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Book Review: Conversion and Social Equality in India

Conversion and Social Equality in India By Dick Kooiman New Delhi. India: Manohar 1989. xi. 236pp.. cloth. Rs. 200 Reviewed by Hunter P. Mabry Subtitled "The London Missionary Society in South Travancore in the 19th Century," this book deals with the problem of untouchability from a historical perspective among some untouchable communities in southern India. Kooiman focuses on the Shanars (now Nadars), Pulayas, and Pariahs, with particular attention to their movement into (and out of) Christianity from the arrival of the first LMS missionary in 1808 until around 1900. Kooiman is trained in Asian history and sociology and was teaching South Asian history at the Free University of Amsterdam at the time this book was published. His approach is that of a social historian, viewing the "stigma of pollution and the material deprivation of the untouchable poor" as reinforcing one another. He argues that an important escape route has been to adopt a new religion through mass conversion as part of an effort to gain a more dignified status in society. Along the way he provides a short history of Travancore, examines the relationship between colonialism and missionary activity (which he finds to be both cooperative and conflictive), and analyzes the "missionary advance" in the social setting of Travancore-with particular attention to linkages between education and employBook Reviews 95