Upper-Caste Conversions (1500–1900)

2020 ◽  
pp. 517-549
Author(s):  
David W. Kling
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Caste System ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Pandita Ramabai

After tracing the early Christian presence in India and discussing the nature of the caste system, this chapter profiles individuals—well-known upper-caste nineteenth-century converts from Hinduism. As in China, the missionary presence in India was a necessary but not sufficient factor in Christianity’s spread. Missionaries initiated the first conversions, but within a generation or two, Indian Christians became the primary instruments for the spread of the gospel. Communication never flowed in one direction, from missionary to Indians. Increasingly, Indians converted on their own terms and adapted Christianity to meet their own particular concerns and to indigenize their faith by separating Christ from the trappings of Western, colonial Christianity. Converts discussed include Krishna Mohan Banerjea, Baba Padmanjee, Krishna Pillai, Narayan Vaman Tilak, Pandita Ramabai, and Brahmabandhab Upadhyay.

scholarly journals Colonial State as ‘New Manu’? Explorations in Education Policies in Relation to Dalit and Low-Caste Education in the Nineteenth-Century India

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-107
Author(s):  
Parimala V. Rao
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Education Policy ◽  
Caste System ◽  
Colonial Administration ◽  
Education Policies ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Lower Castes ◽  
Priestly Class ◽  
Colonial Government ◽  
Implementation Stage

The colonial state always asserted itself as a harbinger of ‘modernity’ and emphasised its role in India as a ‘civilising mission’. The 1811 Educational Minute of Governor General Minto, declared Hindus and Muslims of India as inherently corrupt and insisted on the British role as ‘civilising’. Conventionally the terms ‘modern’ and ‘civilising mission’ have been considered as offensive, and scholars have critiqued them as Eurocentric and racist. However, these terms have not been analysed at the implementation stage in India. The colonial government used these terms to actually strengthen the structures of the traditional hierarchy. When Minto declared that the education policy was to civilise Hindus and Muslims of India, it was through the ‘the dread of their religion in this world and the next’ and through strengthening and empowering the priestly class of Hindus and Muslims (Sharp, 1920, pp. 19–21). The colonial administration regarded this kind of education as the corner stone of its education policy. This article looks at the education policies of the colonial state towards lower castes in the nineteenth-century India and how these policies upheld and reinforced the caste system.

Appropriating the Past: Romanesque Spolia in Seventeenth-Century Ireland

2008 ◽  
Vol 51 ◽  
pp. 63-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Moss
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Young Subject ◽  
The Political ◽  
Medieval Architecture ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
True Value ◽  
State Initiatives ◽  
History Of ◽  
Strong Motivation ◽  
National Architecture

Although a relatively young subject, the historiography of Irish architecture has had a remarkably significant impact on the manner in which particular styles have been interpreted and valued. Since the genesis of the topic in the mid-eighteenth century, specific styles of architecture have been inextricably connected with the political history of the country, and each has been associated with the political and religious affiliations of its patrons. From the mid-nineteenth century, the focus on identifying an Irish ‘national’ architecture became particularly strong, with Early Christian and Romanesque architecture firmly believed to imbue ‘the spirit of native genius’, while Gothic, viewed as the introduction of the Anglo-Norman invader, was seen as marking the end of ‘Irish’ art. Inevitably, with such a strong motivation behind them, early texts were keen to find structures that were untouched by the hand of the colonizer as exemplars of the ‘national architecture’. Scholars, including the pioneering George Petrie (1790–1866) in works such as his 1845 study of the round towers of Ireland, believed that through historical research he and others were the first to understand the ‘true value’ of these buildings and that any former interest in them had been purely in their destruction, rather than in their restoration or reconstruction. It was believed that such examples of early medieval architecture and sculpture as had survived had done so despite, rather than because of, the efforts of former ages, and, although often in ruins, the remains could be interpreted purely in terms of the date of their original, medieval, creation.Informed by such studies, from the mid-nineteenth century a movement grew to preserve and consolidate a number of threatened Romanesque buildings with the guiding philosophy of preserving the monuments as close to their original ‘pre-colonial’ form as possible. Consolidation of the ruins of the Nuns’ Church at Clonmacnoise (Co. Offaly) is traditionally amongst the earliest and most celebrated of these endeavours, undertaken by the Kilkenny and Southeast Ireland Archaeological Society in the 1860s, setting a precedent for both the type of monument and method of preservation that was to become the focus of activity from the 1870s, and thus for the first State initiatives in architectural conservation.

The Roots and Varieties of Political Conservatism in India

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christophe Jaffrelot
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Land Reform ◽  
Caste System ◽  
Reform Movements ◽  
The Past ◽  
Congress Party ◽  
Political Conservatism

A country that has not gone through a revolution, India has been the crucible of several reform movements as early as the nineteenth century. But none of them intended to break with the past. They even sometimes prepared the ground for revivalism. In parallel, Hindu traditionalism developed in reaction to social and cultural change. In the twentieth century, these schools of thought found political expressions in the Congress party where they inhibited the fights against the caste system and land reform. These trends continued after 1947, in reaction to Nehruvian views, till conservative Congressmen created the Swatantra party and then the Congress (O).

