Christian subversion and missionary activities -2

03-12-2007, 03:40 AM

The star in the east: the controversy over Christian missions to India,
1805-1813
The Historian
March 22, 1998
Chancey, Karen

The dominance of the East India Co. over colonial India was successfully challenged by Protestant Christian missionaries. The missionaries portrayed the company as a profiteering usurper of British political authority, while describing themselves as philanthropists. Formal religious control was granted to the missionaries by the British government by the 1820s.

In 1805, the publication of a pamphlet by Claudius Buchanan, a little known Anglican clergyman in Calcutta, sparked a bitter eight-year debate over the right of Christian missionaries to operate in British India. The issue became the subject of dozens of pamphlets, many emotional sermons, and nearly 1,000 parliamentary petitions. While missions advocates stressed the need to combat immorality and convert the unsaved, their opponents, led by the powerful East India Company, argued that such mission work caused disaffection among Indian citizens and undermined British political authority.(1)

Most scholars have assigned motives to the two groups involved in the dispute similar to those publicized in the original controversy. Scholars sympathetic to the pro-missions forces, such as Eli Potts, portray them as concerned only with the well-being of India's people: "[T]hey thought the conversion of its people to Christianity was intimately bound up with the progressive improvement of their condition."(2) According to this view, the anti-missions group cared more for conquest and profit than for humanitarian issues. George D. Bearce notes that "the missionaries were proposing changes which would disrupt the imperial order.

Imperial attitudes, thus, were normally in opposition to the projects of the missionaries and humanitarians."(3) The other side of the issue is discussed by Penelope Carson, who sees the East India Company as not so much anti-missions as pro-common sense. By attempting to curtail the missionary activity, she argues, the Company was acting out of a "concern for the security of British India."(4) In the same vein, C. H. Philips sees the missionaries as shortsighted individuals who did not consider the possible ramifications of their actions: "[F]anaticism tends to obscure rather than clarify political issues."(5)

Although both of these analyses contain truth, they overlook more subtle motivations. Consideration of underlying social and political conditions in Britain and India reveals that the debate was concerned less with missions and political security per se than with power. It became a focal point for the struggles between the Church of England and the Dissent, and between the Company and the Crown over who was ultimately to control India, religiously and politically. 

When William Carey and John Thomas, the first Dissenting missionaries to arrive in India, reached Bengal in 1793, the foundation for controversy had already been laid in both Britain and India. In Britain this took the form of two significant events, one religious and one political. The Protestant Dissent, those churches such as the Lutherans and the Puritans who had long rejected the authority of the Church of England, had been joined in the late eighteenth century by a number of fast-growing denominations, including the Baptists to which Carey and Thomas belonged. The "New Dissent," as such denominations are known, had become so prevalent by the early nineteenth century that, according to an 1811 House of Lords report, the Church of England was on its way to becoming a minority religious establishment. A number of Anglicans became concerned, both about the spread of Dissenting churches and their effect on the official church: Evangelicals within the Church of England were beginning to adopt some Dissenting views, becoming interested in social and religious reform measures and in missions. The same year that the Dissenters arrived in Bengal, William Wilberforce, an evangelical member of Parliament, proposed that Parliament require the East India Company to finance missionary endeavors in its territories. The measure was defeated by the combined efforts of the Company, which objected on financial grounds, and Anglican leaders, who were more interested in combating the threat of the Dissent at home than in proselytizing abroad. Anglican evangelicals responded by helping to form missionary societies such as the Church Missionary Society in 1799 and the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1804. They also ensured that a number of evangelical chaplains were sent abroad with the Company.(6)

The passing in 1784 of Prime Minister William Pitt's East India Act also affected the controversy. Since the East India Company was first chartered by Queen Elizabeth I in 1600, it had governed itself with minimal interference from the Crown through its Court of Directors, a body similar in function to the board of directors in a modern company, with input from its Court of Proprietors, those persons owning Company stock. Detractors in Parliament cited the Company's financial problems and frequent wars with Indian powers as evidence of its inability to continue without supervision. Pitt's Act formed the first significant limitation of the Company's right to govern its Asian possessions as it saw fit.

The Act was a compromise between those like Edmund Burke, who wanted the Crown to take complete control of the Company, and the company's directors. The Court of Directors retained the power to appoint the civil, military, and judicial officials serving in India, including the governor-general, the Company employee who directed all of its activities there. However, it also set up the Board of Control, a parliamentary committee to oversee the Court of Directors, and gave the Crown the right to recall any Company employee in India whose actions it disapproved.

