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.