The British propagation of Christianity in India: A Tharoorian blindspot?
In her conversation with Shashi Tharoor at the launch of his book An Era of Darkness: The British empire in India at the Ahmedabad Management Association (AMA), Nidhi Razdan said:
“Interesting, when we talk about what to come here, and you mention that on page 113, saying that they weren’t motivated, such as, you know, the zeal of spreading Christianity and what it was basically to make money out of India. India was a career, it wasn’t a crusade.” (almost verbatim; sic.) [Emphasis mine]
Source: https://youtu.be/nldK6Qz0CD0?t=304 ~05:04–05:19
Shashi Tharoor’s response began with:
“Absolutely!…”
Source: https://youtu.be/nldK6Qz0CD0?t=304 ~05:20
In p. 113 of his book, one finds the following:
“Since by either the crusading Christianity of the Spanish or the cultural zeal of the French, but merely by pecuniary greed, they were not unduly anxious to transform Indian society or shape it in their image. … For many Britons, imperialism was primarily justified as a moral crusade to liberate Indians from ‘ignorance, idolatry and vice’. But they were curiously reluctant to act on it. Whereas the Portuguese rapidly Christianized Goa, for instance, the British did not import their first Bishop till 1813.” [Emphasis mine]
While on the face of it, much of the above may seem commonsensical, both excerpts above-from the conversation and from the book-are, in my opinion, remarkable examples of clever use of language to conceal, as much if not more, than to reveal. The mastery lies in the usage of the words “motivated” and “the British” (underlined in excerpts above) and some critical thinking 101 can be put to use to attempt deconstructing the “mastery”:
Premise 1: The East India Company was British
Premise 2: The East India Company was motivated by pecuniary greed, not by crusading Christianity
Conclusion A: The East India Company, that was British, was motivated by pecuniary greed, not by crusading Christianity
The deduction above is clearly valid (that is, Conclusion A follows logically from the premises) and is perhaps sound too, if Premise 2 is also true along with Premise 1 (which clearly is true).
Let us now make a small modification now to the Conclusion:
Premise 1: The East India Company was British
Premise 2: The East India Company was motivated by pecuniary greed, not by crusading Christianity
Conclusion B: The British were motivated by pecuniary greed, not by crusading Christianity
The deduction above-Conclusion B-is clearly NOT sound as it fails the validity test itself: Conclusion B does NOT follow logically from the premises as the premises are about T he East India Company (which no doubt was British) but the conclusion is about The British and there certainly is more to The British than just The East India Company: for instance, The British Parliament!
What is more representative of The British: The East India Company or The British Parliament (House of Commons)?
The relevance of this would become obvious when one considers what Tharoor reveals-”the British did not import their first Bishop till 1813″ (ibid.)-but more importantly what he conceals: that on June 22, 1813, in The House of Commons (British Parliament), 89 out of 125 members-a clear and decisive majority-voted “For the Resolution”: Propagation of Christianity in India.
Source: p. 873–74 in The Parliamentary Debates from the Year 1803 to the Present Time, Volume XXVI (1813). London.
Which perhaps neatly brings us back to the title of this piece: The British propagation of Christianity in India: A Tharoorian blindspot?
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Of course, this is most likely not limited to being a blind spot of just Tharoor.
It is perhaps a blind spot of many narratives that wish to underplay Christian, but more specifically, Christian-Protestant religious impulses during colonialism, and instead, paint them in various “secular” and (so-called) “liberal”*** shades.
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Originally published at http://meghk.wordpress.com on September 24, 2018.
