Paper short abstract:

Drawing on a case study of Bhil Christians in southern Rajasthan, this paper seeks to complicate existing narratives of acculturation by showing how Christians strive to assert their own difference in the context of endemic anti-Christian violence perpetrated by the Sangh Parivar.

Paper long abstract:

Ideas of acculturation and indigeneity have been heavily foregrounded in recent literature on adivasi Christianity in India. Scholarship on how adivasi worldviews and cultural practices have interacted with the religious and ritual universe of Christianity has largely focused on the processes of syncretism and assimilation that have taken place between adivasis and the Church. In this paper I examine the ways in which Hindu Nationalist anti-Christian activity has complicated these now-familiar narratives, based on fieldwork carried out amongst Bhil Pentecostal Christians in Udaipur district, Rajasthan. This area has seen the aggressive mobilisation of Hindu nationalist groups amongst tribal communities since the mid-1990s.

While the Hindu Nationalist portrayal of Christianity as a foreign religion has led scholars and others to emphasize its essential indigeneity, this is not necessarily the case when we look at the narratives of adivasi Christians in areas where the Sangh Parivar is active both socially and politically. Considering both the nature of the Pentecostal church in this region and the various types of violence enacted on Christians by Hindu nationalist groups, I argue that the experiences of Christians here have in fact played a role in reducing fluidity in group boundaries and behaviours. While they do not conceptualise their religion as foreign, Bhil Christians are actively expressing their own 'otherness' through their religious, social and political practices, and constructing and performing a Christian identity that actually serves to distance them from the dominant- and at times antagonistic- local religious culture.