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- Convenors:
-
Peter Berger
(Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Groningen)
Sarbeswar Sahoo (Indian Institute of Technology Delhi)
- Location:
- Room 215
- Start time:
- 27 July, 2016 at
Time zone: Europe/Warsaw
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
This panel seeks to examine the modalities and processes of religious conversion in India with regard to three interconnected levels: the subjective experience of the actors involved, the (inter)group dynamics and the larger political and societal contexts.
Long Abstract:
This panel seeks to examine modalities of religious conversion in India. Conversion has often been analyzed as a radical and sudden change. While this may be the case this change does not need to be abrupt but can also be gradual. Moreover, conversion does not need to be total, that means involving at the same time and to the same extend belief, practice, life-style and social relationships. It may affect only one or more of these dimensions and to a different degree at different moments in the process of conversion. The panel is not about any particular religion. Rather, the focus is on the processes of changing religious affiliations with regard to three interconnected levels: a) the subjective experience of the actors involved, b) the (inter)group dynamics and, c) the larger political and societal contexts. Pertinent questions thus are: How do these micro, meso and macro levels interact in the processes of conversion? Can we identify different aspects as being crucial in the initial phase of conversion in contrast to the period after conversion? In which way are the general political and societal contexts relevant in this regard? Does, for example, the pressure from the state to become part of the "mainstream" push communities towards changing their religious affiliation? And, do people convert because they feel inferior vis-à-vis a dominant culture or religion? Is it more a conversion toward a new religion, or rather away from an old identity?
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
Three processes will be compared: first, the individual conversion toward an ascetic reform movement; second, appropriation of cultural features of “Indian mainstream society” by the young; third, assertion of an “Adivasi identity” by a few.
Paper long abstract:
This paper discusses recent research on cultural change among the Gadaba of highland Odisha, a community classified as Schedule Tribe by the government. Three processes will be compared. The first concerns the individual choice of a few Gadaba to abandon their previous lifestyle and to become initiated into an ascetic reform movement called Alekh Dharma. It will be outlined how this ascetic stance can be negotiated with a local religion that stresses alcohol consumption and animal sacrifice. The second process deals with a phenomenon widespread among the young Gadaba, namely the appropriation of cultural elements such as gestures, clothes and diet associated with "Indian mainstream society" that is advocated in local government schools and popularized through recently available Oriya films. The paper will address if and how this appropriation changes local ritual practice and what its impact is on inter-generational relations. Finally, a few educated Gadaba articulate tentative claims toward a separate Adivasi identity — for instance with regard to language — and it will be discussed whether these are individual opinions or rather the beginning of institutionalized resistance.
Paper short abstract:
Explores one of a number of such movements which took place subsequent to untouchable (dalit) movements into Christianity, and which occurred in coastal Telugu speaking areas, as well as in Hyderabad, from about the 1920's onwards.
Paper long abstract:
The paper acknowledges the extent to which non-brahmans were impressed by changes in the life-style and attitudes of untouchables who became Christians. But it also points to the particular situation of Hyderabad under the Nizam's oppressive administration. In spite of caste divisions, lower caste non-brahmans, shared many tasks in common with untouchables. Furthermore, in Hyderabad in particular, both these sections of society felt the weight of oppression, and the need to collaborate in the face of Government and higher caste exploitation. The support of Christian pastors, opportunities for education and the appeal of modernization all contributed to a greater sense of empowerment and hope for the future. But while there was a movement from caste to class feeling, the paper also points to the fact that some powerful village heads also joined the Christian churches.
Paper short abstract:
This paper attempts to examine how communist activism indubitably planted seeds of ‘caste consciousness’ and in turn contributed for the growth of Christianity in some parts of coastal Andhra Pradesh.
Paper long abstract:
The proposed paper attempts to explore a rather distinctive trajectory of conversion to Christianity in the history of modern India taking the 'communist activism', if not the communist ideology, as a point of entry into the discourse of religious conversions to argue that it indubitably planted seeds of 'caste consciousness' and in turn contributed for the growth of Christianity in some parts of coastal Andhra Pradesh. In order to unfold this trajectory of conversion to Christianity, one needs to historically examine communist activism in Coastal Andhra with reference to local politics especially lower caste politics. Local politics/community politics is one of the significant junctures/terrains wherein 'caste' and 'class', as predominant categories of mobilization, begin to interact and feed into each other owing to a fact that lower castes of this region constitute a sizable working class. It is therefore argued that the lower castes constitute a significant portion of the social base of communist activism itself. This paper further examines how communist activism, as one of the pioneering agencies that firmly stood against various institutional forms of castes discrimination earlier, underwent formidable modifications as per ever changing socio-religious dynamics of Coastal Andhra and in turn laid foundation for the growth of 'caste consciousness'. I would like to argue that the strengthening of 'caste consciousness' and 'conversion to Christianity' were though unintended but significant manifestations of communist activism. The Caste-Class dynamics with reference to religious conversions will be explored with the help of ethnographic data collected from the field.
Paper short abstract:
Using the concepts of rupture (Joel Robbins) and transnational transcendence (Csordas) the paper explores the theme of healing and its historical and contemporary role in Christianity among the Naga of northeast India.
