Through a creative critical reading of the translations of a ninth-century Copper Plate Deed and other narratives from precolonial South India, this essay attempts to deconstruct the colonial-nationalist historiographic project that imagined linear, progressive and homogenous histories for communities with heterogenous roots/routes. I examine selected narratives of Suriyani Christian identity formation in "Kerala" during the colonial period to critique the problematic co-constitution of caste and Christianity for a postcolonial nation state. I argue that the strategic postcolonial desire of many communities, even minoritised communities, for a 'pure origin' that guaranteed a privileged lineage has obliterated their multiple 'beginnings' which willfully 'adulterated' any essentialisation, and created the conditions of minoritisation for themselves as well as their imagined 'others'.