Signs Taken for Wonders: An Anecdote Taken from History

Bill Bell

New Literary History, Volume 43, Number 2, Spring 2012, pp. 309-329 (Article)

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/nlh.2012.0015

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/483022

Access provided by King's College London (22 Oct 2017 17:41 GMT)
 Signs Taken for Wonders:
An Anecdote Taken from History
Bill Bell

S
ince its first appearance as an article in Critical Inquiry in 1985,
Homi Bhabhas Signs Taken for Wonders: Questions of Ambiva-
lence and Authority Under a Tree Outside Delhi, May 1817 has
become a locus classicus for postcolonial studies.1 A central document
in todays postcolonial archive, it was republished as a chapter in The
Location of Culture in 1994, in numerous subsequent editions, and is a
text that has been recycled and repeated in several languages and in
countless anthologies and secondary works. It constitutes a discourse
whose key coinageshybridity, sly civility, mimicryhave passed
into such common usage in the past twenty-five years that they have come
to colonize the postcolonial imagination with an imaginative power rare
within the rarefied world of cultural theory.
It is not my aim to rehearse here the impressive and energetic per-
formance of a European critique that informs Bhabhas argument as
it movesdeft and dutifulthrough the luminary ecumene of Freud,
Foucault, Lacan, and Derrida, nor the subtle way in which it comes to
concepts that now pass for truisms. Instead I want to show that this es-
say, and in particular its use of anecdotal history, is more fraught than
Bhabhas swallow flights allow.
Since the appearance of Bhabhas essay, the relationship between
critique and historyand in particular the deployment of historical anec-
dote for the sake of polemichas remained a troubling and unresolved
presence within critical practice. Carolyn Porter detects in the use of the
isolated anecdote a tendency towards colonial formalism, appropriat-
ing the strange things to be found outside the literary, while effacing
the social and historical realm that produced them. Such a practice,
argues Porter, is at once a plundering and erasing of the discursive
practices to which the argument appeals.2 In addressing these same
tendencies as they are played out in Bhabhas influential essay, it is not
my intention here to conjure a return to the grand recit of history, but
to offer three counterhistories, to open up a set of questions erased in
a paradigmatic discourse that moves seamlessly and confidently between
theoretical statement and historic assertion.

New Literary History, 2012, 43: 309329

310 new literary history

And what is the significance of the Bible?

Bhabhas argument takes as its point of departure the following episode

as it appeared in the Missionary Register in 1817 describing a conversa-
tion between a native catechist and five hundred mysterious converts
in a sacred grove near Delhi. It is an anecdote to which the argument
returns at strategic moments, and provides the basis for the essays more
general historical and theoretical assertions.
In the first week of May 1817, writes Bhabha, Anund Messeh,3 one
of the earliest Indian catechists, made a hurried and excited journey
from his mission in Meerut to a grove of trees just outside Delhi:

He found about 500 people, men, women, and children, seated under the
shade of the trees, and employed, as had been related to him, in reading and
conversation. He went up to an elderly looking man, and accosted him, and
the following conversation passed.
Pray who are all these people? and whence come they? We are poor and
lowly, and we read and love this book.What is that book?The book
of God!Let me look at it, if you please. Anund, on opening the book,
perceived it to be the Gospel of our Lord, translated into the Hindoostanee
Tongue, many copies of which seemed to be in the possession of the party: some
were PRINTED, others WRITTEN by themselves from the printed ones. Anund
pointed to the name of Jesus, and asked, Who is that? That is God! He gave
us this book.Where did you obtain it? An Angel from heaven gave it us,
at Hurdwar fair.4An Angel? Yes, to us he was Gods Angel: but he was a
man, a learned Pundit. (Doubtless these translated Gospels must have been
the books distributed, five or six years ago, at Hurdwar by the Missionary.) The
written copies we write ourselves, having no other means of obtaining more
of this blessed word. These books, said Anund, teach the religion of the
European Sahibs. It is THEIR book; and they printed it in our language, for
our use. Ah! no, replied the stranger, that cannot be, for they eat flesh.
Jesus Christ, said Anund, teaches that it does not signify what a man eats or
drinks. EATING is nothing before God. Not that which entereth into a mans mouth
defileth him, but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man: for vile things
come forth from the heart. Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries,
fornications, thefts; and these are the things that defile.
That is true; but how can it be the European Book, when we believe that it
is Gods gift to us? He sent it to us at Hurdwar. God gave it long ago to the
Sahibs, and THEY sent it to us. . . . The ignorance and simplicity of many are
very striking, never having heard of a printed book before; and its very appear-
ance was to them miraculous. A great stir was excited by the gradual increasing
information hereby obtained, and all united to acknowledge the superiority of
the doctrines of this Holy Book to every thing which they had hitherto heard
or known. An indifference to the distinctions of Caste soon manifested itself;
and the interference and tyrannical authority of the Brahmins became more
signs taken for wonders 311

offensive and contemptible. At last, it was determined to separate themselves

from the rest of their Hindoo Brethren; and to establish a party of their own
choosing, four or five, who could read the best, to be the public teachers from
this newly-acquired Book. . . . Anund asked them, Why are you all dressed in
white? The people of God should wear white raiment, was the reply, as a
sign that they are clean, and rid of their sins. Anund observed, You ought
to be BAPTIZED, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Ghost. Come to Meerut: there is a Christian Padre there; and he will shew you
what you ought to do. They answered, Now we must go home to the harvest;
but, as we mean to meet once a year, perhaps the next year we may come to
Meerut. . . . I explained to them the nature of the Sacrament and of Baptism;
in answer to which, they replied, We are willing to be baptized, but we will
never take the Sacrament. To all the other customs of Christians we are willing
to conform, but not to the Sacrament, because the Europeans eat cows flesh,
and this will never do for us. To this I answered, This WORD is of God, and
not of men; and when HE makes your hearts to understand, then you will
PROPERLY comprehend it. They replied, If all our country will receive this
Sacrament, then will we. I then observed, The time is at hand, when all the
countries will receive this WORD! They replied, True!5

The central trope around which Bhabhas reading of this strange

moment formulates itself is one, so the argument goes, that repeats so
insistently in the nineteenth century that it triumphantly inaugurates
a literature of empire, namely the sudden, fortuitous discovery of the
English book. When the Bible enters the scene, for Bhabha it is in har-
mony with an abstraction called colonial desire and discipline, waiting
for an Indian encounter that will cause it to be remade, appropriated,
hybridized (14546).
The bibles distributed at Hardwar most likely included copies of
the New Testament in Hindi, printed at the Baptist Mission Press in
Serampore.6 William Carey, the missionary-printer who had overseen
their production, had arrived to set up his press in India at a time when
British colonial policy was openly hostile to the presence of missionaries
in the subcontinent, even threatening to arrest any who might be found
trespassing on the [East India] Companys territories. Seeing him as
a threat to government security, the governor-general had in 1799 re-
fused permission for Carey to set up his printing operation in Calcutta.
Outside British sanction, Carey found asylum in Serampore, then under
Danish control, where he would be free from molestation by the Brit-
ish authorities.7 It was here, in spite of government interference, that
the work of translating and printing the books in question took place.
But in the eyes of the British authorities, few were more trouble-
some than John Chamberlain, the missionary who actually distributed
the books at the Hardwar Fair. When in April 1814 he made his way to
312 new literary history

