Pedalling Out of Sociocultural Precariousness: Religious Conversions amongst the Hindu Dalits to Christianity in Nepal

Christian conversion has become a major topic of discussion amongst academics, religious leaders, and policymakers alike in recent decades, especially in developing countries. Nepal has witnessed one of the highest rates of Hinduism to Christianity conversion in South Asia. Whilst there are no legal restrictions for religious conversion in Nepal, the conversion from Hinduism to Christianity appears to be disproportionately higher amongst Dalit communities in Nepal. However, religious conversion amongst Nepalese Dalits is yet to be fully understood. This research uses mixed methodologies of data collection and analysis to explore various issues related to religious conversion amongst Hindu Dalits into Christianity in Nepal. Results indicate whilst elderly and female Dalits tended to convert to Christianity, a range of factors specific to personal and communal biographies including social, cultural, emotional, and spiritual interplay together to shape the process of religious conversion amongst the Dalits. The paper concludes that the study of religious conversion should consider a range of sociocultural factors to fully understand the dynamics of religious conversion amongst Dalits.

Muslim Converts to Orthodox Christianity during the Greek War of Independence, 1821–1832

This article explores the conversion of Muslims to Orthodox Christianity during the Greek War of Independence (1821–1832) and the first post-independence years as a case study which shows that religious boundaries in the Balkans do not seem to have been as insurmountable as one might think. The bonds between people of different religious affiliations, including Christians and Muslims, were not so loose in the chaotic period of the nineteenth century. Even though religious differences have always existed in South-eastern Europe, the inhabitants of that region have not always seen fellow humans with different religious affiliations as estranged others. Muslim converts to Christianity were ready to compromise their Islamic faith in exchange for security, social status, and well-being in the changed political and social environment created by Greek nationalism, with a view to advancing their professional opportunities and material interests in the new state. The Greek case is not unique. Religious conversions from Islam to Christianity occurred elsewhere in the region during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Yet, while Balkan historiographical literature has focused on the Islamization of Christians in the region during the Ottoman period, it has paid little attention to the inverse processes of Christianization of Muslims in the age of nationalism.

RELIGIOUS CONVERSIONS OF THE ARMENIANS TO ORTHODOXY IN THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE (MID-19TH – EARLY 20TH CENTURY): MOTIVES, TYPOLOGY, AND RESULTS

An analysis of the religious conversions of persons of Armenian confession to Orthodox allows the author to evaluate them as a special phenomenon in the history of Russian-Armenian church relations, as well as to establish the features of economic, social, national, and confessional policies of the Russian Empire in the Transcaucasus in the 19th – early 20th centuries. The sources are the unpublished documents in Russian from the collections of the National Archives of the Republic of Armenia. Based on the available archival sources, it was established that the cases of the adoption of Orthodoxy by the Armenians were caused by three motives: 1) economic, 2) various situations of a non-economic nature, and 3) coercive measures. Despite the absence of a special “Armenian mission” among the Orthodox priests, the cases of Armenians’ conversion to Orthodoxy, especially those made for economic reasons, were rather actively encouraged by the Russian Orthodox Church. For the Russian government, the Armenians who converted to Orthodoxy were seen as a reliable social base in the Transcaucasus. The relevance of studying the issue is since, in the 20th century, despite the contradictions of the synodal period, the Russian Orthodox Church built relations with the Armenian Apostolic Church based on the principles of friendship, good neighborliness, and mutual assistance. Today, this factor contributes to the strengthening of both church and political relations between Russia and Armenia.

Becoming Armenian: Religious Conversions in the Late Imperial South Caucasus

In the nineteenth-century South Caucasus, hundreds of local farmers and nomads petitioned Russian authorities to allow them to become Christians. Most of them were Muslims and specifically requested to join the Armenian Apostolic Church. This article explores religious conversions to Armenian Christianity on Russia's mountainous southern border with the Ottoman Empire and Iran. It demonstrates that tsarist reforms, chiefly the peasant reform and the sedentarization of nomads, accelerated labor migration within the region, bringing many Muslims, Yazidis, and Assyrians into an Armenian environment. Local anxieties over Russian colonialism further encouraged conversions. I argue that by converting to Armenian Christianity many rural South Caucasians benefited from a change in their legal status, which came with the right to move residence, access to agricultural land, and other freedoms. Russia's Jewish communities, on the other hand, saw conversion to Armenian Christianity as a legal means to circumvent discrimination and obtain the right to live outside of the Pale of Settlement. By drawing on converts’ petitions and officials’ decisions, this article illustrates that the Russian government emerged as an ultimate arbiter of religious conversions, evaluating the sincerity of petitioners’ faith and how Armenian they had become, while preserving the empire's religious and social hierarchies.

