ABSTRACT

The Dublin University Mission (DUM) arrived in the town of Hazaribagh in the Chota Nagpur Division of western Bengal in January 1892, with a clear strategy to draw upon and utilise the collective knowledge of its graduate missionaries. Contemporary missionary wisdom emphasised the importance of third level education in order to justify financial support and ensure victory in the foreign mission field. 1 Initial missionary encounters with local populations were facilitated by an apparent need for western teaching and healthcare, and it was hoped that the provision of this practical, medical assistance would help lead the local population to Christianity. 2 However, upon arrival in Hazaribagh, the Dublin University missionaries recognised the need to adapt the philanthropic approach to evangelising they had devised while preparing for mission in the comfort of the college rooms and parochial houses of Victorian Dublin. For the mission to succeed and appeal to the local population, it needed not only to transcend geographical and social boundaries, but to engage directly with individuals and traditional practices. Within the wider apparatus of the colonial project, the Mission utilised medicine as a mechanism to penetrate spatial and social barriers. As will be demonstrated in this chapter though, it was the assimilation of local social customs and medical practices with the Irish missionaries’ medicine, and the subsequent alteration in the way in which the missionaries’ medical knowledge was practiced, which ensured the sustainability of the Mission in Chota Nagpur.