Munda “Conversions” in Two Missionaries’ Narratives

Abstract This article focuses on the conversion narratives of two fathers of the Belgian Jesuit mission in Bengal (India), Joseph Müllender and Johan-Baptist Hoffmann, among the Munda Adivasi minority. Their letters (1881–1927) offer contrasting accounts of conversion as motivated by preaching and the theological superiority of Christianity over so-called ‘spirit worship’ on the one hand, and by socio-political and agrarian issues as well as literacy on the other. Published material by Hoffmann (notably the Encyclopedia Mundarica , 1930–1937) completes our perspective on Munda cosmology and politics as on its Jesuit translation. Finally, an article from 1928 gives us the perspective of a young Jesuit-educated Adivasi on the same subject.