Read more
This book studies the politics of Pentecostal conversion and anti-Christian violence in India. It asks: why has India been experiencing increasing incidents of anti-Christian violence since the 1990s? Why are the Bhil Adivasis increasingly converting to Pentecostalism? And, what are the implications of conversion for religion within indigenous communities on the one hand and broader issues of secularism, religious freedom and democratic rights on the other? Drawing on extended ethnographic fieldwork amongst the Bhils of Northern India since 2006, this book asserts that ideological incompatibility and antagonism between Christian missionaries and Hindu nationalists provide only a partial explanation for anti-Christian violence in India. It unravels the complex interactions between different actors/ agents in the production of anti-Christian violence and provides detailed ethnographic narratives on Pentecostal conversion, Hindu nationalist politics and anti-Christian violence in the largest state of India that has hitherto been dominated by upper caste Rajput Hindu(tva) ideology.
List of contents
Preface; Acknowledgements; 1. Introduction: conversion and the shifting discourse of violence; 2. Spreading like fire: the growth of Pentecostalism among tribals; 3. Taking refuge in Christ: four narratives on religious conversion; 4. Becoming believers: Adivasi women and the Pentecostal Church; 5. Seen as the alien: Hindutva politics and anti-Christian violence; 6. Conclusion: beyond the competing projects of conversion; Endnotes; Bibliography.
About the author
Sarbeswar Sahoo teaches Sociology at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India. He is also Adjunct Faculty at the Centre for the Study of Religion and Culture in Asia, University of Groningen, the Netherlands. His research interests include Civil Society and Democratization, Sociology of Religion, Pentecostalism, and anti-Christian Violence in India. He is the author of Civil Society and Democratization in India: Institutions, Ideologies and Interests (2013).
Summary
This book studies the politics of Pentecostal conversion and anti-Christian violence in India and unravels the complex interactions between different actors/ agents in the production of anti-Christian violence.