Hindu Kingship and the Origin of Community: Religion, State and Society in Kerala, 1750–1850

1984 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Bayly
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Western Ghats ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Caste System ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
General Sense ◽  
South Indian ◽  
Malabar Coast ◽  
State And Society ◽  
The Western Ghats

Until recently the Malayalam-speaking region of southern India—once known as the Malabar coast and now the state of Kerala—was portrayed as a bastion of orthodox high Hinduism. The region's caste system was famous for its intricacy and supposed rigidity; its temples were rich, numerous and heavily patronized by Malayali rulers; and there was a general sense of the area as a picturesque backwater hidden away behind the western Ghats, untouched by the turbulent forces at work elsewhere in south Indian society. According to this view Kerala was a static society, ‘pure’ in culture and religious tradition, and ripe for drastic modernization once British suzerainty was established during the nineteenth century.

1877‒1889

2021 ◽  
pp. 121-160
Author(s):  
Ian Bradley
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Church Music ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Annual Basis ◽  
Golden Legend

The period from 1877 to 1889 was dominated for Sullivan by his collaboration with W.S. Gilbert, with whom he wrote ten highly successful comic operas on an almost annual basis. He found the partnership increasingly frustrating, if highly lucrative. Away from the theatre, he wrote a dramatic cantata about an early Christian martyr, The Martyr of Antioch (1880), and a sacred cantata, The Golden Legend (1886), based on the poem by Henry Longfellow, which was performed more than any other choral work apart from The Messiah in the closing decade of the nineteenth century. In 1880, Sullivan took up the conductorship of the prestigious Leeds Festival which gave him a chance to conduct significant sacred works, including the first ever complete performance in Britain of Bach’s B Minor Mass over which he took considerable pains. An address on music which he gave in Birmingham in 1888 touches on his own faith and reveals his Biblical knowledge and deep attachment to church music. His own contributions to the Savoy operas on which he collaborated with Gilbert also reveal much about his spirituality.

After Injury

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashraf H.A. Rushdy
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Historical Evolution ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The Past ◽  
Contemporary Study ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Public Apologies

After Injury explores the practices of forgiveness, resentment, and apology in three key moments when they were undergoing a dramatic change: early Christian history (for forgiveness), the shift from British eighteenth-century to Continental nineteenth-century philosophers (for resentment), and the moment in the 1950s postwar world in which ordinary language philosophers and sociologists of everyday life theorized what it means to express or perform an apology. The debates in those key moments have largely defined the contemporary study of these practices. The first premise of this book is that because these three practices are interlinked—forgiveness is commonly defined as a forswearing of resentment in response to an apology—it makes sense to study these practices together. The second premise is that each practice has a different historical evolution. It thus makes sense to identify a key moment to examine what is arguably the most important mutation in the evolution of each practice. After looking at the debates in those three key moments, After Injury takes up the important contemporary questions about each of the practices. For the practice of forgiveness, those questions center on whether forgiveness is possible, and what place it occupies in relation to retribution. For resentment, the questions involve the value and risks of holding on to what is admittedly the disabling emotion of resentment in order to affirm the injustice of the past. For the practice of apology, a key question is what to make of a shift from personal to collective, from private to public apologies.

scholarly journals Caught in Transition: Liturgical Studies, Grand Narratives, and Methodologies of the Past and the Future

Scrinium ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 329-339
Author(s):  
Arkadiy Avdokhin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Critical Assessment ◽  
Short Paper ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Liturgical Studies ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
The Past ◽  
New Methodologies ◽  
Traditional Scholarship ◽  
Early Christian Studies

The short paper offers a critical assessment of the historical method in the recent Liturgical Subjects by D. Krueger, and extends the discussion into wider reflections on methodology of the studies of Christian liturgy and how they reflect larger shifts in early Christian studies. It is argued that thinking in terms of ‘grand narratives’ and unchanging liturgical patterns is ultimately rooted in the academic agendas of the nineteenth century. It is also suggested that the quest for innovative approaches to liturgical research should account for both new methodologies introduced and the historical insights of traditional scholarship.


The Library of the Fathers

2002 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 294-306
Author(s):  
Austin Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
John Henry Newman ◽  
Oxford Movement ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Church

The Oxford Movement in the nineteenth century sought to emphasise the nature of the Church of England as “Catholic”, continuing the work of the Incarnation throughout all times and places. Part of this theological and historical polemic involved being in harmony with the writers of the early Christian centuries, the Fathers of the Church. John Henry Newman, John Keble, Richard Hurrell Froude, and (later) Edward Bouverie Pusey, appealed to the Fathers of the Church from the beginning of the Movement. This eventually blossomed into an ambitious programme for translating the works of the Fathers into English, many of them for the first time. “The Library of the Fathers”, as it was called, was a major contribution to historical and theological studies. It had an influence well beyond the narrow confines of a church “party” or movement.

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