Nidān: International Journal for Indian Studies

Editor's Preface

Deepra Dandekar — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

Eliza F. Kent — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Conclusion

Brian A. Hatcher — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

From Courtesan to King

Arun W. Jones — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

One of the most interesting and famous women rulers of North India at the turn of the 19th century was known as the Begum Samru. Starting out as a dancing girl in Delhi, she became the sole ruler of the state of Sardhana for 30 years. This essay argues that her adoption of Roman Catholicism after the death of her husband played a key role in the begum’s personal and professional transformation into a king, in the mould of Indian sovereigns of the day. Having established herself as a military leader with the security afforded by revenue from a sizable tract of land, Farzana drew not only on the codes of Persian and Sanskritic sovereignty, but also on the affordances of 18th century-Catholicism to consolidate, exercise and expand her power.

Images of Concealment

Deepra Dandekar — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Pandita Ramabai Dongre (1858-1922) is well-known as an Indian Christian missionary and an early feminist leader, who established an independent mission—the Mukti Mission for destitute women in 1898 in Kedgaon (Maharashtra). Ramabai was also the first Indian leader to use photography as an advocacy and marketing tool, a technology that had recently become popular in India in the mid-19th century, to document Mukti and portray the lives of its residents. To facilitate deeper understanding of how Ramabai contributed to the late-colonial and missionary establishment of 20th century India, this article analyses some Mukti photographs that were published by Ramabai’s friend and missionary Helen Dyer (1900 and 1924). Treating photographs as a primary source for missionary history is an important method for understanding how Mukti presented itself and Pandita Ramabai to multiple audiences at home and abroad: an indigenous proto-Pentecostal mission run by a woman leader; an anticolonial patriotic enterprise that resisted denominational control, but elicited funds from donours abroad; and an early feminist enterprise that saved and rehabilitated women.

Christian Conversion and the Racialisation of Religion in Colonial India

Eliza F. Kent — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Building on the work of scholars like Geraldine Heng (2003, 2018), Maria Elena Martinez (2008, 2009), Katharine Kerbner (2018), and Judith Weisenfeld (2017), this article argues that religious conversion, particularly its perceived failure, is a key site for analysing race-making in action. Insofar as it is based on the expectation of substantial change, religious conversion brings into relief those aspects of a people or a person that are resistant to change, and thus spurs informal or formal theorizing about a fundamental or absolute essence and the qualities associated with it. In colonial India, the process of change that accompanied conversion to Protestant Christianity was hotly contested. What was mere culture, custom and tradition, and what was a necessary observable index of invisible moral and spiritual transformation? Out of a decades-long conversation about change and its limits among missionaries and converts, a racialised understanding of caste came to be seen as an aspect of the self and the community that was fundamental, absolute and essential and thus impervious to change. As I demonstrate through a close examination of texts by and about two influential Christians in India – Robert Caldwell (1814-1891) and Pandita Ramabai (1858-1922) – people could and did debate the value ascribed to caste differences, but the fact that caste identity constituted a part of the self that could not change was increasingly asserted as axiomatic.

Diagnosing 'Ignorance'

Torsten Tschacher — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This article analyses the impact of colonial racialisation on Muslim reform movements in the Madras Presidency and Ceylon. It argues that that the internal racialisation of Muslims into ‘racially foreign’ ‘born Muslims’ and ‘racially Indian’ converts had direct consequences on the manner in which Muslim projects of religious reform in the colonial period were formulated. In the Madras Presidency, the Malayalam-speaking Mappilas and the Tamil-speaking Labbais were identified as communities of ‘converts’ with a thin ‘mixed-race’ elite, and consequently addressed by reform movements primarily as Muslim Malayalis and Tamils, who not only needed to purge their Islam of religious practices that were conceived of as remnants of their ‘Hindu’ identities prior to conversion, but also to remove ‘secular’ Arabic elements, such as the use of the Arabic script to write Malayalam and Tamil, in order to become properly ‘modern’ members of their respective ethno-linguistic groups. In Ceylon, in contrast, the claims to Arab-descent by local Tamil-speaking Muslims were recognised by the colonial state. Consequently, the Ceylon Muslim Revival, despite emerging from a similar social position as reform-movements in Madras, and similarly aiming at the upliftment of Muslims in terms of English-style education and the introduction of ‘modernity’, was more concerned with a quasi-secular Arabisation of its constituency rather than with religious purification.

Race, Caste, and Missionary Work of the Syro-Malabar Catholics in Postcolonial India and the US

Sonja Thomas — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In this article, I discuss the rise of Syro-Malabar Catholic missionary work in India in the mid-twentieth century and the United States today. At a time when India was beginning to curb foreign missionary work in India, in-house Syro-Malabar Catholic missionary work was on the rise. I examine the racial differences between (white) Catholic missionaries and (brown) dominant caste Catholics. In India, there are three rites of Catholicism: Syro-Malabar, Syro-Malankara, and Latin. While the Syro-Malabar and Syro-Malankara rites are considered ‘forward’ caste in the state of Kerala, Latin Catholics are recognized as OBC. The majority of Catholics in India are Dalit and Adivasi, but the Catholic hierarchy remains overwhelmingly dominant caste. Thus, there is a caste division between rites of Catholicism in India which plays into missionary work. This caste dynamic is key in understanding Syro-Malabar missionary work especially outside of the state of Kerala. In the US, Syro-Malabar dominant caste priests may experience racism especially in predominantly white rural areas where they have little support systems in place. They also may be sent to Native communities, entering into the long history and present of Catholic settler colonialism. I examine how caste and race configures Catholic missionary work by specifically examining how the Catholic hierarchy is structured by caste, how caste and race may shape how spiritual labour is perceived by Catholics and non-Catholics alike, and how caste and race shape how priests themselves view the spiritual guidance of white, Indigenous, Dalit Bahujan, and Adivasi parishioners.

Orality, Identity, and the Sense of the Past in the India-Burma Borderlands: A Review of Recent Studies

Manjeet Baruah — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Orality remains a powerful idiom, a point of reference and meaning in the politics of ethnicity in the India-Burma borderlands. In a recent body of works on the area, the continued significance and meaning-bearing capacity of orality has been studied through departures from earlier colonial anthropological frameworks. For example, what constitutes the relation between oral form and social relations? Or is orality ideologically embedded? Or what would be some of the methods to read and understand orality beyond their popular representations in the societies? While highlighting the importance of these questions, this essay critically engages with this recent body of work on the above topics. At the same time, the essay also points to some of the limitations in the approaches applied, and indicates possible aspects that could be considered in this regard. The essay also argues that the relationship between orality, identity and the sense of the past needs to be studied beyond the framework of there being a necessary correspondence between form and context. In this regard, identifying the discontinuities in the relationship could provide further insights into the nature of the oral field.

Front Matter

Deepra Dandekar — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Radio for the Millions

Anandita Bajpai — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Abundance

Deepra Dandekar — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

South Asia's Christians

Margherita Trento — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Between Hindu and Christian

Ehud Halperin — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Taming the Oriental Bazaar

Prashant Kidambi — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In Dialogue with the Mahābhārata

Seema K. Chauhan — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Minority Pasts

Simon Daisley — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000