We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 March 2014
Gandhian and Hindutva-inspired discourses around conversions to Christianity in India over-simplify the historical nexus of relations between missionaries, converts and the colonial state. Challenging the view that conversions were ever only about material gain, this paper draws on long-term ethnographic fieldwork with leprosy-affected people in South India to consider the role that conversion has also played in establishing alternative, often positively construed, identities for those who came to live in leprosy colonies from the mid twentieth century onwards. The paper draws out the distinctive values associated with a Christian identity in India, exploring local Christianities as sets of practices through which, for example, a positive sense of belonging might be established for those otherwise excluded, rather than being centred upon personal faith and theology per se. Biographical accounts are drawn upon to document and analyse some of the on-the-ground realities, and the different implications—depending on one's wider social positioning—of converting from Hinduism to Christianity in South India.
1 See, for examples, Kooiman, D., ‘Conversion from slavery to plantation labour: Christian mission in South India (19th century)’, Social Scientist 19:8–9, 1991, pp. 57–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hardiman, D., The coming of Devi: Adivasi assertion in western India. Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1987Google Scholar; Rafael, V., Contracting Colonialism: translation and Christian conversion in Tagalog society under early Spanish rule, Cornell University Press, London, 1988Google Scholar; Stirrat, R. L., Power and religiosity in a post-colonial setting: Sinhala Catholics in contemporary Sri Lanka, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1992CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Froerer, P., Religious division and social conflict: the emergence of Hindu nationalism in rural India, Social Science Press, New Delhi, 2007Google Scholar.
2 M. Thomas, Christian missions in the pluralistic context of India: the relevance of Gandhian approach, Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, 2002; Kumarappa, B. (ed.) Christian Missions: Their Place in India (by Gandhi, M. K.), Navajivan Publishing House, Ahmedabad, 2000Google Scholar.
3 There were, of course, counter discourses, including, most famously, Ambedkar's call to conversion—especially to Buddhism—as a route via which Dalits could escape the inequities of caste; a system which, in his view, was synonymous with the Hinduism Gandhi wanted to protect. See Ambedkar, B. R., Annihilation of Caste. Dalit Sahitya Academy, Bangalore, 1987Google Scholar.
4 Bauman, C., Christian identity and Dalit religion in Hindu India, 1868–1947, Eerdmans Publishing Limited, Michigan, 2008, p. 231.Google Scholar
5 Ibid., p. 4.
6 Ibid.
7 Dube, S., Stitches on Time: colonial textures and postcolonial tangles, Duke University Press, Durham and London, 2004CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Comaroff, J. and Comaroff, J., Of revelation and revolution, Christianity, colonialism, and consciousness, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1991Google Scholar.
8 Frykenberg, R. E., Christianity in India: from beginnings to the present, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
9 Neill, S., A History of Christianity in India 1707–1858. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1985.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
10 Matthew 26:6–13; Mark 14:3–9.
11 Gopal, P. K., ‘Introduction’, in Guidelines for the Social and Economic Rehabilitation of People Affected by Leprosy, Nicholls, P., Nash, J. and Tamplin, M. (eds), International Federation of Anti-Leprosy Associations, London, 1999, p. 3.Google Scholar
12 For more background detail on begging, see Staples, J., ‘Begging questions: leprosy and alms collection in Mumbai’, in Livelihoods at the Margins: Surviving the City, Staples, J. (ed.), Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek, California, 2007.Google Scholar
13 Malas and Madigas made up 28.77 per cent of Bethany's population when I surveyed the community in 1999, compared with 12.43 per cent of the municipality as a whole.
14 Bourdieu, P., The logic of Practice (translated by Nice, Richard), Polity, Cambridge, 1990.Google Scholar
15 Dube, S., Untouchable pasts: religion, identity and power among a central Indian community, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1998.Google Scholar
16 Bauman, Christian identity and Dalit religion in Hindu India.
17 Dube, S., ‘Paternalism and freedom: the evangelical encounter in colonial Chhattisgarh, Central India’. Modern Asian Studies vol. 29, no. 1, 1995, p. 177.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
18 Rauschenbusch-Clough, E.. While Wearing Sandals or Tales of a Telugu Pariah Tribe. Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1899.Google Scholar See also Copley, A., Religions in Conflict: Ideology, Cultural Contact and Conversion in Late-Colonial India, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1997, p. 53Google Scholar.
