Entangled Faiths: Christian Missions, Indigenous Agency and the Politics of Conversion in Colonial South Asia

Drawing on Farrukh Ahmad’s poem ‘Panjeri’ as a metaphor for historiographical fog, this forum essay argues that Christian missions in South Asia are best understood not as one-directional imperial projects, but as uneven, reciprocal encounters shaped by Indigenous agency. Through a comparative analysis of Mou Banerjee’s The Disinherited, Chandra Mallampalli’s South Asia’s Christians, and Md Shaikh Farid and Liz Jackson’s Can the Church Be Decolonized?, it traces how conversion was co-produced through law and property disputes, schooling and gendered reform, print culture and vernacular theology, and everyday ritual practice. Moving across colonial Bengal, a region-wide South Asian frame, and postcolonial Bangladesh, the article investigates four themes—epistemic crossroads, the politics of conversion, colonial authority and theological power, and gendered educational change—to illuminate how Christian subjectivities emerged amid caste, kinship, institutional constraint and creative negotiation. It underscores the continuing stakes of these histories for decolonisation debates and minority life today.