Search

This paper argues that manifestations of the sacred in Hollywood biblical spectaculars, as well as in films from Bollywood (the Hollywood of Bombay), have been significantly contoured by a reticulate set of oral norms. That is, the films' depictions of hierophany are tied to a way of knowing that maintains roots in orality (as distinct from a way of knowing historically permitted and/or induced by a cultural investment in the written word). Such orally inflected norms as epical and exoteric abundance, melodrama, frontality, and a telescoping of the real into the mythic compel us to re-think the common critical assumption that religious spectaculars are not authentically manifesting the sacred or that they can only be operating as escapist metaphors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines two celebrated cases of the conversion of Indian youths to Christianity by missionaries in Bombay: the case of Dhanjibhai Nauroji of 1839 and the case of Shripat Sheshadri of 1843. The cases were precedents in Indians challenging Christian conversion by way of the law courts, and highlight the adaptive responses of the Parsi and Hindu communities of Bombay and western India to Christian proselytism, and the attractions and challenges of the larger colonial environment to Indians' ability to regulate and safeguard their community and caste norms. The article argues that in response to Christian proselytism and colonial power and ideology, Indians utilized traditional and non-traditional mechanisms that ultimately led to challenges, accommodations, and reassessments of Indians' place under the ideological framework of colonialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]