This collection contains four sections that respond to “established and dominant historiographic tendencies that have come under a question mark quite recently” (ix). These tendencies are to focus on the links between Christianity in the sub-continent and western empires and missionaries, rather than on the rich diversity of belief structures, ritual and cultural practice evidenced in Christianity in the sub-continent. The book has four sections: Historiography, Conversion Narratives, Identity Formation, and Conflicts and Dialogue. Its essays focus from the early sixteenth century to the second half of the twentieth century. The book opens with a beautiful eighteenth century late-Mughal depiction of Christ's birth that begs analysis of the meanings of presenting this scene in Mughal court form.
The first section of the text consists of a single essay by J. Webster on the Dalit Christian historiography. Webster argues that this experience was under-represented by missionaries and in the secular era post-independence. Subsequently, varied and sophisticated treatments of theology, material political and communal change have been produced, such as the essays in this volume. Webster's piece richly argued and might have well been integrated into the introduction to the book rather than standing on its own. I would have liked the author to better address the argument that rural Dalits be analysed alongside that of the educated Christian elite. What is also missing here and, in fact, throughout the entire collection is the meaningful application of feminist analysis. The excellent work of Eliza Kent is mentioned but not woven into the work itself, and this could be beneficial.
The next section consists of six essays focusing on conversion. Staples's “We Are One” outlines the complexity of belief and practice in a close study of one Christian community, brought together by treatment for leprosy. His essay embeds specific Indian Christianities within a view of Christianity and communities more broadly. In the next chapter, J. Pachau presents an ethnography of “Christianity in Mizoram”. In this community, denominational affiliation links to ethnicity, and formal religious institutions exist alongside “lay expressions” of faith. In the next chapter, Nongbrai presents another example of how a local identity shapes Christian identity in the Khasi Hills. The author sees aspects of conflict, assimilation, and incorporation not as displaced Khasi traditional religion, but as a “mission made” Christian complex. Dube's beautifully written “Vernacular Christianity” focuses on the journals and diaries of Indian catechists in Chhattisgarh. These spoke of localized spirituality by affirming similarities through their local cultural idiom, while remaining linked to colonial authority. L. Pachuau's “‘Assistants’ or ‘Leaders’” is a carefully constructed history of recovery, concluding that while missionaries were responsible for early work, it was native “assistants” who created church growth after that. In the final essay in this section “Sinners and Confessors”, Županov offers an elegant analysis of Jesuit dialogical texts written for the Parvana community in 1530s South India. While the priests practiced “spiritual” colonialism through these texts, the author argues this only occurred through a textured recording of Tamil expressions of who they were, and who they should be, as Christians.
The third section of this collection narrows in on the question of Christian belief and the formation of communities. Dasgupta's study of the Oraon people in Chhotanagpur “Christian Tribes” outlines an example of the ethnographic work of western missionaries with the “aboriginal” Mundaris and Oraons. In examining “the Bettiah Christian Community,”, Kalapura examines the impact of missions introducing the Cooperative Credit Movement in twentieth century Bihar. Focusing on Christianity as a socio-cultural marker of identity, it would be interesting to hear more about the specifics of belief in this community. Mosse's final chapter in this section, “Accommodating Reconciliation” examines how Christian views embed in Tamil cultural and ritual forms in ways that benefitted the mission. It addresses how mission Christianity could “fit” into existing belief systems, such as when saints within a pantheon of Hindu gods. It also discusses the contemporary era and how a Christian community could provide space for political and social resistance for Dalits.
The final section of essays begins with Harding's “Bede Griffiths”, which focuses on the under-studied period of secularism post-independence. This vital period saw Indian Christians became leaders, and a few Indian theologians turn away from western thinking. Contemplative orders emerged in the subcontinent and formed ashrams, but these seem to have been more popular with western visitors than with Indian Christians themselves. The final essay in this section addresses an earlier influx of visitors to India. Malekandathil examines the experience of recently-converted Portuguese Jews in his “Religious Fluvidity”, noting how they found space in this new setting to interact with the Jewish community there. Brought to the attention of the Inquisition, all the New Christians investigated were punished, while it is clear is that this was not solely a religious act, but driven by economic self-interest of rival traders who benefitted from their arrests. So, an identity as Christian yet non-elite within colonising society could be unsafe, even in the religious frontiers of early-modern empires.
Elements of Schröder's “Globalizing Religion” offers an apt conclusion to the collection. In it, she both problematizes the introduction's insistence that non-western Christians have not received much attention and challenges authors to take their excellent close studies and make new sense of them in terms of the global practices of Christianity. She argues that socio-cultural historians have long desired to hear and understand “the so-called ‘subaltern’ voices … seeking to recover the multi-layered forms of Indian participation and resistance, [to] enable scholars to better understand the dynamic structures and hybridity of the colonial discourse as well as the historical complexities of Indian Christianity” (233). Her other assertion is that examining Christian religiosity in the sub-continent can help make sense of religious and community development and change on a global level. This is the critical argument of the book, that Christianity is ever a frontier religious formation—whether the frontier is in the Khasi Hills, on the Canadian prairies, or in the back pews of a congregation, and so understanding Indian Christianity in all its varieties helps us understand what Mosse describes (189) as a contingent and at times unstable category of thought and action wrought in ways that need to be discovered, but which does not fail to point beyond itself to transcendental truth.
