ABSTRACT
As Roman Catholic Christianity spread and moved inland during the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it incorporated members of castes differently ranked within regional caste hierarchies. Caste distinctions and rivalries thus entered the churches and missionary policy at the time generally favoured maintaining those distinctions and hierarchies. Politically, Indian Christians were well represented in the early years of the Indian National Congress. They tended to be political moderates suspicious of the extremists’ religious nationalism. The constitution of independent India, adopted in 1950, provided the legal parameters within which Christians and other Indians were to live together. Apart from the adult franchise opening up the vote to all, there were several provisions of the constitution that were of special significance to Christians. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the Census indicated that the Christian population was just over 24 million, but with a growth rate slightly lower than that of the population as a whole.
