Godroads

Peter Berger (Ph.D. 2004) has been conducting research among indigenous highland communities of Odisha since 1996, working on topics such as cosmology, ritual, social structure and food. The present book is the result of an increasing interest in understanding cultural and religious change that has developed over the last ten years. His books include Feeding, Sharing and Devouring: Ritual and Society in Highland Odisha, India (2015), and he coedited Ultimate Ambiguities: Investigating Death and Liminality (2016), The Modern Anthropology of India (2013) and The Anthropology of Values (2010). Sarbeswar Sahoo (Ph.D. 2010) teaches sociology in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. He was Charles Wallace Fellow at Queen's University Belfast and Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at Max Weber Kolleg, Universität Erfurt, Germany, Germany. Sahoo received his Ph.D. from National University of Singapore. His books include Civil Society and Democratization in India: Institutions, Ideologies and Interests (2013) and Pentecostalism and Politics of Conversion in India (Cambridge, 2018).

• Preface Piers Vitebsky; Introduction. Godroads: modalities of conversion in India Peter Berger and Sarbeswar Sahoo; 1. The rise, growth and significance of Sudra conversion movements in the Methodist mission, Hyderabad, 1925–1947 Geoffrey A. Oddie; 2. Communism and the cross: a caste-class trajectory of religious conversion in South India Ashok Kumar M.; 3. Religious conversion as ethical transformation: a study of Islamic reformism in rural West Bengal Fernande W. Pool; 4. Conversion versus unity: the Basel Mission among Badagas on the Nilgiri Plateau, 1845–1915 Frank Heidemann; 5. Identity change and the construction of difference: colonial and post-colonial conversions among the Sumi Naga of Nagaland, Northeast India Iliyana Angelova; 6. Conversion to Christianity and healing: the Naga of North East India Vibha Joshi; 7. Reshaping the American evangelical conversion narrative in nineteenth century North India Arun W. Jones; 8. Cultural transformations through performance arts in the early twentieth century South India Rajalakshmi Nadadur Kannan; 9. Conversion and Hindu-Christian conflict in Odisha and Rajasthan Sarbeswar Sahoo; 10. Rupture and resilience: dynamics between a Hindu reform movement and an Indigenous religion in Highland Odisha Peter Berger; Afterword. India seen from Amazonia Aparecida Vilaça; Endnotes; Notes on contributors; Index.

'… contains ten riveting historical and anthropological case studies of the several modes in which 'conversion' has taken place in various parts of India. Without employing the notion of conversion in a strictly 'religious' sense, the authors situate their respective chapters in terms of continuity, change, process, and event. Utilizing the metaphor of Godroads, the book offers a welcome and fresh perspective by critically engaging with the notion of conversion …' Mukesh Kumar, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute