Anti-Christian Violence in India - Books by Chad Bauman

Chad Bauman is an American scholar who has written books on contemporary Christianity in India. Some of his books are  Christian Identity and Dalit Religion in Hindu India 1868 1947, The Routledge Handbook of Hindu-Christian Relations, Constructing Indian Christianities: Culture, Conversion and Caste.  While the state of present day Indian Christianity and Indian Christians is an interesting topic in itself and would need a separate write-up, this review is of two books that Bauman has written on Anti-Christian violence in India. These two books are Pentecostals, Proselytization, and Anti-Christian Violence in Contemporary India and Anti-Christian Violence in India. Many of the themes and thoughts of Chad Bauman overlap in these two books, which made me think, that it would be fit to write a single review. Another important reason for writing this review, is that in this current period of increasing Hindu aggressiveness and rampant misinformation, a seriously researched book is an invaluable help for giving right thinking people an understanding of issues which is for most people "far-off".

          Since Anti-Christian violence in India is for the most part, targeted against "Pentecostals" and "Pentecostalized Evangelicals", it is on this subgroup of Christianity that he focuses on in this book. Before delving into the specifics, he provides a brief overview of the origins and history of Pentecostalism in India. For readers who are interested in knowing more about the history of the Pentecostal movement in India, much of the information in this chapter is taken from "The South Indian Pentecostal Movement in the Twentieth Century" by  Michael Bergunder. For a lay reader like me, who thought that the modern Pentecostal movement started with the Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles of the early 20th century, it was revealing to know that there are documented early Indian revival meetings having displays of Pentecostal experience in 1860. Also interesting to know was the role played by Pandita Ramabai and her Mukti Mission in the global spread of Pentecostalism.

    It is also in the first chapter, that he tries to distinguish Pentecostalism and delineate it from both Mainstream Protestant and Catholic denominationalism, as well as the more problematic 'Evangelical' Christianity in the Indian context. For many of us who have witnessed Pentecostal worship, it is characterized by boisterous loudness and  shared affectivity in the congregation. Many Pentecostal services also feature "glossolalia" and speakers making "Prophecies". In simple terms, there is a lot of importance given to the "Holy Spirit" and its manifestation, as part of congregational worship. Putting it in layman's term, you would be able to name it when you see it. In the Indian context according to Baumann, even evangelical groups that are involved in missionary work too display many characteristics that are seen in Pentecostal worship. Baumann calls these groups "Pentecostalized  Evangelicals". For a book exploring Anti-Christian violence in India, elaborate exposition on the nature of Pentecostalism by using Durkheimian or (William) Jamesian line of enquiry is simply too trite. These theoretical and theological meanderings occupy too many pages of the book without really advancing any line of thought towards the purpose of the book, which is to show a light on Pentecostalism and Anti-Christian violence. I had a strong feeling that these elaborations were included to make the book look more academic. While these belaboring's distract, the book does move forward by asking interesting questions. One interesting question is, why does evangelical Christianity in India become Pentecostalized. Baumann gives two answers to this question. Pentecostal forms of worship and preaching have become so widespread through mass media (TV shows and musical CDs), that they have attained a sort of normality of worship style in evangelical Christian circles. The second reason is the Indian milieu that encourages ecstatic worship and religious activities like healing and divination. Evangelical activity becomes Pentecostalized because congregations demand spirit-filled worship and healing. So while Baumann is not able to clearly get any clear delineating boundary between Evangelicals and Pentecostals in worship or doctrine, I thought at least in the South Indian context I could spot a difference in terms of their relationship with other Christians. In South India, my casual observation has been, that there is a subtle hostility and not much personal relationship (at least at the leadership level) between ideological Pentecostal churches and mainstream Protestant churches. But this is not so with evangelical churches. Many of the indigenous evangelical mission organizations are sponsored by members of mainstream Protestant denominations,and while their churches in the mission fields may have a predominantly Pentecostal form of worship, the missionaries and leaders continue to maintain a relationship with the institutional church. There is continuous shared use of resources and people happening in informal ways. This may not be true in North India, where Baumann mentions the proportion of Christians is too small, that denominational walls are fluid, and cross-overs continuously happen.