As the directors feared, the Act began a trend. Thereafter, until the final assumption of the government of India by the Crown in 1858, each time the Company's charter came up for renewal more power passed out of its hands--a fact deeply resented and bitterly contested by the Company.

In India, expansion of the Company's possessions was another important factor underlying the debate. As the Company's territories grew more extensive, more than doubling between the 1790s and 1813, its government became more restrictive. The largest acquisitions came during the governor-generalship of Richard Wellesley (1798-1805), who implemented government censorship of the press and placed restraints on Europeans' freedom of movement. Neil Benjamin Edmonstone, chief secretary to government under Wellesley, justified such measures as necessary to control those Europeans who were not employed by--and therefore directly answerable to--the Company. For decades there had been a number of "vagrant Europeans" in India who neither worked for the Company nor provided any useful service to it.(7) Efforts were made to absorb some of these into Company service and to deport others. Carey and Thomas may have assumed that they would be classed with this segment of society, for they failed to apply for the permits required by the Company for British subjects residing in India and did not even travel to the subcontinent on a British ship.(8)

After spending some years in language study, the missionaries settled in the Danish town of Serampore in 1800. There they began translating and printing the Bible, circulating religious pamphlets, and preaching, often in Calcutta. Their activities soon brought them to the attention of Claudius Buchanan, an evangelical chaplain employed by the Company.

Buchanan strongly approved of the missionaries' efforts, especially their translation work. Years earlier, while studying at Queen's College, Cambridge, he had asserted that "nothing but ... the constant perusal of the New Testament seems capable of delivering men from unnecessary prejudices and prepossessions. Grace does not necessarily do it.... Grace converts the heart, but it does not teach the understanding."(9) Soon after meeting the Serampore Baptists, who had modestly augmented their numbers, Buchanan commented that "instead of thirty missionaries, I wish they could transport three hundred. They can do little harm, and may do some good."(10)

Among both Europeans and Indians Buchanan saw what he considered to be gross immorality. Calcutta he compared to the Biblical Sodom, where it was impossible to find 10 righteous men. Buchanan's perception was shared by other writers of the day, many of them unconnected with the religious establishment, who left similar accounts of the city. Duels were common, the most famous taking place between Warren Hastings, then governor-general, and the senior member of his council. "Punch houses," taverns named for the drink of limes, sugar, and alcohol, were numerous and led "to the ruin of nine out of ten [men] which step over their threshholds."(11) After a dinner party, it was common for a man to drink three bottles of claret or two of white wine, piling the empties beside him as "trophies of his prowess."(12) Heavy gambling was rampant, one young man amassing debts of 80,000 rupees in three years, equal at his level of salary to more than 60 years' wages. Drugs were readily available, especially opium, one of the Company's most lucrative exports, and were often added to the tobacco in the popular hookahs. Concubinage was so prevalent that Thomas Williamson, a long-time Company employee, estimated that three-quarters of non-married British men in India kept mistressses.(13)

While the short lifespan of many Europeans in India, reflected in Calcutta's reputation as "the grave of thousands,"(14) gave rise to much of this carpe them attitude, Buchanan was convinced that the lack of ministry was also to blame. He noted that services were not normally held at the Company's cantonments, where "the Christian Sabbath is no otherwise distinguished than by the dignity of the British flag." He lamented that for the 30,000 British soldiers and civil servants in India, there were only six military chaplains and three churches, fewer than on the island of Jamaica.(15) The Serampore missionaries filled this gap somewhat, at least in the area around Calcutta. As early as January 1800, soldiers were attending services at Serampore, just across the Hugly River from the large Company cantonment at Barrackpore. The missionaries' primary interest was the conversion of the Indians, however, and their efforts helped to increase Buchanan's interest in missions.(16)

From Buchanan's perspective, the moral state of the Indians was even worse than that of the Europeans. He wrote with horror of children sacrificed to the river at Saugor, a station at the mouth of the Hugly that East Indiamen passed on their way to Calcutta, and of female infanticide among the Rajputs. Sati, the practice of immolating women on their husbands' funeral pyres, often against their win, also appalled him. The light from burning pyres could be seen at night from the terraces of the city, causing him to wonder how many instances of sati occurred practically on the Company's doorstep. Buchanan may have learned of some of these practices from the missionaries, whose petitions to the Company's government helped to bring about the 1802 ban on child sacrifice and who regularly protested against sati.(17) {Usual made up stuff, somethings never change}

This similarity in outlook, as well as the dearth of other Anglican clergy in India, led Buchanan to work closely with the Serampore Baptists in the years leading up to 1805. He was instrumental in obtaining for William Carey a position as a language professor at the College of Fort William, and he assisted the missionaries in raising funds for translation work. He also helped to protect them from the Company's government, which suspected the Dissenters of having Jacobin sympathies.(18)

In 1805, Buchanan published his concerns regarding the immorality of British India in his Memoir on the Expediency of an Ecclesiastical Establishment for British India.

