From the outset of its involvement with India in the early seventeenth century, the East India Company could not entirely ignore religious questions. Not only was it required to provide essential ...religious services for its merchants and officials, it also had to rely on the good will of the local people, who were mainly Hindu. In addition, many of its local employees were Roman Catholic mixed-race Portuguese/Indians. The Company pursued a pragmatic policy of religious toleration. The situation became more complicated once the Company gained political control over vast swathes of the subcontinent. This coincided with the emerging Evangelical Revival in Britain, which put great pressure on the Company to be more active in promoting Christian endeavor in India. This chapter charts the way in which the Company tried to deal with these competing pressures until its ultimate failure in 1858.
J.S. Mill's encounter with India Moir, Martin; Peers, Douglas Mark; Zastoupil, Lynn
J.S. Mill's encounter with India,
c1999, 19990217, 2000, 1999-01-01
eBook
The essays in this collection explore specific aspects of Mill?s approach to Indian issues, including religion, law, education, and security, and also place him within the broader currents of ...utilitarianism.
In 1813 William Wilberforce, the famous abolitionist and supporter of Protestant missions, told the British House of Commons that missionaries in India were the "most esteemed and popular individuals ...in the country." He went on to add that "the natives are so tolerant and patient in what concerns their religion that even the grossest imprudence could not arouse their an-ger"
1
In private letters, however, some missionaries were telling a contrary story, of open hostility and even violence.
2
The cautious, almost antipathetic behavior of the East India Company toward missionary activity was to a large extent due to Company fears of Indian reactions to attempts to convert them. Were there grounds for the Company's caution or was missionary rhetoric correct that conversion would bind rulers and ruled?
3
There are many ques-tions that need to be asked. Was peaceful coexistence between Christians and the wider community in the precolonial period a reality? If harmonious rela tions prevailed, what were the factors that enabled this situation to arise? How far was Christianity "inculturated" into the fabric of a common, albeit highly structured, "Hindu"
4
life, and did this amount to what we might re-gard as socio-cultural integration? To what were converts
5
so attracted that they wished to change religious affiliation, and what did they expect to result from this change? What socio-cultural fissures already existed, and in what way did new fissures develop? Did conflict arise from the mere fact that peo-ple became Christian, or were there other factors behind "Hindu"-Christian clashes?
6
Finally, how far was that linkage of Christianity with the colonial powers, such as Portugal and Britain, a factor in promoting the progress of Christians in Kerala? How might such a linkage have been a factor in promot-ing or retarding the progress of things Christian, especially in Kerala?
In 1821 the Baptist missionary William Ward said of Sanskrit that it was a ‘golden casket exquisitely wrought, but in reality ... filled with pebbles and trash.’¹ In these few words Ward foreshadowed ...the Anglicist/Orientalist controversy which was brought to a head in India by Charles Trevelyan and Macaulay in the 1830s. Trevelyan and Macaulay persuaded the governor-general, Lord William Bentinck, that the government’s objective should be the promotion of European literature and science through the medium of the English language rather than through support of traditional oriental studies, which they regarded as worthless. Orientalists, on the other hand, saw
