attacks on churches and church-run institutions are on the rise, and vigilante groups now openly threaten believers and non-believers alike for celebrating "foreign festivals" like Christmas. Perhaps this Christmas, the nation needs to pledge to reclaim its pluralism.
The writer is a PhD research scholar in History at the University of British Columbia, Canada, and the author of the book, Allahu Akbar: Understanding the Great Mughal in Today's India.
