ABSTRACT
This essay argues that gender was central to the racialization of religion during the British colonial period, which legitimized the domination of Hindus (and people of other religions) by Christians on the basis of fixed characteristics assigned to the bearers of each religion. At this time, as in many others, gender differences were used, rhetorically and in practice, to reinforce, contest or undermine the very boundaries constructed between “Christians” and “Hindus.” Two case studies illuminate the centrality of gender in the negotiation of interreligious boundaries in South Asia: the semi-licit sexual relationships that Christian European men established with Indian women during the East India Company (EIC) period and the tumultuous career of Pandita Ramabai, a Brahmin convert to Christianity who achieved worldwide fame on the late nineteenth-century lecture circuit and whose life exemplifies the complexity of religious boundary management at the height of British colonial rule.
