Comparative History as World History: Religious Conversion in Modern India

Abstract

In the period from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century, the vast majority of the Naga peoples of northeastern India converted to Christianity. This article explores the reasons for this extraordinary phenomenon—in Asia, second only in magnitude to the conversion of the Philippine population—and examines the different rates of conversion among Naga communities. It also tests the usefulness of models of religious change generated from fieldwork on conversion in Africa—in particular, Robin Horton's "intellectualist" theory. In this sense the article is an essay in comparative history, and it argues for the usefulness of the comparative method for world history.