The Double Face of Christian Mission and Education in India From Dalit and

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The Double Face of Christian
Mission and Education in India
from Dalit and Decolonial
Perspectives
Shakespeare Sigamoney
Shakespeare Sigamoney is a PhD candidate in mission studies at Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea.
Abstract
Missionaries from Europe came to India starting in the 15th century to preach the gospel.
Their mission works have both intended and unintended consequences that affect people
even today. Missionaries brought modern education to India and gave Western education to
Dalits, leading to the social uplifting of Dalits, who were denied education by the oppressive
caste system. Some missionaries also spoke against the social evils during their time. On the
other hand, some missionaries’ work at times highlighted the Brahmanic religion as a pan-
India religion which placed popular religions in a disadvantaged position. Furthermore, their
work also helped the British colonial government to maintain control and become powerful.
The translation work of the missionaries and the educational institutions helped the colonial
government to strengthen its control over the local population. This article discusses the
mission work of Robert de Nobili, Bartholomew Ziegenbalg, and William Carey and
evaluates their mission works from Dalit and decolonial perspectives.
Keywords
religion, Dalits, caste system, mission approach, popular religion, mission and decolonialism
Christian missionaries like Robert de Nobili from the Italian Jesuit mission came to
Tamil Nadu in the early 16th century. A century later, Bartholomew Ziegenbalg, a
Lutheran missionary from Germany, arrived in Tamil Nadu for mission work. At the
end of the 17th century, William Carey, a Baptist missionary from Northamptonshire,
came to Bengal from Europe and did mission work among different people in India.
DOI: 10.1111/irom.12308
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Shakespeare Sigamoney Double Face
Though their mission work promoted Christianity in many ways, their work also had
many unintended negative consequences. For example, some missionaries’ works con-
tributed to the popularizing and strengthening of dominant religious ideologies, while
their study of local language and culture helped the colonial government to command
and control the local population and to remain in power. This paper critically engages
with mission works of the abovementioned missionaries and their educational engage-
ments. This article argues from Dalit and decolonial perspectives so that oppressive
social systems are not affirmed through the mission works done by missionaries.
Based on Dalit and decolonial perspectives, this article critically examines the mission
works of Robert de Nobili from the Jesuit mission, William Carey from the Baptist
mission, and Bartholomew Ziegenbalg from the Lutheran mission. De Nobili came
to South India and opted to work with the caste people, especially the Brahmins, as
during his time mission work in Madurai was only among the oppressed communities.
Bartholomew Ziegenbalg from the Halle mission came to Tranquebar in South India
and engaged in education and mission with people of all social groups. William Carey,
also known as the father of the modern mission movement, is acknowledged by many
people in India for his literary and social works, in which he attempted to transform
Indian society.
It is a paradox to notice that the very mission works that have spread the teaching of the
gospel, have stood against social evils, and have empowered the oppressed communities
in India also facilitated the revival of dominant religious practices and helped the British
colonial government to control and rule the natives.
Robert de Nobili: Jesuit Missionary to South India
Robert de Nobili was born in Rome in September 1577 into the privileges of a noble
family. He travelled to India in 1605 and in Tamil was called Tatua Podagar Swami, mean-
ing teacher of truth.1 De Nobili wanted to try the top-down approach in his mission
work, thinking that all communities were under the power of Brahmins. He adopted the
local way of dressing, as his counterpart Matteo Ricci, who was also from Italy, did:
Ricci dressed like the Buddhists he met2 and entered the local culture. In a similar way,
de Nobili entered the local culture dressed like a sanyasi, which also kept him away from
the oppressed communities.
1 Julius Richter, A History of Mission in India (New York: Fleming Hrevel, 1908), 59.
2 John Patrick Donnelly, ed., Jesuit Writings of the Early Modern Period, 1540–1640 (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 2006),
88–89.
© 2020 World Council of Churches 41

