Colonialism and Missions

Vinoth Ramachandra ( Subverting Global Myths: Theology and the Public Issues Shaping Our World ) acknowledges that there are “many shameful stories to be told of Western missionary complicity in colonial practices of domination,” but adds that “the more typical stories of missionaries and local Christian leaders in India, Africa or the South Pacific who courageously defended native interests and combated racist theories and stereotypes propagated by their fellow countrymen are missing from the anti-Orientalist corpus.”

Specifically: “From the initial commercial ventures of the East India Company to the heyday of the British Raj, colonial administrators were mostly hostile to Christian missionaries and made every effort not to interfere with local customs, religious beliefs and values. Ironically, and contrary to many anti-Orientalist writers, it was onlt when the Serampore missionaries and Ram Mohan Roy . . . convinced the governor, Lord Bentinck, that sati . . . had no authority in the sacred Hindu texts, did the British abolish the practice in 1829 . . . . it is rarely mentioned that some British Christians in India such as C. F. Andrews were criticizing British racism and advocating full independence for India rather than dominion status within the empire long before Gandhi and the Congress Party took it up in 1924. So impressed was Gandhi himself by Andrews’s integrity that, in order to break the deadlock between Congress and the Muslim League, he made the remarkable proposal to the Viceroy Lord Mountbatten in 1947 that Andrews be appointed as the first president of independent India.”