AZARIAH, VEDANAYAKAM SAMUEL

AZARIAH, VEDANAYAKAM SAMUEL (1874–1945), Indian prelate, first Indian bishop of the Anglican Church. V. S. Azariah was born in Tinnevelly, 17 August 1874, the son of an Anglican pastor. He studied in the local Church Missionary Society College and at Madras Christian College. In 1902, he visited Jaffna (Ceylon) and was so impressed with the vigor of the Christian community there that on his return he organized, with K. T. Paul, the Indian Missionary Society (IMS), convinced that an indigenous mission would revitalize the local church. They met in Calcutta, 25 December 1905, and founded the National Missionary Society (NMS)—their objectives to unite all Protestant Christians and to evangelize all of India. Azariah was the first general secretary.

In 1904 the IMS had sent missionaries to work in Dornakal, a very impoverished location, east of Hyderabad. Azariah himself became so concerned with this work that in 1909 he resigned his post as general secretary of the NMS and took charge.

In 1910 Azariah was invited to the Edinburgh Missionary Conference. He addressed the gathering, appealing for a much deeper level of cooperation between foreign missionaries and Indian Christians. Azariah reminded the audience that the Indian church would always be grateful for the heroism and self-denying labor of the missionaries. "You have given us your goods to feed the poor..We also ask for your love. Give us friends!" Azariah believed that to make a significant impact, a genuinely Indian church must emerge and the role of foreign missionaries must diminish.

On 29 December 1912, Vedanayakam Samuel Azariah was consecrated the first Indian bishop of the Anglican Church. Over the next thirty years, he was instrumental in what came to be known as a mass movement to Christianity among the poor and the exploited in the districts around Dornakal. In 1904 there were almost no Christians. By the time Azariah died, their number exceeded 250,000.

Azariah was not active in the nationalist freedom struggle. Rather than political independence, he was most concerned with the self-determination and self expression of the Indian church. Azariah did take a stand against communal based electoral reforms; in this he agreed with Mahatma M. K. Gandhi.

Bishop Azariah of Dornakal died after a brief illness on 1 January 1945.

Graham Houghton

See alsoChristian Impact on India, History of

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Eddy, Sherwood. Pathfinders of the World Missionary Crusade. New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury, 1945. Harper, Susan Billington. In the Shadow of the Mahatma.

Cambridge, U.K.: Eerdmans, 2000. Stock, Eugene. The History of the Church Missionary Society, vol. 4. London: CMS, 1916.