Hardwar on the banks of the Gangesan important site of pilgrimage

for Hindus, Moslems, and SikhsChamberlain could not have imagined
the success that was waiting. Within ten days, writes one eyewitness, his
congregation had grown to many thousands. . . . They sat around, and
listened with an attention which would have reflected credit on a Chris-
tian audience. On the Missionarys retiring, they every evening cheered
him home with, May the padree (or priest) live for ever.8 The success
of Chamberlains ministry led to his removal from the district by order
of governor-general under armed guard. The British authorities, who
saw his presence as politically dangerous, responded quickly, and the
Angel who had distributed the New Testaments at the Hardwar Fair
was forced to return to Serampore.9
Such episodes should cause us to think again about the way in which
these same books may or may not have operated as part of a concerted
and coordinated campaign on the part of missionaries and government
officials. Saurabh Dube has observed, A pernicious commonplace among
historians and theorists of colonial discourse holds that the construc-
tion of powerful images of the non-Western other was carried out by a
unified conquering colonial elite with a uniform Western mentality.10
So Bhabha provides the following brief history:

It was with Grants election to the Board of the East India Company . . . and
through his energetic espousal of the Evangelical ideals of the Clapham Sect,
that the East India Company reintroduced a pious clause into its charter for
1813. By 1817 the Church Missionary Society ran sixty-one schools, and in 1818
it commissioned the Burdwan Plan, a central plan of education for instruction
in the English language. The aim of the plan anticipates, almost to the word,
Thomas Macaulays infamous Minute on Education: to form a body of well
instructed labourers, competent in their proficiency in English to act as Teach-
ers, Translators, and Compilers of useful works for the masses of the people.
Anund Messehs lifeless repetition of chapter and verse, his artless technique
of translation, participate in one of the most artful technologies of colonial
power. (15051)

That the missionary effort in India before and after 1813 was a cul-
tural enterprise complicit with official government policy would not
have accorded with the experiences of Carey and Chamberlain. And
they were not alone. Describing the deep differences of opinion on
the role of missions in the years well after the pious clause, several
scholars notice how many among the ranks of the colonial administra-
tion wanted to keep the missionaries out and leave alone the customs
and traditions of India.11 Gauri Viswanathan observes that, while the
Charter of 1813 might appear to suggest a victory for the missionaries.
. . . They were dismayed by the continuing checks on their activities,
signs taken for wonders 313

which grew impossibly stringent.12 In 1822 Thomas Munro, Governor

of Madras, expressed it in no uncertain terms: In every country, but
especially in this, where the rulers are so few, and of a different race
from the people, it is the most dangerous of all things to tamper with
religious feelings.13
Macaulays notorious Minute on Education and its call for the pro-
motion of the English language in Indiaa default position in many
postcolonial readings of nineteenth-century Indian history may have
been enforced in government schools and colleges, but in mission
schools in outlying areas the teaching of native languages and religions
continued with vigor. Whatever the stated aims of the Burdwan Plan,
not all were wholeheartedly committed to the teaching of English: by
1828 there were ten schools in and around Burdwan in which about
1000 children were taught the Bengalee language.14 The place of Eng-
lish in India much exercised Carey as he prepared his translations. As
he later wrote: It has been felt that English State Education wasno
doubt without any intention that it should be so, but was in effectto
chill and even to destroy the springs of reverence and devotion and the
religious sentiment in the students.15 Believing the affinity between
Sanskrit (which he called the father of Eastern languages) was closer
to Biblical Greek than English, Carey gathered at Serampore a body of
native scholars to prepare ancient religious texts from a variety of tradi-
tions in a range of dialects. William Ward, writing to Careys cousin in
1811, left the following vivid account of the press in action:

As you enter, you see your cousin, in a small room, dressed in a white jacket,
reading or writing, and looking over the office, which is more than 170 feet long.
There you find Indians translating the Scriptures into the different tongues, or
correcting proof-sheets. You observe, laid out in cases, types in Arabic, Persian,
Nagari, Panjabi, Bengali, Marathi, Chinese, Oriya, Burmese, Kanarese, Greek,
Hebrew and English. Hindus, Mussulmans and Christian Indians are busy, com-
posing, correcting, distributing. Next are four men throwing off the Scripture
sheets in the different languages; others folding the sheets and delivering them
to the large store room; and six Mussulmans do the binding. 16

As well as producing Christian scriptures in a wide range of languages,

a considerable number of Indian religious texts were also printed at the
Serampore press. Shivanath has noted the importance of Careys opera-
tion to the early flowering of indigenous literature.17 Swapan Majumdar
observes how, in drawing together Sanskrit pandits and Perso-Arabic
munshis to reshape Bengali prose, Carey created a center for the
promotion of Indian literature: From colloquies and popular stories,
chronicles and legends, to definitive editions of literary texts.18
314 new literary history

For Carey, his press operations were part of a larger investment in

the promotion of native languages in the face of what he saw as English
incursion. In the manifesto that he framed for the mission at Serampore
he argued for the importance of native churches run by Indians who
would more readily identify the cause as belonging to their own na-
tion.19 Like the reformist Hindus with whom he formed alliances, Carey
fought against caste inequality, infanticide, and satiin whose 1829
abolition he played a major rolebut in the innocent uses of mankind
he held (like them) strong noninterventionist views: We have thought
it our duty not to change the names of native converts, observing from
Scripture that the Apostles did not change those of the first Christians
turned from heathenism. . . . We think the great object . . . is not the
changing of the names, the dress, the food, and the innocent usages of
mankind. . . . It would not be right to perpetuate the names of heathen
gods among Christians, neither is it necessary or prudent to give a new
name to every man after his conversion, as hereby the economy of fami-
lies, neighbourhoods, etc., would be needlessly disturbed.20
The copies of the Christian scripturestranslated from koine Greek
into Indian vernacular languagesthat were distributed by Chamber-
lain at the Hardwar Fair in 1814 were not quite the emblem of the
concerted English project that Bhabha imagines. Translated by native
pundits, printed by a colonial exile, distributed by a political incendi-
ary, the English book was no stranger to complex cultural encounter,
and not really English at all. The Serampore Testaments were hybrid
when they arrived.

Pray, who are all these people?