International Review of Mission Volume 109 • Number 1 • May 2020
While de Nobili can be praised for his inculturation, at the same time he can be criti-
cized for it, since his mission was maintaining the status quo of the caste system even
though he preached the gospel. He did not want to hurt the religious sensibilities of the
Brahmins and was not interested in the violence and suffering the caste system had
brought on the society. If the gospel maintains the status quo and affirms the oppres-
sive way of life, going along with the powerful and the oppressors, it cannot be trans-
formative for all. The question is this: What made de Nobili follow the Brahmanical way
of life and not that of the Dalits? One can conclude that since he came from a noble
family,3 he must have been familiar with social classification. Being from such a back-
ground might have made de Nobili comfortable with the ways of the elite, and not
comfortable with the common folks. He was very much in favour of the kudumi (long
hair), the sacred thread, and sandal paste, and he argued strongly that there was nothing
wrong with following this way of life, since these are social and not religious symbols.
However, they are not merely social symbols: they are also symbols of divisions,
oppression, and social hierarchy.
De Nobili was convinced that the caste system is a social system; he failed to see it as
evil, as he argued strongly and passionately for the caste myth.4 I am sure he had read
the manuscript on the caste system, which was very violent and suppressive, but he
refers to it as a civil life system.5 Probably because of his belonging to a noble family, he
viewed the caste system as something similar to the class system in his home country.
By acknowledging the caste system, he went against the values of the gospel.
De Nobili defends the privilege given to Brahmins by the law of Manu, where a Brahmin
cannot be punished, and says this is similar to the Roman law stating that a Roman citi-
zen cannot be crucified.6 Wanting to make the gospel appear “native,” de Nobili “sim-
plified his dress, diet, and lifestyle and sought to follow the ascetic lifestyle of a Hindu
renunciant.”7 He became a sanyasi and stopped consuming meat, eggs, and wine, eating
just once a day.8 He transformed himself completely. He stopped contact with so-called
outcaste people and considered himself a Brahman. He followed the Brahmanic purity
3 Robert de’ Nobili, The Irish Monthly 9:102 (1881): 643–62. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20496667.
4 Roberto de Nobili, S.J., Preaching Wisdom to the Wise: Three Treatises by Roberto de Nobili, S.J., Missionary and Scholar in
17th Century India, trans. Anand Amaladass, S.J., and Francis X. Clooney, S.J. (St. Louis, Mo.: The Institute of Jesuit
Sources, 2000), 134.
5 Xavier Rajamanickam, “The Newly Discovered ‘Informatio’ of Robert de Nobili,” Archivum Historicum Societatis
Iesu 39 (1970): 232.
6 Ibid., 238.
7 De Nobili, Preaching Wisdom to the Wise, 4.
8 Rajamanickam, “The Newly Discovered ‘Informatio’ of Robert de Nobili,” 221.

and pollution system, as he ate only food cooked by Brahmins.9 In other words, he fol-
lowed untouchability and discrimination against Dalits.
De Nobili experienced complete transference in the process of preaching the gospel to
the Brahmins: it blinded him to the oppression and slavery found in the social system.
When questioned by church authorities, he defended that his knowledge and his incul-
turation were right. His argument, attested to by 108 Brahmin scholars10 who were not
Christians, shows that he had gone to the extreme in Brahmin society: the number 108
is considered complete in the Brahmanical tradition, and de Nobili had completely
immersed himself into the system.
While the previous Jesuit missionaries had successfully worked with oppressed groups,
de Nobili wanted to preach the gospel to the Brahmins. He was convinced that Brahmins
are learned people, saying, “the order of Brahmins, being what it is and given the specific
function it fulfills, indeed constitutes the order of the ‘learned.’”11
What he failed to see was that in South India, the four-caste system did not exist till
today. There were priests who were Brahmins, but no Kshatriyas or Vysyas. Most of
the South Indian people, especially in Tamil Nadu, were listed as Sudras or outcastes.
Through his own writings and those of other missionaries like him, the idea of the
Brahmanic way of life was communicated to the Western world as representing India.
When de Nobili wrote to defend his inculturation as right, he was propagating the life-
style of Brahmins to the Western world. The result was a new idea of people in India
having a common belief system or religious system that was represented to Europe.
Missionaries’ preference of written texts over oral traditions brought them close to
Brahmins; in this way, de Nobili’s works popularized the Brahmanic religion.
It is true that one can see de Nobili’s mission work through the indigenizing principle,
where the gospel is at home with the culture. But as Andrew F. Walls has said, the “sec-
ond principle,” that is, the pilgrim principle, will put Christians out of society, “for that
society never existed, in East or West, ancient or modern, which could absorb the word
of Christ painlessly into its system.”12 As Walls says, the gospel can be a liberator of
culture, but at the same time it can become a prisoner of culture. In the case of de
9 Judy Wakabayashi and Rita Kothari, eds., Decentering Translation Studies Indian and Beyond (Amsterdam: John
Benjamin, 2009), 22.
10 Ibid., 225.
11 De Nobili, Preaching Wisdom to the Wise, 64.
12 Andrew F. Walls, The Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in Transmission of Faith (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis
Books, 2001), 8.

