Anti-Christian Violence in India
Author:
Chad M. Bauman
ISBN:
9788194783084
Binding:
Hardcover
Year:
2021
Pages:
320 with 6 b/w illustrations
Size:
16 x 24 x 3 cm
Weight:
609 grams
Price:
INR
1495.00
Does religion cause violent conflict, asks Chad M. Bauman, and if so, does it cause conflict more than other social identities? Through an extended history of Christian-Hindu relations, with particular attention to the 2007–2008 riots in Kandhamal, Odisha, Anti-Christian Violence in India examines religious violence and how it pertains to broader aspects of humanity. Is "religious" conflict sui generis, or is it merely one species of intergroup conflict? Why and how might violence become an attractive option for religious actors? What explains the increase in religious violence over the last twenty to thirty years?Integrating theories of anti-Christian violence focused on politics, economics, and proselytization, Anti-Christian Violence in India additionally weaves in recent theory about globalization and, in particular, the forms of resistance against Western secular modernity that globalization periodically helps to provoke. With such theories in mind, Bauman explores the nature of anti-Christian violence in India, contending that resistance to secular modernities is, in fact, an important but often overlooked reason behind Hindu attacks on Christians.Intensifying the widespread Hindu tendency to think of religion in ethnic rather than universal terms, the ideology of Hindutva, or "Hinduness," explicitly rejects both the secular privatization of religion and the separability of religions from the communities that incubate them. And so, with provocative and original analysis, Bauman questions whether anti-Christian violence in contemporary India is really about religion, in the narrowest sense, or rather a manifestation of broader concerns among some Hindus about the Western sociopolitical order with which they associate global Christianity.
Chad M. Bauman
Chad M. Bauman is Professor of Religion at Butler University. He is the author of Christian Identity and Dalit Religion in Hindu India and the co-editor of Constructing Indian Christianities. Follow him on Twitter @dharmabaum.
Editorial Reviews
“Bauman enters deeply into the thinking of Hindu nationalists to show that their acts of violence against Christians are motivated not by disputes over doctrine but by an even more basic clash over the role of religion.”
—Foreign Affairs
“Anti-Christian Violence in India runs the gamut of the Christian/anti-Christian experience in India. Well-written and thoughtful, it stands out when describing and analyzing Hindu-Christian relations.”
—Neil DeVotta, Wake Forest University, editor of Understanding Contemporary India
“I am simply blown away by this book. Bauman's voice is judicious and magisterial. He is a careful analyst and thorough investigator. This generates an extraordinarily instructive and illuminating book that manages to be simultaneously balanced and hard-hitting.”
—Timothy Samuel Shah, Vice-President for Strategy & International Research of the Religious Freedom Institute and co-author, God's Century.
“This is a book that was waiting to be written and there may be no one better qualified to write it than Chad Bauman. One hopes that this would encourage more attention to this oft ignored facet of contemporary India which is currently being torn apart on issues of identity and belongingness.”
—Rev. Vijayesh Lal, General Secretary, Evangelical Fellowship of India
“This book fabulously documents majoritarian chauvinism, fears of minorities, and the messy ethno-religious politics and communal relations in India. Bauman skillfully combines theoretical insights with in-depth empirical narratives on everyday inter-religious fissures and produces a masterwork on Hindu-Christian relations and cultural politics in India during the postcolonial period.”
—Sarbeswar Sahoo, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, author of Pentecostalism and Politics of Conversion in India