Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

Volume 18 Article 20

January 2005

Book Review: "Converting Women: Gender and Protestant Christianity in Colonial South India"

Leslie C. Orr

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Recommended Citation Orr, Leslie C. (2005) "Book Review: "Converting Women: Gender and Protestant Christianity in Colonial South India"," Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies: Vol. 18, Article 20. Available at: https://doi.org/10.7825/2164-6279.1353

The Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies is a publication of the Society for Hindu-Christian Studies. The digital version is made available by Digital Commons @ Butler University. For questions about the Journal or the Society, please contact [email protected]. For more information about Digital Commons @ Butler University, please contact [email protected]. Orr: Book Review: "Converting Women: Gender and Protestant Christianity in Colonial South India" 64 Book Reviews

noting that almost all female gurus are not in write on current gurus, especially if one has traditional lineages that wield orthodox received kindness from them and their power but are "stand-alone" figures who tap followers. Nevertheless, a discussion about into universality and the philosophical what kinds of worries have exercised the oneness of Vedanta. disciples and ex-disciples of female gurus My one small reservation about this could be a fruitful, additional lens through splendid collection of essays is the uneven which to understand the group as. a whole. attention by the authors to the darker sides In this regard, I find Cornille'sessay on of the individuals and organizations they Mother Meera to be exemplary. She describe. For gurus like Sita Devi, Gauri mentions, up -front, discomfitting facts about Ma, or Anandamayi Ma, perhaps there are her subject, and yet her presentation of no sources for their more human sides, Mother Meera as a woman who awakens particularly since two of them were not insights in her disciples also makes one take supposed to be human. I wonder however this guru seriously. about the rather idealized picture of Shree These concerns aside, The Graceful Ma of Kamakkhya, she who stands with the Guru is a lovely volume that teaches us a lot dispossessed other, in Biernacki's essay. In about the category of women gurus through the same vein, it takes a small army of interesting descriptions of some famous devoted disciples to manage and facilitate examples. The volume layout is beautiful, Ammachi's 1,800 hugs a day; as a guru her too, with an initial introduction to each of innovative maternal ministry may indeed be the authors, references and books for further healing for the recipients, but one also hears reading collected after each essay, and a stories of the near slavery of those close to final list of websites. If only Oxford had her, in terms of work expectations. Again, agreed to invest in some photographs! Pechilisi n. 28 p. 239 on accusations against the SYDA Foundation is so carefully Rachel Fell McDermott worded as to tell us practically nothing. It is Barnard College of course an extremely sensitive task to

Converting Women: Gender and Protestant Christianity in Colonial South India. Eliza F. Kent. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004, xiv + 315 pp.

ELIZA Kent's study of conversion in the conversion in terms of the theological, social Tamil country of the 19th and early 20th and political context of these earliyr times centuries focusses on women -- Western (as opposed to those of post-Independence women who were Protestant mission~ries, India), and an account that reflects the Indian women who converted to motives and experiences of Indian converts. Christianity, and issues relating to women's Given that the Indian converts whose conduct and capacities that were brought perspectives Kent seeks to recover are not into play by these women's propagation of only women, but also frequently low-caste and responses to Christianity. Drawing on or untouchable, the historiographical an array of Tamil sources, as well as the challenges are considerable; nonetheless, the records and publications in English of endeavour results ~n a distinctive and missionaries, colonial administrators, and extremely valuable contribution. Indian Christians, Kent's effort is to provide This book's central thesis is that an account of the processes and meanings of conversion to Christianity was not the

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. function of the imposition from outside of missionaries in South India, and that their foreign beliefs and practices, but a dialogical concerns, experiences, and fields of activity process involving the agency of the convert were often quite separate from those of their and a series of complex negotiations about male counterparts. With reference to the the impact of the new religious identity on groups of low-caste Indians among whom Indian lives. With sympathy for the the South Indian missionaries w~rked, Kent sincerity and authenticity of the motives of does an admirable job of deconstructing the both missionary and convert, and for the images projected by colonial ethnographers intense engagement with encounter arid and administrators, and by the missionaries transformation that brought the two sides themselves. Her presentation not only together, Kent draws attention to the lack of counters colonial stereotypes of congruence between their understandings of untouchables as depraved and/or as abject the significance of the adoption of Christian victims, but introduces us to the variety of values and behaviours by Indians. The conditions and ways of life with which concept of female respectability provides a members of these commumtles were wonderful example of the ways in which involved, as well as the historical dynamics Western missionaries and Indian Christians of the colonial period which dramatically invested a model for women's comportment altered their opportunities and their with divergent meanings: on the one hand, vulnerabilities. The diverse types of as representing (and inculcating) the missionaries and of Christian converts -- and Christian virtues of modesty, chastity, and insight into the convictions and motivations self-discipline, and on the other, as marking that may have belonged to members of the the convert's rising status with reference to groups they belonged to -- are brought to life Indian society's norms for' the dress, by Kent's portraits. She employs a range of movement outside the home, and sexual different kinds of sources to provide details . behaviour of women positioned variously of the activities and attitudes of Amy within the hierarchy of caste. The fact that . Carmichael and Eva Swift in her very rich the sexual conduct of Western female chapter on "Women's Missionary Societies," missionaries, like other white women in and of the conceptions of Christianity and colonial India, was subject to surveillance as domesticity that were salient for the rigorous as that endured by high-caste Hindu Satthianadhan family and for the Reverend women only adds to the complexities and A.N. Sattampillai. She makes skillful use of ironies of the situation. I find convincing the fragmentary material that sheds light on Kent's suggestion that the acceptance by the functions and character of the Indian low-caste Indian Christian women of a "Bible women," and revisits the missionary parallel regulatory framework, although it archive to recover other glimpses of the curtailed their activities in a number of experience of Indian Christians. Although ways, was useful as an expression of these people may have beco'me Christians as resistance to the threat of sexual exploitation . the result of "mass conversions," and despite by upper-caste men. the author's statement (p. 7) that her focus is Not only does this book provide a "on the public, social aspect of conversion," rich portrait of the diverse and distinct there is a great deal in this book that treats apprehensions of what conversion meant to the individual and the interior. missionaries and to Indian converts, but Kent argues that for Indian women each of these two groups is represented as and low-caste men, conversion to encompassing great variety. We learn that Christianity was a means of reformulating Protestant Christian groups had very one's socia] identity, carrying with it an different views about the nature of implicit critique of the dominant Hindu conversion and salvation, and about the aims society's patriarchal and hierarchical and methods of their foreign missions. We tendencies. She does not claim that come to appreciate the impact of female Christianity was the only worldview that

https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/jhcs/vol18/iss1/20 DOI: 10.7825/2164-6279.1353 2 Orr: Book Review: "Converting Women: Gender and Protestant Christianity in Colonial South India" 66 Book Reviews

presented such alternatives, and points spring to mind at all is an indication of the toward the possibility that other religious quality and value of this book. For while' movements such as the cult of Murukan Kent's graceful prose and balanced were "a focus of low-caste restlessness in presentation please the reader, the account nineteenth-century South India" (p. 248). she provides of the actions and experiences Although there seems to be little research on of her subjects is provocative. Part of the such movements, I would have liked to see story is about collaboration, resourcefulness, some further discussion of the parallels with and self-transformation, but Kent is right to conversion to Christianity. I am also curious remind us that these religious interactions about the suggestion in Kent's conclusion also involved conflict, rupture, and uneasy that it has not only been in the colonial compromise. Her focus on women in this period that "gaps and fissures" (p. 3) have arena, and on both Western and Indian appeared in Indian society which have women, gives her the opportunity to teach us provided the impetus and opportunity for much that is new about the processes and social and religious self-transformation. tensions of conversion and of the colonial What comparisons can be made between the encounter. And the sensitivity and conditions that prevailed in the colonial imagination she brings to her portrayal of period and those of the times of the Buddha the people ,enmeshed with one another in or the bhakti saints? Or is it the content of this context makes their struggles and the message, rather than the context in achievements poignant and compelling. which it is encountered, that is most responsible for its appeal? It is likely that a consideration of Leslie C. Orr such far-ranging questions would have led Concordia University our author too far afield; the fact that they , ,

Briefly N oled

Asian Christian Theologies: A Research Guide to Authors, Movements, Sources. Volume 1: Asia Region 7th-20th centuries; South Asia; Austral Asia. Edited by John C. England; Jose Kuttianimattathil, S.D.B.; John Mansford Prior, S.V.D.; Lily A. Quintos, R.C.; David Suh Kwang-sun; Janice Wickeri. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis/ Delhi: ISPCKlQuezon City: Claretian Publishers, 2002, xlv + 679 pp.

THE compilers, writers and editors of this expressed intent is to provide the "first fine three volume encyclopedia have taken wide-ranging attempt to chart the vast on the formidable task of mapping materials of Asian Christian theologies," (p. historically, geographically, thematically xlv) to make available the key sources and and biographically the myriad expressions tools in English for the study of Catholic, of Asian Christian theology. Of the three Protestant and Orthodox Asian theology volumes, the first will be of greatest over the centuries. The focus throughout is usefulness to those interested in the on the understanding of Christian faith as interaction of Hinduism and Christianity, expressed in theologies grounded in local since it covers South Asia and India. The contexts that draw on indigenous culture and general theme of Volume 2(2003), by religion. Accordingly, purely western contrast, is Southeast Asia, that of Volume 3 theologies transplapted in Asia are of lesser (2004) Northeast Asia. interest. Special attention is also given to The project of compilation, which the voices of women in their "aspirations, began in 1998, is ambitious; the editors' faith and struggles against oppression" (p.

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