Cristianismo na Índia: os cristãos de São Tomé, sua constituição, suas tradições e suas práticas religiosas

Abstract

The tradition of Saint Thomas the Apostle is linked to the Indian Christianity in an unknown way to the most of the Western world. In the Eastern world, Thomas was called “the greatest of the Apostles”. Combined with the tradition that this apostle, directly related to Jesus, personally preached in the Indian region of the Malabar Coast, there is an important documentation about the Syriac and Mesopotamic roots and a group of Indian Christians, identifying themselves as “Saint Thomas Christians”. Three moments marked the history of Saint Thomas Christians: the supposed arrival of Thomas to India, in 52 A.D., the First Migration of Christian Jewish Babylonians, leaded by Thomas of Cana in the 4th century and the Second Migration of Chaldeans Nestorians, that gravitated toward the bishops Sabor and Proth, in the 9th century. The liturgical issue is so important that it gives name to the Christians of St. Thomas in India: they are the "Syrian Christians". But they can also be called Nambudiris, Nairs, Knanayas, Malabars, Dravidians (or Dravidians from South India), Keralites, “Roman-Syrians", Chaldeans, Jacobites, etc. Consisting of a set of communities that work through the caste system, mostly practicing endogamous relations, the Saint Thomas Christians had their creation associated, initially, to the Eastern Syriac Christianity (i.e., from Edessa) and the Nestorian Church of the East, result of the first schism in the Church. Afterwards, they branched out in churches of various denominations since the arrival of the Portuguese people in India, and incorporated even the Anglicanism in one of their branches. They maintained, however, their culture, their socio-religious relations and never completely abdicated their Hindu roots. The individual worship way of one single god in the Hindu tradition, denominated bhakti, and the discipline of the religious living, traditionally known as dharma, from the teachings of Jesus Christ, make of these Indian Christians of Saint Thomas a people who live a particular Christianity and, in many ways, very close to the Nazarene Rabbi, to even state that, in India, the word of Jesus is better understand then in the Western world. In a word, in addition to the Christianity of Paul, that characterizes Western Christianity, an equally important Christianity developed in the East, particularly in India, with other narratives including apocryphal, has Saint Thomas as one of its key references.