Missionaries as Social Commentators

The purpose of this essay is to discuss missionaries as social commentators with specific reference to British Protestant missionaries in India in the nineteenth century. There is no attempt in what follows to deny that missionary observers shared many assumptions and attitudes in common with other Europeans including aspects of the so-called “orientalist” view of India: the notion that India was essentially different from Europe and generally inferior. ¹ The argument of this paper is that, notwithstanding these views and the particular bias inherent in missionary perspectives, missionary comment (if used critically) can provide a valuable and, in some cases, unique insight into social developments in India in the nineteenth century.