Caste and Community in Confusion

This is part 2 of a two-part interaction with Frontier Mission's May/June issue on India. See part 1 here.

I find the ongoing use of “caste” as the key sociological concept for the purposes of church planting deeply problematic, as I explained in some detail in a previous publication.[1] I am not sure whether people have ignored that article or simply don’t understand it, since nobody has interacted with that article. If that article is opaque, I hope I can have a chance here to remedy that.

The question of how we classify people clearly continues to excite imaginations, as we see in the recent Patidar reservation agitation in which a dominant caste in Gujarat has attempted to get legal recognition as a downtrodden people in order to be recipients of affirmative action. In this regard I find it naïve that the author identified as, A Passionate Indian Servant can say in “Why the Community/ Caste Focus is Needed in Support of Church Planting Movements” that, “There is too much of classifying people by who we think they are, rather than who they perceive themselves to be”. Identities, however, are always a product of negotiation between insiders and outsiders, so it does not make sense to try to classify everyone simply according to their self identifier. In South Asia, especially, these things are contested.

In the editorial, the significance of community is front and center: “Each of these communities will likely need a separate movement of disciple making and church planting – thereby making India the greatest challenge to world evangelization…today”.

If there are “thousands of different communities all separated by caste, language and religion,” as Rick Wood asserts in “The Only Way to Reach India Is through Movements,” then India does indeed look like the neediest country in the world in terms of church planting. But if India’s communities are not as fissiparous as it first appears, that argument collapses. It does not mean, necessarily, that India is not the greatest challenge, but it does mean that such an assertion would need to be justified on other grounds.

I wonder if part of the problem is that the research is partial and biased. Why, for instance, does A Passionate Indian Servant write that, “Typically, in an Indian city, 99% of those of Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe status are able to supply their community/caste/tribe name when asked.” What about other castes? In my research in Nepal, almost everyone knew their caste – to ask someone’s jati would seem rude but to ask someone’s thar invariably resulted in an immediate and clear answer.

Likewise, Victor John, in “The Bhojpuri Movement Transforming Social Dynamics,” reports that among Bhojpuri speakers “low caste or outcast Dalits and adivasi” make up 80% of the group and the “good news has tended to more quickly enter the low caste”. Nevertheless, he writes that, “If the high caste in our area are only two percent or 10 percent of the population, that same percentage is also reflected in the churches.” I can’t see how both can be true. More likely, it would seem that indeed the Bhojpuri phenomenon is an overwhelmingly Dalit movement, as indeed A Passionate Indian Servant suggests—both the Chamar and Balmiki people are Dalit castes. So John’s claim that the “focus on language rather than caste” results in the movement touching all castes, is not established.

What exactly is caste? The aforementioned author attempts to define caste in ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ ways. But what does he mean by formal and informal? Rather than clarifying the issue, such distinctions obfuscate. One would be hard put to find any scholar making such a distinction. The great need is to define caste as it is lived and experienced. It is only when real communities are understood that social data can be useful. And that only really happens with careful, in-depth, theoretically-sensitive ethnographic observation and interaction. There is little evidence that any such research has been attempted as little ethnographic data is presented.

Is caste the same thing as community? The same writer tells us that, “In south Asia, community largely means ‘caste,’ but is more innocent sounding term and preferable to many. A South Asian community is not a voluntary association, but an ethno-linguistic hereditary group with defined boundaries within which one must marry.”

Community can, of course, be defined in any number of ways, especially in today’s climate of identity politics. Caste, however, has been the subject of intense sociological and historical analysis. The writer quotes historian Sumit Guha: ‘…the bounded, status-ranked ethnic community or ‘caste’ is a social form that frequently appears in multiethnic societies… (pp. 2–3).” But Guha also argues that castes are “geographically bounded communities”.[2] It is this geographical, or territorial, element that is largely missing in so much writing on South Asian missiology. 

Allow me to return to the Badhai, whom I discussed in my previous article. According to the JP, the Badhai are a group of peoples traditionally involved in carpentry. The JP lists five groups in India with the name Badhai: 

·      Badhai (Hindu Traditions)

·      Badhai (Hindu Traditions)

·      Badhai Gandhar

·      Badhai Kharadi 

·      Badhai Konkani

The first group is located across much of north, central, and western India, the second mostly in Uttar Pradesh with many also in other Indian states as well as in Pakistan and Bangladesh, while each of the three latter groups turn out to be rather few in numbers and situated in geographically tightly circumscribed areas.