Nobili, the pilgrim principle was lost over the indigenizing principle without maintain-
ing the creative tension.
Geoffrey Oddie, who wrote on Hinduism, explains how the writings of de Nobili and
other missionaries contributed to the knowledge of a Brahmanic religion; the religions
of the masses were not considered religions because of missionaries’ preoccupation
with texts. Oddie summarizes Ines G. Zupanov’s work on Jesuit development of a
Brahmanic model pointing to five characteristics: selecting Brahmans as the key group
to understand Indian society; privileging written text and considering textual knowledge
as true knowledge; using Sanskrit and Brahmanical religious words and terminologies
while describing Indian religious phenomena; not considering popular religion as reli-
gion; and the assumption that the Brahmanical model is the standard for the behaviour
of the common people.13 The written text was used only by a small group of people
educated in Sanskrit, but the missionaries’ translation made it appear as if it represented
the religious language of all of India. Since popular religions were not recognized, the
Brahmanical religion became an umbrella religion representing India.
Contrary to de Nobili, Francis Xavier – also a Jesuit missionary, who reached Goa in
1542 – decided to go to Cape Comorin, where the Paravas14 live, where, as he saw it,
“there is reason to hope that many will become Christians.”15 His attitude toward
Brahmins was different from that of de Nobili. Francis Xavier decided to work with the
oppressed community, which was suffering from the evils of the caste system. As the
Brahmins withheld knowledge from the oppressed communities, Xavier called them
“as perverse and wicked a set as can anywhere be found … they are liars and cheats to
the very backbone.”16 He wrote in 1543 about how the Brahmins were creating hin-
drances that prevented him from doing his work: “If it were not for the opposition of
the Brahmins, we should have them all embracing the religion of Jesus Christ.”17 The
Brahmins opposed the missionary work because if all the so-called lower caste people
converted to Christianity, it would affect the status of the Brahmins as a superior race.
Thus we can see that Francis Xavier sided with the oppressed community and stood
against the Brahmins; as a result, through him the southern coastal areas were con-
verted by the thousands.
13
G.A. Oddie, Imagined Hinduism: British Protestant Missionary Constructions of Hinduism, 1793–1900 (New Delhi: Sage,
2006), 54.
14 Paravas is a fishing community in South India made up of people living along the coast.
15 Henry James Coleridge, Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier (London: Burns and Oates, 1872), 120.
16 Ibid., 157–58.
17 Ibid., 159.

Bartholomew Ziegenbalg: Pioneer Missionary of Pietism
Bartholomew Ziegenbalg and Heinrich Plütschau came from Germany. Fredrik IV of

Denmark sent them to the southeast part of India, which was controlled by Danish
forces, as royal missionaries with the responsibility of preaching and converting.18
Ziegenbalg and Plütschau had studied together and were ordained in Copenhagen; they
arrived in Tranquebar, a Danish trade establishment, on 9 July 1706.
The environment from which both men came throws light on why Ziegenbalg did mis-
sion in a particular way. Pietism was at its height in Germany, and Ziegenbalg was its
first missionary. In this movement, disciplined life was preferred over sound doctrine;
similarly, the individual’s experience was given more importance than ecclesiastical
authority, and practice was preferred over theory.19 Pietism was against orthodoxy,
rejected group conversion, and emphasized individual decisions. This shows why
Ziegenbalg did not choose the top-down approach, as de Nobili had done. Because
Pietism was against orthodoxy, Ziegenbalg was against the orthodox Brahminical social
structure and therefore the caste system. But he was not hostile to the Brahmins, as he
saw people as individuals and not as part of a group. Ziegenbalg believed that the salva-
tion of the soul and the salvation of the body cannot be separated.20 Therefore he
preached the gospel and at the same time worked for the social uplifting of all people.
The Pietists in Germany were ministering to destitute and deprived people. They built
institutions such as schools, hospitals, widows’ homes, and orphanages,21 showing great
concern for people at the margins. It is clear that the same pietistic attitude was reflected
in Ziegenbalg’s ministry while he was in India, at a time when education was meant only
for Brahmins and boys. Other groups could not even imagine having an education, as
they faced violent consequences whenever they tried to pursue one. In this social con-
text where oppressed people were denied rights, Ziegenbalg began educational institu-
tions for girls and Dalits. In the Tranquebar mission schools, people were not forced to
convert, and some teachers were not Christians.22
Looking into a few developments that took place in mission during the Pietism move-
ment helps one to understand the environment from which the missionaries came.
18
Brijraj Singh, The First Protestant Missionaries to India: Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg, 1683–1710 (New Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1999), 11.
19 David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2014), 258.
20 Ibid., 259.
21 Ibid., 260.
22 Ibid.

