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BOOK REVIEW: Religion and Secularities: Reconfiguring Islam in Contemporary India (Orient Blackswan)
Reviewed by: Sarbeswar Sahoo, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi
In Indian sociology, while a lot of research has been done on issues of caste, tribe, ethnicity and gender, very little attention has been paid to the sociology and anthropology of religion, especially Islam and Christianity. One of the reasons for this could be religion’s uneasy relationship with the postcolonial Indian nationstate. Particularly, in the post-partition context, religion was viewed with suspicion— as a major factor of communal violence. Although the postcolonial Indian state did not refute the role of religion in public sphere, it adopted a secular model of nation-building that aimed to maintain equidistance from all religions. Following this, Indian sociology was preoccupied with questions of secular modernity rather than religion (Sahoo, 2019). However, recently some Indian sociologists have focused their attention on religion and the role it plays in public life. Sitharaman and Chakrabarti belong to this small group of sociologists who have contributed significantly in understanding the complex and dynamic relationship between religion and secularism in India. In their new edited volume Religion and Secularities, which grew out of a seminar at IIT Kanpur, Sitharaman and Chakrabarti examine the multiple facets of Islam in the diverse sociohistorical context of India.
The volume has a long and comprehensive introduction and seven chapters by a group of young researchers working on the sociology of religion. The introduction by Sitharaman and Chakrabarti sets the tone for the book, posing some vital questions related to the anthropology of Islam in India. Specifically, the introduction engages with four important and interrelated themes such as debates on ‘Indian Islam’, the trope of syncretism, ethnography of the secular and Islamic public sphere in India. The essays in this volume are broadly organised around these themes. Under the first theme, the editors ask: ‘What is the uniqueness of Indian Islam?’ Discussing the works of Imtiaz Ahmad, Veena Das, Francis Robinson and others, the editors show how Indian sociologists and anthropologists have majorly ‘focused on the questions of kinship, family and caste within Muslim communities’ (p. 4). By highlighting some of these aspects, the above scholars have shown how Islam has intermingled with the local cultural and religious traditions, giving rise to syncretic practices. In this context, Sitharaman and Chakrabarti argue that while syncretism constitutes a vital aspect, it has limitations and there are several other ways of looking at Indian Islam. In the second theme, Sitharaman and Chakrabarti examine the limits to syncretism. Particularly, they question the liberal secular understanding that considers syncretism as liberating and as a solution to communalism and religious intolerance. For them, the liberal model lacks reference to processes or temporal manifestation and views syncretism only as a static condition (p. 8). In this section, the editors ask: ‘Does syncretism truly offer inclusive possibilities for a merging of religious differences, or is it a code word for the incorporation and assimilation of “minority” cultures into the culture of the dominant group?’ (p. 9–10). Addressing this, Aditya Kapoor in Chapter 1 discusses the ‘fluidity of social boundaries and identities’ (p. 32) and shows how Muslims negotiate their ‘Muslim’ and ‘Bengali’ identities in their everyday lives and how it is not about dominance of one identity over the other, but a strategic interplay of multiple identities. Moreover, Kapoor importantly illustrates that ‘construction of religion as faith or as an ideology is a contextually embedded process with shifting boundaries’ (p. 33).
Under the third theme, the book discusses the categories of the religious and the secular and their relationship with the modern nation state. While much of the literature has posited the sacred and the secular as two separate and opposite realms, the essays in this section reveal how both are ‘closely intertwined in paradigmatic ways in modern nation states’ (p. 12). By taking law as an example of the modern state’s governance mechanism, the essays demonstrate the blurred boundaries between the sacred and the secular. While Aleena Sebastian’s chapter discusses the interface of law and socio-cultural pluralities through a contextspecific historical analysis of matrilineal practices among Mappila Muslims of Malabar, Suchandra Ghosh and Anindita Chakrabarti’s essay questions the incompatibility between the secular state law and the non-state religious laws through an ethnographic study of the dispute resolution processes among Muslim litigants in Kanpur. Moreover, Sudha Sitharaman also examines the relationship between religion, secularity and law and asks: Is secularism the best mechanism to govern religious diversity and reduce communal violence in India? Contrary to the liberals (as well as right-wingers) who upheld secularism as progressive, Sitharaman, through the case of the Bababudhan dargah controversy, shows that instead of reducing, ‘modern secular governance’ in India has in fact ‘contributed to the exacerbation of religious tensions, hardening inter-faith boundaries and polarizing religious differences’ (p. 87).
The rest three chapters of the book engage with the final theme, public sphere and civil society. By critically engaging with the Habermasian idea of ‘public sphere’ and Casanova’s idea of ‘public religions’ the authors examine the possibilities of an Islamic ‘counterpublic’ that transcends the rational (secular) deliberations. Notably, as T. Hashim in his chapter shows, multiple religious groups engaged with each other not only to establish an Islamic public sphere in Malabar but also to decide on the nature of ‘true Islam’. What is unique in this is that these groups were ‘influenced by their understandings of their text and everyday religious practices’ as well as ‘socio-political conditions’ (p. 133). Similarly, Shahul Ameen K. T. shows how the Solidarity Youth Movement in Kerala has introduced an ethico-religious dimension to debates on public sphere and civil society. In the final chapter, R. Santhosh asks: Is Islam incompatible with secularism? Addressing this, Santhosh discusses the role of a Muslim reformist organization in the palliative care movement in Kerala and shows how the Islamic and secular ethos can coexist. Particularly, he discusses how the volunteers of the palliative care movement present their activism as Islamic dawa and at the same time are highly conscious of their secular ethos in the public domain.