Imagine the scene, writes Bhabha: The Bible, perhaps translated

into a north Indian dialect like Brigbhasha, handed out free or for one
rupee within a culture where usually only caste Hindus would possess a
copy of the Scriptures, and received in awe by the natives as both novelty
and a household deity. . . . What is the value of English in the offering
of the Hindi Bible? It is . . . so that the natives may resist the Brahmins
monopoly of knowledge and lessen their dependence on their own
religious and cultural traditions (16668). One fundamental problem
with this analysis is that the natives encountered in the anecdote were
not actually practicing Hindus. Anand Messehs question when he first
encountered the five hundred mysterious strangersPray, who are all
these people? And whence come they?goes unanswered in the cat-
echists story. But two months later the mystery was solved. On July 14,
signs taken for wonders 315

1817, the chaplain at Meerut reported that these poor Strangers which
have interested us so much are called Saadhs. After further investiga-
tion, Fisher found members of the sect in at least five villages around
Delhi, subscribing to a monotheistic religion that had long ago seceded
from Hinduism. As a consequence, observed Fisher, they were outcasts
who continued to suffer unrelenting persecutions, including frequent
beatings and extortion, at the hands of the Brahmin.21
The sect had first broken away from mainstream Hinduism in 1543
when it was established by the religious prophet Birbhan whom the Saa-
dhs regarded as the personified word of God. Sometime around 1658,
they adopted the teachings of Jogi Das, who imported to the sect some of
the core beliefs of Christianity, probably communicated to Das through
the early Catholic missionaries then operating in India.22 Thereafter, the
Saadhs had maintained a belief in the One God (Satnam), monogamy,
and a rejection of all caste distinction. Their scriptures, Pothis (the Book),
were read at public gatherings on an annual pilgrimage, whose main
purpose was to provide a forum for the settlement of internal disputes
and to clarify community policy and doctrine; hence their presence in
the grove near Delhia traditional site of Saadh pilgrimagein 1817.
The core of Saadh conduct and belief took the form of twelve com-
mandments (Hukms) contained in the scriptures transmitted by Jogi
Das, the Adi Updesh, or First Precepts, in which are detectable obvious
Judeo-Christian elements:

1.Acknowledge but one God who made and can destroy you, to whom there
is none superior, and to whom alone therefore is worship due; not to earth,
nor stone, nor metal, nor wood, nor trees, nor any created thing. There is
but one Lord, and the word of the Lord. He who meditates on falsehoods,
practices falsehoods and commits sin, and he who commits sin falls into
hell.
2.Be modest and humble, set not your affections on the world, adhere faith-
fully to your creed, and avoid intercourse with all not of the same faith, eat
not of a strangers bread.
3.Never lie nor speak ill at any time to, or of anything of earth or water, or
trees, or animals. Let the tongue be employed in the praise of God. Never
steal, nor wealth, nor lands, nor beasts, nor pasture. Distinguish your own
from anothers property, and be content with what you possess. Never imag-
ine evil. Let not your eyes rest on improper objects, nor men, nor women,
nor dances, nor shows.
4.Listen not to evil discourse, nor to anything but the praise of the Creator,
nor to tales, nor gossip, nor calumny, nor music, nor singing except hymns;
but then the only musical accompaniment must be in the mind.
5.Never covet anything, either of body or wealth; take not of another. God is
the giver of all things, as your trust is in Him so shall you receive.
316 new literary history

6.When asked what you are, declare yourself a Sadh, speak not of caste, engage
not in controversy, hold firm your faith, put not your hope in men.
7.Wear white garments, use no pigments, nor collyrium, nor dentifrice, nor
mehndi (henna), nor mark your person, nor your forehead, with sectional
distinctions, nor wear chaplets, or rosaries or jewels.
8.Never eat nor drink intoxicating substances, nor chew pan, nor smell per-
fumes, nor smoke tobacco, nor chew nor smell opium; hold not up your
hands, bow not down your head in the presence of idols or of men.
9.Take no life away, nor offer personal violence, nor give damnatory evidence,
nor seize anything by force.
10.Let a man wed one wife, and a woman one husband, let not a man eat a
womans leavings, but a woman may of a mans as may be the custom. Let
the woman be obedient to the man.
11.Assume not the garb of a mendicant, nor solicit alms, nor accept gifts. Have
no dread of necromancy, neither have recourse to it. Know before you
confide. The meetings of the pious (Sadhus) are the only places of pilgrim-
age, but understand who are the pious (Sadhus) before you so salute them.
12.Let not the Sadhus be superstitious as to days, or to lunations, or to the
months, or the cries of appearance of birds or animals; let him seek only
the will of the Lord.23

Fishers initial impression was by and large correct. For over three
centuries the Saadhs had been outcasts, rejecting all forms of polytheism
and the most sacred of Brahmin rituals and beliefs. Since its establish-
ment, Saadhism had survived as a devout monotheistic sect, whose ascetic
lifestyle led a number of Europeans to identify its adherents with the
Society of Friends; perhaps because, like the Quakers, they were open
to progressive revelation: Any Saadh, believing himself to be under the
influence of that same divine spirit which they suppose to have inspired
their first founder, observed Fisher, is at perfect liberty to offer his own
productions at their religious assemblies for public repetition so long
as they are . . . not in contradiction to their received opinions, they will
not be objected to.24
The responses of the Saadhs to Anand Messeh would seem to confirm
that they believed the Bibles they received at Hardwar were infused with
the same divine spirit. Why else would they have gone to the labori-
ous trouble of copying them out by hand? Their responsethat these
were not European books but had been sent to them from Godwas
not the act of spectacular resistance imagined by Bhabha but rather
a simple acceptance of a God-breathed scripture unmediated by men
(II Timothy 3:16). The Saadhs belief that the learned pundits who
had given them the books were at the same time angels also appears
to be a literal rendering of a text that spoke of angelic messengers sent
forth by God to gather together the elect from the four winds. Be
signs taken for wonders 317

