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This article revisits the promulgation of the Scheduled Caste Order 1950, appended to Article 341 of the Indian Constitution. The Order provides the list of Scheduled Castes (SCs) and sets the prerequisites for a series of robust entitlements to India's 'untouchable castes'. The Order of 1950, however, also serves as a dampener to the equality claims of low castes of non-Hindu denominations by precluding them from the entitlements that the SC status promises. The Order has been amended twice—in 1956 to include Sikh low castes and in 1990 to accommodate the neo-Buddhists. However, the untouchable convertees to Islam and Christianity continue to remain outside its purview. The article develops on the deliberations surrounding the promulgation of the Government Order of 1950 in the Constituent Assembly, subsequently in the Indian Parliament, in the courts and in the public domain. Through an analysis of the discussions and disputes around this question, it attempts to deconstruct the nationalist common sense on the question of inequality and caste among non-Hindus, its fears and anxieties regarding proselytisation and the emerging idea of nationhood and citizenship.

This article outlines two inter-related but distinct theoretical approaches to the study of Christianity and Social Class developed from the work of Pierre Bourdieu. The first is a model derived from Distinction (Bourdieu [1979] 1984), the second comes from Bourdieu's work on religious fields with a focus on the conversion of capital between different fields. The former, better known, approach has the potential to provide important insights, including identifying the affinity of different religious groups with different class locations; on the other hand, this would tell us little about the internal workings of religious communities; it is also unfortunately hampered by a lack of suitable data. The conception of fields and their inter-relations will not answer the questions about the affinity of particular class fragments for particular kinds of religiosity, but it does provide much keener insight into the operation of class within religious communities, by examining the conversion of different types of capital into religious capital. This is illustrated with an extended Bourdieusian hypothesis, a schematic outline that could be used as the starting point for empirical research on the operation of different kinds of capital in the Church of England.

Within the scope of foreign affairs between Portugal and England during Elizabeth's rule, numerous events indicate the challenges faced by the Portuguese ambassadors on their missions. Regrettably, little is known about these envoys and one rarely finds any reference to their names or their diplomatic accomplishments in Early Modern studies. This paper focuses on a diplomatic incident which involved Francisco Giraldes, a Portuguese resident ambassador in England, aiming to shed some light on "the intolerable business" that led to a confrontation with the Bishop of London, Edwin Sandys. Attending a Catholic Mass in the context of the Elizabethan Religious Settlement involved certain challenges that should be considered. Diplomats, however, enjoyed certain immunities, including the droit de chappelle, and were allowed to hold Catholic services in their ambassadorial residences. But in March 1573, while Mass was being held, Francisco Giraldes's residence was raided by the Sheriff of London's men, working under the Bishop of London's instructions. The ongoing tension between the religious and the political areas of power was, thus, exposed. Two letters, written by the Bishop of London, included in the Lansdowne Manuscripts Collection of the British Library, registered the event. As Sandy's correspondence appears to be the single piece of surviving evidence regarding this diplomatic incident, it stands to reason that its analysis will provide significant insight into the coexistence, as well as the clash, of oppositional forces, while further contributing to an interpretation of Anglo-Portuguese affairs in Early Modern times. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

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