Missionary Education in Colonial India

Ph D Synopsis
REVISITING MISSIONARY EDUCATION IN INDIA: ATTITUDES

AND PROGRAMMES OF LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY IN
COLONIAL MADRAS PRESIDENCY
By
SAMRAJ N
ZAKIR HUSAIN CENTRE FOR EDUCATIONAL STUDIES

SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES
JAWAHARLAL NEHRU UNIVERSITY
NEW DELHI.
Introduction
It has frequently been argued that disadvantageous groups in South India, who on account of their poor
social plight had always attracted a great deal of scholarship around the world cutting across
disciplines. The study assumes greater significance as the political landscape of India is undergoing a
dynamic transformation through a dialectical process of social engineering. In this process, education
has been an inevitable part of life throughout human history. At all times society has been interested in
entering into new avenues of knowledge and the knowledge thus gained by the means of social change.
These have been the source for various revolutions that took place in history, especially in the
reformation of the Christian church. Any person or group, who attempted social reform, used education
to the fullest possible extend. During the colonial era, the grandiose attempts were made by a small
group of innovators, such as missionaries to implement radical changes upon a massive population.1
Missionaries, some of them, highly-gifted with literary, cultural, educational and above all religious
pursuits, focused their attention towards the respective interested fields, getting to know the Indians and
Indian society.... Missionary schools and institutions were started not only to give Biblical instruction
to the newly-converted Christians, but also to educate the millions, including people of all religions and
castes, and girls, who had no opportunity to attend a school during their life time. The missionaries of
the London Missionary Society, who started their work in South Travancore, were not exception to
this. One of the main reasons for the success of the LMS missionaries was their involvement in the
field of education and using it as a means of change.
Purpose of Study / Research Questions
In the nineteenth century, the English Protestant missionary societies in India, as well as in other
countries, used education as a missionary tool. This study examines the reasons for doing so and the
missionaries’ efforts to bring in educational ideas of the West, and to implement various educational
strategies, and the way in which the missionaries adjusted to their new context and thier relationship
with the government and with the local culture. The study examines the missionaries’ educational aims,
which were some extent formulated in diologue with the government, though the missionaries and the
government had significantly differed in their educational policies.
The main purpose of this study is to explore the progress and impact of English and modern education
on Indian society, on the arrival of missionaries, primarily from the London Missionary Society, and
the different stations the LMS missionaries settled, the schools and other educational institutions started
for primary, secondary and higher education, and the missionaries’ attitude towards women and
depressed masses in India, particularly in colonial Madras Presidency from the beginning of the
nineteenth century to the Partition.
The study will focus on how missionaries, in the absence of government sponsored schools, excelled in
providing education, and how this notion of modern education played a vital role for acquisition of
1
Beidelman, T .O, Colonial Evangelism: A SocioHistorical study of an East African Mission at the Grassroots, Indiana
University Press, Bloomington, 1982., p. 23.
knowledge, and slowly and steadily, this knowledge opened up vistas for the emergence of indigenous
leaders to question the existing order, socially and politically vibrant community came into being,
nevertheless, their conversion agenda failed miserably. Attention is paid to draw the distinction
between the education aimed at the nation’s elite through English education and the missionaries’
attempt to educate the rural mass in the vernacular language, and how the missionaries succeeded in the
latter.
The pedagogy by examining the infrastructural shortcomings and instructive contexts in which these
schools operated. In particular, it links the infrastructural deficiencies of pedagogy with larger trends of
secularization which were fashioned by both missionaries and Indians. Furthermore, the study tries to
find out the reason behind missionaries’ initial purpose of founding schools and colleges, though
intervened in the middle, they could make their strategy at the end.
Among those who had studied the problem of the depressed classes in the perspective of social change,
some have based their work in rural areas, while others based their studies on urban dwellers. Most of
them have studied social pattern, customary practices, behaviour and levels of aspiration. However,
none of the studies mentioned, provide sufficient information with special reference to depressed
classes of South India, in the context of education and its socio-economic implications, changes in the
customs, practices and beliefs of masses, missionary perspective of women empowerment through
female education.
Literature Review
Ringeltaube, in his journal (1806) wrote a letter to his friend in London to represent and impress the
Board of Directors of the LMS to obtain a sum of $100 for him towards building a church in
Travancore and erecting small buildings for a Seminary where the selected most-intelligent and
talented students from the congregations would be educated. Furthermore, he writes about the setting
up of a Boarding school. 2 In 1813, there were 188 boys studying in his schools which all had Indian
schoolmasters.3
Robert Eric Frykenberg (1967, 1987, 2009), who is an authority on missionaries, conversion,
missionary education in Modern India, exhorts through his articles, books and edited volumes, how
2
Jacob, John A, A History of the LMS in South Travancore 18061959, Nagercoil, 1959, p. 32; also see C. M. Agur,
Church History of Travancore, 1903, p. 509 ; William Robinson, Ringeltaube, the Rishi , CLS, Madras, 1908, p. 95.
3
Ringeltaube’s letter, dated, Mayiladi, 4 January 1813, South India General, Box 2, F 1, J A, CWWA, quoted in
Gladstone, Protestant Missionaries and People’s Movement in Kerala, Seminary Publications, KUTS, 1984, P. 70.
missionary societies stepped in to Indian soil, established the mission centres, started schools for the
depressed and underprivileged, particularly in Madras Presidency.4 He points out that the origins of
Modern Education in South India lay in Northern Europe, and it was there that new techniques evolved
for building radically new social institutions came from the inspiration of August Hermann Francke
(1663-1727), Philip Jacob Spencer's disciple that personal enlightenment, spiritual vitality, and moral
transformation by means of a proliferating network, paved the way for German Pietism, which was
influenced by the missionaries, and that in turn promoted educational work in India.
Dick Kooiman (1989), in his seminal work, Conversion and Social Equality in India : The London
Missionary Society in South Travancore in the nineteentyh Century, delineates the extreme level of
caste oppression on the lower castes and untouchables; they were denied access to public roads, courts
and schools; they could not carry umbrellas, and worst of all, lower caste women were to present
themselves in public bare-breasted as they were prohibited to cover their bosom.5 The social
transformation witnessed by Travancore in the interface between the LMS which set foot in Travancore
in the first decade of the nineteenth century...............
Koji Kawashima’s (1999) Missionaries and a Hindu State : Travancore 1858-1936 explores how a
self- declared Hindu State Travancore changed itself into a modern state by introducing Modern and
English Education, and the way the state used LMS and other Christian Missionary organizations, who
had a completely different religious position from itself, during the process of state-building; and how
the British authorities were concerned in this process.6
Duncan Forrester (1980) who worked tremendously on caste, depressed classes, conversion,
Christianity and missionaries, exemplifies that the issues continue to have not only intellectual
significance but an integral relation to questions of value and of action.7 Duncan Forrester (1977,
1980) in his works, The Depressed Classes and Conversion to Christianity, 18601960, Caste and
Christianity: Attitudes and Policies on Caste of AngloSaxon Protestant Missionaries in India, worked
tremendously on caste, depressed classes, conversion, Christianity and missionaries, and exemplifies
that the issues continue to have not only intellectual significance but an integral relation to questions of
4
Frykenberg, Robert Eric, “Modern Education in South India, 17841854: Its roots and Its Role as a Vehicle of
Integration under Company Raj”. The American Historical Review, Vol.91, No. 1, Feb 1986, p. 41.
5
Kooiman, Dick, Conversion and Social Equality in India: The London Missionary Society in South Travancore in the
Nineteenth Century, Manohar, New Delhi, 1989.
6
Kawashima, Koji, Missionaries and a Hindu State Travancore 18581936 . Oxford, New Delhi, 2003.
7
Forrester, Duncan B, Caste and Christianity : Attitudes and Policicies on Caste of AngloSaxon Protestant Missions in
India, Curzon Press, London, 1980.
value and of action. Forrester narrates not only the early English Dissenters such as the Serampore
Baptists came for the most part from the ranks of the ‘skilled machanics’8, but also believes that the
egalitarian orientation which they had developed as a result of their resentment at the restraints of class
in England, brought a difference of emphasis relating to the different backgrounds of Scottish
missionaries like, Alexander Duff, Wilson and John Anderson. He also summarises the incompatibility
of Caste and Christianity, as caste sometimes appears, as part of a motley collection of practices which
are certainly strange to westerners, and also found to be an obstacle to their efforts to convert
individuals to Christianity, as caste and the Hindu religion were so intimately wrought together that
the one could not barely be distinguished from the other
E. Daniel Potts (1967), in his work, British Protestant Missionaries in India, 1793-1837: the History of
Serampore and its Missions contributes the British Baptist Missionaries’ work on sevaral Indian
languages, translations, dictionaries, grammar books, vernacular prose-writing and journalism. Potts
also talks about the pioneer work in printing, botany and agriculture; and the missionaries’ role in
mobilizing the conscience of government and public opinion against social abuses.
Christopher Fuller’s work on Nayars and Christians in Travancore exhorts the feudal life of the land-
owning castes in Travancore, their culture, religious traditions, .........................
David Mosse, in his D.Phil Dissertation Caste, Christianity and Hinduism : A Study of Social
Organisation and Religion in Rural Ramnad discusses one of the most powerful autonomous
seventeenth-century cult centres, the shrine of Lord Yagappan at Suranam, in the heart of the Marava
dominated poligar country of easrtern Ramnad.
Dennis Hudson in his Ph.D Dissertation The Life and Times of H. A. Krishnapillai (1827-1900) : A
Study in the Encounter of Tamil Sri Vaishnava Hinduism and Evangelical Protestant Christianity in
Nineteenth Century Tirunelveli District9 ...........................................................................
Susan Bayly (1980), in her work Popular Christianity, Caste and Hindu Society in South India, 1800-
1915: A Study of Travancore and Tirunelveli stresses the depth and resilience of South India’s
8
Forrester, Duncan B, Caste and Christianity : Attitudes and Policicies on Caste of AngloSaxon Protestant Missions in
India, Curzon Press, London, 1980, p. 193202.
9
Hudson, Dennis, Protestant Origins in India
indigenous religious traditions in the encounters with the faiths of foreign missionaries and also
narrates that converted Christians were never isolated from the world of indigenous cult devotion
among both Tamil and Malayali Christians. In her another work titled Saints, Goddesses and Kings :
Muslims and Christians in South Indian Society 1700-1900 she vividly analyses the nature and origins
of religious conversion and the status of religious minorities,10 their social organization and
practice.........................
Hugald Grafe (1990) talks on the the growth and establishment of various Protestant and Catholic
missions in Madras Presidency, particularly in the Tamil region since 1800. Apart from talking about
the conversion of Tamil groups – Nadars, Vellalas, Adidravidas and Brahmains, he explains the
misssionary activities among the peopole groups in different parts of Tamilnadu, forming and
establishing Christian Villages in Southern Tamil Nadu, where mass conversion happened largely, and
the LMS missionary Ringeltaube, who was persuaded by the local Protestant convert Vedamanickam
from Mayiladi, near Kanyakumari, to establish a mission station there.11
Hayden Bellenoit (2007) examines the precolonial foundations upon which both Orientalist
scholarship and comparative religious debate were based. In particular, he examines, vibrant, extant
traditions of religious debate and appropriation, which were picked upon by eighteenth century
Orientalist scholars, who normally studied India, China and Persia, and later on, missionaries
themselves. Taking the late eighteenth century as a very roughly defined starting point, Orientalism
can be discussed and analyzed as the corporate institution for dealing with the orient- dealing with it by
making statements about it, authorising views of it : in short, Orientalism as a western style for
dominating, restructuring and having authority over the orient.
Bellenoit also delineates how missionaries engaged with pre-existing studies of Hindu theism and how
they moulded to fit their own agenda. Furthermore, the nuts and bolts of pedagodgy by examining the
infrastructural shortcomings and instructive contexts in which these schools operated. In particular, it
links the infrastructural deficiencies of pedagogy with larger trends of secularization which were
fashioned by both missionaries and Indians. It also addresses acquisition of knowledge, though reacted
to the western curricula and contested on comparitive religion, and also the rise of affective
knowledge, that paved the way for Indian patriotism, and at a larger level, Indian nationalism. There
10
Bayly, Susan, Saints, Goddesses and Kings : Muslims and Christians in South Indian Society 17001900 ; Popular
Christianity, Caste and Hindu Society in South India, 18001915: A Study of Travancore and Tirunelveli
11
Grafe, Hugald, The History of Christianity in India, Part IV. CHAI, Bangalore, 1990, pp. 2829.
were not simply irregularities but an integral part of the mission ideology, which enabled the British to
react flexibly to changing colonial parameters and to ‘improve’ the means and mechanisms. The
educational enterprise certainly did-like most other modern educational regimes, reproduce elite Indian
ethos. Education in mission schools was an attempt to socially reproduce values and morals.12
Research Methodology
The study of ethnic and religious diversity has become a major leitmotif in recent Indian
historiography. Considering the current political reality, understanding the events of the past which led
to the empowerment of the communities needs to be historically expounded and explicated with a view
to reconstruct the history of modern India in the light of the emerging new theories, evidences and
tools. In this context, the construction and re-construction of Tamils’ history through missionary
writings, translations and missionary periodicals, available in repositories like National Archives of
India, New Delhi, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, Serampore Missionary Archives,
Vidya Jyoti Seminary, New Delhi, Tamil Nadu State Archives, Chennai, United Theological College
and its Church History Archives of India, Bangalore, Gurukkul Theological Seminary and Archives,
Chennai, Madras Christian College Archives, Chennai, Tamil Nadu Theological Seminary, Madurai,
Stephen Neill Study and Research Centre, have now become probative and prodigious mainly due to
missionaries’ cutting-edge effort to study the attitudes and programmes with special reference to
education.
Arrival of missionaries in colonised countries has always been portrayed by Western scholars as one of
the intended results of powerhegemonic relationship. Antonio Gramsci illuminates the relations of
culture and power through the useful insight that the cultural domination works by consent and often
precedes conquest by force. Power, operating concurrently at two clearly distinguishable levels,
produces a situation where “the supremacy of a social group manifests itself in two ways, as
domination and as intellectual and moral leadership…. It seems clear… that there can, and indeed must
be hegemonic activity even before the rise to power, and that one should not count only on the material
force which power gives in order to exercise an effective leadership.”13
12
Heyden J A Bellenoit, Missionary Education and Empire in Late Colonial India, 18601920, Pickering and Chatto,
London, 2007.
13
Quoted in Gauri Viswanathan, “Currying Favor: The Politics of British Educational and Cultural Policy in India, 1813
1854, Social Text, no. 19/20, Autumn, 1988, p. 85.
Unquestionably, the interference of missionaries in day-to-day activities of the people in Madras
Presidency opened up vistas for the so-called depressed classes to have public spaces. Michel
Foucault's notion of a discourse, as described by him in the 'The Archeology of Knowledge' and in
'Discipline and Punish' to identify Orientalism, as it also tries to show that European culture gained in
strength and identity by setting itself off against the Orient as a sort of surrogate and even underground
self. Foucault talks about knowledge, which is power. Knowledge, which is consigned with a group,
who are powerful. Foucault’s work is, to challenge to the empirical dogma that we speak of that
which we see, and that words and things bear an essential referential interrelation. Foucault talks on the
theory of power as a web of force relations. These force relations are, by definition unstable, variable
and constantly in a state of evolution.
Bourdieu’s reproductive and theoretical template offers useful insight. The rhetoric of morality and
religious pluralism clouded Indian desires to reproduce their own social distinctions, especially when
zamindars, pundits and rajas served as patrons of ‘progressive’ and modern institutions. The social,
economic and moral context, which allowed the emergence of a north Indian educational enterprise, the
ascendency of a market form of education, which came into being during the later half of nineteenth
century. From the beginning of the colonial rule in India, the British regarded the country and its
people as subjugated by political regimes that they characterised as 'oriental despotism', written by
officials of the East India Company during early British historiography. The notion of 'improvement of
human kind' was prevalent, among the political and economic elite of Great Britain during the last
decades of the eighteenth century, and extended to the moral and material improvement of British
India; in both societies, the British elite regarded betterment as a mandate to civilize the masses.
However, the colonies in general, and India in particular, became a kind of vast laboratory where the
ideology of a civilizing mission towards an ‘uncivilised’ people was worked out by various groups and
individuals, who dominated the public and political spheres of both the metropolis and the colonial
periphery.
The colonial conquest underlined the weaknesses of the traditional order and the need for reform and
regeneration of its institutions. An alternative, however, was not entirely found in the Western model
presented by colonial rule, particularly because of the apprehension aroused in Indian mind by the
cultural and intellectual engineering by colonial state as a part of its strategy of political control. While
traditional culture appeared inadequate to meet the challenge posed by the West, colonial
hegemonisation tended to destroy the tradition itself.14
14
K. N. Panikkar, “Culture and Ideology: Contradictions in Intellectual Transformation of Colonial Society in India,”
Historical interest in Indian Christians has so far been almost entirely fixed on foreign missionaries,
and on the process of conversion that they supposedly inaugurated. In other words, a transition to
Christianity is primarily situated in the initiative of the Western missions rather than in the experience
and sensibility of Indian converts. The horizon of enquiry is largely filled up with questions about the
consequences of conversion, especially the extent of continuity or break with an anterior religious
identity. The degree of embeddedness of Indian Christians in surrounding Hindu society thus emerges
as a central concern. A second set of preoccupations revolve around the agents behind conversion:
whether the hidden hand of the colonial state was more responsible for it, or it was the social
advancement that the missionaries provided with their educational, and selfimprovement schemes.15
Historical introduction to Christianity: Protestantism, Pietism, Enlightenment and Missionary

