ABSTRACT
Vedanayagam Samuel Azariah's major challenge was to overcome the constant friction between local Andhra culture and the transformative agenda of Christianity. The mass movements to Christianity demanded radical adjustments to Andhra village life, particularly in outcaste and low-caste sections. Azariah stressed that the Anglican church in India forbade marriages of Christians with non-Christians even though such ‘mixed’ marriages were deemed legal under the Indian Christian Marriage Act of 1872. Azariah accordingly insisted that all beliefs, rituals, practices, and cultural manifestations of Hinduism that the church judged to be evil should be renounced at baptism. Chief among these ‘evils’ was the caste system, with its dehumanizing conceptualization and rationalization of ‘pollution’ and ‘untouchability’—relegating up to one-fifth of society to perpetual thraldom. The struggle against caste feeling was therefore one of the central struggles of his ministry in Dornakal, and a constant theme in diocesan records.
