Christian Women’s Journals and Vernacular Christianity: A Case Study of Vivekavathi in Telugu-Speaking Regions

Abstract

This article investigates the Vivekavathi journal, established in 1909 by Protestant Christian female missionaries for women readers in the Telugu-speaking regions of the Madras Presidency, India. The study delves into the journal’s influence on the formation and dissemination of Christian beliefs and values within the Telugu society during the early twentieth century, a period marked by the rise of a reading public facilitated by colonial state efforts and Christian missionary initiatives. Furthermore, the article reveals how Protestant female missionaries utilised the journal to promote a novel concept of womanhood among the Telugu-speaking population. The research underscores the journal’s effective engagement with women, highlighting their active participation in shaping religious practices, an exceptional accomplishment in light of the pervasive patriarchal systems and values that often imply limited agency for women in religious contexts.

Keywords:

• Christian family
• Christian journals
• desire and sexuality
• modern womanhood
• Telugu Christianity
• vernacular Christianity
• Vivekavathi
• women education
• women journals
• women missionaries

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Acknowledgements

I am thankful to the South Asia reviewers of this article for their valuable comments and suggestions. I thank K. Satyanarayana, EFL University, for his comments on the earlier draft. I also thank Tarangini Sriraman for sharing copies of the journal and providing feedback on the initial draft. Furthermore, I acknowledge Chandra Bhanu Nalamala for introducing me to and helping me to find the journal.

Notes

1. Robert Eric Frykenberg, Christianity in India: From Beginnings to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).

2. Chandra Mallampalli, Christians and Public Life in Colonial South India, 1836–1937: Contending with Marginality (London: Routledge Curzon, 2004).

3. Arun M. Jones, Missionary Christianity and Local Religion: American Evangelism in North India, 1836–1870 (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2017).

4. Susan Billington Harper, In the Shadow of Mahatma: Bishop Azariah and the Travails of Christianity in British India (New York: Routledge, 2019).

5. James Elisha Taneti, Caste, Gender, and Christianity in Colonial India: Telugu Women in Mission (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); James Elisha Taneti, Telugu Christians: A History (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2022).

6. Ashok Kumar Mocherla, Dalit Christians in South India: Caste, Ideology and Lived Religion (New York: Routledge, 2021).

7. Ursula King, Women and Spirituality: Voices of Protest and Promise (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1993): 37.

8. Santha Kumari Varikoti-Jetty, Christian Mission and Conversion: A Historical and Sociological and Anthropological Study of the Depressed Castes of India, 1850–1950 (Delhi: Christian World Imprints, 2019): 63–112; M. Moses, Andhra Pradesh Kraisthava Sangha Charitra (Christian Church History of Andhra Pradesh) (Tenali: Christian Truth Press, 2004); Bh. Sivasankaranarayanana, Andhra Pradesh District Gazetteers Anantapur (Hyderabad: Government Press, 1970): 126.

9. Dalits, formerly referred to as ‘untouchables’, occupy the lowest position in the Hindu caste hierarchy.

10. D.B. Forrester, Caste and Christianity: Attitudes and Policies on Caste of Anglo-Saxon Protestant Mission in India (London: Curzon Press, 1980): 69–96; Frykenberg, Christianity in India, 234–39; G.A. Oddie, ‘Christian Conversion in the Telugu Country, 1860–1900: A Case Study of One Protestant Movement in the Godavary-Krishna Delta’, IESHR 12, no. 1 (1975): 61–79; Taneti, Caste, Gender, and Christianity, 53–55; John C.B. Webster, The Dalit Christians: A History (Delhi: ISPCK, 2009): 51–56; Chandra Mallampalli, South Asia’s Christians: Between Hindu and Muslim (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023): 165–71; Chakali Chandra Sekhar, ‘In Search of a Touchable Body: Christian Mission and Dalit Conversions’, Religions, 10, no. 12 (2019): 1–14.

11. G.A. Oddie, ‘Missionaries as Social Commentators: The Indian Case’, in Missionary Encounters: Sources and Issues, ed. Robert A. Bickers and Rosemary Seton (Richmond: Curzon Press, 1996): 199–200; Padma Anagol, The Emergence of Feminism in India, 1850–1920 (New York: Routledge, 2005): 22–23.

12. Padma Anagol, ‘Indian Christian Women and Indigenous Feminism’, in Gender and Imperialism, ed. Claire Midgley (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998): 79–103; 81.

13. Taneti, Telugu Christians, 75–102; Chakali Chandra Sekhar, ‘Dalit Women and Colonial Christianity: First Telugu Bible Women as Teachers of Wisdom’, Economic & Political Weekly 56, no. 11 (2021): 57–63.

14. Elizabeth McCauley, ‘The Christian Literature in India’, Lutheran Woman’s Work 12, no. 8 (1919): 254.

15. For information on Telugu journals during the colonial period and their contribution to social reforms and women’s movements in India, see M. Ashitha, ‘Towards Emergence of a New “Womanhood”: The Case of Women’s Journals in Colonial India’, Journal of South Indian History 5, no. 2 (2019): 50–64; Shaik Mahaboob Basha, Print Culture and Women’s Voices: A Study of Telugu Journals, 1902–1960 (unpublished PhD thesis, Jawaharlal Nehru University, 2015); V. Ramakrishna, ‘Women’s Journals in Andhra during the Nineteenth Century’, Social Scientist 19, nos. 5/6 (1991): 80–87.

16. McCauley, ‘Christian Literature’, 255.

17. Mahaboob Basha talks of missionaries’ contribution to Hindu social reform and the Christian women missionaries’ perspective on Hindu women’s reform: Shaik Mahaboob Basha, ‘Christian Press and Hindu Social Reform: The Story of Vivekavathi’, Kakatiya Journal of Historical Studies 16, no. 1 (2021): 114–35.