The book makes several important contributions. First, in contrast to several studies, which call for consolidating secularism to strengthen democracy, this book shows how secularism can also polarise identities and exacerbate religious intolerance. Secondly, contrary to the literature that posits the religious and the secular as conflicting domains, this book provides a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between the religious and the political and shows how the boundaries between the two could often be blurred. Finally, by discussing the various aspects of the everyday lived realities of Muslim communities in different socio-structural contexts, the book provides a holistic perspective on the anthropology of Islam in India. Two minor shortcomings of the book are: one the thematic distribution of the chapters is uneven, and two, I would have liked the inclusion of some chapters that discuss the questions of caste, kinship and family relations among Muslims in contemporary India. Despite these minor shortcomings, the volume is filled with new theoretical insights and makes a substantial contribution to the sociology and anthropology of religion in India.
Reference
Sahoo, S. (2019) Caste, conversion and care: Towards an anthropology of Christianity of India. Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies, 32(Article 3), 9–19.
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@ Sahoo, S. (2021) S. “Review of Sitharaman & A. Chakrabarti (eds.) Religion and Secularities: Reconfiguring Islam in Contemporary India,” Sociological Bulletin, 72(3): 433-436.
BOOK REVIEW: Pentecostalism and Politics of Conversion in India
Reviewed by: Allan Varghese, Asbury Theological Seminary
In Pentecostalism and Politics of Conversion in India, Sarbeswar Sahoo, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IIT), presents the complexity of understanding conversion in India. From the context of the tribal communities of Rajasthan, Sahoo attempts to provide a “holistic interpretation” of conversion to Pentecostalism in light of the recent anti-Christian violence in India, highlighting the “competing projects of conversion of both Christian missionaries and Hindu nationalists” (pg. 7).
In the introductory chapter, Sahoo opens up the discourse by presenting the Christian and Hindu claims for and against the tribal conversion to the Pentecostal expression of Christianity.
In chapter two, Sahoo unpacks the rise of Pentecostalism in India and namely in the state of Rajasthan. Sahoo highlights the Native Missionary Movement (NMM) and the Calvary Covenant Fellowship Mission (CCFM) for successfully propagating Pentecostal mission works among the tribal communities. Sahoo notes that the “divine healings, emphasis on Spirit worship, strict rules, and belief system and ‘holistic development’ through active social ministries have…helped spread Pentecostalism among tribals” (pg. 35). Sahoo also presents the new converts’ financial and social trepidation, who are at risk of losing their communal identity due to their new Pentecostal religious identity.
In chapter three, Sahoo takes the analysis a step further by presenting four narratives of contemporary religious conversion from Rajasthan to demonstrate the complex nature of conversion at the grassroots level. First, the Hindu nationalist narrative, which advocates against conversion rigorously and accuses the missionaries of gaining converts through allurements. Second, Sahoo presents the local Christian missionary narrative that rejects the Hindu nationalist accusations and sees missionary work as within the bounds of Indian constitutional rights of propagating religion. Third, the convert’s narrative demonstrates that the conversion happens due to “tension-producing situational factors” (pg. 77), highlighting the instances where the village gods were not powerful to bring healing and peace, but the missionaries prayed, and healing occurred. Fourth, the Hindu Adivasi narrative, which acknowledges the rationale for conversions as healing from disease and material benefits, but also sees conversion as angering the Hindu gods and ultimately undermining the sense of tribal solidarity. Through these four narratives, Sahoo establishes the sociological complexity of understanding conversion.
In chapter four, Sahoo focuses on women’s conversion experiences in the tribal villages of south Rajasthan. After a brief history of women and Pentecostalism worldwide, Sahoo narrates various Adivasi women’s conversion experiences at length, demonstrating the “experientialist” (pg. 99) aspects of Pentecostalism that enabled the women to experience the transcendent, which led them to experience freedom and equality in churches.
Finally, in chapter five, while highlighting the nature of Hindutva politics that has been driving the anti-conversion violence in India, Sahoo also draws attention to “competing projects of conversion’” (pg. 127) among both Christian missionaries and Hindu nationalists. Like Christian missionaries, Hindu nationalist groups have also established development projects to curb Christian conversion and to reconvert the Christians back to Hinduism. Sahoo also provides apolitical analysis on such competing projects of conversion that often puts the Christians in a disadvantageous position compared to their Hindu counterparts.
In general, Sarbeswar Sahoo’s book is a much-needed addition to the subject of conversion from a more sociological and ethnographic perspective. It portrays the Indian grassroots reality where the competing local understandings of conversion are held in tension. One of the main objectives that Sahoo’s study brought forth is to go “beyond the ‘materialist incentive discourse’” (pg. 159) as a motivation for conversion. Sahoo shows that the process of conversion is complex, where material allure is just one piece of the puzzle. Another strength of Sahoo’s work is in highlighting the development projects of Hindu nationalist organizations to compete with the Christian social service activities to provide empowerment and even conduct “reconversion” (gharwapsi) rituals if any converts wish to go back to Hinduism.
