Skip to main content

Dalits and Religion



Book Review

 Can we really separate the spiritual from the temporal?  Can religion make sense as an entity independent of the believer’s socio-political and economic status?  Jose Maliekal’s book, Standstill Utopias? Dalits Encountering Christianity is an academic exploration into that question with particular reference to the Madiga people in Andhra Pradesh.  The book is an adaptation of the author’s doctrinal thesis and hence is academic in style – which means it contains a lot of academic jargon.

If the reader is ready to endure words like hermeneutics, essentialization and epistemological, the book can throw a very rewarding light on what religion really means to the downtrodden and how religions need to adapt themselves in order to become really meaningful for such people.

The author carried out a protracted research among the Catholic Madigas of Konaseema in the Godavari Delta of Andhra Pradesh.  The result is a transdisciplinary study which combines anthropology, sociology, political economy, philosophy and religious studies.  The Madigas are traditionally leather workers.  Now most of them are migrant labourers uprooted from their soil, caste profession, and social identity.

The first two chapters build up the theoretical framework of the research.  The next two chapters trace the traditional Madiga religion, moving gradually towards the social and economic links which the Madiga rituals essentially have.  The last two chapters look at the role played by the Catholic Church in the lives of the Madigas.

The author, in spite of being a Catholic priest, is academically objective in his study and presentation of the findings.  He does not hesitate to point a finger at certain missionaries who maintain a high-handed approach in their dealings with the Madiga people.  There are Catholic missionaries, for example, who consider themselves superior to the untouchable Madigas because of their claimed Brahminical lineage.  More often than not, “The missionary views the help extended in its instrumental nature, by way of either a reward for the progress shown (by the converted Dalits) in faith, or as an entry point for speaking about the spiritual matters like the gospel message, Jesus Christ and salvation.” [Page 203] The author continues to point out that even when the Dalits are taken into the organizational structure of the Church, there is discrimination.  The people opt for religious conversion in the hope “that it would be a means of identity assertion and autonomy.”  But this aspiration is not often fulfilled.

The last chapter is particularly striking given that it is coming from a Catholic priest. The author seeks to combine spirit and matter and redefines salvation as well-being. “The major religions should realize,” suggests the author, “that if they are to be credible to the marginalized, their discourse of salvation should have a concrete historical content … (and) turn their attention to the cause of the emancipation of the marginalized, in promoting life in all its richness and dimensions. [281-282, emphasis added]  The author asserts that religion, to be meaningful, should be “a flesh and blood affair, involved in the concrete lives of the people.” [288] Moreover, he also suggests that the people should not be divorced from their traditional religious symbols while being converted into a new religion.

In spite of its heavily academic nature, the book is worth reading especially if you are interested in the role that religion should play in the real, practical lives of people.


Comments

  1. Caste wise church is an evident phenomena in Telugu states.Privileged castes like Reddys and Kammas are with Catholic churches.Mostly in high positions.Now,Madigas keep coming out with great rage.Once they were ashamed of uttering their own caste,are now suffixing it with pride,I have seen it all with astonishment.What a paradigm shift..!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm not familiar with the situation in Andhra but I can understand what you say because the Catholic Church has always played power politics right from the time of Emperor Constantine. Too many centuries, and yet the Church has not learnt the required lessons and it won't. Religions are power games.

      But I'm happy that the downtrodden Madigas are able to display some pride today. That must mean something to them, I hope.

      Delete
  2. The book sounds interesting. Somehow I always believed that when we say Dalit we mean the other, so the missionaries all work there, be it the Saffron Brigade, the christian or the Maoist, interestingly the Islamic and Buddhist guys don't venture into that space.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. But conversions to Buddhism too take place occasionally. Even recently more than 300 Dalits embraced Buddhism in Gujarat. I don't know, however, whether there are Buddhist missionaries at work. Islam too converts though in more subtle ways.

