Education: In and Out!: Role of Christian Missionary Education in India during British Colonial period

Ideally Christian missionaries hoped to make schools the spiritual and religious centers. Through education they hoped to eradicate the practices and behaviors of natives like Idol worship, polytheism, bigotry, polygamy and many superstitions which were considered by them to be much uncivilized. Their ultimate aim was to proselytize the native population and prove the falsehood of the native religions. Regular Bible lessons were supposed to become the norm in the schools of Christian missionaries whereas the reality at the ground level for Christian Educational missionaries in India turned out to be otherwise. Bellinoit says that the examination preparation was given priority at the expense of the time needed to engage in spiritual and religious lessons. During the colonial period, government was the only source of the employment for the educated. Administration, governance and military were the only sectors where the employment was generated. These sectors reached the saturation very soon.

Getting employment under colonial government was the only major motive for Indians to so zealously pursue the education prescribed by the government. Colonial government realized that the increasing educated masses staying unemployed would eventually give rise to the social unrest. To check this from happening, the failure rate was kept very high. The reputation of the school solely depended on the success rate of the students in the examination. Any drop in the success rate would tremendously bring down the enrollment numbers. This forced the Christian missionary schools to devote major part of their school time towards exam preparation rather than in spiritual or religious engagement. Apart from this Christian missionaries had to largely depend on the government funds to run the schools. To receive the government funds it was mandatory on the part of the schools to follow the prescribed curriculum. Colonial government also did not encourage conversion since that would disturb the social harmony and hence their trade. Any missionary school getting government funds could not force students to take religious lessons. They had to go through regular inspections by the government agencies with regard to compliance with the government rules and regulations. Another bottleneck for Christian missionaries in the way towards achieving their goals was the teaching staff. The number of teachers belonging to Hindu and Islamic religion was far greater than the number of Christian teachers in Christian missionary schools. Getting enough number of qualified Christian teachers was very difficult. Number of qualified Christian teachers recruited could not meet the demands of large pupil strength. This hampered the efforts of Christian missionary schools in influencing their students with Christian ethos and practices. This excerpt given below from Bellinoit’s “Missionary Education, Religion and Knowledge in India” article clearly captures the plight of Christian missionaries with regard to their religious instruction.

As per this excerpt in some schools religious instruction had to be altogether cancelled in favor of preparation for examination. In others it was either very infrequent or made to be only optional. Instructional methods employed for teaching Bible shifted from classroom to public lectures in auditorium where an entire school was addressed at once.

A single instance of any student getting converted to Christianity in the school would make the students empty the school in mass immediately. All these factors discussed here forced the Christian missionaries to marginalize their radical religious pedagogical and curricular approaches just to stay afloat. Christian principles had to be brought inside the classroom in the name of moral education which was devoid from any direct references to religious aspects.

Apart from the government funds Christian missionaries were also dependent on the funds back home for their existence. Even these funds did not come without any stipulation. All that mattered to the people back home who gave the funds to Christian missionaries functioning in India was the number of natives being converted to Christianity successfully. It was difficult for the missionaries here to convince the people back home of the ground realities. All they wanted was the immediate results. Converting the people or at least getting the students whose families already had the tradition of learning to accept the Christian principles was a very tedious task. Especially students coming from the families of learned traditions started questioning the claims of relationship between religious and cultural superiority made by the Christian missionaries. In this case western education turned out to be constructive rather than destructive towards Indian Knowledge system. Students with such backgrounds started employing both western and native modes of analysis. It was not very difficult for them to realize very soon that the history of Christianity and most of the western science and technology did not see eye to eye. Christianity instead of being the cause for the blossoming of modern knowledge had historically been a hurdle in the development of science and technology. Ideologically they were staunchly against each other. In India Christian missionaries took up the role of giving both religious and scientific knowledge to the natives. They even tried to hide their true identity by projecting an impression that all the modernity was because of Christianity. Their assumptions that Christianity would become more pleasing when packaged with cultural modernity turned out to be completely opposite. It instead gave rise to enraged debates questioning the rationality and superiority of Christianity over the native religions. The nature of students arguments is given below from an of excerpt of Bellinoit’s article

The assumptions that modern education with all its rationality and logic would make students discard their native religion turned out to be unsuccessful.

