Catholics, caste and citizenship: Engagements in civil society

Abstract

The article connects discussions on civil society with those on citizenship and foregrounds Young’s notion of ‘differentiated citizenship’. Through fieldwork on Catholic lay associations in Mumbai and Chennai in India, it takes up the specific idea of ‘religious citizenship’ and tries to understand how citizenship works on the ground in the activities and engagements of members of these associations. The article is concerned with a number of questions. In particular, it asks what sense do these Catholics have of themselves as citizens? How is their understanding of citizenship inspired by their faith? Emerging through the different sites of the study is the idea that civil society is a domain of deeply contested notions of citizenship. Some of the new literature on ‘religious citizenship’ favors an understanding that is based on the idea of care; what is shown in the article, however, is that citizenship must implicate power or else it is bereft of meaning for those castes experiencing structural exclusion.