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"""This rare account of Christian conversion uses family history as the basis for wide-ranging exploration of the social hazards and the emancipatory possibilities of vernacular Christianity, and the place of the upper-caste convert in it. Dandekar has provided readers with a multi-layered, multi-voiced text which addresses social histories of reform and modernizing self-realization, the ethicality of 'faith,' and the politics of translation between Hindu bhakti and nonconformist Christianity that enabled acts of conversion to preserve the tissue of caste and community. This is an important and enduring contribution to religious studies, autobiography, and social history, and a literary tour de force!""--Anupama Rao, author of The Caste Question: Dalits and the Politics of Modern India ""The Subhedar's Son is the life story of a Brahmin convert to Christianity. Written in Marathi some hundred years ago, it nevertheless resonates in this moment as a powerful record of the fragmentation of identity around caste, gender, and religion. In Deepra Dandekar's hands this English translation speaks to the present complexities of Indian social life. Dandekar surrounds Sawarkar's text with essays conveying deep and often personal insights about context, narrative structure, cultural history, and the contemporary politics of religion. Enfolding literary studies, ethnography, history, religious studies, and memoir, Dandekar's work is a shining example of how translation ought to be done.""--Christian Lee Novetzke, author of The Quotidian Revolution ""This new translation offers a window into the fascinating world of a 19th-century Maharashtrian convert, as he tries to integrate regional political history with his own social and spiritual struggles in the form of a Marathi novel. Even more powerful is Dandekar's keen analysis and boldly intimate reflections on the complex interplay of alienation and relative privilege in the lives of Brahmin converts to Christianity and their descendants.""--Jon Keune, Assistant Professor of South Asian Religions, Michigan State University"

This rare account of Christian conversion uses family history as the basis for wide-ranging exploration of the social hazards and the emancipatory possibilities of vernacular Christianity, and the place of the upper-caste convert in it. Dandekar has provided readers with a multi-layered, multi-voiced text which addresses social histories of reform and modernizing self-realization, the ethicality of 'faith, ' and the politics of translation between Hindu bhakti and nonconformist Christianity that enabled acts of conversion to preserve the tissue of caste and community. This is an important and enduring contribution to religious studies, autobiography, and social history, and a literary tour de force! --Anupama Rao, author of The Caste Question: Dalits and the Politics of Modern India The Subhedar's Son is the life story of a Brahmin convert to Christianity. Written in Marathi some hundred years ago, it nevertheless resonates in this moment as a powerful record of the fragmentation of identity around caste, gender, and religion. In Deepra Dandekar's hands this English translation speaks to the present complexities of Indian social life. Dandekar surrounds Sawarkar's text with essays conveying deep and often personal insights about context, narrative structure, cultural history, and the contemporary politics of religion. Enfolding literary studies, ethnography, history, religious studies, and memoir, Dandekar's work is a shining example of how translation ought to be done. --Christian Lee Novetzke, author of The Quotidian Revolution This new translation offers a window into the fascinating world of a 19th-century Maharashtrian convert, as he tries to integrate regional political history with his own social and spiritual struggles in the form of a Marathi novel. Even more powerful is Dandekar's keen analysis and boldly intimate reflections on the complex interplay of alienation and relative privilege in the lives of Brahmin converts to Christianity and their descendants. --Jon Keune, Assistant Professor of South Asian Religions, Michigan State University

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Deepra Dandekar, Researcher, Max Planck Institute of Human Development, Berlin Deepra Dandekar completed her training in history, anthropology and archaeology at Delhi University (St. Stephen's College) and Deccan College, Pune. Subsequently, she trained as an internee at various Non-Governmental Organizations in Pune on research projects concerning gender, religion and health. She has researched and published on women's health rituals, and the religious expression of political minorities in Maharashtra at the South Asia Institute and the Cluster for Excellence, University of Heidelberg. She is currently working on the research project on migration and exclusion at the Max Planck Institute of Human Development, Berlin.

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