Protestant Christianity and Social Changes among the Hill Tribes in Kerala

Abstract

The history of Protestant Christianity in India is viewed as an integral part of the socio-cultural history of the Indian people rather than as separate from it. The history will therefore focus on the Christian people of India and they understood themselves upon their social, religious, cultural and political encounters and changes which these encounters produced in them. The appropriation of the Christian gospel in the Indian culture and society of which were a part of their propaganda. The experience of conversion is viewed as diverse possibilities that focus on new identities, believes and practices. The modes, motivations and symbolic meanings of Christianity to religious conversion are identified and transformations of caste and tribes. Historians argued the Conversion as a transition on the basis of tradition, heredity, customs and practice, etc. On the one side conversion is the change of customs and tradition, on the other hand it is the process by which natural change happens with the individual. Religious conversion has played a vital role in the life of Hill Tribes.