2019/01/01 by Nilay Saiya · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Religion, Society, and Development #Vietnamese History and Culture Studies
paper · doi:10.1093/jcs/csz073
openalex publication_date 2019/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Despite its status as the world’s largest democracy, the ideals of religious liberty and equality set forth in its constitution, and Christianity’s long-standing presence in the country, India has the highest rates of social hostilities involving religion in the world, according to the Pew Research Center. Historically, religious violence in India has targeted all of India’s major faith communities. But in recent times, Christians have suffered from a disproportionate level of religious persecution, which has only intensified after the coming to power of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2014. Today, India ranks among the world’s worst countries in its levels of anti-Christian hostility. Given this context, Sarbeswar Sahoo’s timely book, Pentecostalism and Politics of Conversion in India, is a welcome addition to the existing literature on religious conflict in India. While a number of studies on religious conflict in India have focused on relations between Hindus and Muslims, Hindu-Christian relations have been largely absent from the literature, insofar as violence against Christians has been a relatively recent phenomenon. Among the many issues involved in inter-religious conflict in India, few are as charged as conversion. Sahoo’s focus on conversion to Pentecostalism among the Bhils of southern Rajasthan thus fills an important gap in the literature.