stet!!

Just put in the final piece of the jigsaw. Bated breath––hope the pieces stick together but more importantly, hope the jigsaw sells! This collection of essays should soon be in print by the end of this year. Our publishers have already made the announcement, which seems to say that dye has been cast.

Here's the skinny on the book. Christianity came to India in the 1st, 4th or 18th century CE, depending on which tradition you take up. The bulk of its recipients were the no-bodies of "Indian" society hoping to reinvent themselves as the some-bodies. Not so! The no-bodies remained as such for the next two centuries and more. Over the last thirty years, the no-bodies came back with a literary vengeance. Flinging their pens with aplomb, they asserted their place in religious and social discourse in a move to dismantle the societal strait-jackets imposed on them. Since this initial surge, insiders and outsiders have looked back in critical retrospect; new vocabularies, emergent investments, and discursive trajectories are being explored to map out where this assertive stance might address itself in the twentyfirst century. Some of these arrogative explorations are catalogued in this collection of essays.

To toot my horn, my contribution to the collection was as a tribal. I also took the lead on the copy editing, proofreading, and compiling the index. But readers, especially my folks, might sense a slight tokenism in my inclusion as the sole other no-body. But then again, the focus of the book--and the conference from which this collection of essays is drawn--might not have much space to be more encompassing.

If you got the dosh and the curiosity...buy!