Missionary Education, Religion and Knowledge in India, c.1880–1915

Abstract

Christian missionaries were some of the most influential actors in colonial India. Yet they only began working recently in relation to larger British influence in the subcontinent. Originally banned from the territories of the East India Company for fears of upsetting Indian religious sensibilities, they were allowed to operate after 1843 in parallel with a rising Utilitarian and evangelist fervour in Britain and within particular Company circles; the latter often blurred the distinctions between ‘moral improvement’, civilisation and Christianity. Missionaries were influential in the debate over sati and the subsequent outlaw of its practice. Protestant encounters with Hinduism and Islam were defined by the rhetoric of ‘heathen’ and ‘unbelievers’, as missionaries derided the ‘idolatry’ of Hinduism and ‘bigotry’ of Islam. Some of the first mission schools established were in the Bombay Presidency, Bengal and the Punjab. During this period missionaries ascribed utility to the corpus of western scholarship as an ally against Indian religions. They hoped to ‘prove’ their falsehoods. The primary way to do this was through western education, arguing that western scholarship was saturated with Christian morals and that such ethoses would transform Indians accordingly. This was a period when the symmetry between Christianity and western scholarship was championed by missionaries such as John Murdoch and Alexander Duff. After the Indian Mutiny (1857–8), missionaries were held in check (at least officially) by the colonial state as a means of avoiding upsetting Indian religious sensibilities. Yet, ironically, in northern India missionaries came to be relied upon by a cash-strapped Education Department. They came to dominate education and were credited with doing much to push the frontiers of western pedagogy in their efforts to propagate their faith.

The Protestant Legacy: Missions and Literacy in India

“…In thirty years experience, I have never known that to happen". Bellenoit (2007b) mentions the story of a mission school outside Lucknow that lost its students and was forced to close when rumors circulated that teachers were trying to convert students. Finally, according to a report of the London Missionary Society, in the spring of 1891 an open rebellion erupted in Almora (Uttarakhand) when a Brahmin student of Ramsay College converted to Christianity.…”

“…Finally, according to a report of the London Missionary Society, in the spring of 1891 an open rebellion erupted in Almora (Uttarakhand) when a Brahmin student of Ramsay College converted to Christianity. The headmaster, Edward Oakley, admitted that conversions would "empty our classrooms" (cited in Bellenoit [2007b]). 40 The analysis of the intergenerational transmission of values, preferences and beliefs has been at the center of several works on anthropology and sociology since the early 1980s (see in particular Cavalli- Sforza and Feldman [1981], Boyd and Richerson [1985]).…”

Content Analysis of Spiritual Life in Contemporary USA, India, and China

“…The pattern of response from participants in the India sample may also reflect the legacy of colonialism. During British rule, religious practices and traditions were publicly discouraged and subject to criticism (Bellenoit 2007;Dirks 1997;Roy 2006;Thapar 1989). Those who engaged in extreme religious practices were cast by the British Media as victims, and the practices themselves were described as "revolting" (Dirks 1997, p. 219).…”

“…Perhaps this may partially explain why participants from India tended to apologetically couch their narratives with statements such as "this may be too religious." Lastly, colonialism led to the proliferation of Christian missionary expeditions to India (Bellenoit 2007;Miller and Stanczak 2009;Roy 2006), which brought the language and symbolism of Christian faith into civil discourse. The high prevalence of Christian-based prayer may be rooted in this legacy.…”

Theorising missionary education: the Bolivian Indian Mission 1908‐1920

“…Therefore there is a need to theorise more carefully the relationship between missions and education; or at least to test a range of models by which the particularities of missions and mission contexts might be analysed, compared and conceptualised. To this end, for example, Hayden Bellenoit's recent studies of British missionary educational projects in late‐colonial northern India draw on the socio‐educational thinking of Pierre Bourdieu and they use “empire” as a broader interpretive framework (Bellenoit, 2007a, b). Imperialism and colonialism have certainly emerged as an important explanatory device (Raftery, 2012, pp.…”