The first part dealt with the need for a formal Anglican presence in India to minister to the Europeans there. His primary argument, other than that of the moral laxity prevalent among East India Company men, was that India was "the only instance in the annals of our country where church and state have been dismembered. We seem at present to be trying the question, whether religion be necessary for a state."(19) it was a powerful argument, as the link between church and state in Britain was strengthening owing to perceived threats of social unrest and the growth of Dissenting churches.

Although Buchanan did not say so explicitly in Memoir, it is clear from his actions that he believed a strong Anglican presence was needed in India to ensure that the Church of England retained control over the Dissenting missionaries. The same year Memoir was published, an argument broke out between Buchanan and the Serampore Baptists; over funds they had raised for translation of the Bible.

Buchanan assumed the right to distribute the money as he saw fit, ignoring the wishes of the Baptists; two years later he attempted to take full control of the Serampore translation work, an event that led to "a dreadful collision."(20) As Buchanan later wrote, his motivation was "that the important work might be conducted strictly in the principles of the national church, and not fall entirely into the hands of dissenters."(21)

Buchanan's determination that the Anglican Church should control Christian religious activity in India was also apparent when he visited Mar Dionysius, the bishop of a sizable group of Syrian Christians whose ancestors had settled in Tanjore centuries before. When Buchanan visited the bishop in 1806, he assured the Syrian Christians that the Church of England wanted to "protect and defend" them and to use them "as an instrument of future good in the midst of her own Empire." He pointed out, however, that the Anglicans might find some of their practices objectionable and hinted that any union would require the Syrians to submit their beliefs for Anglican approval. On the same trip he made similar visits to Lutherans working on the Coromandel Coast and to the Roman Catholic missionaries working in southern India. Buchanan's vision of a paternalistic Church of England directing all Christian efforts in India must be seen as an additional motive for his ecclesiastical plan, as only through an official Anglican presence fully supported by government would such a plan be possible.(22)

The second part of Buchanan's Memoir dealt with the question of missions to the Indians. He praised the Serampore missionaries for reaching out to the Indians and castigated his own church for not doing likewise. He was also critical of the East India Company:

QUOTEProvidence hath been pleased to grant to us this great empire, on a

continent where, a few years ago, we had not a foot of land. From it

we export annually an immense wealth to enrich our own country. What

do we give in return? Is it said that we give protection to the

inhabitants and administer equal laws? This is necessary for

obtaining our wealth. But what do we give in return?(23) 

Such statements elicited furious response from members of the Company in Britain, and during the next two years, several events occurred in India to make the issue of missionary activity--Anglican or otherwise--even more controversial.

On 10 July 1806, Indian sepoys at Vellore in the Madras presidency revolted against their officers and killed 200 in the garrison of 370 before order was restored by a British force from Arcot. The mutiny was sparked by new government regulations concerning dress, which violated the religious customs of the sepoys. The Indian government, however, issued a statement that the underlying cause was a rumor that the Company intended to convert its soldiers by force to Christianity. Although there were no missionaries resident in either Vellore or Arcot, and very few in the Madras presidency, the Company implied that disruptive missionary activity had given rise to the rumor. A similar report was made to the East India Court of Directors in March 1807.(24)

The second event had to do with a proselytizing pamphlet, written in Persian, that was printed at the Serampore press in 1807. Entitled An Address to Musslemans with an Appendix Containing Some Account of Mahomet, the pamphlet sharply criticized the Moslem faith. A young Moslem who found it offensive complained to the government and, as a result, the government restricted the preaching activities of the Serampore missionaries and ordered them to move their press to Calcutta, where all future printing would be subject to censorship.(25)

The recent personal experience of Neil Edmonstone may have influenced how these events were interpreted by the Company. Edmonstone, official censor and the person to whom the missionaries had to answer in the Persian pamphlet controversy, was also a good friend of Sir George Barlow, governor-general during the Vellore mutiny. He accompanied Barlow to Madras to investigate the incident, and Barlow later wrote that Edmonstone's "wise and steady counsel afforded me important aid and support in carrying into effect the measures necessary for counteracting the impressions made by that alarming event."(26)