Although Pentecostalism and Politics of Conversion in India is a well-researched, easy-to-read work, some may sense that Sahoo’s analysis is more sympathetic towards the Pentecostals than the Hindu nationalist side. However, Sahoo, who is not a Christian (which he mentions in the book), provides ample ethnographic data to balance that deficit if anyone perceives it as biased. Nonetheless, religious scholars and students interested in Christian mission, Pentecostalism, and religion & politics will find the book an intellectual asset.
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@ Varghese, A. (2021) The Journal of Asian American Theological Forum, 8(1): 13-14; https://aatfweb.org/2021/05/14/pentecostalism-and-politics-of-conversion-in-india/
Collaboration, Co-Optation or Navigation? The Role of Civil Society in Disaster Governance in India
Existing research on civil society organizations (CSOs) facing restricted civic space largely focuses on the crackdown on freedoms and CSOs’ strategies to handle these restrictions, often emphasizing impact on their more confrontational public roles. However, many CSOs shape their roles through collaborative relations with government. Drawing on interviews with state agencies and CSOs, this article analyes state–CSO collaboration in the restricted civic space context of disaster risk reduction in India. Findings are that the shaping of CSOs’ roles through collaboration under conditions of restricted civic space is only partly defined by the across-the-board restrictive policies that have been the focus of much existing research on restricted civic space and its implications for CSOs. Interplay at the level of individual state agencies and CSOs, based on mutual perceptions, diverse organization level considerations and actions, and evolving relations, shape who collaborates with whom and to what effect. This article thus stresses interplay and agency, moving away from simple understandings of co-optation, and calling for a more differentiated approach to the study of state–civil society collaboration under conditions of restricted civic space, with close attention to navigation.
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@ R. Syal & M. van Wessel and S. Sahoo (2021) “Collaboration, Co-optation or Navigation? The Role of Civil Society in Disaster Governance in India,” VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Non-Profit Organizations, 32(4): 795-808 (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11266-021-00344-8).
Representation by Development Organizations: Evidence From India and Implications for Inclusive Development
This article focuses on development organizations’ construction of representative roles in their work at the environment–development interface and on implications of these constructions for inclusiveness. While much of the past literature on representation has dealt with electoral representation, this article highlights the importance of nonelectoral representation. It follows a constructivist approach and is based on 36 in-depth interviews with the staff of different types of India-based development organizations working on disaster risk management. The article shows how development organizations in India contribute to inclusive development by representing groups that are vulnerable to disaster risk in diverse ways. Showing this diversity and how it is mediated by organizations, the article makes clear that representation is much more complex than literature commonly suggests. This complexity enables organizations to engage with specific dimensions of inclusive development. The article also illustrates how representation by development organizations happens through opportunities found and created through the intertwining of capacity development, service delivery, and advocacy. At the same time, the mediated nature of representation, and its embeddedness in a wide set of relations, makes representation by development organizations indirect and questionable in ways beyond the commonly understood dominance of powerful nongovernmental organizations.
Keywords civil society, development organizations, disaster risk management, inclusive development, India, representation
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Source: S. Katyaini, M. van Wessel and S. Sahoo (2021) “Representation by Development Organizations: Evidence from India and Implications for Inclusive Development”, Journal of Environment and Development, Vol.30, No.1, pp.98-123 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1070496520983599)
Book Review: Pentecostalism and Politics of Conversion in India
Reviewed By: Allan Varghese, Asbury Theological Seminary
In Pentecostalism and Politics of Conversion in India, Sarbeswar Sahoo, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IIT), presents the complexity of understanding conversion in India. From the context of the tribal communities of Rajasthan, Sahoo attempts to provide a “holistic interpretation” of conversion to Pentecostalism in light of the recent anti-Christian violence in India, highlighting the “competing projects of conversion of both Christian missionaries and Hindu nationalists” (pg. 7).
In the introductory chapter, Sahoo opens up the discourse by presenting the Christian and Hindu claims for and against the tribal conversion to the Pentecostal expression of Christianity.
In chapter two, Sahoo unpacks the rise of Pentecostalism in India and namely in the state of Rajasthan. Sahoo highlights the Native Missionary Movement (NMM) and the Calvary Covenant Fellowship Mission (CCFM) for successfully propagating Pentecostal mission works among the tribal communities. Sahoo notes that the “divine healings, emphasis on Spirit worship, strict rules, and belief system and ‘holistic development’ through active social ministries have…helped spread Pentecostalism among tribals” (pg. 35). Sahoo also presents the new converts’ financial and social trepidation, who are at risk of losing their communal identity due to their new Pentecostal religious identity.
In chapter three, Sahoo takes the analysis a step further by presenting four narratives of contemporary religious conversion from Rajasthan to demonstrate the complex nature of conversion at the grassroots level. First, the Hindu nationalist narrative, which advocates against conversion rigorously and accuses the missionaries of gaining converts through allurements. Second, Sahoo presents the local Christian missionary narrative that rejects the Hindu nationalist accusations and sees missionary work as within the bounds of Indian constitutional rights of propagating religion. Third, the convert’s narrative demonstrates that the conversion happens due to “tension-producing situational factors” (pg. 77), highlighting the instances where the village gods were not powerful to bring healing and peace, but the missionaries prayed, and healing occurred. Fourth, the Hindu Adivasi narrative, which acknowledges the rationale for conversions as healing from disease and material benefits, but also sees conversion as angering the Hindu gods and ultimately undermining the sense of tribal solidarity. Through these four narratives, Sahoo establishes the sociological complexity of understanding conversion.
