ABSTRACT
Mahipatram, as a teacher in government schools and later as a principal of Mahalakshmi Training College, naturally came into contact with missionary teachers. Christian missionaries were the first to put women on the agenda of Indian social reform. British administrators and scholars shared the missionary perceptions regarding the backward and degraded nature of Indian society, particularly of its women, and highlighting this was one way of establishing the moral superiority of the rulers and justifying colonial rule. William Adam, a missionary who was deputed by Lord William Bentinck to undertake a survey of education in Bengal in the 1830s, also noted that in Rajshahi district, as in other parts of Bengal, female education was practically unknown because of the superstition that a literate girl would be widowed shortly after marriage. Women missionaries also played a significant role in laying the foundations of girls’ education in Bombay.