The Badhai (HT) are further divided into 25 ‘subgroups’, many of whom comprise tens of thousands of individuals, and by the look of their names seem to belong to particular places just as the latter three on the main list. We are told that these subgroups are designated as such because they constitute a “segment of a people group that probably does not need a unique church planting effort.” Why? Because “The Gospel can flow between subgroups without encountering significant barriers of understanding or acceptance.”

Although I know very little about the Badhai in India, I would hazard a guess, based on my detailed field work in Nepal, that people who identify as Badhai in India would indeed have a measure of affinity for one another. However, and this is the crucial point, I think it highly unlikely that they would intermarry at any great distance, nor have much social interaction at all, except in their own locality. My point is that they constitute a societalgroup (i.e. a mental category), not a social group, as there is little interaction between the members, except in their own localities.

If this is the case, one would surmise that the 25 subgroups of the Badhai (HT) are in the same category as the Badhai Gandhar, Badhai Kharadi, and Badhai Konkani, making 28 Badhai (HT) groups in all.[3]

Furthermore, Badhai (Muslim Traditions) are also scattered, suggesting that they too in fact constitute dozens of groups. I am speculating here but Hindu/Muslim relations being what they are in India, I would not expect any significant social interaction between the two religious groupings (though inter-religious social interaction and even marriage is not always out of the question, as my research in Nepal among Hindus and Buddhists demonstrates).

So that begs the question: Does each of these groups in every one of these locations need a distinct effort of church planting? I argue no, for the following reason: For the most part, a caste does not constitute a community. An exception to this might be Dalit castes in any particular locality, where all the people belong to a single, endogamous group. But many villages and all towns and cities are made up of dozens of castes that would rarely intermarry but, nevertheless, have cordial social and religious interaction on a daily basis. It is these villages that constitute a community. In towns and cities, the traditional community may be more on the level of neighbourhood, and it is typically multicaste. With recent rapid urbanization, caste distinctions are even less significant in daily life, as both Victor John and A Passionate Indian Servant recognise.

John does recognise the significance of the locality:

In addition, caste-focused work would be impractical [sic] in many cases. In some villages, there might be only one family from a particular caste. You can’t start a worshiping community with only one family, so you need a multicaste fellowship. We focus on reaching persons based upon their language, geography, and economic status, rather than caste, because that helps the good news to take root throughout the region, and spread.

In conclusion, I would suggest that much more attention be focussed on how various caste groups interact with each other in their villages, village clusters, town neighbourhoods, etc. It is in these interactions that true community is observed and in which gospel communication can readily proceed.

---

[1] Mark Pickett, “Ethnicity, Kinship, Religion and Territory: Identifying Communities in South Asia,” International Journal of Frontier Missiology 32:1 (Spring 2015): 23-36. Cited 28 May 2019. Online: https://www.ijfm.org/PDFs_IJFM/32_1_PDFs/IJFM_32_1-Pickett.pdf. 

[2] Sumit Guha, Beyond Caste: Identity and Power in South Asia, Past and Present (Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2016), 71. I sense some tension in Guha’s work between the ‘tribal’ nature of caste and its territorial expression. See my review of this important book here: https://markpickett.blogspot.com/2019/06/beyond-caste-identity-and-power-in.html.

[3] Having said that, it would seem that modern politics and technology are leading to the closer integration of some such groups. See, for example, the matrimonial service TeriMeriChoice.com. Online: https://www.terimerichoice.com/badhai-matrimony. I am not aware of any research to determine how significant these changes are.

Frontier Missiology Goes POP

Back in the summer I wrote a response to the May-June 2019 issue of Mission Frontiers, which was titled “India: The Greatest Challenge to World Evangelization.” That didn't go anywhere so I thought it would be good to post it here in the hope that a few people at least would read it.