In chapter four, Sahoo focuses on women’s conversion experiences in the tribal villages of south Rajasthan. After a brief history of women and Pentecostalism worldwide, Sahoo narrates various Adivasi women’s conversion experiences at length, demonstrating the “experientialist” (pg. 99) aspects of Pentecostalism that enabled the women to experience the transcendent, which led them to experience freedom and equality in churches.
Finally, in chapter five, while highlighting the nature of Hindutva politics that has been driving the anti-conversion violence in India, Sahoo also draws attention to “competing projects of conversion’” (pg. 127) among both Christian missionaries and Hindu nationalists. Like Christian missionaries, Hindu nationalist groups have also established development projects to curb Christian conversion and to reconvert the Christians back to Hinduism. Sahoo also provides apolitical analysis on such competing projects of conversion that often puts the Christians in a disadvantageous position compared to their Hindu counterparts.
In general, Sarbeswar Sahoo’s book is a much-needed addition to the subject of conversion from a more sociological and ethnographic perspective. It portrays the Indian grassroots reality where the competing local understandings of conversion are held in tension. One of the main objectives that Sahoo’s study brought forth is to go “beyond the ‘materialist incentive discourse’” (pg. 159) as a motivation for conversion. Sahoo shows that the process of conversion is complex, where material allure is just one piece of the puzzle. Another strength of Sahoo’s work is in highlighting the development projects of Hindu nationalist organizations to compete with the Christian social service activities to provide empowerment and even conduct “reconversion” (gharwapsi) rituals if any converts wish to go back to Hinduism.
Although Pentecostalism and Politics of Conversion in Indiais a well-researched, easy-to-read work, some may sense that Sahoo’s analysis is more sympathetic towards the Pentecostals than the Hindu nationalist side. However, Sahoo, who is not a Christian (which he mentions in the book), provides ample ethnographic data to balance that deficit if anyone perceives it as biased. Nonetheless, religious scholars and students interested in Christian mission, Pentecostalism, and religion & politics will find the book an intellectual asset.
Allan Varghese
Asbury Theological Seminary
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Source: Allan Varghese, Asbury Theological Seminary (2021) The Journal of Asian American Theological Forum, Vol.8, No.1, May 14, pp.13-14 (https://aatfweb.org/2021/05/14/pentecostalism-and-politics-of-conversion-in-india/; accessed 30th June 2021).
Complementarities in CSO Collaborations: How Working with Diversity Produces Advantages
By: Margit van Wessel • Farhat Naz • Sarbeswar Sahoo
A commonly explored theme in international civil society organisation (CSO) collaborations is the dominance of Northern CSOs and how this impinges on Southern CSOs’ autonomy, but there is little work on the relative importance of different collaborations for Southern CSOs. This study examined complementarity as a new approach to understanding CSO collaboration. Seeking Southern perspectives, we examined the case of CSOs working on disaster risk reduction in India and developed a typology of complementarities in this domain. The article considers the implications for understanding complemen- tarity in broader CSO collaborations. We find that con- structing collaborations through the lens of complementarity may facilitate capitalising on diversity among CSOs and help build collaborations that consider the domestic orientation of many Southern CSOs and reshape the roles of Northern CSOs as complementary rather than leading.
Keywords Collaboration Complementarity Civil society organisations Disaster risk reduction Southern leadership
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Source: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11266-020-00227-4
BOOK REVIEW: Pentecostalism and politics of conversion in India
Reviewed by: Bernardo Brown (International Christian University, Tokyo)
This ethnography examines the phenomenon of conversion to Pentecostalism amongst a tribal community in the district of Udaipur in Rajasthan. Sarbeswar Sahoo arrived at this theme after conducting his doctoral fieldwork with a local NGO aligned with the Hindu nationalist ideology of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). While in the field, he observed that the development agenda of this and other NGOs operating in the region was specifically directed against the work of Muslim groups and Christian missionaries. This anti‐Christian agenda – together with the rising levels of violence against Christian minorities developing since the 1990s – was what prompted Sahoo to turn his research attention to the dynamics of conversion amongst the Bhils of south Rajasthan.
I begin by highlighting this background because it is not possible to interpret the meaning of conversion in Udaipur without a deep understanding of contemporary Indian politics. Although the rise of Hindutva ideology has broad implications that negatively impact ethnic and religious minorities at a national level, in this sophisticated monograph, Sahoo reveals how the actions of relatively small‐scale, localized right‐wing organizations not only play a key role in the rise of anti‐Christian violence, but are also intimately related to the aspirations, zeal, and success of Pentecostal missionaries. Sahoo also argues that what has fuelled an intensification of violence is not the ideological antagonism between Hindu nationalists and Christian missionaries, but their competitive quest for converts amongst Adivasi communities. The key to the rising tensions therefore might be found in how organizations on both sides exchange accusations and develop tactics aimed at neutralizing the gains of the other. However, the tribal communities that they target are not passive pawns in this quest for converts. They actively search for ways to benefit – sometimes alternatively – from the opportunities for education, employment, and development that missionaries and nationalist NGOs offer.
