Abstract
Religious change and transformations in societies have been long-standing concerns of sociology ever since the emergence of the discipline. Religious conversion and subsequent sociocultural transformations have elicited scholarly attention in the sub-discipline of sociology of religious conversion especially during the second half of the twentieth century. However, as rightly observed in the ‘Foreword’ to the book by Professor Hans Joas, sociological attention to the global rise of Pentecostal Christianity is sparse. Such a gap in the context of Indian subcontinent which is experiencing high politicization of religion in the twenty-first century has been attempted to be filled, rather successfully, by the volume under review.
An attempt to review this book is challenging, for it has already been commended by four eminent sociologists of religion whose praises appear in the back cover of the book. The book contains an appreciative and critical foreword by Professor Hans Joas, Ernst Troeltsch Professor for the Sociology of Religion, Humboldt University of Berlin. Professor Hans Joas’ concluding comments in the foreword are important to grasp the substantive contribution of the book. He commented that ‘The author does not turn the one-sidedness of a materialist reductionism into a cultural reductionism… [The book] is exemplary in its achievements’. Professor Bryan S. Turner considers the book as ‘A major contribution to both the study of modern India and sociology of religion’. Political sociologically, when the nation-state is experiencing the re-implantation of Hindu-nationalistic politics in contemporary times, Sarbeshwar Sahoo’s political sociological examination of anti-Christian violence helps us to understand the nature and course of social processes relating to the spread of Pentecostalism in India.
The book is the result of Sarbeshwar Sahoo’s longitudinal engagement with the field for almost a decade since 2006–2007. His sensitivity to conversion and violence emerged during his initial examination of the interface between three ideologically and politically different non-governmental organizations in the tribal-dominated Udaipur district of Rajasthan and their engagement with developmental practices. In the course of his field investigations for doctoral studies in the tribal villages of Jhadol and Kotra tehsils, Sarbeshwar Sahoo had noticed the prevalence of violence against the Christian missionaries and the Christian tribal population. The survey of literature made him realize the absence of scholarly attention to Hindu–Christian violence in the Indian subcontinent at large. In the introduction to the book, conceptual and methodological underpinnings of the work are articulated. The study is the result of ethnographic field research.
The growth and implications of Pentecostalism in the Rajput Hindu(tva) ideology-dominated Rajasthan have been elaborately discussed in the second chapter. Drawing on ethnographic field data, the third chapter examines multiple narratives on religious conversion. The chapter points to the multidimensionality of conversion as a social process in tribal India. An intriguing issue of why many women are drawn towards Christianity has been examined in the fourth chapter. The chapter five highlights the reasons for violence against Christians. It recognizes economic backwardness and contested cultural identity of tribals and competing projects of conversion adopted by the missionaries and the responses of the Hindu nationalists as the sociopolitical reasons.
The book is useful for those who are interested in knowing the nature of and reasons for growing incidents of anti-Christian violence in India during the last two decades. It will be an insightful reading to those interested in Sociology of religious conversions and religion-related violence and suffering. It is written in a lucid language, and arguments have been presented cogently. I recommend it as a must reading for researchers on sociology of religious conversion. At the same time, it is of intellectual use to students of political sociology and sociology of religion in India.