I rejoice that in recent decades many in India, especially from lower status groups, have come to be followers of Jesus. It is also moving to read of the persecution that many are experiencing (“Enduring Persecution in India”) and the disappointments and challenges with which Andy Walker and his co-workers are attempting to deal (“A Church Planting Movement Advancing through Barriers”). 

I hope, with the editor and authors, that this issue, along with the other work of Frontier Ventures, leads to concerted prayer and engagement in making Christ known in the country.

The arguments presented in the issue are compromised, however, by two major weaknesses, which I would like to address.

Before doing so, however, I would like to point out a glaring error in “Enduring Persecution in India,” in which the ‘Leader of a Church Planting Movement in India’ asserts that when the bamboo curtain came down in China there were 70 million churches! Operation World reports that in 2010 there were 75 million evangelicals in the country, so it is highly unlikely that there were so many churches decades before. How important it is that we check and recheck our figures for accuracy before we go to print. My main concerns, however, are theological and sociological.

In this post I will deal with the first: Frontier Missiology Goes POP.

The frontier mission movement is plagued by pragmatism. This is especially apparent in Anderson's, “Embracing an Audacious God-Sized Dream,” and Walker's “A Church Planting Movement Advancing through Barriers.”

While it is good to discuss practical methods of engaging people with the gospel, pragmatism is unbecoming of God’s people. Our approach must not be to borrow strategies and frameworks from the marketing world; our philosophy of ministry must be founded on much more solid ground than expediency. 

A number of the authors do indeed refer to Scripture. But there is a difference between an approach that references a few proof texts and a theologically robust missiology that takes the grand sweep of the storyline of the Bible seriously.

Pragmatism is not a new problem in missiology. Indeed, it has plagued much missiology for decades. Take the notion of the “Persons of Peace”: How is it that one element of one narrative from one Gospel (Matt 10:11— in Luke 9:4 Jesus talks about a ‘house’—) has been so over-extended to become the centre of a whole methodology? One text is having to do an awesome amount of work.

A balanced approach would surely be to establish a sounder theological base for the great task by deriving principles from a careful exegesis of all the key New Testament passages. That is not in evidence in this issue. Which brings me to John Ridgway’s article.

In “Key Insights in Enabling Movements among the Hindu and Muslim Peoples” Ridgway interprets the “way in the wilderness” (Isa 43:19) as “new pathways in the Scriptures.” On this basis he argues that, “…from a kingdom perspective, we view everything from a spiritual framework, not a physical framework.” Why does Ridgway contrast spiritual with physical? It certainly doesn’t emerge out of the verses quoted: In Romans 12:1-2, Paul explicitly urges the Romans to offer their bodies as living sacrifices. A few verses pulled out of context don’t make a good basis for building a missiology. 

The Lord Jesus himself taught his disciples not to set up a false dichotomy between the spiritual and the physical: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30). Jesus’ own incarnation is the glorious sign of the worth of the physical – a reality that continues with his resurrection and ascension in the body to the right hand of the Father. We can also be confident of the continuity not only of our personal physicality (1 Cor 15) but also that of the cosmos (Rom 8:22-25).

Though I appreciate Ridgway’s attempts to overcome the obstacles that many Hindus and Muslims find in their way, his “new pathways” seem to have led him right out of the Scriptures and down the garden path of the old gnostic heresy that dogged the early church. This will have far-reaching implications that are apparently not appreciated.

Later I will post my second concern.

Why TGC and IMB Must Try Harder

The other day, I was happily surprised to see that The Gospel Coalition had published an article on Hinduism. Although there are over a billion Hindus in the world they are largely misunderstood and ignored. And among followers of Christ that translates into a serious lack of prayerful interest. So to see an article on "9 Things You Should Know About Hinduism," by Joe Carter, was encouraging.

I was also pleasantly surprised that it wasn't complete rubbish. Sadly, when evangelicals write on Hinduism their articles and books are nearly always shot through with inaccuracy and naive interpretive miss-steps. 

So to read that, "Although Hinduism is often treated as a single religion, it is more accurate to describe it as a family of religions..." was refreshing.

But to read on that, those religions, "share common beliefs and characteristics" was a big let down.  Although there are certain similarities among many of the groups that make up this great 'family' there really is not one doctrine that one can say all Hindus believe. When an atheist can be a good Hindu, you know that something else provides the common factor. And that factor is that all these beliefs and practices share a common civilisational heritage. That's all.

