Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-mp689 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T15:38:08.267Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Mass Movement, Famine and Epidemic A Study in Interrelationship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Dick Kooiman
Dick Kooiman
Affiliation:
Amsterdam Free University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Meenakshipuram is a small, dusty village in Tamilnadu's Tinnevelly (Tirunelveli) district, very close to the south Kerala border. In 1981 this inconspicuous place, and several other villages in its immediate vicinity, made big headlines in the Indian daily papers when thousands of harijans or ex-untouchables decided to leave Hinduism and to embrace Islam. This spectacular case of mass conversion created a terrible shock among caste Hindus and threatened to upset the always precarious communal balance. Rumours circulated about Arabian sheikhs who had come to give tangible expression to the immense richness of Islamic belief by handsome distributions of oildollars. More serious investigation, however, showed that the harijans in this region had been suffering from oppression by aggressive landlords, harassment by police authorities and acute prejudices by caste Hindus for a very long time. A growing awareness of this social degradation has led many of these harijans to convert to Islam.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , May 1991 , pp. 281 - 301
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bhatia, B. M. 1963. Famines in India: A Study in some Aspects of the Economic History of India (1860–1945), London.Google Scholar
Boel, J. 1975. Christian Mission in India: A sociological analysis, Amsterdam: Graduate Press.Google Scholar
Bucher, , Hubert, , 1980. Spirits and Power: An Analysis of Shona Cosmology, Cape Town: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Forrester, Duncan B. 1977. ‘The Depressed Classes and Conversion to Christianity, 1860–1960’, in Oddie, G. A. (ed.), Religion in South Asia: Religious conversion and Revival Movements in South Asia in Medieval and Modern Times, New Delhi: Manohar.Google Scholar
Gladstone, J. W. 1984. Protestant Christianity and People's Movements in Kerala: A Study of Christian Mass Movements in Relation to Neo-Hindu Socio-Religious Movements in Kerala, 1850–1936, Trivandrum: The Seminary Publications.Google Scholar
Hacker, I. H. 1908. A Hundred Years in Travancore 1806–1906: A History and Description of the Work Done by the L M S in Travancore, South India, London: H. R. Allenson.Google Scholar
Kooiman, , Dick, , 1984. ‘The Gospel of Coffee: Mission, Education and Employment in Travancore (19th century)’, in Kooiman, , Dick, , van den Muyzenberg, Otto and van der Veer, Peter (eds), Conversion, Competition and Conflict: Essays on the Role of Religion in Asia, Amsterdam: Anthropological Studies Free University 6, pp. 185–215.Google Scholar
Kooiman, , Dick, , 1989. Conversion and Social Equality in India: The London Missionary Society in South Travancore in the Nineteenth Century, New Delhi: Manohar; Amsterdam: Free University Press.Google Scholar
Kumar, , Dharma, , 1965. Land and Caste in South India: Agricultural Labour in the Madras Presidency during the Nineteenth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kuper, , Adam, , 1979. ‘The Magician and the Missionary’, in van den Berghe, P. L. (ed.), The Liberal Dilemma in South Africa, London: Tavistock, pp. 77–96.Google Scholar
Lardinois, , Roland, , 1985. ‘Famine, Epidemics and Mortality in South India: A Reappraisal of the Demographic Crisis of 1876–1878’, in Economic and Political Weekly, XX: 11, pp. 454ff.Google Scholar
Mateer, S. no date. ‘The Pariah Caste in Travancore’, in L M S Archives, Odds, Box 15/mf.1099–1100 (also in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, XVI New Series 1884, pp. 180–95).Google Scholar
Mathew, , George, , 1982. ‘Politicization of Religion: Conversions to Islam in Tamil Nadu’, in Economic and Political Weekly, XVII: 25, pp. 1027ff. and XVII: 26, pp. 1068ff.Google Scholar
Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap: bijdragen tot de kennis der zending en der taal-, land- en volkenkunde van Nederlandsch Indië, Rotterdam, vol. XXIX (1885)ff.Google Scholar
Paulose, E. M. 1980. ‘The Protestant Missionaries and Social Reforms in Travancore: 1806–1865’, Unpublished Master Thesis, Department of History, University of Calicut.Google Scholar
Roberts, M. W. 1966. ‘Indian Estate Labour in Ceylon during the Coffee Period (1830–1880)’, in The Indian Economic and Social History Review, III: 1 pp. 1–34, III: 2, pp. 101–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wesumperuma, D. 1978. ‘Unindentured Indian Labour Overseas: Plantation Labour in British Ceylon’, paper submitted to VIth European Conference on Modern South Asian Studies, Paris.Google Scholar
Yesudas, R. N. 1980. The History of the London Missionary Society in Travancore 1806–1908, Trivandrum: Kerala Historical Society.Google Scholar