Ninth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

In this paper, I hope to reformulate the notion of religious conversion and broaden the meanings that conversion has attained in the socio-cultural imagination of contemporary India. Focusing upon the narratives of conversion among inter-religious couples and families, I intend to provide descriptions of the diverse ways in which religious conversion is experienced within inter-religious domestic spaces. A study of conversion among inter-religious families is very crucial to understand the transformation of religious subjectivities in the everyday of multi-religious spaces. My research focuses mainly on the daily observance of piety, the engagement with religious beliefs, practices and also addresses questions of religious identity, All these are crucially tied to the gendered subjectivities and conjugal life of my interlocutors as the site of my research is the family and the inter-religious domestic space. Therefore, I engage with narratives of conversion placed at the interstices of gendered and religious difference. This paper shall be based upon fieldwork conducted among inter-religious couples and families in the cities of Delhi, Muzaffarnagar and also among the South Asian diaspora in Canada and the United States. The fieldwork was conducted in early 2016 and late 2017 as a part of my Masters and M.Phil research work. In detailing the narratives of my interlocutors I hope to investigate and problematize the ontological character of conversion in inter-religious domestic spaces and contribute to the discourse around inter-religious marriages, conversion and the everyday of religious life.