Reconversion to Hinduism: A Hindu Nationalist Reaction Against Conversion to Christianity and Islam

Vandevelde, Iris

doi:10.1080/00856401.2011.549083

Cited by 12 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…As in Uttar Pradesh, the law also boosts the ghar wapsi efforts of Hindutva-aligned organisations to force or entice Christians (and Muslims) to return to the Hindu faith. Known since the late nineteenth century, ghar wapsi has gained popularity with the political and social ascendance of the Hindutva movement since the early 2000s (Katju 2015;Vandevelde 2011). Particularly vital for Muslim and Christian Dalits is that the law provides that on reconversion to Hinduism these groups will be able to enjoy the affirmative action policies and greater legal protections which Muslim and Christian Dalits are not entitled to.…”

Section: Combating "Fraudulent Conversions": the Karnataka Right To F...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Hindu nationalist statecraft, dog-whistle legislation, and the vigilante state in contemporary India

Nielsen,

Selvaraj,

Nilsen

2023

Kritisk Etnografi: Swedish Journal of Anthropology

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The ideology and politics of Hindu nationalism has always been predicated on an antagonistic discursive construction of 'dangerous others,' notably Muslims but also Christians. This construct has served to define India as first and foremost a Hindu nation, thereby de facto relegating religious minorities to the status of not properly belonging to the nation. However, under the leadership of the current Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Hindu nationalism has acquired an unprecedented political force. A key consequence of this has been that the discursive construction of dangerous others is now increasingly being written into law, through a process of Hindu nationalist statecraft. The result is, we argue, not just a de facto but increasingly also a de jure marginalization and stigmatization of religious minorities. We substantiate this argument by analysing the intent and effect of recent pieces of legislation in two Indian states regulating, among other things, religious conversions, inter-faith relationships, and population growth. Conceiving of such laws as dog-whistle legislation, we argue that they are, in fact, geared towards the legal consolidation of India as a Hindu state. We also analyse the intimate entanglement between these laws and the collective violence of vigilante groups against those minorities that Hindu nationalists frame as dangerous, anti-national others.

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Section: Combating "Fraudulent Conversions": the Karnataka Right To F...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Hindu nationalist statecraft, dog-whistle legislation, and the vigilante state in contemporary India

Nielsen,

Selvaraj,

Nilsen

2023

Kritisk Etnografi: Swedish Journal of Anthropology

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“…All over South Asia, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Sikh, and Jain reformers established their own Young Men's Associations to diminish the attraction of the Christian YMCA (Farquhar 1915, 80, 125, 278, 329, 343, 444). In India, the Hindu revivalist Arya Samajis even founded a “Vedic Salvation Army” and developed śuddhi , a novel ritual of purification (Farquhar 1915, 127; Fischer-Tiné 2000; Ghai 1990; Vandevelde 2011) with a view to “reclaim” Hindu converts to Christianity who wanted to return to their old religion. All of this caused deep concerns in missionary circles (Thompson 1901).…”

Section: The Crisis Of Proselytism and The “Science Of Religion”: Farmentioning

confidence: 99%

Third-Stream Orientalism: J. N. Farquhar, the Indian YMCA's Literature Department, and the Representation of South Asian Cultures and Religions (ca. 1910–1940)

Fischer–Tiné¹

2020

J of Asian Stud

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This article reconstructs the history of the Indian YMCA's Orientalist knowledge production in an attempt to capture a significant, if forgotten, transitional moment in the production and dissemination of scholarship on the religions and cultures of the Indian subcontinent. The YMCA's three Orientalist book series examined here flourished from the 1910s to the 1930s and represent a kind of third-stream approach to the study of South Asia. Inspired by the Christian fulfillment theory, “Y Orientalism” was at pains to differentiate itself from older polemical missionary writings. It also distanced itself from the popular “spiritual Orientalism” advocated by the Theosophical Society and from the philologically inclined “academic Orientalism” pursued in the Sanskrit departments of Western universities. The interest of the series’ authors in the region's present and the multifarious facets of its “little traditions,” living languages, arts, and cultures, as well as their privileging of knowledge that was generated “in the field” rather than in distant Western libraries, was unusual. Arguably, it anticipated important elements of the “area studies” approach to the Indian subcontinent that became dominant in Anglophone academia after the Second World War.

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“…In recent years, Hindu nationalist organisations, such as the Hindutva organisations rss (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) and vhp (Vishwa Hindu Parishad), have staged such (re)conversions as part of larger programmes, so-called Ghar Wapsi (homecomings), in which thousands of Christians and Muslims return to Hinduism (Vandevelde 2011). These are the source of intense controversy and sometimes scandal, as in 2014, when a Ghar Wapsi campaign claimed that it had converted over fifty Muslim families to Hinduism even though a commission later concluded that the Hindu nationalist group had tricked the families with promises of houses and ration cards and that the families remained Muslim (Mishral 2015).…”

Section: Major Controversiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Handbook of Leaving Religion

Pulcini

2020

Journal of Contemporary Religion

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Reconversion to Hinduism: A Hindu Nationalist Reaction Against Conversion to Christianity and Islam

Cited by 12 publications

References 0 publications

Hindu nationalist statecraft, dog-whistle legislation, and the vigilante state in contemporary India

Hindu nationalist statecraft, dog-whistle legislation, and the vigilante state in contemporary India

Third-Stream Orientalism: J. N. Farquhar, the Indian YMCA's Literature Department, and the Representation of South Asian Cultures and Religions (ca. 1910–1940)

Handbook of Leaving Religion

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