India’s Nonviolent Freedom Struggle: The Thomas Christians (1599-1799)

India’s Nonviolent Freedom Struggle is a groundbreaking book that offers a fresh perspective on the Indian freedom struggle. It focuses on the Thomas Christians, a group of Christians in South India who waged a nonviolent struggle against European colonization during the politically volatile period of 1599-1799.

The book has three related objectives and unique characteristics. First, it offers a comprehensive study of primary sources that scholars have referenced but rarely studied in depth. Second, it argues that the Thomas Christian narratives provide a unique position to challenge prevalent estimations found in canonical and postcolonial critical discourse on the nation. Third, the book considers how an account of a nonviolent struggle by Thomas Christians further complicates received ideas of the postcolonial nation.

The book sheds light on the often-overlooked contributions of the Thomas Christians in India’s nonviolent freedom struggle and challenges readers to reimagine the complex and often contentious relationship between colonizers and colonized.

A unique contribution to the study of Indian history, this book is an essential read for scholars of colonialism, anticolonial movements, and the history of India.

Clara A. B. Joseph is Professor of English and Adjunct Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Calgary, Canada. She is the author of The Agent in the Margin: Nayantara Sahgal’s Gandhian Fiction (2008) and Christianity in India: The Anti-Colonial Turn (Routledge 2019).