not forgetful to entertain strangers, St. Paul had written, for thereby
some have entertained angels unawares (Hebrews 13:2). Nor was it, as
Bhabha suggests, just another household deity that these Saadhs had
found in their Testamentsa concept that ran fundamentally counter to
their strict monotheismbut quite the opposite: the confirmation of an
already firmly held set of belief in the One True God, and their approval
of the Bible as Gods gift to usone more episode in the evolution of
a religion whose followers, generations ago, had rejected the Brahmin
and their household deities. Little wonder that these poor natives
valued a text that confirmed their own established beliefs in a world
dominated by prohibition and caste difference, a world in which only
an elite could possess, let alone read, the sacred word. The weakening
grip of Indias traditional religious leaderspartly a consequence of the
Christians and their bookpromised wider legitimacy to disenfranchised
groups like the Saadhs. In the end, it appears that their response to a
Bible that fitted uncontroversially within their own world view had less
to do with white men forcing themselves between the Indian peasantry
and its religious leaders than with a grateful recognition that my enemys
enemy is my friend.25
Advocating a turning away from the vicissitudes of interpretation
towards what he calls a discursive transparency Bhabha passes over the
complex dynamics of reading (15455). And in asking and answering
And what of the native discourse? Who can tell? (173)he evades the
difficulty of how and what the Saadhs might actually have been reading
that day. Instead, Bhabha relies on a crude overreading of native intention
in order to accommodate the theoretical concepts that a priori always
inform his reading of the episode: Through the natives strange ques-
tions it is possible to see, with historical hindsight, what they resisted in
questioning the presence of the English. . . . When the natives demand
an Indianized Gospel, they are using the powers of hybridity to resist
baptism and to put the project of conversion in an impossible position
(16869). As he moves to the close of his argument, Bhabha suggests
that the narrative should be read as a question of colonial authority,
an agonistic space, characterized by moments of civil disobedience
. . . signs of spectacular resistance. . . . Was it in the spirit of such sly
civility that the native Christians parried so long with Anund Messeh and
then, at the mention of baptism, politely excused themselves: Now we
must go home to the harvest . . . perhaps the next year we may come
to Meerut (17273).
Rather than exploring a story of a single meeting in which a catechist
debates the English book with the people of a village, writes one critic
of Bhabhas essay, it would have been helpful to have provided a more
318 new literary history

historical analysis of peasant responses.26 To suggest that, in politely

excusing themselves, the Saadhs are engaged in an act of sly civility
may suit the purposes of Bhabhas argument, but a more detailed un-
derstanding of the context in which the exchange about baptism takes
place suggests where the discursive transparency actually lies. In early
May, at the height of the harvest season, there would have been little
reason for the catechist to doubt the word of poor subsistence farmers
who had to go home to gather their crops. Given that the journey would
also have required them to travel some eighty miles to and from the
mission stationpossibly on foot, without proper supplies, and at the
hottest time of the year, it is hardly surprising that they were reticent to
take up Anands suggestion.
Bhabha nevertheless goes on to argue that the pilgrims refusal to take
communion should also be regarded as a mode of discursive distur-
bance, which contests the logical order of the discourse of authority
(170). In nineteenth-century India there was nothing especially subversive
about a refusal to celebrate the Eucharist with the missionaries on the
grounds that the Europeans eat cows flesh. The real discourse of
authority to which the Saadhs response bears witness was the Brahmin
code of purity and prohibition. The two unpardonable sins in Hindu
society were to eat beef, and, by association, to eat with those who
did. Either was sufficient grounds for total caste expulsion. By taking
communion with the missionaries, the Saadhs stood to lose what little
economic and social rights they had. Their rejection of the sacrament
was less a resistance to the miraculous equivalence of God and the
English than an expression of genuine fear (168)fear of economic
exile, social exclusion, and physical violence. As one of the Saadhs later
remarked: We are persecuted enough already . . . but if we were to eat
beef and pigs-blood what would become of us?27
In the light of such tensions, many colonial administrators expressed
their opposition to the introduction of Christian rituals that might serve
to undermine native hierarchies, while missionary policy governing the
order and legitimacy of the communion service was far from settled. Some
Christian congregations took a liberal attitude towards the maintenance
of caste distinction and the prohibition of commensalism (interdin-
ing), while others insisted on the abolition of caste between believers
and argued for a more inclusive communion. Still others regarded the
problem as simply a civil distinction, making arrangements so that
the converts from different castes . . . would not even partake of the
Lords Supper together. Such accommodatory practices were tolerated
by Richard Heber when he became Bishop of Calcutta in 1823, while
his successor, Daniel Wilson, took a harder line against caste difference
signs taken for wonders 319

and the practice of separate communion.28 In short, there was never a

single approach to Eucharistic practices in India. To suggest that the
Sacraments were part of the logical order of the discourse of authority
is to overlook the fierce sectarian struggles that had for centuries sur-
rounded the meaning of communion in Europe, struggles that would
continue to be played out in other continents and contexts.
One final problem with Bhabhas reading of this moment in the
anecdote has to do with the way in which it is severely redacted.29 His
elliptical editing frames it in such a way as to give the impression that
the conversation about the Sacrament occurred in the presence of the
five hundred pilgrims on the same day. The original anecdote, in fact,
as presented in the Missionary Register, contains two episodes. This final
conversation (related in a later message from Anand himself) took place
a week after the initial meeting, only after the five hundred had been
scattered about in different directions and the catechist found a few
of the remnant in a nearby village. It is in this context that we find the
response, If all our country will receive this Sacrament, then will we.
In other words, had the conversation taken place on the first dayat the
annual gathering where matters of Saadh doctrine were settled30then
the speaker may indeed have been in a position to accept the terms of
Anands offer.
Saadhs did eventually come to Meerut. Among their Christian con-
verts was the tribal elder David Jysingh, who was baptized by Fisher
on Christmas Day 1818 and became a scripture reader and teacher in
his home village of Kowallee. In the meantime, in the absence of an
officiating priest, members of the community incorporated their own
forms of baptism and communion into their worship.31 In the follow-
ing year, Henry Fisher, with funds raised from well-meaning Indian and
European benefactors, arranged for the building of a school and chapel
on a regular plan, staking out a village which the Saadhs later called
Henreepore, in honor of their patron.32 At Henreepore, the Saadhs sent
their children to school, attended chapel on Sundays, and continued to
live under the protection of the Church Missionary Society. In the years
that followed, the relationship of the Henreepore Saadhs and European
Christians appears to have been one of mutual respect and dialogue,
earning the Saadhs high regard among those missionaries with whom
they came in contact.33 Their continued belief in the compatibility of
the Christian scriptures with their own sacred writings is understandable.
Over a century and a half before, they had imbibed Christian doctrine
through the pages of the Adi Updesh. When they received the mission-
arys sacred gift at the Hardwar Fair, they were simply reconnecting
with their own religious past. Theirs too was already a hybrid discourse.
320 new literary history

Who was Anand Messeh?