Societies
The philosophy of the Enlightenment gave new direction in Europe, where society exists out which was
readily amenable to empirical observation; the knowledge of society can be objective and universal and
hence cumulative and progressive; this knowledge is different from and superior to ideological
distortions and religious beliefs and is positively useful for the restructuring of human society.
The Reformation in Germany and other countries since 1516, after Martin Luther’s protest against the
authority and corrupt practices of the Church, and his proclamation of 95 Theses in Gutenberg, paved
the way for the idea of ‘Protestantism’ in Europe, and the following centuries Europe underwent a lot
of changes in the springing out of many kinds of ideologies, when ‘German Pietism’ and
‘Enlightenment’ made big impact in the thinking of the people. The pietists in Germany were more
interested in education, and their leading representative Spener and his disciple August Hermann
Francke, started planning and propagating the ideas of modern education throughout the world.
Meanwhile, John Amos Comenius, a Moravian bishop, self-styled pansophist and pedagogue,
considered to be one of the founders of modern schools proposed a twelve grades of compulsory
learning.16 The ‘evangelical revival’ in the Great Britain, which was at its helm of affairs during the
last decade of the eighteenth century, envisaged the formation of missionary societies among the
various protestant groups. Obviously, Baptist Missionary Society (1792), London Missionary Society
(1795), Church Missionary Society(1799) etc., were formed and missionaries were sent to different
Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 22, no. 49, December, 5, 1987, p. 2115.
15
Tanika Sarkar, “Missionaries, Converts and State in Colonial India,” Studies in History, vol. 18, no. 1, Sage
Publications, 2002, pp. 121122.
16
Martin Carnoy, Education as Cultural Imperialism, David Mckay Company, New York, 1967, p. 4.
parts of other countries.17
Christianity in India
India’s engagement with Christianity is believed to have started as early as the beginning of the
Christian era. St. Thomas, one of the 12 apostles of Jesus Christ, landed at Kodungallur, in Kerala, on
the West coast of South India in A.D.52. After 20 years of religious activity in the country, he was
murdered, it is believed, at Little Mount, in Chennai (Madras). A new epoch in the history of India may
be said to have begun when Vasco De Gama, the first Portuguese sailor, reached Calicut in A. D.1498.
The Portuguese were the first Europeans to come to the Malabar coast on 24 December 1500. 18 Sixteen
centuries later, St. Francis Xavier (1506-1552), one of the founding priests of Society of Jesus, an
International Religious Institution, serving particularly in the field of education, was in India for
Missionary work, St. John de Britto (1647-1693), also belonging to the Society of Jesus, followed
him a century later.19 While the Christian missionaries from the west, worked in India for more than
four hundred years, stand for the peaceful penetration of western culture, the various European powers
- the Portuguese, Dutch, French and English - who vied with each other for political hegemony and
territorial aggrandizement in the Indian subcontinent, symbolize the violent imposition of culture from
above through colonization and regimentation. The different denominational churches that were long
engaged in religious, educational and medical work in the colonial context have left some productive
impressions upon the life and thought of the people of India in general and that of the Madras
Presidency in particular.20
Early Initiatives in Education in India

