ABSTRACT
The area initially committed to Vedanayagam Samuel Azariah's care in the Nizam’s Dominions included the former Church Missionary Society mission area of Khammamett, which ranged over 5,000 square miles and, in 1913, contained 350 village congregations with 5,689 baptized Christians and catechumens led by six ordained priests and 126 Christian agents. The external pressure of rising political nationalism combined with internal pressure for greater ecclesiastical autonomy from newly assertive educated Indian Christian converts. Strong bonds of affection had developed over one hundred years of interaction between highly literate if paternalistic British missionaries and Telugu Christians who gathered, as they liked to sing, ‘like ants around the sweet jaggery of the gospel.’ The unity of the church was threatened not only by conflicts with Anglican missionary societies. The western missionary enterprise had imported multiple denominations to India, so that the Indian Christian church was itself divided into many sections.
