In its most obviously stated form, conversion is a change of religion, but when we consider the problems that studies of conversion tackle, the term no longer remains so simple. Whether one wants to understand forms of identity, study the anatomy of religiously motivated social and political movements, criticize the means by which conversion occurred—voluntarily or involuntarily—or determine whether an instance of conversion was sincere and agentive rather than forced, the term conversion is largely descriptive of an experience that we have already interpreted. The interpretation of that experience, however, is distinct across studies and disciplines, and frequently, in terms that converts themselves would not recognize.
Political scientists have tended to conceptualize religious conversion in terms of an event: something sudden, definite, complete, and immediate. Conversion is explicitly explained as a strategic response to changing external circumstances, whereby individuals and groups rationally but dramatically choose to alter their religious lives, whether by changing their creedal affiliation or by adopting one for the first time. Anthropologists, on the other hand, have focused on conversion less as a matter of subjective or inner belief or choice and instead as a field of collective social and cultural transformations produced because of or in reaction against the foreign religious ideology. In particular, anthropologists tend to emphasize syncretism, or the amalgamation of new religious and cultural practices with pre-existing ones, in cases where conversion was politically mandated. That is, they focus on continuity rather than rupture.
What the theoretical lens of syncretism misses, however, are the profoundly generative aspects of conversion, the ways in which people are enabled and emboldened by their faith. By simply speaking of syncretistic Christianities, we undermine the particular amities as well as conflicts that are part of subscribing to a universalistic ideology. A purportedly universalistic religion positions people alongside other people on an even keel, from a purely objective point of view. That position of belonging to the same ethical worldview then drives the politics of subjects claiming the same or greater moral authority as their rulers. What people call themselves is, at least in part, based upon their conviction that that label means something important and powerful, and it propels them to act in accordance with that faith.
Ardent Christian converts in the seventeenth century Portuguese colony of Goa did not attempt to evade the reaches of colonial power by retaining elements of Hinduism. On the contrary, it was precisely the avowed embrace of Christianity by Goans that troubled their governors. Existing scholarly approaches do not adequately contend with the production of sincere belief in the context of forceful conversion. Thus, I propose an alternative theoretical framework for understanding conversion in general, and in the particular case of Goa.
Conversion is a change in religious norms and rituals, the enactment of which significantly transforms how religious agents think about themselves in relation to other members of their own faith, as well as those outside it. This is not to say simply that action produces belief, but rather that the two are inextricably linked. If we conceptualize belief as something that is not wholly interioristic, we begin to see why the element of force should not be deemed incompatible with the production of belief. It is conceivably difficult to forcibly alter internal desires or convictions, and if that is all we regard belief to be, it is clear why we might not consider forced conversion a subject worth investigating—we dismiss its very possibility. The peripety model of conversion, which emphasizes dramatic events such as revelations and an autonomous path to God, further reinforces this position. I suggest, however, that while conversion must necessarily involve a change of some kind, often radical, what that change is, whether interior or exterior, varies from context to context.
Conversion in Portuguese Goa was ritualized and decidedly coercive in nature. This form of political conversion was largely beholden to the thinking of Saint Paul and Saint Augustine on belief and questions of how the believer is formed in relation to God and temporal authority. Conversion was not sudden and dramatic in this understanding. It was gradualist, continuous, and an oft-lifelong process of living according to sacred precepts. Bernard of Clairvaux distinguished between two levels of conversion: the first one was that of affiliation, the one most commonly recognized by social scientists. A person first submitted to religious institutions such as the seminaries and churches in order to receive the appropriate education that would mold them for the second level of conversion. This was the process of redemption, which was wholly initiated and sustained by the grace of God. People could not choose to believe, nor could they will God’s grace. They could, however, demonstrate their willingness to be saved. Such an understanding of conversion thus lays the groundwork for developing theories of submission to colonial conversion.
