Paper short abstract:

This paper looks at the contemporary character of South Asian Christianity in India as experienced, negotiated and altered by the Dalit Christians through the study of two novels ("Siluvai Raj Sarithiram" and "Kalacchumai") written by Raj Gautaman, a Dalit Christian himself.

Paper long abstract:

This paper looks at the contemporary character of South Asian Christianity in India as experienced, negotiated and altered by a Dalit Christian, Raj Gautaman and narrates his story—indeed the collective experience of Dalit Christians—through his two novels: "Siluvai Raj Sarithiram" and "Kalacchumai."

The paper shows that Dalit Christianity in India is not so much a particular form of Christianity but a field of contestation and negotiation between three matrices: the cultural matrix of Dalits, the religious matrix of caste-ridden Catholic Christianity and the secular matrix of Indian Nation state. Placed at the intersection between the three, a Dalit Christian faces different forms of discrimination and resistance to the emergence of his subjecthood. In his transition from childhood to adulthood and from village to city, Raj Gautaman, with his inherited and ambivalent dual identity of a Dalit and a Catholic Christian, sees no scope for his self-cultivation either within or outside the Church.

Making use of Bakhtinian framework of analysis, the paper aims to explore the subaltern's construction of inner self in relation to the outer-world and, shows how in the process, not only the religious identity of an individual but also the contemporary character of Christianity is negotiated, interrogated, punctured and altered.

South Asian Christianity in India is primarily a lived-in social space and it can cease to be a religion for the Dalits when it fails to help them conquer their subaltern victimhood and construct their modern selfhood in the society.