Education in some form or the other did exist in India as early as the Indo-Aryan Scripture – the Vedas
and the Upanishads. As a result of this, learning and a particular mode of training for brahmins
regarding priestly functions,21 was needed either in one way or the other. Brahminic education was the
earliest traceable programme of education in the ancient India.22 Three types of schools were
functioning in Travancore when missionaries arrived.23 The first among them was ‘Ezhuthupalli’24 or
17
Richard Lovett , The History of the London Missionary Society, London, 1899 ; Robert Eric Frykenberg, Modern
Education in South India, 17841854; See also
18
J M Mundadan, History of Christianity in India, Vol.1, Church History Association of India, Bangalore, 1989, p. 356.
19
S Viswanathan , “Memorable Mission,” Frontline, 28 July, 2006, P. 84.
20
S. Manickam, Studies in Mission History, The Christian Literature Society, Madras, 1988. p.1.
21
Romila Thapar, Ancient Indian Social History: Some Interpretations, Orient Longman, 1978, New Delhi, p. 140.
22
Santhosh Kumar Das, The Educational System of the Ancient Hindus, Calcutta, 1933, p. 18.
23
A Sreedhara Menon, Kerala Gazateers, Trivandrum, p. 649.
24
where alphabets were taught; the children wrote on ground and then an ‘ola’ was given and the students memorized
devotional pieces and simple arithmetic. ‘Ola’ is a dried piece of Palmyra leaf used for writing, ‘olei’ in Tamil.
pyall school, Kalari25 and Vedic schools.26
The state of education in the mid-sixteen and early seventeenth centuries India was quite different from
the situation in Europe. James Smith, one of the mission officials opines that, “we, in India, have
traditional educational system, venerable and hoary. These may be characterized in a word as a device
for cramping the intellect and preventing people from thinking. I refer to such indigenous schools as
vedashala and padashala. No ray of light, civilization or knowledge shines in the home, the street, the
field or the town”. Meanwhile, while explaining the traditional educational system in India, Livingston
argues in the following lines: “In India, there were three kinds of traditional schools in the early
sixteenth century. The first one is the highest rank, where learned pundits devote their life to the work
of education, with a patience and industry beyond all praise. But they are very thinly scattered over the
country. The other is the extreme in the scale that is the lowest rank of schools. Class room is verandah
of the temple of the houses of some one of the more comfortable inhabitants of a town or a village. The
intermediate class of schools is more difficult to represent and the want of system and design to middle
classes is the third category.27
Religion, Education and Colonial Government
The close association between religion and education has been a common phenomenon in all societies,
until the predominance of secularization in modern ones. The corresponding affinity between these two
sub-systems of society and even the dependence of the educational one on the religious is not
surprising. The earliest teachers in society were first the medicine-men, later education become more
formalized with brahmans and monks being teachers and eventually education was institutionalized in
ashrams and monasteries.28 Though the East India Company wished to follow the policy of religious
neutrality in India, for obvious reasons it was not practicable. Lord Wellesley pursued a policy of his
own, ordered for regular and official church attendance29
Though the church and the school were not always on friendly terms, the early Christian movement
was indifferent to education,when not hostile to it.30 Education was naturally left out of account the
25
Kalari was a private school run by high caste people, where physical education was taught by a ‘guru’. The students,
generally called ‘shishyas’ lived with the guru,until he finished his studies and gave fees either in kind or cash.
26
Vedic schools taught vedas, sastras, upanishads, and other such classics. ‘They were the Ujjains of ancient Kerala’ says
Sreedhara Menon. The students resided in ‘salais’, where they were given free boarding and lodging. The students
memorised brief portions from the vedas, upanishads and other hymns, and was really in the ‘true tradiotiion of
Gurugula ideal.’ See A Sreedhara Menon, Kerala Gazateers, Trivandrum, p. 650.
27
Daniel Jeyaraj, Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg: The First Protestant Missionary to India, Indian Society for Promoting
Christian Knowledge, New Delhi, 2006, p. 5.
28
Rudolf C. Heredia, “Education and Mission: School as an Agent of Evangelization,” Economic and Political Weekly,
vol. 30, no. 37, September, 16, 1995, p. 2332.
29
Hutten, W. H, Indian Rulers, Oxford, 1897, p. 126.
30
J. M. Powis Smith, The Church and Education, The Journal of Religion, vol. 4, no.1, January 1924, p. 46.
earliest Christian schools, which were catachumenical and catechetical and designed for the training of
the converts, and later developed into the cathedral and monastery schools, with no attempt to impart
purely secular knowledge, for at the Synod of Catharge in 398 A.D. all Bishops were forbidden to read
any non-biblical literature, due to the fear lest acquaintance with that learning should corrupt the
Christian mind, and this attitude prepared the way for the ‘dark ages’31 From the seventh to the end of
the twelfth century the monks practically controlled all education, then followed the period of
scholasticism lasting till the end of the fifteenth century, during this period the great universities of
Europe were founded and controlled by the church and their faculties were made up almost wholly of
either Franciscan or Dominican friars.32
Missionaries as Civilizing Mission33 in Colonial India
From the beginning of the colonial rule in India, the British regarded the country and its people as
subjugated by political regimes that they characterized as 'oriental despotism', written by officials of the
East India Company during early British historiography. In the early seventeenth century, King James
advocated the British missionaries for schooling Indians in America to promote ‘civilization’ and
Christianity.34 The notion of 'improvement of human kind' was prevalent, among the political and
economic elite of Great Britain during the last decades of the eighteenth century, and extended to the
moral and material improvement of British India; in both societies, the British elite regarded betterment
as a mandate to civilize the masses. However, the colonies in general, and India in particular, became a
kind of vast laboratory where the ideology of a civilizing mission towards an ‘uncivilized’ people was
worked out by various groups and individuals, who dominated the public and political spheres of both
the metropolis and the colonial periphery. Christianity underlay the ‘civilizing mission’ of colonialism
at many different levels, as there was indeed a strong Christian component of ‘civilizing’ as evinced in
Europe an science and technology and their assaults on the puranas and Hindu mythology.35
During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centurties, Protestant missionaries with the support of
allies in India and England, took the initiative in advocating a number of social reforms in Hindu
Society.36 They drew attention to practices such as infanticide, sati and devadasi. However, Indian
31
32
33
Michael Mann, Colonialism as Civilizing Mission.......
34
Carel Devens, “If We Get the Girls, We Get the Race”: Missionary Education of Native American Girls, Journal of
World History, Vol. 3, no. 2 (Fall, 1992) p. 221.
35
Heyden J A Bellenoit, Missionary Education and Empire in Late Colonial Empire, Pickering and Chatto, London,
2007, p. 84.
36
Geoffrey A Oddie, Social Protest in India: British Protestant Missionaries and Social Reforms 18501900, Manohar,
New Delhi, 1979, p. 1.
society in the nineteenth century was caught in a vicious web created by religious superstitions and
social obscurantism. Hinduism, as Max Weber observes, had become a compound of magic animis and
superstition and abominable like animal sacrifice and physical torture had replaced the worship of god.
The priest exercised an overwhelming and, indeed, unhealthy influence on the minds of the people.
Idolatry and polytheism helped to reinforce their position.37
Missionaries and Orientalism