    The second chapter discusses how, during British rule, a Hindu identity grew in opposition to what it saw as "foreign" Muslim and Christian identities. But first, he discusses the overall peaceful coexistence that has existed for a 1000 years between Christians and Hindus in Kerala. A mention of Syrian Christians is an often compulsory topic in any discussion on Indian Christianity. This book too is no exception and it takes its references from "Christianity in India: From Beginnings to the Present" by Michael Frykenberg. Syrian Christians before the advent of the Europeans were considered a ritually pure and "high ranking" community of warriors and traders. As was common in medieval South India, achieving ritual high status needed participation in the temple "honors" system and the privilege to be able to give sacrificial gifts to deities. To be so highly integrated into the existing Hindu socio-religious cultural system, makes the very claim of Syrian Christian "Christianness" highly suspect. Understanding this makes the whole claim of the ancientness of Christianity in the Sub-Continent, which both Baumann and Frykenberg make in their books contentious. While this is a digression from the main topic of anti-Christian violence, the history of Syrian Christians reveals certain motivations that drive anti-Christian violence, a theme which I will discuss later. The remainder of the second chapter examines the period from the mid-nineteenth century to the present post-independence age, during which a Hindu identity antagonistic to the west and, by extension, its religion grew. For students of history, the events and narratives mentioned here are familiar and have been covered exhaustively by very many works of scholarship. I summarize them in the rest of this paragraph. Some of these significant events include the arrival of more missionaries in 1813 after the East India Company granted them permission to work in India, the social and religious reforms (such as the abolition of Sati) that they helped to bring about, and their advocacy for policy changes that favored lower castes, peasants, and Christians. Many attacks on native converted Christians occurred during the Great Rebellion of 1857, which historians now believe was sparked by perceived British intrusions into the religious and social lives of Indian elites. The association between Christians and British rule was being made by the early and mid-nineteenth century at least in the formerly Muslim ruled North India. The later part of the nineteenth century saw the decennial census and Swami Dayanand Saraswathy's "Shuddi" movement. The 20th century saw Gandhi equating conversion to "denationalization" and normalizing anti-conversion discourse with his famous words "If I had power and could legislate, I should certainly stop all Proselytizing ..". While the post-independence era of Nehruvian nation building saw a temporary truce in public expressions of Anti-Christian conversion sentiments, an ambivalence on Christian conversions has always continued to exist amongst the opinion making middle classes ( read upper castes). This has been especially buttressed by the Niyogi report on conversions in Madhya Pradesh which blamed "force, fraud, and allurements". The post-liberalization era saw a significant increase in Anti-Christian violence with major riots in Dangs and Kandhamal. It is also in this period that violence against Christians became "routinized" in the sense that it has become so "everyday", that it no longer warrants the mainstream attention.

    The third chapter talks about the reason for the disproportionate targeting of Pentecostals. Baumann lists three inherent reasons in the nature of Pentecostalism that could cause violence against it. They are its (1) evangelical assertion and enthusiasm,(2) the greater presence and participation, within it, of marginalized and vulnerable peoples, and (3) its countercultural posture. This is the chapter that reveals the serious shortcomings of this book. The author seems to be so interested in developing theoretical frameworks and getting into the "nature" of things that he misses the serious casework needed to get a more definitive understanding. The only statement in this whole chapter that seemed fully empirical was a commonsensical one by John Dayal (Leader of the Ecumenical Christian Council), on the reason for Pentecostal churches being targeted, “The episcopal, mainline churches have withdrawn from the countryside. . . . They’re not there to be victimized. . . . You can’t drown on a mountaintop.”. As a reviewer attempting to fill this missing gap, I would like to add in this review, a localized Hindu-Christian conflict that I have had first-hand experience of, and which incidentally happened to be the first instance of Hindu-Christian violence in Post Independence India. This was the fatal Hindu-Christian riots of Mandaikadu in Kanyakumari district of Tamilnadu.Despite the fact that I did not conduct extensive research on this, I was able to form a causal narrative of the conflict based on incidents mentioned in casual conversations and distinct recollections of different people. And from what I gathered, Pentecostal Christians were very peripheral to the conflict, despite the fact that the Pentecostal movement was very vibrant in the district. The seeds of the fissures that would later blow up into a large scale riot and lead to an eventual Hindu political consolidation, started off as a power struggle in the political arena between emergent lower caste Nadar leaders in the secular Congress party. Hindu Nadar leaders felt that the Christian Nadar leaders used religion as a tool to marginalize and discriminate against them within the party. The general recollection among many people(both Christian and Hindu) is that Nadar Christians or at least a section among them, behaved in a very discriminating, snobbish, "looking down" sort of manner toward their Hindu brethren. This parochialism was fearfully amplified by the institutional power (Education, Medical and Political) that mainstream Christians held in Kanyakumari district. To what extent, Christianity can be implicated for this discriminating attitude is debatable. In the highly casteist, low-trust societies (my own subjective experience growing up there) of Travancore and Tamilnadu, this sort of snobbery and "looking down" is very normative and not "out of the ordinary". But what should have remained a vexing localised disagreement grew into something larger and more terrifying as a result of its ability to appropriate as its own narrative, tropes developed as part of the national "Hindu" identity somewhere else. Some of these ideas, as Bauman writes in the previously discussed second chapter, include conflating India with a "Hindu" identity, imagining Christianity and Islam as aggressive foreign entities that prey on a tolerant and vulnerable Hindu people, and so on. In addition to the above was the role played by organizations of the Sangh Pariwar, who in the words of Paul Brass, "there are active, knowing subjects and organizations at work engaged in a continuous tending of the fires of communal divisions and animosities ...". At least in Kanyakumari district then, Hindu-Christian conflict developed synchronously and in relationship to mainstream Catholic and Protestant denominations. Are Pentecostals then totally absent in this Hindu-Christian conflict?. In present-day Kanyakumari district, as in many other places, there has been a phenomenal growth of autonomous Pentecostal churches. While Christians were a significant minority, both at the time of independence and Mandaikadu riots(1982), they are a majority (est. 62%)now, thanks to this explosive growth of Pentecostal Churches. But this growth has not seen any large scale riots or violence("Routinized" violence, mostly verbal aggression against Pentecostals though is not uncommon. But these are mostly opportunistic crimes because Pentecostals do not hit back nor do they mostly complain to the police). While the main reason for this, is the ruling Dravidian parties' strong anti-communal leanings, Could there be other factors that miss our eye?. It is in questions like this, without any definitive answers and where facts are not easily forthcoming, that we have to turn into speculation about the "nature" of things and phenomena. My supposition would start from the argument, that in KanyaKumari district which has seen a historical Hindu political consolidation and where politically powerful and well connected organizations like "Hindu Munnani" have a widespread grassroots presence, it would have been virtually impossible for the mainstream denominations (Catholic and Protestant) to have grown as much, without a major violent blowback. This brings us to an intriguing corollary: how did the Pentecostal movement manage to do just that?. I for one, believe the answer to this lies in the very nature of Pentecostal religion. I would like to quote Bauman on this, "the Pentecostal emphasis on freedom in the spirit, and freedom to follow the spirit where it leads, creates a scenario in which Pentecostalism is always in a state of becoming, always emergent and yet-to-be-determined. Every Pentecostal generation is, as Everett Wilson points out, “the first generation.”". It is this nebulous nature of the Pentecostal movement, its inability to stand still and create something solid that bamboozles organized Hindu groups. The language of "Hindu" identity and aggression developed in cultures and places "far off" is superfluous when face to face with Pentecostal Christianity. 