19 Manor, J. G., ‘Testing the barrier between Caste and Outcaste: The Andhra Evangelical Lutheran Church in Guntur District, 1920–1949’. Indian Church Review 5, 1971, p. 30.Google Scholar
20 Copley, op. cit., p. 54.
21 Bauman, op. cit.
22 For specific examples of Christians being targeted by the Hindu right wing see Sarkar, S., ‘Conversions and the politics of the Hindu Right’. Economic and Political Weekly, 26 June 1999, vol. 26, pp. 1691–1700.Google Scholar
23 Forrester, D. B., Caste and Christianity: Attitudes and Politics of Anglo-Saxon Protestant Missions in India. Curzon Press, London, 1980.Google Scholar
24 Mosse, D., ‘Responding to Subordination: The Politics of Identity Change Among South Indian Untouchable Castes’, in Identity and Affect: Experiences of Identity in a Globalising World, Campbell, J. R. and Rew, A. (eds), Pluto Press, London, 1999, p. 76Google Scholar; see also Busby, C., ‘Concepts of religious power in a fishing village in South India’, in The Anthropology of Christianity, Cannell, F. (ed.), Duke University Press, Durham, North Carolina, 2006, pp. 77–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Webster, J. C. B., ‘The Dalit situation in India today’, International Journal of Frontier Missions, vol. 18, no. 1, 2001, pp. 15–17Google Scholar.
25 Dube, ‘Paternalism and freedom: the evangelical encounter in colonial Chhattisgarh, Central India’, p. 181, citing C. P. Ethnographic Survey XV11, draft articles on Hindustani Castes, 1st series, Nagpur 1914, p. 57.
26 Staples, J., ‘“Go on, just try some!” Meat and meaning-making among South Indian Christians’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, vol. 31, no. 1, 2008, pp. 36–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
27 Ibid.
28 Busby, op. cit., p. 96.
29 van der Veer, P., ‘Religions in South Asia.’ Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 31, 2002, pp. 175–176.Google Scholar
30 Ibid., p. 197.
31 Kawashima, K., Missionaries and a Hindu State: Travancore 1858–1936. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1998, p. 80.Google Scholar
32 R. Woodberry, The shadow of empire: Christian missions, colonial power and democracy in post-colonial societies. Ph.D. Thesis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2004, p. 76.
33 Ibid., p. 117.
34 K. Kawashima, op. cit., p. 38; Oddie, G., ‘Protestant Missions, Caste and Social Change in India, 1850–1914’. The Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 6, no. 3, 1969, pp. 259–291CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Oddie, G., ‘Christianity and Social Mobility in South India 1840–1920: A Continuing Debate’, South Asia, vol. 19 (special issue), 1996, pp. 143–159CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Oddie, G., Missionaries, Rebellion and Proto-Nationalism. Curzon Press, Richmond, England, 1999Google Scholar.
35 Viswanathan, G., 1998. Outside the Fold: Conversion, Modernity, and Belief, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1998.Google Scholar
36 Woodberry, op. cit., p. 80.
37 Comaroff and Comaroff, op. cit., p. xi.
38 Comaroff, John, ‘Images of Empire, contests of conscience: models of colonial domination in South Africa’, American Ethnologist, vol. 16, no. 4, 1989, p. 662.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
39 S. Dube, Stitches on Time: colonial textures and postcolonial tangles, p. 43.
40 Bailey, W. C., The Lepers of Our Indian Empire: A Visit To Them In 1890–91, John F. Shaw and Co., London, n.d., p. 224.Google Scholar
41 Cochrane, R. G., Leprosy in India: A Survey, World Dominion Press, London, 1927, p. 22.Google Scholar
42 Dube, ‘Paternalism and freedom: the evangelical encounter in colonial Chhattisgarh, Central India’, p. 201.
43 Staples, J., Peculiar People, Amazing Lives: leprosy, social exclusion and community-making in South India, Orient Longman, Delhi, 2007, pp. 151–153.Google Scholar
44 I have opted for this term rather than for ‘nominal Christians’ because even the least devout of Bethany's Christians tended to identify themselves as Christian in more than just name.
45 Oddie, G., Hindu and Christian in South-East India, Curzon Press, London, 1991, p. 141.Google Scholar
46 On one occasion, I recall, he was asked by the office to tone down one of the school drama productions he had helped to produce in which the children talked gleefully of Hindus being struck down by God and thrown into the eternal fires or damnation.
47 Reproduced from Staples 2007, op. cit., pp. 164–165.