18. Vivekavathi (October 1909): 1–5.

19. Vivekavathi (February 1910): 160.

20. Vivekavathi (April 1912): 197–98.

21. Mahaboob Basha, ‘Lesser Known Telugu Women’s Journals of the Colonial Period’, Kakatiya Journal of Historical Studies 8, no. 1 (2018): 39.

22. Vivekavathi (October 1913): 2.

23. Following Vivekavathi’s example, other Telugu women’s journals, such as Anasuya and Andhra Lakshmi, included images of women on their cover pages.

24. All translations from the journal by the author.

25. Vivekavathi (October 1913): 2–3.

26. P. Solomon Raj, The New Wine-Skins: The Story of the Indigenous Missions in Coastal Andhra Pradesh, India (Delhi: ISPCK, 2003): 94.

27. Vivekavathi (June 1912): 258.

28. Vivekavathi (October 1912): 2.

29. For further discussion, see Brian K. Pennington, Was Hinduism Invented? Britons, Indians, and the Colonial Construction of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); David N. Lorenzen, ‘Who Invented Hinduism?’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 41, no. 4 (1999): 630–59; Meenakshi Jain, Sati, Evangelicals, Baptist Missionaries and the Changing Colonial Discourse (New Delhi: Aryan Books International, 2016); Sharada Sugirtharajah, Imagining Hinduism: A Postcolonial Perspective (London: Routledge, 2003).

30. Vivekavathi (November 1915): 57–59; Vivekavathi (December 1913): 89.

31. Vivekavathi (October 1915): 4–7.

32. Vivekavathi (February 1910): 130–33; Vivekavathi (March 1910): 161–63.

33. Vivekavathi (December 1914): 87–92.

34. Vivekavathi (April 1920): 161–64.

35. Vivekavathi (June 1921): 213–14.

36. James Elisha Taneti, ‘Encounter between Protestant and Telugu Women’s Paradigms of Scripture’, posted on eScholarship@BC, Boston College University Libraries (Chestnut Hill, MA: Theology Department, Boston College, 2007): 84–85.

37. Pennington, Was Hinduism Invented?, 82; Jain, Sati, Evangelicals, 147.

38. Vivekavathi (June 1915): 281–83.

39. Sumathi Ramaswamy, Passions of the Tongue: Language and Devotion in Tamil India, 1891–1970 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); Sumathi Ramaswamy, The Goddess and the Nation: Mapping Mother India (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010).

40. Francesca Orsini, The Hindi Public Sphere 1920–1940: Language and Literature in the Age of Nationalism (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002): 192.

41. Vivekavathi (July 1910): 290.

42. Taneti, Caste, Gender, and Christianity, 74.

43. Bandaru Acchamamba, Abala Saccaharitra Ratnamala (History of Great Women) (Madras: S.V. Krishna & Co., 1913): 1.

44. M.L. Orchard and K.S. McLaurin, The Enterprise: The Jubilee Story of the Canadian Baptist Mission in India 1874–1924 (Toronto: The Canadian Baptist Foreign Mission Board, 1924): 285.

45. Ibid., 189.

46. Vivekavathi (October 1912): 23.

47. Vivekavathi (April 1910): 208–9; Vivekavathi (October 1912): 19–20; Vivekavathi (December 1909): 81; Vivekavathi (June 1919): 217.

48. Vivekavathi (November 1909): 58

49. Vivekavathi (December 1909): 83; Vivekavathi (April 1912): 193; Vivekavathi (March 1910): 165.

50. Vivekavathi (August 1913): 334–35.

51. Edith M. Annett, ‘Story-Telling as a Factor in Missionary Work’, The International Review of Missions 14 (1925): 230.

52. Vivekavathi (March 1910): 165–66.

53. Indrani Chatterjee, The Bengali Bhadramahila, 1930–34 (unpublished PhD thesis, Jawaharlal Nehru University, 1986): 57.

54. Vivekavathi (February 1910): 153; Vivekavathi (September 1912): 355; Vivekavathi (November 1912): 40.

55. Vivekavathi (January 1910): 110; Vivekavathi (July 1910): 290–91; Vivekavathi (May 1910): 223–24.

56. Vivekavathi (April 1910): 190–93.

57. Jürgen Habermas, Sara Lennox and Frank Lennox, ‘The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article (1964)’, New German Critique 3 (1974): 49–55.

58. Vivekavathi (March 1910): 166–67; Vivekavathi (December 1909): 84, 92.

59. Vivekavathi (August 1912): 325.

60. Vivekavathi (October 1911): 12.

61. Vivekavathi (April 1910): 208–9; Vivekavathi (July 1910): 290–91; Vivekavathi (December 1909): 81; Vivekavathi (September 1910): 364; Vivekavathi (July 1911): 305–6.

62. Vivekavathi (November 1917): 25–28.

63. Vivekavathi (July 1911): 306–7.

64. Vivekavathi (November 1912): 58.

65. Vivekavathi (May 1912): 228–29; Vivekavathi (November 1909): 43.

66. Vivekavathi (July 1910): 285–86.

67. Vivekavathi (November 1912): 53; Vivekavathi (November 1911): 36.

68. Vivekavathi (November 1911): 36; Vivekavathi (July 1912): 289–91, 314, 316; Vivekavathi (April 1912): 224; Vivekavathi (November 1913): 61.

69. Charu Gupta, Sexuality, Obscenity, Community: Women, Muslims and the Hindu Public in Colonial India (New York: Palgrave, 2002): 140–41.

70. Vivekavathi (March 1918): 141.