    The fourth chapter is on what Bauman names as "recuperative conversions". These are conversions initiated by faith healing. According to Bauman, most conversions, or at least potential converts contact with Pentecostalized Evangelicals start with a request or a need for healing. In the words of one Pentecostal Pastor,"70% of the converts are converted because of physical or spiritual healing. The other 30% also get healed of something". What Bauman mentions here can be attested by anyone who is in touch with missionaries or mission organizations. Another interesting fact that Bauman mentions is not all faith-healings result in conversion. This is because, in the Indian context, people are always shopping for relief from physical and spiritual ailments. They could be visiting shrines, godmen, and magic practitioners one after another. Miraculous healing does not immediately result in change of religious identity or long-term association with the Prayer Group or Pastor. Typically according to Bauman, caste is one of the factors that plays a role here, with higher castes avoiding conversion because of the association Christianity has with lower castes. It is also in this chapter that Bauman contradicts the widely prevalent opinion that "force, fraud  and allurement" are behind Christian conversions, a view that was popularized by Gandhi and later the Niyogi report. According to the voluminous Niyogi report, Christian missionaries use the power and prestige of modern medicine for fraudulent conversion. The logic of faith healing is in direct contrast to the spirit of Western medicine, nor does it need its financial resources. Another observation that can be added, is that in current-day India, modern hospitals and medicines in rural India are no longer the preserves of Christians, unlike at the time of the "Niyogi report". 

    The fifth chapter is about mission organizations and their work. He debunks the popular notion believed by many people, that Christian missionaries are foreign missionaries. Most missionaries now are Indians. The book's general weakness of meandering, without getting to the point is visible here too. Take the topic of foreign funding for evangelical work. There is much information, on how much Americans contribute, the method and denominations that they contribute to, research on different manuals and magazines to find how much they contribute, strategies that foreign missions follow and so on, that it misses the essential question, which is, how important is foreign money to "effective" evangelical activity in India. The answer to this question is critical because it is widely assumed that foreign money drives Indian evangelical activity. To substantiate this assumption, would need a lot of fieldwork, which is unfortunately lacking. Since that is missing here, I would add my own experience of what I personally witnessed. A mainstream non-charismatic denomination called "Churches of Christ" as part of its evangelical mission started its outreach in Bangalore. In the 10 year period (from 1985 to 1995) that I witnessed its operation as an outside observer, I saw American missionaries being sent to Bangalore for extended periods of time, visiting groups of American missionaries holding gospel preaching meets in large costly auditoriums, children's retreats organized, a head office in Bangalore's CBD being taken on rent for worship service. Like any other rich American organization looking to expand in India, it attracted hanger-on's who offered their services for monetary help. It also attracted peripheral Christians who were drawn in by the novelty of the whole enterprise and, most likely, the opportunity to associate with American glamour. After spending millions of dollars through the years, it could not attract more than a handful of people, and that too a transient one. My experience from both hearsay and direct experience is, that there has to be a dedicated and strong local agency for a missionary organization to be successful. Some of the very successful evangelical organizations are indigenous for this very reason. The missionaries of these organizations at great personal cost(many of them leave secular jobs) work in remote areas(mostly tribal) separated from their children (who study in Dohnavur). Prayer leaders in missionary support areas (mostly South India) organize financial support for these missionaries and hold regular prayer meetings. Many families also sponsor missionaries, visiting them in their mission fields. If at all there is a Western influence in these evangelical missions, it is the example of early pioneering Christian missionaries like William Carey, Hudson, and Stanley, on whom they model their evangelical life. Bauman cites the example of overseas missionary support organizations like Spiritual Overseers Service International that speak in modern business terminology of "insuring a superior return for missionary investment". These organizations by their very nature attract "career-oriented" personality types and their resulting work is ephemeral too. Even though there might be a lot of American money flowing into evangelical networks, their effectiveness in proselytization is highly doubtful (cross-checked with missionaries in the field, many of whom expressed disdain).  Support for social services such as running children's homes, feeding poor children, building hospitals, providing medical services, and a plethora of other forms of social work is where American money is more effective. These have clearly defined metrics to evaluate and can be done in a cross-cultural environment. Other than these evangelical organizations, the explosive growth of Pentecostal Christianity is driven by people like Prakash and Satish whom Bauman cites (a welcome instance of fieldwork in the book),  as having received some miraculous healing, which they interpret as God's calling, and take up full-time ministry to plant house churches. These types of Pentecostal house churches are financially self-sufficient since their members offer tithe. In fact, as I write this review, ten years from the time of publication of this book, stringent FCRA regulations have ensured a severe curtailment of financial support from abroad for evangelical activities. This though has meant no signs of slowdown for Pentecostalized Evangelical activity. 

