Papers by Mukesh Kumar
Social Sciences and Missions, Brill, 2024
The article examines the influence of Swabian Pietism, a variant of Pietism in South Germany, on ... more The article examines the influence of Swabian Pietism, a variant of Pietism in South Germany, on the Basel Mission's activities in South India. It highlights how Pietism redefined conversion as a personal, transformative experience, shaping missionary discourse and practices. The Basel Mission, founded by Pietistic followers, exemplifies this approach, emphasising "personal will" in conversion. The Mission's expansion in 19thcentury South India brought encounters with diverse socio-religious groups, including Brahmins, Billavas, and Lingayats, each with distinct responses to Protestantism. These encounters challenge simplistic narratives of religious conversion and transformations, revealing complex negotiations and adaptations by both missionaries and locals. The article argues for an intersectional perspective that considers caste, class, and sectarian divides in understanding missionary encounters. It suggests that notions of 'native agency' were nuanced and shaped by social, religious, and economic contexts, leading to a unique 'Indian' Pietistic Protestantism that defied missionary expectations of converts.
Swiss Journal of History , 2024
This article explores the attitudes of the 19 th-century Basel Mission (BM) towards individuals c... more This article explores the attitudes of the 19 th-century Basel Mission (BM) towards individuals considered «lower caste» in South India. It analyses discourses related to the regulation and administration of the body and mind, with the aim of producing social categories and shaping a society that adhered to Protestant norms. Using missionary photographs, narratives, annual reports, and booklets, the dominant conception of religious conversion is problematized, generally defined as a change in one's «spiritual being». This article argues that conversion in non-European settings was entangled with multiple meanings of self-transformation centred around the complex duality of body and mind. In Protestant thinking, the mind was prioritised because it dealt with the «Word of God», while the heart, which represented bodily passions, emotions, and desires, needed to be individually tamed.
History and Anthropology , 2022
This article explores the making and unmaking of a shared shrine culture at an integrated religio... more This article explores the making and unmaking of a shared shrine culture at an integrated religious site in north India, known for the entanglement of Hindu and Islamic religious figures. In particular, what prompts Hindu devotees to protect ‘the otherness’ of two Muslim saints from the attacks of right-wing Hindus who, after recent political developments in India, began to challenge the religious others’ presence next to Hindu sacred figures, Shiva and Hanuman. Following Carla Bellamy, it is shown that Muslim saints represent power ready to be used and harnessed by Hindus if they are willing to transcend their religious boundaries, which in turn, following Levinas, creates an ethics of responsibility for ‘the other’ demanding protection of the Muslim saints’ ontological being and their symbolism of devotion and unique power among Hindus. Hindu devotees, it is argued, exercise cooperative segregation and emphasize the importance of distinction to save the religious culture associated with the two Muslim saints and preserve the symbolism of otherness.
Contemporary South Asia, 2022
This article historically and anthropologically examines the issue of religious conversion and id... more This article historically and anthropologically examines the issue of religious conversion and identity formation among a Jogi community of religious converts. They were previously Muslims and changed their religious association to Hinduism after 1947. Individual and collective narratives of their religious conversion and the problems associated with forming a respected socio-religious identity indicate that religious conversion in South Asia is a non-linear event symbolising a complex process of becoming Hindus. The Muslim Jogis were not accepted by the Hindu Jogis after these conversions leading to the formation of a new Jogi caste community called the Suddhi (purified) Jogis, popularly recognised in Alwar as a caste of converts. The community members still struggle to assert their Hindu identity. This article suggests and argues that converting to Hinduism may result in 'social stasis', signifying a 'perpetual state of becoming' due to the lack of complete social acceptance of converts by the traditionally recognised caste communities of 'Hindus'.
Oxford Journal of Law and Religion, 2022
The promulgation of the new state-level conversion laws in India or some changes in already exist... more The promulgation of the new state-level conversion laws in India or some changes in already existing ones by ordinances is premised upon various conspiracy theories of Hindu fundamentalists against Muslims. Implicit in and placed at the centre of these new anti-conversion laws and public debates thereof is the conspiracy theory of lovejihad that Muslim men lure Hindu women on the pretext of love and get them convert to Islam to eventually outnumber the Hindu majority. This article argues that the anticonversion laws in India result from anxieties of the dominant caste and class regarding gender and caste, leading to the imposition of the mainstream orthodox religious and political will upon the marginalized. The creation of anti-conversion laws is based on assumptions, fears, conspiracy theories, and moral and religious values primarily shared by the 'upper-caste' section across the political spectrum. Furthermore, it also shows a growing nexus between conservative religious forces and state apparatuses that restricts religious and social mobility of the marginalized sections through legal changes.
Antipode, 2021
WhatsApp and digital private spaces are transforming the quality of lived democracy in India toda... more WhatsApp and digital private spaces are transforming the quality of lived democracy in India today. Bringing together STS, geographies of democracy, digital and political anthropology, and feminist approaches to the home, this paper makes visible how the Silicon Valley imaginary of the "digital living room" is domesticated in India. Drawing on digital ethnographic research in urban north India we show how WhatsApp is being used by the Hindu right to digitise new party-political intimacies. This has implications for how people at the margins of Hindu nationalist politics dwell in the "digital living room". Framed as a home like space, we problematise Facebook's "spatiotechnical" utopia by making visible how kinship and (domestic) politics are newly entangled in digital private spaces. Finally, we document how WhatsApp is deployed as a technology of discipline to determine modes of appropriate sociality
Routledge Handbook of South Asian Religions eds. By Knut A. Jacobsen, 2020
This chapter analyses the historical transformations in a north Indian saintly tradition of Lalda... more This chapter analyses the historical transformations in a north Indian saintly tradition of Laldas, who advocated a liminal path marked by nirgun Bhakti. Through his messages, Laldas appealed to Hindu and Muslim followers to adopt a righteous lifestyle devoid of violence, thievery, and animal killing. Although Laldas’ notion of religion and religious identity stood in stark contrast to institutional values of society, his example shows that religious life in India can be variously lived and delineated. To sum up, a shared religious plurality has been and still is a widespread norm in the subcontinent that makes it hard to categorise the general populace in religious terms.
