 Hello and welcome to the British Library South Asia seminar series, which is part of our research and digitization project called Two Centuries of Indian Print. Today, we are very happy to have amongst us Dr. Moe Banerjee from the University of Wisconsin Madison, who will be speaking on the disinherited Christianity and conversion in Calcutta. Dr. Moe Banerjee is an assistant professor of history at the University of Wisconsin Madison. She holds an MA and PhD in history from Harvard University and is a historian of modern South Asia, specializing in the period from the 18th to 20th centuries. Her research interests include religion and politics in India, especially on the evolution of the concepts of private faith and public political identity during the 19th and the 20th centuries. We are also very happy to have amongst us Dr. Devjani Bhattacharya as a chair for this event. Dr. Bhattacharya is an associate professor of history at Drexel University in Philadelphia. She's also the author of Empire and Ecology in the Bengal Delta, the making of Calcutta, which was published in 2018 from Cambridge University Press. She's currently working on her second book manuscript, tentatively titled Monson Landscapes, Law and Climate Science in the Indian Ocean World, which explores how the East India Company's marine insurance cases shaped the 18th and 19th century climate science. About the structure of the event today, Mo will be presenting her talk for about 30 to 45 minutes, after which Dr. Bhattacharya and Mo will engage in a discussion following her talk, after which we will open this up for audience question and answers. If in the meantime you would like to put in your questions, please use the chat box to do so, and I will take them in order once the discussion is over. So without much further ado, I hand over to Mo to present her talk today on the disinherited Christianity and conversion in Calcutta. Over to you Mo. Hi, everyone. Thank you all for being here. Thank you, Dr. Vasu, for your invitation to present my work at the British Library and for your very warm introduction. I conducted the majority of my research at the BL and it feels like coming back home. My sincere thanks to Professor Montacharya for agreeing to moderate this talk. And I know this will be a very generative conversation. And as I said, I'm very grateful to all of you, my audience for being here with me. I'm just going to take one second to start the slideshow and then I'll get into my talk. I want to begin my talk today by taking into account the certain ways in which Christianity has essentially been thought of in Bengal, particularly especially after the period of 1813. In this main slide that you have here what you see is essentially a painting by the Bengali painter Jamini Roy, which is of the last supper. Jamini Roy belonged to a generation of Bengalis who had some sort of understanding of Christianity, especially because Calcutta itself was very, very deeply entangled in the Evangelical Mission in the 19th and 20th century. In his own memoirs, Jamini Roy says that he had never ever seen the Bible or read it, but he had heard enough stories and had gone to enough churches that the story of the Bible, the narrative of Christ was something that was imprinted in his heart. And out of that in the 1940s emerges a series of paintings on the Bible, many of which find their way through the British and the American soldiers who are stationed in Calcutta for R&R into major museums, both in the UK and in the US. What does this tell us? Why do I begin with this? It just is just to make sure that we know that there is a particular understanding of Christianity in Bengal, which pervades all spheres, the domestic sphere, the public sphere, the education or the logical sphere and ultimately the final and most important part of the political sphere. And I want to begin my talk today, talking about a particular Bengali aristocrat. His name was Kali Prashan Nushenko, but he is far more well known to us today as the author of a particularly salacious, very easy, gossipy depiction of Calcutta in the early part of the 19th century. This is known as the Hootampachar-Nokshar, the cadastral map of the Hooting hour, where he talked about the fads and many different kinds of, you know, crazes about particular kinds of fashion among the elite and among the non-elite citizens, the subaltern citizens of Calcutta, one of which was the conversion fund. And he writes in his Hootampachar-Nokshar, which is first published in 1862, about one such event which happened in 1851, almost at a 10-year removal period. He talks about the huge uproar that is caused in Calcutta and, you know, the kind of anxieties that are generated in Calcutta as a result of the conversion of a young Bengali man known as Ganindra Mohantikor, who came from a very, very affluent family. The Tigor surname, of course, most of us know is very well recognizable in Bengal and in the world, because it is associated with Rubindranath Tigor, the very first Asian and non-white person, if you will, to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. But he is talking about a different branch of the family and the cause of the uproar, the cause of the scandal that happens in 1851 is because this young man, who is his father's only son and thereby the heir to a very large property, essentially converts and almost as soon as he converts, he marries his father's daughter, that is, he marries his preceptor, Krishna Mohan Banerjee's daughter, and then as a result of his conversion, his father, Prasanna Kumar Thakur, essentially disinherits him from a fabulously wealthy inheritance. The story that I want to tell you today is essentially about this particular family, but I hope that my talk will in some ways add to our understanding of the ways in which religion had an impact on the economic and political sphere, not merely on the spiritual domain, which is sometimes very neatly carved out of the outer domain. There has been historiography, the South Asian historiography of the past 40 years or so, almost secularizes the public domain and essentially keeps religion at the center of the inner domain. This is not the case when we look at cases of conversion and that essentially tells us that religion had an overarching impact upon the ways in which Bengali is in Calcutta and all over India as a matter of fact, put religion at the center of their political and their personal identities. He personally carried out rituals of faith, often had outsized political fallouts. So what does Huthum Patjasi say about this conversion fact? He says that in 1851, the arbiters of Bengali caste system of Hinduism, were all up in arms because a young man called Ganandram Kuntivore had converted. How was he lured into conversion? Exactly the language that Huthum uses. So he was essentially tricked into it. It is not an inward deeply felt belief. He was lured into it by the promise of the hand of Krishnamohan Banerjee's daughter, very well known as one of Calcutta's beauties. And what was the result of this? His father immediately disinherited him. And then Huthum, who goes on to talk about how such things have been happening all over India and it fits the case of Ganandram Mohan directly with the case of Balip Singh Ji, who was converted to Christianity when he was 14 years old and then set to Britain to become King Victoria's godson. And this is the same Balip Singh who was the inheritor of the Sikh empire, and essentially, you know, as a person who hands over the Kohino diamond to the Queen, which is why it's a part of the Crown Jewel's diversity. So Huthum, even at a 10 year removal, essentially is making particular kinds of arguments about Christianity and conversion in India, which today still hold particular kinds of political poignancy. One, of course, is the kind of harm that is done to a collective like a Hindu community, to the social matrix, to the moral and social capital gathered by Hindu aristocrats and the Hindu elite and intelligentsia, which is damaged immediately when a member of those slightly need communities like Ganandram Mohan step out of the court. The second point that Huthum Panchal makes, Balip Rasheem Rasheem home makes, essentially, is that it's never a sincere conversion. The language that Balip Rasheem Rasheem home makes, Huthum Panchal, the Huti now makes is he was leered by the promise of certain kinds of very tangible material benefits in this case, marriage to Krishna Mohan Banerjee's daughter, and essentially that essentially sent, you know, foregrounds a particular kind of argument about Christianity in Bengal and in India, which is that Christian conversions are not sincere. They are not deeply inwardly felt. They are not a moral convection. They are essentially always as a result of some sort of tangible material benefit and that is the reason that they are attended. So, you can, you know, this is exactly what he says. You can read it here. I'm not, you know, take a minute here to just read what he says. Again, if you read this, Kaliprasana Shingo is making an argument about the fact that even though material benefits are promised by missionaries, conversion essentially means that because people have to go out of the fold, because they no longer have the social and moral capital that they could inherit, because they suffered economic losses as well, they are left in a far more poor condition spiritually as well as materially as a result of conversion practices. The only person who talks about conversion in material terms talks about the insincerity of the idea of conversion. No. If you look at another major Indian