    The last and concluding chapter moralizes on Conversions, the naturalness of Anti-Christian violence, and argues on the question of culpability. This chapter is deeply problematic since the paradigm under which Bauman frames his answers is contestable. In Bauman's understanding of things, India is like America a secular democracy, Hinduism in India is a monolith like Christianity in America and then there are the intolerant religions like Islam or fundamentalist Christianity in America and Pentecostal Christianity in India, with the good, nice, secular people in both America and India having to manage these intolerant bigots who are using the very freedom provided by peaceful majorities to sabotage secular tolerance. The only condemnable part in Bauman's view is physical violence against Christians. While it is true, that the role of the state as enshrined in the Indian constitution, enjoining it to prevent violence and avoiding discrimination can be the only legitimate expectation from the Christian minority. It is also important that in places like India, where state institutions are weak and malleable, to confront world-views which inevitably cause eventual physical violence. One reason probably for Bauman's problematic world-view is because caste is not a lived experience for him, but something he theoretically tries to understand and incorporate into his logic. The second reason, is probably because since he is a Western, Christian, first world scholar parachuting to a third world nation, which brings with it all the attendant background noise of colonialism, racism and so on, he wants to appear even handed and appreciate what he thinks is the dominant culture of his hosts. But nevertheless we have to appreciate Bauman for venturing into an area that very few social science scholars do, and that is to give a personal opinion and solution on the subject that he is investigating.  

    To contest the unreasonableness of Bauman's worldview, I would like to continue with the story of Syrian Christians  that Bauman narrates here. Syrian Christians who were considered a ritually pure community began to lose their high-caste status when under the influence of the Portugese first and then the British moved away from participation in temple rituals. By mid nineteenth century, Upper Castes were treating them like a ritually polluting caste. Syrian Christians got back their high-caste standing since the late 19th century by cultivating ritual connection with their Hindu neighbors through the adoption of high-caste Hindu practices involving, among other things, temple festivals and lif-cycle rituals.According to Bauman this high caste status has given them protection from prevalent Anti-Christian sentiments. What does this imply?. Even in the pre-modern era , being alienated or having an identity that rejected temples (representing Hindu Brahmin religion) was not just ritually polluting but also ensued subsequent loss of economic and political power. Could we imagine then, this constructed "Hindu" identity of the modern era as a continuity from the pre-modern.The repercussions are just the same. Lack of participation in the "Hindu" identity that is conflated with the Indian identity makes Christians and Muslims "second-class" citizens with the concomitant loss of political and cultural power. It is here that Pentecostal Christians differ from votaries of mainstream "Hinduness". Pentecostal Christianity for all it's religious intolerance is not angling for political power and the resultant ability to marginalize people. Pentecostal Christian religion might call your "god" a man-made idol or still worse a demon, but it is not going to burn your house and throw you out. Anyone who doubts this, just has to google "Muslims and India". To find moral equivalence between two ideologies both vying for different things, incomparable in the social status of its practitioners (Priveleged uppercastes on the one hand and mostly untouchables and tribals on the other hand), with repercussions that are not at all comparable, is to me against all sense of fairplay and justice. Should we call it Cruel?. 

    To me, Bauman is fixated on asking the wrong questions "Are Pentecostals Provocative?". "Do Pentecostals invite the violence that befalls them?" and so on. Provocation is itself a loaded word with very subjective answers dependent on time and place. It is my personal belief that indigenous communities or castes will be able to solve their issues when left to themselves. Pentecostal Christianity with it's belief of the supernatural, demons, emotional meltdowns, miracles, corporate worship and healing is rooted in many ways closer to the psyche of people than we would acknowledge. As I mentioned before, it is the language of "Hindu" identity and aggression developed in cultures and places "far off", with national-level actors who bring to a localized conflict an edge and a sophistication that it would never have on its own, who seem to be the problem. To come back to Kanyakumari district, local Sangh workers faced with the failure of a vocabulary to effectively confront Pentecostal religion as well as the inability to use the power of the state, have started to critique Christianity. Some of their popular criticisms that I know are, "What God is he, if he cannot remove two nails and set himself free", "The Virgin birth of Jesus", comparing the boisterousness and happiness of Hindu temple worship against the crying and sadness of Pentecostal worship. This I believe is a healthy way of solving conflict. Words that are being replied with words and not violence. 

    This book for all its weaknesses is a very needed and useful one, setting up a template for further study. In this period of growing intolerance in India and deliberate propagation of misinformation, a book like this performs a valuable service.    