The mission could no longer be considered the duty of the colonial government.
Individuals were to participate actively in the mission: it was not only in the hands of
rulers and church authorities. With such an understanding of mission, Ziegenbalg tran-
scended social structures that had prevented marginalized people from getting involved
in any form of education or other social activities. Christian fellowship had to transcend
national and denominational boundaries.23 The pietistic missionaries, who were regular
people, “went literally to the ends of the earth, devoted themselves for life to people
often living in the most degrading circumstances, identified with them, and lived the
gospel in their midst.”24 These missionaries often chose to live in places where people
were deprived of privileges and opportunities.
Closer to the locals than to fellow Europeans, Ziegenbalg won the hearts of the local
people. Brijraj Singh’s study shows that although Ziegenbalg was a strong critic of the
Hindu religion, Hindus liked him for the following reasons: his knowledge of the Hindu
religion was greater than that of any other Western missionaries; he never looked down
on the Hindus and had high respect for them; and while he was preaching Christianity,
he loved to preserve the Tamil language and culture, and thus the culture grew.25
Ziegenbalg’s relationship with the Danish authorities was very poor; in the end, this led
to his arrest.
Singh argues that although Ziegenbalg made his connections with British power to get
the protection of the Protestant mission, he was not a colonialist.26 Singh suggests that
Ziegenbalg overestimated the social power of the Brahmins because during his time,
“the Brahmins of Tranquebar, whom he considers as repositories, custodians and high-
est practitioners of tenants of Hinduism, were largely a demoralized lot.”27 Also, Singh
argues that the Sudras outranked the Brahmins at times, and therefore the relationships
were fluid and ambiguous, not clear cut.
Ziegenbalg travelled to South India with no knowledge of the local Tamil language and
culture, but soon learned and mastered both. His interest in Tamil language and culture
landed him in trouble with the mission organization back home, as the picture he
presented of Tamil culture contradicted the expectations of the European mission
organization. Out of ignorance of other languages and culture, some such
23
Ibid.
24 Ibid., 260–61.
25 Singh, The First Protestant Missionaries to India, 22–23.
26 Ibid., 163.
27 Ibid., 51.

organizations of that time thought of the South Indian people as “barbarians.” While
the mission organization wanted to justify that the locals were barbarians, the mission-
aries in Tamil Nadu were saying that the local people were more moral and upright than
Christians, which angered the Lutheran mission society back home. Kopf quotes what
one of the officials wrote to Ziegenbalg: “the missionaries were sent back to extermi-
nate heathenism in India not to spread heathen nonsense all over Europe.”28 This
example shows that though the mission organizations sent missionaries with the aim of
subduing the local religion and customs, Ziegenbalg was convinced that the Tamil cul-
ture and way of life were of a much higher moral standard than that of the Christians.
The mission board could not accept this view, as it challenged the orientalist view of
Indian society.
Influenced by Pietism, Ziegenbalg was ready to stand with the oppressed communities
by empowering them. He was against the oppressive orthodoxy and not against the
people; he was able to relate to all people, though he stood for the emancipation of
oppressed groups.
Ziegenbalg dialogued with the Tamil people as equals, and his report of the local people
was different from that of the colonist. He let the colonized articulate their religious
beliefs, experiences, and practices,29 and worked for the well-being of all people. It can
be boldly said that his mission was not a European colonization or destruction of cul-
ture, but has preserved and promoted Tamil culture against the empire. He also stood
against those elements in the culture that denied human dignity.30 In this aspect,
Ziegenbalg was a missionary against the empire, standing with the local people and
respecting their language and culture. He can therefore be a good model for doing mis-
sion in the context of decolonialism.
Ziegenbalg did not work for the welfare of the colonial power, nor did he side with
the powerful people of his time. He did not enforce the European way of life over the
local people. Rather, he lived and died with the Tamil people, redeeming mission from
colonial clutches as he dialogued with local people as equals and thus learned from
them.
28
David Kopf, British Orientalism and the Bengal Renaissance: The Dynamics of Indian Modernization, 1773–1835 (Calcutta:
Firma K.L. Mukhopadhyay, 1969), 52.
29 Daniel Jeyaraj, “The First Lutheran Missionary Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg: His Concepts of Culture and Mission
from a Postcolonial Perspective,” Swedish Missiological Themes 93:3 (2005): 391.
30 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson, “Mission in Spite of Empire: The Story of Bartholomus Ziegenbalg,” Christian Century
(2014). https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2014-08/mission-spite-empire.

