num_pages: 312
description: To Be Cared For offers a unique view into the conceptual and moral world of slum-bound Dalits (untouchables) in the South Indian city of Chennai. Focusing on the decision by many women to embrace locally specific forms of Pentecostal Christianity Nathaniel Roberts challenges dominant anthropological understandings of religion as a matter of culture and identity as well as Indian nationalist narratives of Christianity as a foreign ideology that disrupts local communities. Far from being a divisive force conversion integrates the slum communityChristians and Hindus alikeby addressing hidden moral fault lines that subtly pit residents against one another in a national context that renders Dalits outsiders in their own land.Read an with the author on the Association for Asian Studies' #AsiaNow blog.
language: English
title: To Be Cared For: The Power of Conversion and Foreignness of Belonging in an Indian Slum (Volume 20)
publisher: University of California Press