Crooked Stalks Cultivating Virtue in South India

                            Anand Pandian's anthropological writing on Piramalai Kallars comes as a fresh breeze fifty years after the publication of Louis Dumont's classical ethnographic work on the same group in "A South Indian Sub-caste". While Dumont's study had a focus on Piramalai Kallars as part of a wider Indian social context and on his central hypothesis that "Each person has his being outside of himself", Pandian's central theme in this book is a more intimate inquiry "How do people live as they ought to live". With this meaning ingrained question as the prominent theme, the book in a series of connected essays attempts to bring out an answer. Since the question itself veers toward the ontological, there cannot be any definite answers but only probes which can open doors for further revelation. When i read through the book I was stuck with the easy intimacy that Pandian strikes with his interlocutors in their quotidian space and realm. This makes him a natural to explore a more intimate topic like the theme that he has chosen. To understand this sea of difference, one has to read "A Remembered Village"by M.N Srinivas or Beteille's  "Sripuram : A Village in Tanjore" where the sociologist in spite of all their attempts to fit in are never able to move away from a position of  aloofness and distance. This comfortableness probably has to do with the fact that Pandian comes from a subaltern caste just like his subjects even though he belongs to the different Nadar caste, something which he revealed in "Ayya's account", his moving memoir about his grandfather.
                          The book is also interesting for a modern reader in the Indian context, because the ethnic group which has been selected has had a hoary history of being labelled as a "Crimnal Tribe" by the colonial authorities. Their very names "Kallars" an inheritance from a much older precolonial past translates literally as thieves. This being an assignment made by the dominant ethos and language of the agricultural citizen, the "Kutiyanavan" of the Tamil countryside. For readers like me, the interest is not just academical as an anthropological understanding of a "Community in Change". There is also a deeper personal interest that in being citizens of a common democratic state teetering in the precipice of disorder and lawlessness, an understanding this book attempts to bring about is invaluable.
                    The book as i mentioned before is a collection of  essays.The essays set on contemporary
events, interviews, anecdotes and understandings within the background of a historical context and setting do not always achieve a clear demarcation.Anand Pandian starts with the contention that the urgency of how one "ought" to live is a moral sense that develops in the shadows of particular histories of experience. With this proposition, he traces through the historical past experiences of the Kallars from medieval times. He writes of the "Criminal Tribes Act"  and the brutal policing of subjects under this act. This is still a living memory that is commemorated and regaled as stories by the Kallar people.  He writes of a Tamil moral tradition that celebrates the cultural ethos of the upstanding agrarian citizen in which "Kallars" are excluded as living beyond the pale of civilized human habitation, to the metonymically named "Katu". This moral tradition which is exemplified by didactic verses from the Tamil literary canon that spans from the later centuries of the first millennium to the medieval period includes some of the more popular works like the "Kural" and "Athichudi" which continue to exercise the popular imagination. As Pandian mentions, they continue to circulate in contemporary moral discourse as proverbs and maxims, "Old Sayings" and folk verities stripped of their historical referents and carrying with them nothing more than the concrete scenes of the agrarian livelihood they invoke. These two streams of moralising traditions, one from the precolonial past and the other from the pedagogical attempts of colonial authorities continue to influence contemporary Kallar moral selves.
             With this historical background in mind, Pandian attempts to identify the virtues and the lack of them that mark out and separate Kallar selves from the supposedly more civilized others.  These recognized in markedly oppositional terms forms the crux of each one of his essays. Savagery versus Civility, Propriety versus Impropriety, Restraint versus Thievishness.
             Savagery, Pandian writes in his first essay with the experience of one who has lived amongst the Kallars, is not only the opinion others hold but also what the Kallars themselves hold about themselves. Culture and civility the very antithesis of savagery is associated in both Western history and Sanskritic verses with cities, courts and other urban social formations, but in the Tamil country a pre-colonial civility that has its roots in a moral cultivation practised in an agricultural milieu has been able to take a preeminent role.For the Piramalai Kallars settled in the Cumbum Valley as agriculturalists in recent times, this moral standard of civility is the one against which they hold themselves and their neighbours into account.  According to Pandian, Piramalai Kallars by continuing to invoke the spectre of savagery incite themselves and others to reform. Here Pandian mentions with experiences and anecdotes that the practises of cultivation are not only a means of material development but also a means of transformation of their supposedly savage selves.  Turning to the virtue of Propriety, Pandian traces the tenuous links that hold Piramalai Kallars in Cumbum Valley to being proper agrarian citizens, the Tamil "Kutiyanavan" inspite of being predominantly involved in agriculture both as tenants and landlords. In his numerous interviews with his individual Kallar interlocutors he finds overwhelmingly that they refuse to identify themselves as "Kutiyanavan".   This feeling leads him to an exploration of the historical antagonism caused by rival forms of political sovereignty exercised by  Kallars in the form of "Kallar Kaval". "Kallar Kaval" in Southern Tamilnadu involved bands of Kallars stealing produce and livestock from villages finally forcing villagers to employ the same Kallars as watchmen to protect themselves from their predation. This form of Sovereignty which never had much moral legitimacy was exacerbated under British rule with both the practise and the practitioners being labelled as Criminal. During the later part of the 19th century, agricultural citizens banded together to force Kallars altogether out of villages that they inhabited. Thousands of homes were burned and dozens killed in this Anti-Kallar movement. The reverberation of this historical antagonism continues to this day in the conception of Kallar selves as somehow alien to the natural agrarian psychical milieu.
                                Pandian in his next essay reflects on the nature of restraint and its relation to criminality.  He discusses the intellectual milieu in Europe that gave rise to the idea of a Criminal man. The outcome of this understanding being the implementation of "Criminal Tribe Act" of 1918. He traces the common denominator in both Western and Tamil thought of looking at the unrestrained mind as bestial or animal-like. Moving to contemporary times, an often remarked statement by other communities is that Kallars rose from penury to prosperous householders because they alone were willing to follow every " Crooked Path".This sets him on an exploration of how Kallars make sense of their wayward trajectories. Interviews with individual Kallars reveal how animal metonyms from Tamil cultural life help them in identifying the nature of these impulses, setting boundaries of acceptability and generally explaining them.
              Pandian in his penultimate two essays writes on two virtues that inhabit an ambivalent place in Kallar imagination, toil and sympathy. Tracing the history of the idea that agricultural toil as suffering from medieval tamil didactic verses, the British attempt to reform Kallars by settling them as agricultural cultivators to the current day experience of cultivators for  whom agricultural production is a gamble, which is in Pandian's words a work "whose rythms are set from far off". He narrates of the historical antecedents which steered Kallars to the path of agricultural toil, the damming of the Periyar river to irrigate the Cumbum valley, the missionary and police efforts to reformation with the setting up of Kallar Voluntary Settlement (an agricultural workers colony)
and the distribution of land grants in the Cumbum valley to penniless migrants. But the moral value of hard work is deeply ambiguous because as Pandian says its appeal is questioned by the easy wealth of those who do not toil that much at all. Qualities such as cleverness and cunning, the ability to navigate the simplest and most convenient route through complicated social and economic terrain, regardless of how crooked that path may be seems to net appreciable returns than the patient forecasts and deliberate acts of a life of toil. Lastly the unpredictable workings of accident, chance and fortune amplified by technological developments as well as the neo-liberal political order question the very faith in time upon which toil depends, the sense that acts in the present may be expected to yield predictably in the future.
             This book is a different genre of sociological writing which I found very illuminating coming as I'm from Kanyakumari district which as part of South Travancore is culturally distinct from the lowland Tamil country referenced in this book. The essays with their soaring academic rhetoric weave together images and arguments from vernacular films and poetry to European philosophy that evokes a language of grandeur and beauty. But in a very few parts of the book I had the nagging feeling that these magnificently crafted arguments do not advance but rather conclusions are exaggeratedly tied to them.But this should not distract from the very central themes that run through the book, that in the Tamil countryside the act of cultivation as a practice of moral development,the Kallars uneasy fit into an agricultural world that has their moral selves constantly under judgement both by themselves and others around them, the ambivalence present in the practice of the virtues of agrarian civility in the modern world and the tension in which it exists. From my own experience, now that I live in Chennai where Tamils from everywhere live in an urban environment, the readings from this book often strike me as revelatory in their explanation.

          But as i mentioned in the start of my review, my interest in this book is not just purely sociological but also my own anxiety if the moral imagination, discourses and practices that developed over a millennia in what the historian Burton Stein called "One of the most durable peasant culture areas in history" could help in the sustainment of a liberal democratic political culture in present day Tamilnadu.
         Some 200 miles north east of Cumbum valley in Tiruchengode, young Gokul Raj was kidnapped and murdered in a gruesome manner by a caste outfit gang belonging to the dominant agriculturalists of that area. The crime that he was accused of was being friendly with a girl belonging to the dominant Gounder caste.In the days that the prime accused Yuvraj was absconding, the earnest young dalit lady officer who was assigned to track the case committed suicide. The ostensible reason for her act being the unreasonable pressure exerted by her senior officers. When finally Yuvraj surrendered to the magistrate it was on his own terms with hundreds of lay, ordinary Gounders cheering him with a heroic welcome.But what was most ominous in this theatre of the diabolic was that none of the major political parties in the state condoled the young man's death nor condemned this act of murder in a serious and meaningful manner. This barbarism and its cheering by the Kongu Gounders, the dominant agriculturalists of Western Tamilnadu who as heirs and proud inheritors of this tradition of agrarian civility and culture should seem incongruous. When viewed superfluously, could this be a common state of all civilization immortalized by Yeats famous verse of "Things falling apart and the blood dimmed tide being loosed". Contrarily, is there some thing faulty in the virtues as it is interpreted and practised that do not preclude such diabolic lawlessness. Is it as Pandian mentions in his introduction, the supple adaptiveness of the virtues to the contradictions and dilemmas of modern life because of it multiplicituous nature that proves to be its undoing. Is it a fundamental short coming caused by its lack of acknowledgement of a larger community and its shared vision. It is with these thoughts that I would like to end my review with the final essay of the book where Pandian meditates on the final virtue of sympathy. According to Pandian, sympathy in South India is best understood as the compassionate consequence of an uncalculating inner nature oriented towards the bonds of the past and the needs of the present rather than directed towards the foreseeable attainment of a desirable future. It is in this practise and cultivation of sympathy with all its ambivalences in the modern age do we see the slight glimmer of hope. This is a hope expressed subtly throughout the book, a hope for " a peaceful future".
                  

