Privileged Minorities: Syrian Christianity, Gender, and Minority Rights in Postcolonial India Available to Purchase

Contemporary scholars working on Indian Christianity focus almost exclusively on Dalit and other lower-caste communities, which are rightfully framed as marginalized and oppressed. In studies of such communities, the topic of conversion, frequently framed as a response to or protest against oppression, comes naturally to the fore. Meanwhile, studies focusing on Kerala's Syrian (or St. Thomas) Christian communities tend to focus on their distinctive customs or religious rituals, their connections to the Church of the East, their wealth and educational achievements, or the antiquity of their Indian roots. While it is customary for such studies to note the “upper-caste” status of Syrian Christians, few scholars have applied to them the same kind of critical social and political theory that scholars regularly apply to their Dalit counterparts, such that nonspecialist readers could be excused for presuming, in the context of ascendant Hindu nationalism, that all of India's Christians are equally disprivileged....