The vibrant, extant traditions of religious debate and appropriation, which were picked upon by
eighteenth century Orientalist scholars, who normally studied India, China and Persia, and later on,
missionaries themselves.38 The Orient was almost a European invention, and had been since antiquity a
place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences, and
Orientalism connotes the high- handed executive attitude of nineteenth century and early twentieth
century European colonialism.39
Missionaries’ profession as religious interpreters to their students, combined with their intimate
knowledge of India and In terms of pedagogy, (BELLENOIT)
Tentative Chapterisation
Chapter-I Introduction
The missionary enterprise in India and in other countries, where the Western missions influenced the
authorities and people, what Gramsci called the idea of ‘cultural hegemony’, by imparting and
implementing the policies of modern education through political influence and interference on the
people and land, to make the place in to a ‘civilized’ one. This concept of cultural hegemony led to the
development of ‘critical pedagogy’(Paulo Freire) and mass education. The missionaries established
schools, colleges, technical institutes and other institutions, so that they could facilitate the new
movements among the illiterate population.
Missionary Education
37
Chandra, Bipan, History of Modern India, New Nelhi, 1971, pp. 8485.
38
2007,
39
Edward Said , Orientalism, New York, 1978, p. 4.
It has frequently been argued that education was a necessary missionary tool,40 and so education
formed an essential part of the missionary programme, and for the most of the colonial period the
missions were almost the only agency for education among the depressed classes and tribes. The effect
of this educational activity is reflected in the contrast between literacy and educational programmes
among Christians as opposed to non-Christian members of these communities.41 Mission schools aimed
to be vibrant spiritual centres, in which religion and spirituality were comparatively discussed. 42 This
was all done with the aim of persuading Indian students that Christianity was the ultimate manifestation
and progeny of their civilization’s religious and moral evolution.43 In terms of pedagogy, this religious
factor effectively ensured that missionaries and mission schools were neither Anglicist nor
Orientalists,44 but a quizzical admixture of both. 45
The missionaries’ intervention in social lives of the masses had not only brought Christianity to this
part of the world, but also substantially altered and reshaped the intellectual and cultural life of the
Indian society in the period. Education, one of the great legacies of missionaries, gained its true
recognition and identity through the zeal and efforts of the missionary enterprise, as vast amount of
knowledge were transformed into textual forms such as encyclopedias and extensive archives that were
deployed by the colonial state in fixing, bounding and setting India. 46 The cultural self sufficiency and
the linguistic salience of Indian masses were aptly brought to the fore by the indefatigable efforts of
Catholic and Protestant missions across European and American continents. While mission schools
were established in coastal Nigeria, the missionaries did not enter northern Nigeria because of the
existence of a network of Koranic schools.47
Catholic - Jesuit Early Initiatives in Education in India
Roman Catholic missions had been operating in India since the early sixteenth century.48 The Catholics
40
C. P. Williams, ‘Not Quite Gentlemen’ : an Examination of ‘Middling Class’ Protestant Missionaries from Britain,
18501900, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 31, No. 3, July 1980, pp. 301315.
41
J. H. Beaglehole, “The Indian Christians A Study of a Minority,” Modern Asian Studies, vol. 1, no. 1, 1967, p. 61.
42
2007, p. 88.
43
2007, p. 88.
44
Lynn Zastoupil, M. Moir, The Great Education Debate: Documents Related to the OrientalistAnglicist Conroversy,
17811843, Curzon, Richmond,1999, quoted in Heyden J A Bellenoit, Missionary Education and Empire in Late
Colonial Empire, Pickering and Chatto, London, 2007, p. 87.
45
2007, p. 86.
46
Bernard S Cohn, Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge: British in India, OUP, New Delhi, 1997, p.8.
47
Aparna Basu, Colonial Education: A Comparative Approach., Presidential Address , Indian History Congress,
Gorakhpur, p.3
48
Aparna Basu, The Growth of Education and Political Development in India, 18981920, OUP, Delhi, 1974, p. 3.
had started missionary efforts among the fishing population on the coast at a much earlier date.49 In
1511, the enlightened Portuguese governor, Afonzo de Albuquerque, who was so kind enough to teach
the Portuguese children, requested the King of Portugal to help him educate the children. The
Governor, engaged a Portuguese gentleman, Afonzo Alvares, who got married in Cochin, to teach
boys to read and write. The school started at Cochin in 1511 was the first school by the Portuguese in
the East. The boys attending it, came from all classes; boys belonging to the high caste mingled with
those belonging to the low caste.50 There were about 100 boys in the school, among whom there were
children of the panikkars and other nobles. The children were seemed to be very clever and quickly
picked up what was taught to them.51 King Manuel in 1512, sent primers in the fleet of that year.
Among the Protestants, “the first missionaries to start regular schools in India for general education
were the Danes working at Tranquebar in Madras Presidency.”52
Chapter II : Charter Act, Protestant Missions and Colonial Government
The Protestant missions had made a small beginning in the eighteenth century. King Frederick IV
invited two young Germans, Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg and his friend Heinrich Plutschau, to go to
India and they established in Tranquebar the first Protestant Halle- Tranquebar Mission in 1706, 53
which in turn played a crucial role in laying the foundation for Protestant Missions in South India. The
Baptist Missionary Society, formed in 1792, sent its first missionary, William Carey to India in 1793 at
Serampore, near Calcutta. But the missionary activities expanded rapidly after the passing of the
Charter Act of 1813.54 Accordingly, an amount of one lac rupees is to be allocated for the education of
the people of India, and also the miossionaries were given permission to enter in to India for
proselytization.55
Christian mission societies from Germany, the Scandinavian countries, Canada and the United States of
49
Dick Kooiman, Conversion and Social Equality in India London Missioary Society in South Travancore, Manohar
Publications, New Delhi, 1989, p. 5.
50
J. M. Mundadan, History of Christianity in India, vol.1, Church History Association of India, Bangalore, 1989, p. 356.
51
Quoted in J. M. Mundadan, History of Christianity in India, vol. I, Church History Association of India, Bangalore,
1989, p. 368; Also see A de Silva Rego, ed. Documentacao para a Historia das missioes…… India, I, p.149:
Letter of Albuquerque dated, Cochin, 1 April 1512.
52
53
Brijraj Singh The First Protestant Missionary to India Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg, OUP, New Delhi, 1998, p. 87; Also
see Daniel Jeyaraj, Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg: The First Protestant Missionary to India, Indian Society for Promoting
54
55
The pioneers, who stood and supproted strongly in the British Parliament to pass the Charter Act were, mainly,
Palisbury Member of Parliament, William Wilberforce, who also fought for the emancipation of Black Slaves, and
Charles Grant, former Colonial Official and later one of the Directors of East India Company in London
America have since reached India through the services of missionaries, teachers, doctors, nurses and
social workers,56 and for the missionaries the unfinished work of evangelism amongst the millions in
India seemed a staggering task when living and working with a small minority of Christians. 57
Furthermore, by prescribing Christian morality, means for justifying the British occupation as the
harbinger of civilization. In other words, Christianity was presented as a necessary appendage to the
process of modernization, promoting a progressive outlook and contributing to alternative models of
social behaviour.58
Missionaries and Colonial Government
In the days when the East India Company was unwilling to accept a direct responsibility for the
education of the Indian people, the Christian missionaries came forward and established some of the
earliest modern schools and colleges. Later on the Company did accept the responsibility for education,
but the extension of government effort was so slow before 1854 that the needs were largely met by
missionary institutions.59 The English East India company never showed any interest in missionary
work.60 After the report of the Indian Education Commission of 1882, the missions generally
gave up plans for extension and decided to concentrate on the efficient maintenance of a few
institutions.61 Missionary educationists also underscored Indian patriotism by pitting themselves against
larger imperial prerogatives,62 when Lord Curzon’s punishing educational reforms of 1904
comprehensively marginalized missionaries.63
.
The missionary enterprise in the field of education in Madras Presidency, seemed to be a commendable
one, as the missionaries influenced almost every source available during that time; they influenced the
British Residents, the Dewans (Prime Minister), the Maharajas and all other officials of the ruling class
to sanction permission, for the establishment of mission centres and institutions for the inculcation of
western education and modern science. This education made the under-privileged and depressed people
‘knowledgeful’ and led them into the Foucaudian model of ‘powerful’, which in tern, helped them to
stand for their right in asking their societal liberation.
56
D Christudas, Tranquebar to Travancore., ISPCK, New Delhi, 2008, p. xvii
57
C. R. H.Wilkinson, Missionary Service in North India., American Theological Library Association, p.186.
58
R.S. Sugirtharajah comments on India, quoted in Anna Johnston, The Book Eaters: Textuality, Modernity, and the
London Missionary Society, American Theological Library Journal , Semeia, p. 32.
59
60
Dick Kooiman, Conversion........., p.3.
61
62
2007, p. 174.
63
2007, p. 56.
Modern Education in British India
The firm conviction of the early Protestant missionaries and of English administrators that ‘scientific
training and the English knowledge’64 would enable the Indians awake from slumber. India was seen
as being capable of being changed through British beneficence. They had created the conditions for the
Indians’ advance up the social evolutionary ladder by introducing the ideas of modern education. 65
Missionary institutions had their part to play especially as training centres, schools and colleges, and
brought learning to hundreds who would not have had the opportunity of getting an education.66
Though missionary schools could not make much headway in Vietnam or in India,67 unlike Africa, it
made a big impact on Indian soil.
The Origins Modern Education in South India lay in Northern Europe. It was there that new techniques
evolved for building radically new social institutions and, therewith, for releasing unpredictable social
energies. Precedents for ‘mass’, ‘national’, ‘public’, even ‘popular’ education came out of apocalyptic
dreams and millenarian visions. From the inspiration of August Hermann Francke (1663-1727), Philip
Jacob Spencer's disciple, came actual experiments. Emphasis was placed on personal enlightenment,
spiritual vitality, and moral transformation by means of a proliferating network of small training groups
(collegia philobiblica). German Pietism, form its outset, generated radical impulses. The movement,
advanced by August Hermann Francke from Halle University, spread to the royal houses of Denmark
and Hanover and the Court of St. James and helped generate the Society for Promoting Christian
Knowledge (SPCK), which in turn promoted educational work in India.68 The first Protestant
missionary to have landed in India, Bartolomaeus Ziegenbalg and his colleague Heinrich Plutschau,
both Francke’s students, brought his ideals to Tranquebar in 1706.69
Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg opened five schools- two Tamil schools, a Portuguese school, a Danish
school and a school for girls in 1707-1708 in Tranquebar. This school for girls seems to have been the
first of its kind to be set up in India, for prior to that no school devoted entirely to the education of girls
64
Thomas Pothancamury, Studies, An Irish Quarterly Review, vol.34, no.136, Dec 1945, p. 468. ‘Preparatio Evangelica’
was the main purpose of the missionaries what they applied to evangelize India, and the policy of English education and
scientific training, the missionaries thought, would enable the Hindu to think logically, realize the inconsistencies of his
own religion and accept readily the Christian faith.
65
Bernard S Cohn, Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge: British in India, OUP, New Delhi, 1997, p. 121.
66
C R H Wilkinson, Missionary Service in North India., American Theological Library Association., p. 186.
67
Aparna Basu, Colonial Education: A Comparative Approach., Presidential Address , Indian History Congress,
Gorakhpur, p. 3.
68
Robert Eric Frykenberg , “Modern Education in South India, 17841854: Its roots and Its Role as a Vehicle of
Integration under Company Raj”. The American Historical Review, Vol.91, No. 1, Feb 1986, p. 41.
69
Brijraj Singh, The First Protestant Missionary to India Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg, OUP, New Delhi, 1998, p.87; Also
see Daniel Jeyaraj, Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg: The First Protestant Missionary to India, Indian Society for Promoting
had existed.70 In 1717, the Governor Joseph Collet, wrote to the directors in London that by
arrangement the German missionaries had established a charity school at Fort St. David at Cuddalore,
with one master to teach Tamil and another for Portuguese; at the same time two schools had been
started in Madras- one Portuguese school in the White town, and one for Tamil in the Black Town. 71
The system of ‘Benevolent Institution’ and the ‘Monitorial System’ into the school , had been first
developed by Andrew Bell, chaplain at Madras and Superintendent of the Male Military Asylum(1789-
1796),72 who started to use the senior boys as monitors to teach their juniors. He returned to London
and published an account of his method which attracted great interest. Meanwhile, Joseph Lancaster
had simultaneously developed a similar system in England, and also received much public support.73
From Tranquebar, where a Tamil printing press eventually turned out a steady stream of basic
materials, such schools gradually spread northward to Madras, inland to Tanjore and Trichinopoly, and
southward to Palamcottah. By the 1780s schools run by Christian Friedrich Schwartz and his
associates (John Z. Kiernander, Daniel Joseph Jaenicke, Christian Wilhelm Gericke, John Kasper
Kohloff, Philip Fabricius, among others) were attracting non-Christian students, especially Brahmans
and Vellalars, who hoped that the new learning would better quality them for positions within the
rapidly expanding establishments of the Company.74
Missionaries and English Education
Alexander Duff, the firebrand Sottish missionary, who reached Calcutta, after a voyage of two
shipwrecks in the late 1820s, had made the most impressive contribution to Indian Education through
the introduction of the English language75 as the teaching medium from the bottom to the top of the
educational ladder and the use of Western science and literature as the subjects of study. Duff’s
methods were imitated all over India and finally English was adapted as the medium of higher
education all over the country.76
Formation of London Missionary Society
The London Missionary Society (hereafter LMS), was formed in 179577 in London under the leadership
70
Brijraj Singh, The First Protestant Missionary to India Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg, OUP, New Delhi, 1998, p.87.
71
Stephen Neill, A History of Christianity in India 17071858, CUP, London, 1985, p. 41.
72
M. A. Laird, The Contribution of the Serampore Missionaries in Bengal, 17931837., Bulletin of SOAS, University of
London,Vol.31, No.1,1968, p.95
73
London,Vol.31, No.1,1968, p.95
74
Koji Kawashama, Missionaries and a Hindu State Travancore 18581936 . Oxford, New Delhi, 2003, P.
75
Gauri Viswanathan, Mask of Conquest, OUP, 1989, New Delhi.
76
D. H. Emmott, Alexander Duff and modern Education in India, British Journal of Educational Studies, Vol.13, No.2.,
May 1965, p. 168.
77
Sometime during the spring of 1794 the founding fathers of what soon to become the London Missionary Society met at
the Dissenter’s Library, Red Cross Street in London, to discuss missions in general and Melville Horne’s letter, Letters
on Missions: Addressed to the Protestant Ministers of the British Churches, in particular. The men had been called
of Thomas Haweis, as an undenominational organization78 by members from various denominations
such as, the Congregationalists, the Presbyterians and the Methodists.79 The society was formed for the
propagation of evangelisation among the non-Christian countries and the enthusiasm of spirituality and
commonsense were the basic qualifications80 enough for becoming a missionary. The LMS mission to
the Pacific, Central Asia, India, China, Ceylon and West Indies in the early nineteenth century,
arguably, the most widely published missions of the Evangelical Protestant society.81 The LMS
missionaries believed they would in some senses, travel back in time to the ‘noble savages’ imagined
by Rousseau and many others, and gradually bring them, through study of the Bible, forward to modern
times.82 In promoting its activities, the LMS openly acknowledged the importance of the late
eighteenth-century enthusiasm for the adventures of Captains Cook, Bligh, and Wallis.83
Arrival of LMS Missionaries in India
The first batch of LMS missionaries84 William Tobias Ringeltaube,85 Augustus Desgranges and George
Cran reached Tranquebar on 5 December 1804.86 Ringeltaube, a German Lutheran, after residing there
for sometime, learned Tamil and decided to go to South Travancore on the invitation of
together were David Bogue, Thomas Haweis, John Eyre, Alexander Waugh, James Steven, John Love, Matthew Wilks
at Baker’s Coffee House in London formally to plan the new organization and form its first committee. By September
1795 the Society became a reality and was named as ‘Missionary Society’, and was renamed into ‘London Missionary
Society’ on the 25th General Meeting of the Directors held in London on Thursday, 14 May 1818. The Fundamenrtal
Principles of the London Missionary Society was added to the society’s ‘bylaws’ on 9 May 1796. See Report of the
Directors of the LMS in the Annual General Meeting held on 13 May 1819, p.1; Roger H Martin, The Place of the
London Missionary Society in the Ecumenical Movement, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 31, No. 3. July 1980,
pp. 285291. Also see, J. Morrison, The Fathers and Founders of the London Missionary Society, London 1839; William
Ellis, The History of the London Missionary Society, London 1844; C. S. Horne, The Story of the LMS, London 1895;
Richard Lovett, The History of the London Missionary Society, London 1899.
78
L. E. ElliotBinns, Religion in the Victorian Era, Lutterworth Press, London,1946, p. 377.
79
Koji Kawashima, Missionaries and a Hindu State Travancore 18581936 . Oxford, New Delhi, 2003, p. 54.
80
Tim Dowley, Eerdman’s handbook to The History of Christianity, Eerdman’s Publishing Company, Michigan, USA,
1977, p. 552.
81
Anna Johnston, The Book Eaters: Textuality, Modernity, and the London Missionary Society, American Theological
Library Journal , Semeia, p. 13.
82
Anna Johnston, The Book Eaters: Textuality, Modernity, and the London Missionary Society, American Theological
Library Journal , Semeia, p. 31.
83
Kirsteen Murray, In the Shadow of the Missionary Captain: Captain James Wilson and the LMS Mission to the Pacific,
International Bulletin for the Missionary Research , vol.31, no. 2, p. 73.
84
The LMS missionary Nathaniel Forsyth, who came in 1997 without proper prior permission from the East India
Company, stayed little period in the Danish settlement at Chinchurah in Bengal and left, and so this is the true batch
with proper permission.
85
Ringeltaube, the first LMS missionary to Madras Presidency, was a German, born at Silesia in 1770 and educated in
Halle. In 1797 he went to Calcutta as a missionary of the Society for the Promotion of Christian Literature (SPCK), but
soon returned to England. In 1803 he joined the LMS and again came to India as a missionary in 1804.
86
Richard Lovett, The History London Missionary Society, Vol. II, London, 1899, pp. 1819; see Samuel Mateer, Land of
Charity, pp. 25870 ; also see R.N Yesudas, The History London Missionary Society, p. 26.
Vedamanikam,87 a newly convert from Mayiladi, 88 a tiny village, near Kanyakumari (Cape Comorin)
and reached there on 25 April 1806.89 Augustus Desgranges and George Cran travelled northwards
from Madras and reached Vizakapatnam(at present vishakapattanam or vizag) and founded a mission
in 1805. Cran could learn the native language Telugu 90
Background of the LMS Missionaries
C. P. Williams (1980) vividly explains that many missionaries in the nineteenth century came from the
lower middle and artisan classes, the petit bourgeoise, and the newly professionally conscious, neither
middle-nor-working class but was composed of those who felt society deprived them of deserved status
and privilege and who constantly sought rectification by way of radical social change, and so ‘not quite
gentlemen’, and often called ‘middling class’, especially in its less well-educated sections though the
recruiters wanted persons from well-educated and respectable families, ideally the clergy, but were
faced by a general reluctance to respond to their appeals.91 But this was refuted and no longer true of
those recruited for India during the second half of nineteenth century, for, prior to the joining of the
LMS, about one-fifth in the sample of sixty candidates were young men studying in college.92 Most
missionaries were ordained and that itself was a mark of status of ‘wordly advancement’ and the
society directors appealed to have little prospect of achieving the educational standards necessary for
ordination and the candidates were offered free education.93
It was sometimes said that missionaries were of a lower standard than those accepted for the home
ministry and candidates had to answer detailed questionnaires, to provide referees who could be
closely examined and to be personally interviewed. In 1869, the LMS unveiled an ambitious training
programme which could take five or six years to complete and this was all quite important and it would
87
Vedamanickam (Maharasan before conversion) was a devout Hindu, went to a pilgrimage to the holy Saivite temple at
at Chidambaram in Tanjore to receive spiritual enlightenment, but on his way back turned to a church, where his
relatives were attending, and embraced Christianity. He met Ringeltaube at Tranquebar and invited hiom to come to
South Travancore. See J.W. Gladstone, Protestant Missionary and Peoples Movement in Kerala, 18501936, Seminary
Publications, KUTS, Trivandrum, 1984, p. 5859.
88
I. H. Hacker, A Hundred Years in Travancore, London, 1908, p. 20. Also see William Robinson, “Where the Peacocks
Dance – The Story of Maharasan”, The Chronicle of the LMS, May 1903, p. 107.
89
Koji Kawashima, Missionaries and a Hindu State Travancore 18581936 . Oxford, New Delhi, 2003, p. 55.
90
David Bogue, A Sermon on the Death of the Reverend George Cran, Augustus Desgranges and Jonathan Brain,
Missionaries in India from London Missionary Society, preached at Gosport, 17 March, 1811, American Edition,
Boston, p. 23.
91
C. P. Williams, ‘Not Quite Gentlemen’ : an Examination of ‘Middling Class’ Protestant Missionaries from Britain,
18501900, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 31, No.3, July 1980, pp. 301315.
92
LMS Candidates Papers, 17961899 and Anewerws to Printed Questions, Boxes 2628, quote din Oddie, Geoffrey A,
Social Protest in India: British Protestant Missionaries and Social Reforms 18501900, Manohar, New Delhi, 1979, p.
12. Also see Kooiman,
93
Richard Lovett, History of the LMS, Vol.II, pp. 668670.
be quite wrong to think of missionary training as being specialist and mission-oriented. In fact the LMS
stopped paying full training grants precisely because it felt that the existing arrangement produced too
much enfeebling dependence. And the process of employing laymen as missionaries in its earliest
missionary efforts had not been notably successful.94 The LMS stationed its missionaries at Madras,
Chengalpat, Nellore, Kurnool, Cudappa, Ananthapur, Vizakapatnam, Ganjam, Godavari, Krishna,
Bellary, Bangalore, Jeypur (Goorg), South Canara, North Canara, Malabar, Arcot (North), Arcot
(South), Salem, Coimbatore, Nilgris, Tanjore, Tinnevelly, Nagercoil, Neyyur, Marthandam, Parassala,
Quilon and Trivandrum. 95
Public Re-action to Missionary Endeavours
The feeling of orthodox Hindus against the new religion were visible from the conversion of
Maharasan. But he was identified as a friend of the ‘white men’ and Velu Thampi. The Dewan, during
the Travancore war ‘sent a force of sepoys to capture and kill him’, but he was able to hide himself till
the end of the war.96 Velu Thampi’s opposition towards a new religion was expressed in his famous
‘Kun dara Proclamation’97 during the war in 1809, but immediately after the war the Travancore
Government not only granted permission to erect a church at Mayiladi but also ordered the local
government officials to supervise its construction.
It is well-known that the first LMS missionary to South Travancore, Ringeltaube, was immensely
helped by the then British Resident Col. Macaulay by granting him permission not only to cross the
boundary in to Travancore but also to continue the mission work. 98 Col. Munro, Diwan99 and
Resident100 of Travancore and Cochin, was a devout Christian of the evangelical school, and he
thought it his duty to do all he could for the Christians and decided three needs of the church were
paramount: the clergy must be given an adequate and efficient education, the scriptures must be
translated and distributed in the vernacular, and discipline within the church must be strictly
enforced.101 The LMS missionaries, directly through the British Resident, established a position of
94
Richard Lovett, History of the LMS, Vol. I, p. 64, 6773, 127.
95
From the Reports of the Directors of the LMS in the Annual General Meeting held in the second week of May every
year in London.
96
C M. Agur, Church History of Travancore, pp. 54445. Also see William Robinson, “Where the Peacocks Dance – The
Story of Maharasan”, The Chronicle of the LMS, May 1903, p. 109.
97
Shangoony Menon, Thiruvithamcore Charithram (Malayalam Translation), p. 261.
98
Samuel Mateer, The History of Travancore, The Indian Evangelical Reviev, April 1881, p. 439.
99
Dewan was Prime Minister
100
British Officer appointed by the Colonial Government who worked as an agent between the Governor of a Colonial
State and the Princely States TravancoreCochin.
101
Leslie Brown, The Indian Christians of St.Thomas – An Account of the Ancient Syrian Church of Malabar, CUP, 1982,
p. 132.
influence with the authorities and courts as representatives of culture and political order and made it a
system throughout India.102 The Ranee of Travancore, Gauri Lakshmi Bai, contributed 300 trees and
offer the usage of elephants for carrying timbers and rocks, as the school building was constructed of
rock stones.103 The Rajah of Cochin presented an amount of Rs. 5000/- for the purchase of paddy fields,
and the boarders could be fed by the yielding.104
Chapter III: Modern Education : Primary, Secondary, Higher and Industrial Education
The modern education system in India is deeply indebted to the work of the western missionaries
during the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Educational work had been undertaken by almost all the
missionary societies in India in their respective areas of work. The success of the decision to use the
English language as the medium of instruction stimulated many schools and colleges to do the same 105
and it was received by the elites. With the arrival of the first protestant missionary Ringeltaube in
1806, the foundation was laid for the implementation of modern education and thousands of people got
attracted towards the missionary efforts by attending the institutions.
The LMS missionary Loveless established a Missionary Free School in Madras in 1815 where 75 boys
studied, where as a Female school was also started in the same year. 106 The English high schools were
supported by public contributions, school fees, and grand-in-aid although larger than what is fixed for
native schools is inadequate, and were scales fixed still insufficient for reasons.107 John Hay, the
misionary at Vizakapatam, spent forty-two years and established schools.108 LMS missionary John
Hands founded a Central English School in 1816, for the promising bright students ‘to qualify them for
public office as writers and copyists.’109 C.M. Agur says, “at the end of the nineteenth century there
were 1897 schools and 36652 students in Travancore itself and it is highly gratifying that the present
day Travancore schools stand for in advance of other parts of India including native schools in the
110
matter of female education.” Bernard S Cohn says, “The schools became the crucial civilizing
institutions and sought to produce moral and productive citizens”111
102
103
Report of the Directors of the LMS in the Annual General Meeting held on 11 May 1820 in London, p. 55.
104
105
May 1965, p. 163.
106
Report of the Directors of the LMS in the Annual General Meeting held on 9 May 1816 in London, p.361.
107
Sarah S Gostling, Education in India: ‘ Why it takes more to cure a European of ignorance than it does a native’, LSE
Selected pamphlets, 1885, p. 3.
108
C S Horne, The Story of the LMS, London, 1895, p. 293.
109
James Hough, History of Christianity in India, 1837, p. 101.
110
C. M. Agur, Church History of Travancore, Trivandrum, p. 771.
111
Missionaries and Higher Education
The missionaries were in the forefront to establish colleges for higher education in India. Though it was
the efforts of Warren Hastings, then Governor General of India, to have established the Calcutta
Madrassa for higher education in early 1780s, and the colonial officer Jonathan Duncan, who had
founded the Benaras Sanskrit College in 1792, the missionaries could establish many colleges in the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Governor General Lord Wellesley founded Fort William
College to train the British civil servants in Indian laguages and law at Calcutta in 1800.
Christian colleges were among the first to bring Western ideas of education to India,112 and the
Christian influence in education through schools and colleges was at its zenith from 1858 to 1904. 113
By 1914, an increasing number of foreign missionaries were devoting themselves to the education of
the six thousand youth, studying in the 38 missionary colleges, besides those in the 127 Normal
Training Schools, the 160 Industrial institutions, the 4 Medical colleges, and the 13500 Elementary
Schools. In all these institutions 550,000 youth were being trained for life and service under the
inspiration of a host of a wide-awake missionaries114 By the year 1945, the Protestant Missionaries
established 34 colleges in India, of these 13 were in Madras Presidency with an enrollment 4911.
Catholics started 12 colleges in South India by1944. 115
Scott Christian College
At a time, people of South Travancore never heard of higher education and the higher educational
institutions, the LMS missionary Ringeltaube made an indelible mark in the annals of Education in
Madras Presidency by establishing an English School at Mayiladi, near Kanyakumari in 1809 for the
bright students.116 One of the key factors of the educational development in South Travancore was the
shifting of this English School to an ideal place at Nagercoil by Charles Mead, the charismatic LMS
missionary who came after the departing of Ringeltaube in 1818 and was made into a Seminary and
was named South Travancore Seminary.117 The seminary was started on the Christian principles for
giving training to the 30 most intelligent boys among the Christians selected from the different
congregations and youth of other sects and imparting them English Education. 118 Right from the
112
Aparna Basu, The Growth of Education and Political Development in India, 18981920, OUP, Delhi, 1974, p. 3
113
Thomas Pothancamury, Studies, An Irish Quarterly Review, vol.34, no.136, Dec 1945, p. 470.
114
J. P.Jones, The Protestant Missionary Propaganda in India, The Harvard Theological Review, Vol.8, No.1, Jan 1915, p.
32.
115
116
Agur, C M., Church History of Travancore, Trivandrum, 1903.
117
Ringeltaube’s Journal.........
118
beginning, studies in the Seminary had been carried on chiefly through the medium of the English
language, no distinction being made between boarders intended for mission work and day-scholars
pursuing their studies with a view to obtaining better paid secular employment for which English was
becoming an important qualification.119
Not only the missionaries kept a high standard of teaching and learning in the renowned institution, but
also they made it to accommodate pupils from different caste groups and religions. Tamil, Malayalam,
English and Sanskrit were taught to all students.120 The Seminary taught not only Indian and foreign
classical and other languages, but also inculcated modern science to the scholars. Though the other
colleges LMS established- Wardlaw College, Bellary(1846),121 Ramsay College, Almora (1886), and
Bhownipur Institution, Calcutta (1837)122- were given up later, the LMS promoted the Nagercoil
Seminary. The Seminary underwent tremendous changes when James Duthie took over. During his
furlough in England in 1889, Duthie pleaded with the Directors of the society and got their sanction to
upgrade the Seminary into a second grade college and appealed for funds for such an institution. The
Seminary was raised into a second grade college, and affiliated to the Madras University and started
functioning as the Christian College, Nagercoil from February 1893. In Nagercoil, extensions were
needed for the college, and through the munificence of Septimus Scott, a director of the society and a
great friend of Duthie in London,123 a building was erected and was opened in August 1899, and the
college was renamed in to Scott Christian College.124
Industrial Education
As early as 1821, the LMS missionary wife Mrs. Mault who had some knowledge in lace-making,
began to teach this industry to a few girls at Nagercoil.125 Missionary wives Mrs. Abbs and Mrs. Baylis
began the Embroidery Industry. Lace industry was carried on steadily in Nagercoil and Embroidery
Industry in Neyyoor, Marthandam, Parassala and Trivandrum. The workers in these industries were
paid a reasonable salary and the surplus was used mostly in building up institutions intended for
women.126 A school was established for promoting useful arts, in which several boys made progress in
119
Dick Kooiman, Conversion and Social Equality in India London Missioary Society in South Travancore, Manohar
Pblications, New Delhi, 1989, p. 112.
120
Report (30th) of the Directors of the LMS in the Annual General Meeting held on 13 May 1824 in London, p. 85.
121
Report of the Directors of the LMS in the Annual General Meeting held in 1847 in London, p. 75.
122
Sherring, The History of Protestant Missions in India 1707 to 1881., London., 1884, p. 109.
123
Septimus Scott was one of the then Directors of LMS.
124
Dick Kooiman; R. N. Yesudas; Jacob ; Samuel Mateer;
125
R.N Yesudas, The History of the London Missionary Society in Travancore, Kerala Historical Society, Trivandrum,
1980, p. 82.
126
1980, p. 82.
printing and book-binding. One boy was learning the art of tanning and currying leather.127
Chapter IV: Conceptualising Missionary Engagement: Vernacular Education and Intellectual

