ABSTRACT
Family resemblances arise from the fact that all Christian views, in order to count as Christian, must recognize in the Gospel, however understood, some kind of ultimate criterion. For the Scottish missionaries the spread of enlightenment and the propagation of the Gospel were virtually indistinguishable, or at least continuous with one another, and their initial objections to caste arose from seeing it as an obstacle to the diffusion of enlightenment. The inequality characteristic of caste denied man his proper freedom and condemned him to continue in the lot in which he found himself without any this-worldly hope. This chapter shows how the attempted enforcement of a strict discipline on the caste question in the Protestant churches was highly controversial and often divisive, and apparently discouraged rapid numerical growth through recruitment from castes of middle and high status. Missionary-sponsored attacks on caste in society at large were on the whole naive, unrealistic and, in terms of their stated objectives, unsuccessful.
