Nidān: International Journal for Indian Studies
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Nidān: International Journal for Indian Studies ISSN: 2414-8636 Theme: Multi-religious Entanglements in Peninsular India Guest Editor: Ines Zupanov Vol. 5. No. 1. July, 2020 Published at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa Editors P. Pratap Editor-in-Chief Emeritus University of KwaZulu- Kumar Professor Natal, South Africa Deepra Associate Researcher, Leibnitz-Zentrum Dandekar Editor Contested Moderner Orient, Religion Berlin Ajaya K Sahoo Associate Associate University of Editor Professor Hyderabad, India Ines Zupanov Guest Editor Professor Senior Research Fellow at the CNRS, Paris Editorial Board Members Member Institution Email Butler University, Chad Bauman [email protected] USA University of Michel Clasquin [email protected] South Africa Arun Jones [email protected] Emory University University of Goolam Vahed [email protected] KwaZulu-Natal Concordia T.S. Rukmani University, [email protected] Canada Knut A. University of [email protected] Jacobsen Bergen, Norway Universität Martin Bauman Luzern, [email protected] Switzerland Melbourne Purushottama University, [email protected] Bilimoria Australia Yoshitsugu Tenri University, [email protected] Sawai Japan University of Ramdas Lamb [email protected] Hawaii, USA University of Kim Knott [email protected] Lancaster, UK Corinne Nazereth College, [email protected] Dempsey USA Antoinette University of [email protected] DeNapoli Wyoming, USA Member Institution Email Cleveland State Anup Kumar [email protected] University, USA University of Brij Maharaj KwaZulu-Natal, [email protected] SA Centre for South Mathieu Asian Studies, [email protected] Claveyrolas Paris ISSN 2414-8636 © 2020 Copy Right Reserved: Nidān: International Journal for Indian Studies • Nidān is an international journal which publishes contributions in the field of Indian Studies • Articles published in Nidān have abstracts reflected in the Index to South African Periodicals • Nidān is now distributed only through electronic media as a freely accessed journal from its main website: http://nidan.ukzn.ac.za . It is also published from https://journals.ukzn.ac.za/index.php/Nidan • Articles published in Nidān are also available on Sabinet : http://www.journals.co.za/ej/ejour_nidan.html • This periodical is indexed in the ATLA Religion Database® (ATLA RDB®), http://www.atla.com • The Journal is deposited in the National Library of South Africa Peer Review Policy All papers published in this journal are subjected to rigorous double blind peer review by two independent scholars in the field. Authors’ Guidelines Please see for detailed instructions on our website at http://nidan.ukzn.ac.za Submission of Papers Authors are requested to submit papers to the editor-in-chief by email as attachment in MS word format at: [email protected] Disclaimer Article/papers published in this journal are entirely the views of the authors. The editors and members of the editorial board are not responsible in any way for the views expressed by the authors. Table of Contents Triumph in the face of Obstacles: the Nidan 2020 (July Issue) Deepra Dandekar 1 Voices from India’s Borderlands: Indigeneity and the De-Centering of Dissent against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) Shaheen Salma Ahmed & Suryasikha Pathak 3 Religious Entanglements and Shared Texts: The Western Syriac Revision and Reception of the Malabar Sermonary Radu Mustață 26 Fighting Caste and Losing Ancestors: Untouchable Christians and Dilemmas of Modernity in Colonial Kerala Reju George Mathew 55 Book Reviews Antony Mecherry, SJ. (2019) Testing Ground for Jesuit Accommodation in Early Modern India: Francisco Ros SJ in Malabar (16th-17th Centuries). Reviewed by Francis X. Clooney, SJ 78 Pankaj Jain. (2020) Dharma in America: A Short History of Hindu-Jain Diaspora. London and New York: Routledge. Reviewed by Narasingha P. Sil 82 Tschacher, Torsten. (2018). Race, Religion, and the ‘Indian Muslim’ predicament in Singapore. New York: Routledge. Reviewed by Rodney Sebastian 85 Editorial Preface Despite all the challenges caused by covid-19 around the world, I am finally pleased to announce the release of the July 2020 issue. I apologize to all the readers, members of the editorial board and all the stakeholders for the delayed release. The global pandemic has forced upon us a new normal in which we need to find new ways of teaching and researching. As we continue to discover new ways, Nidan will always endeavor to support scholarly publications and make them available to scholars across the globe. This year, despite all the limitations, our authors have managed to submit their papers and Nidan is happy to offer them to you, albeit rather belatedly. I want to express my gratitude to Prof Ines Zupanov for guest editing the issue. I want to thank the authors for their contributions to the Nidan’s goals for advancing scholarly engagement. I wish to express my gratitude to all the peer reviewers for their critical and insightful comments on the