Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T17:14:12.243Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Unsettled Territories: State, Civil Society, and the Politics of Religious Conversion in India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 November 2010

Leela Fernandes
Leela Fernandes*
Affiliation:
University of Michigan
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Leela Fernandes, University of Michigan, Department of Women Studies, 204 South State Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48108. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The article argues that the secular Indian state and the Hindu nationalist movement are invested in restricting changes in religious membership in ways that intensify religious and caste-based inequalities. The secular state and the Hindu nationalist movement attempt to enforce a shared model of religion that takes the form of a fixed territory. In this model, changes in religious membership through conversion are restricted. An analysis of state-civil society interactions in India must therefore move away from a presumed opposition between state secularism on the one hand and religious nationalism and conflict within civil society on the other. The article draws on three cases: (1) nationalist debates over caste and religious conversion, (2) Hindu nationalist mobilization against religious conversion, and (3) state caste-based affirmative action policies that restrict benefits based on religious conversion.

Type
Articles
Information
Politics and Religion , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , April 2011 , pp. 108 - 135
Copyright
Copyright © Religion and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Ambedkar, B.R. 2002. The Essential Writings of B.R. Ambedkar, ed. Valerian, Rodrigues. New Delhi, India: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Asad, Talal. 1993. Genealogies of Power; Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press.Google Scholar
Asad, Talal. 2003. Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
“Bandh in Mangalore after Hindu Activist's Stabbing.” 2008. Times of India, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Violence-hit_Mangalore_shuts_down/articleshow/3490174.cms (Accessed on September 23, 2010).Google Scholar
Bilgrami, Akeel. 1994. “Two Concepts of Secularism: Reason, Modernity and Archimedean Ideal.” Economic and Political Weekly July 9, 1749–1761.Google Scholar
Brass, Paul. 1997. Theft of an Idol. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chandra, Kanchan. 2004. Why Ethnic Parties Succeed: Patronage and Ethnic Head Counts in India. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cinar, Alev. 2005. Modernity, Islam and Secularism in Turkey. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Dalton, Dennis. 1998. Gandhi's Power: Non-Violence in Action. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dirks, Nicholas. 2001. Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Marking of Modern India. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Freedman, Amy. 2009. “Political Viability, Contestation and Power: Islam and Politics in Indonesia and Malaysia.” Politics and Religion 2:100–127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freston, Paul. 2001. Evangelicals and Politics in Asia, Africa and Latin America. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frykenberg, Robert. 2008. Christianity in India: From Beginnings to the Present. New Delhi, India: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fuller, C.J., and Bénéï, Véronique, eds. 2001. The Everyday State and Society in Modern India. London, UK: Hurst & Co.Google Scholar
Gandhi, Mohandas. 1927. “Swamiji as I Knew Him.” http://www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/cwmg.html (Accessed on July 30, 2009).Google Scholar
Gandhi, Mohandas. 1937. “Interview to Dr. Crane.” http://www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/cwmg.html (Accessed on July 30, 2009).Google Scholar
Gramsci, Antonio. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks, Translated by Quintin Hoare. New York, NY: International Publishers.Google Scholar
Glenn, Evelyn Nakano. 2002. Unequal Freedom: How Race and Gender Shaped American Citizenship and Labor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Gupta, Akhil. 1995. “Blurred Boundaries: The Discourse of Corruption, the Culture of Politics and the Imagined State.” American Ethnologist 22:375–402.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hansen, Thomas Blom. 1999. The Saffron Wave: Democracy and Hindu Nationalism in Modern India, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hansen, Thomas Blom. 2001. Wages of Violence: Naming and Identity in Postcolonial Bombay. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Hasan, Zoya. 1998. Quest for Power: Oppositional Movements and Post-Congress Politics in Uttar Pradesh. New Delhi, India: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Jaffrelot, Christophe. 2005. Dr. Ambedkar and Untouchability: Analyzing and Fighting Caste. London, UK: Hurst.Google Scholar
Jeffrey, Patricia, and Basu, Amrita. eds. 1997. Appropriating Gender: Women's Activism and Politicized Religion in South Asia. New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Jelen, Ted, and Wilcox, Clyde, eds. 2002. Religion and Politics in Comparative Perspective. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jenkins, Laura Dudly. 2003. Identity and Identification in India: Defining the Disadvantaged. New York, NY: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Larson, Gerald. 1996. India's Agony over Religion. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.Google Scholar
Larson, Gerald, ed. 2001. Religion and Personal Law in Secular India: A Call to Judgment. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Lewis, Donald M. 2004. Christianity Reborn: The Global Expansion of Evangelicalism in the Twentieth Century. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdman's Publishing Co.Google Scholar
Mahmood, Saba. 2005. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Mani, Lata. 1998. Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial India. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Migdal, Joel, 2001. State in Society: Studying How States and Societies Transform and Constitute one Another. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University PressCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, Timothy. 1991. “The Limits of the State: Beyond Statistic Approaches and their Critics.” American Political Science Review 85:77–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nandy, Ashis. 2002. “The Politics of Secularism and the Recovery of Religious Tolerance.” In Time Warps: Silent and Evasive Pasts in Indian Politics and Religion, ed. Nandy, Ashis. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 61–88.Google Scholar
Needham, Anuradha Dingwaney, and Rajan, Rajeswari Sunder. 2007. The Crisis of Secularism in India. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Norriss, Pippa, and Inglehart, Ronald. 2004. Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Omvedt, Gail. 1994. Dalits and the Democratic Revolution: Dr. Ambedkar and the Dalit Movement in Colonial India. New Delhi, India: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Rajagopal, Arvind. 2001. Politics after Television: Religious Nationalism and the Making of a Hindu Public. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robinson, Rowena, and Clarke, Sathianathan. 2003. Religious Conversion in India: Modes, Motivations and Meanings. New Delhi, India: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rudolph, Lloyd, and Rudolph, Susanne. 2001. “Living with Difference in India: Legal Pluralism and Legal Universalism in Historical Context.” In Religion and Personal Law in Secular India: A Call to Judgment, ed. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 36–65.Google Scholar
Rudolph, Lloyd, and Rudolph, Susanne. 2006. Postmodern Gandhi and Other Essays: Gandhi in the World and the Home. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ruma, Pal. 2001. “Religious Minorities and the Law.” In Religion and Personal Law in Secular India: A Call to Judgment, ed. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 24–34.Google Scholar
Sen, Ronojoy. 2006. “Defining Religion: Indian Supreme Court and Hinduism.” In Heidelberg Papers in South Asian and Comparative Politics. Heidelberg, Germany: University of Heidelberg, 1–31.Google Scholar
Singh, Ujjwal Kumar. 2007. The State, Democracy and Anti-Terror Laws in India. New Deli. India: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Smilde, David. 2007. Reason to Believe: Cultural Agency in Latin American Evangelicalism. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Rogers. 1997. Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Varshney, Ashutosh. 2003. Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Viswanathan, Gauri. 1998. Outside the Fold: Conversion, Modernity and Belief. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Washburn, Dennis, and Reinhart, Kevin, eds. 2007. Converting Cultures: Religion, Ideology and Transformation of Modernity. Boston, MA: Brill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilkinson, Steven. 2006. Votes and Violence: Electoral Competition and Ethnic Riots in India. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar