<!--QuoteBegin-Bodhi+Apr 29 2007, 09:30 AM-->QUOTE(Bodhi @ Apr 29 2007, 09:30 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->Solomonji, I have fixed the URL in post 68
[right][snapback]68009[/snapback][/right]<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Unfortunately the book is only searchable, not all readable in one go. Could you state which page is relevant or what keyword to search on ('Madras' didn't give access to relevant bits)? Or alternatively, if it's not too much trouble, could you summarise what point that issue of Dublin Review makes regarding land grabs in Tamil Nadu?
Casteist segregation in Indian christianity lasts to the death. And it remains relevant upto the highly-anticipated (but not forthcoming) day of judgement and doubtless beyond:
<b>South Indian Christians, Purity/Impurity, and the Caste System: Death Ritual in a Tamil Roman Catholic Community</b>, David Mosse, <i>The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute</i>, Vol. 2, No. 3. (Sep., 1996), pp. 461-483.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->the history of <b>Alapuram</b> reveals, nonetheless, a complex interpenetration of the worlds of caste and Catholicism, and a disputed boundary between them. On the one hand, the Catholic sacred (even the Mass itself) has constantly been invaded by caste values in the form of segregated seating arrangements, church entrances and distributions of the sacrament, and even in the form of separate statues for veneration37 as villagers have continued to find in church ritual occasions for the validation of caste position. This is true of the rites of death as much as any other rituals. As we have seen, the Christian bier, despite its impurity-denying identification with the body of the crucified Christ, is still capable of evoking the nexus of pollution and caste status. Moreover, if village Christians leave caste and impurity at the church door, where the barber and Untouchable funeral servants also wait, this social and ritual order is reinstated at the cemetery. Despite the emphasis on death as renunciation, and despite the negation of the material and social world, the cemetery provides a microcosm of the social distinctions in the village. The graves of the different Catholic castes map the physical positions of their streets, as well as their seating arrangements in church (high castes to the north, low castes to the south); the wealthy have large tomb-stones, the poor decaying wooden crosses. The human dead have not really left the social world at all. Their tombs 'provide an idealised material map of the permanent social order' (Bloch & Pany 1982: 35). Even those who die away from the village have false graves made for them at a rite resembling the final funeral ceremony. On the other hand, conceptions of the domain of the Catholic religion have themselves been shaped over the centuries by factors which include changing forms of missionary authority and priesthood. Thus, in contrast to its pre-colonial form, the nineteenth- and twentieth-century church has acted to establish and extend a Christian religious domain beyond and against caste culture -to erode purificatory rites, to challenge ritual privilege and to support low caste social protest (Mosse 1994; 1996). In this respect, the church has maintained an uneasy and shifting frontier with caste society in rural Ramnad. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->'Alapuram':<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->NOTES
This article is based on fieldwork carried out in <b>the village of 'Alapuram' (a pseudonym)</b> in 1982-4, together with brief visits in the period 1988-91, and on archival records of the Jesuit Madura Mission (at the Sacred Heart College, Shembaganur, Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu). I am grateful to the ESRC for a research grant, and to Mr M. Sivan for field assistance. Transliteration in the text follows the conventions of the Madras University Tamil Lexicon. This article has also had the benefit of comment and editorial work from Simon Harrison.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The third statement made blue above: "in contrast to its pre-colonial form, the nineteenth- and twentieth-century church has acted to establish and extend a Christian religious domain beyond and against caste culture" - the church never thought of equality until equality became something secular humans in Europe started striving for. All of a sudden the church realised it better become the champion of equality or else it will continue to be recognised as the chief source of inequality in christian and christianised lands. Since then, its PR blitz campaign has been one of 'egalite, fraternite and liberte' - not the church's exact words of course, otherwise everyone would know where they stole that from.
"19th and 20 century church has acted to establish... christian religious domain... <i>against</i> caste culture" - yeah right. Perhaps that explains why even in 1991 an Indian christian archbishop had to bring it to church attention how dalits, though making up most of the converts in many states, are still the smallest number in priestly positions. ( http://www.dailypioneer.com/displayit1.asp...jain/jain55.txt )
I find the whole excuse of 'caste-system in christianity is a left-over from Hinduism' pathetic. Doesn't their religion promise instant fixes? Didn't it promise equality and acceptance and all that stuff that sounded good but turned out to be no different from the hot air communism produces in vast quantities? Loser ideology should own up. Stop blaming Hinduism whenever christianism shows up problems that it's powerless to fix. Funny that 'Syrian' christians who claimed to have been brahmoons converted by Thomas (of Cana or the Apostle, it keeps changing) still - after 1.5 millennia or more according to their myths - consider themselves better than other 'Syrian' christians because of some imaginary brahmoon ancestry (post 71).
Instead of blaming Hinduism for casteism in christianity like christos do, I argue that christianity is a religion that makes fertile ground for christo-casta-ism, racism and other bigotries, where these take easy root in the soil so congenial to them; and thus they become so firmly entrenched, they last for a long time if not forever. I've yet to see one of these permanently and completely abolished in the christian sphere (slavery wasn't abolished because of christianity but <i>in spite</i> of it, racism persists in many S churches in US).
[right][snapback]68009[/snapback][/right]<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Unfortunately the book is only searchable, not all readable in one go. Could you state which page is relevant or what keyword to search on ('Madras' didn't give access to relevant bits)? Or alternatively, if it's not too much trouble, could you summarise what point that issue of Dublin Review makes regarding land grabs in Tamil Nadu?
Casteist segregation in Indian christianity lasts to the death. And it remains relevant upto the highly-anticipated (but not forthcoming) day of judgement and doubtless beyond:
<b>South Indian Christians, Purity/Impurity, and the Caste System: Death Ritual in a Tamil Roman Catholic Community</b>, David Mosse, <i>The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute</i>, Vol. 2, No. 3. (Sep., 1996), pp. 461-483.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->the history of <b>Alapuram</b> reveals, nonetheless, a complex interpenetration of the worlds of caste and Catholicism, and a disputed boundary between them. On the one hand, the Catholic sacred (even the Mass itself) has constantly been invaded by caste values in the form of segregated seating arrangements, church entrances and distributions of the sacrament, and even in the form of separate statues for veneration37 as villagers have continued to find in church ritual occasions for the validation of caste position. This is true of the rites of death as much as any other rituals. As we have seen, the Christian bier, despite its impurity-denying identification with the body of the crucified Christ, is still capable of evoking the nexus of pollution and caste status. Moreover, if village Christians leave caste and impurity at the church door, where the barber and Untouchable funeral servants also wait, this social and ritual order is reinstated at the cemetery. Despite the emphasis on death as renunciation, and despite the negation of the material and social world, the cemetery provides a microcosm of the social distinctions in the village. The graves of the different Catholic castes map the physical positions of their streets, as well as their seating arrangements in church (high castes to the north, low castes to the south); the wealthy have large tomb-stones, the poor decaying wooden crosses. The human dead have not really left the social world at all. Their tombs 'provide an idealised material map of the permanent social order' (Bloch & Pany 1982: 35). Even those who die away from the village have false graves made for them at a rite resembling the final funeral ceremony. On the other hand, conceptions of the domain of the Catholic religion have themselves been shaped over the centuries by factors which include changing forms of missionary authority and priesthood. Thus, in contrast to its pre-colonial form, the nineteenth- and twentieth-century church has acted to establish and extend a Christian religious domain beyond and against caste culture -to erode purificatory rites, to challenge ritual privilege and to support low caste social protest (Mosse 1994; 1996). In this respect, the church has maintained an uneasy and shifting frontier with caste society in rural Ramnad. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->'Alapuram':<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->NOTES
This article is based on fieldwork carried out in <b>the village of 'Alapuram' (a pseudonym)</b> in 1982-4, together with brief visits in the period 1988-91, and on archival records of the Jesuit Madura Mission (at the Sacred Heart College, Shembaganur, Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu). I am grateful to the ESRC for a research grant, and to Mr M. Sivan for field assistance. Transliteration in the text follows the conventions of the Madras University Tamil Lexicon. This article has also had the benefit of comment and editorial work from Simon Harrison.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The third statement made blue above: "in contrast to its pre-colonial form, the nineteenth- and twentieth-century church has acted to establish and extend a Christian religious domain beyond and against caste culture" - the church never thought of equality until equality became something secular humans in Europe started striving for. All of a sudden the church realised it better become the champion of equality or else it will continue to be recognised as the chief source of inequality in christian and christianised lands. Since then, its PR blitz campaign has been one of 'egalite, fraternite and liberte' - not the church's exact words of course, otherwise everyone would know where they stole that from.
"19th and 20 century church has acted to establish... christian religious domain... <i>against</i> caste culture" - yeah right. Perhaps that explains why even in 1991 an Indian christian archbishop had to bring it to church attention how dalits, though making up most of the converts in many states, are still the smallest number in priestly positions. ( http://www.dailypioneer.com/displayit1.asp...jain/jain55.txt )
I find the whole excuse of 'caste-system in christianity is a left-over from Hinduism' pathetic. Doesn't their religion promise instant fixes? Didn't it promise equality and acceptance and all that stuff that sounded good but turned out to be no different from the hot air communism produces in vast quantities? Loser ideology should own up. Stop blaming Hinduism whenever christianism shows up problems that it's powerless to fix. Funny that 'Syrian' christians who claimed to have been brahmoons converted by Thomas (of Cana or the Apostle, it keeps changing) still - after 1.5 millennia or more according to their myths - consider themselves better than other 'Syrian' christians because of some imaginary brahmoon ancestry (post 71).
Instead of blaming Hinduism for casteism in christianity like christos do, I argue that christianity is a religion that makes fertile ground for christo-casta-ism, racism and other bigotries, where these take easy root in the soil so congenial to them; and thus they become so firmly entrenched, they last for a long time if not forever. I've yet to see one of these permanently and completely abolished in the christian sphere (slavery wasn't abolished because of christianity but <i>in spite</i> of it, racism persists in many S churches in US).