figure, Rubens Renath Tagore, who I just spoke about and, you know, who was the first Nobel Prize winner. He is writing in 1912 and he writes an essay called Patapuri Chai which essentially means on the self and identity. It dominates on the many different ways in which particular sex and converts can still claim particular kinds of Hindu identity. It is important to remember here that Rubens Renath Tagore belonged to the Thakur Bari, the Jorah Shaku Thakur Bari. The entire family is Brahmo, the monotheistic reformist religious sect that was founded by Raja Ram Mohan Roy, nurtured by Tagore's own father Devan Dronath Thakur. And essentially, you know, a particular understanding of Hindu religion, which separated them from orthodox practices of rituals and traditions. What Ramesh Renath Tagore is doing here in the Bokta-Bhutini book, regarding 1912, he is trying to claim that there is a particular kind of cultural identity which adheres to religiosity. And even if a person were to convert, that cultural identity does not ever go away. How does he then talk about conversion? And he directly mentions his, you know, Dhanan Ram Mohan Tagore, who was a second cousin, by the way, just as the Jorah Shaku Thakur family was Brahmo, the Bathuriya Thakur family, the other branch of the family were very, very orthodox Hindus. And what does, what does Ramesh Renath say about this cousin twice removed? He talks in tones of deep pity, but at the same time, the kind of, you know, the kind of conclusions that he comes to about Christianity and Christian conversion very neatly lined up with Uttam Pacha, who came almost half a century before him. And then he talks about Christianity is something that is like cloth, that is like a, like a dress or a shirt that you would wear and then discard. But Hinduism was deeply ingrained in something within the soul. Again, Ramesh Renath himself a very, very thoughtful and in many ways a very Catholic and liberal thinker about religion. Essentially, pins Christianity or conversion through Christianity, especially the angelical protest and Christianity in Bengal, as something that is as easily worn and as easily discarded as clothing. It is not something that is organic. It is not something that adheres to or has any sort of nuance for a person's soul. And essentially, people undertake it again as something that is as easily discarded as it is worn. Why does he do this? Why is there this particular kind of understanding of Christianity as something that is not deeply involved with that. For this, I think we need to talk a little bit about the context behind Ganindra Mohan's conversion and the ways in which the events of his life tell us something about the times and the political controversies of of British India company in the early part of the 19th century. And this is, this is to go talking about the poor joy again Hindus in a communitarian sense but Christian by the religion. He is not only talking about Ganandra Mohan, he is talking about Ganandra Mohan's father in law, Krishna Mohan Banerjee who had converted him. And he has essentially saying if you become a Christian there is no way to find your place in society. The only way you can claim that is through a cultural affinity and a deeply inwardly felt connection to Hinduism rooted in the religion of one's forefathers, which is not possible with Christian conversion that translation is not visible in the understanding of the poor joy or identity as from international friends. So as I said, we should talk a little bit about, you know, the context of Ganandra Mohan's own life, the political situation in the East India Company's government in the early part of the 19th century. And I want to do that again with something that is very tangible and material. In the screen before you, you see a emerald ring with entirely your work essentially meaning the salt stone is carved with particular details. If you look at the border, you will find the name Prashanakumar Tagore engraved there. This is a signatory one that essentially bought the authority of the person bearing it and was used as a seal. And this was auctioned by Bornham's the auction house in London in 2015 for about 28,750 British pounds. It had come from the estate of Colin Tennant Baron Glenn Connor who makes an appearance in the TV series The Crown as one of the eccentric Bohemian friends of the royal family. Essentially this comes from his estate, but the name that it bears is the name of Ganandra Mohan's father. I called up Bornham's asking them about the provenance and they're usually very, very tight-lipped about it. But they said that at some point in the early 20th century this ring had come into the possession of Baron Glenn Connor. So how does a ring of an Indian elite landlord aristocrat come from India to Britain pass into the hands of the British aristocrat and then is auctioned off as a Mughal curiosity as Bornham's calls it in the early part of the 21st century. What is the way in which this ring makes its journey across the ocean. My first and foremost thought was that it must have come through the sun, Ganandra Mohan, who we know had, you know, spent a very large part of his life in England at London. He started digging into the archives that came across a Bengali gemological treatise, which said that this ring, the signatory had been in the possession of Ganandra Mohan's cousin Jyotindra Mohan Tagore, who had inherited it from his uncle Prashan Nakumar, Ganandra Mohan's father, who also inherited all the property that Prashan Nakumar did not pass onto his son. In some way, symbolically, the signatory, the idea, you know, that the symbol of authority passed not from Prashan Nakumar to his son, but passed from Prashan Nakumar to his nephew Jyotindra Mohan Tagore. At some point, the descendants of Jyotindra Mohan Tagore sold this to someone in England, and thereby it, you know, reached its inevitable conclusion at the Bornhouse auction. How do we trust that this is actually the case? The person who writes his gemological treatise is another nephew of Prashan Nakumar Tagore, another cousin of Ganandra Mohan Tagore, the younger brother of Jyotindra Mohan, who inherited the ring, a man called Shorindra Mohan Tagore, who is much more well known as a musicological expert, but he makes a point of putting this in his gemological treatise in order to show the legitimacy of the inheritance of the Agatha Tagore family passing from Prashan Nakumar to Jyotindra Mohan, not to the converted son Ganandra Mohan Tagore. They already understand that there are material losses and losses of authority, losses of social and moral capital that are encapsulated by this kind of passage, this kind of inheritance, which is slumped wise instead of the normal way in which it should happen. Jyotindra Mohan Tagore in his old page, he received a title from the British government, whereby he was called Maharaja. He played an immensely important role in being one of the strong supporters of the British government in the later part of the 19th century. He was at the forefront in 1885 of the of the rent clause, the reforms in the rent clause that essentially stops the rack and rent and the troubled usage of the peasantry by the aristocracy and by the landholders. He is an important figure, and again very much like photography of any royal figure from the 19th century. Here he is in full regalia, prepared to go to the Darbar. So, what is happening here as I said there is a slumped in the way in which inheritance should actually occur, particular kinds of Christian conversion already make it clear that inheritance does not pass from father to son. Is this something that is there and supported within British law and within Hindu understandings of inheritance. That is something that we need to discuss a little bit. This is one of the earliest maps of Calcutta and as you can see, you know, everything in the story is set in Calcutta that kind of kind of lotus like structure that you see near the right hand corner of the screen. Essentially is the Fort William, which out of which all the British executive legislative and judiciary services were provided to the British people. If you go a little further to the north to hear the green spaces as you can see across across the very wide swathe of the more than as it is called in Calcutta. You find exactly the places where can in the room on children from a whole Christian local man and others lived and worked and created, you know, their space within the second city of the British Empire. What else was happening in the spaces printing presses, political pamphlet years, book selling stores, missionary and government run schools and colleges were all flourishing and jostling for space and importance. It is in this, you know, northern corner straight up from the Fort William which creates this particular kind of linear connection, spatially between these two spaces that the story unfolds. I mentioned printing presses and schools, especially because in many ways when in young Indian men understand that they have to learn English in order to succeed in the new British government after 1835 and McCall is minute. After go to schools, government schools are very few when number because the British government sets aside only a mere lakh rupees or 100,000 for the purpose the British government finds this far cheaper to hand out certain kinds of funds to missionary institutions, who then take it upon themselves to teach the students in British laws and manners, talk to them about the enlightenment, the very long shadow of enlightenment that creeps into India at a very, very so slow pace. Talk to