"Love Thy Hindu Neighbor as Thyself" - A Field Study of North Indian Pentecostals' Perceptions of Hindu-Christian Relations

Sammanfattning: The aim of this thesis is to better understand Hindu-Christian relations in the experience of North Indian Pentecostals. The study proceeds from a social identity theory (SIT) framework and is guided by three research questions. The research questions call attention to Pentecostals’ perception of the two social groups ‘Christians’ and ‘Hindus’, how the relationship between the two groups is experienced, and Pentecostals’ interaction with the Hindu out-group. In order to answer these questions a field study was conducted at a Pentecostal college in North India, where nine students were interviewed. Previous research states that the Hindu nationalist movement is responsible for a growing religious intolerance against religious minorities in India, which has among other things resulted in increasing anti-Christian violence and anti-conversion laws. However, because of the general lack of studies on how Christians perceive and experience Hindu-Christian relations, little is known about the situation from a micro perspective. The informants’ perception of the Christian in-group and Hindu out-group turned out to be more complex than a SIT model predicted. For example, instead of exaggerating the similarities within the groups, the informants pointed to the differences within the groups. The informants did not express hostile attitudes towards the Hindu out-group, but rather perceived the average Hindu as a potential convert. There was, however, a clear negative perception of Hindu leaders. All informants had Hindu family members or Hindu friends and consequently interacted closely with members of the Hindu out-group. However, there was a significant difference in the interaction patterns between the informants coming from rural, respectively urban areas. The informants residing in villages were part of multi-religious communities and interacted in great extent with the Hindu out-group in their everyday life. The urban informants had the ability to choose who to interact with and were not part of any multi-religious community, which lead to a lesser degree of interaction with the Hindu out-group. In terms of the informants’ experience of the relationship between Christians and Hindus, a main finding is that the informants did not seem to experience that Hindu-Christian relations in their nearest surrounding had been critically affected by the Hindu nationalist movement. The informants described their close relationships with Hindus, as well as Hindu-Christian relations in their home towns/villages, as largely conflict-free. However, the informants generally experienced Hindu-Christian relations in India as tense and expressed fear of how their relations with Hindu out-group would be affected if the BJP won the upcoming national election.