The Unconquered People The Liberation of an Oppressed Caste

This book explores the history and ethnography of the Chandala of classical literature, now known as Punjabi Christians. Mapping their history of conquest and religiously-endorsed degradation, it discusses their subversive counter-narrative through genealogies, wedding songs, litanies and epic poetry; with its defiant proclamation of identity. Rites of passage disclose an unreconstructed patriarchalism, where ritualized sexual joking is a form of equality creation. Eclecticism in their religious sensibilities, indicates how superficial adherence to the externals of major religions, was a survival tactic. Their hidden religion and exclusion from Hindu dharm, shows why they never saw themselves as 'Hindus.' It traces how one group, Mazhabi Sikhs, became a model of social mobility, how their economic world was transformed in the Chenab Canal Colonies and how a new identity began with the founding of Christian villages. It analyses their embracing of Christianity as a 'Tactics of Consumption,' noting the factors that contributed to a turn towards Catholicism. It observes their growing exclusion due to the Islamization of Pakistan. Cautioning against the suppression of the 'memory' of oppression, it argues that seeing themselves as a lineage of belief and praxis, can give meaning to their on-going historical struggle.