One of the most significant themes in the study of India over the past two decades has been that of ‘identity’: its constituents – language, religion, class, region, caste, profession, kinship, interests, beliefs – and the myriad forces which influence its creation and transformation. The language of identity has driven ever more nuanced, multi-disciplinary academic explorations and has contributed to an increasingly self-conscious, complex and riotously democratic social politics in India. Western Christianity and the question of conversion have been intimately and controversially bound up with the issue of identity in modern India, from the spurring effect of far-reaching critiques by colonial-era missionaries of Indian religion, morality, thought, dress and social behaviour to the anger and criticism levelled at converts seen by some Indians as motivated by material or social gain in surrendering their nationality, culture or membership of a local community. Christian identity and dalit religion provides a vivid illustration of all this by means of a case study of the Satnamis, a dalit community (low-caste, formerly ‘untouchable’) many of whose members converted to Christianity. Bauman's ‘historical ethnography [drawing on] methodologies in the study of religion, history and anthropology’ (pp. 20–1) has been a popular approach in recent years, as has the analytical emphasis upon the transformation of Christianity by the people and local cultures with which it came into contact. What is most interesting about Bauman's study is firstly his attempt to ask questions of the past (1868–1947) in the light of contemporary religious politics in India and the difficulties of interpreting, in practice, the meaning of legal prohibitions on conversion ‘by force, fraud, or inducement’ (p. 16). Secondly, Bauman's use of oral history alongside documentary material is revealing, contributing to and providing the means of illustrating his ‘primordialist’ position on conversion, which stresses semi-articulated feeling and intuition in the minds of converts over and above pure rational calculation. Chapter vi draws on interviews conducted amongst people of Satnami origin, and was, for this reviewer, the highlight of the book. Scholars in this area will find much that is familiar in the major themes which emerge from Bauman's study: converts' desire selectively to reformulate rather than totally to abandon their former lives and culture; education, medicine and womanhood as sites of contest and change. For readers newer to the question of Christianity and identity in India, Bauman's approach offers a clear, sincere and engaging introduction.