Shortly after Barlow assumed the governor-generalship, he and Edmonstone had traveled to Allahabad to negotiate an end to hostilities with the Marathas, a powerful northern Indian confederation with whom the Company had been at war since 1803. While at Allahabad they stayed in an ancient mosque that had been converted into accommodations. On a walk one afternoon, Edmonstone was attacked by a knife-wielding Moslem angered by the unintentional violation of the mosque. Edmonstone grappled with the man for some minutes, managing to hold him off until a sentry could come to his rescue.(27)

Just how much the incident affected Edmonstone's judgment on religious matters and, through him, that of the government, is unknown, but a letter he sent to Carey severely curtailing the missionaries' activities evidences a fear of interfering with native religious beliefs. The work at Serampore, he averred, was "evidently calculated to produce consequences in the highest degree detrimental to the tranquillity of the British dominions in India."(28) This was viewed by the missionaries as an overreaction--out of the 300 Persian pamphlets distributed, only one had prompted complaint--and their punishment as a persecution. William Ward commented that "such a letter was never written by a Christian Magistrate, and I never suppose by any Magistrate since the fan of pagan Rome."(29)

The Indian government eventually relented on some of the restrictions, although the missionaries' press remained subject to official censure. The damage had been done, however; the report sent to the Court of Directors blaming missionary work for sparking rebellion at Vellore added strength to the controversy over Buchanan's Memoir. Two men were especially concerned about the role of missionaries in India in general and specifically about those from Dissenting churches. Thomas Twining, a proprietor of the Company, had served for years in a high-level civil service position in Bengal. He protested against Buchanan's Memoir on a number of grounds, objecting especially to one sentence stating that the government should "use every means of coercing this contemptuous spirit of our native subjects."(30) Assuming that Buchanan was recommending forceful conversion of the Indians, Twining warned the court of the dangerous consequences of such an action.

When news of the Vellore mutiny reached London, Twining and several of the Company's directors immediately claimed that Christian missionary activity was responsible for the incident. Although they failed to convince the court to recall the missionaries, the two men responsible for issuing the objectionable orders at Vellore--Commander-in-Chief Sir John Cradock and Governor William Bentinck--were ordered home. The directors may have thought this would satisfy Twining, as Bentinck was known to have evangelical inclinations and might have been expected to support missionary activities in the future. Instead, Twining decided to bring the matter before the public in an 1807 pamphlet entitled A Letter, to the Chairman of the East India Company: On the Danger of Interfering in the Religious Opinions of the Natives of India.(31)

Twining was quickly joined in his protests by Major John Scott-Waring, a retired East India Company officer, and by numerous other writers who argued against missions from both a religious and a political standpoint. They attacked the missionaries' legitimacy, noting that they had not been sent out by the Church of England but were Dissenters, and their character: they were "illiterate, ignorant, and as enthusiastic as the wildest devotees among the Hindoos,"(32) and William Carey was narrow-minded and puritanical. Dissenting missionaries posed a serious threat to the Church of England as they had "set themselves up as the standard of religious orthodoxy, and the models of moral conduct ... who attack all existing regulations, and propose their own crudities as the perfection of reason and faith."(33) The evangelical clergymen in India who assisted them, especially Buchanan, were condemned for having "cordially co-operated with the various sectarian missionaries now unhappily spread over Indian."(34) The Dissenters had deserted "the good old church of England" and were now "court[ing] the friends of the church to aid in its oppression.(35) Missionary societies were also targeted:

QUOTEThese sometimes consist of some members of the church, and of some

sectaries, who, while they seem to press no more than the diffusion

of Christianity, are most earnest in disgracing and subverting the

establishment.... They seek the shelter of the Church, that they may

undermine it. The natural consequences are clear--the sectarian

missionaries will preach against the establishment.(36) 

Readers were presented with a picture of Dissenting missionaries spreading out over India like a virus, slowly destroying the Church of England as they went.

