Religious Division and Social Conflict focuses on the work of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, popularly known as the RSS, to promote a Hindu nationalist agenda among tribal (adivasi) communities surrounding a village in Chhattisgarh, in central India. In this monograph, Peggy Froerer, a research lecturer in anthropology at Brunel University in the United Kingdom, presents a sophisticated ethnographic analysis that extends contemporary scholarship on the diffusion of Hindu nationalism. Central to her analysis is an understanding of “mimesis,” whereby RSS cadres mimic, and thus try to undermine, the social engagement strategies of local Catholic missions. In considering this particular aspect of Hindu nationalist activity, Religious Division and Social Conflict also makes a significant contribution to contemporary scholarly literature on tribal communities and their relationship to Christianity.

As Froerer observes in the introduction, significant lacunae exist in the scholarship on Hindu nationalism: Ethnographic studies are few, and none has addressed the spread of Hindu nationalism among tribal communities. While it is well known that the RSS sponsors “reconversion” programs among Christian tribals, less known are the specific means by which the RSS attempts to advance its agenda among rural communities and thus develop constituencies beyond its urban and middle-class base. Froerer bases her ethnography on a village pseudonymously called “Mohanpur” that is dominated by two social groups: the Hindu landowning Ratiya Kanwar caste and the Oraon Christian community. While the high-caste Ratiya Kanwars own the majority of the land and are indigenous to the area, the low-caste Oraon Christians have come from “outside” and have higher income levels. The RSS strategy is to exploit tensions between these communities.

In Mohanpur and its environs, the RSS employs two basic approaches to promote its nationalist agenda. The first approach is to sponsor social uplift programs that mirror Catholic efforts at civic engagement and religious evangelization. One of the distinguishing characteristics of Catholicism in the area is its association with “biomedicine” through the dispensaries it maintains. In response, the RSS has sponsored a local “biomedical” doctor who travels the countryside and treats patients in their homes. While this adds to the prestige of the RSS, it also is part of a larger “civilizing” program that seeks to wean tribals away from their local deities and healing practices and steer them toward pan-Indian deities such as Ram and festivals and rituals associated with mainstream caste Hinduism. The RSS also intervenes against corrupt local officials, and in a particularly well-done section of the monograph (pp. 145–79), Froerer describes the demise of a village headman who had been illegally pocketing revenue from the local Tendu leaf business. The second approach that the RSS employs is connecting local disputes to “wider Hindu nationalist concerns” (p. 261). This is accomplished by intensifying resentment against the Christian Oraon community. Because of their profitable liquor businesses, Oraons are able not only to lend money for profit but also to buy land that once belonged to the Ratiya Kanwar caste. Local RSS activists were able to join economic resentment against the Oraons with a perception of their “otherness” as Christians. Of course, this process of communalization predates the arrival of the RSS, as for decades Catholics heaped scorn upon the traditional practices of its adivasi constituency in order to create a more sharply demarcated Catholic Christian identity. In this sense, the RSS and the Catholic Church have reciprocally constituted each other in this part of Chhattisgarh.

While Religious Division and Social Conflict deserves a wide audience in South Asian studies, it will be of particular interest to social scientists. Froroer has taken great scholarly care to ground her analysis in a thorough understanding of local politics and the economies of landownership, cultivation, and liquor sale. Because of this specificity, Froerer's analysis will serve as an important touchstone for other studies of the diffusion of Hindu nationalism in rural areas with different political and economic dynamics. In addition to this scholarly relevance, Religious Division and Social Conflict also has a compelling timeliness. Froerer begins her work with an account how a group of young men accused two priests of “bringing the Hindu community down” (p. 2) by converting tribals. While the priests were able to escape without having their jeep put to the torch, in other parts of rural India, similar confrontations between Hindus and Christians have escalated into systematic violence framed in terms of religious and ethnic difference. Peggy Froerer's work thus provides a particularly relevant perspective on contemporary, and ongoing, religious and social tensions in rural India.