Sacred Sites and Sacred Stories Across Cultures: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020
Laldas, a 16th century born saint, is revered by Hindus and Muslims in the Mewat region of north ... more Laldas, a 16th century born saint, is revered by Hindus and Muslims in the Mewat region of north India. Being an ardent follower of the Bhakti saint, Kabir, and born in a Meo Muslim family, Laldas, unlike his guru, advocated a unique form of religious synthesis. Although the various traditional shrines of Laldas historically remained peaceful centres of popular devotion throughout the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, they became religiously disputed spaces from the middle of the 20th century onwards and have remained so till the present. This chapter shows how this religious transformation from an undisputed shared panth (path) to a more Hinduised one has taken place with regards to the popular veneration of a shared religious figure. Among his main followers are the two communities: a Muslim middle-class peasant caste called the Meos and, a Hindu community of merchants known as the Baniyas. Traditionally, both castes were interdependent upon each other under the jajmani (patron-client) system in Indian society. As soon as the jajmani system began to disintegrate, the traditional social relations also weakened. These social transformations were closely aligned with and significantly affected by the nationalist and local politics of the time. But disputes of political arenas also extended to shared religious spaces. I argue emerging religious differences at shared sacred spaces and associated disputes are the reflections of changing forms of religious cultures. Shared religious spaces became prone to conflicts only when the dynamics of social relations and devotional practices changed.
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society: Cambridge University Press, 2019
This article addresses the issue of passive resistance by the Jogi and Mirasi musician castes aga... more This article addresses the issue of passive resistance by the Jogi and Mirasi musician castes against the puritanical notions of their former patrons, Meos. After the Meo patrons embraced the Tablighi Jamaat's version of Islam, the Jogis and Mirasis feel pressured to give up performing. Their artistry is also their livelihood which they value very much. By using James Scott's understanding of 'passive resistance' and 'hidden transcript' this article shows the use of poetic art for passive resistance. In doing so, the Jogis and Mirasis do not compromise with the civility of the art and positively use the lyrics of their new songs against the Meo patrons' versions of religious purity on one hand, and extremist Hin-duism on the other. They, in fact, emphasize a version of righteousness that is universal and thus needs no organised religion.
Economic and Political Weekly, 2019
Cows, as a symbol, enforce the notion of peasanthood across the Hindu–Muslim religious divide. Th... more Cows, as a symbol, enforce the notion of peasanthood across the Hindu–Muslim religious divide. The current identification of cows entirely with Hinduism is only representative of colonial and postcolonial politics. The article looks at the case of cow veneration among the Meo Muslims in the Mewat region to present the complex nature of religious identities.
Economic and Political Weekly, 2017
Rountable India, 2018
Australian director Warwick Thornton's recently released film Sweet Country, which is making a bu... more Australian director Warwick Thornton's recently released film Sweet Country, which is making a buzz on the global scene, unfolds the relationship of power and domination within the purview of the colonial settlers' encounter with the aboriginal people. The film set in the 1920s in the mesmerising landscape of Northern Territory near Alice Springs begins with the story of an indigenous couple Sam Kelly (Hamilton Morris) and his wife Lizzie (Natassia Gorey Furber) who were working on the property of a Christian preacher, Fred Smith (Sam Neill). A firm believer in racial equality with a kind heart, the character of the preacher, is historically analogous to those of British missionaries who had ventured out on Christianising the colonial subjects from Latin America, Africa, Asia, to Australia. Under the influence of the preacher, the couple adapts some basic religious habits such as giving thanks to Jesus before partaking meals. Thus, the film early on sets a stage for two sorts of encounters, cultural and political (including law) between the colonisers and the colonised. In the film, two other white characters, a senile (Thomas M Wright) and bad tampered Harry March (Ewen Leslie)-the symbolism of the colonial power and ego-settled in the vicinity of the preacher, treat 'black stockmen' with strong racial prejudice. At this disjuncture of the film, the gap between the coloniser and the colonised reflects the implications of the colonial power's domination for multiple sections of the indigenous society: for a woman-being reduced to an object of sexual harassment; for elderly indigenous-deprivation of male dignity at the hands of white males; and for children-a concern for indigenous future. All three sections are well portrayed through various indigenous characters in the film. When Sam Kelly kills Harry in an act of self-defence and not for raping his wife, the colonial law takes its course in pursuit of bringing the criminal to justice. And the futile search begins to hunt down Sam who is roaming in the wildness of forest, mountain, and desert in Northern Territory. The imagination of the country at this point is somewhat in compliance with the idea of human closeness to physical attributes of a landscape. Long settled but not being in the line of an inheritor of the local knowledge places the white settlers as outsiders and distantly related to the land. Knowing a land, its beauties, its hidden mysteries, its difficult terrains, in the form of local knowledge makes a country sweet: both for human survival and for extracting its resources if not for greed then for everyday existence.
Book Reviews by Mukesh Kumar
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2023
Books by Mukesh Kumar
Cambridge University Press, 2024
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Papers by Mukesh Kumar
Book Reviews by Mukesh Kumar
Books by Mukesh Kumar