Since independence, Christian missionaries have strongly denounced the hierarchical inequalities of the caste system. However, rather than working towards its elimination, many missionary organizations have incorporated its social structure into their evangelizing strategies. Hindu nationalists have criticized this, accusing missionaries of taking advantage of those at the bottom of Indian society for their own gain. Sahoo’s ethnography provides unique access to the tensions that the politics of conversion – both to Christianity and to Hindutva ideology – generate in villages across south Rajasthan. His interlocutors are constantly wary of to whom they might be talking and what they might be revealing. Some fear losing their jobs in the government if they divulge their Christian identity; others want to hide it from official records to keep qualifying for government reservations. This ‘crypto‐Christianity’ is thus becoming a difficult phenomenon to measure.
The book’s second and third chapters develop Sahoo’s ethnography through examining how Pentecostals in south Rajasthan have not attempted to convert caste Hindus but have instead turned their attention to communities that have been historically marginalized and discriminated against. Their focus on Dalits and Adivasi communities acted as a wake‐up call for organizations that embrace Hindutva ideology, which soon started reclaiming sectors of society that they had never considered as Hindu in the past. This strategic expansion of the limits for inclusion – which are being constantly redefined by supporters of Hindutva – constitutes a significant change for India’s political and religious landscape.
Sahoo effectively engages with scholars who have explored the consequences of this new dynamic (Roberts, Viswanathan, Appadurai), providing a well‐grounded conceptual background to frame his own research. His discussion of the concepts of rupture, continuity, and sincerity is helpful in contextualizing his argument; so is his analysis of the work of some key authors in the anthropology of Christianity (Robbins, Mosse, Keane), but he does not engage in theoretical challenges to their work. Given his deep knowledge of the situation in south Rajasthan and his engagement with this literature, the book could have offered a nuanced perspective on ongoing conceptual debates on Christianity and conversion in South Asia.
Yet this ethnography offers a convincing narrative of how tensions derived from the intense competition between Hindu nationalists and Christian missionaries have grown to produce profound antagonisms and multiple episodes of violence. Some of the most interesting passages of the book are found in chapter 3, where Sahoo takes on the issue of unethical conversions, fleshing out alternative definitions of allurement, freedom, and spiritual belief, revealing the complexities that alternative narratives of conversion generate. The main strengths of this volume derive from its capacity to situate the problem of conversion in the context of contemporary Indian politics and from its sophisticated ethnographic fieldwork in the region.
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@ Journal of Royal Anthropological Society, Vol.26, No.2, June, 2020, pp.450-451
REVIEW: Mobilizing Religion and Gender in India: The Role of Activism
Nandini Deo’s Mobilizing Religion and Gender in India examines the complex and contingent relationship between religion, gender and social movements in India and discusses the role of activism in democratic governance. Deo asks: what factors account for success and failure of social movements? ‘Why do some campaigns work and others fade away? What is the relationship between movement impact and organizational structures? And, what is the relative balance between shifting structural conditions and activist initiative in creating new social realities?’ (11). Addressing these, Deo makes a historical comparative analysis of two dominant social and political movements – Hindu nationalism and feminist movement – of twentieth-century India and discusses the variations in the outcomes between the two. Deo argues that although success or failure of social movements is shaped by multiple factors, what matters the most are: ideologies and strategies of the organization, activist responses to structural change, and influence of and interaction with global forces (3). In particular, Deo establishes the link between strategy and success and advocates for understanding the role that contingency plays in shaping the success and/or failure of social and political movements.
The book is dived into nine chapters. It begins with a theoretical discussion on the relationship between gender, religion and the secular where Deo questions the liberal state’s emphasis on public–private division and shows how Hindu nationalism and the women’s movement have adopted strategies that constantly challenge the public–private boundaries and divisions adopted by the modern Indian state. Both movements originated in the context of colonial domination and anti-colonial resistance where ideologies of their founding members influenced their organizational strategies and actions. For example, in the early post-colonial period, while the exclusivist and violent ideologies and approaches of Hindu nationalism led to its ban from mainstream politics, the inclusive and egalitarian ideologies and strategies of the women’s movement led to its success. Considering this, Hindu nationalists changed their strategies by diversifying their organizational structure and strengthening grassroots mobilization.
In the post-Emergency period, while Hindu nationalists became actively involved in grassroots mobilization and electoral politics, the women’s movement became increasingly disengaged from electoral politics, parties and the state. Instead of returning to grassroots politics or establishing a coalition with political parties, they chased financial support from international donors, which eventually weakened their ability to mobilize the masses. In the 1990s, the Hindu nationalists emerged stronger and more successful owing to their grassroots support base and organizational diversification. As Deo notes, the ‘heterogeneity of the Sangh’s many organizations [gave] it ideological flexibility to innovate’ (118). Building on this, Hindu nationalists reached out to global/transnational forces, especially the Indian diaspora, which provided legitimacy and financial backing to strengthen the movement. In contrast, the feminist movement, due to its lack of grassroots support base, became weakened and took refuge in safer spaces. Based on this, Deo argues that the women’s movement ‘found itself [increasingly] constrained’ by foreign forces and came to be considered the ‘inauthentic’ voice within Indian politics (137). Though Hindu nationalists were similarly constrained by the Indian diaspora, they managed to shift discourse to the right because of their strong grassroots support base. As a consequence, ‘[b]y the end of the century, Hindu nationalism was seen as a major force within Indian politics while the women’s movement was regarded … as a vibrant but minority constituency’ (137). Given this, Deo concludes that ‘everyday acts of community organizing’ (8) plays an important role in determining why a campaign succeeds or fails.