William Carey: The Enlightenment Missionary
William Carey, a Baptist missionary from Northamptonshire, England, came to India in

1793.31 It cannot be denied that Carey was a product of the Enlightenment – a time
when individuals who were touched by awakening took the initiative as Christians from
different churches to spread the gospel, not expecting the church to send them.32
Carey became well versed in the local language and was in a position to teach the lan-
guage.33 He also tried to stop the drowning of children, women, and men in the river due
to superstitious belief.34 He also raised his voice against sati, where women whose hus-
bands had died must jump into the funeral fire or be buried alive with the husband.35 The
criminalization of these practices not only saved the vulnerable portion of the society
but also united the locals to stand against the attack on native traditions by foreigners.
People with leprosy were burned or buried alive; Carey set up a hospital for them.36 The
powerful people in society forced the poor to pierce themselves and do violent sacrifices
by the rich.37 Carey fought against all these social evils for the betterment of the society.
In Conjeeveram, a Brahmanized civilian named Place had as early as 1796 induced the
government to undertake the payment of the temple priests and prostitutes, under the
terminology of “churchwardens” and “management of the church funds.” The gov-
ernment had identified itself with the Hindu religion,38 which had never happened in
the history of India, as there was never a centralized government or centralized religion
before. The system of government supporting or giving money to churches and priests
was common in Europe, from where the missionaries came. Christian influence paved
the way for the institutionalization of the Hindu religion, which otherwise would have
remained fluid.
Sugirtharajah blames Carey for remaining silent on the evils caused by colonialism:
In spite of Carey’s lofty social and moral ideals in delivering the innocent victims from cruel religious
practices, Carey had miserably failed from raising his voice against European political and economic
31
Bosch, Transforming Mission, 186.
32 Ibid.
33 George Smith, The Life of William Carey: Shoe Maker and Missionary (Edinburgh: R&R Clark, 1885), 156.
34 Ibid., 207.
35 Ibid., 209.
36 Ibid., 214.
37 Ibid., 213.
38 Ibid., 212–13.

oppression in India. His fight against Hindu social and religious evils had evangelistic and mission-
izing goals. Carey’s unwillingness to speak against the political and economic evils of the colonial
government had missional and monetary aims.39
David J. Bosch says, “William Carey protested against sugar imports from west Indian
plantations cultivated by slaves”;40 this shows that he was also raising his voice against
exploitation by the colonial powers, but it is also the case that he worked closely with the
colonial authorities in his mission work.
Carey studied Indian religion to bring Christianity as an answer,41 but his study later
developed a complete religion of the Indian people when there was no country called
India, since there was no empire that ruled the whole of the Indian subcontinent,
including the British. People did not have anything in common, since every group had
its own language, culture, faiths, and way of life.
Carey’s work helped the colonial project of orientalism because of his association
with Lord Wellesley.42 When the colonial government was in need of workers who
could communicate with it to do their jobs, the Serampore mission education was
well suited for the task, and Carey was happy to be using every possible way to preach
the gospel. He translated the Ramayana, which was widely welcomed by people in
Europe,43 not knowing that later it would dominate and represent Hinduism not as
one tradition among many, but as the tradition of India that was essential for orien-
talists in Europe. It was not only Carey who thought to prove that the Hindu religion
was not perfect. Missionaries such as Alexander Duff and James Bryce worked in a
similar direction.
Duff, who later came to India and started educational institutions, consolidates a com-
plete system of Hindu religion:
It was Alexander Duff who, in India and India Missions, did more than most other Protestant mis-
sionaries to consolidate these very general views about the nature and shape of Hinduism. It was
also Duff who attempted to clarify notions about the essence, or central ideas, of Hinduism (which
he identified as pantheism) and it was he who developed, still further, an intellectualist critique of the
entire system.44
39
R.S. Sugirtharajah, ed., The Postcolonial Bible (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 106–07.
40 Bosch, Transforming Mission, 287.
41 Oddie, Imagined Hinduism, 138.
42 Kopf, British Orientalism and the Bengal Renaissance, 56.
43 Smith, Life of William Carey, 171–72.
44 Oddie, Imagined Hinduism, 184.

