Introduction

The introduction posits three observations: (i) The belief that the "West is Christian and the East is not" is an erroneous rendering of ground realities in India, (ii) the reason scholars consider the colonial period as marking the beginning of Christianity in India is because India Studies tends to focus on North India, and (iii) the priority scholarship gives to British colonialism adds to this mistaken presumption. These preliminary remarks make way for a quick review of the Thomas Christians of India and their engagement with Portuguese colonizers. This book’s theoretical framework is revealed as drawn from postcolonial studies, which help to identify the location of power and expose its distinctions, but it is also shaped by the challenge the topic of a Christian East poses to the current stance of postcolonial studies. This book’s methodology is defined as literary analysis of cultural and historical texts. The main argument of this chapter-and this book-is that Thomas Christians attempted an anti-colonial turn in the face of ecclesiastical and civic occupation that was colonial at its core.