![]() ![]() The health project that was implicit in this mutual conversion process ultimately was enhanced by many other forces and agents. These ways of thinking or knowledges were available to be used, and could be relatively easily invoked, and therefore later became the central element in the way by which this conversion of both the missionary and the locals expressed itself. The major argument of the article is that a part of the chemistry of this conversion process involved the mutual invocation by the missionary and the local individuals of certain ways of thinking that were implicit in the local Tamil world. The main project in the article is the way in which this conversion made the thinking of the locals and the missionary into a homogenous entity, where the missionary discovered in the local terms and thinking about health a fulfillment of his own religious conversion goals. The goal of this religious conversion, that is to say the conversion that the Christian missionaries wanted to bring about, was ultimately transformed not into converting the "heathen," but was a mechanism where the missionary was himself converted to a local way of thinking. In this narrative I want to respond to what Dipesh Chakrabarty has called the "more affective narratives of human belonging." In the account that follows I wish to show that conversion is a process of examining one's life and physical body and changing it for both the missionary and for the target of conversion. In their work, they note that Protestant conversion activities were "decided by a serendipitous and superficial overlap of two very different orders of meaning and value." They also believe that "Given the mounting evidence of the 'shallow-rootedness' of the new faith, the meaning of conversion itself became debatable." In this article I want to re-introduce the notion of conversion as a much more wide-ranging set of activities that questions the one-way orientation usually associated with conversion. In their commentary about the Tswana, John and Jean Comaroff have questioned the usefulness of conversion as an analytical category. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 23.1-2 (2003) 254-270 ![]()
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