Saurabh Dube has long been one of the most interesting and perceptive scholars addressing the dilemmas of modernity in South Asia. His latest volume not only moves to reexamine the notion of conversion, but also extends his theorizing to art and to his own academic and familial lineage. What emerges is a challenging and thought provoking inquiry, albeit not one for the uninitiated.

Dube frames his discussion by presenting two vignettes from his scholarly life that bring into sharp relief the question of “what constitutes a field of research?” (p. 3). According to Dube, the standard assumption is that a humanistic discipline is defined by the “ostensible object of inquiry” (p. 4) when, in fact, as important are “what we question, how we cast our inquiries, and the way in which we write.” Dube's goal is to bridge, or “to braid together” (p. 7), a variety of disciplinary discussions of South Asian pasts and presents to provide a new context for inquiry that resists the urge to combatively celebrate unity or alterity, either of a particular discipline or of the putative object of study.

The first two chapters explicitly address conversion. In “After Conversion,” Dube reads the diaries of Evangelical catechists working in Central India in the early twentieth century. Writing in English, these Indian Christians engaged in what Dube describes as a process of “vernacular translation.” For example, an earnest catechist records how he related the tribal, and hence “pagan,” sacrifice of a baby goat (kid) not only to the atonement of Christ but also to elements of Mosaic law. As Dube describes it, “through excess of application to the Book, out of surplus of application of the Word, the catechist produced a supplementary narrative on the subjects of kid and Christ, sacrifice and redemption” (pp. 43–44). In the next chapter, “Spectres of Conversion,” Dube takes aim at Louis Dumont and his distinctions between caste and sect, renouncer and householder. Dube closely analyzes the practices of the Satnampanth of Chhattisgarh and the Mahima Dharma of Orissa to develop a multi-layered interpretation that probes the extent to which a unified Hinduism is an essential or “spectral” feature of Indian civilization and its politics.

The next chapters are extended reflections that thematically relate to previous discussion of conversion, particularly by exploring understandings of overlapping identities and theoretical constructs. In “Ties that Bind,” Dube reflects on the work of his father, the eminent anthropologist S. C. Dube, examining not only his scholarship in English but also his commentaries that were published in Hindi. In what is the most suggestive discussion of the volume, Dube introduces the art of Savindra Sawarkar, a convert to Buddhism from the untouchable Mahar caste in Nagpur. One of Sawarkar's works portrays a Dalit couple with clay pots hanging heavily around their necks—the pots are emblazoned with the swastika and the mantra Om to emphasize the weight of the Hindu tradition. Another painting shows a naked Brahman with a nude Dalit woman. Dube draws our attention to how the Brahman's lamp illuminates the belly of the woman, and “how the legs and feet of both forms work in tandem” (p. 152). Dube extends his analysis by observing that the woman and the Brahman are not separated by an unbridgeable gulf. Instead, Dube argues, “through their very enmeshments they lead each other to their mutual possibilities, while bringing each other to their shared crises” (p. 152). Nine paintings are reproduced in full color and Sawarkar's work is indeed beautiful and provocative.

The volume continues with an interview with Dipesh Chakrabarty and highlights Chakrabarty's understanding of “life-world (s)” and his engagement with the thought of Martin Heidegger. The final two chapters examine the dilemmas of modernity. In “Identity and Difference,” Dube interrogates the category “medieval,” especially as applied to the modern Taliban. Dube then poses a number of questions that challenge “modular designs of past, present, and posterity” (p. 186). In an epilogue, Dube considers Chakrabarty again, via the work of Ranajit Guha and Partha Chatterjee, among others. Dube's intent, consistent with that presented in the Introduction to the volume, is to “indicate the importance of opening up the different registers of ‘historicism,’ ‘the hermeneutical,’ and the ‘analytical’…as a crucial part of the worlds of modernity and its articulations” (p. 199).

Dube writes in an intricate academic prose. Adjectives and alliterations are used extensively to create a stylistic effect evoking the scholarly connections and ambiguities that he examines and interrogates. This style can be quite challenging for those readers not already familiar with the discussions and scholarly figures Dube references. But for patient and thoughtful readers, Dube's work offers a rich dividend found in its sophisticated re-working and re-framing of widely accepted scholarly considerations of modernity.