And what of Anand Messeh, the scripture reader who made that
hurried and excited journey from his mission in Meerut in May 1817?
Since being rescued from obscurity, the humble catechist with a zeal
for baptizing his fellow Indians has come to assume a second-hand and
second-rate presence within postcolonial studies. Made to stand for
the complicity of Indian subjects with European power, the story of his
confounded zeal has been told and retold since his resurrection from
the dead in 1985. One commentator finds in the anecdote evidence of
the naivety of a native convert who subscribes to the authority of the
culture of print, and specifically to European modes of mediation.34
Another comments on how the figure of Anund Messeh seems to be
the perfect example of the way in which the native desires to be like
the colonizerin dress, manner, and beliefthereby reinforcing the
apparent benevolence of the colonizer while reinforcing the colonizers
superiority; Anund Messeh can become anglicized, a functionary of English
rule, but he cannot become English.35 Poor Anand Messeh.
Paramanand, by his own account, was born in a village near Delhi,
possibly sometime in the 1790s. Named after one of the most celebrated
Hindu poet-saints of the sixteenth century,36 he was a devout member
of the Brahmin caste, Indias elite religious class. At an early age, he
became a pundit and priest among his native people, later settling in
Delhi where, in accordance with his office, he regularly performed
readings from the Hindu scriptures to largely illiterate followers, taught
the Hindu religion, and officiated at marriages and funerals. So assured
was he of his belief in Brahminism that he was fully satisfied that our
images were real gods and that all other religions were false.37
Around 1812 he was becoming increasingly dissatisfied with Brah-
minism. In his memoirs he describes the moment of his disenchantment:

The place was not far off and I hastened to the spot and begged permission
to behold this wonderful god. The Brahmins stood around and ordered me to
retire, but believing that if this was god his power must be great and that he
would be able to cleanse my heart and make it pure as gold, I determined to
try my strength, and to break through all opposition and touch him. I did so,
and accomplished my purpose, and rubbed my brass ring upon the idol, but it
was a brass ring still. I saw that the idol was a large black stone roughly hewn
into the human form with four hands. It was about two feet high. Six months
in the year it is usually covered with snow, and safe from exposure, but in the
warmer months when the heat of the sun has dissolved the snow, thousands
crowded from all quarters to have a distant glimpse, to offer the customary
tributes, and get to themselves some imaginary good by the sight. I was myself
signs taken for wonders 321

disgusted, wasted, and overcome by fatigue, and I returned home with feelings
of disappointment.38

Before long, he was employed by the Baptist missionary in Sirdhana,

John Chamberlain, as a translator, becoming increasingly attracted to
the Christian scriptures: I stood . . . halting between two opinions for a
long time. I told the Missionary at last that I would be a Christian; but I
trembled when I said so, and in my private dwelling I was a more rigid
and superstitious Hindoo than ever. I dreaded the possible consequences
of the anger of my own idols.39 Thereafter he made several requests
for baptism which Chamberlain repeatedly denied, being unpersuaded
by his native helpers professions of faith.
On March 10, 1814, just a month before Paramanand accompanied
Chamberlain to the Hardwar Fair, the missionary continued to have
doubts: The Hindoos are becoming very shy, he wrote, I suppose on
Purumanundas account.40 A month later Chamberlains suspicions
were realized:

Once I remember particularly, in coming from Hardwar, where the Missionary

had been to distribute books among the natives, who annually frequent the
place, we had halted for the night and finished our evening Christian services.
I watched for an opportunity to have my own worship in secret, and having
found a convenient shade and washed and cleaned my idol, and set him in the
place, I was busy with my prostrations and worship, when the Missionary sud-
denly surprised me in the midst of my employment. I was confounded and
ashamed, and conscious of my own duplicity and folly: yet such was the power
of my natural apprehensions, that if the Hindoo idols were really gods, their
revenge would be intolerable, for my denial of their authority and power, and
that they would afflict me with painful diseases or cover me with leprosy. Thus I
attended the morning and evening prayers of the Missionary, and finished with
my own idolatries, ere I went to rest; thinking that if I were defiled by contact
with Christians, this would secure my purification.41

On returning to Sirdhana, the exasperated Chamberlain wrote that

Purumamunda has grieved me, but he appears penitent, and wishes
to be baptized; but I am afraid to baptize him.42 After Chamberlains
departure for Serampore later that year, Paramanand attached himself
to the missionary Thomas Thomason, once again requested baptism,
and was once again denied. Soon afterwards, he met with the same
response from the chaplain at Meerut.43
In 1815, we find Paramanand employed under the superintendence of
Reverend Henry Fisher at Meerut. Having responsibility for five schools
in the district, Paramanand moved into spacious quarters provided above
the citys Great Gate, where he held Bible classes for the local residents.44
322 new literary history

A year later, his ambitions were realized and Fisher, seeing every reason
to believe in the sincerity of his Christian profession, baptized him on
Christmas Day 1816, when he received the name of Anund Messeeh.45
On May 6, 1817, Anand did not, as Bhabha suggests, make a hur-
ried and excited journey from his mission in Meerut to a grove of trees
just outside Delhi but in fact left for Delhi to visit his wife and family
(146). Sometime later, he was at a Hindu temple in the Imperial City
where he met, in the shade of some trees, a number of strangers from
several villages to the west of Delhi, perhaps some of the same Saadh
converts that he had met at the Hardwar Fair.46 Eight months later,
the first of several remarkable stories fashioned by the Brahmin convert
appeared in the religious press. Having seen little success since its ar-
rival in India, it is hardly surprising that there was excitement in the
missionary community over the story of the five hundred mysterious
converts that appeared in the Missionary Register for January 1818. But
the excitement was short-lived and severe doubts about its authenticity
began to be raised. While he had no reason to doubt the substantial
points of the narrative, Thomason (who had initially submitted it to
the Register) was forced in July to urge caution, suspecting that Anands
story was less remarkable than we had been given to understand.47 In
June, Lieutenant Macdonald, who was stationed in Delhi, undertook, at
Thomasons request, to cross-examine Anand about what had happened
on that day but regretted that he was unable to corroborate the story
from the Saadhs themselves and so was unable to speak exclusively on
the subject. Without such a personal inquiry he too felt utterly in-
competent to judge the account of what had happened.48 A year later,
Anands humiliation was complete when the Asiatic Journal revealed
that he had been repeatedly cautioned not to let his warm imagination
delude him into any exaggerated representations of what he may deem
worth observing and communicating.49
A potential embarrassment to the Church Missionary Society, the
first Brahmin convert nevertheless remained a valuable trophyand
valuable in other waysto the missionaries who needed encouraging
stories of native conversion at a time when results were meager. In the
years that followed, Anand had more spectacular tales to report, tell-
ing of his persecution at the hands of Hindus and Moslems, and of his
rhetorical victories over the many natives with whom he spoke about
Christianity. At Meerut, he appears to have been at pains to convince
Fisher that he had turned from his old ways. After delivering a sermon
on the cruel punishments inflicted by Brahmin, Fisher writes: I asked
my little congregation what they thought of all this. They sat silent, with
their eyes cast down, and sighing heavily. At length, Anund turned to
signs taken for wonders 323