them about the radical ideas of people like Adam Smith, Smith and Tom Paine and others. But at the same time missionary institutions allow certain kinds of activities between receptors and students which are not allowed in government schools, and that is the freedom to preach to students. Essentially, for many, many Bengali men and later in the century Bengali family, their first understanding of Christianity and their first contact with evangelism happens in this schools. The first wave of this, of course, starts after 1813, 1813, when the charter of the Britishist India Company is renewed. And for the very first time, supported by William Wilberforce, the great abolitionist, we have permission for British missionaries to preach in British Indian domains. In 1813, what this has meant is an influx of a number of very, very well educated missionaries coming to India with the objective of converting all of India within a short space of time. They find their objects of conversion or the subjects of their conversion. They find them in the schools and colleges and institutions in this metropolitan cities. Most important of which is Calcutta, which is the capital of the British government, and essentially after London, the largest city of the British Empire. And one of these men who come into Calcutta, one of those missionaries who comes to Calcutta in 1830, 30, is a man called Alexander Tav, who is a Scottish missionary and who essentially is the figurehead of the Scottish Shizam, Shizam meaning he's a part of the new reformative Scottish Church. He sets up a number of institutions in Calcutta, including the General Assembly's institution, which later on goes on to become the Scottish Church College. Still functioning as one of the most important liberal humanities educational institutions in the country, in the country of India. So, Alexander Tav, Scottish missionary, makes his journey to Calcutta on the way, according to his own biography, he is shipwrecked twice. And in a miraculous, you know, miraculous way his life is saved and the only thing that he can save from all of his luggage is his life. Like at 1830 immediately gets a number of interviews as you would to announce your presence. And immediately, you know, gets a number of interviews to say I'm going to convert all of Calcutta within a year. So this amazing ambition is never fulfilled. He nevertheless manages to convert a handful of about 100 people, usually high-caste Hindu Bengali men who go on to form the backbone in many ways of Bengali convert Christian society. He also converts a number of people, Indians, who go on to have important missionary careers of their own. One of them is Krishna Mohan Banerjee, who later on goes on to convert Gyanand Ramohan Tagore and his daughter Gyanand Ramohan Tagore. Why else is Alexander Duff so very important in trying to understand the context of Gyanand Ramohan's own conversion 20 years after Duff's arrival in India. From the very beginning, Duff understands that if loss of ancestral property, if loss of inheritance cannot be stopped when Indians convert, it means it is a disincentive to Indians to actually convert. So from the period of the 1830s to the period of the 1850s, Alexander Duff, other than having an immense, you know, outsize impact on the Indian educational system also essentially continually makes this important, you know, interventions in the change of inheritance laws in Calcutta. His influence is not taken in a very, you know, in a good way by anyone in Bengal, especially of the elite and intelligentsia, the Bengalis aristocratic families, and a number of people, you know, either write pamphlets threatening him, a number of aristocrats threatened to send assassins after him, not yours, or people holding clubs after him, and Isha Chandragupta, one of the earliest vernacular editors of the Bengali newspaper, prints a scurrilous poem which with its hymns of, you know, prohibited sex, sexuality, prohibited enchantments of the missionary, missionaryism as it used to be called in his, in his newspaper, and he essentially talks about the way in which Hinduism itself is in complete disrepair. And everyone is taking a dip in Duff's tub of love, essentially meaning that, you know, in some ways the younger generation of Bengals most important families were at complete and total risk from activities by people like Duff. There should also tell us something about the outsize anxiety that conversion efforts in Calcutta and in Bengal and widely in India, you know, format numbers as I said over a 20 year period are only about 100. But the anxiety that happens is completely out of proportion in India there is not a conversion crisis with a conversion plan. And as I said, this is a total number of people that you know all the educational institutions run by Evangelical Evangelical missionary missionaries essentially to government schools 27 London Missionary School 14 Baptist Missionary School 35 Church Missionary Society which is a society under which can and remote converted 17 free church institution Alexander tough 29 educated in the free church institution but baptized elsewhere eight Church of Scotland 27. So a total of 107 people over a 20 year period, but the anxiety that is fermented in Bengali society is completely outsize. As I said, Duff from the very beginning understands that there is a great need to stop loss of inheritance for this Bengali men, once they make a decision to convert. Essentially the loss of inheritance would mean that most people would not want to convert. And this is a lot to do with the way in which British law is evolving in India as well. So in the early years of the 1930s. It is the Bible, which is a Hindu codex which is taken as a basis on which property can be partitioned and according to it from generation to generation it is the father of the family, the head of the family who would convert to alienate property, as he wished, essentially paving the path for certain recalcitrant children, who would not agree to certain kinds of, you know, certain kinds of rights and rituals of particular families to be made that are essentially discarded out of the family. This was a provision that was being used by Hindu fathers when they were disinheriting their sons. What happens with this kind of pamphlet hearing by Alexander Duff and others. This is about in 1831 from the Baptist Mission Press that is written by Alexander Duff. Essentially, you know, who's from the free church, free church institution. So all missionary, you know, institutions in India in Bengal are very, very deeply invested in this. Essentially, this leads to the passage of what is known as the Lexlosei or law of the land act, which passes as Act 21 in 1950. This is exactly a year before Alexander Mohan himself converts, which takes away the right of alienation of property from the Hindu father. What it does instead is make a provision which says that the Hindu father essentially cannot alienate ancestral properties, meaning something which has been in the family through generations, cannot alienate because the child comes into that inheritance at the same time as well. If it is the father's own personal inheritance you can do whatever you wish with it, but ancestral inheritances cannot be alienated from the children. This is at this act the Lexlosei Act or Act 21 1850 is also known as the caste disabilities removal act. This paves the way for a wider wave of missionary conversions in and around 1850 and 51 across India, and this would go on to have the effect of Saeed Ahmad Khan, writing in his reasons for the cause of the 1857-58 mutiny, the kind of interference in the modes and manners of lives of Hindus and Muslims by evangelical efforts of missionaries, especially through schools. So the pedagogical institution, the political institution and the evangelical effort in India are very, very closely tied together to an understanding by the Hindu community that there was a real and present threat to their way of life. And that the British government in a way going against its promise to the Indian population that had been given since 1757 of non-interference had gone back on its words and was using its soft power to make it possible for this kind of paving the path for this kind of paving the path of conversion efforts. And this is the Lexlosei Caste Disabilities Removal Act. What does it say? They cannot by reason of their renouncing or having excluded from the communion of any religion be alienated from their properties. Meaning even if they converted, the parents really had no other way of making sure that they could, and the community had no other way of making sure that they could actually make certain kinds of, certain kinds of punishments available for recalcitrant children like this. What is the result of all of this? Of course, you know, more and more the Bengali printing press, the vernacular printing press starts talking about the ways in which young men are being taken away from their families. And the question is then her sentiments, which is something that is peculiarly tricky in the way in which it is encoded in the Indian-Indian penal code, but it emerges out of this kind of, you know, caste disabilities removal paving the way for larger numbers of conversions. And essentially what Aqecomar Dotto, the great rationalist says when he's writing in the Bhagavad Gita, is that this has been a source of immense hurt and betrayal, not only at the familial level, but at the communitarian level and at the political level. So essentially, how do we place Gyanand Ramohan in this story? How do we talk about him in this story? Essentially, most