Imperial Fault Lines: Christianity and Colonial Power in India, 1818-1940

by Jeffrey Cox

Overview

Imperial Fault Lines tells the history of Christian missionary encounters with non-Christians in a part of the world where there were no Christians at all until the advent of British imperial rule in the early nineteenth century. As British and American missionaries spread out from Delhi into the heartland of Punjab, their preconceived ideas about Hinduism and Islam broke down rapidly as they established institutions requiring the close cooperation of Indians. Two-thirds of the foreign missionaries who entered the Punjab were women, and issues of gender as well as race were central dilemmas in a cultural encounter that featured numerous irresolvable conflicts. The missionaries' commitment to Christian universalism clashed with the visible realities of their imperial privileges. Although determined to build multiracial institutions based on spiritual equality, missionaries were the beneficiaries of an imperial racial hierarchy. Their social encounters with Indians were exceedingly complex, involving intimacy and affection as well as affronts and betrayals.

Missionaries were compelled to react to circumstances not of their own making, and were forced to negotiate and compromise with Indian Christians, government officials, Indian critics of the missionary movement, and the many non-Christian students, patients, and staff at large and influential missionary schools, colleges, and hospitals. In villages, university-educated clergymen who had hoped to convert the Hindu and Muslim elite found themselves in the surprising position of advocating the rights of stigmatized and oppressed rural laborers. The history of elite institution-building took surprising turns during the rise of the national movement, as missionaries struggled with the conflict between their own transparent entanglement with imperialism and their attempts to foster new forms of indigenous Christianity that would outlive British imperial rule.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780804743181
Publisher:	Stanford University Press
Publication date:	04/03/2002
Edition description:	1
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Jeffrey Cox is Professor of History at the University of Iowa. He is the author of The English Churches in a Secular Society: Lambeth, 1870-1930 and the co-editor of Contesting the Master Narrative: Essays in Social History.

Table of Contents

1.	Master Narratives of Religion and Empire	1
	Imperial History and the Presumption of Marginality	7
	The Saidian Master Narrative	9
	The Providentialist Master Narrative	11
	Imperialism as a Religious Problem	13
Part I	The Ecclesiastical Invasion of Punjab, 1818-1890
2.	The Empire of Christ and the Empire of Britain	23
	Geo-religious Triumphalism	26
	Non-European Pioneers and Military Rebellion	28
	The Punjab School and the Rhetoric of Providence	31
	Early Ordination	38
	Dependency as an Imperial Problem	40
	The Diocese of Lahore, or the Native Church Council?	43
	Delhi--A New Alexandria	46
	Competing Narratives of Conquest and Anti-conquest	48
3.	Visible Institutions, Invisible Influence	52
	Proclamation as Divine Imperative	55
	Defamation and Its Limits	61
	Fulfillment and Indian Religious Reform	64
	Multiracial Institutions	68
	A School as a "Witness in Itself"	70
	Family and Profession	76
Part II	Nonwhite, Nonmale, and Untouchable: Contradictions of the Mission Presence during the High Imperial Period, 1870-1930
4.	An Indian Church for the Indian People	87
	Sympathy and Its Imperial Limits	88
	Mixed Motives and Spiritual Status	92
	Race	95
	Indian, Foreign, and Hybrid	99
	Bible Women and Catechists	105
	An Indian Christian Culture	108
5.	Village Christians/Songs of Deliverance	116
	The Crisis of Village Conversion	120
	Indigenous Initiative	125
	Conversion and Dignity	127
	Patterns of Conversion	130
	Village Christianity: Indigenous, Foreign, and Hybrid	134
	Anglican Elitism	136
	Compromise	145
	Piety and Song in Punjabi Christianity	146
6.	Gender, Medicine, and the Rhetoric of Professional Expertise	153
	Gendered Bureaucracies	155
	Our Indian Sisters	156
	Moral Blindness: The Care of Orphans	163
	Itineration as Entertainment	166
	Independent Foreign Women	167
	Religion and Healing	171
	Professional Women	175
	Secular Imperialist Medicine	179
	Professionalism and Racial Stratification	181
	Independent Indian Women	186
7.	The Many Faces of Christian Education	189
	Non-Christian Demand for Mission Education	190
	Christian Education for Non-Christians	194
	Non-Christians as Mission Agents	196
	Indian Christians and the Dilemmas of Social Class	201
	Science and Religion	206
	Non-Christian Competition	208
	Manly Imperialist Christian Education	209
	Liberal Feminist Christian Education	211
	Romantic Literature and Religious Ethos	212
Part III	Confronting Imperialism/Decolonizing the Churches, 1900-1940
8.	Embracing India: Missionaries and Indian Christians Confront Imperial Fault Lines	221
	Moving Out	223
	Impersonation	224
	The Christian Fakir	226
	Going Native	233
	Social Salvation and Imperial Power	239
	Another Gospel	242
	Christ in the Indian National Congress	246
9.	Christianity and the National Movement	250
	War and Its Aftermath	253
	Canal Colonies	259
	Celebrities	264
	Communal Electorates and Christian Identity	266
	Notes	271
	Works Cited	329
	Index	351

Editorial Reviews

"This is an excellent, well-researched book, rich in detail and anecdote, and filled with valuable and original information and analysis about European Christian/Indian Christian (and non-Christian) interaction. "—Roger B. Beck, Eastern Illinois University

"This richly detailed book references large amounts of archival material and will be of interest to scholars and advanced students of Christian missions outside the West."—Religious Studies Review

" . . . [H]e is one of the few active scholars in this field to bring all these perspectives into a single focus. Analytically as well as methodologically, this book has moved the cutting edge of the field."—Victorian Studies

"His work moves beyond presenting missionary activity as a simple narrative of progress; instead, Cox helps to demonstrate the complex development of missions and missionary activities in an imperial context, especially the competing realities of imperial necessity and missionary desires."—Journal of the American Oriental Society

"....[A] complex, variegated, and compelling history of the tensions between the Christian universalism of teh missionaries and the indigenous politics of status and religious reform, as well as focused consideration of the pivotal position of cultural and racial difference under colonial rule."—Victorian Studies

From the Publisher

"His work moves beyond presenting missionary activity as a simple narrative of progress; instead, Cox helps to demonstrate the complex development of missions and missionary activities in an imperial context, especially the competing realities of imperial necessity and missionary desires."

Journal of the American Oriental Society

" . . . [H]e is one of the few active scholars in this field to bring all these perspectives into a single focus. Analytically as well as methodologically, this book has moved the cutting edge of the field."

Victorian Studies

"This richly detailed book references large amounts of archival material and will be of interest to scholars and advanced students of Christian missions outside the West."

Religious Studies Review

"This is an excellent, well-researched book, rich in detail and anecdote, and filled with valuable and original information and analysis about European Christian/Indian Christian (and non-Christian) interaction. "

Eastern Illinois University - Roger B. Beck

When 19th century British missionaries from the Church Missionary Society (CMS) went to the Punjab<-->now encompassing much of northwest India and northern Pakistan, they experienced culture shock and contradictory impulses. Based on study of the narratives of successive CMS waves classified as being: imperialist but marginal by virtue of being largely female, unwittingly imperialist about supposedly neutral values, or defensively providentialist, Cox (history, U. of Iowa) traces their attitudes toward imperialism, strategies to win Indian souls, advocacy of oppressed workers' rights, and marginalization of women in these colonial institution-building efforts. Includes substantial reference material. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews