*Conversion and Social Equality in India. The London Missionary Society in South Travancore in the 19th Century* by Dick Kooiman, Published by Manohar Publications, New Delhi, 1989, pp. 236, Rs.200/-.
As the Dalits' movement for their liberation gathers momentum under the inspiration of Dr. Ambedkar, the necessity of their quitting brahminical controlled Hinduism is debated with renewed vitality in dalit circles and in dalit journals all over the country. Preparatory movements are also afoot in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala. There are two important considerations for the move. Firstly, it is absolutely necessary for the Dalits to recover their self-image as full human beings, sacred and inviolable as any other human group of people. This requires their quitting hierarchical brahminical Hinduism and joining a religious tradition which professes social equality and practices communal feeling and fellowship. Secondly, Dalits who are divided into hundreds of sub-castes which may go to their ancient tribal past, need to bring about a cultural cohesion as a community to promote their aspirations and to fight their oppression.
In this context, historical studies of earlier movements of untouchable communities into other religious traditions are important since they can throw some light on the problem. Though the present-day political context of the Dalits and their capacity are substantially different from the past, the nature of their problem cannot be said to be so very different from what obtained in the 19th century. Here lies the relevance of studies like the book under review, *Conversion and Social Equality in India* by Dick Kooiman. The book deals with the work of the London Missionary Society in South Travancore in the 19th century.
The book establishes beyond doubt the historical fact that the expectations and motivations of the missionaries and of the people who responded to their work like Shanars, Sambhavas, Pulayas and Kuravas, did not exactly coincide, though they came to share certain common perceptions and were partners in a common movement of social and religious change. The ex-untouchable castes seized upon the opportunity of religious conversion to escape the stigma of untouchability and assert their social equality against the Nairs and other caste Hindus, while these latter classes viewed the missionary work, especially in the initial stages, as a great threat to religio-cultural and economic hegemony. These missionaries' accessibility to the centres of power was an important consideration with the converts. What I find very positive in this book however is that the author, by meticulously arraying all the available evidence from primary sources, proves the inadequacy of many of the reductionist and simplistic theories on the activities of the missionary as well as on the conversion of the socially and economically oppressed groups. For instance, 'the missionaries started the anti-slavery movement in order to free the slave labour for the emerging capitalistic plantation economy'; 'they were the cultural arms of the British imperialism'; 'the poor from the lower strata became Christians to escape starvation or to avail themselves of economic benefits'. On all these and similar theories the author gives both sets of evidence which prove convincingly that religio-cultural and socio-political changes are complex matters that an individual's or group's motives or behaviour pattern do not produce straightaway history and historical changes. This needs emphasis since I have found even dalit youths repeat these half-truths, propagated by some earlier writers.
One thing I hoped to find but did not discover in the book is the answer to my problem why in spite of the fact that Sambhavas were the first to rally round L.M.S. supporting its work over the century, they and their comperes like the Pulayas and Kuruvas not only lost to the Shanars and other groups in educational and economic upward mobility, but they even had to drift to other church denominations like the Salvation Army. Perhaps since the whole book is written on the basis of missionary and government records, an answer to this problem cannot be found. We probably need more ethnographic information on the recipient groups themselves of that time to answer these points, which unfortunately is absent. This sad fact reminds us once again the position of Dr. Ambedkar that untouchability is not merely a question of absence of status but also a problem of power. In other words dalit liberation necessarily includes cultural steps to redefine their religious status as well as resources in the form of educational and economic power to assert themselves as social equals with the rest of the community.
I however fail to understand the confusion created by the author by comparing Christianisation as some kind of sanskritization because of certain apparent similarities. These are diametrically opposed social processes. The author could have been right if he asserted that Christianisation in the case of the groups in question did not amount to much more than sanskritization, or simply that Christianity failed to break the stranglehold of caste among Christians. This is something different from a theoretical attempt to compare sanskritization and Christianization as essentially similar social processes. If this theoretical confusion were avoided in the 'Conclusion', it would have helped him to evaluate successes and failure of the conversion attempt in a much clearer perspective.
— A. M. Abraham Ayrookuzhiel