The political picture recounted by anti-missions pamphleteers was even grimmer. The object of his letter, Twining said, was to "oppose measures, involving the extinction, not only of the East India Company, but of the British Empire in Indian"(37) Scott-Waring called the missionaries "dangerous men" who recklessly pursued their activities without thought of the consequences. He had, he claimed, seen letters from "very sensible men in India" informing him that the actions of the missionaries, especially their work in distributing tracts and translations of the Bible, had been a factor in the Vellore mutiny.(38)

He went on to state that the work of the Serampore missionaries and the Memoir had "caused the greatest alarm throughout Hindostan," and he castigated Buchanan for his continued efforts to promote the cause of missionary activity in the months following the mutiny: "When the walls of Vellore were red with the blood of our countrymen, so profusely shed by religious enthusiasts, a rational man might have expected that we should have heard no more as to converting the natives to Christianity."(39) He joined Twining in warning that if Buchanan's plan were followed, British India would be lost.(40)

The public was further informed that in addition to the threat of internal revolt, there was a more menacing enemy to guard against. As the bogey of the age, the most extravagant rhetoric was reserved for Napoleon:

QUOTEThe laurels of conquest refuse to flourish, and fade upon his brow,
Â
until this nation shall send its princes to follow his triumphal car.

The sword of our Edward, and the armour of our Henry, the tapestries

of Blenheim and the trophies of St. Paul's ... are wanted to decorate

the capitol of the spoiler of the world.(41) 

It was only a matter of time before Napoleon turned his attention to India, Hopkins said, and if the missionaries caused enough disaffection among the Indians, they might join the French against the British. Under the circumstances, the safest thing was to prohibit all missionary activity, whether Anglican or Dissent, and to stop the circulation of the Bible. Alluding to the Persian pamphlet incident, Scott-Waring wondered what it would take for the government to recall "these madmen from Bengal."(42)

Naturally, the pro-missions forces could not ignore such a challenge. Andrew Fuller, secretary to the Baptist Missionary Society, replied for the Baptists, while Claudius Buchanan and John Shore, Lord Teignmouth, led the evangelical response. Their strategy was not only to refute their opponents' main points but also to renew the call for additional missionary activity in India. 

Fuller's response to Twining was fairly calm, as Twining's pamphlet had refrained from personal attacks. He merely asserted that the missionaries had never attempted to convert anyone forcibly, nor did they desire to do so; Twining had simply misunderstood Buchanan's intent. He reminded Twining that he had offered no proof that missionaries had had anything to do with the incident at Vellore, and averred that "nothing will so effectually establish the British dominion in India, as the introduction of Christianity."(43) Fuller was less kind to Scott-Waring:

QUOTE[T]his gentleman is sufficiently aware of the prejudice which exists

against Protestant dissenters, and knows how to avail himself of it.

He can condescend to call the missionaries sectaries and schismatics.

And would he have liked them better, if they had been Churchmen? No,

for he speaks of certain gentlemen, as "classed under that

description of our clergy, who are termed `evangelical,'" and of

their being all for "converting the Hindoos to Christianity." Clergymen

of this description are, in his account, as bad as sectaries and schismatics.

The truth is, it is as Christians that we earn his displeasure, only

he judges it prudent to attack us under other names.(44) 

Part of Fuller's conviction that Scott-Waring was no Christian may have come from the accurate assumption that he was the author of two anonymous books entitled A Vindication of the Hindoos. Published in 1808, the volumes explained the basics of Hinduism and argued that it was as well suited as Christianity to be the religion of a civilized society. Scott-Waring even hinted that Hinduism might be the better religion, commenting that "the religion of Brahma has done more for the lower orders of the Hindoos than Christianity seems to have done for the corresponding classes in Europe."(45)

Buchanan also responded to his opponents' comments, noting, for instance, that missionary work was commonplace in India: "There have been for ages past, numerous castes of missionaries in Hindostan, Pagan, Mohamedan, and Christian, all seeking to proselyte individuals to a new religion."(46) There was no reason to view missionary activity as dangerous in a country where it had long existed. For the most part, however, he appealed to the sympathy of the British public on behalf of India, which he portrayed as mired in superstition. He wrote about the temple of Juggernaut, which had just come under the Company's supervision in 1806, calling attention to the devotees who annually allowed themselves to be crushed underneath the idol's cart to prove their devotion. He graphically described the burning of widows and child sacrifice he had seen in Bengal, and recommended to his readers a work by one of the Serampore missionaries that went into even greater detail.(47)

Buchanan's writings were extremely popular, both in England and America, where they went into numerous printings. Part of the reason for this was the timing of their publication: it was the beginning of the reform era in Britain, when concern over social issues such as slavery and working conditions in the factories was increasing. Buchanan was a tireless propagandist for the cause of Indian social reform, and he seemed instinctively to know what issues would grip the public's imagination. He was among the first, for instance, to point out the inconsistency in the East India Company's stated neutrality in religious matters and their role as collector of the lucrative pilgrim tax at the juggernaut temple complex. Buchanan argued that the Company was more concerned with making money than with the welfare of the Indian people.(48)

The answer that ended the debate, at least temporarily, came from Lord Teignmouth. As a member of the Board of Control, his voice carried weight, as did his argument that he had been in India longer and more recently than Scott-Waring and, based on that experience, could definitely say that the missionaries posed no threat. Shore's rebuttal hinged on three main points: First, Scott-Waring had never named the writers of the letters who held the missionaries responsible for the Vellore mutiny, thus making them suspect. Second, none of the soldiers who were questioned after the incident mentioned the missionaries as a factor.