Failure and difficulty in convincing students of learned castes to accept Christianity, social and political influence in running the schools and pressure from back home to show the solid results of the missionary activity forced Christian missionaries to take up the educational and later social cause of depressed castes and widows very seriously. Depressed castes who had been deprived of educational opportunities through generations in India did not find relief even under the British colonial government because of their ambivalent educational policies. Even though the colonial government was not against the education of children of depressed castes monetary factors made their educational policies ambivalent. Wherever the situation was worse, for instance if the whole school had to be abandoned by enrolling a few children of depressed castes then school could instead avoid enrolling such students. Setting up schools exclusively for depressed castes was an expensive affair. In certain cases where students of depressed castes were in large numbers government did fund their education but only with the sustained intervention by Christian missionaries as middlemen between untouchables and colonial government. A symbiotic relationship between untouchables and Christian missionaries got established. An excerpt below from Philip Constable’s article “Sitting on the School Veranda” brings to us the impact of Christian missionaries in untouchable’s social and political cause.

In this manner Christian missionaries spearheaded the organization of untouchables as a strong pressure group.

Apart from untouchables another potential group that was targeted by Christian missionaries was the widows. The practice of child marriage was rampant in India during the colonial period. The very low life expectancy coupled with child marriages and little scope for widow remarriages gave rise to the number of young widows leading a life of social exclusion from their families and communities. Christian missionaries saw in them the potential converts. They started educating them and later on got them recruited as the teachers and practitioners of medicine for their missionary enterprises. Families in Indian society though initially resisted these moves by missionaries they gradually came to accept the education and employment of widows since it reduced their own burden of taking care of them. Here again both gained from the education of widows. To some extent it catered to the need of Christian teachers in missionaries schools. As the society came to accept Women in these roles, missionaries pioneered the girl’s education by opening many schools exclusively meant for girls. Similar to the case of untouchables Christian missionaries played a crucial role in standing up to the social and political causes of women. They intervened actively in the ban of sati system and promotion of girl’s education and widow remarriage.

Christian missionaries getting involved in the cause of untouchables and women’s welfare did not mean that they gave up their interest in the education of other sections of the populace. Instead the people of higher and middle classes themselves promoted Christian missionaries’ educational initiatives to reproduce their own class and social structures.

1Bellinoit's Article

The reason behind promotion of missionary schools by elites was also because of the perception of better quality these schools offered when compared to government run schools. This perception was partly driven by the cultural acquaintance of the missionaries with that of the colonial governments and their comfort in dealing with the English as a medium of instruction. Even though missionaries started educating the lower castes the chances that they would succeed in the getting employed by the colonial government was very little. Colonial government in order to project its image as an impartial and transparent used standardized examinations to recruit the employees. The recruitment was strictly based on the merit. Like now there was no provision of reservation for backward or depressed caste students in the government employment. Such an environment clearly served in the reproduction of caste and class hierarchies. Brahmins and other upper castes that already had a tradition of learning found a cultural advantage over the students of depressed castes. Students of depressed castes had to face severe competition from the students of elite background. English as a medium of instruction further hurt their chances of success. Overall without any governmental intervention to secure the interests of depressed castes in employment education served as means to the reproduction of caste and class hierarchies.

