ABSTRACT
The main aspect of conversions to Christianity that often heckled the advocates of an emerging Hindu nationalism in the colonial period was the entrance of the converts into a new community which, in turn, implied the diminution of the number of Hindus. In the forms of Dalit Christianity that are being developed, the Christian attempts to indigenise the gospel into 'higher' caste Hindu idioms are criticised as being complicit in the continuing oppression of Dalits throughout the country. The debates over the mass conversions of the 'lower' castes to Christianity and Buddhism and the allegation that such conversions were driven by fraudulent means have to be located in the political context, for with the British government's creation of 'communal' Hindu and Muslim electorates the question of whether the 'lower' castes were to be regarded as Hindus became an intensely volatile matter.