of the material that we have on him that I found is at the British Library, including this, you know, series of series of letters. The story of the Indian Renaissance, if you will, and the story of abolitionism come together in a very, very surprising way. George Thompson, very well known radical abolitionist, essentially takes two trips to India, first in 1843 at the invitation of the Tagore family when he stays with Prashunna Kumar Tagore, Gyanand Ramohan's father, and takes part in Gyanand Ramohan's first marriage. And then, again, in 1856, when he comes back for another visit and finds that everything has changed in the intervening period of 13-14 years, he starts writing these immensely long letters to his daughter Amelia Chestin back in England, and the title of his letter about Gyanand Ramohan Tagore is the disinherited. Most of the information that we have about the inner domains of the Tagore family in Papadiyal Bhatta, suffering the loss of the sun and air is through this letter and through a series of pamphlets that talk about the two major protagonists, Gyanand Ramohan, and his first wife, Balashundari Tagore. Balashundari and Gyanand Ramohan's life as it is told by George Thompson is one of bibliophilia. It's a particular kind of built on straw money, if you will, a growing up story of a husband and wife, where they essentially undertake a particular kind of translation project that of the soul, that of the spirit through voracious reading. Gyanand Ramohan is very well educated, because he's the son and heir of the Papadiyal Bhatta family, but Prashanna Kumar assigns a British governess for his young daughter-in-law through whom she learns to read English. And the first book that she reads with her husband essentially is the Pilgrim's Progress. Then she reads the Methodist call for renewed evangelism, which becomes very, very important in the later part of the 18th century and early part of the 19th century. She goes on consistently reading a number of pamphlets about the goodness of Christianity versus the superstitious darkness of Hinduism. And from the letter, it seems very, very clear that this little girl who enters the Tagore family at age nine and dies at the age of 16 is very significantly important to Gyanand Ramohan's own steps towards conversion. How does this happen? Be fine. For the very first time, Bengali women being given their own voice and I cannot stress this enough. The first autobiography for Bengali woman, Rajshundari ladies are my words, comes out in 1876. Gyanand, George Thompson is writing about Gyanand Ramohan and Balashundari in 1856, 20 years before the publication of the Bengali woman's autobiography. And what is this voice? It is a very stern, determined voice of someone that is very, very young who says to her husband over and over again renounces affection towards Hinduism, renounces affection towards your father, towards the comforts of this great wealth that you've been born into. Choose to be a Christian because that is the only way in which you can have salvation. She contracts consumption because of course the activities of this young couple are not hidden from the wider family, which in 1851 is counted at 200 members, and Balashundari is over and over again told by her mother-in-law that she should renounce her families and take into account the long established Hindu traditions and rituals that are at her home. As a result of this, George Thompson says she contracts that very Victorian romantic disease of consumption and essentially that is why she wants to, you know, that is why, you know, she has this rapid consumption tuberculosis. Just before dying, she wants to be baptized. Of course, it's not possible. Prashanakumatagar does not allow anyone to enter into this inner sanctum, but she tells her husband, I die a Christian. This is the story embellished by many different kinds of details over the next 15 years, almost always coming from Gyanindra Mohan, which go on to lionize the way in which Gyanindra Mohan takes its decision to become a Christian. And what are the kinds of pamphlets that are being produced? We have the Eastern BBE gathered, for example, the memoir of Balashundari Tagore by Edward Storo, who himself go on to convert a number of young Gyanindra Mohan boys. We have a number of other pamphlets where again Balashundari seen as the catalyst for Gyanindra Mohan's heroic renunciation of his patronage. This is not actually the case as, as George Thompson tells us. Gyanindra Mohan is told by his preceptor Krishna Mohan Banerjee to wait until the passage of the cast Disabilities Removal Act or the Lexlose Act of 1551. Gyanindra Mohan's traditionally Balashundari dies right before this law is passed. As soon as this law is passed Krishna Mohan Banerjee, who was one of Gyanindra Mohan's preceptors at Bishop's College, essentially takes it upon himself to help this young man convert. There are a number of, you know, local newspapers like the Evangelical Record, the missionary mouthpiece of the of the Sarampur, a Sarampur Baptist, the friend of India, all of which say that that Prashanogumar Tagore keeps on trying to tell his son do whatever you wish to do in public by in private, don't convert publicly tells him that he's going to settle 2000 pounds on to him for every month as as as an allowance, and essentially Gyanindra Mohan tries his level best to stock his son from taking the very very public step. It does not work because in a way there is this now legal safeguard, which tells Prashanog, which which tells a Prashanogumar Tagore and which tells Gyanindra Mohan as well, that there is nothing that his father can actually do in order to disinherit. And his father essentially starts first the traditional methods of disinheritance, which is an erasure of Gyanindra Mohan from the families from the families of doc, you know, records and documents from the genealogical books so even today, if you take up something from the Tagore family or from the Duranshrako family, you will find him either not mentioned, as if he was never, you know, present as if he had never been born, or one single statement he converted to Christianity that is the entirety of his presence within this genealogical records. This was something that is very very common across families, which is why it's so very hard to, you know, retrieve this kind of convert voices from the archive. The second step that Prashanogumar takes, other than you know, raising his son out of the genealogical records is to create an entail on his estate, something that had never ever been done before. He makes the argument that the properties need to pass on to his nephew, Jyotindra Mohan Tagore, because Jyotindra Mohan would be able to take part in the traditional rites and rituals, including the last rites of his uncle, which would make him a legitimate inheritor of the properties and creates the conditions of the entail according to British law. This had never ever been done before in India. What is the result of this? We have the Great Tagore Wheel case, which goes on from 1867, immediately after Prashanogumar's death, to 1882, it goes up to the Privy Council, at which point, you know, the decision that is made is Jyotindra Mohan will have a life interest in the properties. Once Jyotindra Mohan passed away, the properties would revert back to Jyotindra Mohan Tagore. Something else happens that makes any kind of rapprochement between son and father completely impossible. And this is what I began my talk with. This very poorly preserved photograph, as you can see, the woman in a black gown sitting down is Prashanogumar Mohan Banerjee's daughter, Kamala, who, Kamala Mohan married. And, you know, essentially it is this marriage and children from this marriage that her Prashanogumar and the prestige of the Bathoryabhadra family in a particular way, which makes any kind of rapprochement completely impossible. What happens to this, to this young Christian convert family? There are a number of graves in and around Bishop's College, which essentially is now the Shippur Engineering College in Calcutta. The graveyard is run over with snakes and tall grass, no one is there to take care of it. Pomolative is mentioned only once or twice. Her grave is in the Park Street cemetery. I have not been able to find it. Many people say that it was completely destroyed. Gyanendra Mohan himself died in the early 1890s, so he did not outlive his cousin. His only daughter, Shruthendra Valla, surviving daughter, passed on the properties to the cousin, Shruthendra Mohan Tagore, because he outlived his, Gyanendra Mohan's entire family. And so it ultimately comes down to a question of inheritance. It comes down to a story of two whales. This is the record of Prashanna Kumar's, Kumar's will in the whales and probate papers, where he says there's just one sentence regarding this beloved son where he says I've made provisions for him, and he will receive nothing whatsoever under this. This is a man who makes provisions for the Tagore law lectures among other things. You know, donating more than 300,000 rupees to the Calcutta University, and those lectures are continuing to this day. It just erases his son, both out of the genealogy, and out of any inheritance that he might have had. Prashanna Kumar does this, but in 1882, when the Privy Council decides that, you know, there can be a reversion of their states back to Gyanendra Mohan. Gyanendra Mohan starts writing over and over again that he is the heir and reversion Prashanna Kumar. So on one hand there is this desire to erase on the other hand there is this very strong clinging on to a particular