The author makes further mistakes. I will list some of there here:

1. Carter asserts that, "The sacred texts of Hinduism outline four primary, though not mutually exclusive, paths to experience Brahman, or ultimate reality, and obtain Moksha" and lists these as Karma Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Jnana Yoga, and Raja Yoga. As you can see for yourself if you click on the link you are not directed to the sacred texts themselves but to a pro-Hindu polemical web site - not exactly a reliable way to do research, as I would have thought a TGC writer would have figured. Scholarly writings on Hinduism invariably list three paths to experience the divine, not four, the last being in a different category of altogether. Raja yoga, also called samkhya, is an attempt to reverse the effects of evolution on the soul, not a path of liberation to moksha.
2. He also states that, "The postural yoga often used as a form of exercise in the West is derived from raja yoga." Again, this is just plain wrong, as has been pointed out on this blog before.
3. Again, "Hinduism has no concept of sin" is simply mistaken. Wrongdoing is well understood by Hindus. Let me quote an authority, K. K. Klostermeier: "Notions of guilt and sin play a great role in Hinduism, and devices for righting wrongs and atoning for sins occupy a large place in the life of many Hindus" (A Survey of Hinduism, p. 146). This idea that Hindus have no concept of sin is trotted out ad nauseam by Christians. The concept may not be the same as the concept we have but it does not mean there is no semantic overlap. Attempts at sharing Christ with Hindus are not so hampered that one cannot talk about failure, impurity, transgression. Indeed, as Paul tells us, "Indeed, when Gentiles who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law fro themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the righteous requirements of the law are written on their hearts..." (Romans 2:14-15). Listen to this poem of the seventeenth century Hindu Marathi poet, Tukaram:

I am a mass of sin;
Thou art all purity;
Yet thou must take me as I am
And bear my load for me.
Me Death has all consumed
In thee all power abides.
All else forsaking, at thy feet
Thy servant Tuka hides.

Carter's big problem is to rely on web sites, some of which are clearly second-rate, for his information. I hope that in future the TGC will represent the Hindu tradition as it really is, rather than as poorly-informed missionaries and polemicists would have us believe.

At school, my report always said that I 'must try harder'. And my assessment of TGC (and IMB for that matter, as their web site was one of the sources) is that they too must try harder. The eternal destiny of over a billion souls depends on it.

Tiki for Jai Ram

“How should we advise him?” Santosh asked Shanti. 

“I don’t know,” replied Shanti. “If he keeps the tiki, people will think he is still a good Hindu when, in fact, he has become a Christian and taken baptism. But if he doesn’t keep the traditions, he will alienate his family and the whole village!” 

No part of the Bible had yet been translated into this language of South Asiawhen Santosh and his wife, Shanti, had arrived in the area. After a few years in which they became fluent in the language and built good relationships with local people, they were ready for the task of translation. As they searched for a reliable language assistant, they eventually thought of Jai Ram, a young man who lived in a nearby village. Jai Ram had been born into a highly respected traditional Hindu Brahman family. As a child, he was taught the customs of his family and his parents hoped he would become well settled in life. They made sure he received the best education they could afford, and Jai Ram was a good student who was well liked in his community.

On graduation from the local college, Jai Ram was looking for work and so agreed to help check the first draft of the Gospel of Mark which Santosh and Shanti had translated into his native tongue. It was during this work that the story of Christ gripped him, and he decided to become his disciple. At first, declaring his new path of devotion was not problematic. 

“So long as you continue to follow our customs, babu,” his mother said, “it doesn’t matter who you worship.” 

Three years had passed. Now one of his close relatives had died, and his uncle had just visited his home to tell them. This meant that the Death Feast would soon be held in the deceased relative’s village to honour him. In that Brahman tradition, the family of the deceased hosts large feasts on the eleventh and twelfth days after the family member has died. It is believed that the more people they feed on these days the more spiritual merit accrues to the person who has died and the better the quality of life they experience in their next reincarnation.

