Archive for January, 2023
REVIEW: Godroads (Cambridge University Press, 2020)
Reviewed by: Lancy Lobo, Centre for Culture and Development, Vadodara, Gujarat, India
Taking the simile of ‘road to God’, well known in India as Panth or Marg, which could be rough, smooth, bent, high and low, and endless pilgrim’s way, this volume brings together well researched essays on the subject of conversion in India. The essays are an outcome of the research project, ‘Modalities of Conversion in India’ and were presented first at the European Conference of South Asian studies, held at the University Warsaw, Poland in the year 2016.
Apart from the introduction written by the editors, this volume includes 10 essays with a Foreword by P. Vitebsky and an Afterword by A. Vilaca. Of these 10 essays, 3 are by anthropologists, 1 sociologist, 3 anthropologists cum theologians and 3 faculties of theology and religious studies. Seven essays are concerned with Christianity, one to Hinduism, one to tribal religion and one on a study of Islamic reformism. The seven essays on Christianity deal with classical Protestant denominations and missions, and none to Catholic Christianity which is numerically preponderant in India.
In the words of the editors in Introduction, the chapters ‘highlight two dimensions of conversion to modernities. While one aspect of modernity refers to missionary education, modern medicine, advanced agricultural technologies and the prospect of material progress and social mobility, the other dimension is represented through enlightenment value systems, such as increasing rationalization and individualisation, the quest for equal rights and human dignity, freedom from oppression and humiliation and the establishment of law, order and social Justice’ (p. 13). One cannot classify the 10 essays by one dimension or the other as the two dimensions are not mutually exclusive.
Though the volume is on conversion, there appears much debate and discussion on the use of this term in the case studies presented. Is conversion a onetime event or rupture with former religion? Is conversion a resilient, slow winding road? Does conversion entail syncretism in varying degrees? Is it the outcome of protest? Is conversion a search for new identity? Is it a sure route to modernity? Is it to access material and healing benefits? Can intra-religious reform or refinement be considered conversion? Why do some convert, de-convert and some reconvert or go back to their original religion? Why some choose to continue in the new religion despite the state depriving them of reservation or affirmative action? This volume draws attention to the conversion process and themes such as: conversion as protest; conversion to modernities; and conversion as continuity, change, process and event.
However, having alerted the reader that most studies on conversion have been on Christianity, conversion and missionaries have been synonymous with Christianity as if other religions do not engage in conversions. In this volume too, most of the essays are focused on Christianity. These essays give the impression as if there is no or little conversion in other religions. When one talks about modalities of conversion, one could also speak of employing violent and non-violent means. For instance, the way in which Buddhism spread over large parts of the world.
Much as I enjoyed reading these erudite essays which deal mostly with historic past, what relevance do they have for contemporary India? The Indian state has stopped allowing foreign Christian missionaries since 1960s and has sent them back or not renewed their visas. The evangelical Christian missionaries come on short term under the guise of tourist visa and which too is under the scanner. The state has also used reservation as a deterrent for scheduled castes from converting. It has given reservation to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist Dalits but not to Muslim and Christian Dalits. Conversions to Christianity have come to a halt in the 1950s among Dalits and tribals thereafter.
This volume raises interesting questions for future research on the nature of conversions in a majoritarian Hindu nationalist state. Mocherla, Sahoo, Berger and Kannan’s essays are significant. Berger’s thick ethnography does not once use the term Sanskritisation among Gadaba and Olek. Kannan deals with sacred art and Hindu nationalism. Sahoo deals with reservation and religious freedom. Mocherla discusses the shift from communist ideology to Christianity.
Sanskritisation was a slow and spontaneous process of lower castes emulating the Sanskritic Hinduism of the upper castes. David Pocock has illustrated how the process of ‘inclusion and exclusion’ has been going on through a variety of means in India. Today a number of Sanskritic Hindu sects are actively looking for adherents among tribals, which I know in the case of Gujarat.
Since the Arya Samaj which began Shuddi, its modern forms like ghar wapsi (home coming) a euphemistic term for reconversion has come into vogue. However, Hindutvisation is qualitatively a different process as compared to Sanskritisation. Hindutvisation by the many Hindu nationalist affiliates of Sangh Parivar, especially VHP, and Vanvasi Kalyan Parishad, are engaged in proselytization of tribals and ghar wapsi of Christian/Muslim converts. This volume rightly raises the question if the term conversion is appropriate to capture the phenomena in religious landscape of India. We have hardly any studies on contemporary conversion movements in Hinduism, Jainism and Sikhism except neo-Buddhism. So also the new variant of Christian Pentecostalism consumed by people irrespective of caste, sect, tribe, and Dalit in India as adherents though not formally baptised. If in the past conversions to Christianity were seen from the prism of protest, modernity, continuity, change, process and event, there is an open field for social scientists to study the nature of Godroads in contemporary India with reference to Hinduism and Hindu nationalism.
This volume also limits its quest largely to socio-historic research with little attention except Oddie to theological and spiritual transformations that accompany conversion. Only Oddie has dealt with this. While there are some who leave or revert to their former religion, why do those many continue in very adverse socio-economic conditions in the new religion? Is there a reality called Godexperience or spiritual experience which grips them? This dimension is missing making conversion a socio-cultural and historic reality.
Another theme that is missing in this volume is individual conversion. Of course there is a case of Zahur-Al-Haqq, a Muslim convert to evangelical Christianity by Arun Jones. This volume studies by and large group conversions thereby making conversions appear solely as a socio-political phenomenon.
This volume has exposed highly researched material on varied dimensions of conversions questioning if the term conversion itself is enough to explain the phenomena of change in religion or change within a religion. All the essays, with the Introduction, Foreword and Afterword, should interest historians, anthropologists, sociologists, theologians and especially those who wish to study religious change, and wish to engage in God-talk.
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@ Lobo, L. (2021) Sociological Bulletin, 70(2): 276-278; https://doi.org/10.1177/0038022920970290
Sarbeswar Sahoo
The Practice of Sociology 