Consciousness in Madras Presidency
Nobody in the early stages of the development of Indian languages paid greater attention to the study of
native languages than the missionaries.128 The existence of a lingua franca round the Eastern shores of
the Mediterranean has always been recognized as a primary factor in the success of the first gentile
mission.129 This chapter demonstrates how the eminent missionaries like Robert Caldwell, G. U. Pope,
particularly the LMS missionaries John Abbs, John Hands, Benjamin Rice, James Duthie’s effort led
to the establishment of Vernacular schools in different parts of Madras Presidency. This in-depth study
aptly underscores the crucial roles played by Western missionaries’ modern, socio-religious reform
movements through vernacular education and the emergence of intellectual consciousness in the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with an historical understanding.
To the missionaries, education was the vehicle to spread Christianity, an objective also in accord with
the official one. Since it was easy to translate the Bible into the vernacular tongues than to teach the
masses in English, the missionaries promoted the cause of vernacular education. An exception was
Alexander Duff, the Scottish missionary, who argued that it was better to educate the few first in
English and allow them to teach the masses.130 Mountstuart Elphinson, Governor of Bombay and Sir
Thomas Munro, former Governor of Madras, had outlined plans for mass education in the vernaculars.
Even in Bengal, William Adam was authorized in January 1835, to survey existing Vernacular
education and draw up a plan to build upon it,131 and Adam reported that education in the local schools
was ‘superficial and deficitive.’132
127
128
M A Sherring, The History of Protestant Missions in India 1707 to 1881., London., 1884, P. 465.
129
Imperial Latin played a part almost as important as Imperial Greek in the building of the church further West. Beyond
the area of such common languages, the capacity of the church to expand and to establish a living tradition appears to have
been proportionate to its care for the transition of its Scriptures and Liturgical books into vernacular. It may be noted that
Cyril and Methodius of the ninth century Slavonic Mission, who went to China succeeded largely because they gave their
converts a vernacular liturgy, reducing an unscripted language into writing for that purpose; and that the Nestorian Mission,
went to China in the seventh and eighth centuries, failed largely because they did not concern themselves with vernacular
literature. So, centuries later, when the Franciscans came to China they found stone crosses but no Christians.Max Warren
(ed). The Triumph of God A Series of Essays. Longmans, London, 1938, p. 326.
130
John D Windhausen, The Vernaculars, 18351839: A Third Medium for Indian Education, Sociology of Educatuion,
vol.37, no.3 (Spring, 1964), p. 255.
131
John D Windhausen, The Vernaculars, 18351839: A Third Medium for Indian Education, Sociology of Education,
vol.37, no.3 (Spring, 1964), p. 256.
132
The Portuguese were the first to bring Western education in to India by establishing educational centres
at Malabar, Goa, Pondicherry, Mahe, Chandernagore etc., and those schools were generally in the
vernacular, at the elementary level. However, in 1684, in order to strengthen Portugal’s hold on Goa,
Konkani was banned by viceregal decree on June 27, and parish priests and school masters were
instructed to teach only in the colonial language.133 There had been scattered and discontinuous efforts
to learn Sanskrit, particularly by Catholic missionaries like Roberto de Nobili of Madurai in the
seventeenth century.134
In the late years of the eighteenth century, general British incompetence in Indian languages yielded to
a concerted effort to produce a set of texts – grammars, dictionaries, teaching aids- which were to make
the acquisition of a working knowledge of the languages of India available to those British who were to
be part of ruling groups in India.135 Throughout the colonial period the colonial officials felt the
knowledge of Indian languages was the means of gaining a more complex knowledge of the strange
customs, codes, and rules of the Indians, who were in most instances docile, cooperative, and quite
willing to obey the orders and commands of the sahibs,except when ignorance led the latter to offend
the prejudices of the natives.136 Though the translations of Ziegenbalg, William Carey, Joshua
Marshman and William Ward were very far from perfect, they are considered to be the pioneers in the
field, for translating many books in to vernacular and other European languages.137
Alexander Duff found that Brahmans and other caste Hindus who could afford to run vernacular
elementary schools with Bengali as the medium of instruction in Bengal, cooperated with each other to
form small one-teacher schools of their own, classes being held in the home of one of the boys’ parents
and the teacher being paid by the fees raised.138 The missionary attitude of ‘cultural hybridism’139 in
mixing both English and Vernacular schools was a perfect reflection both of the deep missionary
engagements with Indian society and the nature of the educational enterprise itself. For example,
Bishop Whitehead, on a visit to Lucknow in 1907, stated to an audience that English education had
deprived India of her glorious yet unrecognized vernacular literature and argued that what was needed
was not the replacement of one culture and language with another but a hybrid and assimilation of the
133
134
135
Bernard S Cohn, Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge: British in India, OUP, New Delhi, 1997, p. xiii.
136
137
London,Vol.31, No.1,1968, p. 94.
138
May 1965, pp. 16061.
139
2007, p. 86.
best of English and the vernacular.140
During the colonial period, throughout Madras Presidency the Dravidian languages were popular
among the masses, and vernacular education was in their own respective mother tongues. Apart from
Sanskrit, English, Portuguese and French, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Tulu were the
most popular languages. Robert Caldwell, a Church of England missionary at Idiankudi in Tinnevelly
district applied the methods that had been so successful in constructing the history of the Indo-
European family of languages to the South-Indian languages, which he labeled as the Dravidian
language family.141 Samuel Mateer, of the LMS viewed that the languages of South India were not
derived from Sanskrit.142 Though there was no proper evidence to say what kind of educational system
was in operation in colonial Madras Presidency, it was sure that education was also controlled by the
castes and was permitted only to the high caste people. T. K. Velupillai says, “it is not possible to date
the beginning of vernacular education143 in Travancore.
From 1860, however, greater emphasis was laid upon Tamil studies and the LMS expressed the view
that English should be regarded as subordinate to the language of the Tamil speaking areas. In 1862, a
decision was taken to stop gradually all teaching in English as far as those educated at the expense of
the LMS were concerned. In support of this decision, the official reports referred to the availability of
a sufficient number of Tamil language class books to pursue studies with advantage solely in the
vernacular and to the need of their countrymen, amongst whom they would be sent for labour.144 The
LMS had developed master plan, and master’s plan for the schoools started in various locations of the
Presidency. The master’s salary was made dependent not only on the number of pupils he had, but on
whether they had written down and could recite from memory the prescribed amount from the
textbooks, to the satisfaction of the Superintendents on their monthly visits.145
Missionaries and Printing
The invention of printing press in the 15th century, and heavy intellectual demand made by the
Reformation and the Renaissance, conspired together to produce a new high level of literacy in north-
western Europe which prepared the way for the printing expansion of the East. According to
140
UPSA, Advocate, Lucknow, 26 December, Selection from the Vernacular Newspaper, ‘The Future of Indian
Christianity, by the Bishop of Madras’, The East and the West, 1905, pp. 921, quoted in Heyden J A Bellenoit,
Missionary Education and Empire in Late Colonial Empire, Pickering and Chatto, London, 2007, p. 86.
141
142
Samuel Mateer, Land of Charity Travancore and its People, London, 1870, p. 1289.
143
T. K. Velupillai, The Travancore State Manuel, Vol. III, Government of Travancore, 1940, p. 691.
144
Dick Kooiman, Conversion and Social Equality in India: London Missioary Society in South Travancore, Manohar
Publications, New Delhi, 1989, p. 112.
145
London, Vol. 31, No. 1, 1968, p. 104.
Jawaharlal Nehru, “The advent and the use of the printing press gave a great stimulus to the
development of the popular Indian languages146......and the printing of books and news papers broke the
hold of the classics and immediately prose literature in the provincial languages began to develop. The
early Christian Missionaries helped in this process greatly”.147 India received printing serendipitously in
1556, just about a hundred years after printing with movable type was developed in Germany, add was
sent to India in a Portuguese ship that came to Goa.148 Though , ititially it was a monopoly of the
Jesuits, printing became an enterprise of the Protestant missionaries in the eighteenth century.149
The Lutherans, with the support of the Danish crown and later the London- based Society for the
Propagation of Christian Knowledge (SPCK), set up the first printing press on the east coast in 1711.
Within 20 years, the industrious Lutherans had produced more than a 100 books, including the first
ever Tamil translation of the Bible; by the end of the century, they had printed a total of 338 separate
books (Bibles, gospels, catechisms, grammars, dictionaries, almanacs, etc). A few were printed in
German, Dutch, Latin and Danish, many in Portuguese, others increasingly in English, but most of their
books were in Tamil. In the first eight years alone (1712-1720), the Lutherans printed a total of 65
books in all languages, and another 52 in the next decade. By the end of the 18th century, the Lutherans
had produced a total of 338 books, making the Tranquebar press the long-lived and most prodigious of
any in India during the century.150 By 1800 A. D. however, the total number of Tamil publications had
reached 266. This increase was part of a rise in printing throughout India, which saw the number of
printing books grow from a mere 19 in the 16th century and 40 in the 17th century, to 1712 new books
printed in the 18th century.151
152
Printing in India was to be revived - and survive enjoying a thriving life today only early 18th
146
Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India., Calcutta, 1945, p. 266.
147
Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India., Calcutta, 1945, p. 266.
148
Subbiah Muthiah. Giving India the Printed Word in Halle and the Beginning of Protestant Christianity in India,
Vol. III., (ed) Andreas Gross et. al., Franckesche Stiftungen, Halle, 2006., p. 1241.
149
The Jesuits, who dominated the missionary field in the Tamil country since the arrival of St. Francis Xavier almost 200
years before, expanded their territories throughout South India and by 1700, sources claim that 45000 Christians
were under the pastoral care in the fishery coast alone; by 1750, one reliable source claimed a total of 350,000
Catholics in all South Indian Jesuit missions. More alarming to the Jesuits, the Lutherans had also usurped that
other Jesuit specialization, printing in Tamil; although pioneered and controlled by the Jesuits, in the 18th century,
Tamil printing became a Lutheran enterprise.Hugald Grafe. The History of Christianity in India, Part IV. CHAI,
Bangalore, 1990, pp. 2526.
150
Stuart Blackburn, Print, Folklore and Nationalism in Colonial South India. Permanent Black, New Delhi, 2003,
p.27.
151
Ibid., p. 44.
152
The Danish East India Company, formed in 1616, sought a foothold in a treaty in 1620 with Rajah Raghunatha Nayak
century. The Danish East India Company, formed in 1616, sought a foothold in a treaty in 1620 with
Rajah Raghunatha Nayak of Tanjavur, by which the Danes were granted the 25 square mile coastal
territory of Tranquebar (Tarangambadi) .153 For a good 125 years of Danish settlement, Tranquebar
played a role that only to modern India. For it was here that modern printing was revived and then
spread throughout India. Moreover, King Frederick IV invited two young Germans, Bartholomaeus
Ziegenbalg and his friend Heinrich Plutschau, to go to India and they established in Tranquebar the
first Protestant Halle- Tranquebar Mission in India, which in turn played a crucial role in laying the
foundation for Protestant Missions in South India. Slowly and steadily, the missions made an indelieble
mark in their educational endeavours.
By now, the use of the printing press as an adjunct of missionary work is well established in India.154
The Serampore Trio established the first Bengali newspaper Samachar Darpan and released the first
issue on 31 May 1818,155 and the first printing press in Travancore was installed by the LMS
missionary Charles Mead at Nagercoil156 in 1819. The LMS missionary at Bellary, John Hands
obtained a press and Canarese types from Madras and installed in the mission garden in 1821.157 The
missionaries not only printed the school books, but also used the Christian Literature Society, which
was founded at Madras in 1858, as a channel of print communication.158
Missionaries, Bazar159 Schools and Adult Education

