Vol. 5 · pages 476–480

461 THE CONDITION OF THE CONVERT appointments were reserved for Christians and non-attendance at religious schools treated as state offence. By 1685, 3,20,000 Cinhalese had yielded to these methods. The same religious fervour was shown by the East India Company. In 1614, an young Indian had been brought to London by the Captain of the Company’s ship. The Company educated him at its own expense ‘to be an instrument in converting some of his nation’. His baptism was performed at Poplar. The Lord Mayor of London and the Directors of the Company attended the baptism. King James I chose for him the name of Peter and the priest who baptised him presented him to the Audience as ‘the first fruit of India’. In 1617 there took place in Surat the conversion of a Mahomedan. Thus the career of the Company began with conversions at both ends. In 1657 the Directors applied to the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford for a Chaplain ‘the Company having resolved to endeavour the advance and spreading of the Gospel in India’. In 1698 the Company very readily accepted a clause in her Charter which required the Company’s Chaplains ‘should apply themselves to learn the languages of the countries, the better to enable them to instruct the Gentoos, who should be the servants of the Company or their agents, in the Protestant religion’. Suddenly after 1698 the attitude of the Company seems to have undergone a significant though gradual change. While the Portugal and the Dutch Governments were going on with top speed the East India Company was slowing down. In the very year the Company seems to have been of two minds on this question. While it accepted an obligation to train its chaplains in vernaculars of India so as to make them potent instruments of propaganda it allowed a prayer to be drawn up for the Company which said ‘that, we adorning the Gospel of our Saviour in all things, these Indian natives among whom we dwell, beholding our good works, may be won over’. This prayer continued to be offered, certainly till 1750. A close scrutiny of the wording of the prayer suggests if it does not avow the complete abandonment of the original idea of active proselytising. This attitude of the Company soon became a matter of controversy. Friends of conversion were waiting for an opportunity to force the Company to give up this attitude. The Regulating Act of 1773 and Pitt’s East India Act had put an end to a ‘State disguised as a Merchant’ and brought the Company the chartered agent of Parliament to carry on the Government of the Indian Territories. It was provided under the Act that the charter of the Company should be only for 20 years and should be renewed thereafter. The year 1793 was of immense importance since the revision of the charter of the Company was to fall due in that year.

462 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES To those who favoured the diffusion of Christian knowledge the task seemed quite easy. Wilberforce, who was in charge of the matter had secured the support of important persons in Parliament. He had obtained Archbishop Moore’s blessing, and still more important he had won a promise of support from the minister in charge of the East India Company’s Charter Bill. As a preliminary to the passing of this Bill matters to be incorporated in the charter were put in the form of resolutions to be passed by the House of Commons. One of the resolutions passed ran as follows: “That it was the peculiar and bounden duty of the British Legislature to promote, by all just and prudent means, the interest and happiness of the inhabitants of the British Dominions in India; and that for these ends such measures ought to be adopted as may generally tend to their advancement in useful knowledge and to their religious and more improvement.” “Be it therefore further enacted, that the said Court of Directors shall be and are hereby empowered and required to appoint and send out, from time to time, a sufficient number of fit and proper persons for carrying into effect the purposes aforesaid, by acting as schoolmasters, missionaries, or otherwise every such person, before he is so appointed or sent out, having produced to the said Court of Directors, a satisfactory testimonial or certificate from the Archbishop of Canterbury, or the Bishop of London for the time being, or from the Society in London for the promotion of Christian Knowledge, or from the Society in Scotland for propagating Christian Knowledge, of his sufficiency for these purposes. And be it further enacted, that the said Court of Directors are hereby empowered and required to give directions to the governments of the respective presidencies in India, to settle the destination and to provide for the necessary and decent maintenance of the persons to be sent out as aforesaid; and also to direct the said governments to consider of and adopt such other measures according to their discretion, as may appear to them most conducive to the ends aforesaid.” It was largely due to the support of Dundas that the House accepted the resolution without demur. Wilberforce was deeply moved. ‘The hand of Providence’, he wrote in his journal, ‘was never more visible than in his East Indian Affair.’ This confidence was premature. Because, on the third reading of the Bill, the clause was struck out with the consent of Dundas. Wilberforce wrote his friend Gisborne “My clauses thrown out ….., Dundas most false and double..…”

463 THE CONDITION OF THE CONVERT This change of front was brought about by the Directors of the East India Company. The East India trade was a monopoly of the Company and no Englishman could enter the territories of the East India Company in India without license from the Directors of the Company and any Englishman found in the territories of the Company without a license was liable to be deported. The Company did not take long to realize what the effect of the new clause would be. It knew that the clause would require them to open the gates of India to the flood of the Missionaries and their propaganda. Should the Missionaries be allowed a free hand, was the question of the hour. As was natural this became a subject of a most interesting, instructive and bitter controversy and those who care to know it in its details may usefully refer to the pages of the Edinborough Review and the …....of the day. There were three parties to this controversy. There were the Directors of the East India Company whose primary interest was to protect its shareholders who were clamouring for dividends. The second party to the controversy was the English Middle Class which was living on the East India trade and whose sons were finding new avenues for lucrative careers in the territories. Thirdly there was the Church Missionary Society formed in the year …….for the purpose of spreading the Christian faith. The interests of the first two coincided. They were for the maintenance of the Empire and therefore wanted peace and tranquility. The third did care for peace but was keen on the substitution of Indian superstition by the Christian faith. The first made a powerful combination and obliged all the forces against the third. The result was that they triumphed and the Church Missionary Society lost. The arguments advanced by the controversialist on the triumphant side are of course the most important and the most instructive part of the controversy. To the argument that the propaganda in favour of the Christian faith should begin at once, that it was wrong to hold that the truth though sacred should be doled out in such a way and in such bits as to avoid all risk, the reply given by Sydney Smith was a stunning reply. This is what he said : “When we consider for how many centuries after Christ, Providence allowed the greater part of mankind to live and die without any possibility of their attaining to the knowledge of the sacred truths by any human exertion, we must be satisfied that the rapid and speedy conversion of the whole world forms no part of the scheme of its Almighty Governor, and that it can give no offence in His eyes if we do not desert our domestic duties and expose the

