ABSTRACT
The chapter discusses a specific event that revealed an 1828 dispute among the Velalan Protestants themselves. The dispute within the Tanjore Evangelical Congregation revealed that a coherent idea of 'pluralistic unity' among Protestant Malabarians had developed. Divisiveness over caste had begun in the Vepery Congregation in Madras, and by 1829 it had appeared in Tanjore. In response, Velalans in the Congregation compiled the collection of Tamil texts. Bible translation into Tamil had been going on, of course, since Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg landed in Tranquebar in 1706. As Vedanayagam Sastri stated them, the four 'cruelties' reveal that the 'Junior Missionaries' were voicing new Protestant theological trends in Europe and North America, trends echoing the values that gave rise to the 'Enlightenment' ideologies that had propelled the American and French Revolutions. The new missionaries were seeking to eliminate all distinctions between high-status and low-status castes among Protestants, and between the 'right hand' and 'left hand' divisions.
