Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2020. xi, 302 pp. (Tables, graphs, maps, B&W photos.) US$35.00, cloth. ISBN 9781501750687.
In this remarkably imperative, insightful, and first-ever critical analysis of anti-Christian violence in India, Chad Bauman employs a constructionist approach, provides an overview of what he calls the “troubling” aspect of Hindu-Christian relations in contemporary India, and theorizes the reasons behind anti-Christian violence. Drawing from the lingo of religious studies and political science, Bauman demonstrates how (violent) conflicts between different religious groups in India occur as a result of social, economic, cultural, and political interests. He builds a strong case for the most extreme instance of anti-Christian violence that occurred in Kandhamal, located in the Indian state of Odisha in 2007 to 2008. These conflicts exhibit the devastating violence that killed both Christians and Hindus, destroyed property, and generated various forms of sexual assault. Bauman complicates the theorization of Hindu-Christian violence through this case study of Kandhamal violence and argues that the Hindu-Christian conflict was triggered predominantly by the economic competition of “highly” Christianized Scheduled Caste Panas with the “less” Christianized Scheduled Tribe Kandhas. This book demonstrates how the disproportionately high involvement of Christians in the social service sector, and the manner in which a considerable number of Christians in Kandhamal looked up to Hindus for their survival, elicited extreme anti-Christian violence.
The extensive use of archival materials, interviews with more than 150 Indians, and the conscientious exertions put forth by the author make this book a historic contribution to the historiography of religion and identity politics in contemporary India. Bauman explains that Hindu-Christian violence prior to the 1980s was characterized by nonviolent forms such as religious rhetoric, discourse, polemics, and social pressure. Most notably, as Bauman explicates, the revolt of 1857 amalgamated Indian Christians, colonial officials, and proselytizing missionaries as a sort of united entity that created the intricacies of Hindu-Christian relations. Further, according to Bauman, famines in the latter half of the nineteenth century and the subsequent missionary persuasion of famine orphans created possibilities for large-scale mass Christian conversions, which, in turn, intensified Hindu-Christian tensions. Consequently, as Bauman shows, some Hindu leaders started expressing their anxiety that the anti-national activities through large-scale conversions would cause internal threats, diminish Hindu unity, destabilize political power, and annihilate the Hindu race.
One of the most important objectives of this book is to provide what Bauman calls a historical clarification on how Hindu-Christian conflicts developed in India. He accomplishes this by offering a historical explanation of how certain conflicts in India have been depicted as religious conflicts that involved people who are Hindus and Christians. The book explains how local interests, politics, and world-historical forces such as colonization and globalization have played a crucial role in the making of Hindu-Christian violence. According to Bauman, global and local factors persuaded a section of Hindus to construct the idea that Western people and Christianity, through some modern and secular ideals, had a considerable amount of political and cultural control over the people of India. Consequently, Christian violence has not simply been the consequence of religious differences between these two entities. On the contrary, the construction of Hindu and Christian identities, for example, has been primarily the work of some Hindu nationalists who viewed the idea of “Christianness” as an antithesis to “Hinduness.” Bauman argues that Hindu nationalists indicted Christians for embracing and propagating the principles of Western secular modernities such as rationality, individuality, and equality. He maintains that Hindu nationalists derived their ideological potency from the controversial Niyogi Committee Report on Christian Missionaries published in 1956 that linked the idea of Christianity to the CIA and portrayed evangelism as a form of “neocolonial invasion.”
Bauman specifies that communal violence against Christians was on the rise after the Mandaikadu riots which led to the destruction of churches, temples, schools, convents, and the poisoning of wells in south India in 1982. Such widespread Hindu-Christian violence has been attributed to a number of factors such as the Sangh Parivar’s (Hindu nationalist movement) endeavour to expand Hindu unity by marginalizing Christians and other religious minorities, the growing discontent against converted Dalit Christians, politics over proselytization, and growing economic competition between Hindus and Christians. Bauman suggests that the intensity of anti-Christian violence in India coincided with the increase of religious violence at the global level. He indicates that India is one of 151 countries where Christians have experienced restricted religious freedom and unprecedented communal violence on a regular basis.
Bauman contends that even though the Kandhamal tragedy received attention from domestic and international media, hundreds of small-scale, isolated instances of violence against Christians have not been widely covered; therefore, most are unaware of the actual number of violent acts against Christians in India—approximately 350 communal acts of violence take place every year against Christians in one way or another. Since violence against Christians in India has become an everyday phenomenon, Bauman uses the phrase “everyday anti-Christian violence.” He asserts that the Hindu-Christian violence that took place in Kandhamal was the most destructive communal violence in India post-independence. Bauman traces the roots of the violence to entrenched Kandha-Pana tensions, Oriya interventions, communalization of the conflict by the Sangh Parivar, and the politics of religious conversion. Accordingly, those who supported the Sangh Parivar’s project of religious homogenization benefited the most from the anti-Christian violence in Odisha. The Kandhamal case study in this book clearly reveals that anti-Christian violence has affected the physical, psychological, educational, economic, and occupational aspects of the Indian people considerably. Bauman argues persuasively that Hindu-Christian violence in India is not isolated incidents, but an everyday phenomenon that needs further historical examination.
M. Christhu Doss
Christ University, Bengaluru