kind of identity. Gyanendra Mohan spends most of his last years as a teacher of Hindu law at London University and he gives a lecture, one of his lectures is recorded. He talks to the native Christians of India where he talks about religion and the impact of religion. And he talks about the way in which it is a realization of the moral life of a nation in corporate form. He stresses that a change of religion does not mean that there is a change of nationality and patriotism. Early Christian conversions mean people can be more nationalist and patriotistic, which is essentially against the nascent rise of Indian nationalism in the way we understand it. Gyanendra Mohan's nationalism and patriotism is very geared towards the support of the British government, the way in which nationalism starts being defined from the late 19th centuries, very, very different from this. Gyanendra Mohan say in his own bill, he again mentions his father, very, very briefly one sentence, where he just says, you know, he made no preparations for me as only son. And the way in which this is written the rest of the language of this will is very, very, you know, try legal ease, but that one sentence there should should give you a sense of the kind of abandonment that the son felt and the kind of disjunct from his own community that he felt as a result of this disinheritance. Gyanendra Bala, as I said the only surviving daughter of GM Tagore essentially, you know, has this has this poignant letter written in 1905, where she is impersonating the British crown just to show her support, so that she does not have to sign over her father's rights to his cousin, Gyanendra Mohan. It does not happen she, you know, signs it over for a pittance and die soon after of breast cancer the entire family is essentially wiped out within the course of 40 years or so. Again, in this letter you can find that very strong desire to claim a kind of Brahmin identity claim a particular kind of Indian identity which was erased as a result of the conversion. So what can this tell us about conversion, you know about conversion in Indian about Christianity in India. One, one hand over and over again Indian interlocutors Indian intelligentsia characterised Christianity and conversion as insincere as a result of material gains. The entire community creates a particular kind of hard and monolithic identity as a result of their profound anxieties and profoundly hostile reaction to Christian conversions. On the other hand, Christian converts keep on trying to make this make this plea that they're that they are not they do not exhibit mutilated cells that they are as much Indian as much tied to their communities of birth that there are possibilities of multiple kinds of ideas of identity that might exist. Why do I show you this picture of this burnt church, this is, you know, from the early 2010s, essentially, you know the ransacking of the of the church of James Skinner in Delhi. What this shows is, you know, this kind of insincere that the idea of insincere motives, the idea of material benefits occurring to Christianity is a narrative that has been flagrantly used by the current religious dispensation, political dispensation, in the right wing dispensation in India, which creates these conditions where it says no one can be a true Christian, they are only rice Christians. And as a result, you know, they can be reconverted curve opposite, if you will. The other result, of course, is to think of Indian Christians who have almost as long a history in India as that of Christianity itself, as outsiders and enemies, and this is the result of that finalizing taking away parts of their identity never ever thinking of them as belonging to the mainstream of the Indian nation. I will stop my talk here. Thank you very much. Thank you so much more for that fascinating presentation and for, you know, connecting it so well with the political situation, the religious situation, not just in India but in post colonial South Asia at the moment so thank you very much for that. And your talk was so pertinent to our project itself two centuries of Indian print, precisely because we have already digitized and made available online so many Christian tracks in translation in English and this is already available for users to download and you know consult online. So I won't take up any more time and I would like to invite the journey but that area to have a discussion with more. And in the meanwhile if the audience wants to put in their questions, please use a chat box for that and we'll take them off the discussion. Over to you they've done. Thank you. Thank you, Priyanka for that introduction and also for gathering us together and allowing me the chance to comment and engage with Dr more banerjee's really extraordinarily rich and generative work I was actually lucky to read the whole paper which I enjoyed thoroughly, and I'm really really excited for her upcoming books so with that I want to come and do on this wonderful paper and for presenting this historical narrative of elite conversion in Calcutta that in some ways, I thought is beautifully pulsating with the temper of the movement and came out very nicely when you laid out that slide of Calcutta mapping the spatiality of the debate and the sense of loss inheritance and that story. So I really loved it. And as someone who like more was trained and I'm calling you more I hope that's okay. In both literature and history. I also appreciated what you did in this paper. It is in some ways a methodological masterpiece in navigating between I thought in the written paper the three registers of the literary, the epistolary epistolary and the historical. I, my students often asked me how to use literature to do historical work. And I always say that literature can be the nose that allows you to sniff out the events that take on somewhat apocal or historical ramifications within the everyday folds of the moment you're investigating. And in some ways more I think your paper sort of is the best example to elucidate what I keep telling my students so I really love it. What more does for us is historicize conversion hurt loss and in this loss from community of in of wealth of material and social worlds in not just colonial India but it allows us a glimpse into understanding what's what is happening in the post colonial moment and by really going to this going through through this really deep and contextual reading of the Tagore well you are really opening up an entire histories of the kind of erasure kind of forgetting that puts this last slide in some ways like puts this last slide into relief of what exactly is going on in this in these stories from that begin you look it in the early 18 early 19th century and continue. I will not summarize this rich work but I will think of like ask you to think with me about a few points. And that came to my head and I am sorry I will begin with property because and I know like this is people say they've done it if you put they've done into conversation properties what she begins with I but anyway it's really made me think of the relation between conversion and wealth. And I liked what you did was you begin by saying like you know the, the fact that who tomb and everybody talks about reach conversion or miss reads conversion as kind of as as a cynical move as an insincere move as a move all located within the material world. And how do we move away from that and try to understand it on all its interiority all its spiritual understanding on what exactly is the communion between the individual and their understanding of God or spirituality or the Bible or the church or whatever that might be. And you say how do we begin from this miss reading, to really go somewhere else. And I thought it was amazing what you do and I really like the way you keep both the, both the spiritual world of the husband wife of of again and remote on his loss of community and the material together. But for me, I think it also raises a kind of an interesting methodological question. So what happens then if we want to go beyond this moment of miss reading, but yet our analytic and our historical lens is the bit precisely because of the way the debate has unfolded and what has left what are the archival traces that are left begins from property and begins from the will. So I want you to think about the relation between the rubric of the will that allows you to enter the story, the space of law and legal anxiety that you unpack to think through the religious anxieties and the emotional world of the religion that you're sort of unpacking. This made me think of, can we have also a cynical reading of the Lex Loka act and I don't, I haven't read the act so I might be completely wrong but you know I thought like okay this is Alexander Duff is invested in converting elites. Right. And of course you think about the kind of disciples you're bringing into your fold. Of course you Christianity will bring in poor like the wouldn't distinguish between wealth and wealth and poverty. But the idea is what happens when wealthy disciples come into your fold and come in with their properties. What sort of establishment of schools are enabled what sort of and again I'm doing exactly the kind of cynical reading of Duff's intention that you are telling us do not do off maybe Ganandram Mohan and Balas intention but I'm trying to understand. Can we continue to like what you are doing is you're asking us to say religious conversion and wealth are two stories we need to pay attention together but not read in some ways in a cynical manner but I'm trying to also do then how do we need this