Abstract
With Anti-Christian Violence in India, religious scholar Chad Bauman brings to completion a project initiated more than a decade ago. The goal of the project is to formulate a methodological and theoretical framework that allows scholars to approach the divisive yet unavoidable phenomenon of anti-Christian violence in India. While Bauman’s previous books and articles offered theoretical glimpses and historical episodes that justified the scholarly relevance of the phenomenon, in this work he presents the whole argument. For Bauman, a postsecular (my descriptor) framework allows scholars to comprehend Hindu nationalists’ mind-set, including their double claim that religion cannot be distinguished from politics or Christianity from Western secular modernity. In Bauman’s words, “Most Indian Hindu do not naturally perceive a clear distinction between what most Westerns would distinguish as ‘the religious’ and ‘the political’” (26). He adds that “the construction of Hindutva as normative Hinduism” operates “in competition with Christianity [which is] constructed as part and parcel of the project of Western secular modernity” (20). The first claim allows Hindu nationalists to, among other things, reframe religious proselytism in political terms. The second claim permits them to deny Christians’ claim of separation between Christian religion and Western modernity. Thus, the Hindu resistance to Western modernity is, by default, a resistance to Christianity, and vice versa.
The book comprises an introduction, a conclusion, and five chapters. In chapter 1 Bauman explains his methodological and epistemological approach to ethnic and religious conflict. In chapter 2 he rewrites the history of Hindu-Christian relationships through the category of conflict. Bauman explains how certain conflicts in India have been viewed as religious conflicts. The history of religious conflict in India precedes Narendra Modi’s ascent to power in 2014. Accordingly, for Bauman the sources of anti-Christian violence can only partially be related to Hindutva (i.e., Hindu nationalism or political Hinduism). In chapter 3 he addresses the phenomenon of hundreds of smaller-scale incidents of violence against Christians, approximately one per day, occurring in India over the last decade. Bauman refers to this phenomenon as “everyday” anti-Christian violence (8). Chapters 4 and 5 explore the nature, causes, manifestations, and implications of the August 2008 riot violence in the Kandhamal district of Odisha.
The merits of this study are several. The most important is that Bauman does not sugar the pill: Christian India is under attack. It may not be the same dramatic situation as Muslim India, but it is in trouble nevertheless. By considering small and large incidents of violence, Bauman frames a powerful narrative of persistent, undisputable persecution of Christians in India. Despite the reassurance coming from the prime minister and the government of India, the Hindu-Christian climate is tainted by the increasing presence of interreligious hate. An equally crucial contribution is Bauman’s attempt to reframe the concept of religion. In Bauman’s opinion, “Hindu-Christian conflict is religious” (original emphasis), not in terms of doctrinal principles and pastoral practices, but rather “in disparate understandings of what religion is and should be” (20). Because the Hindu nationalistic way of thinking does not separate religion from politics, anti-Christian violence cannot be labeled as simply religiously motivated. Still, anti-Christian violence is religiously motivated in the sense that religion is reframed by Hindu nationalists in the greater project of ethnicized identity, namely the reinvention of Hinduness under the guise of ethnic nationalism.
Bauman’s argument is that violence against Christianity is part of a much greater effort by Hindus to resist Western modernity that globalization periodically helps to provoke. A new body of literature is emerging that links the ideology of Hindutva to national renaissance in the context of the manifest and global destinies of India. It will be interesting to see how Bauman responds to this alternative narrative. A work at the intersection of religion and politics, Bauman’s book is complex and addresses the subject through multiple angles. The book is recommended for both undergraduate and graduate courses; it is a valuable resource not only for political and religious scholars, but also for sociologists and historians of South Asia who seek illumination on the phenomenon of interreligious conflict.