ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses that the post-colonial state has been manned by hegemonic upper class-castes with an ethos of 'brahmanic cunning'. Gorringe's revelations regarding the increasingly 'Brahminical' behaviour of the Viduthalai Ciruthaigal Katchi's (VCK's) leadership are very worrying: unfortunately, its rhetoric has a new emphasis on the 'chastity' and 'respectability' of women. The book describes an evolution in the consciousness of urban Dalit women evangelists, whose mobility, voice and feminist ambitions are enkindled and steadily enlarged by their new Pentecostal ethos of radical egalitarianism. It indicates that location/space is the key: particularly vicious treatment is meted out to Dalits in rural India because this is where the local dominant castes are still able to control Dalits and to exploit Dalit labour. The book offers intriguing studies of largely female Christian conversions that also constitute new forms of urban subaltern politics.