act together with not just like you know protecting the converted but also thinking through what it does for the church and the missionaries. So that's one large question I was trying to think through to one large question on an estate question then the other thing I really thought you did a beautiful job because you would not let us settle down on what is interiority and privacy and what is public. And if you bring you really like you say no these are not like let us be careful because these are not constant even if these are concepts we think we know your paper sort of de familiarizes us because because in one way this Balas spiritual awakening is very much a kind of a personal awakening but very much through her reading through her thinking she comes it is something that happens within this conjugal family of husband and the wife they are talking about it they're thinking through it and it is very much a you know it's this kind of as you say she's a she reads and she thinks through it's a kind of a strong strong will woman who's trying to under developer interiority and it is very much the buildings Roman kind of a motive through which one may read that and yet what is very interesting is like there is this other world that she tries to renounce the world of the Hindu tradition the world of worship the ritual that is playing out within the interior circles of the family so there is there is that kind of a semi privatized semi public space and then there is the public act of conversion that she asks her husband to do and there are two things happening so Proshanna Kumar is saying it's all right keep your religion private don't make it a public so here I kept thinking what is how do we map on this public and private in some times sometimes I feel maybe the Hindu traditions feel like a public religion is Christianity feels are really public and then I said no more would not let me settle on that and then I think oh this is the like the family versus the church or the missionaries but then that is also not the case so I think there is something interesting going on in the way what your texts and your reading of this moment is doing to the question of public private and precisely because there's so much written within South Asia and I'm thinking through Tony Kashorka's work but which is work on the question of the public private and you're completely like opening up this question really anew by entering through the act of Ganandram Mohan's public conversion which also made me think a little bit about the question of gender how do we read like Bala is central to his conversion although Bala's father is the reverent who's doing that but the really that if you want to read the way they both think about the theology they develop the theology in your paper you beautifully bring it out how they go from a unitary unitary unitarian thinking to a trinitarian thinking through Bala's kind of engagement in some ways. I was thinking how do we read this because when Bala is talking to him Bala says give up your religion and in a same language that give up your father and give up your wealth. So what is Bala saying how do we read Bala's giving up where she equates these three things together and if we have a gender lens on us what how do we read this daughter in law strong willed educated comes from as you pointed out socially much more upward caste than the Tagore's is demanding of her husband in within the conjugal you know within the entire writing of this conjugal marriage. What is she what how do we read this moment of of her gender demands on her marriage and her paternal family and its relation to Christianity. So there is and then the last thing and I like I want to end because I see there are already 10 questions here. The last thing I was thinking about the Brahmin Christian that Ganand Ramohan invokes the Hindu Christian that Tagore invokes in Akta Porichai. Are they the same thing and what's exactly happening because you know because Ganand Ramohan side wants to keep the Brahmin identity intact. He's the Brahmin Christian Surendra Bala wants to remain the Brahmin based whereas Tagore is thinking through a Hindu Christian. Maybe it's interchangeably used as the literature might suggest you know in the 19th mid 19th century Hindu Brahmin often ends up being the same thing, which also got me thinking about you know someone like Sanal Mohan's work on the modernity of slavery and you're saying if the if this if the convert this Brahmin Christian Hindu Christian and where Sanal would say the Dalit Christian is the site to understand the question of modernity. And the convert who is kind of destabilizing all this, how do we then place your story of elite conversion with the story of you know the Christianity that people are writing with the way they are reading the moment of conversion that they are reading. What Protestant missionaries are doing, how do you place these two together. And, and finally I was thinking and I think you begin to do that at the end of the paper how your work in some ways allows us to reflect, because your paper is very much on the social violence the material violence. In some ways in the post colonial moment we are actually seeing physical violence right in some ways and I think you really really allow us to understand that there's a longer history to this physical violence. And physical violence is a is is a culmination of the kind of long history of social economy political violence that has been taking place for a long time so I really thought this was really really amazing very very rich very and I'll end over here. Thank you so much more for this wonderful presentation. Thank you for that area. Thank you, thank you for this absolutely wonderful series of questions. You know, I will, because we have so many questions in the chat as well I just very want to quickly talk about talk about, you know, few of the points that you raise, which are also very very important. One is of course the question of the interiority and the exteriority of the cell. And in many ways, when you know we talk about a public self and a private cell to discount the ways in which this kind of division probably does not exist to believe in this is theoretically very generative perhaps or was generated in the last 30 years or so. But once we start thinking about it in realistic terms no human being the lives, one particular kind of life, completely separated from their public identity. What is happening in the case of Christian conversion is that kind of division now needs to be reinforced, both by the Hindu community and by the Christian evangelical project, because that translation has to be public for it to come, which is why Bala's understanding of herself Bala's creation of this gendered identity for herself in terms of making her own decisions strikes me very very you know strikes me as something that is completely revolutionary. Because in some way she's not only transgressing that interiority that understanding of the interiorization and the public performance of a particular kind of party. She's essentially attaching that to particular kinds of cultural traditional familial understanding of the role of a woman within the family, and she's stepping out of it and asking her husband to step out of this. This is not the Indian woman on whose body a particular kind of history can be written. She is not the mute subject of the history nationalist history. Most conversion narratives when they talk about to the women kind of privilege this sort of self making which is then generated for that public performance of this and in some way erasing that kind of division between the private This is very, very important. I have seen at least three papers who talk about Bala Shambhavi without any kind of you know attention towards the fact that she comes from this particular kind of background. She's not merely a figure in this evangelical, you know pamphlets as this generative ideas and Anna convert. And there is a historical background to her coming from an orthodox, but very highly influential aristocratic family like a puppy. Which grounds in particular ways the ways in which she thinks of herself and a relationship to which I think is something that needs to be taken seriously, not only in the ways in which we talk about Indian women but also in the general history, but also in the way we think about the women are not there to be groups. That is, that is, that is something that I want to say. The second question of course is this connection between the property between conversion, you know the space of legal and other anxieties which connect, you know, and I really like the way you say that can we do a cynical reading of this. Yes, I mean, the entire project is beset with cynicism in particular ways, which I think has done immense harm to the understanding of the space of minorities within. We all sort of think of bomb King Chandra Chatterjee and on the modern wishbrikko in 1880 as a moment in which you know the other to the Indian nationalist, you know, identity the Hindu, the Hindu religious identity which is essentially secularized starts happening. It happens much, much earlier in the decade beginning with 1820s and 30s when people like Ram Mohan Roy and Alexander tough are starting to talk about the ways in which particular kinds of relationships between the between spirituality between between religion between public performances and particular kinds of identities and between material wealth need to be taken into account. The Lexlose act read cynically and this is the way it is read by every Hindu commentator is essentially applied to