Impact of Christian missionary Education

V Subramaniam says that Indian nationalism at first took place as a religious counter propaganda to the activities of Christian missionaries in India. He justifies this by saying that people like Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Annie Besant, B G Tilak, Mahatma Gandhi and many others used religious symbolism for the political awakening of natives. Religious counter propaganda was very effective also because of the perception of Christianity as a religion of the rulers. Even though the British were very cautious in bringing in the Christian missionaries and discouraged the missionary activity; the association of Christian missionaries with that of the colonial government by the natives could not be avoided. The activities of both colonial government and Christian missionaries in effect had cumulative negative consequences for each other. The missionary activities of conversion, and their use of education as a means of carrying out conversion along with the education of the untouchables and women hurt the entrenched interests of elite natives in a hierarchical society of India; on the other hand government policies like partiality shown in the employment of English men over the natives to the top posts in administration triggered the resentment in the same elite natives who were aspirants of those positions. These factors together led the nationalists to work on the counter religious propaganda. Initially the reasons for the counter propaganda was mostly religious because the resentment arising out of the way of functioning of the government like impartiality shown in the employment and promotion was a matter of concern for very few but the masses who had been indoctrinated with religious rituals and mythologies for generations could be easily aroused through religious issues. The sepoy mutiny of 1857 is one such instance where religious sensibilities were used to gather the momentum for revolting against the British even though the reasons for the pent up emotions were mainly administrative. The ease with which the religious sensibilities of the natives can be used for organization of the masses for large scale demonstrations and protests against the colonial government gave rise to the revival of Hinduism.

The stage for the revival of Hinduism was set by the Christian missionaries themselves. Unable to achieve their proselytizing goals within the educational enterprise they moved to public debates. An excerpt below from Bellinoit’s articles gives us the glimpse of the dynamics of the religious discourse.

These missionaries triggered the comparative studies of religions among the natives. The attempts by the missionaries to make forceful relationship between Christianity and Hinduism and their arguments like Christianity as a source of Hinduism which has over the generations got deviated from the true religion of missionaries were fiercely contested by the learned native elite. In the process they consolidated their knowledge about the Hinduism and saw the need for the revival of the degenerating Hinduism which already had fragmented into hundreds of different versions.

The debate and contestations did not end with just the religious aspects. It dived into the social and cultural aspects too. The status of women and untouchables and their education, issues like the practice of sati and child marriage etc were seen as severe drawbacks of native religions which later led to the emergence of many social reforms. The role of Christian missionaries in the emergence of depressed castes as a strong political identity is very significant.

Conclusion

By and large it can be said that the Christian missionaries though failed in their actual proselytizing efforts they succeeded in bringing about many changes in the mindset of the natives through educational activities regarding the perceptions about religion, science and technology, gender and caste. Social structures with caste and class hierarchies in Indian society saw tremendous changes benefitting the depressed castes. Christian missionaries were also directly responsible for initiating the natives towards finding a national identity along with their religious identities. Heightened sense of religious identities among the natives further culminated in the bitter partition of the nation based on the religion during the independence from the British rein and many more instances of communal violence in the post independent period. The issues with respect to the status of women and gender inequalities among the natives which was initially brought to the limelight by the Christian missionaries took a back bench during the intense freedom struggle. Women are yet to consolidate themselves politically at least to the extent the untouchables and the other backward classes were able to achieve. Passing women’s bill is still not a priority in the current political scenario. Instances of Child marriages have come down though not completely eliminated. Killing of the girl child, right in the womb of the mother is still rampant; aided by improved health care infrastructure. Interestingly Christian missionaries who pioneered by taking up the social causes of depressed castes and women during colonial period have now left these issues to the other social activists and have started focusing on their proselytizing efforts of the natives.

References

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

Author(s): Hayden J. A. Bellenoit

Source: Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 41, No. 2 (Mar., 2007), pp. 369-394

Published by: Cambridge University Press

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4132356.

2 Missionary Education and Empire in Late Colonial India, 1860–1920 , by Hayden J. A. Bellenoit

Author(s): Jeffrey Cox

Source: Victorian Studies, Vol. 51, No. 4 (Summer 2009), pp. 749-751

Published by: Indiana University Press

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/VIC.2009.51.4.749.

3 Demythologising the Missionaries: A Reassessment of the Functions and Relationships of