Finally, the Memoir had not been translated into any Indian languages; the Indians were unaware of Buchanan's call to expand missionary activity and were uninterested in the debate.(49)

Twining nonetheless forced a vote by the Board of Control on the issue in 1808, which he lost 7 to 13. Company arguments that missionary activity threatened British security were unconvincing, as British India had not been so free of danger in years. Externally, Napoleon's army in Egypt had been defeated by a combined British/Ottoman force in 1801, and Richard Wellesley had thereafter ousted all French sympathizers from the subcontinent. Internally, the Indian powers capable of resisting Company expansion--Tipu Sultan in the south, Hyderabad in the Deccan, and the Marathas in the north--had either been defeated militarily or rendered harmless by treaty. The government observation and censorship to which the few missionaries resident in India were subject allayed any remaining fears.

Within a few years, however, another reason for opposing missionary activity in India arose. Buchanan had never allowed the primary premise of his Memoir, that a formal ecclesiastical establishment be set up in British India, to be lost in the discussion. His writings and those of his supporters steadily grew in popularity among British churchgoers, and Buchanan grew hopeful that Parliament would amend the East India Company's charter to provide for a formal Anglican presence in India. As the date for the charter's renewal grew closer, the missionary issue was reexamined. By this time, however, it had nearly ceased to be a religious issue and become instead a focal point for those who wanted to keep the Company autonomous from the British government.

The debate of 1813 revolved around who should regulate religious activity in India, the Company or the Crown. The issue was hotly contested as its resolution would set a precedent for future questions of Company authority. The subject of control had always been a factor in the discussion. In the fourth edition of his Observations on the Present State of the East India Company, Scott-Waring had defended the Company's right to manage its own affairs, and one of his objections to the Serampore missionaries had been the way "they stole out to India" without permits, ignoring the Company's sovereignty.(50) Another writer had complained that the missionaries' actions denied the Company "the first principle of civil government," which was to regulate religious activity within its domain.(51) With renewal of the chapter pending, however, the issue came to the forefront of the discussion.

The question was argued in pamphlets, in petitions to Parliament, and in debates in the Court of Proprietors and in Parliament. Most Company proprietors opposed any missionary activity, viewing it as inextricably linked with Buchanan's proposal.

They feared that a state-sanctioned Anglican presence would undercut the Company's authority: "no man could go out [to India] in the situation of a bishop, without holding the same rank as within this country--a rank quite inconsistent with the policy and government of India."(52) One proprietor noted that "the love of power and prerogatives was . . . so predominant in a Church dignitary, that he was afraid the establishment of a Bishop would not contribute much to the ease and comfort of the government of India."(53) As in 1807-8, the Dissenters were portrayed as ungovernable rebels who would be the ruin of India if permitted to remain. When one man attempted to speak up for the missionaries in a Court of Proprietors meeting, he was shouted down by other members. The anti-missions argument also had support in Parliament, where it was argued that granting licenses to missionaries would give "the sanction of the British Government against the jurisdiction of the Colonial Governor."(54)

Pro-missions forces were greater, however, and members in both houses presented hundreds of petitions from British churches urging "the propagation of Christian Knowledge in India."(55) Lord Castlereagh spoke in favor of missionaries, arguing that "no danger would arise from allowing a certain number of persons, under the cognizance of the Court of Directors . . . to proceed, as missionaries to India."(56) However, the real champion of the missionaries was Witham Wilberforce, who spoke at length in their favor. Carey and the other missionaries were "entitled to our highest respect and admiration," and far from harming British interests in India, they would help to establish them.(57) This theme was echoed by Joshua Marshman, one of the Serampore Baptists, who published a defense of his group's activities in 1813. Responding to the question of missionary involvement in Vellore, he argued that the uprising was solely the fault of Company officials and likened the debate to Nero burning Rome and then blaming it on the Christians.(58)