Richard Sennett on The Culture of the New Capitalism

Richard Sennett has been one of the foremost thinkers of our current times whose thoughts on the changing nature of work, the flux of the institutions and its effects on the men who inhabit them has enriched anyone who was looking for a deeper understanding of the times that we live in. He has been  exploring these topics
over the past thirty years from "The Hidden Injuries of Class" written in 1972 , "The Corrosion of Character, The Personal Consequences Of Work in the New Capitalism"  and now "The Culture of New Capitalism". Sennett has as the main thread of this book the evolution of capitalism and its institutions from the advent of industrial age through the age of industrial bureaucracies modeled on standing armies to the modern information age.
              Richard Sennett starts his book with the quote from Marx  "All that is solid melts into air". This would be the defining words on the instability of the age with its market upheavals, the sudden rise, collapse and movement of factories, the mass migration of workers seeking better jobs or any jobs. But this Schumpeterian "Creative destruction" was not to last for long. Over a period of a hundred years from 1860 to 1970 this free market capitalism was to be tamed and transformed into a social capitalism of vast bureaucratic corporations. The bureaucratic corporation according to Max Weber had its origin when the organizing principles of the Prussian military were borrowed to business and other institutions of civil society. The bureaucratic corporation provided for each worker a particular place and each place a defined function. According to Weber the greatest contribution of this "Iron Cage" would be the gift of organized time. People could work on a long term strategy for their lives.At an individual level this facilitated individuals to plan their lives." It became possible, for instance , to define what the stages of a career ought to look like, to correlate long term service in the firm to specific steps of increased wealth. Many manual workers could for the first time plan to buy a house".  In the broader cultural realm of social relationships Sennett makes an insightful observation." All Social relationships take time to develop. A life narrative in which the individual matters to others require an institution with lifetime longevity". The institutional framework of the bureaucratic organization caters and facilitates to this aspect of human social need.
                   But this bureaucratic organization of Weber's time is slowly unraveling. Some of the visible changes can be seen in the end of life term employment, the waning of careers spent within a single institution and more importantly the decline in moral prestige attached to work that is fixed and stable. One of interesting terms that Sennett uses is "Personal drift". In the absence of institutions on which to anchor themselves people face a life of drifting in isolation, moving from one work task to another. This according to Sennett is the defining cultural difference between the cultures of the old social capitalism and the new capitalism. Sennett then attempts to find out the reason for the rise of this new capitalism. He identifies three broad trends that have caused this new capitalism to take-off. Firstly he identifies the breakdown of the Breton Woods agreements in the 1970's and the unleashing of  a vast tide of global capital that was no longer held back by national barriers. Secondly he mentions a decided change in the attitude of capital to the institutions that it is invested in. The time horizon on which this new capital expected its return was lower. The capital of the older age was inextricably tied long term with the institution that it was invested in and it expected its return in the form of long term dividends.Thirdly was the influence of technology and automation. The growth of communication technology meant that that information could pass in an unambiguous and thorough manner in a corporation. Instructions from the top could go to the bottom without the need for any modulation. Executives at the top could get information on the performance of the units in the bottom at real time. The spread of automation meant that many of routine non specialized work could be done by machines. This meant that organizations could shed jobs that were routine.Technological ability and capacity means that inclusion of the masses , the social element of social capitalism can wither.The idealized new self of the worker has also changed from one who was dependable and did his work well to somebody who is constantly learning. This is because technology constantly keeps workers on their toes making once solid dependable jobs either redundant or making the skill involved in the job go away.
         After having identified the historical and material processes that have driven the trend to this "New Capitalism", Sennett looks at the new institutional realities of the modern corporate institution. Sennett comes across an institution that is very short term task oriented with the organization in a state of constant flux, the organization swelling and contracting according to the task that has to be done.Another institutional reality according to Sennett is the centralization of power and the social inequality within organization. I would believe it is here that things become a little blurred and Sennett's arguments a little shaky. Since the organizations of the New Capitalism are not really social, it would be inaccurate to describe the power differentials within an organization as social inequality. A more apt description would be to describe that the organization can look at people and their roles from a spectrum of indifference to recognition. Often individual roles and people can move across this spectrum with the changing flux of what is thought as the business need of the hour. In a cutting edge high tech organization, even an engineer at the base of the organization can have a role which is treated with recognition. There is no great distance between a Zuckerberg of Facebook and a nerdy engineer in his organization other than one of great difference in material wealth.On the other hand the example cited by Sennett of  the relationship between a Milan fashionista and her Thai Shoe maker is characterized not only by indifference but the shoemaker can never move into a role of recognition. This distinction points to a trend for us to reflect. Why are two set of worker experiences in the modern capitalist organization so very different. That would ask us to reflect on the identities of  the workers themselves. Are identities of workers themselves as professionals, craft workers and "cog in the wheel" technologically de-skilled working class matter in the developing social inequality. A social inequality which is not embedded in the organization as such but more deeply structurally built in the construct of social relationships in society as such. Sennett then goes on to identify the three social deficits of the structurally changed organization as low institutional loyalty, diminishment of informal trust among workers and weakening of institutional knowledge. For anybody who has either worked or been exposed to the culture of any modern day corporation this is not a surprise.