Jai Ram was troubled. He would be expected to come to the Death Feast to show respect for his dead relative. Before the feast he would be expected to have his head shaved in the traditional fashion of a relative of the deceased, leaving a tuft of hair at the back of the head - a tiki. Could he do that now that he was a follower of Jesus? Furthermore, what should he do about the feast? Could he miss the feast without it being considered terribly disrespectful? Dishonour would be brought on his family. 

In the morning, the young man walked over to the next village and set to work on the translation as usual. Over lunch he discussed his problem with Santosh and Shanti.

“Why don’t you attend the feast but not shave your head?” suggested Santosh.

“But,” replied Jai Ram respectfully, “that would be even worse than not going at all, as it would be showing disregard for an important part of our traditions.”

“Then why don’t you just have a barber shave your wholehead and not leave a tiki?” asked Shanti. “That way everyone will realize you are not a Hindu anymore because you won’t have a tiki.”

“But there is nothing in the Bible condemning keeping the tiki, is there?” asked Jai Ram.

“True,” said Santosh, “but doesn’t the Bible tell us to avoid even the appearance of wrong? What I am inside should match what I am outside.”

“What about any other rituals?” asked Santosh. “The head shaving is just the preliminary part. Won’t you also be expected to join the others at the ‘holy area’ by the pond, where the priest reads from the Hindu scriptures, and offer flowers, incense and sweets to the gods?” 

“I know,” sighed Jai Ram, “and my family would be very unhappy with me if I bring shame on them by not participating.”

“Could you go along to the feast but skip being involved in any rituals?” asked Shanti.

“Of course, being there and taking part in the feast is the main thing,” replied Jai Ram. “I could try to explain that I can’t take part in the actual religious rituals. But nobody’s done that before. There is bound to be opposition. It will look like I don’t respect my elders.”

“Look, we’ll pray about it tonight and we’ll talk about it again in the morning, Jai Ram brother,” said Santosh.

That evening, as Jai Ram wandered back to the village, he agonized about what he should do. He remembered that even the apostle Paul had shaved his head (Acts 18:18). He wondered what he could do without compromising his own convictions and conscience. To make it more complicated, however, the following week, he was scheduled to give some instruction to a group of new believers from a Hindu background. They would be sure to realize what he had done, when he turned up with just a few days’ hair growth. Maybe they would thinkhe had compromised his faith even if his conscience was clear. Would this cause some of them to stumble in their faith?

Santosh and Shanti also discussed the situation late into the evening. They realized this decision also had repercussions for them. If Jai Ram upset everyone in the village by his actions the villagers would assume they had instructed him that he should not follow their customs. Would this ruin their relationship with the village and discredit their work? On the other hand, if he did indeed shave his head in the traditional way and this became known among believers in the nearby town, would it ruin the relationship and trust they had with other believers and church leaders?

There was no easy answer. Santosh and Shanti agreed that the issue really came down to the significance of the head shaving and tiki, and that of the feast. In the morning, they would walk over to the village, go over the biblical principles with him and see what he did.

Beyond Caste: Identity and Power in South Asia, Past and Present, by Sumit Guha: a Review

Beyond Caste: Identity and Power in South Asia, Past and Present, by Sumit Guha, Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2016 (Leiden: EJ Brill, 2013), pp. 291 + xxiii.

In the course of my research in Nepal I read a lot about caste. Caste is typically understood to be the characteristic social order of India and its neighbours. Debates about what makes it what it is abound. Researchers and theorists approach it from various angles: sociological, historical, political, economic, religious.

My study on the city of Lalitpur in Nepal was largely a sociological one depending heavily on my ethnographic methodology. I did, however, do a fair bit of historical investigation, by delving into the way groups had evolved over the centuries. I was disappointed that my publisher, Orchid Press, decided to entitle my work Caste and Kinship in a Modern Hindu Society because much of what I discovered was of more historical interest. Indeed, I argued that the ritual complex of the city told us a lot about how the city wasin days gone by, rather than what it is today. (Orchid Press, by the way, has not responded to any of my attempts at communication since the book was published and I have never received a single penny in royalties.) 