Duff tried to develop an intellectual critique of Hinduism before doing the same as
Carey, however. He unconsciously unified a belief system to identify as a religion of
India. The missionaries of the Enlightenment worldview thought there had to be a
complete system that encompassed all the people of India; with this mental back-
ground, they described and thought of Indian society as following one religion, with
slight differences.
Duff ’s relationship with Brahmans made him think in terms of the Brahminical idea of
religion, though Duff ’s focus was to prove that Hinduism is a religion with a flaw.45
Later, these writings gave shape in the Western world and academic field to a complete
religious system called Hinduism centred on Brahmanism. The missionary writings
increased public consciousness of Hindus and Hinduism.46 While there was a plurality
of religions in India, the Western preference for text gave Brahmanic religion the upper
hand compared to the folk traditions. In the long run, this can be seen as a cultural
genocide of the faiths of common people in India, as all religious beliefs were merged
into one. Social reformers like Raja Ram Mohan Roy emerged to save Hinduism. The
reformed Hinduism began to mirror the missionaries vigorously. During the second
half of the 19th century, Westerners were becoming more sympathetic toward Hinduism.
Kopf describes William Carey as the “religious counterpart of the secular Orientalist in
the Company’s service.”47 The translations and knowledge of local culture and lan-
guage produced by missionaries like Carey allowed the colonial government to control
and rule the local people. As Bernard says, “the knowledge of languages was necessary
to issue commands, collect taxes, maintain law and order – and to create other forms of
knowledge about the people they were ruling. This knowledge was to enable the British
to classify, categorize and bound the vast social world that was India so that it could be
controlled.”48
The educational institutions created by the missionaries liberated the oppressed com-
munities to be educated, but it should be acknowledged that the British system of edu-
cation was to produce loyal governing elites,49 and the missionaries were contributing a
great deal to this aspect. Mission work liberated people from traditional oppressive
forces, but tamed the elites to fit into the colonial system.
45
Ibid., 195.
46 Ibid., 203.
47 Kopf, British Orientalism and the Bengal Renaissance, 51.
48 Bernard S. Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1996), 4–5.
49 Ibid., 4.

While the missionaries were studying the local religions, the British portrayed themselves
as protectors of the Indian religion by providing support from the government to main-
tain religious places, schools, and religious establishments, including Catholic institu-
tions.50 When Catholicism was an established religion, by recognizing Hinduism and
Islam in India, religions that were fluid became concrete religions in terms of the British
definition, while the local oral religious traditions were completely neglected and not
given equal recognition. Government funding resulted in the flourishing of one religion
while the unfunded oral traditions were not given importance. The recognition of one
religious tradition among many is the beginning of the destruction of humanity. The
recognized religious system is then popularized through literature. Since the British were
of the idea that religion needs to have texts, like Christians had the Bible, oral traditions
were not considered important. In this way the British promoted the modern concept of
religion through their policies, creating knowledge which gives power over the natives,
who are made to think in a particular way of themselves as the Western masters want.
Bryce, a Scottish missionary, believed that instead of proving that Hinduism is illogical,
it was better to make people believe that Hinduism has a glorious past, “a golden age”
through its own literature, to help the relationship between the conquered and the con-
queror.51 This resulted in the idea that there was glorious past; later, it legitimized the
claim that India was a country with one religion with a glorious past. The result was
hatred toward minorities who did not fit into that one single tradition. This idea served
the purposes of fundamental nationalism. Bryce wanted to preach the gospel to Hindus
in a way they would accept; but first, he said, Hindus needed to accept Brahma as one
God. Then missionaries could say that the Hindu knowledge of one God is the same as
that of the Christian God, which gives the space to say that Jesus Christ is sent by God
to save humanity.52
This idea has the potential for ethnic and religious genocide when communities think
there was a glorious past and they want to re-establish it. Knowledge of the local lan-
guage, culture, and religious belief was essential for the colonial government to control
the masses, and the works of missionaries were a great resource for that government.
Bernard Cohn argues that missionaries’ translation of the Bible into local languages led
to a “major contribution to the empirical study of Indian society.”53 He also argues that
50
Kenneth Ballatchet, Caste, Class and Catholicism in India, 1789–1914 (Richmond: Curzon Press, 1998), 15–22.
51 James Bryce, A Sketch of Native Education in India (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1839), 121–24.
52 Ibid., 94–95.
53 Bernard S. Cohn, “Notes on the History of the Study of Indian Society and Culture,” in Structure and Change in
Indian Society, ed. Milton Singer and Bernard Cohn (New York: Viking, 1968), 9.

