Paper short abstract:

This paper will explore how church membership provides Naga migrants from Northeast India with safe social spaces and a sense of belonging in the mega-city of New Delhi, which help them negotiate their multi-layered marginality and exclusion and rework and resist dominant relations of power.

Paper long abstract:

Over the past several decades, the rise of militant Hindu ideologies within the political space of India has exacerbated existing communal tensions and rifts, which has resulted in the severe marginalisation and discrimination of sizeable minority communities, especially in India's cities. However, while many minority migrants are subjected to similar forms of discrimination and exclusion in the mega-city of New Delhi, for example, some, such as the Naga from Northeast India, are quite distinguishable from the imagination of what constitutes the Indian 'mainstream' and as a result, they experience multi-layered forms of everyday precarity and violence. By virtue of being Scheduled Tribes, the Naga are subjected to structural violence within the Hindu caste system, which relegates members of scheduled tribes to the bottom of the social hierarchy and also exhibits a strong racial prejudice; they are vulnerable to economic exploitation in the neoliberal economy of New Delhi; they are often exposed to sexual violence; and their religious identities make them regular targets of xenophobic violence. With an ethnographic focus on some Naga Baptist churches in New Delhi, this paper will explore how church membership provides Naga migrants not only with a strong social network which mediates connections with the wider society back home but also, more importantly, with a sense of belonging and safe social spaces within the general precariousness of the mega-city in which they can devise and share mechanisms for coping with their marginality and exclusion and rework and resist dominant relations of power.