Author Description

About the Author John O'Brien was born in Ireland where he studied Science, Education and Theology. His doctoral thesis at the Gregorian University Rome, was entitled 'The Hermeneutical Privilege of Poor.' He worked as a teacher in Sierra Leone, as a community activist in inner-city Dublin and lectured widely inReligious Studies. He first came to Pakistan in 1977 and has spent 25 years there working among its minorities in a variety of educational and development projects, while engaging in dialogue with Islam. He has lectured and conducted workshops in many countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and LatinAmerica. At present he is involved in community development in Sindh while also conducting research in Sufism. Product Description 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 epicpoetry; 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 asurvival 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 withthe 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.