papers and for helping authors to take cognizance of the issues they may have missed. I also wish to thank the book reviewers who have offered thoughtful reviews on some key publications that we have included in this issue. As always, I am grateful to all the editorial board and the associate editors, especially Dr. Dandekar for ensuring that this issue is kept alive. I thank the Sabinet staff for their continued support for Nidan. I also wish to thank the UKZN Website Staff for their diligent work, especially Mr. Vincent Mboyeni for managing our website. I hope that the readers will find the papers and book reviews thought provoking and illuminating. Thanks again for supporting Nidan. P. Pratap Kumar Editor-in-chief Nidān, Volume 5, No. 1, July 2020, pp. 1-2 ISSN 2414-8636 doi.org/10.36886/nidan.2020.5.1.1 Triumph in the face of Obstacles: the Nidan 2020 (July Issue) Deepra Dandekar, Associate Editor: Nidān Leibnitz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin. [email protected] It gives me great pleasure to announce the July issue of Nidan: International Journal of Indian Studies, for which I am now working as associate-editor for the second consecutive year. After successfully guest editing the 2019 Nidan special issue on Christianity in India, I was deeply honoured when Professor Pratap Penumala invited me to accept the position of associate editor for the journal. Professor Penumala and I had already struck up a cordial and efficient working relationship and saw eye-to-eye on several academic and political issues, giving me the freedom and confidence to choose my own themes, decide on paper submissions, and other reviewers and guest editors. Professor Penumala’s constant and gentle, encouraging words of wisdom gave me courage to face CoVid demotivation this year that sometimes felt insurmountable, and my work experience with various authors, reviewers, and the efficient team of editors at the University of KwaZulu-Natal humbled me with their dedication. I received much enthusiasm from junior and senior scholarly professionals alike, who were happy to contribute and review papers for Nidan. In fact, the academic verve I encountered while working with Nidan has gone a long way in restoring my faith in academia in general, bringing me in close contact with many highly merited researchers. That said, 2020 has been a difficult year for us all, and like other more- established journals, Nidan too was hit by the CoVid pandemic. Though we had a large number of promising contributors for the July 2020 issue, a majority of them declined in the end due to the crushing crisis of the Pandemic that saw them unable to travel, undertake fieldwork, library, or archival research, and even maintain academic contracts, with universities and research institutions closing indefinitely. While the very existence of many scholars came under threat, with classes moving online, many of our other contributors faced personal losses and family crises made more difficult by the pandemic. We take a moment to thank them for their 1 Dandekar / Triumph in the face of Obstacles dedication to Nidan this year, despite these difficulties, and also take the same opportunity to thank our reviewers. I am happy to say that despite the pandemic chaos, we have three robust papers for the July 2020 Issue, in addition to our usual array of interesting book reviews. While one of the papers on Peninsular India in the July 2020 Issue emerged out of a conference on multi-religious entanglements in South Asia organized in April 2019 by Professor Zupanov at the CEIAS in Paris, we received an additional, independent paper on vernacular Dalit literature in Kerala. We further added to the July Issue, bolstering the conference thematic with another current, vibrant topic of significance: the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act civil movements that raged across India in 2019. And as part of this, we elicited two excellent articles on Assam, and on the Jain community in Mumbai. The CAA discussions concentrating on religious difference, ethnicity and indigenous rights were not without its resonance with entanglements faced by religious communities in the past either, which was a topic so central to our conference theme. I am therefore, happy to announce that despite our editorial struggle with the CoVid chaos, our July 2020 Issue reflects the human cause of living and working together amidst various claims and vicissitudes of feeling different. 2 Nidān, Volume 5, No. 1, July 2020, pp. 3-25 ISSN 2414-8636 doi.org/10.36886/nidan.2020.5.1.2 Voices from India’s Borderlands: Indigeneity and the De-Centering of Dissent against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) Shaheen Salma Ahmed PhD Candidate (Cultural Studies), Monash University Email: [email protected] Suryasikha Pathak Faculty, Centre for Tribal Studies, Assam University Email: [email protected] Abstract India’s Northeast region (NER) has been framed politically over the years in myriad ways, often as a frontier for resource extraction, or a frontier with strategic boundaries.