The question of missionaries across the world invariably links us to realms of religious discussion and objectivity in such matters is painstakingly hard to maintain. The researcher in this work is similarly vexed with the spiritualism preached by Christianity. Perhaps, a small liberty may be taken in stating, that the ideals of the church seem at times hard to attribute to Jesus himself. This poses a unique problem of definition- for it is impossible to view Christianity in a Christ-void and it is hard to reconcile the missionaries of the church with Christian ideals all the time.
Since this will lead to unnecessary complication of religious beliefs and faith, for the sake of historical discussion, the researcher chooses to define missionaries as missionaries of the church and that shall be perceived as Christian. This will be of considerable help in treating missionary work objectively, for the church is a discrete body, unlike the teachings of Jesus.
Problem of Perspectives
The approach towards the issue on missionary work will vary with the purpose it would seek to serve. As a matter of political discussion, it will invariably lead to a clash between secular fundamentalists and secularists.[1] As a matter of spiritual discourse, it will boil down to matters of religious sanction of doubtable activities, and the researcher disclaims any competence to argue on ecclesiastical matters. While the historical perspective is the major window for the present work, political influences in this matter can hardly be avoided. Personal political affinities might spill into the work, and although arguments will be founded on facts, treatment remains to open to challenge. This is a humble submission.
Division
The following work makes a brief analysis of two tenets of missionary work in India, each of which could make for further work. I have tried to argue for and against Arun Shourie’s work titled “Missionaries in India” while dealing with the nexus of the political with the religious.
In the second part I have tried working a theory to compare missionary work with the theory of ideological indoctrination seen in the power approach to the study of politics.
Chapter I
Political Aims of Missionaries in India
A standard debate on missionaries has a few standard arguments. Conversion and forceful conversion on the one side, refinement (so they say), education and reform on the other. Very recently I had the opportunity of perusing several documents that unearthed rather distressing motives behind the sustenance of missionary work in this nation. The facts about conversion may be suitably dealt with later, but the correspondence that took place in between our Christian conquerors would be the first part that I shall be dealing with.
Analysis of Political Allegations Against Missionary Work
Arun Shourie’s book titled Missionaries in India contains a thesis based on his arguments at the Catholic Bishop’s Conference in India, 1994. While disclaiming to present what he was invited to do, a Hindu perspective of missionary work in India, what comes across is, apparently well founded, yet overtly critical account of the same.[2]
I cannot believe most of it to be Hindu in perspective. In fact, the facts are so telling, I could almost define it as historical.
For example, Macaulay’s[3] famous design to create in India “a class of persons, Indians in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect,” paints a very lowly picture of all the schools built in these years. However, the point to be noted here is that Macaulay was speaking of a ruler’s design, a political design. The work that missionaries did carry out could perhaps be viewed as the most cogent evidence of attempts made towards the fulfilling of this end, but this is not nexus enough. We have to delve a little deeper into how much hand were the European rulers in India in glove with the delegations of the church to analyze this matter further.
That for a great measure of time, political aims had nothing to do with religious pursuits is easy to argue. The following facts will demonstrate the point beyond much doubt.
- According to the 3rd century Acts of Thomas, the first Christians in India were converted by St Thomas the Apostle, who arrived at Kodungallur on the Malabar Coast of India in 52 AD. It is also important to note that the saint performed the first Christian baptisms in India. The Syrian Malabar Nasrani people are an ethnic community in Kerala, South India. Their tradition goes back to the very beginnings of first century Christian thought, and the seven churches that were established by St. Thomas the Apostle among the natives and the Jewish Diaspora in Kerala. They follow a unique Hebrew-Syrian Christian tradition, which includes several Jewish elements along with some Hindu customs. Their heritage is Syrian-Keralite, their culture South Indian, their faith St. Thomas Christian, and their language Malayalam. According to the Acts of Thomas, the first converts made by Thomas in India were Malabari Jews, who had settled in Kerala since the time of King Solomon of Israel.[4]
- Portuguese missionaries, who reached the Malabar Coast in the late 15th century, made contact with the St Thomas Christians in Kerala, and sought to introduce among them the Latin Rite of the Roman Catholic Church. Throughout this period, foreign missionaries also made many new converts to Christianity. They are a separate community and are called Latin Catholics in Kerala. Early Roman Catholic missionaries, particularly the Portuguese, led by the Jesuit St Francis Xavier (1506-52), expanded from their bases on the west coast making many converts. Portuguese missionaries sought to convert the entire Hindu population of Goa. St. Francis Xavier, in a 1545 letter to John III of Portugal, requested an Inquisition be installed in Goa. However, it was not installed until eight years after Francis Xavier's death.[5]
The roots of missionary disagreement with “Indian sensibilities” began with the fact that Indian customs and rituals hurt the beliefs of Christianity. Political motivation at these times is perilously hard to find. During the Goa inquisition by the Portuguese, several Hindus were forced to convert to Christianity and those who refused to do so or were suspected of practicing heresy were burnt alive.[6]
Although it is difficult to yet imagine that these conversions were made to assist Portuguese rule, it is evident that the missionaries found assistance in their backlash. This behavior has found explanation in many things that the likes of Vivekananda had to say, and I draw from one of his speeches in the Parliament of Religions, wherein he mentioned that difference in faiths is inevitable[7]; it is only when one is convinced about his superiority and takes upon himself the moral burden of purifying the rest, do such atrocities take place.[8]
The missionary work in India turned a new leaf with the advent of Protestant missionaries in India, especially from England. William Carey, the English Baptist minister, best known for the establishment of one of the finest educational institutions in West Bengal, namely the Serampore College, arrived in India in 1793.[9] By 1793, the Company rule in India was only being consolidated. The nexus between this consolidation and missionary work remains a highly debatable issue and I will be bound to refer to documents before and after this time, to make a point. Arun Shourie once again, has put in loads of evidence from these times and I shall take the liberty of drawing from them.
