The Context of The Subhedar’s Son

This chapter discusses different social questions that were important for Brahmin conversion in the nineteenth-century Marathi mission. It begins with the racialization of religion at the mission, highlighting the question of rescued African slaves and the importance of retaining caste status among upper-caste converts. The chapter explores how caste identity among Brahmin converts in Nasik was produced from experiences of ostracism and oppression. While European missionaries oppressed native converts, Hindu Brahmins from Nasik ostracized Christians, who were disallowed from entering Nasik and lived in a Christian inhabitation called Sharanpur. The Subhedar’s Son is a perfect example of a conversion biography that simultaneously highlights Brahmin-Christian ancestry and the discrimination meted out to converts by Hindus. The book also demonstrates how writing about conversion and Christianity utilized borrowed emotions and experience from an entire vernacular literary domain that inscribed religious modernity and individual emancipation.

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