In Beyond Caste, Sumit Guha delves assiduously into previously unresearched historical material and interacts with nearly all the significant literature (though not all – see below). Replete in historical and geographical detail, it is a piece of serious scholarship that deserves careful reading. I will not attempt a thorough review here but merely state Guha’s thesis, note some significant historical facts that were new to me, and make some brief comments. (For a more comprehensive review please see that of H. L. Richard here. I was given a copy of the South Asian edition. The European and American editions are a ridiculous price.)

Guha argues that a caste is a “bounded social group demarcated by the exercise of power throughout its millennial history” (252). He reminds us that, in the study of caste, the exotic has often been highlighted over aspects that are shared with other social systems. In this way, then, caste became an Orientalist trope, as did so many other aspects of Hindu culture. Guha’s point is to demonstrate that “the bounded, status-ranked ethnic community or ‘caste’ is a social form that frequently appears in multi-ethnic societies” (3).

It is not that it is exactly like that of other societies because “in South Asia it became a highly involuted, politicised form of ethnic ranking shaped by the constant exercise of socio-economic power.” And that encapsulates Guha’s answer to the big question that emerges in all the good studies of caste: to what extent is caste in South Asia unique? In my study, I argue that caste is indeed unique because of the creative tension that arises from the competing demands of centralizing kingship and decentralizing kinship, but more on that below.

One of the strengths of Guha’s study is its historical approach, focussing as it does on “dynamic social processes” (6). But it is also valuable because he does not focus on the development of caste in just one part of India. He demonstrates, rather, how social processes have gone on in different parts of the subcontinent at different rates, are often not completed, and often set in reverse; he eschews an evolutionist theoretical position which deems certain systems as necessarily primitive.

In all the vicissitudes of history, however, “the bounded ethnic group remained and remains a powerful presence” (7).

Guha, rightly, after Nicholas Dirks and Susan Bayly, argues that caste is not a product of a single ‘Hindu’ ideology. I also argued that caste is structural rather than ideological. Rather, says Guha, power is the all-important ingredient.

Guha argues that castes are a sort of tribe, by which he means “large, stratified, socio-political organizations characterized by diffuse authority and collective leadership such as, for example, a council of important chiefs” (71). He says that such “identity-centred and geographically bounded communities” were “the domains in which ethnic politics was formed” and that this gives us a “deeper appreciation of how indigenous states in India grew out of and reproduced the lasting structures of inequality so inadequately captured by what has been called the ‘caste system’” (99).

Kinship is far from the fixed, bounded unit of social organization that we often see portrayed in the literature: “kinship and exclusion from the kin were both socially constructed statuses, and a person could move from one to the other in the course of a lifetime” (150). And yet, as my research seems to suggest, there are times when kinship groups do indeed attempt to maintain a tighter boundary. 

How did caste develop under British rule? Guha reports how important the colonial administration of British India was in the formation of South Asian identities. Bernard Cohn and Nicholas Dirks, he reports, “argued that colonialism was more than a system of power: it was also a mode of knowing that constructed its objects of knowledge” 174). The colonial administration created a significant apparatus to classify and count all the peoples in its domain. Sometimes administrators visited a region and, working with local Brahman literati, as in the Bombay Presidency at the beginning of the nineteenth century, “simply divided the people into Muslims and Hindus, and the latter into Brahman, Rajput, ‘Shoodruh’ or Maratha, and Ati-Shudra or outcastes” (201), masking and distorting a much more complex reality on the ground. Interestingly, twenty years later, in the mid-nineteenth century a change had occurred, with the “basic ordering seems to have been religious (201). This would seem to correlate with the developing notions of religion in the emerging paradigm of ‘world religions’.

After the great anti-colonial uprising of 1857-8 the notion of race became a significant category in a way it had not been hitherto (203). And this was a surprise to me: by the late eighteenth century, “It was the political value of this sense of European-born identity that…led the [East India] Company to assiduously limit the development of a local power elite with any genealogical depth. It also caused the Company to discourage the immigration of non-official Englishmen into India. All this was designed…to pre-empt any local claim to the ‘rights of Englishmen’ that had just been forcefully raised in North America. The disavowed India-born offspring formed a socially inferior class of Eurasians, excluded from power” (218). In order to encourage English officials to return to Britain once their term of service was complete, Lord Cornwallis, the then Governor-General of India, sanctioned a large pay increase, allowing them to return at middle age with a substantial nest egg.

