Abstract
This article focuses on Roberts’ argument that the religiosity of urban Tamil Dalits, or “slum religion,” transcends Hindu or Christian affiliation. Roberts’ ethnography challenges the dominant discourse surrounding Pentecostal Christianity which asserts that conversion is inevitably divisive, splitting families and communities and even individuals in harmful ways that justify its tight legal regulation. To the contrary, Roberts’ fieldwork reveals how the deeply pragmatic nature of Dalit religion allows for significant individual variation and dynamism without inordinate contentiousness. To Be Cared For also contributes to scholarship on women and religion in India, sensitively illustrating the tensions and strains within urban Dalit women’s lives that the collective ritual forms of Pentecostal Christianity help to assuage.
Recommended Citation
Kent, Eliza F.
(2020)
"Review of Nathaniel Roberts’ To Be Cared For:The Power of Conversion and the Foreignness of Belonging in an Indian Slum,"
Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies:
Vol. 32, Article 2.
Available at: https://doi.org/10.7825/2164-6279.1728