RELIGIOUS CONVERSION ON STUDENTS’ CHARACTERS: A STUDY AT RUMAH YATIM AND TAHFIDZ QUR’AN MADANI BANDUNG

The development of individual characters was inseparable from the influence of the social environment. Particularly in the era of Industrial Revolution 4.0, the development is attached to the importance of Information Technology (IT). This study investigated the impact of religious conversion on the students' characteristics in the industrial revolution 4.0 era. It was conducted to the students of Sekolah Tinggi Ilmu Ekonomi Bandung, who lived in Rumah Yatim and Tahfidz Qur’an Madani Bandung. It was a qualitative method using case study, designed to comprehensively explore the students’ experiences during the process of their religious conversion and to understand how the experiences transformed their characters. The study used the three-stage data analysis, involving data reduction, presentation and conclusions. From the analysis, it was concluded that: 1) The religious conversions done by the students were influenced predominantly by their mental and environmental factors, especially by the place where they lived; 2) The religious conversions were motivated by certain events such as parents’ divorces or deaths; 3) Their character transformations were varying with three dimensions. In the cognitive dimension, they showed an improvement of critical thinking. In the psychomotor dimension, they were more skilled to socialize. In the affective, they became more emotionally mature because of the improved memorization of the Qur'an. Abstrak: Perkembangan karakter seseorang tidak terlepas dari pengaruh lingkungan, apalagi pengaruh teknologi informasi di Era Revolusi Industri ke empat. Penelitian ini membahas tentang dampak konversi agama terhadap karakteristik peserta didik di usia remaja, khususnya pada mahasiswi Sekolah Tinggi Ilmu Ekonomi Bandung yang tinggal di Rumah Yatim dan Tahfidz Qur’an Madani Bandung. Penelitian ini bertujuan mengetahui bagaimana dampak konversi agama terhadap perubahan karakteristik informan. Sehingga bisa mempelajari lebih dalam setiap kejadian dari proses konversi agamanya. Penelitian ini menggunakan pendekatan kualitatif dengan metode studi kasus, yang bertujuan untuk mempelajari penuh dari setiap kejadian yang dialami informan. Teknik analisis datanya meliputi reduksi data, penyajian data dan penarikan kesimpulan. Dari hasil analisis dapat disimpulkan bahwa: 1) Konsep konversi agama adalah sebagai berubahnya suatu keadaan agama yang didominasi karena faktor batin (kejiwaan) dan faktor lingkungan tempat mereka tinggal. 2) Motivasi konversi agama mereka karena adanya kejadian-kejadian tertentu seperti keluarga broken home, orangtua meninggal, dan lainnya. 3) Dampak karakter setelah mereka konversi agama sangat beragam, dimulai dari kognitif mereka daya berpikir semakin kritis, dari psikomotor mereka lebih terampil untuk bersosialisasi, serta yang terakhir dari afektif karakter mereka lebih terjaga karena salah satu penguatnya adalah hafalan al-Qur’an.

Thinking Technocratically

Although Polish politics moved to the right after the death of Józef Piłsudski in 1935, demographic anxieties about Volhynia had already been expressed by academics who supported the Sanacja’s technocratic program in the province. Focusing most particularly on geographical Polesie (which covered the northern part of the province of Volhynia), some scholars fostered the concept of national uncertainty in order to support more aggressive measures of Polonization. By dispensing with the regionalists’ patience for the provincial framework and in line with broader political radicalization across Europe, Polish officials increasingly used scholarly conclusions to advocate for redrawing internal borders and launching internal colonization. By the late 1930s, the army and border guards carried out forced religious conversions (“revindications”) of Orthodox Christian, Ukrainian-speaking populations to Roman Catholicism, based on the idea that these people were descended from Polish Catholics. Their concurrent support for policies of Jewish emigration was based on the opposite assumption—that Jews could never be considered Polish.

Ambedkar’s Journey of Conversion to Buddhism

The history of religious conversions has highlighted two aspects. One is the transformation in one’s spiritual and transcendental realm and the other is the social and the political domain that encompasses a sense of rejection of existing religious and philosophical world views as well as assertion of one’s political outlook. In this context, this article explores the contours of one of the most important political thinkers of modern India, that is, B. R. Ambedkar who embraced Buddhism after 40 years of his experiment with the Hindu religion. This article is divided into two parts; the first deals with Ambedkar’s engagement with Hinduism with a hope of reforming the same but having failed in his attempt for 20 years, he declared to leave the religion in 1936. The second part deals with Ambedkar’s both explicit and implicit deliberations for selecting the right noble faith, that is, Buddhism whose foundation was egalitarianism, based on equality and compassion. He used Deweyian experimentalism and Buddhist rationalism, to reject Hinduism and seek refuge in the reformed Buddhism, that is, Navayana Buddhism.