Returning to his main point, Guha tells us to “abandon the futile search for a social essence” because “social structures, old and new, have been politically ordered in ways that we cannot grasp unless we deploy the concept of caste as a bounded corporate body shaped by socio-political power throughout its long history” (255).

I have a few quibbles with Guha’s analysis.

Firstly, I think he makes too much of ranking. That is, he seems to follow the standard idea that all the castes in a society are in a clear hierarchy relative to each other. He quotes Weber: “A status segregation grown into a ‘caste’ differs in its structure from a more ‘ethnic’ segregation: the caste structure transforms the horizontal and unconnected coexistences of ethnically segregated groups into a vertical social system of super- and subordination” (13).

As I demonstrated in my work, with the exception of Dalits (those formerly known to others as Untouchables) and, to a lesser extent, other impure, but not untouchable castes, such as Butchers, those vertical relations are often contested and indeterminate because of no ritual intercaste relations. Guha does acknowledge, at least, that ethnic boundaries are porous.

Secondly, although Guha examines caste throughout traditional India (including the territories now Pakistan and Bangladesh), dividing it helpfully into five regions, and makes several references to caste in Sri Lanka, he barely mentions Nepal. In a sense Nepal is little different from other parts of the subcontinent, especially in the old Mithila kingdoms of the southern plains (Tarai). But the Newar former kingdoms of the Kathmandu Valley – Kathmandu, Lalitpur (Patan), and Bhaktapur – are particularly significant exemplars of archaic caste systems because the Nepal Valley was never under Mughal or British rule.

Although he does indeed discuss the phenomenon of kingship, and interacts with Dirks and A. M. Hocart, he doesn’t even reference Declan Quigley’s important theoretical work, The Interpretation of Caste. Thus, in my opinion, kingship and the city are not given their due.

Has Guha’s study led me to change my view of caste? Not a lot. But it has broadened it. Guha’s careful elucidation of the ongoing centrality of power in the development of caste society is convincing. In so arguing, Guha is stating that caste is not unique but is, rather, a South Asian example of political realities found in every society, but in a way that previous materialist writers had not managed.

However, Guha makes no mention at all of the ‘climax communities’ of the Kathmandu Valley. I think that is a failing. In so doing he misses the centrality of kingship in those societies. But his central thesis is solid, and I now think such cities must be regarded not as the apex of caste society but as perhaps caste's most complex instantiation.

There are missiological implications to this analysis, but more on that later.

Review Article: Outside In

Margins of Islam: Ministry in Diverse Muslim Contexts

Edited by Gene Daniels and Warrick Farah (Pasadena: William Carey), 2018, 240pp, £12.30 (Amazon), £7.66 (Kindle)

I was in Indonesia last year, teaching in a couple of seminaries.[1] That vast archipelago constitutes the most populous Muslim-majority nation on Earth. Just a few months earlier, the country was shocked when radical Islamists (from one family as it happens) killed thirteen worshippers at Easter services in the city of Surabaya.[2] That violent extremism seemed far away from the folk I met there, such as the middle-aged hijabi who sat next to me on the long train journey across the island and offered me a share of her snacks. I also met the leader of a movement of people, outside mainstream evangelicalism, who meet regularly in small groups to read the Bible and worship Jesus. After twenty years, the movement’s leaders reckon their numbers have now reached six figures. The key feature of these vignettes for our purposes is that all these people would identify as Muslims.

Since then, I have met a number of Muslims as I have visited universities around the UK. Let me introduce some of them to you: the young Mancunian woman in her hijab, the mature Iranian man who dare not go home for fear of the state, the Algerian researcher trying to make sense of the modern world, the Egyptian postgraduate student who asked me why Christians are so private about their religion, and the young Saudi woman who told me she had rejected Wahabi Islam when she saw what IS was doing.

What staggering diversity. How do we make sense of Islam in a world of such variety? What, after all, is Islam? Is it a religion or a way of life or something else? 

This book is a major contribution to understanding Islam and ministry to Muslims. Read more here.

