or construction of Hinduism, including of Hindu deities and the idea of caste
(e.g. Dalmia 1995, 1997; T. Basu et al. 1993; Kapur 1993).
In recent years, studies of Muslims and Christians in particular have begun
to increase. Jews have received some attention (Abraham 1994, 1995). Though
these studies constitute but a drop in the ocean, they have challenged several
received notions in the study of religion in South Asia. In particular, terms
such as ‘syncretism’ and ‘composite culture’, which have been freely employed
have been shown to have their limitations. They view the interaction between
different religious traditions as an essentially harmonic one. Ram (1991) has
argued that while most Christian communities live in worlds permeated with
‘Hindu’ ideas, it is facile to view the retention of Hindu elements among
Christian groups as a sign of the lack of authenticity of their faith or to assume
that converts always have a harmonious (‘syncretic’) relationship with all
strands of Hinduism.
Questions of caste and identity remain crucial (Kaur 1986; Jayaram 1992;
Bhatty 1996; Tharamangalam 1996), while other concerns have also come to
the foreground. These include the relationship between text and practice, the
cult of saints and the play of gender, belief and ritual (Visvanathan 1993;
Ghadially 2003, 2005; Mehta 1997; Fazalbhoy 2000; Pinto 1995; Saiyed
1995), the rise and implications of minority fundamentalism (Sikand 2002),
the idea of conversion and the modes of transaction, translation and interaction
between communities (Sikand 2003). In particular, the theme of conversion
has seen some novel interventions. Viswanathan (1998) has explored con-
version as a subversion of state power even as she pursues the mapping of
identities by the state on the colonial convert.
Rodrigues’ (2002) study of Ambedkar’s philosophy also attempts to relate
notions of conversion with political imaginings, while Uberoi uses the
semiological method to weave a narrative linking Sikh and Gandhian
philosophy through an understanding of the ways in which these reconcile the
oppositions of state and power and the individual and the collective (1996).
Robinson and Clarke (2003) argue that conversion has been treated as a taken-
for-granted term, a term transparent, when its whys and hows differ
fundamentally by social and political context. They challenge the ‘coercive’
model and the models of ‘assimilation’ and ‘sanskritization’ that have been
used extensively to understand conversion on the subcontinent.
A range of new themes have now entered the field: the dynamics of
interaction between converters and social groups in different regions, the forms
this interplay of cultures and discourses takes, the modes through which
converts often challenge and contest elite or priestly authority and the
negotiation (and sometimes clash) of new faiths and creeds with prevailing
patterns of kinship, marriage and inheritance as well as with food conven-
tions and sartorial codes (Robinson 2003). Conversion to Christianity has
particularly benefited from this opening up. S Dube (1992, 1995, 1999)134
ROWENA ROBINSON AND VINEETA SINHA