In offering the fruit of wide-ranging field research, Goh explores, analyzes, and interprets how Indian Christians who live in translocated realities have negotiated the essence and form of practicing Christianity in such new contexts. Protestant Christianity in the Indian Diaspora takes up, examines, and responds to several provocative research questions, including: Are marginalized realties and experiences carried across borders? Given different societal and cultural expectations, how do such Christians find a “comfort” zone and who offers such a space to them? Do Pentecostal ways and means of living out one's faith offer such people a level of assurance and, if so, why and how?

While interrogating the wealth of literature dealing with the Indian diaspora in general and also focusing on the burgeoning studies on other communities like the Sikhs, Goh notes major differences between such groups and Protestant Christians in diasporic situations. He explores the issue of whether there is something that “binds” such people together—given the differences in originary caste backgrounds, transference of privilege, or (in most cases here) marginalization—into a fresh religious identity in India but now being lived out in other countries, some of which affirm religious freedom and toleration.

Goh rightly goes straight to the point that caste identities have marked the reality of Indian Christians, particularly the large number of Christians who came from a Dalit background who have continued to face discrimination from the wider Hindu society and also from those Christians who come from other backgrounds, including discrimination from those considered “backward” but not “untouchable.” Pointing out that the experience of abjection is never overcome simply by switching to a different religious framework, and indeed it carries across generations, Goh examines the reality of social stratification even in a context that on paper is supposed to be progressive and forward looking, especially within the various churches. He has not forgotten to stress the feminization of oppression and the gendered nature of such marginalization at multiple levels.

The scope and comprehensiveness of this project is commendable—Goh has done field work and interviews not just in Southeast Asia and North America, but also in Europe, the West Indies, the Middle East, and Australia, not forgetting extensive trips to India. This work not only involved interacting with the actual subjects of the study, those forging a dynamic future and trying to shape an innovative identity for themselves, but also other expatriates from South Asia and those who were in interaction with them, including leaders of faith communities.

Given the complex history of Christianity in India—which has its roots in the early expansion of Christianity (“St. Thomas Christians”); those communities who were formed by the Catholic missions of the sixteenth century; the multiplicity of Protestant missions, beginning in 1706; and the Pentecostal movement, with external and internal impulses at the turn of the twentieth century—Goh offers a good overview and uses tools developed by subaltern studies which attempt to recover the local, not superficially but in its myriad density. Since there is a lack of mutual acceptance between and among denominations, regions, worship styles, and liturgical languages, not forgetting the persistence of caste prejudices, Goh examines the export of “abjection” and the quest for a renegotiated and reconstructed version of Christianity in a new context by Christians who for various reasons have moved out of their homeland. At the same time, Goh asks what this all means for the ongoing existence of Christianity in India, given the increasingly harsh rhetoric and significant policy changes coming from the present government, which unabashedly avows a “nationalistic” agenda where Christians are being made to feel increasingly insecure despite being in a country that is, in theory, constitutionally “secular.”

Goh does not shy away from raising difficult questions: Are Indian diasporic communities by nature “passive,” trying to fly under the radar as it were, and seeking refuge in forms of religious escapism? Are such communities, for survival reasons, willing to overlook the often theologically shallow and simplistic sloganeering of the host communities that offer them welcome? To what extent is the hyphenated Indian-Christian identity a problem in interacting with other Indians or South Asians of different religious persuasions in the various countries where such Christians find themselves? How do they deal with the pressure on the hyphen, in both directions? Goh's work opens possible avenues for further research, including on the use of the Bible as an artifact and the level of “proof texting,” especially when it comes to questions of morality and changing patterns of family life. Given the reality that expatriate communities of all religious backgrounds provide significant economic input in order to fuel religious programs and further particular ideological agendas in India, Goh offers insights into how Christian diasporic communities see their responsibility for “mission” and how they understand the implications and outcomes of the mission programs that they do so much to support. The ongoing question is how this desire to “do something” results in the further polarization of Christianity in India, feeding into theories of anti-nationalism and providing fodder to those who see a conversion agenda in all things Christian.

In this book, Goh offers us a solid resource and invites us to continue to research transnational movements of peoples, recognizing that a considerable part of this journey involves one's religious identity and the challenges and opportunities that new geographical locations offer. At the same time, one must be mindful of the reality that some religious convictions, like Pentecostalism, are pancontinental in their very essence. Protestant Christianity in the Indian Diaspora provides a solid and substantial analysis of how Protestant Christians in the Indian diaspora have subverted their abject identities, negotiated evangelical relations, and seized a vision that offers them dignity, worth, and validation as individuals and communities—issues and themes that should continue to be part of further research projects.