From Heart to Mind: The Basel Protestant Mission and «Lower-Caste» Billavas
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Date
2024
Publication Type
Journal Article
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yes
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Abstract
This article explores the attitudes of the 19th-century Basel Mission (BM) towards individuals considered «lower caste» in South India. It analyses discourses related to the regulation and administration of the body and mind, with the aim of producing social categories and shaping a society that adhered to Protestant norms. Using missionary photographs, narratives, annual reports, and booklets, the dominant conception of religious conversion is problematized, generally defined as a change in one’s «spiritual being». This article argues that conversion in non-European settings was entangled with multiple meanings of self-transformation centred around the complex duality of body and mind. In Protestant thinking, the mind was prioritised because it dealt with the «Word of God», while the heart, which represented bodily passions, emotions, and desires, needed to be individually tamed.
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published
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Volume
74 (1)
Pages / Article No.
5 - 30
Publisher
Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Geschichte
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03814 - Fischer-Tiné, Harald / Fischer-Tiné, Harald