464 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES lives and worldly happiness of multitudes of our fellow country men to hazard in our attempt to their conversion.” *** “The Directors would be doing their duty neither to the shareholders nor the British Nation if they allowed ‘itinerant tinkers to preach the natives into insurrection….. The natives must be taught a better religion at a time and in a manner that will not inspire them with a passion for political change.’ ….. Our duties to our families and Country are set before us by God Himself. We are not at liberty to desert them in order to give a remote chance of conferring greater benefits on strangers at a distance.” It is arguments such as those which prevailed with Parliament and led to the rejection of the Clause in 1793. Wilberforce twitted members of Parliament by reminding them with, their Christianity was not a religion of convenience but it was a religion established by law. But as has been well pointed out, “for the major portion of those ‘counted’ in the eighteenth century the religion accepted by the State and Society as a convenience was something to be used with fact and discretion at home. There was no need to diffuse it recklessly abroad. The general atmosphere, as has often been pointed out, was remarkably like that of Augustan Rome. To the statesman, thinking imperially, all religions were equally useful, each in its proper place.” 1 The attempt to open the door to the Missionaries failed and the Missionary was shut out from India till 1813. Not only was he shut out but the Company’s Government kept a strict vigil upon the activities of such stray missionaries who contrived to go to India without their license. In 1793 Dr. Carey went as an interloper without license. As he was not allowed to enter Calcutta being without license, he made Serampore, 14 miles away from Calcutta as his base of operation. Serampore was a Danish settlement and the Danes had placed no restrictions on missionaries or mission propaganda. On the contrary the Governor of Serampore actively helped them. Carey and his Mission was always suspect in the eyes of the Company’s Government. In 1798 the Serampore Mission decided to engage four missionaries who arrived in the year 1800. They went to reside in the Danish settlement of Serampore. As a matter of fact the Governor General had nothing to do with them. But the unconcealed residence of those unlicensed enthusiasts was too much for the Company’s Governor General and Lord Wellesley wrote to the Governor of Serampore, “Would His Excellency see to the expulsion of these interlopers who 1 Mayhew- Christianity and the Government of India, p. 51.

465 THE CONDITION OF THE CONVERT might at any moment violate the territories of the British East India Company”, to which the Danish Governor replied that he would do nothing of the kind 1. Similar action was taken in 1806 when Captain Wickes brought two more Missionaries in the ‘Crieterion’ which anchored off Calcutta. Sir George Barlow was then the Governor General. He took a most extra-ordinary action to prevent the landing of these two missionaries. He ordered that the Captain be not given his clearance papers unless he agreed to take back the two missionaries. Although they had gone to live in Serampore and were in fact under the protection of the Danish Crown. This was not only a more unreasonable attitude towards missionaries but it was also an attitude which could not but be regarded as hostile 2. The Vellore Mutiny among Indian Soldiers which took place in 1806 was quite erroneously attributed to missionary propaganda and Sir George Barlow in a panicky condition proceeded to put the following restrictions on the activities of the Serampore Missionaries: 1. The Missionaries remain at Serampore. 2. They must not preach openly in the bazar. 3. Native converts might preach provided they are not sent forth as emissaries from Serampore. The vehemence with which the Government of Bengal came down upon the Serampore Mission in 1807 for issuing a tract on Islam in which quite inadvertently the prophet Mahomed was called an imposter also furnishes further evidence of the attitude of hostility which Government of the Company bore towards the Missionaries. The Government of Bengal refused to be satisfied with the apologies of Dr. Carey and insisted upon the transfer of the Press from Serampore to Calcutta in order that Government may be in a better position to control the literature issued therefrom. The news caused dismay for it meant the disruption of the mission. As usual, the Governor of the Danish settlement came to their rescue and told the frightened Serampore Missionaries that he would fight their battle if the Government of Bengal forcibly removed the Press to Calcutta. Subsequently matters were settled and the order was withdrawn 3. But the fact remains that the Government of the Company was not a friend of the Missionaries. So much for the excuse which they can legitimately plead. But what attitude did they take when they were allowed after 1813 to operate in the field ? Did they take the line that caste must go from the thought and life of the Convert? The earliest pronouncement of a Protestant Missionary does not warrant an affirmative answer. 1J. C. Marshman. Life & Times of Carey, Marshman and word. Vol. 1, p. 2 Ibid., p. 307.