the missionary writings, along with other literary works that followed, defined an epis-
temological space, created a discourse (orientalism), and converted Indian forms of
knowledge into European objects.54
Dalits and Decolonial Perspectives
Dalit theology was born in the context of the oppressive caste system. The indigenous
theology in India was called Indian Christian theology, where the frame of reference
was dominant caste ideologies. Later, Dalit theology came to assert that Dalits are sub-
jects of their history. They are outside the caste system, and so Indian Christian theol-
ogy was far from their reality and belief system. Though Dalit theology is a liberation
theology like Black theology, Minjung theology, and Latin American liberation theol-
ogy, it is unique because the society is stratified into castes sanctioned by religion, and
there can be no social mobility.
In Dalit theology, Christ is seen as a Dalit – an outcaste marginalized by society. God
therefore identifies with the suffering of the Dalits, who are oppressed by the caste
system. When A.P. Nirmal first wrote on Dalit theology, pain and pathos were central
for him. These were a “starting point for Dalit theology that leads to the praxis of lib-
eration.”55 God was not only seen as God who suffers with the dehumanized commu-
nity, but also as God who liberates. The suffering of the cross played an important role
in identifying God with the suffering community. Dalit theology took energy from lib-
eration theology in Latin America. Dalits are marginalized and excluded by the caste
system, therefore Dalit theology is inclusive. Though it stands against the oppressive
system, it does not advocate reverse discrimination or exclusivity. Dalit theology stands
against oppressive social and religious systems that deny human dignity. Dalit theology
reminds us that religion can oppressively affirm the dominant ideology, and that
redemption of the religion itself is necessary. Dalit theology has a prophetic role that
resists oppressive religious systems.
Evaluation of Missionaries from a Dalit Perspective
Robert de Nobili endorsed the oppressive caste system, supporting the high-caste
people, and tried the top-down approach. William Carey stood against social evils and
educated the local people, but his translation works and education served the British
colonial interest of controlling and governing. Bartholomew Ziegenbalg stood against
the Brahmanic religion and caste system but was inclusive in his mission work. He was
54
Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge, 21.
55 Arvind P. Nirmal, Towards a Dalit Theology: Heuristic Explorations (Madras: CLS, 1991), 141.

also against colonial power and wrote of the high standard of the Tamil culture to the
European mission board, which was against the orientalist current of his time.
On one hand, the missionaries worked for the liberation of the oppressed communities
in India. On the other hand, missionaries’ work on Hinduism helped the Indians and
people outside India to imagine a unified religion called Hinduism. This has resulted in
the rise of one Hindu religion, where different religions with oral traditions have lost
their respective places. The rise of Hindu nationalism and fundamentalism has its roots
in Western mission education in India. Missionaries brought freedom from slavery and
also homogenized people of India as Hindus. This definition and homogenization later
are used by the colonized people to stand against the empire and become the same and
suppress minority religious beliefs.
The mission works have allowed the caste system to enter the church. Religion is there
to protect and bring liberation to the oppressed, but in India, religion itself was changed
into an instrument of oppression: “… within the Christian fold, the association b etween
caste and patriarchy is established by the fact that it is the caste churches which are
opposed to the ordination of women.”56 Therefore, religions themselves need libera-
tion from the clutches of the caste system. Only then can religion be a resource of sal-
vation and liberation.
Robert de Nobili affirmed the oppressive caste system, and we can see that even today,
Christians are divided into Dalit churches and Caste churches in Tamil Nadu, especially
in Madurai, where de Nobili worked. It is not hard to find two churches within a short
distance for different caste groups. Ziegenbalg, as a pietistic missionary, took a stand
against oppression of weak communities and empowered them through education. At
the same time, he did not hate the upper-caste people and was open to them.
William Carey’s education mission was done with the aim of preaching the gospel, but
also helped the colonial government to control and rule the local people with command
over the language. The urge to educate upper-caste people resulted in producing good
workers for the colonial government and strengthening the caste system. James Massey
rightly mentions that K.M. Banerjea, who is seen as a great Indian Christian theologian
– a convert from the so-called dominant caste – tries to establish a historical relation-
ship between the Bible and the Vedas. Banerjea’s theological articulation has a direction
to many other Indian Christian theologians. He articulates that Indian Christians like
him are descendants of the authors of the Vedas.57
56
V. Devasahayam, Doing Dalit Theology in Biblical Key (Gurukul: ISPCK, 1997), 30.
57 James Massey, Dalit Theology (New Delhi: Manohar, 2014), 103–04.

