"[2][3] Joseph Chelladurai Kumarappa was born on 4 January 1892 in Tanjore, present-day Tamil Nadu, into a Christian family.

[6] On his return to India, Kumarappa published an article on the British tax policy and its exploitation of the Indian economy.

Kumarappa worked to combine Christian and Gandhian values of "trusteeship", non-violence and a focus on human dignity and development in place of materialism as the basis of his economic theories.

Gandhi and Kumarappa envisioned an economy focused on satisfying human needs and challenges while rooting out socio-economic conflict, unemployment, poverty and deprivation.

He was described by M. M. Thomas as one of the "Christians of the inner Gandhi circle" – which included non-Indians such as Charles Freer Andrews, Verrier Elwin and R. R. Keithahn, and Indians such as Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, S. K. George, Aryanayagam and B. Kumarappa, all of whom espoused the philosophy of non-violence.

[7] J. C. Kumarappa responded positively to the Indian national renaissance, and he and George rejected the idea that British rule in India was ordained by divine providence[8] Kumarappa worked as a professor of economics at the Gujarat Vidyapith in Ahmedabad, while serving as the editor of Young India during the Salt Satyagraha,[1] between May 1930 and February 1931.

Historian Ramachandra Guha calls Kumarappa, "The Green Gandhian," portraying him as the founder of modern environmentalism in India.