While non-Christian parents were found to be unwilling to send their children to the mission compound
schools, missionaries had to find new ways to get these children. The LMS missionaries constructed a
new building in a public place, near a bazar, in Nagercoil, which was a convenient place for people of
all religions to meet. The Bazar school was started in 1821 and considered to be one of the four
important schools under the mission, and was well attended by Hindus, brahmans and Muslims. 160 In
1822, there were 40 children161 and in 1823 the number increased to 50, and the missionaries started
of Tanjavur, by which the Danes were granted the 25 square mile coastal territory of Tranquebar (Tarangambadi).
See Subbiah Muthiah, op.cit., pp. 12421243.
153
Subbiah Muthiah, op.cit., pp. 12421243.
154
Ernest De Witt Burton and Alonzo Ketchem Parker, An Professional Reading Course on the Expansion of Christianity
in the Twentieth Century, IV, The Biblical World, Vol. 41, no.5 (May 1913), p. 331.
155
Stephen Neill, A History of Christianity in India 17071858, CUP, London, 1985, p. 202.
156
R.N Yesudas, A History of the London Missionary Society in Travancore., Kerala Historical Council,
Thiruvananthapuram, p. 151.
157
LMS Directors’ Report, 1821, p. 56. See also, Lovett, History of the London Missionary Society, Vol. II, 1899, p. 89.
158
Max Warren (ed), The Triumph of God - A Series of Essays. Longmans, London, 1938, p. 330.
159
Bazar means market
160
161
similar schools in different places. Charles Mault, the LMS missionary at Nagercoil writes, “The Bazar
school continues to be examined every week, so likewise do six more out of our immediate
neighborhood...”162 The Bazar schools, perhaps vanished, as there were emerging Evening schools and
Night schools. Now, the missionaries turned their attention towards adults, and the adult literacy work
in the villages enabled many more to learn how to read163 and write. Therefore the Bazar schools might
have been converted into evening schools. The first school evening was opened in 1861, and by 1864
there were 11 such schools in operation and most of the neo-literates were pariahs164
Missionaries, Textbooks and Public Libraries

