Conversion and Social Equality in India PDF Download

Author: Dick Kooiman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Kerala (India)
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
"Analyses the confrontation between Evangelical missionaries from Victorian England and low caste communities in the Hindu social order, in the social setting of Travancore, an Indian native state tucked away in the South-west corner of the Indian peninsula. However, the problems like social stratifcation and cultural change dealt with by the author in the book concern a much wider field than Travancore or India along."--Dust jacket flap

Author: Rupa Viswanath
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231537506
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
Once known as "Pariahs," Dalits are primarily descendants of unfree agrarian laborers. They belong to India's most subordinated castes, face overwhelming poverty and discrimination, and provoke public anxiety. Drawing on a wealth of previously untapped sources, this book follows the conception and evolution of the "Pariah Problem" in public consciousness in the 1890s. It shows how high-caste landlords, state officials, and well-intentioned missionaries conceived of Dalit oppression, and effectively foreclosed the emergence of substantive solutions to the "Problem"—with consequences that continue to be felt today. Rupa Viswanath begins with a description of the everyday lives of Dalit laborers in the 1890s and highlights the systematic efforts made by the state and Indian elites to protect Indian slavery from public scrutiny. Protestant missionaries were the first non-Dalits to draw attention to their plight. The missionaries' vision of the Pariahs' suffering as being a result of Hindu religious prejudice, however, obscured the fact that the entire agrarian political–economic system depended on unfree Pariah labor. Both the Indian public and colonial officials came to share a view compatible with missionary explanations, which meant all subsequent welfare efforts directed at Dalits focused on religious and social transformation rather than on structural reform. Methodologically, theoretically, and empirically, this book breaks new ground to demonstrate how events in the early decades of state-sponsored welfare directed at Dalits laid the groundwork for the present day, where the postcolonial state and well-meaning social and religious reformers continue to downplay Dalits' landlessness, violent suppression, and political subordination.

Author: Sarbeswar Sahoo
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108553559
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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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.

Author: Geoffrey A. Oddie
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780700704729
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
These papers address the issues of religious conversion and religious conversion movements - a topic which has rapidly become the central issue of many scholarly debates. Many religions are discussed along with other relevent issues

Author: Pt Satish K. Sharma
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781838266219
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 120

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Book Description
Almost everyone on the planet has heard of the "Ancient Hindu Caste" system and somehow, almost everyone knows how horrible it is, but what if it wasn't ancient and it wasn't Hindu? Almost everyone on the planet knows that the colonialist erasure of indigenous languages and ideas was a horrific chapter in human history, but what if it's not over, what if it's morphed in to a new form, just as devastating and destructive, and what if the Caste issue holds the key to revealing it? Every Hindu walks through life carrying a subliminal guilt that his or her ancestors were "caste discriminators" and every devout Christian walks tall and proud in the knowledge that his or her ancestors helped to free the crushed, downtrodden from the depraved Hindoo caste system, and being an accepted "truth" no-one questions it any more. What if they are both victims of the same deception, of the same multigenerational fraud? In 2016, the British Hindu community was rocked when it became the target of demonisation and dehumanisation by anti-Hindu Anglican Evangelists. Allegations were made that caste discrimination was not a relic of history but was present and not only present but rife amongst the British Indian community. The difficulty was that there was no experience of it at the grass roots level, and there was no evidence of it being either systemic nor endemic, so what was afoot? The author Pt Satish K Sharma, a Dharmic Scholar and Theologian and a long serving community worker under took the task of determining, once and for all, the real history of Caste and of establishing and quantifying its presence or absence in the Britain of the 21st Century. There were mountains of academic accounts of the theory, allegations and anecdotes abounded and yet the reality at ground level was remarkably different. The revelations contained in this work were the revelations which incinerated the false claims which had been levelled, revealed the hidden hand behind the anti-Hindu media campaign but also provided the context and framework with which this long running civilisational wound could heal. The contents of this book include actual communications which took place, the information which was presented to Parliamentarians. Legislators and Community leaders as well as eye witness accounts of meetings and "consultations", as well as the authors research, research which led eventually to the senior leaders of the Church of England requesting that Parliament review the whole issue once more. We have the strange situation that Parliament passed legislation without adequate consultation and the Government chose not to enact the legislation, a phenomenon never before arisen in British History, this book provides the answers as to why. The Caste issue remains a colonialist force for harm, and the tropes which underly it cause suffering to the Hindu community in every corner of the world even today, as Isabel Wilkersons recent tragically uninfomed book prove. This book will go a long way to to reversing this harm and should be compulsory reading for every Hindu, Christian and activist working to reverse the civilisational trauma of European Colonialism "I find it extraordinary that there are issues here of which until now I have had absolutely no knowledge. My feeling is that the majority of native Britons will share this reaction. The Church, Christianity, which had perverted the simple message of its founder, believed it could justify imposing its version on a "primitive" people with a concept of original sin and the claim that it alone possessed the means to personal salvation. Between them, they were able to devise an extraordinarily successful divide-and-rule format which did immense damage to that country... Please forgive us now, so that we can move forward together." M Purton BBC Producer (Retd)