This book is very unique and makes important contributions. First, for the first time, it brings together Hindu nationalism in comparison with the feminist movement of India. Second, it examines the complex and contingent relationship between ideologies, strategies, structural forces and transnational links in explaining the rise and fall of social movements. Third, it provides a very well structured and sophisticated theory of social change. And finally, it shows how ‘comparative chronological history’ as a method is vital to understanding Indian politics. In summation, the book is analytically sophisticated and rich with insights and makes a significant contribution to the understanding of the complex interrelationship between religion, gender, social movements and the state in India.
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@ Sarbeswar Sahoo (2019) Contemporary South Asia; https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09584935.2019.1649048
Book Review: Pentecostalism and Politics of Conversion in India
By: Gnana Patrick
History and Sociology of South Asia, Vol.13, Issue.1, March, pp.46-50.
Sarbeswar Sahoo’s Pentecostalism and Politics of Conversion in India is an excellent volume, a welcome addition to the existing few research-based literature on debates related to Pentecostalism, politics centring on conversion and anti-Christian violence in the Indian context. Sahoo begins with a note that scholarly writing on Hindu–Christian violence, unlike that of the Hindu–Muslim violence, has been rare or ‘almost nothing’ (p. 2). That could be due to, according to him, the fact that Hindu–Christian violence is a relatively recent phenomenon or that Christian population is so small that it is politically insignificant or that the violence has been largely small scale or dispersed (p. 3). However, the shift that occurred around the 1980s in the increase of violence against Christians along with the political ascend of the Sangh Parivar is generating many studies today. Among a few such well-articulated studies,1
Sahoo’s volume focuses specifically on the neo-Pentecostals, who are working among the tribal people in south Rajasthan. Based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out among the Bhils of southern Rajasthan since 2005 and most specifically from 2011, this book provides detailed ethnographic narratives of Pentecostal conversion, Hindu Nationalist Politics and anti-Christian violence. The new dimension that the book brings to the debate on the subject is the ethnographic narratives from different others who are, in some way or other, the stakeholders of the phenomenon of conversion. Thus, the narratives of those who undergo conversion and face violence on account of it, stances of Christian missionaries, grievances of Hindu nationalists and of the Hindu adivasis are brought together to shed light on the phenomenon more holistically. And the book becomes holistic also by arguing that it is not mere antagonism between Christian missionaries and Hindu nationalists that causes anti-Christian violence, but an array of issues such as ‘competing projects of conversion between Christian missionaries and Hindu nationalists, politicisation of identity in relation to competitive electoral politics, and the dynamics of the (BJP-led) development state’ which ‘are integrally related to the production of anti-Christian violence in India’ (p. 7).
The volume is cast into six chapters, including introduction and conclusion. The introductory chapter clarifies the core concept of violence, shows the lacuna in studies related to Hindu–Christian violence, situates the present study amidst the existing debates on religious conversion in the Indian context and provides a long note on the methodology of the ethnographic study undertaken among the Bhils of south Rajasthan. The second chapter discusses the history of Pentecostalism in Rajasthan, and the strategies followed by the missionaries to enter as well as to establish legitimacy in tribal society. Further, it discusses the implications of the spread of Pentecostalism for the quota system or policies of affirmative action in India (p. 23).
The third chapter, after touching upon the existing studies on conversion in terms, primarily, of their perspectives, both in the Indian and the international contexts, examines the multiple narratives of conversions, as put forth by Hindu nationalists, Christian missionaries, adivasi converts and Hindu adivasis—the four stakeholders in the phenomenon of conversion in India. Based on the narratives obtained from or representing these stakeholders, the author concludes that ‘conversion is not a straightforward practice in which Christian missionaries go in and seduce people with material benefits, but that there are multiple and contradictory discourses surrounding it, which makes the practice complicated’ (p. 86). The author goes to say that these narratives should not ‘be read as exclusivist and separable from one another, but partially overlapping spheres of meaning—discrete points of entry into the much broader discursive issue of religious conversion in India’ (p. 86).
Fourth chapter is about the adivasi women and the Pentecostal Church, which gives a detailed ethnographic account of the conversion experience of the women, their narratives of empowerment, consequent changes in the male–female relations, socio-economic well-being, etc. ‘In ancient times people were divided on the basis of high-low or pure-impure; women were considered inferior. But in the Church there is no discrimination on the basis of caste, creed or gender. All are one/equal in Christ’ (p. 112) is perhaps the core of the narrative of women’s experience of Christianity. The author concludes that tribal women, having been ‘disillusioned by the bhopas and the hospitals, … came to the church as a last resort …’ and found the church ‘to be effective, non-exploitative, caring and compassionate’ (p. 118). They evince ‘courage and confidence to face any situation in life’ (p. 117). ‘Such life-transforming spiritual and material changes do not just defy the ‘materialist incentive hypothesis’ of conversion; they also stand as testimonies and credible explanations of why tribal women take a deliberate decision, in spite of knowing the adverse consequences …’ (p. 119).