As early as 1840, the LMS missionary Benjamin Rice at Bangalore, started writing tracts and
statements of the doctrines of Christianity on the same subjects. He wrote a series of school books, and
an instrumental in establishing a School Book Society in Bangalore, and to which he offered the books
after labouring several years. Rice emphasized the need for a much more extended use of the printing
press, because it was the only means by which a small body of workers can reach and influence the vast
multitudes of a country like India, as India had a population at the end of the 19thC equal to five times
that of all the rest of the British Empire put together. There were said to be 15,000,000 readers in India
in 1895, and the extension of education was increasing that number year by year. It is also to be stated
here that the LMS had its credit to have started a public library at Nagercoil in 1820.165
Chapter V: London Missionary Society and Women's Education

The educational facilities were very poor for women in India and till the end of the eighteenth century
sufficient attention was not given to them. The high caste people never interested to send their girls out
of the house. The only training available even to the women of the upper caste was elementary moral
instruction and basic lessons on music and dance when they were small girls.166 Even before the
colonial government envisaged the idea of giving education to untouchable girls, the missionaries were
able to open the eyes of the government and compelled them to enter the field. The missionaries
understood clearly that education of women and children were the paramount importance in any
society,167 and liked to put an end to the deplorable state of womenfolk.168
162
Evangelical Magazine, Nov 1826, p. 490. Extract of Mault’s letter.
163
Wilkinson C R H, Missionary Service in North India., p. 186.
164
Report of the Directors of the LMS in the Annual General Meeting held on 12 May 1864 in London, p. 94 & 96.
165
166
R. Narayana Panikkar, History of Travancore, Trivandrum, 1933, p. 287.
167
Susan Smith, Moari and Mission Sisters in New Zealand Since 1865: Changing Approaches, International Bulletin for
the Missionary Research , vol.31, no. 2, p. 77.
168
Richard Lovett, The History of the London Missionary Society, London, 1899, p. 151.
The work done by the wives of the missionaries among the womenfolk needs special consideration.
These ladies did not occupy any official position or salaried post, but as a labour of love, they devoted
a good deal of their time to the supervision of institutions started for the welfare of women. 169 The girls
were educated in schools and prepared for home life.170
171
In Travancore, the first women’s school was founded by Mrs. Mead at Nagercoil172 in 1819, but to
the surprise of the missionaries, not more than few girls turned up because of the general tendency
existed against women’s education. The LMS’ Bellary mission took the pioneer lead in the education
of females by establishing a Female school in 1826173 and was supervised by the missionary wife Mrs.
John Hands. The missionaries published pamphlets and other literature to create awareness and public
support for women’s education174 The missionary women took special interest in the education of girls
by establishing boarding schools175 and they established 15 women’s schools by 1838 and 47 by 1865
including 6 boarding schools. The medium of instruction in the women’s schools was the vernacular
languages. Though the primary importance was given to religious education, subjects like history,
geography, arithmetic and elements of natural philosophy were taught,176 apart from knitting, lace-
making and sewing.177
Missionaries and Medical Education
Allopathic medicine was introduced by the British during the mid- eighteenth century to essentially
cater to the needs of their civilian and military population. The medical missions entered the Indian
subcontinent during the late eighteenth century mainly in those regions which were directly under
British rule. The pioneers of Christian missionary work belonged to both British and American medical
missions. Missionary hospitals in India appear to be better distributed in those states which had
comparatively good institutional and infrastructural facilities. The earliest among them was the LMS
169
R.N Yesudas, The History of the London Missionary Society in Travancore, Kertala Historical Society, Trivandrum,
1980, p. 82.
170
Wilkinson C R H, Missionary Service in North India., American Theological Library Association., p. 186.
171
Report of the Directors of the LMS in the Annual General Meeting held on 13 May 1819 in London, p. 55. It was
realized by the missionary couple Charles Meads to start a school for the most intelligent girls at Nagercoil, to be
selected from the other schools. Mrs. Mead, who from her missionary habits, knowledge of the language, proved herself
to be a worthy school teacher.
172
Today it is called ‘Duthie Girls School’ in Nagercoil with more than 2000 girl students.
173
K. Ingham, Reformers in India, Cup, 1956, p. 87.
174
C. M. Agur, Church History of Travancore, p. 769. Here, Agur publishes an extract from a 12 page tract titled ‘On the
Advantage of Female Education’.
175
1980, p. 83.
176
John Jacob, A History of the London Missionary Society from 1806 to 1956, Nagercoil, 1959, p. 102.
177
C. M. Agur, Church History of Travancore, p. 766.
which started work in the early nineteenth century in the Madras Presidency.178 Medical missionaries179
from Zanana Missionary Medical College came to India during nineteenth century and served at
different parts, including Neyyur in South Travancore in the erstwhile Madras Presidency. 180 It was
commendable and well received the hundreds of missionaries devoted themselves to medical work
connected with the 610 mission hospitals and dispensaries, where more than three million patients were
annually treated.181
Chapter VI : Education, Depressed Classes and Formation of Alternative Ideology