Author: Laura Dudley Jenkins
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812250923
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Hinduism is the largest religion in India, encompassing roughly 80 percent of the population, while 14 percent of the population practices Islam and the remaining 6 percent adheres to other religions. The right to "freely profess, practice, and propagate religion" in India's constitution is one of the most comprehensive articulations of the right to religious freedom. Yet from the late colonial era to the present, mass conversions to minority religions have inflamed majority-minority relations in India and complicated the exercise of this right. In Religious Freedom and Mass Conversion in India, Laura Dudley Jenkins examines three mass conversion movements in India: among Christians in the 1930s, Dalit Buddhists in the 1950s, and Mizo Jews in the 2000s. Critics of these movements claimed mass converts were victims of overzealous proselytizers promising material benefits, but defenders insisted the converts were individuals choosing to convert for spiritual reasons. Jenkins traces the origins of these opposing arguments to the 1930s and 1940s, when emerging human rights frameworks and early social scientific studies of religion posited an ideal convert: an individual making a purely spiritual choice. However, she observes that India's mass conversions did not adhere to this model and therefore sparked scrutiny of mass converts' individual agency and spiritual sincerity. Jenkins demonstrates that the preoccupation with converts' agency and sincerity has resulted in significant challenges to religious freedom. One is the proliferation of legislation limiting induced conversions. Another is the restriction of affirmative action rights of low caste people who choose to practice Islam or Christianity. Last, incendiary rumors are intentionally spread of women being converted to Islam via seduction. Religious Freedom and Mass Conversion in India illuminates the ways in which these tactics immobilize potential converts, reinforce damaging assumptions about women, lower castes, and religious minorities, and continue to restrict religious freedom in India today.

Author: Dr. Chittaranjan Mallik
Publisher: REDSHINE Publication
ISBN: 9358793090
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
The idea of writing this book has been germinating in my mind for long time but due to certain unavoidable reason could not get it finished. Really, it is very tough task to put together Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar’s ideas and thoughts on entirety in a single book, yet this book is an attempt to provide a coherent account on his socio-political struggles to establish an egalitarian transformative society with the ideas of liberty, equality, fraternity and social justice through the Constitutional means with all odds of caste indignities; and challenged the age-old social structure intellectually rooting on the ground and rendered unwavering contributions in making modern India.

Author: Eliza F. Kent
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190290048
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
With the emergence of Hindu nationalism, the conversion of Indians to Christianity has become a volatile issue, erupting in violence against converts and missionaries. At the height of British colonialism, however, conversion was a path to upward mobility for low-castes and untouchables, especially in the Tamil-speaking south of India. In this book, Eliza F. Kent takes a fresh look at these conversions, focusing especially on the experience of women converts and the ways in which conversion transformed gender roles and expectations. Kent argues that the creation of a new, "respectable" community identity was central to the conversion process for the agricultural laborers and artisans who embraced Protestant Christianity under British rule. At the same time, she shows, this new identity was informed as much by elite Sanskritic customs and ideologies as by Western Christian discourse. Stigmatized by the dominant castes for their ritually polluting occupations and relaxed rules governing kinship and marriage, low-caste converts sought to validate their new higher-status identity in part by the reform of gender relations. These reforms affected ideals of femininity and masculinity in the areas of marriage, domesticity, and dress. By the creation of a "discourse of respectability," says Kent, Tamil Christians hoped to counter the cultural justifications for their social, economic, and sexual exploitation at the hands of high-caste landowners and village elites. Kent's focus on the interactions between Western women missionaries and the Indian Christian women not only adds depth to our understanding of colonial and patriarchal power dynamics, but to the intricacies of conversion itself. Posing an important challenge to normative notions of conversion as a privatized, individual moment in time, Kent's study takes into consideration the ways that public behavior, social status, and the transformation of everyday life inform religious conversion.

