Introduction
Nathaniel Roberts’ To Be Cared for: The Power of Conversion and Foreigness of Belonging in an Indian Slum takes a unique look at the way in which the Christian religion takes on meaning for the lives of Indians living in a slum in Chennai. The process by which Roberts presents this world is interesting because he starts with the people themselves first, and not really with the religion or how it impacts their lives. Instead, Roberts takes a different approach—or, in better words—the opposite approach. He shows how their lives impact their religion. This paper will discuss Roberts’ To Be Cared For and describe what it means to be a foreigner among a group of Indians, who are outsiders themselves—separate as a caste from the rest of the Indian people—the cast-offs, who are nonetheless welcomed by Christ. This book is about what that experience is like and what it means to the people involved in that world.
Outsiders
The first three chapters of the book describe the world of the outsiders—the slum Indians in Chennai. It examines their everyday lives as well as the foreigner narrator’s entry into that world. It looks at the needs of the people and what their living conditions are like: living in a slum is not easy and simple things that most people take for granted—like safe drinking water—is very much not guaranteed for these people in this place. As people in the slum, they are viewed differently by other Indians: they are separate from them—not equal. They are the poor—and for this reason, the Christian religion becomes especially meaningful for them (though this is not really discussed until later in the book). In the beginning, Roberts is mainly concerned with presenting their world and how the lived experience manifests itself from day to day.
Even though they are outsiders, the Indians of the slums continuously assert their humanity—the fact that they are human beings, like others everywhere. They are united in their poverty with the other people of the slums, in spite of the fact that they share really nothing in common beyond their poverty. They have no traditions, no customs, no beliefs that set them apart and create a bond of ideas. They are united merely by the fact that they live in the slums together—that they are rejected by the other side of the country, that they are there in their squalor, existing.
Yet it is this poverty that allows them to see beyond caste and class—to see themselves as humans (without labels), and to engage in compassion and care for one another. As Roberts notes, “to be human in the world of the slum was to be instinctively concerned about those who were in need, whoever they might be, and to feel called upon to care actively for them.”[footnoteRef:1] Their lack of worldly goods and materials, of material...
Bibliography
Roberts, Nathaniel. To Be Cared For: The Power of Conversion and Foreignness of
Belonging in an Indian Slum. CA: University of California Press, 2016.
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