Fifth chapter is on ‘Hindutva Politics and Anti-Christian Violence’. It situates the anti-Christian violence within the political economy of the tribal society in India. It shows that how Christian missionaries and members of the Sangh Parivar are involved today in competing projects of conversion through development programmes and welfare interventions. Since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) perceives conversion to be a threat to their electoral support base among the tribals, it is acutely involved in the project of gaining and sustaining the support of the tribals, which in turn, is partial explanation to the rising violence against Christians.
The final chapter sums up the narratives, demonstrations and arguments of the book. The experience of conversion among the Bhils of Rajasthan, whose explanation goes beyond the reductive argument of material inducement, is demonstrated to be a multifaceted one, involving a new identity construction, social empowerment, gender equality, agency of the marginalised, negotiation of traditional beliefs and practices, dynamics of religio-cultural continuity and discontinuity, the case of crypto-Christians, and so on. From the side of Hindu nationalists, it is a case of developing antagonism on account of a perceived threat to the Hindu cultural fabric, tribal solidarity, Hindu nationhood, electoral support base, and the like. As regards the Pentecostal Church in India is concerned, it finds itself being estranged not only from the Hindu nationalists but also from the mainline Christian denominational Churches. It is then a complex narrative that is involved in the politics of conversion and anti-Christian violence in India today.
The new dimension that this work brings in to the scholarship on the politics of Pentecostalism in India, compared to other extant works dwelling more or less on the same theme, is the ethnographic narratives even of the critics of conversion, while the other works, somehow, take for granted the views of the opponents while narrating the views of the converts to Pentecostalism. Sahoo, on the other hand, is narrating side by side the views of the different stakeholders, thereby helping the readers to understand the issue from a newer angle.
I wonder why it limits to four categories of stakeholders alone! What about the voice of a Hindu commoner or a Christian commoner who are not ‘activists’, but form the majority of Indian population? If the subject examined is conversion, it pertains to the religion, culture and decision-making of commoners, and not only of religious activists. It may be responded that the study is about the ‘politics’ of conversion, and therefore it deals only with those who are part of the process of politicisation of the subject. Unless the general reality of conversion as it goes about among the commoners is taken into consideration, how one could meaningfully debate about even the politics of conversion, lest by politics one meant only the enunciated debate in the public media.
Moreover, in spite of the conscious attempt to provide a holistic understanding of the causes of anti-Christian violence in India, and in spite of discussing the tensions between the Anglo-American and Indian understandings of secularism or religion–state relationships, the work, in my opinion, does not ‘sufficiently’ discuss the reality of caste which is said to provide a structural or systemic sociological framework for the generation of violence against Christians today. One might observe that the community that the researcher studies is a tribal community, and that it has less to do with caste in the Indian society. Perhaps the relationship of a tribal community to the Indian caste-based society, the progressive peasantisation of the tribal people and the enveloping cultural nationalist discourse could have been sufficiently discussed so as to understand the phenomenon of conversion yet more holistically.
Certain casual statements could have been avoided. For example, the author states, ‘Although Christianity was first brought to India by Saint Thomas, the Apostle, in AD 52…’ I do understand that the focus of the volume is not on history, and therefore less attention to history. However, a statement with such certitude about the arrival of Saint Thomas in ad 52 as a historical fact does not go well with the nuances the volume is seeking to bring about in the politics of conversion. Again, a statement like ‘Today, anywhere between 2.3 and 6 per cent (24 to 68 million people) of the Indian population are Christian’, (p. 21) is too casual to be mentioned in a volume on the ‘politics’ of conversion. In the next page, the author goes on to claim, ‘In India, by the year 2000, Pentecostals had grown to approximately 33.5 million strong… (p. 22). One wonders where from the author gets his free-flowing statistics! When we relate these statistics with the statement of the author: ‘Hindu nationalists have heavily opposed religious conversion because they are concerned about the growing number of converts, which has major implications…’ (p. 43), the consequentiality of such statistics is brought home.
But, finally, the merit of a fresh volume on Pentecostalism and the Politics of Conversion in India based on the ethnographic narratives of different stakeholders can never be less lauded. The epistemological intervention made by the volume will serve open many a closure. I congratulate the author for this scholarly contribution. I am sure religious studies in India will stand immensely benefitted by this timely work of Sarbeswar Sahoo.
FOOTNOTE:
1: For example, the volume by Chad M. Bauman, Pentecostals, Proselytization, and Anti-Christian Violence in Contemporary India (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015) deals with the phenomenon of Indian Pentecostalism and anti-Christian violence primarily from an embedded Christian optic, and the volume by Nathaniel Roberts, To be Cared for: The Power of Conversion and Foreignness of Belonging in an Indian Slum(New Delhi: Navayana Publishing Pvt Ltd, 2016), though focusing upon the reality of care as emerging from Pentecostalism, does discuss the issue of conversion within the frame of nationalism.