Christian missions in India began as an uphill battle especially as it critiqued and challenged the social
evils that lurked so graphically in the establishment of time. They protested the operation of slavery as
an institution and the immolation of widows on the pire of their diseased husbands. 182 The Madras
society, like any other society was a caste-ridden society. Referring to the Sangam literature, E. Kunjan
Pillai writes, “Casteless society was the life of Dravidian culture”. 183 Only during the tenth and eleventh
centuries when the brahmins established their supremacy over the state, caste system crept into the life
in South Indian society and, since then, brahmins controlled the social structure of the community and
became powerful.184 Nairs, Vellalas were from the Sudra caste, and Nadars,185 Ezhavas, Mudaliars,
Vokaligas etc., enjoyed a social status between the high caste Sudras and the low caste or outcaste
untouchables. European observers of the nineteenth century regarded the caste system of Malabar in
general and Travancore in Particular as the most rigid in the subcontinent.186 The missionary agenda, in
addition to conversion, was to free the people from what they saw as the thralldom of ‘the heathen
caste system’187
Caldwell describes the Nadars as “belonging to the highest division of the lowest class or lowest of the
178
Rama Baru, Missionaries in Medical Care, Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 34, no. 9 (Feb 27 Mar 5, 1999), p. 521.
179
The term ‘medical missionary’ had been used in reference to those ladies,who had not taken the five years’ course, but
had passed successfully a ‘two years’ diploma course and had been working as “missionaries with medical knowledge”
in India, China, Burma, Ceylon, Africa, Syria and all those countries where women only were allowed to treat women
and their children. See De G Griffith, Medical Missionaries, The British Medical Journal, vol.2, no.1714, 4 Nov 1893,
p. 1026.
180
De G Griffith, Medical Missionaries, The British Medical Journal, vol.2, no.1714, 4 Nov 1893, p. 1026.
181
J. P.Jones, The Protestant Missionary Propaganda in India, The Harvard Theological Review, Vol.8, No.1, Jan 1915, p.
33.
182
Victor A Raj quoted in D Christudas, Tranquebar to Travancore., ISPCK, New Delhi, 2008, p. xv.
183
Elamkulam Kunjan Pillai, Keralam Anchum Arum Nootandukalil (Malayalam Translated), Kottayam, 1924, p. 189.
184
Samuel Mateer, Native Life in Travancore, London, 1883, pp. 3132.
185
Robert Hardgrave., Nadars of Tamil Nadu, OUP, Bombay, 1969, p. 21.
186
187
middle classes, poor, but not paupers”188 and Rajah Rama Rao describes them as “inferior to sudras and
superior to parayas.”189 The lowest section of the society was occupied by the slave caste which was
composed of mainly the parayas, pulayas, pallars, malas, madigas etc., with very poor living conditions
and were treated worst by the caste people.190 Severe taxes were imposed on the lower caste people for
conducting marriages and other functions;191 their presence anywhere in the vicinity of a brahman was
considered to be polluted; and they were not permitted to construct homes and were asked to live in
the fields always. Samuel Mateer, who was an LMS missionary at Pareychaley (Parassala) says, “So
dreadful is the ignorance of the people through want of education .....the ignorance of the Pariahs and
Pulayas, who could never read proclamations themselves, nor ordinary approach the places of public
resort where Government notices are proclaimed”.192 By 1870, half a million low-caste people
constituting no less than one-third of the whole population of Travancore, should be educated,
enfranchised, invested with the rights and liberties of citizenship.193 The destitute children of Anglo-
Indian at Bellary were found to be ‘literally naked, merely starved and almost ignorant as brutes’ when
they were taken to Fort Charity School, which was founded by John Hands in 1811, who provided
education with free boarding and clothing. 194
The poor classes were predominantly illiterate, while the middle classes were educated in a proportion
equal to that of countries which were socially and economically much more highly developed195 The
extreme poverty of the masses, the inadequate means of communication, the purdah, child marriage,
child widowhood, the conflict of communal interests and ambitions and the seemingly unbridgeable
chasm between rural and urban life; all of which had operated to prevent the growth of a desire for
education among the masses which were largely rural and agricultural.196
The rapid and astounding success of the Protestant Missions in certain parts of the country was mainly
due to the remarkable facilities they offered for the educational advancement and vocational training of
the poor and depressed classes.197 Guari Viswanathan argues that historically, missionary schools
opened their doors to socially excluded groups, while the schools run by the colonial government had
as their main clientele students from the upper castes. Yet precisely because missionary schools were
188
Robert Caldwell., Tinnevelly Shanars, SPCK, London, 1850, pp. 45.
189
Rajah Rama Rao., Ramnad Manuel, Madras, 1889, p. 36.
190
R N Yesudhas., A Peoples Revolt in Travancore, Kerala Historical Society , Thiruvananthapuram, 1975, p.33.
191
Samuel Mateer, Native Life in Travancore., W. H. Allen & Co., London, 1883, p. 333.
192
Samuel Mateer, Native Life in Travancore., W. H. Allen & Co., London, 1883, p. 2425.
193
194
Report of the Directors of the LMS in the Annual General Meeting held May 1820 in London, p. 161.
195
George Allen Odgers, Education in British India, The Phi Delta Kappan, vol.8, no. 2, (Oct., 1925), p. 2.
196
George Allen Odgers, Education in British India, The Phi Delta Kappan, vol.8, no. 2, (Oct., 1925), p. 2.
197
so closely identified with lower-caste education, missionaries found their aims compromised by their
desire to lure the upper castes to their schools.198 One of the main reasons for the success of the LMS
missionaries was their involvement in the field of education and using it as a means for change. The
missionaries entered into all areas of society, and their encounter with the intellectuals developed a new
line of thinking and their involvement in the life of the poor and identification with the oppressed gave
the people a new hope.199
George Mc Guire has argued that without missionary schools there would have been no schooling.
People would not have learned to read and write Knowledge is power- it builds bridges it irrigates
fields it saves lives - missionary education did not oppress people. It liberated them.200 Humayun Kabir
has suggested that Christian missionaries in India were the catalysts for a rebirth of learning and
intellectual aspiration. Paul C Quamnia, Secretary of the Fundamental Baptist school Board in Trinidad
and Tobago has insisted that “missionary schools supported the efforts of ordinary people to arrive at a
free and just society in the face of colonialism.” 201 The missionaries undertook the tedious task of
uplifting the depressed classes, made it a policy to establish schools with other organizations.
Charles Mead, the LMS missionary at Trivandrum writes, “in every place where we have a
congregation, a school is also established, principally for the education of illiterates, and it is open to
all.” The LMS missionaries followed a policy of vigorous proselytizing with an educational and
economic programme aimed at changing the economic and legal position of dependable of their low-
caste followers. They established a school for Nadar girls at Nagercoil in which they were trained in
European- style lace making.202
Breast-Cloth Controversy203
The Nadars, among whom the LMS missionaries were to have so much success, are usually described
as palmyra tappers, some were also carters and semi-nomadic; others were agricultural laborers and
tenants of Nair landlords. They were concentrated in the Southern and South Western tip of India, some
in the Ramnad and Tinnevelly districts of Madras Presidency, and others across the border in South
Travancore.204 Nadar women could not carry pots on their hips nor could they cover the the upper part
198
Gauri Viswanathan, Literacy in the Eye of India’s Conversion Storm in Kenneth Mills and Anthony Grafton (eds.)
Conversion: Old Worlds and New, University of Rochester Press, New York, 2003, p. 280.
199
L Sahanam, The Contributions of LMS missionaries in the Field of Education in South Travancore A Historical
Enquiry., Unpublished M. Th Dissertation submitted to United Theological College, Bangalore, 1976., p.1.
200
Clayton G MacKenzie, “Demythologizing the Missionaries: A ReAssessment of the Functions and the Relationship of
Christian Missionary Education under Colonialism,” Comparative Education, vol. 29, no. 1, 1993, p. 45.
201
Clayton G MacKenzie, “Demythologizing the Missionaries: A ReAssessment of the Functions and the Relationship of
Christian Missionary Education under Colonialism,” Comparative Education, vol. 29, no. 1, 1993, p. 45.
202
203
The term ‘Breast cloth controversy’ was first coined by Robert Hardgrave
204
of their bodies.205 In the case of Travancore, in order to support the depressed class Nadar women, who
were always oppressed by the upper castes like Nairs and Namboothiris, by not allowing them anything
to wear above their hip, the wives of the missionaries had designed and produced a loose jacket that
met their criteria for modest clothing that befitted them.206 Although permission to cover the upper part
of the person had been given to the lower castes, they were still by law restricted to the use of coarse
cloth.207 The controversy over breast cloth, which is narrated and analyzed by a number of historians
and writers, lives on and the battle waged by the Nadar women as a victory in the march of progress
against untouchable habits, customs, and privileges of orthodox Hindus, who were the representatives
of a pleasure loving feudal caste-culture.208
Unquestionably, the interference of missionaries in day-to-day activities of the people in Madras
Presidency opened up vistas for the so-called depressed classes to have public spaces. The chapter also
makes an attempt to critically analyze the attempt made by missionaries to create a powerful and
thought-provoking domestic force of socio-political reforms including Justice Party, Temple entry
movements, and self-respect movements led by a group of forward-thinking intellectuals who not only
promoted the learning of missionaries’ Western ideas but also advocated the adoption of Western
socio-political thinking. Reform minded intellectuals including Periar led an unrelenting campaign
criticizing traditional practices of the so-called superior community and introduced Western rational
ideologies and practices in a fairly systematic fashion to create a modern, middle class intelligentsia.
Chapter VII : Conclusion

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1806 - Ringeltaube’s letter to his friend in London, requesting him to influence the Directors for
sending $100 for the purpose of constructing the church and school buildings
1809 - Ringeltaube’s letter to the Directors of LMS, London, after establishing the English school at
Mayiladi. Extract of the letter is seen in “Caldwell, R., Records of the Early History of
Tinnevelly”, Madras, 1881, pp. 138-139.
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United Theological College, Bangalore has reports (24 files) starting from 1818).
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Journals & Magazines

Church History Review
Church Missionar Intelligencer
Desopakari (Tamil - startaed in 1862 at Nagercoil by LMS)
Evangelical Magazine
Friend of India
International Review of Missions
Madras Mail
Madras Gazette
Madras Courier
Missionary Chronicle
Oriental Magazine
Studies in Church History
From Tranquebar, where a Tamil printing press eventually turned out a steady stream of basic materials, such schools
gradually spread northward to Madras, inland to Tanjore and Trichinopoly, and southward to Palamcottah. By the 1780s
schools run by Christian Friedrich Schwartz and his associates (John Z. Kiernander, Daniel Joseph Jaenicke, Christian
Wilhelm Gericke, John Kasper Kohloff, Philip Fabricius, among others) were attracting nonChristian students, especially
Brahmans and Vellalars, who hoped that the new learning would better quality them for positions within the rapidly
expanding establishments of the Company.209
209
Koji Kawashama, Missionaries and a Hindu State Travancore 18581936 . Oxford, New Delhi, 2003, P.

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Ph D Synopsis

REVISITING MISSIONARY EDUCATION IN INDIA: ATTITUDES

ZAKIR HUSAIN CENTRE FOR EDUCATIONAL STUDIES

Historical introduction to Christianity: Protestantism, Pietism, Enlightenment and Missionary

Early Initiatives in Education in India

Missionaries and Orientalism

Chapter IV: Conceptualising Missionary Engagement: Vernacular Education and Intellectual

Missionaries, Bazar159 Schools and Adult Education

Missionaries, Textbooks and Public Libraries

Chapter V: London Missionary Society and Women's Education

Chapter VI : Education, Depressed Classes and Formation of Alternative Ideology

Chapter VII : Conclusion

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