                               Lastly Sennett tries to understand the effect that the  flexible workplace has on the workers themselves.This is a topic that Sennett explored in his other book "The Corrosion of Character". The crux of Sennett's argument is that in a flexible organization , workers are not able to form stable fixed identities that are central to formation of a "moral" character.In Sennett's words "The time-engine driving the Protestant Ethic is delayed gratification in the present for the sake of long-term goals. Delayed gratification makes possible self-discipline.This work requires a certain kind of institution to be creditable.It has to be stable to deliver the future rewards.Its managers have to remain in place as witnesses to your performance" .  Is Sennett overextending his arguments here. Since identities are always relational, to speculate on the identity of a worker is to enter the realm of the ontological . It would raise questions of , does an individual need a "life-time" framework for a healthy work identity.  How much has the human condition evolved for a stable versus a flexible identity. Are there innate differences in human personality that would make some of us thrive in a flexible environment (not just labor in the cutting edge for whom Sennett makes exceptions). But instinctively many of us especially the non-ambitious sort seem to understand and agree with Sennett that a general ambiguity of  character sets upon in an environment of flexible and uncommitted work organizations.
                              Since this book is a compilation of lectures, Sennett moves to a related but separate topic of talent and the specter of uselessness. It covers an subject that has been written about by many political and economic commentators.Sennett brackets under the specter of uselessness the job losses wrought to migration of jobs to low cost nations, automation and the more general discrimination of the aged.Sennett does not have any direct suggestions but rather enumerates the problem. Sennett then goes on to define modern capitalism's definition of talent. He takes two terms which define people talents craftsmanship and meritocracy. He elaborates on an understanding of craftsmanship and its uneasy fit with the capitalism of new age. Craftsmanship needs a depth that institutions based on short term transactions  do not breed. But this again would be an argument with holes. Many of the technological innovations characteristic of our age come out of a spirit of craftsmanship practiced by its engineers and workers. This reminds me of  one anachronistic blue collar job that has survived to the present day with its craftsmanship features intact. This is the job of  the London cab driver and their examination called "The Knowledge".The amount of information that has to be learnt to master this test is so vast that neurologists have found that the hippo-campus, the part of the brain responsible for spatial navigation is significantly larger for a London cabby than the general human population. On an average an individual spends four years of  an all consuming learning to qualify. This would be for Sennett an example of Craftsmanship symbolizing the values of an epoch gone by. Today an individual with Google on a Samsung smartphone could more or less find his way out. He probably could not do it with the ease or efficiency of the London cab driver but in a strictly utilitarian way he can. In other words the invulnerability and essentiality of the London cabby is no longer there. Is Craftsmanship lost here. Not in the real world yet for the London Cabby but potentially yes. But there has been craftsmanship gained  in the extraordinary sophistication and potency of the smart phones, the complex networks, algorithms and servers that make the complicated search of a Google map possible. This raises another question. Is an epochal understanding really the way to look at an issue as complex as craftsmanship.
                       Sennett then looks at politics of the modern age under the title "Consuming Politics". Sennett makes a comparison between the politics in the age of of new capitalism to the marketing of a product. This is the chapter where i found Sennett taking a too convoluted  and rambling approach to drive home his conclusion. Sennett argues that the modern day citizen becomes a "consumer of politics faced with pressures to buy". And just what are the marketing tactics that the consumer faces. Modern marketing makes the buying of products a "Self-consuming passion".   A Self-consuming passion according to Sennett is a passion that burns it out by its own consumption.In a Self-consuming passion imagination is strongest in anticipation and grows ever weaker through use. Branding and Potency are two ways the self-consuming passion is made desirable. Branding works by "gold plating", which is a term used by marketers to exaggerate minor differences on a common platform.Potency is endowing  commonplace objects a potential beyond what is rational. He takes the example of an iPod which can store millions of songs even though a human user would never be able to use it for more than a few hundred songs.Potency arouses a passion, which often cannot deliver what it promises to do. Sennett sees a similar thinking working in modern day politics. The consumer-citizen is driven from progressive politics to a passive receptive state which translates into, being offered political platforms that resemble product platforms, gold-plated differences between political ideologies and asked to discount the "twisted timbers of humanity" (as Immanuel Kant called us). By progressive politics Sennett means a polity in which all citizens believe they are bound together in a common project. While any casual observer of modern day American media and politics would agree with this conclusion, has Sennett got his horse and cart in the wrong order. Sennett's observation is that individuals are enervated by their participation in the institutions and markets of new capitalism that they no longer are able to create a progressive political environment. The cultural values of work and consumption seep into the domain of politics as well. But could it be the other way around, something that Sennett alludes to in the end of the chapter. Could it be the overwhelming political consensus in Anglo-American countries for a neo-liberal democratic regimes that favor limited government. When politics loses its moral prestige and importance, the corollary that follows is political leaders are reduced to a role where they have to market themselves akin to selling soap.

        The last chapter titled " Social capitalism in our time" is Sennett's suggestion for progressive politics to find its way into relevance. Sennett looks at some interesting efforts to create "parallel institutions" which try to give workers a  sense of continuity a narrative. One of them has been the way some unions have moved away from their traditional role to become community based groups that provide a sense of emotional security. He mentions about the Dutch system of  "Job sharing". This allows every one to have some work and nobody is fully unemployed. The purpose of all this for Sennett is " All these efforts address a hard reality. insecurity is not just an unwanted consequence of upheavals in the market; rather, insecurity is programmed into the new institutional model". In the realm of the usefulness Sennett suggest a return to progressive politics. For Sennett a truly progressive politics would "seek to strengthen the State as an employer, rather than hive-off public service work to private companies. Another suggestion that Sennett makes is for "care" work to be monetarily supported. Sennett ends his book with a hope that borders on a schadenfreude about the new system "Since people can anchor themselves in life only by trying to do something well for its own sake, the triumph of superficiality at work, in schools and in politics seem to be fragile. Perhaps, indeed , revolt against this enfeebled culture will constitute our next fresh page".  Altogether a very readable book.