ABSTRACT
In the 1860s and the 1870s Christian missions, initially particularly Protestant missions, became aware of an unexpected and dramatic development. In widely separated parts of India, churches which had for the most part been almost static for decades, or even declined in numbers, began to grow at a rapid rate through group conversions from untouchable castes. There had indeed been some similar experience of mass movements, but only in isolated and not numerically significant instances. The Paravars, a fisherman caste on the southern tip of the peninsula, had been converted en bloc to Roman Catholicism in the sixteenth century. The missionary conviction of the evils of caste made them positively opposed to the idea of group conversion, and served to reinforce the individualism characteristic of nineteenth century evangelicals. Missionaries and their allies weighed into the debate on the causes of the Revolt of 1857 and the policies which government should follow as a consequence.