actually take the wealth out of this Hindu connected families. Bring them into the public domain in such a way that it serves the British government better through this evangelical institutions. What do the evangelical institutions think there is a huge amount of money which is being spent by the institutions back at home, the CMS the church missionary society the London missionary society the Baptist mission funnel in a huge amount of money into the Indian mission at least in this moment of the 19th century. The immediate result of this is this mission trying to find sources of income, which are separate from the home institutions which would allow them more, you know, a more kind of relaxed way in which in relaxed, but more ways in which to understand Indian culture and make the evangelical project better success. One of the ways to do that of course is to ensure that anyone who comes into the boat into Christianity comes with their properties intact, which means that they are not hesitant about conversion, thereby leading to an increase in the numbers of conversions. But it also means materially there is some benefit and that note the home institutions or the missions, no longer have to think about the financial question. The overall part of this question of courses because over and over again missionary institutions are targeted and told that you give out money and you give out material benefits and that is why people convert. Once the Lexlose Actors passed they think if people come in with their properties they are no longer dependent on this missions that puts an end to that kind of negative cynical reading of the evangelical project. The fact that someone like, you know, Prasanna Kumar Tagore so easily able to subvert it is also a way in which, you know, we understand that the legal arena becomes another arena of contestation about identities, and the ways in which this, you know, Hindu community is trying to essentially harden the boundaries between itself, and those who are, you know, members of that same community who are therefore greater betrayers and traitors than than anyone who could come from outside. So there is that aspect and the way in which you know the Lith Christian with the hyphen Brahmin Christian with the hyphen, so many of these people that I have studied over the course of the 19th and 20th century seem to find their identity connected to that hyphen. It is that particular hyphenated multiple identity, which people do not seem to be able to hold on to, especially after 1872, and the sensors, which essentially means that you have to declare only one particular identity and not another. So we have, you know, Ganindra Mohan Tagore calling himself a Brahmin Christian, thereby giving himself not only a Hindu identity but the most elevated Hindu identity that he could, trying to see that he still had that kind of, you know, you know, spiritual ability to care for the traditions and rituals of his own family while at the same time being a Christian, and that is related to the clause of, you know, the clause of fitness in order to inherit which, which Prashant Guman adds to the, to the NTU that he creates. The second, you know, anybody else who is writing thereafter, for example, Bhavanicharan Bhandavadhyay, who we know as Brahmavandavadhyay later on, any of the other bigger names within this including Bhavanicharan's uncle to whom Gandhi goes to, he goes to learn about Christianity, continuously define themselves as belonging to both their communities of birth and to their Christian identity. They do not in any way disentangle those identities. However, both British law and Indian nationalism essentially make sure that that hyphenated identity does not hold any meaning and they have to choose either one or the other. I think in some ways what Dalit Christianity has managed to do that has come with the liberation theology that has come with a particular understanding of the political nature of this kind of conversions is go beyond that loss of the hyphen and create a particular ground, which essentially is not so much for the destabilization of Hindu communities, but for creating a particular kind of identity, politically more upwardly mobile and they were able to gather more resources, which in the 19th and early 20th century, these converted Christians. We can have other, you know, more discussions about your absolutely fantastic questions later on. Thank you, Mo. I think there are loads of questions waiting for you and they have started coming in when the discussions were on. And the first question I'm going to take them in order. The first question is by Brian Madonna. Where does the Roman Catholic Church fit into the dynamics you so ably present. As a Roman Christian, the Catholic Church in India has a much longer history than that of evangelism Protestant evangelism. As as we all know the, you know, Catholic project in India starts with the coming of Vasco the gamma the coming of the part of our door. There are some more accepting and forgiving of particular kinds of syncretic accommodations, which essentially means if certain communities convert. And this is very, very common in the early history of the church in the in the 16th and 17th century, for example, where it's not one elite individual but entire communities who convert to Catholicism. And this is this is essentially because they're very, very charismatic, Catholic, you know, Catholic preachers months Jesuits who are coming in I think I saw a question about the same area as college and as well I'll come to that in a bit. But at the same time it is also very, very interesting to understand that in this in the 16th and 17th century. There's a very, very moderate kind of political struggle which is going on in southern and southwestern India, which is the Catholicism flourishes between the Mughal government. The Portuguese coming in with their, you know, with their own imperial invasions. And last but not least the kind of piracy which is going on in terms of you know, trade in the Indian Ocean arena and many of these communities which essentially convert. their social metrics intact are trying to figure out who to go to in order to find more political maneuvering. So in some senses this sort of conversion is very, very different from the protest and evangelical process that is happening in Calcutta, the capital of the British, you know, imperial government in the 18th and 19th century. And these syncretic practices essentially make it far easier for an accommodation of Catholicism than any kind of this kind, you know, Protestantism does not is has never been welcoming of syncretic practices. And that is where I think in some ways a friction starts which is why political identity becomes much more of an important question. Then I think it happens with widespread communitarian conversion practices in the case of the Roman Catholic project. What does that mean violence against minorities, there is talk, you know, most of the attacks starting with the 1980s, you know, mass riots. Most of them have happened in Southern India and in Oresa and other places. So to this long, very long lived communities of faith. And that is that is something, you know, do I think the Hindu right wing. It really does not matter if you were a Protestant or a Roman Catholic or you know, you know, Nazarene or Syrian Christian. The very idea that you were a Christian is enough to, you know, in brand and entire community as an outsider or as a treaty. And that is also something that simplification in black and white. Thank you, Mo. The next question is from Philomena Harrison. Can either of you comment on the legacy of the past, including colonialism and empire on Christians in India today. Oh, very wide question. Two things that I should mention, of course, as I keep, you know, kept on saying in the first part of my lecture, the numbers of converts in India never at least in British India never ever go beyond more than 1.5% that holds stable stable between 1850 and 20. That holds stable now. The Christian population in India is more or less at, you know, 2.3% about 2728 million, you know, million people. That never ever goes past that so there are many kinds of associated, you know, of cynical readings if you will appreciate you one of which of course is attributed to the Muslim minority communities as well, which is a demographic destabilization. That was never ever a case that was not even on the horizon as a threat to the large demographics of Hindus and Muslims in India in the 19th century. That's one. One of this is a more interesting thing and it comes with the pedagogical angle. If you ask any Indian who can, you know, who can speak in English, where they got their education from 80% of them will tell you they went to a missionary run institution. And they read the Bible and they know the Lord's prayer by heart and, you know, they celebrate Christmas with as much customers as possible, without in any way converting at all. One of my colleagues calls this a secular conversion and not very sure that I want to call it that. But that outside impact in the creation of a particular kind of secular understanding of different kinds of religiosity. Essentially, it's the gift of Christianity in India and that is something that we really cannot discount and should not. Thank you, Mo. The next question is from Miss Ann Rahman. Excellent presentation though I wonder if you could elaborate a little on the spiritual anxiety of the educated converted individuals in Bengal. I think that because the spirituality of an educated person like Ganindra Mohan came with a high sense of