Modernity of Slavery

This book analyzes the experiences of the slave castes (Dalits) in Kerala in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when the European Missionaries began to interact closely with them and thousands of slave castes began to join the Church Missionary Society and London Missionary Society. For the first time in the historical scholarship in South Asia this book highlights the everyday experiences of slave castes such as the break up of their families, torture and sufferings and how they are rememorialised by contemporary generations. Moving away from the stereotypes of history writings on Dalits and Christianity, this book brings to the center the question of consciousness by exploring the meaning of Christianity that provided a new conceptual language to Dalits. This leads to the questions of interiority that the book deals with by taking up specific instances from the Dalit experience in Kerala. This is further done by analyzing the history and discourses of the Prathyaksha Raksha Daiva Sahha in Kerala. Evolving within the missionary Christianity, it developed a powerful critique of the Churches that practiced caste and showed their specific way to salvation through revelation. Based on fresh archival and ethnographic sources this work breaks fresh ground in understanding Christianity, Dalit religious movements, their hybridity and questions of social identity.