Chapter 4 addresses the role of the classical rhetorical tradition in bolstering Iberianized Catholicism among native converts in Paraguay and Portuguese India. By taking a connected and comparative approach to the application of the classical rhetorical tradition by Jesuit missionaries and its reception by native audiences both in the Americas and in coastal western India, this chapter argues that classical rhetoric shaped Konkani-language missionary oratory much more than Nahuatl, Quechua and Guarani examples, and offers a possible explanation based on the social and caste structures of the two contexts. In so doing, this chapter places Latin American ethnohistory in a new meta-geographical context, and argues for the important constitutive role played by non-European languages, peoples and cultural practices in the Iberian World.

Mumbai’s industrial character having faded, the city has turned more nativist. Religious riots in the 1990s caused rifts to deepen and Muslims found themselves confined to ghettos. Waes of aggression have also been directed at outsiders, particularly working class labourers from the north referred to as ‘bhaiyya’ or brother. This chapter examines internal migration and the author’s struggle to try and belong to the city as a woman and a female ‘brother’.