Exploring Indigenous Spirituality: The Kutchi Kohli Christians of Pakistan: A Journey of Adaptation and Creativity

By Anita Maryam Mansingh and Noelia Molina

Anita's book is a deep and enlightening study of the spiritual experience of the Kutchi Kohli Christians of Pakistan. Producing a complex, versatile, and appealing conceptual framework for studying their inner experiences, Anita provides conceptual tools for understanding the spiritual journey and relation with the divine of indigenous people in the south of Pakistan. Relying on their own narratives, this book gives voice to the Kutchi Kohlis of Pakistan, allowing the readers to enter into their own symbolic and conceptual way to understand reality. In addition, exploring their spiritual experience, Anita shows us the creative way in which Kutchi Kohli Christians have adapted and recreated their own identity in relation to Hinduism and Islam. With most of the academia focusing on the study of indigenous people in India, this book offers a breakthrough into unexplored areas for understanding indigenous peoples and Christianity in South Asia.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Release date: Jul 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9781666707380

Anita Maryam Mansingh

Anita Maryam Mansingh is a Presentation Sister and she holds a Master in Applied Spirituality from WIT University Ireland. She has focused her research on the study of spirituality and the Kutchi Kohli people of Pakistan. Thus, Anita explores their history, spiritual lives, and social dynamics. She has previously published Art Dispels the Darkness: A Spirituality of Healing, where she reflects on the connection between art and spirituality as part of the processes of healing and growth.

Book preview

Exploring Indigenous Spirituality:

The Kutchi Kohli Christians of Pakistan

A Journey of Adaptation and Creativity

Anita Maryam Mansingh

Foreword by Noelia Molina

Exploring Indigenous Spirituality: The Kutchi Kohli Christians of Pakistan

A Journey of Adaptation and Creativity

Copyright © 2021 Anita Maryam Mansingh. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

Wipf & Stock

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

Eugene, OR 97401

www.wipfandstock.com

paperback isbn: 978-1-6667-0736-6

hardcover isbn: 978-1-6667-0737-3

ebook isbn: 978-1-6667-0738-0

06/24/21

Cover photo by Emmanuel Guddu.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1: Encountering and Understanding the Kutchi Kohli Christians

Chapter 2: A Narrative Approach to the Spiritual Life of the Kutchi Kohli Christians

Chapter 3: Kutchi Kohli Voices and the Shaping of Their Identity

Chapter 4: Paths towards the Future

Appendix 1: Questionnaire in English

Appendix 2: Data Analysis Procedure and Thematic Results

Appendix 3: Photos of Kutchi Kohlis

Glossary

Bibliography

To my parents, Mansingh Rawa and Rani Moti, and to all those Kutchi Kohlis who day by day search for their roots, build their present, and shape their future.

Foreword

In this book, Anita has managed to depict a spiritual map that is quite crucial for the Kutchi Kohli and is also humanly universal. Every time a cultural practice ceases to exist or a minority language isn’t spoken anymore, a part of us all is lost. Nothing has been written on the Kutchi Kohli spirituality. Writing this book is walking on uncharted territory, as all Kutchi Kohli practices are transmitted orally.

She did a conscious study on other indigenous spiritualities in Israel, Latin America, and Thailand. This study pioneers complex, profound concepts on how to research indigenous spirituality: interspirituality, multiple or double religious belonging, and hybridization. The process of enculturation and the process by which cultures become fluid are intricate. This book is a profound study on how to create a conceptual framework that helps to analyze Kutchi Kohli spirituality.

Anita underwent a deep, organic journey to explore through her own native language the process of constructing meaning and identity in which she was also embedded. She has done this beautifully and exquisitely for her people. The quality of writing is highly academic and artistic at the same time. Anita is also a poet, and one can sense this in how she writes prose. She became her people’s voice by conducting excellent interviews and by extracting the essence and the intricate social, historical, economical, emotional and spiritual substratum of her people. In a very original way, Anita encapsulated this intricacy by coining a neologism, Kutchikohliness. By naming these unique experiences, the meaning of them becomes alive and they are given an existence of their own.

Every chapter in this book engages the reader on multiple levels. The narrative challenges us to dwell inside ourselves and encounter the cultural and spiritual life of Kutchi Kohli Christians. It forces us to overcome our colonial, religious, and social prejudices. It also makes us reflect on the crucial, historical, dual dynamics of the oppressor and the oppressed. I find Anita’s book very timely. We are living through a world pandemic in which the concepts of healing, power, and oppression are at the front lines of discussion. The chair of the UN urged Member States and the international community to include the specific needs and priorities of indigenous peoples in addressing the global outbreak of COVID-19.¹ As we know, indigenous peoples have an intimate relationship with the Earth and have been sealing their territories to facilitate isolation. They are vulnerable, and we cannot afford to lose the immense cultural heritage that may disappear with indigenous minority groups.

As Anita points out in her book, the Kutchi Kholi share common issues with other indigenous groups around the world. Economically, they are very poor. They are caught up in a feudal system as landless farmers, earning extremely low salaries which made it impossible to get out of the vicious cycle of debt to the landowners. They are manipulated and taken advantage of because of their lack of education. Therefore, the importance of this book and the fact that it is written by a Kutchi Kohli is in the hope that unfolds by naming and bringing to light the experiences and challenges of this minority group. In this sense, Linda Tuhiwai Smith points out, in her book Decolonizing Methodologies, that

thirteen years ago when the book was published the worlds of indigenous peoples and research intersected only to the extent that indigenous communities were most often the objects or subjects of study by non-indigenous researchers. They were not considered agents themselves, as capable of or interested in research, or as having expert knowledge about themselves and their conditions.²

How can the Kutchi Kohli build a project of life integration? Certainly the main issue that comes to the forefront is education. Anita is a Presentation Sister. The transformative spirituality of their Irish founder, Nano Nagle, was about empowerment to the people who were pushed to the margins by poverty or dispossession. The power of education will free the individual and, by extension, the social group. Having conversations with Anita, I realized she has dreams for her people. She would love to build a heritage center for the Kutchi Kohli in her region. This project will achieve the permanence of their history and culture.

Most importantly, I believe, the concrete visualization of her people to everyone creates and builds a renew self-esteem for the entire community to feel proud of their roots, their very existence. This book is the first building block in constructing the new chapter in the history of the Kutchi Kohli. It also achieves the most needed reconciliation towards the harmonious relationships among Kutchi Kohlis, both Christian and Hindu. Spiritual and cultural healing is the drive for this research. I truly hope that readers can sense the dual spiritual transformation emerging in this book: that of the author and, by extension, that of her people, the Kutchi Kohli of Pakistan.

Noelia Molina

SpIRE (Spirituality Institute for Research and Education)

Dublin 2020

11.

"COVID-

19

and Indigenous Peoples."

2

. Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies, x.

Preface

My study of Kutchi Kohli Christian spirituality has been not only an academic endeavor; it has also been an existential journey. In a certain way, the research questions about the characteristics, dynamics, and perspectives of Kutchi Kohli Christian spirituality were also questions about my own self, my own experience of God, my own personal and social journey.

I am a Kutchi Kohli, I am a Christian, I am a Pakistani, I am a woman, I am a religious sister (a member of a Catholic religious congregation, the Presentation Sisters). I imagine that I could make this list longer, but I think these five dimensions of my being express the complexity not only of who I am but also of who we are, the Kutchi Kohli Christians. We, I, have to articulate these multiple identities, these multiple belongings, constantly and creatively; our present and future are related to how