The pro-missions group also received support from those who accused the Company of assuming powers in India it was never meant to have. "We are not a little alarmed," an article in the Edinburgh Review noted, "at the tone in which their advocates have begun to talk of their rights . . . with which, they more than insinuate, the Legislature of Great Britain has no more right to interfere, than with the rights of any other sovereign."(59)

The final point in the pro-missions argument was an extension of Buchanan's portrayal of the Company as profiteers. In contrast, the missionaries were depicted as "Christian philanthropists" to whom "it appears a matter of comparatively small importance, whether or not Britain be enriched by the commerce of the East, provided she be the means of rescuing millions of rational and immortal beings from the dominion of idolatry, superstition and ignorance."(60)

The argument was effective: Parliament renewed the East India Company charter with Buchanan's proposal intact, 89 to 36. The Dissenting missionaries were allowed to remain and evangelicals within the Company received a free hand to send more abroad, although, as Penelope Carson has demonstrated, the Company continued to severely curtail missionary activity in India. The question of who was ultimately to govern India had been answered, as the British government imposed its will on the Company over the strenuous objections of its leadership, a practice that would be repeated frequently in years to come. The issue of formal religious control had also been decided; the Church of England was established in ecclesiastical control of India, but by linking his argument with his defense of the Serampore Baptists, Buchanan had ensured that Dissenting missionaries would continue to play an important role.

The 1820s and 1830s witnessed a great increase in all types of Protestant missionaries in India. Working with the Anglican establishment, they fulfilled many of Buchanan's goals by helping to decrease practices such as sati and female infanticide. Britain had given its judgment on the missionaries, and it agreed with Buchanan's. "Are there good men among these sects?," Mar Dionysius had asked Buchanan. He had answered without hesitation, "Excellent men, almost in all."(61)
(not sure how the author reaches the conclusion.. ah well....)

(1) Claudius Buchanan, Memoir of the Expediency of an Ecclesiastical Establishment for British India (1805; reprint 1811), 14.

(2) Eli Daniel Potts, British Baptist Missionaries in India, 1793-1837 (Cambridge, 1967), 2.

(3) George D. Bearce, British Attitudes Towards India, 1784-1858 (London, 1961), 80.

(4) Penelope Carson, "An Imperial Dilemma: The Propagation of Christianity in Early Colonial India," Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 18 (May 1990): 173.

(5) Cyril H. Philips, The East India Company, 1784-1834 (Manchester, 1961), 159.

(6) David Hempton, "Evangelicalism in English and Irish Society, 1780-1840," in Evangelicalism: Comparative Studies of Popular Protestantism in North America, the British Isles, and Beyond, 1700-1990, ed. Mark A. Noll (New York, 1994), 162.

(7) Neil Benjamin Edmonstone, "Report on the Subject of the Freedom of the Press in India," 6 January 1823, Home Misc. Series 690, fol. 8, India Office Library, London; Hickey's Bengal Gazette, 23-30 December 1780.

(8) Potts, British Baptist Missionaries, 13.

(9) Quoted in Hugh Pearson, Memoir of the Life and Writings of the Reverend Claudius Buchanan (New York, 1818), 91.

(10) Ibid., 125.

(11) Pearson, Memoir, 126; Eliza Fay, Original Letters from India, 1779-1815 (London, 1925), 185; Thomas Williamson, The East India Vade-Mecum, vol. 2 (London, 1810), 161; Thomas Williamson, The European in India (London, 1813), 4.

(12) Sophia Goldesborne [pseud.], Hartley House, Calcutta (1798; reprint, 1908), 36.

(13) Calcutta: A Poem (London, 1811), 100; Williamson, Vade-Mecum, 224; Sketches of India (London, 1816), 164.

(14) Goldesborne, Hartley House, Calcutta, 1.

(15) Buchanan, Memoir, 14.

(16) Potts, British Baptist Missionaries, 40.

(17) Buchanan, Memoir, 59, 60, 62.

(18) Potts, British Baptist Missionaries, 54; Pearson, Memoir of the Life, 138.

(19) Buchanan, Memoir, 13.

(20) William Ward, Journal, quoted in Potts, British Baptist Missionaries, 55.

(21) Claudius Buchanan, An Apology for Promoting Christianity in India (Boston, 1814), 51.

(22) Claudius Buchanan, Christian Researches in Asia (New York, 1812), 68, iii.

(23) Buchanan, Memoir, 27.