Matthew Phiroodeen, and, passing his arms round his neck, exclaimed,
with the most touching expression of affection as well as of gratitude to
God, Ah, my brother! my brother! such devils once were we! but now
(and he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and elevated his whole person),
Jesus! Jesus! my God! my Saviour! It was very affecting.50
No doubt encouraged by such exemplary behaviorthough Fishers
ambiguous use of the word affecting is interestingFisher established
the Saadh village of Henreepore in around 1820 where he installed
Anand and his family in the newly built mission house.51 But soon Anand
was playing for higher stakes. In December 1824, he was given an intro-
duction to Reginald Heber, Bishop of Calcutta. When Fisher asked the
Bishop to ordain his native catechist, Heber was less than impressed:
He is a tall, coarse-looking man, without much intellect in his coun-
tenance.52 Early in 1826, we find Anand operating as a native teacher
in Delhi, under the close supervision of Fishers son, who was Chaplain
there. But soon again he was finding displeasure with the clergy and
was moved to Karnaul, some seventy miles to the north, at the request
of the Joint-Chaplain at Cawpore: In the hope that we may hereafter
see a merciful end answered in the change of his destination.53
Over the next decade, Anand appears to have won back the confi-
dence of the church hierarchy. On June 21, 1836, Hebers successor,
Bishop Wilson, wrote from Simlah that he had the peculiar pleasure
of interviewing Anand on his visit to Meerut and thought him by now
a very superior man; able, powerful, simple in his love of Christ, well
instructed in the Bible, humble. At that meeting, the catechist produced
a letter from the late Bishop Heber, allegedly written in 1824, which
very much affected me. It closes by recommending him, in case of my
death, to any one who may succeed me as Bishop of Calcutta. Wilson
ordained Anand on November 11, an occasion that the Bishop found
most affecting, as he is the first Brahmin who has been ordained in
our Church. He is a fine, noble creature, spiritually minded, well read
in Scripture, full of simplicity and love of Christ, and bold as a lion. He
has as little of the native faults of conceit and mysticism as I ever saw.54
In 1842, with a sizeable residence for his family, perhaps one or two
servants, and a regular salary of eighty rupees a month, Reverend Messeh
was installed as the CMS minister at Meerut.55 But in a matter of months
he was again persona non grata. Serious charges upheld by the CMS
were brought against him, leading to his dismissal. In retrospect, Bishop
Wilson, perhaps not without a little embarrassment, claimed that he
had always harbored misgivings about Anands wife, who remained a
heathen, and her influence was sinister.56 There are hints in Wilsons
report that the convert had reverted to his old Brahmin ways, his latest
324 new literary history

transgression a consequence of the great hazard of presenting native

converts as candidates for holy orders whilst their adult children and
family remain heathens. He also cautioned against the expediency of
allowing native priests to practice medicine, to travel about by themselves
for the purpose of preaching the Gospel, when the expenses of the
journey are afterwards to be arranged for by the Society.57
In 1845, he was once again employed as an officiating priest at Agra,
his reputation once more retrieved, venerable with age, and though
incapable of very active duties . . . an ornament to his sacred character.
All earlier transgressions were again forgiven and it was reported that
hopes for Anands spiritual consistency had now been abundantly real-
ized.58 But in May 1857, as the Great Mutiny took hold and his fellow
missionaries found refuge in the fort at Agra, Anand had other thoughts
in mind. The last report we have is in a dispatch of July 26: You will be
sorry to hear that most of our native Christians have lamentably failed
under the present trial. I have had the painful duty of excluding Para-
manund, one of my preachers, who has assumed the garb of a Byragee,
or a holy Hindoo! And has denied Christ!59 From Agra, he appears
to have made his way to the birthplace of Krishna at Muttra where, as
the Baptist Missionary Herald reported, Paramanands adoption of the
ancient garb did not save him from betrayal, and it is said that he fell
slaughtered by the hand of a cruel Moslem.60
The protocols of mimicry do appear to have been in operation on that
day in the grove near Delhi, though not in ways that Bhabha supposes.
Could it be that the catechist who spoke the evangelical discourse of
his English masters was ultimately the real mimic man of the piece? Had
his repeated expressions of Christian faith been, after all, part of a four
decade campaign of sly civility, his desire for baptism and ordination
outward demonstrations that belied a deeper identity with the religion of
his birth? If so, then his response to the Saadhs in 1817These books
teach the religion of the European Sahibs. It is Their bookbegins
to look less like an expression of belief in white mens religion, and
more like a statement of religious and cultural skepticism. Could it be
that the boy who had been trained from his childhood to tell enigmatic
stories about miraculous and reversible transformationsstories that
were destined to reappear in the pages of the Missionary Registerhad
all along been mimicking a centuries-old practice that he had inherited
from his Brahmin masters?
The last we hear of Paramanand was written by the missionary Michael
Wilkinson, who paid his last respects in the following terms: His mild
and peaceful character won for him more than common respect. Among
the Sikhs in particular, he was really venerated. May his end be peace!61
The subaltern can be a haunting figure, returning to speak new stories
signs taken for wonders 325

when least expected and, as the story of the Bible, the pilgrims, and
the catechist shows, the experiences of the past can be infinitely more
complex than they at first appear.
In the end, do the lives of Indian peasants in 1817 really matter? I think
they do. Should history concern itself with what outcasts actually thought
about the Bible two centuries ago? I think it should. The question asked
by Anand Messeh, who are all these people?a question borne of a
desire to understand othersis always worth asking. The anecdote taken
from history is not simply, or even, a tale about poor Hindus who use
sly civility as a means of cultural resistance, nor about the tendency of
native Christians to speak for their European masters. In a world where
Brahmin reincarnate themselves as Christians, Indians live in fear of
one another, and signs are taken for wonders, the details of history can
be inconvenient. The violent death of Paramanand, the Christian who
became a devotee, stands not only as a challenge to stock assumptions
about the complicity of natives within colonial authority, but also as a
reminder of howin speaking theoretical abstractions like hybridity,
sly civility, and mimicrywe should be careful not to write history
out of the subject, or the subject out of history.

University of Edinburgh
NOTES

I am grateful to those colleagues with whom I discussed this essay, and in particular to
Georgia Axiotou, Peter Cudmore, John Frow, Gladson Jathanna, Michelle Keown, Daniel
OConnor, Anca-Raluca Radu, Kirsten Sandrock, Barbara Schaff, and Peter van der Weel.
I owe particular debts of gratitude to Rosinka Chaudhuri and Abhijit Gupta for having
shared findings from their own parallel studies of the topic.
1 Homi K. Bhabha, Signs Taken for Wonders: Ambivalence and Authority Under a Tree
Outside Delhi, May 1817, Critical Inquiry 12, no. 1 (1985): 14465. All of the following
quotations are taken from the version which appears in The Location of Culture (Abingdon:
Routledge, 2010), 14574 (hereafter cited in text).
2 Carolyn Porter, Are We Being Historical Yet?, South Atlantic Quarterly 87, no. 4 (1988):
799.
3 Anund is the principal spelling used by missionaries in the early nineteenth century
as opposed to the standard Indian spelling of Anand. Both spellings are used in this essay.
4 Hurdwar is the form used by missionaries in the early nineteenth century as opposed
to the standard Indian spelling of Hardwar. Both spellings will be used in this essay in
their respective contexts.
5 Bhabha, Location of Culture, 14648. Bhabha transcribes the account from The Mission-
ary Register, January 1818, 1819.
6 Chamberlain could not have distributed copies of the scriptures in Braj bhasha at
Hurdwar, as Bhabha speculates (166). It was not until he was there, in April 1814, that
he received a parcel from Serampore containing the first proof sheets of his Braj bhasha
translation of the New Testament. William Yates, Memoirs of Mr John Chamberlain (Lon-
326 new literary history