Winter into Spring VIII: Muslims

In both Newcastle and Dundee, especially the latter, the events were attended by a number of Muslim students. I was struck by the diversity in this ‘community’. There was the British young lady in her hijab, the mature Iranian man who can’t go back home for fear of the state, the Egyptian post-graduate student who asked me why Christians are so reticent to be public about their religion, the young lady from a very tightly-controlled country who told me she had rejected the Wahabi interpretation of Islam when she saw what IS was doing, and the Arab student who identified as an atheist (more about him later).

Those that attended events listened respectfully and were happy to discuss the issues that arose. There were no heated arguments, no verbal attacks. On first entering the marquee they were perhaps a little uncomfortable, wondering, probably, if they were allowed. But a welcome by a student or CU guest soon put them at ease.

One leader of the Islamic Soc. in Newcastle attended a lunch bar and asked me a load of questions about the logistics of the venue, etc.: he was getting ideas for their own events week!

Another male student, from Pakistan, came during the morning slack time when the marquee was open for coffee. We had a respectful and frank exchange of views and I gave him my email if he should want to contact me later. I received an email a few weeks later apologising if he had given offence (he had not) and said he would come back to me with more questions.

The high point from the point of view of witness to Muslims, was the dialogue between an Imam and a Pastor in Dundee. Imam Jabil, a local mosque leader, shared the stage with Duncan Peters from Glasgow, with the two-hour event ably chaired by a retired Dundee lecturer. The chair had made a list of questions which he asked in turn, with each man having three minutes to answer each question. At the end, questions were fielded from the floor, with the whole event lasting two hours.

About 15 Muslim students attended as well as around the same number of CU members and a few of us others. The Arab atheist stood at the back nearly the whole time (arriving slightly late). He was clearly flabbergasted at what he was witnessing – a friendly sharing of views. He asked me who had organised the event. Afterwards he stayed to talk, not giving too much away but telling me he was unimpressed by the answers the Imam was making.

I thought this event was a modest success. The big gain for the CU is that it provided an environment for building relationships and in which the sharing of the gospel was entirely natural. It was important for those of us who organised this that the event should not be a debate but a dialogue. The former can sometimes cause people to feel threatened, leading them to become defensive and combative. Here no one felt under attack; all were happy to talk afterwards. Duncan’s fresh translation of Luke’s Gospel – Holy Injil: Luke– was available for people to take afterwards. A number of the Muslims who attended came back for subsequent events.

It would be great to see such events put on in universities throughout Europe, especially where there are a significant number of Muslim students. We need to help students to create concrete ways in which they can show love to their classmates, and in which the truth of the person of Jesus and his saving work can be shared respectfully and humanely.

Winter into Spring VII: Hindus

I got to share the gospel with a number of Hindus in all four locations I visited over the past few months. Nearly all were international students.

in Dundee a group of post-graduate students from India joined us for dinner one evening. It was hard to discern if they had anything more than a passing interest in what was going on. They asked intelligent questions and listened respectfully. There was a marked ignorance (I don’t mean that pejoratively) among the group, of our message. One asked me, “You know there are three types of Christianity?” I asked him what he meant, and he replied, “You know, those who worship Jesus, those who worship Mary, and those who worship Satan”! Some serious groundwork needed there. These were intelligent young men but with very little awareness of who Jesus is or what he has done. (On a side note, I just about managed to prevent them from eating the beef – ‘Cottage Pie’ could be anything to the uninitiated. Thankfully there was a vegetarian option.)

Two Hindus stood out for me. One was a young lady in Aber who had migrated from Nepal in her mid-teens. She had heard of Yeshu in Nepal and thought it must be a foreign god. She was astonished when I told her that the Jesus who we talk about here is the same person!

I had the joy of interacting with one recent Indian graduate in Utrecht. He had been involved in a Globe Café and was reading John Uncovered with his new friends. We talked seriously until it was time to leave. His first question to me after hearing Lindsay speak on ‘Why Bother with Jesus’ was this: If this is true what does it mean for the Indian villager who has never heard? Wow! This was no smug attempt to humiliate me – he was probably thinking of his grandmother. I told him how we all alike are held responsible for the way we have handled the light we have received and that we can only be saved by conscious faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. His reaction was to say something along the lines that, if that is the case, people need to get the message out. Indeed.

I wrote a piece on Sharing Jesus with Hindu Friends for bethinking here.