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@ https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2230807518810039
REVIEW: Pentecostalism and Politics of Conversion in India
By: SUMAN NATH (Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Government College, Kolkatta)
Pentecostalism and Politics of Conversion in India is an important contribution to the study of the multifaceted dimensions of religious conversion with a special emphasis on Pentecostalism in India. The author, trained in political sociology and ethnography, explores the interplay of religion, everyday life, state and politics in rural Rajasthan. The book aptly maps India—especially Rajasthan—to the global rise of Pentecostal Christianity.
The book is divided into six chapters and each of them opens up important dimensions of the spread of Pentecostalism from the same series of ethnography, often from the same sets of qualitative interviews. This very approach gives the work an interesting methodological position. A reader will find each of the chapters offering addition to the existing interpretations. Although it appears that the book is not strictly an outcome of participant observation, some of the anecdotes in the initial chapters show the nature and extent of the author’s immersion in the field situation. He relied more on interview sessions to find out major dimensions of Pentecostalism and its everyday interplay with people’s lives, politics and state policies.
Chapter 1 introduces the issue of religious conversion and Pentecostalism in the context of intersubjective violence that plays a crucial role in disrupting the interactive plane of the society at large. It shows that Hindu–Christian conflict is understudied because of the low percentage of Christians and the geographically restricted and relatively smaller scale of such violence. Furthermore, it gives a historical reference to the fact that missionary movements that began to intensify since 1991 with the Pope’s visit to India, were perceived as a threat by Hindu nationalists. The author shows that this is also the time when a series of large-scale attacks on Christians started to take place. He argues that Pentecostalism—allegedly with its aggressive conversion—is projected as one of the reasons for such conflicts. He places his research question in this chapter, which is to explore the reasons for rapid conversion of Adivasis and other marginal sections of the population, through ethnographic research on the Bhils of Rajasthan. To address the research question, he reveals that he has used immersion-based ethnography and phenomenology. However, as one reads through the chapters, it becomes clear that although he has successfully captured multiple perspectives of the phenomenon of conversion, this book cannot be said to be a project of phenomenology primarily because it does not offer a phenomenological thematic analysis.
Chapter 2 reveals some of the fundamental reasons for the spread of Pentecostalism, rooted in the history of the marginal existence of adivasis and dalits in India and in Rajasthan. It shows how Pentacostalists concentrated on people from the margins as they had little success in their efforts among the caste Hindus. The author cites: (a) compatibility of tribal belief system and Pentacostalists, (b) the ‘magical’ healing and (c) organised move of the Pentacostalists coupled with missionary movements as major reasons of success of the conversion process. By showing a case study of the Calvary Covenant Fellowship Mission (CCFM), a Pentacostalist mission organisation, the chapter shows how magical healing becomes one of the prime reasons for conversion. It also shows that people do not usually go for conversion for immediate material gains. Pentacostalists, furthermore, do not put any bar on using the convert’s earlier surnames, which renders conversion as an ‘unofficial’ process. Hence, converts can still access state-driven benefits designed for adivasis and dalits.
Chapter 3 discusses the reasons, features, expressions, beliefs, constructs and consequences of conversion. It attempts to explore whether genuine spiritual belief and free will or material benefits drive people to go for conversion. The author reviews a rich literature on conversion addressing the issue from a variety of disciplines and shows through ethnographic narratives how people attach meanings including relief from health problems, family tension, black magic and the like as reasons for conversion. He shows that exclusion from the tribal society and common property resources are some of the extreme consequences which in some cases converts have faced.
Chapter 4 brings out the dimensions of gender in conversion. Focusing on existing literature on women Pentacostalists, who are greater in number than men, this chapter gives ethnographic details of the issues of alcohol consumption and polygamous nature of men as two unique reasons cited by women to go for conversion. Furthermore, the author gives details of how converted women found conversion as giving them a sense of self-esteem.
Chapter 5 situates the author’s ethnographic findings in the broad spectrum of politics of India and issues of conversion. It explores the claim of Hindutva forces that conversion to Christianity is a threat to integration of the nation. They firmly believe India to be a Hindu nation. While in contrast, the Church perceives conversion not as a threat to Hindus and shows how heavily marginalised and excluded people ‘seek refuge in Christ’. Hence, missionaries project themselves as agents of progress.
In a rather brief conclusion the book contests the materialist approach of seeing conversion as an outcome of immediate material gains and argues for the multiple dimensions of the phenomenon of conversion as investigated through ethnography.
This book is perhaps one of the first attempts that focuses on Pentecostalism in India through ethnographic details. Hence, it is an extremely valuable contribution to a social–scientific understanding of the issues of religious conversion at large, and Pentecostalism in particular. The author has successfully presented multiple perceptions and dimensions of the issue of conversion and Pentecostalism with ethnographic details. This book is definitely going to bridge the gap in existing knowledge about (a) the rise of Pentecostalism in practice, (b) Christianity in India, (c) the Hindutva interface and (d) policy and politics interplay.
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Suman Nath (2019) Contributions to Indian Sociology, Vol.53, No.2, May, pp.360-362.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0069966719833465
Sarbeswar Sahoo
The Practice of Sociology 