don: Wightman and Cramp, 1826), 347. A despatch from Calcutta on August 21, 1817,
claimed that the Delhi pilgrims were found with but 2 or 3 printed copies of the New
Testament, in the Hindoostanee language. On one of them was found the name of Mr.
Chamberlain. It was therefore discovered, that Mr C. was the angel. He had given away a
few copies, at the Hurdwar fair. American Baptist Magazine (March 1818), 298. It is likely
that these were copies of The New Testament of Our Lord and Saviour J. C.; translated into the
Hindustanee (Hindi) Language by the Missionaries at Serampore, first published at the Ser-
ampore Mission Press in 1811; revised by Henry Martyn with the assistance of Mirza Fitrat
and other learned natives for printing at the Serampore Press in 1814. See J. T. Zenker,
Bibliotheca orientalis (Leipzig: Engelmann, 1861), 42930. A variety of other Serampore
texts appear to have been distributed by John Chamberlain at the Hurdwar Fair. In 1818,
the pilgrims in question were discovered to have in their possession eleven copies of the
Gospel of St. Matthew and one Gospel of St. Mark (Missionary Register, May 1818, 205),
though these may have been acquired by other means. Another missionary reported that
two Brahmins had received at Hardwar free copies of the Gospel of St. Luke in Hindi,
and The Gospel Messenger, a tract containing Bengali verse by Ramram Basu, compiled by
Chamberlain and also printed at Serampore. See Thomas Smith, The History and Origin
of the Missionary Societies (London: Kelly and Evans, 1824), 523; John Murdoch, English
Translations of Selected Tracts Published in India (Madras: Scottish Press, 1861), ixx.
7 John Clark Marshman, The Life and Times of Carey, Marshman, and Ward (London:
Longman, 1859), 1:12022.
8 Yates, Memoirs of Mr. John Chamberlain, 350.
9 At the time of his ministry at Hardwar, the missionary was operating under the patron-
age and protection of Begum Samru, the Kashmiri ruler of the principality of Sirdhana.
After Chamberlains dismissal, she ordered her own soldiers to provide him with armed
protection and made several unsuccessful appeals to the colonial government to allow
Chamberlain to remain in Sirdhana. See William Carey, Oriental Christian Biography (Cal-
cutta: Baptist Mission Press, 1850), 2:228. See also Baptist Missionary Magazine, March 1818,
298; Lucius Edwin Smith, Heroes and Martyrs of the Modern Missionary Enterprise (Providence,
RI: Potter, 1856), 98.
10 Saurabh Dube, Travelling Light: Missionary Musings, Colonial Cultures and Anthro-
pological Anxieties, in Travel Worlds: Journeys in Contemporary Cultural Politics, ed. Raminder
Kaur and John Hutnyk (London: Zed, 1999), 36. Bart Moore-Gilbert also observes that
Bhabhas unitary conception of the colonial subject . . . does not do justice to historical
realities. Writing India, 17571900: The Literature of British India (Manchester: Manchester
Univ. Press, 1995), 202. For my own revisionist reading of the monologic view of empire,
see Bill Bell, Commentary: Selkirks Silence, Times Literary Supplement, March 18, 2011,
1415.
11 Martin Ballard, The Age of Progress 18481866 (London: Methuen, 1971), 47. See also
Penelope Carson, An Imperial Dilemma: The Propagation of Christianity in Early Colonial
India, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 18, no. 2 (1990), 16990; John L.
Comaroff, Images of Empire, Contests of Conscience: Models of Colonial Domination
in South Africa, in Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, ed. Frederick
Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1997),
16397; Karen Chancey, The Star in the East: The Controversy over Christian Missions
to India, 18051813, The Historian 60, no. 3 (1998): 50722.
12 Gauri Viswanathan, The Beginnings of English Literary Studies in British India, in
The Post-colonial Studies Reader, ed. B. Ashcroft, G. Griffiths, and H. Tiffin, 2nd ed. (Oxford:
Routledge, 2006), 376.
13 George Robert Gleig, Life of Major-General Sir Thomas Munro (London: Colburn and
Bentley, 1830), 2:118. Among the dangerous effects that Munro and others laid at the
door of missionary interference was the Sepoy Uprising of 1806. Decades later, many
signs taken for wonders 327

would lay similar blame on Christian missionaries for the racial tensions that had sparked
the Mutiny of 1857. In the years to come, disputes between British Christians and official
government policy continued to be bitter. As one exasperated commentator remarked
in the Calcutta Review for 1862: Why are the sacred books of the Hindus and the Koran
. . . read in Government colleges, and the Bible . . . excluded? Why is a Director of Public
Instruction suffered to remove from English class-books every allusion, however remote, to
Christianity, whilst the Bengalee text-books, selected by the Government for the examination
of those who wish to pass in the vernacular, remain ineffably obscene and filthy? (217).
14 Charles Williams, The Missionary Gazetteer (London: Westley and Davis, 1828), 19.
15 George Smith, The Life of William Carey: Shoemaker and Missionary (London: John Mur-
ray, 1885), 456.
16 S. P. Carey, William Carey, 6th ed. (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1925), 283.
17 Shivanath, Modern Dogri Literature, Modern Indian Literature: An Anthology, ed. K.
M. George (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1992), 1:96.
18 Swapan Majumdar, Literature and Literary Life in Old Calcutta, in Calcutta, the
Living City, ed. Sukanta Chaudhuri (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1990), 1:1079.
19 Smith, Life of Carey, 477.
20 Smith, Life of Carey, 448.
21 Missionary Register, May 1818, 2045.
22 F. E. Keay, Kabir and His Followers (New Delhi: Aravali, 1997), 164.
23 Mohamed Taher, Encyclopedic Survey of Islamic Culture (New Delhi: Anmol Publications,
1998), 10:22425.
24 Asiatic Journal and Monthly Miscellany, July 1819, 74.
25 Rosinka Chaudhuri, in her perceptive critique of Bhabhas essay, approaches the
problem from the perspective of another class of Indian reader, namely those middle-class
intellectuals who argued for the wider availability of European education in accordance
with their own social ambitions. Gentlemen Poets in Colonial Bengal: Emergent Nationalism and
the Orientalist Project (Calcutta: Seagull, 2002), 1017.
26 David Jefferess, Postcolonial Resistance: Culture, Liberation and Transformation (Toronto:
Univ. of Toronto Press, 2008), 4041.
27 Missionary Register, May 1818, 206. This last statement may be based on Brahminical
anti-Christian propaganda, in which the Eucharist was rumored to include the consump-
tion of beef and pigs blood. For a detailed discussion of the controversy, see Duncan
B. Forrester, Commensalism and Christian Mission: The Indian Case, in Forrester on
Christian Ethics and Practical Theology: Collected Writings on Christianity, India, and the Social
Order (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), 12534.
28 Missionary Chronicle, vol. 6 (1838), 72.
29 As well as the introduction of ellipses, Bhabhas transcription of the episode also
includes no fewer than six variants, mostly orthographic, from the original account in
the Missionary Register (all of which are reproduced in the quote with which this article
begins).
30 John Evans, A Sketch of the Denominations of the Christian World (Amherst: Adams, 1832),
22830.
31 Their conversation betrayed continually how much they were under the dominion
of the fear of man, though but poor and unknown villagers. What will all our brethren
say! What will the neighbours think! was the ready reply to all [Anunds] arguments. A
sort of compromise was suggested by them. Go you, said they to Anund, and preach
the Messiah God to all the neighbouring villagers, and find out what they all think, and
come back and tell us: and, in the mean time, we will take bread and water, and remem-
ber Christ; and as we have no Padre, we will sprinkle our brows, and vow to believe in
Jesus!Missionary Register, May 1818, 2056. Water communion had been a practice used
328 new literary history

