Author : P. D. Mathew
Publisher :
Page : 140 pages
File Size : 38,54 MB
Release : 1999
Category : Political Science
ISBN :
With reference to the Indian scene.
Author : Laura Dudley Jenkins
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 24,13 MB
Release : 2019-05-31
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0812250923
Hinduism is the largest religion in India, encompassing roughly 80 percent of the population, while 14 percent of the population practices Islam and the remaining 6 percent adheres to other religions. The right to "freely profess, practice, and propagate religion" in India's constitution is one of the most comprehensive articulations of the right to religious freedom. Yet from the late colonial era to the present, mass conversions to minority religions have inflamed majority-minority relations in India and complicated the exercise of this right. In Religious Freedom and Mass Conversion in India, Laura Dudley Jenkins examines three mass conversion movements in India: among Christians in the 1930s, Dalit Buddhists in the 1950s, and Mizo Jews in the 2000s. Critics of these movements claimed mass converts were victims of overzealous proselytizers promising material benefits, but defenders insisted the converts were individuals choosing to convert for spiritual reasons. Jenkins traces the origins of these opposing arguments to the 1930s and 1940s, when emerging human rights frameworks and early social scientific studies of religion posited an ideal convert: an individual making a purely spiritual choice. However, she observes that India's mass conversions did not adhere to this model and therefore sparked scrutiny of mass converts' individual agency and spiritual sincerity. Jenkins demonstrates that the preoccupation with converts' agency and sincerity has resulted in significant challenges to religious freedom. One is the proliferation of legislation limiting induced conversions. Another is the restriction of affirmative action rights of low caste people who choose to practice Islam or Christianity. Last, incendiary rumors are intentionally spread of women being converted to Islam via seduction. Religious Freedom and Mass Conversion in India illuminates the ways in which these tactics immobilize potential converts, reinforce damaging assumptions about women, lower castes, and religious minorities, and continue to restrict religious freedom in India today.
Author : Lewis R. Rambo
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 829 pages
File Size : 45,78 MB
Release : 2014-03-06
Category : Religion
ISBN : 0199713545
The Oxford Handbook of Religious Conversion offers a comprehensive exploration of the dynamics of religious conversion, which for centuries has profoundly shaped societies, cultures, and individuals throughout the world. Scholars from a wide array of religions and disciplines interpret both the varieties of conversion experiences and the processes that inform this personal and communal phenomenon. This volume examines the experiences of individuals and communities who change religions, those who experience an intensification of their religion of origin, and those who encounter new religions through colonial intrusion, missionary work, and charismatic and revitalization movements. The thirty-two innovative essays provide overviews of the history of particular religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Sikhism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, indigenous religions, and new religious movements. The essays also offer a wide range of disciplinary perspectives-psychological, sociological, anthropological, legal, political, feminist, and geographical-on methods and theories deployed in understanding conversion, and insight into various forms of deconversion.
Author : Ankur Barua
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 228 pages
File Size : 10,77 MB
Release : 2015-03-27
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1317538595
Hindu and Christian debates over the meanings, motivations, and modalities of ‘conversion’ provide the central connecting theme running through this book. It focuses on the reasons offered by both sides to defend or oppose the possibility of these cross-border movements, and shows how these reasons form part of a wider constellation of ideas, concepts, and practices of the Christian and the Hindu worlds. The book draws upon several historical case-studies of Christian missionaries and of Hindus who encountered these missionaries. By analysing some of the complex negotiations, intersections, and conflicts between Hindus and Christians over the question of ‘conversion’, it demonstrates that these encounters revolve around three main contested themes. Firstly, who can properly ‘speak for the convert’? Secondly, how is ‘tolerating’ the religious other connected to an appraisal of the other’s viewpoints which may be held to be incorrect, inadequate, or incomplete? Finally, what is, in fact, the ‘true Religion’? The book demonstrates that it is necessary to wrestle with these questions for an adequate understanding of the Hindu and Christian debates over ‘conversion.’ Questioning what ‘conversion’ precisely is, and why it has been such a volatile issue on India’s political-legal landscape, the book will be a useful contribution to studies of Hinduism, Christianity and Asian Religion and Philosophy.
Author : Nehal Bhuta
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 265 pages
File Size : 41,69 MB
Release : 2019-01-24
Category : Law
ISBN : 0192540092
This interdisciplinary volume examines the relationship between secularism, freedom of religion and human rights in legal, theoretical, historical and political perspective. It brings together chapters from leading scholars of human rights, law and religion, political theory, religious studies and history, and provides insights into the state of the debate about the relationship between these concepts. Comparative in orientation, its chapters draw on constitutional and political discourses and experience not only from Western Europe and the United States, but also from India, the Arab world, and Malaysia.
