Author: Antony Copley
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 1999
Language: English
Pages: 279
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0195649109
Description
This study of grassroots inter-faith relationships explores the impact of missionary endeavors on Indian religions, in particular Hinduism, but also Islam and Sikhism.
This work is the story of Protestant missions and Indian Christianity in the mid-nineteenth century. Looking in particular at eastern and northern India as well as Tamil Nadu and parts of Andhra, this book studies certain crucial themes pertaining to Christianity in India: Mission as ideology; the nature of the cultural contact between Missions and Indian religions; the conversion experience of an Indian minority and the consequent conflict of cultural loyalties within an Indian Christian elite.
In doing so it opens up a wider debate on the nature of imperialism and proto-nationalism. At one level it looks at how the missionary ideology ties up with imperialism, and at another at the ideology developed by Indian religions to fend off the missionary onslaught. The author argues that India's traditional institutions and their functionaries did more to ward off this challenge than did the later religious reform movements.
Contents
PART I : MISSION IDEOLOGY IN CONTEXT
Prologue
CHAPTER I
Ideology and Strategy
CHAPTER II
Cultural Context
PART II : MISSION AND CULTURAL CONTACT
CHAPTER III
Missionary Case-Studies : Bengal
CHAPTER IV
Missionary Case-Studies : Lower Hindustan
CHAPTER V
Missionary Case-Studies : Upper Hindustan
CHAPTER VI
Missionary Case-Studies : The South
PART III : INDIAN CHRISTIANS AND CONVERSION
CHAPTER VII
Conversion : Case-Studies from the South
CHAPTER VIII
Conversion : Case-Studies from Bengal and the North
Epilogue
A Select Bibliography
Index