      Poverty is the real villain. The book under review mentions it too. Those with sound economic background seldom change their religion. Missionaries, irrespective of religion, feed on poverty.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Prelude to AtoZ

  From Garden of 5 Senses, Delhi [file pic] Hindsight gives an unearthly charm and order to the past. There can be pain too. A lot of things could have been different, much better, if only we possessed the wisdom of our old age back in those days. As a writer put it, Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear and a lot of those guys must have thought, “I wish I had known this some time ago.” Life is a series of errors with intermittent achievements. The only usefulness of the errors may be the lessons they teach us. Probably, that is their purpose too. We are created to err so that we learn, I dare to put it that way. I turn 64 in a month’s time. It’s not inappropriate to look back at some of the people whom life brought into my life so that I would learn certain lessons. No, I don’t mean to say that life has any such purpose or design or anything. Life is absurd. People come into your life as haphazardly as vehicles ply on your road or birds poop on your head. Some of these people change the chemist

Why I won’t vote

From Deshabhimani , Malayalam weekly Exactly a month from today is the Parliamentary election in my state of Kerala. This time, I’m not going to vote. Bernard Shaw defined democracy , with his characteristic cynicism, as “ a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve .” We elect our government in a democracy. And the government invariably sucks our blood – whichever the party is. The BJP and the Congress are like Tweedledum and Tweedledee though the former makes all sorts of other claims day in and day out. BJP = Congress + the holy cow. The holy cow has turned out to be quite a vampire and that makes a difference, no doubt. In our Prime Minister’s algebra, it is: (a+b) 2 which should be equal to a 2 and b 2 . There is an extra 2ab which is the holy cow. In George Orwell’s Animal Farm , the animals revolt against the human master and set up their own nationalist republic. Soon politics develops in the republic and some pigs become leaders. The porcine

How Arvind Kejriwal can save himself

Narendra Modi and Amit Shah have a clear vision. Eliminate all opposition. Decimate them or absorb them. My previous post [link below] showed a few people decimated by them. Today let’s look at the others: those who are saved by joining the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP]. 1. Himanta Biswa Sarma  This guy was in Congress and faced serious charges related to the multi-crore Saradha chit fund scam. He also faced corruption charges related to drinking water supply in Guwahati. His house was raided by the Central Bureau of Investigation [CBI]. Then he switched over to BJP and all his crimes just vanished. It’s as simple as taking a dip in the Ganga and all your sins are forgiven. Today he is the chief minister of Assam. Nothing is heard of all the charges that were levelled against him. 2. Amarinder Singh  This former Captain in the Indian Army was a Congressman until Modi’s Enforcement Directorate [ED] started raiding him, his son and his son-in-law. He put an end to all those raid

The Good Old World

Book Review Title: Dukhi Dadiba and irony of fate Author: Dadi Edulji Taraporewala Translators: Aban Mukherji and Tulsi Vatsal Publisher: Ratna Books, Delhi, 2023 Pages: 314 If you want to return to the good old days of the late 19 th century, this is an ideal novel for you. This was published originally in Gujarati in 1913. It appeared as a serial before that from 1898 onwards in a periodical. The conflict between good and evil is the dominant motif though there is romance, betrayal, disappointment, regret, and pretty much of traditional morality. Reading this novel is quite like watching an old Bollywood movie, 1960s style. Ardeshir Bahadurshah, a wealthy Parsi aristocrat in Surat, dies having obligated his son Jehangir to find out his long-lost brother Rustom. Rustom was Bahadurshah’s son in his first marriage. The mother died when the boy was too small and the nurse who looked after the child vanished with it one day. Ratanmai, Bahadurshah’s present wife, takes her

Kejriwal’s Arrest in Modi’s Kurukshetra

For some mysterious reason, Arvind Kejriwal’s arrest reminded me of Haren Pandya. Maybe, because Pandya’s 21 st death anniversary is approaching (26 March). Have you forgotten Haren Pandya? He was the Home Minister of Gujarat before Narendra Modi assumed dictatorial powers in that state. Modi chose to teach humility to Pandya by making him the Minister of State for revenue. Pandya chose not to learn humility from Modi and resigned from that post in Aug 2002. Remember Gujarat of 2002? You should. A fire engulfed a train on 27 Feb 2002 killing 58 Hindu pilgrims who were returning from Ayodhya where they had gone to discover their god, not very unlike Christopher Columbus undertaking a voyage to discover India and messing it all up. What caused the fire in the train? Lord Ram knows probably. The upshot was that there was a riot in Gujarat by Hindus against Muslims. Haren Pandya is one of the BJP leaders who gave statements in many places indicting Modi for the riots. He asser