James Ponniah is an assistant professor in the department of Christian studies at the University of Madras. He is the author of The Dynamics of Folk Religion in Society: Pericentralisation as Deconstruction of Sanskritisation (2011) and editor of Committed to the Church and the Country (2013) and Identity, Difference and Conflict: Postcolonial Critique (2013). His areas of research include popular Catholicism & Dalit Christianity.