ABSTRACT
Caste boundaries have proved to be considerable obstacles to the spread of conversion. Protestant mass movements among the Karta Bhajas at Krishnagar in Bengal, and among the Nadars or Shanars, a caste of rather indeterminate social status in the south of the Tamil country, had got under way in the early nineteenth century. Missionary sources are frequently aware in a rather simplistic way of a connection between the start of a mass movement and a period of famine. In Telugu country, mass movements developed among two untouchable castes, the Malas and Madigas, who had perennial disputes about their relative status. In several places the mass movements among Malas and Madigas in the Telugu country sparked off individual conversions or even small-scale group conversions among other castes rather higher in the scale, some of them ranking as Sudra castes. The case of the Nadars or Shanars of Tamilnadu is one of the best documented and most interesting of all mass movements.