(24) See R. E. Frykenburg, "New Light on the Vellore Mutiny," in East India Company Studies, ed. Kenneth Ballhatchet and John Harrison (Hong Kong, 1986); P. Chinnian, Vellore Mutiny (Saidapet, Madras, 1982); Stephen Neill, A History of Christianity in India: 1707-1858 (Cambridge, 1985), 150; John Scott-Waring, Observations on the Present State of the East India Company (London, 1808), iii; Philips, The East India Company, 160.

(25) Potts, British Baptist Missionaries, 183; Neil Benjamin Edmonstone, from Calcutta, to [Reverend William Carey, at Serampore] 8 September 1807, India Office Records, Home Misc. series 690, fols. 57-58.

(26) Neil Benjamin Edmonstone, "Report on the Subject of the Freedom of the Press in India," fol. 130; Testimonial from Sir George Barlow, September 1837, contained within the "Autobiography of Neil Benjamin Edmonstone," British Library Manuscripts, Add. Mss.36471, fol. 21.

(27) "Autobiography of Neil Benjamin Edmonstone," fol. 42.

(28) Edmonstone to Carey, 8 September 1807, letter, Home Misc. Series 690, fol. 56.

(29) William Ward, Journal, quoted in Potts, British Baptist Missionaries, 185.

(30) Neil Benjamin Edmonstone from Fort William to [Reverend William Carey at Serampore] 5 October 1807, India Office records, Home Misc. Series 690, fol. 141; Thomas Twining, A Letter to the Chairman of the East India Company. On the Danger of Interfering in the Religious Opinions of the Natives of India (London, 1807), 21.

(31) Philips, The East India Company, 160.

(32) Scott-Waring, A Letter to the Reverend John Owen (London, 1808), 33; Scott-Waring, Observations, xliv.

(33) Scott-Waring, A Letter to Owen, 33; David Hopkins, The Danger to British India from French Invasion and Missionary Establishments (London, 1809), 14.

(34) Scott-Waring, Observations, xiv.

(35) Id., xliv; Hopkins, Danger to British India, 26.

(36) Hopkins, Danger to British India, 50.

(37) Twining, ii.

(38) Scott-Waring, Letter to Owen, 81, 8.

(39) Scott-Waring, Observations, xii, xxxvi.

(40) John Scott-Waring, Remarks on the Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford (London, 1808), 63.

(41) Hopkins, Danger to British India, 3.

(42) Scott-Waring, Remarks on the Sermons, 43; Hopkins, Danger to British India, 54; Scott-Waring, Observations, lxvii.

(43) Andrew Fuller, An Apology for the Late Christian Mission to India (London, 1808), 4.

(44) Ibid., 73 (emphasis in original).

(45) [John Scott-Waring], A Vindication of the Hindoos: Part the Second (London, 1808), 106, 6.

(46) Buchanan, Christian Researches, 142.

(47) Claudius Buchanan, Letter from Tanjore, India, September 1, 1806 (New Haven, 1809), 2; Buchanan, An Apology, 8-9.

(48) Buchanan, "Christian Researches in Asia," in The Works of Claudius Buchanan (New York, 1812), 33-34.

(49) John Shore, Baron Teignmouth, Considerations on the Practicability, Policy, and Obligation of Communicating to the Natives of India the Knowledge of Christianity (London, 1808), 4, 7, 9, 13.

(50) Philips, The East India Company, 164; Scott-Waring, Remarks on the Sermons, 10.

(51) Hopkins, Danger to British India, 23.

(52) East India Question, Debates at the General Court of Proprietors of East India Stock on the 22nd and 26th June, 1813 on a Bill Pending in Parliament for a Renewal of the Company's Charter (London, 1813), 185.

(53) Ibid., 220.

(54) Ibid., 221, 241; Charles Marsh, Substance of a Speech by Charles Marsh Esq. in a Committee of the House of Commons, July 1, 1813 (London, 1813), 6.

(55) The Parliamentary Debates from the Year 1803 to the Present Time, vol. 26 (London, 1813), 105.

(56) Ibid., 827.

(57) Ibid., 870.

(58) Joshua Marshman, Advantages of Christianity in Promoting the Establishment and Prosperity of the British Government in India (London, 1813), 5.

(59) Papers Relating to the East India Company's Charter," The Edinburgh Review 20 (1812): 471.

(60) Indicophilus [pseud.], An Essay on the Propagation of Christianity in India, Occasioned by the Proposed Renewal of the East India Company's Charter (Edinburgh, 1813), 7-8.

(61) Parliamentary Debates, 870; Carson, 184 ff.; quoted in Pearson, Reverend Claudius Buchanan, 69.

Karen Chancey is a Ph.D. candidate in Asian history at Florida State University.

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