Author : Donald Eugene Smith
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 539 pages
File Size : 35,30 MB
Release : 2015-12-08
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1400877784
Throughout India's history, religion has been the most powerful single factor in the development of her civilization. Today, despite her religious tradition, India is emerging as a secular state. In this book, Donald E. Smith explores the origin of the concept of secularization as it is found both in Indian culture and in the example of the western nations. He emphasizes the important role of secularization in India’s total democratic experiment and points out that the degree of its realization will undoubtedly affect the eventual character of democracy in India. In addition, the success or failure of the secular state in India cannot fail to influence the attitudes of her neighbors. Professor Smith considers the many aspects and implications of India’s attempt to secularize her government. Originally published in 1963. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Author : Timothy Keller
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 338 pages
File Size : 13,71 MB
Release : 2016-09-20
Category : Religion
ISBN : 0525954155
We live in an age of skepticism. Our society places such faith in empirical reason, historical progress, and heartfelt emotion that it’s easy to wonder: Why should anyone believe in Christianity? What role can faith and religion play in our modern lives? In this thoughtful and inspiring new book, pastor and New York Times bestselling author Timothy Keller invites skeptics to consider that Christianity is more relevant now than ever. As human beings, we cannot live without meaning, satisfaction, freedom, identity, justice, and hope. Christianity provides us with unsurpassed resources to meet these needs. Written for both the ardent believer and the skeptic, Making Sense of God shines a light on the profound value and importance of Christianity in our lives.
Author : Talal Asad
Publisher : Stanford University Press
Page : 401 pages
File Size : 41,37 MB
Release : 2003-02-03
Category : Religion
ISBN : 0804783098
“A dark but brilliantly original work . . . one of the most important books on religion and the modern in recent years.” —H-Net Reviews Opening with the provocative query “what might an anthropology of the secular look like?” this book explores the concepts, practices, and political formations of secularism, with emphasis on the major historical shifts that have shaped secular sensibilities and attitudes in the modern West and the Middle East. Talal Asad proceeds to dismantle commonly held assumptions about the secular and the terrain it allegedly covers. He argues that while anthropologists have oriented themselves to the study of the “strangeness of the non-European world” and to what are seen as non-rational dimensions of social life (things like myth, taboo, and religion),the modern and the secular have not been adequately examined. The conclusion is that the secular cannot be viewed as a successor to religion, or be seen as on the side of the rational. It is a category with a multi-layered history, related to major premises of modernity, democracy, and the concept of human rights. This book will appeal to anthropologists, historians, religious studies scholars, as well as scholars working on modernity. “A difficult if stunningly eloquent book, a response both elusive and forthright to the many shelves of ‘books on terrorism’ which this country’s trade publishers are rushing into print.” —Bryn Mawr Review of Comparative Literature “This wonderfully illuminating book should be read alongside the author’s Genealogies of Religion.” —Religion “One of the most interesting scholars of religious writing today.” —Christian Scholar’s Review “Asad’s brilliant study remains a defining piece of intellectual and scholarly contribution for all of those interested in exploring the religious and the secular in the modern era.” —The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences
Author : Waheeda Amien
Publisher :
Page : 230 pages
File Size : 27,4 MB
Release : 2021
Category :
ISBN : 9783036525099
The aim of this book is to create a space for contributions on religious freedom in the Global South. The contributions speak to diverse themes underscoring religious freedom in the Global South including the impact of religious freedom on majority and minority religious communities, the relationship between religious freedom and the state, and the relationship between religious freedom and other fundamental human rights. Through the adoption of inter- and multidisciplinary approaches, and with reference to various religions such as Islam, Hinduism, Sufism, Sikhism, and Christianity, contributors address the themes across several regions in the world including Africa, South Asia, South-East Asia, South America, and Eastern Europe. Depending on the social, legal, and political context and by relying on diverse examples such as the Muslim call to prayer (adhan), domestic violence, animal sacrifice, religious conversions, abortion, the rights of LGBT persons, and religious education in the public sphere, the contributions illustrate how religious freedom can undermine or promote the rights of majority or minority religious communities, and how it can impact on the rights of marginalised members within minority religious communities.
Author : Sarah Claerhout
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 186 pages
File Size : 15,16 MB
Release : 2022-05-06
Category : Religion
ISBN : 1000571130
This book re-examines the issue of religious conversion, which has been a site of conflict in India for several centuries. It discusses wide-ranging themes such as conversion, education, and reform in colonial India; the process and practices of conversion in Christian Europe; Gandhi, conversion, and the equality of religions; perspectives from Hindu nationalism, secularism, and religious minorities; religious freedom and the limits of propagating religion; and conversion in constitutional law, commissions, and courts, to chart new directions for research on religion, tradition, and conversion. Tracing developments from the 19th-century colonial era to contemporary times, the book analyses cultural background frameworks and the origins of religious conversion and its conceptualisation in Western Christianity. It further delves into how Indian culture and its traditions have shaped responses to conversion. Part of the Critical Humanities Across Cultures series, this book will be useful to scholars and researchers of critical humanities, religion, cultural studies, sociology of religion, comparative religion, philosophy, anthropology, theology, Indology, history, politics, postcolonial studies, critical theory, and South Asian studies.