Author: Sarah Claerhout
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000571130
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Book Description
This book re-examines the issue of religious conversion, which has been a site of conflict in India for several centuries. It discusses wide-ranging themes such as conversion, education, and reform in colonial India; the process and practices of conversion in Christian Europe; Gandhi, conversion, and the equality of religions; perspectives from Hindu nationalism, secularism, and religious minorities; religious freedom and the limits of propagating religion; and conversion in constitutional law, commissions, and courts, to chart new directions for research on religion, tradition, and conversion. Tracing developments from the 19th-century colonial era to contemporary times, the book analyses cultural background frameworks and the origins of religious conversion and its conceptualisation in Western Christianity. It further delves into how Indian culture and its traditions have shaped responses to conversion. Part of the Critical Humanities Across Cultures series, this book will be useful to scholars and researchers of critical humanities, religion, cultural studies, sociology of religion, comparative religion, philosophy, anthropology, theology, Indology, history, politics, postcolonial studies, critical theory, and South Asian studies.

Author: ராஜ் சேகர் பாசு / Raj Sekhar Basu
Publisher: Kizhakku Pathippagam
ISBN: 9384149810
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 810

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"""பறையர்கள் என்பவர்கள் யார் என்னும் ஆதாரக் கேள்வியுடன் தொடங்கும் இந்த முக்கியமான ஆய்வுநூல் 19ம் நூற்றாண்டின் தொடக்கம் முதல் 20ம் நூற்றாண்டின் பிற்பகுதி வரையிலான பறையர்களின் சமூக, அரசியல், பொருளாதார வாழ்க்கை முறையை மிக விரிவாகவும் ஆதாரபூர்வமாகவும் பதிவு செய்திருக்கிறது. பிரிட்டிஷ் காலனியாதிக்கத்துக்கு ஆட்படுவதற்கு முன்பு பறையர்களின் வாழ்நிலை எப்படி இருந்தது என்பதையும் ஆட்பட்ட பின்னர் எத்தகைய மாற்றங்களையெல்லாம் சந்திக்க நேர்ந்தது என்பதையும் நுணுக்கமாக ஒப்பிட்டு ஆராய்கிறது. இந்த மாற்றத்தில் பங்கெடுத்த பிரிட்டிஷ் மற்றும் இந்திய அமைப்புகள், அரசியல் கட்சிகள், கிறிஸ்தவ மிஷனரிகள் ஆகியவற்றைப் பற்றியும் பல விரிவான செய்திகள் இந்நூலில் இடம்பெற்றுள்ளன. பறையர்கள் மெல்ல மெல்ல தங்கள் வாழ்நிலையை மாற்றிக்கொண்டு போராடத் தொடங்கியபோதும் அரசியல் வெளிக்குள் நுழைந்தபோதும் மேல்சாதியினரும் ஆதிக்கப் பிரிவினரும் எப்படியெல்லாம் எதிர்வினையாற்றினார்கள் என்பதை வாசிக்கும்போது நந்தனார் சம்பவம் நம் நினைவுக்கு வந்துவிடுகிறது. திராவிட இயக்கம் தோன்றுவதற்கு முன்பே, 1850களில் பறையர்களின் போராட்ட மரபு தொடங்கிவிட்டது என்பதைத் தகுந்த ஆதாரங்களுடன் நிறுவும் நூலாசிரியர் ராஜ் சேகர் பாசு, தமிழ்நாட்டின் தவிர்க்கவியலாத அரசியல் சக்தியாக பறையர்கள் மாறிப்போனது எப்படி என்பதைப் படிப்படியாக விவரிக்கிறார். பிரிட்டிஷ் நிர்வாக ஆவணங்கள், அரசுத் துறை பதிவுகள், நில ஆவணங்கள் என்று தொடங்கி விரிவான, ஆழமான மூலாதாரங்களில் இருந்து பறையர்கள் குறித்த தகவல்களைத் திரட்டியெடுத்து ஆய்வு செய்துள்ளார். விளிம்புநிலை மக்களின் வரலாறு எப்படி ஆய்வு செய்யப்படவேண்டும், எப்படி ஆவணப்படுத்தப்படவேண்டும் என்பதற்கு இந்தப் புத்தகம் ஒரு அருமையான உதாரணம். சாதி, அரசியல், வரலாறு, சமூகவியல் ஆகிய துறைகளில் ஆர்வம் உள்ள அனைவரும் போற்றி வரவேற்கவேண்டிய மிக முக்கியமான பதிவு இந்நூல். """