enlightenment, individualism and progress that should have met the loss, he might have felt for leaving his previous religious community. I would also be great. It would also be great to know how Ganindra Mohan dealt with the spiritual anxiety he had with conversion. Thank you. Looking forward to reading your book. Thank you very much, Miss Ann. Again, it's a complicated question and I'll try and answer it as much as I can. The first conversions of 107 conversions that I you know the list of which I showed you in my presentation are all high cast Hindu boys who essentially are very well educated. Most of them go to Hindu College, many of them go to the General Assembly's institution in terms of the literacy, you know, factor in India at that particular point of time below one person for males, almost non existent for women. These are absolutely the most well educated. Many of them also come into contact with this enlightenment ideas through certain receptors like de Rosio in Calcutta, for example, and the inherited tradition which is inherently rationalistic one, you know, two of the favorite authors whose books sell out almost as soon as the Indian shores are David Hume and Adam Smith. What explains this shift from this rational enlightenment, you know pedagogy to an understanding of Christianity as a path to enlightenment. That is very, you know, that is something that I have, I have tried to understand. And there are strands of it, which essentially tie that enlightenment to a Christian enlightenment. That is what Eric Stokes in his classic book English utilitarians in India, essentially tries to show when he says that that kind of deep Protestant faith is at the very, you know, base of the kind of paternalistic utilitarian reforms that are being undertaken in India and none of this very well educated people are actually uninformed about what it might mean to convert to Christianity. How do they make come to terms with this loss in the case of Ganandram Mohan as I said, you know as soon as this, you know, soon as this people cross that threshold get out of the cold become converts. It's very difficult to find any kind of archival trace because they are being erased in Ganandram Mohan's case that pamphlet that I talked about which he essentially dedicates to the native Christians of India. There's some sort of understanding of how he thinks about himself. And again, when he calls himself a brown and Christian he's allocating to himself a particular kind of spiritual authority, which is trying to portray as doubly beneficial, because he is traveling those two worlds of Hindu religiosity and Christian enlightenment, and thereby is better placed to show to the people of India that it's converted Christians, who in some ways bridge the gap between the ruler and the Christian, that is what he is trying to do. That is where his consolation lies. Is this actually true, not really know, because I again as we find that, you know, among other people, Ganandram Mohan's classmate Michael move should on doctor, another very well known Indian converted Christian one of, you know, best poets to come out of India. In the 19th century, let's a life of absolute penury and and dies in poverty. Because again, none of these promises, which this educated Christians thing are going to be fulfilled one big once they cross that Rubicon, none of the ideas of racial equality which they think will immediately come to them. Once they become Christians are actually happening. They essentially have no space, either within the community that they left or that the community that the aspiration and you want to belong to. So, what do you find in you know Michael move should on doctor is the make not work up where essentially you know the villain figure is the one that is lion eyes rubber rubber rubber is lion eyes. Whereas, you know, in people like Ganandram Mohan for all his efforts. That is the one copy of that pamphlet that I've ever found anywhere in any part of the world. And if the British library did not exist. The story probably could not have been told. So essentially there are anxieties and those are born out in repeated series of losses the loss of you know, if you go to the bishops bishops, the bishops college which is now they should put into college, you go look at the Braves. This two people who are married for less than eight years, lose about five children in the span of those eight years. This marriage loss, you know, Kamala Banerjee and Ganandram Mohan last eight years because she herself is dying of tuberculosis. And out of all of the children, only one of you know survives her father and then her grave is grave cannot be found. Her mother's grave cannot also be found her father's grave I have no way of tracing. I have not found a photograph or a painting of Ganandram Mohan anywhere. What does this essentially tell us it tells us that in particular ways identity formation happens in India which raises out any sort of, you know, difference that might crop up as a result of religious and that in a way narrowed the space of the discourse of nationalism itself as well. So if all of us start writing only about middle class, aspirationally upper middle class and elite Bengali men and Hindu Bengali men. So we are talking about a very partial, you know, Indian nationalism as well, which has done immense damage to our understanding of India in the present day. Thank you. I think we have time for just one question. We are running out of time. So I'll take the question by from Melanie Johnson. What is current, what is the current situation with Christianity inheritance conversion in India is conversion allowed our converts accepted in 21st century India or they are forced to reconvert to Hinduism. Are these people descended inherited in current political climate. The answer to that question is yes. What happens immediately after independence is a number of Hindu number of sorry number of Indian states, which used to be Hindu princely kingdoms for example, including a number of western Indian states, like Rajasthan like British and the eastern Indian state of Orissa, essentially pass freedom of religion ads, which essentially are a way to stop conversion. Freedom of religion in this case does not mean the freedom of religion to preach one's own faith which is enshrined in the Indian Indian Constitution, but rather the freedom to have a particular kind of Hindu identity, and have that, you know, be the same as it was in the era of princely kingdoms and of princely rulers. What are the, what are the penalties that these that these kinds of freedom of religion, you know, acts impose upon the people well for a very long time it was about, you know, about 750 rupees and about, you know, one year's imprisonment. But what this did, even though material material terms, those are very light light terms, what this did was give immense amount of power to the bureaucracy and to the to the to the police, for example, or the army to intimidate converted Christians to stop them from carrying out, you know, rituals and traditions of their own faith. It stopped missionaries from setting up schools. And now in the present day it has led to a number of riots, even when there are no elite conversions only tribal conversions. We know that the RSS at the rush response even some has this huge carapacee are coming back into the full programs, which again in the emerging the in the 19th century with with Swami Dan and others. And essentially there is this initiated atmosphere but that particular you know, narrative narrative of cynicism and suspicion essentially talks about Christianity is something that is not organic something that can be thrown off at any any moment of time. We all know. I don't know if all of us know but it's certainly something that was very important to me. We are coming upon the 20th, 20th anniversary of the of the brutal burning of the missionary Graham Stains and his two young sons by a member of the Kandala fringe outfit associated with ours is in Orissa in in the last 10 years we have had the Kandamal riots they have had the gang rape of a nun and only three or four days ago of four nuns were actually, you know, without a warrant taken and arrested by the Indian police to make sure that they were not illegally converting people anywhere. So are these people that is inherited. Yes, they are disinherited in terms of access to education. They are disinherited in terms of access to actually, you know, publicly proclaiming their own identities they're disinherited that in that at any moment at any, you know, in any any legal, you know, judicial or or executive, you know, relief that they might claim will not be not be taken seriously by the kind of dispensers dispensation. What does this done again as I keep on saying I think, like, like, you know, is this essentially taken out every sort of diversity which might have enriched Indian culture. And we are beginning to see a kind of homogenization which which is not Indian in any sense. Thank you. Thank you to both more Banerjee and give Johnny but a chair for that fascinating session. A lot of food for thought there and I'm eagerly looking forward to both your monographs. And thank you to the audience for joining us tonight. Our next talk will be by Dr. Davesh sony G next month on the 19. And he will be speaking on occluded Muslim histories of modern South Indian raga based music. The session will be chaired by Dr. Anna Schultz from University of Chicago. So please join us. And thank you have a good evening, and stay well and stay safe. Thank you. Thank you so much this was such an excellent presentation. Thank you.