Paper long abstract:
The Naga peoples of Nagaland in north eastern India have over two or three generations converted almost entirely to Christianity from their indigenous animistic religion. Situating the phenomenon of conversion in its socio-political and historical context, I explore how far the analytical categories of rupture (Joel Robbins) and transnational transcendence (Thomas Csordas) can be applied to conversion among Naga. I then conclude that the theme of healing is the connecting thread which runs through the historical and contemporary role of Christianity and its continued importance in the shift from individual to collective healing.
Paper short abstract:
The paper will present a comparative account of colonial and post-colonial conversions among the Naga tribes of Northeast India and argue that in both periods Naga conversions have been underpinned by perceptions of modernity and attempts to assert ethnic distinctiveness and political autonomy.
Paper long abstract:
Christian conversions in India are often explained in relation to the changed socio-economic and political realities brought about by the colonial encounter and by foreign missionaries, or as a tool for social mobility and empowerment, especially among tribal and Dalit groups in the post-colonial era of India's independence. In the far northeast of India, however, conversions of tribal communities to Christianity have often served the purpose of constructing difference and maintaining distance from what is perceived as the mainstream of Indian civilisation. Drawing on the ethnographic example of the Naga from the state of Nagaland in Northeast India - the highest density Christian population state in India, the paper will explore the motivations which have underpinned mass Naga conversions to Baptist Christianity in the course of the 20th century. The paper will adopt an ethno-historical and ethnographic perspective in order to demonstrate that from the beginning of foreign missionary work among the Naga in the late 19th century conversion has been conceptualised through discourses of modernity and identity change which have translated into a political project of converting to Christianity in the late colonial and in the post-colonial period. The paper will argue that the unfolding of geopolitics in the Indo-Burma borderlands throughout the 20th century has served as a strong catalyst for Naga conversions to Christianity as conversion became an ideological tool for constructing ethnic distinctiveness and asserting Nagas' right to self-determination and political autonomy from the Indian nation state.
Paper short abstract:
There's a multi-layered conflict and division within a single Christian denomination. The tenets of religion (Christianity here) as believed and the core-belief (the way it is lived out) is found intricately linked with traditional customs - believe and practices.
Paper long abstract:
Studies on the north eastern states of India have usually tended to concentrate on problems of ethnicity, militancy, identity, and the politics of cultural and religious differences. This paper also takes familiar terrain by way of looking at the history, but goes beyond them to explore much ignored and missing perspectives on customary practices, conflicts arising out of religious core-beliefs and historical influences. This paper is a sociological enquiry of a micro and localized crisis in Yimti village in the North-East Region (NER) of India, attempting a broader understanding of conflict and the role of religious worldviews. Yimti village is a 161 household village in Nagaland, inhabited exclusively by the Ao-Naga tribal group. With its rather hostile social history towards mainland India, the village has been subject to colonial and post colonial control and influenced historically in uniquely different ways. Distinctly, Yimti has an unusual conflict within a church, socio-economic politics and conflicts within and without - all of which demand equivocal inquiry so as to look through and beyond easily evident and commonsensical constructs of institutions.
Paper short abstract:
The paper examines four narratives on conversion - narratives of Hindu nationalists, Christian missionaries, Adivasi converts, and (Hindu) Adivasis. These narratives show how different actors assign different meanings, often contradictory to each other, to the complex and controversial issue of conversion.
Paper long abstract:
This paper engages with the issue of free will/force and spiritual belief/inducement, through examining whether Adivasis convert out of "genuine spiritual belief and free will", or are induced to convert via material means. These issues signify not only the mismatch between the Hindu nationalists' and Christian missionaries' understandings of conversion, but also point out how these groups have relied on the Constitution to justify and resist conversion. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among the Bhil tribes of Southern Rajasthan in the last decade, I examine multiple narratives on religious conversion. Specifically, I examine narratives of Hindu nationalists, Christian missionaries, Adivasi converts, and (Hindu) Adivasis. These four narratives show how different actors assign different meanings, often contradictory to each other, to the complex and controversial issue of conversion. These four narratives, the paper suggests, should not be read as exclusive and separable from each other. They should rather be understood as four "partially overlapping spheres of meaning - discrete points of entry into the much broader discursive" issue of conversion in India.
Paper short abstract:
A critical examination of the autobiography of a 19th century North Indian school teacher to uncover the personal, communal, religious, political and social factors that facilitated his conversions from Sunni Islam to the Pranami sect, then to Christianity, and finally to evangelical Protestantism.
Paper long abstract:
At the age of 50, on the 25th anniversary of his baptism, and 2 years after his promotion to the second highest position in the Methodist hierarchy, Zahur-ul-Haqq wrote an autobiography that recounted his religious migration from Sunni Islam to Methodist Christianity. It was, according to him, a path with a number of religious conversions, and he has left us with hints about and explanations for some of the factors that went into the various decisions he made along the way. The fact that he never changed his name, along with certain features of his thought that are evident in his writing, indicate that he also did not see conversion as a total rejection of the past, but rather a gradual and ongoing movement toward what he named as "truth." This paper will first of all locate Haqq's autobiography within the genre of Methodist conversion narratives, and will compare it to standard Methodist narratives, so that the unique characteristics and emphases of Haqq's autobiography can be discerned. Secondly, it will draw on historical material to understand the particular religious traditions, in their North Indian context, with which he was affiliated, to reveal some of the elements of those traditions which made it possible for him to move from one to another without great disruption, and with a measure of continuity. Finally, the paper will draw some conclusions about what Zahur-ul-Haqq's autobiography can tell us regarding the nature of religious conversion in British North India in the 19th century.