throughout the history of Christianity, particularly in the absence of an officiating priest

and in cultural groups, such the Saadhs, where alcohol was prohibited. It is still practiced
in Europe by Unitarians, Methodists, and Latter-Day Saints. See Hans Leitzmann, Mass and
Lords Supper: A Study in the History of the Liturgy (Leiden: Brill, 1979), 2023. David Jysingh
described the Saadhs eventual Eucharistic practice to Fisher: In the evening, the bread
is placed upon a small elevation, and after a short extempore prayer, divided among the
guests. A vessel, containing sherbet, called The Cup of Fellowship, is also passed round.
Christian Herald and Seamans Magazine, vol. 6 (1819), 217.
32 Proceedings of the Church Missionary Society for Africa and the East 18191820 (London: R.
Watts, 1820), 14445; James Hough, The History of Christianity in India (London: Church
Missionary House, 1860), 5:31517.
33 This is indeed a Heathen sect, but its members so surpass some Christians in the
mildness of their tempers and the purity of their lives, that a place could not be refused
it in this work. John Evans, A Sketch of the Denominations of the Christian World (Amherst,
MA: J.S. & C. Adams, 1832), 230.
34 Vanessa Smith, Literary Culture and the Pacific: Nineteenth-Century Textual Encounters
(Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1998), 95.
35 Jefferess, Postcolonial Resistance, 43.
36 See A. Whitney Sanford, Singing Krishna: Sound Becomes Sight in Paramanands Poetry
(Albany: SUNY Press, 2008)
37 Paramanands memoirs are reproduced in Michael Wilkinson, Memorials of an Indian
Missionary (London: Wertheim, Macintosh and Hunt, 1857), 187.
38 Wilkinson, Memorials, 18889.
39 Wilkinson, Memorials, 191.
40 Yates, Memoirs of Mr John Chamberlain, 345.
41 Wilkinson, Memorials, 19192.
42 Yates, Memoirs of Mr John Chamberlain, 353. Chamberlains fear presumably had to
do with the fact that British missionaries were becoming increasingly cautious about the
investiture of native converts to the church. A century earlier Jesuit missionaries had be-
come notorious for the mass baptism of nonbelievers in an attempt to demonstrate their
success in India and elsewhere. In 1833, an open letter to the Calcutta Review, signed by a
number of the leading members of mission societies, urged caution against the baptism
of individuals for love of gain or notoreity. Calcutta Review, July 1833, 330. The Wesleyan
Missionary Notices returned to the topic in 1860: When the British took possession of
Ceylon, there were 500,000 baptised natives, members of the Dutch church. They had
been won over to a nominal profession of Christianity by worldly hopes or worldly fears.
None but baptized natives were eligible to places in the public service, and when a man
apostatized from Christianity it cost him something more than his place. Wesleyan Mis-
sionary Notices, May 25, 1860, 107.
43 Wilkinson, Memorials, 193.
44 Missionary Register, January 1818, 11.
45 Rev. James Hough, The History of Christianity in India (London: Church Missionary
House, 1845), 4:47445.
46 Missionary Register, January 1818, 18.
47 Missionary Register, January, 1818, 20.
48 In May 1818 the editor of the Missionary Register told its readers: It will be seen
in our former article on this subject, that Mr. Thomason suggested a caution, with
respect to giving credit to that intelligence, in its full extent, till the details were better
known. In a Letter, which accompanied the present communication, he adverts to this
caution; and observes, that, . . . [this] differs in some points from the other. Missionary
Register, May 1818, 206.
signs taken for wonders 329

49 Asiatic Journal, July 1819, 75.

50 C. M. S. Report 21, 181. Missionary Register, November 1821, 472.
51 Hough, The History of Christianity in India, 5:31517.
52 Reginald Heber, Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India (Philadelphia:
Carey, 1828), 1:441.
53 Missionary Register, February 1828, 100.
54 Daniel Wilson, Bishop Wilsons Journal Letters (London: Nisbet, 1863), 182, 199.
55 Raj Bahadur Sharma, Christian Missions in North India, 18131913 (Delhi: Mittal, 1988)
8788.
56 Josiah Bateman, Life of Daniel Wilson (Boston: Gould and Lincoln, 1860), 491.
57 The reference to medicine probably refers to an opium addiction that came to light
many years later when, informed a Royal Commission that Paramanund . . . had been
for years, while yet a Hindu devotee, in the habit of eating opium. Every possible effort
was made to cure him of the habit, but all was in vain. I have often seen him walking
along by my side with his eyes closed, and it was with the greatest difficulty I could keep
him awake while teaching me the language. He himself often said that he deeply felt the
disgrace of his position, but he could not possibly live without his daily dose of opium.
Evidence given by Thomas Evans at Calcutta on 23 November 1893: The First Report of the
Royal Commission on Opium (London: HMSO, 1894), 2:46
58 James Hough, The History of Christianity in India, 4:475.
59 Letter from Thomas Evans, 26 July 1857. Missionary Herald, 1857, 725.
60 Missionary Herald, 1857, 72. See also Evans, A Welshman in India, 252.
61 Wilkinson, Memorials, 202.