The missionaries’ pointing out of the evil in Hinduism and the human rights abuses in
the first half of the 19th century gave rise to Hindus reforming the religion.58 This
united the local people; by the end of the 19th century, the tables had turned. Hindu
missionaries, Hindu tract organizations, and Western-educated men with European
rationalism were becoming violent and anti-Christian.59
Vasudha Dalmia has argued that Christian missionaries played a role in modern India’s
idea of religion: missionaries discussing with Indians by talking and printing challenged
Indian concepts of religion, trying to prove the superiority of Christian religion. With
the missionaries initiating the debate, the Indians had to defend their religious views by
responding to the missionaries.60
The missionaries’ work of creating an idea of an all-Indian religion was not only an
instrument in contributing to a dominant religion, but also it oppressed the Dalits in the
long run. European rationalism not only made people anti-Christian, but silenced Dalit
traditions. The missionaries intended to preach the gospel, but the method they used
had unintended consequences, such as strengthening and affirming oppressive systems.
Missionaries, Dalits, and Decoloniality
Quijano argues that the colonial matrix of power produced discrimination and was
codified as racial, ethnic, anthropological, or national according to specific socio-
historical and geographic contexts.61
What some missionaries have reinforced has continued until now to dictate the lives
of the masses, including the oppressor and the oppressed. This was not their history.
History has been reinforced on the Dalits. Religion that they should have used to d efend
themselves was completely destroyed by the system formed by missionaries like William
Carey. But other elements, with missionaries like Ziegenbalg, who engaged with the
difference, have the potential to be used as a decolonial voice in the context of Dalit
struggle.
The theory of decoloniality started in Latin America; it has now become popular and
has been used in other fields. In fact, for all who struggle with the voices of colonialism,
the aspect of coloniality functions in two elements: decoloniality and coloniality. William
58
Oddie, Imagined Hinduism, 296.
59 Ibid., 300.
60 Vasudha Dalmia, The Nationalization of the Hindu Tradition: Bharatendu Harischandra and Nineteenth-Century Benares
(New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), 351–88.
61 Aníbal Quijano, “Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality,” Cultural Studies 21:2 (2007), 168.

Carey and Robert de Nobili perceived India, and especially the idea of religion in India,
in a particular way. Through these colonial lenses that they formed, people continue to
think in a particular way. While the missionaries are dead and gone, the oppression they
left behind through ideologically defining people is still embedded in Indian society and
in the wider world when it comes to how people imagine India. Hence there is a need
for decoloniality, which resists and unmasks histories of oppression and how ideologies
have been formed over time by rulers and colonial powers. Every Dalit community has
its own history. The voices of the colonial power dehistoricized it, but we can rehistori-
cize Dalit history through the lens of decolonization.
Conclusion
Mission works can be pragmatic so that in the future, mission does not affirm oppres-
sive social systems or help the colonial powers to control and dominate the locals. The
indigenizing model of de Nobili, which used the dominant culture as its core principle,
exposed the marginalized community to severe oppression and discrimination.
The educational institutions started by missionaries continue to liberate oppressed com-
munities and have transformed societies for the better. India is a good example, where
mission education institutions continue to liberate the Dalits. Mission work in India has
also raised its voice against the empire by standing with the oppressed and respecting
the marginalized community’s language and culture. Missionaries like Ziegenbalg have
treated locals as partners, which resulted in mutual learning. The decolonial voice of
missionaries encourages us to do mission in the future.
Preferring written texts to oral traditions can result in the loss of valuable oral reli-
gious traditions that have been handed on from generation to generation. Mission work
and missionary education empowered the oppressed Dalits, but at the same time gave
importance to one dominant religious tradition as “Indian religion.” In the process, pop-
ular oral traditions were neglected. The literature work of missionaries like Carey and de
Nobili popularized the dominant religious system outside India, providing r esources for
Western orientalism. Ziegenbalg, however, suffered at the hands of the colonial powers
by standing with the socially oppressed and working for their emancipation. Ziegenbalg
is a model for mission with a decolonial voice, as he had no colonial interest, nor did he
side with the socially powerful people. He showed that mission can be emancipatory,
even in the face of colonial powers.

The Double Face of Christian Mission and Education in India From Dalit and

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17586631, 2020, 1, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/irom.12308 by <Shibboleth>-member@kuleuven.be, Wiley Online Library on [15/01/2023].

Robert de Nobili: Jesuit Missionary to South India

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42 © 2020 World Council of Churches

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Bartholomew Ziegenbalg: Pioneer Missionary of Pietism

Bartholomew Ziegenbalg and Heinrich Plütschau came from Germany. Fredrik IV of

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46 © 2020 World Council of Churches

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William Carey: The Enlightenment Missionary

William Carey, a Baptist missionary from Northamptonshire, England, came to India in

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50 © 2020 World Council of Churches

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Dalits and Decolonial Perspectives

Evaluation of Missionaries from a Dalit Perspective

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© 2020 World Council of Churches 53

Missionaries, Dalits, and Decoloniality

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© 2020 World Council of Churches 55

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