Following are excerpts from the Macaulay Minute:[10]
- “…Medical doctrines that would move laughter in girls at an English Boarding School… false history, false astronomy, false medicine… in company with a false religion.”
- “The effect of this education on the Hindoos is prodigous. No Hindoo, who has received an English education, ever remains sincerely attached to his religion. Some continue to profess it purely as a matter of policy; but many profess themselves as pure Deists, some embrace Christianity.
If Macaulay’s ideas were supposed to be singular, we shall be greatly deceived. Words that may be attributed to a Company official, Sir Charles Edward Trevelyan, touted as the father of modern British Civil Service, reveal the strong nexus between activities of the rulers and the church in India. The BBC records his work in the following words:
“Trevelyan himself had taken a post in the government in Calcutta where he devoted himself to the cause of education, particularly of providing Indians with schooling in European science and literature.”[11]
Trevelyan’s work titled “On the education of the People in India” has been described as “extreme degradation of Hindoos” in a research work traceable to 1839.[12]
Following are excerpts from Trevelyan’s work:[13]
· “The young men, brought up in our seminaries, turn with contempt from the barbarous despotisms under which their ancestors groaned, to the prospect of improving their national institutions on the English model.”
· “This class is at present a small minority, but it is continually receiving accessions from the youth who are brought up at different English seminaries. It will become the majority; and it will then be necessary to modify the political institutions to suit the increased intelligence of the people, and their capacity for self-government… Trained by us to happiness and independence, India will remain the proudest monument of British benevolence.”
Trevelyan’s perspective of Indian improvement was based on a belief that the British could not forever remain in India and that the change of rule could be effected in either a violent revolution or a peaceable, condescending interchange.[14] His ideas on education and the spread of the Christian words were a means to the latter only.
I shall not for once, comment on the merits of the argument that my ancestors were barbarous. The umpteen researches on the Vedas have revealed quite otherwise. In fact, I need not say much if I can put forward these lines printed in a leading American daily, upon the conclusion of Swami Vivekananda’s deliveries at Chicago.[15]
“After hearing him we feel how foolish it is to send missionaries to this learned nation.”
However, I am pressed to note that most of Trevelyan has been vindicated. The culture in which he envisaged an Independent India is quite what we have achieved. Perhaps the glorious freedom struggle prevented a “gift of independence” and yet when I look at the ideals by which we govern our country, the basis of our education, the Constitution that guides[16] I am compelled to believe that we have built ourselves on the foundations Trevelyan had so cruelly spoken of.
Most of our texts speak highly of the Brahmo “Reformist” Samaj. We have come to study these with great reverence and for many of us, it has been our suitable answer to missionaries in India. If prejudices of the Hindu religion necessitated removal then the Samaj aimed at just that.
I therefore believe that no eulogy is too much for the achievements of Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Dwarkanath Tagore.
The missionary links with “Hindu Theistic Reform” work may be examined from a few lines I quote- from an address by Sir Richard Temple[17], another British servant in India:[18]
· “It is to you, my Christian brethren, to exert yourselves to attract that movement in the direction of Christianity.”
· “…Many of them are almost persuaded to be Christians. Some of their ministers actually preach sermons from texts taken from the Bible.”
· “If you listen to their sermons, if you see the address of welcome which they have lately given to the missionaries of the Oxford Mission to Calcutta, you can judge whether they are not on the high road to Christianity.”
I should have been greatly inclined to examine the veracity of most of these statements but that would shift the thrust of this research otherwise. At present, I have presented these points only to demonstrate that this is perhaps what was discussed about our reformers amongst missionary circles.
[1] Arun Shourie Missionaries in India (HarperCollins, 1998), at p. xi.
[2] “Had I urged the themes of this lecture to secularists, they would have denounced me as communal… The reaction of the Bishops and senior clergy was the exact opposite” Arun Shourie Missionaries in India HarperCollins, 1998, at p. xi.
[3] Macaulay Minute, 1835 cf Arun Shourie Missionaries in India (HarperCollins, 1998)
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_India
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] “Why We Disagree”, Parliament of Religions, Chicago, 15th September 1893. Printed form Chicago Addresses (Advaita Ashrama, Kolkata)
[8] “Judaism failed to absorb its all-conquering sister”: Drawn from “Paper on Hinduism”, Parliament of Religions, Chicago, 1893. Printed form Chicago Addresses (Advaita Ashrama, Kolkata)
[9] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Carey
[10] Thomas Babbington Macaulay, Minute cf Arun Shourie Missionaries in India (HarperCollins, 1998) at pp. 60-63
[11] http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/trevelyan_charles.shtml
[12] The Eclectic Review, vol. VI, W. Ball Arnold and Co., London, 1839 – digital version by Google Inc.
[13] Charles Edward Trevelyan On the Education of the People in India
[14] Ibid. cf Arun Shourie Missionaries in India (HarperCollins, 1998) at pp. 72-73
[15] The New York Herald.
[16] Drawn heavily from the Government of India Act, 1935.
[17] “Municipalities, dispensaries, primary schools, district boards dripped from his pen”; Philip Mason, The Men Who Ruled India. (J. Cape, London, 1953)
[18] Sir Richard Temple at the Baptist Missionary Society, London, 1883.
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