G. Kanato Chophy's Christianity and Politics in Tribal India paints a vivid portrait of the extent to which Baptist Christianity mediated religious, cultural, and political transitions in the Indian state of Nagaland, especially during the course of the twentieth century. It begins with the commencement of missionary work by the American Baptist missionaries among the various nationalities inhabiting the Indo-Burma borderland, which Chophy calls the “Baptist Highland.” The motivations and context that informed the transnational missionary enterprise are highlighted. Further on, the book illustrates the gradual spread and establishment of the Baptist faith among the Nagas residing in Nagaland. Alongside the waves of conversion that occurred in light of the missionary work undertaken by American and Naga missionaries, what becomes evident are the intended and unintended ways in which Baptist faith was instilled among the local people, informing their subsequent intellectual, religious, and political fervor.

The book is lucid, eloquent, and forthcoming in its presentation, and it does not fail to engage the reader from beginning to end. It is certainly written with a wider audience beyond the academy in mind. Drawing on oral testimonies from a range of respondents and an existing body of primary and secondary literature, which unfortunately remains undercited, the book provides empirically dense reportage of people and events from the past. Those unversed with the growing scholarship on the Indo-Burma borderlands may find the book a useful primer for understanding the religious and political landscape of the Nagas, albeit only those of Nagaland. (Nagas are spread across the Indian states of Nagaland, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh and Assam, and the Sagaing Region in Myanmar.)

Chophy's allegiance to the Baptist faith, institutions, personnel, and legacy is apparent throughout the book. That in itself ought not to be a matter of concern. However, when there is a subliminal urge to consistently validate and defend them at the expense of an impartial historical inquiry, it becomes worrisome. The historical narrative, in the book, has a trajectory that is providential, one that privileges and finds fulfillment in the Baptist present as opposed to the “animist” past. The highland, in such a narrative, prior to being christened “Baptist,” is regarded as a clean slate, terra incognita, outside of history. As a result, the iconoclasm that accompanies mass conversions, the intolerance that comes to the fore as the converted become the majority, and the far-reaching sociocultural changes that missionary work initiates hardly seem violent, but rather a necessity. Hence, it is with much ease, quite nonchalantly, that Chophy mentions that “in less than three decades the practices of the new faith supplanted the ancestral” (p. 214).

Impervious to the “animist” past and its persistence in modern times—and to other secular influences, especially in the intellectual, religious, and political domain—there is an eagerness, especially in the later chapters of the book, to read Baptist faith and culture into everything and everyone considered worthy and virtuous in modern Naga society. Moreover, Baptist faith and culture themselves remain insufficiently explained or historicized. In fact, the selection of what ought to be attributed to and excluded from Baptist faith and culture occasionally seems arbitrary, wherein it is that which Chophy identifies to be worthy and virtuous, by his own judgment, that is considered to be of Baptist lineage. For example, Gaidinliu, a religious and political leader much disliked by the Baptists, is found worthy to be rehabilitated into the Naga mainstream, but only if she can be recovered as a covert Baptist. In another case, the intellectual and political acumen of A. Z. Phizo, former president of the Naga National Council (NNC), who is regarded as the father of Naga nation, and T. Sakhrie, founding member of the NNC and its former general secretary, about whom there is a fine and vivid account in the book, is attributed solely to “Baptist culture” and “Baptist education.” Though the book states, quite rightly, that the ethno-national aspiration among the Nagas was not the product of Baptist Christianity, as a result of the eagerness to highlight the “Baptist touch” in everything worthwhile and virtuous, the book also runs the risk of giving the impression that even the ethno-national aspiration is a product of Baptist Christianity.

It is undeniable that Baptist Christianity has had far-reaching effects on the religious, cultural, and political life of the Nagas. After all, Baptist Christianity made a substantial impact on how Nagas accessed modernity. But can everything worthwhile and virtuous in modern Naga society be reduced to being a “Baptist product,” and everything unpleasant a deviation from the Baptist self? While retaining and acknowledging one's Baptist identity, can one write a history that is not necessarily an apologetic, but one that is impartial, truthful, and open to multiple possibilities? The book is certainly a magnum opus of sorts, but in its quest to sanctify the modern history of the Nagas as Baptist, it falls short of encapsulating the richness and multifariousness of Naga history.