Intolerance in Christian missionary zeal in the early years of print in colonial India.

Missionaries who traveled to India - alongside the East India Company - were involved in proselytising, and oftentimes, the means used to do so  - reviled local Indian, Hindu customs. There is ample documentation of their methods used in the writings of Rammohun Roy:

It is fitting that we also consider the other side of the picture of how native print that was made use of by the Britishers; by the early nineteenth century, missionaries had started to try to convert Hindus by distributing free pamphlets. Rammohun Roy wrote  about this phenomenon in 1821 in The Brahmanical Magazine or The Missionary and the Brahmun:

                                  

… But during the last twenty years, a body of English gentlemen, who are called missionaries, have been publicly endeavoring, in several ways to convert Hindoos and Mussalmans of this country into Christianity. The first way is that of publishing and distributing among the natives various books, large and small, reviling both religions…

if they were true missionaries, they would preach in countries like Turkey and Persia, … In Bengal, where the English are the sole rulers, and where the mere name of Englishman is sufficient to frighten people, an encroachment upon the rights of her poor timid and humble inhabitants and upon their religion, cannot be viewed [as a justifiable act][1] 

In order to transmit the ideas of Christianity, knowledge of native languages was needed, alongside the complete establishment of native fonts. This was but one of the central reasons as to why there was so much immediate efforts taken by the Baptist missionaries to fund the formation of native fonts

The Srirampur Missionary Press played an important role in cultivating and establishing print for the natives. The history of the Baptist Mission and its publishing endeavor is intrinsic to any description of how print in Calcutta was democratised. This history also reveals the workings of the Company, and their deep fears. Initially, Bengali letterpress technology was mastered by Charles Wilkins who worked for the East India Company. Eventually, this technology was transferred to the Baptist Mission Press. Baptist missionaries had a zeal to interact with the Hindus and proselytize, permission for which was refused by the British government in order to prevent antagonism from the natives. It was, after all, only with the collaboration with the natives that the East India Company could rule in a fashion that did not lead to open rebellion. William Carey (1761-1834), a Baptist missionary, was a pioneer of sorts in his efforts to print a large number of texts in Bengali. Carey was working in Malda, in north Bengal, when he translated the Bible into Bengali. His teacher, Ramram Bose, helped him with the translations. In order to print it, Bengali fonts were needed. Reading an advertisement in the newspaper, Carey got in contact with Panchanan Karmakar, where he learnt of a foundry in Calcutta. Carey purchased a printing press for forty pounds and he set it up in Malda. His request to the London Missionary Society asking for more missionaries was granted, and he was joined by others in 1799, who urged him to reside in Srirampur, a Danish enclave and outside the East India Company’s jurisdiction. Carey, along with the other missionaries, formed the Baptist Mission in 1800 and in order to make a functional printing press, was joined by Karmakar in the same year. Karmakar was assisted by another craftsman and a pupil of Charles Wilkins, Manohar. He made punches of more than twelve Indian languages, and also of Chinese. It was here that the New Testament was printed in 1801. Biblical texts were translated and printed, and tracts were disseminated among the people. They were assisted in these works by pandits.

 

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[1] Rammohun Roy, The Brahmanical Magazine, p. 138.

Creating Bridges.

For civilizations to survive, we need to be able to live harmoniously. The inevitable question is: how do we do it?


If we closely examine the following verse from the Mundaka Upanishad, we come to the understanding that there are many paths -- “rivers” -- to realising God – the “sea”; and that on realising God, the self becomes “freed from name and form” and merges with Brahma. This realisation is greater than “Maya” which is the tangible world around us.

As rivers, flowing down, become indistinguishable on reaching the sea by giving up their names and forms, so also the illumined soul, having become freed from name and form, reaches the self-effulgent Purusa that is higher than the higher (Máyá).

There are two tropes that recur and are of relevance for the moment: the abstraction of God versus the tangible notion of Maya. These two tropes are central to all religious texts; they are articulated in a different manner – but if we closely read what other religious texts have to offer – we will arrive at the same results.

The following is an extract from the second chapter of the Koran; “Al-Baqarah”:

This is the Book about which there is no doubt, a guidance for those conscious of Allah …

Who believe in the unseen …

And who believe in what has been revealed to you, [O Muhammad], and what was revealed before you

…

Indeed, those who disbelieve - it is all the same for them whether you warn them or do not warn them - they will not believe …

 

The “disbelievers” are those who are enmeshed in Maya; and those “who believe in the unseen” are those who have realised God.

 

In order to establish a civilizational balance – the perfect chi – and to ensure that we are not enmeshed in perpetual battles – we need to create bridges across religious divides.

The Upanishad and the Koran.

In the Mundaka Upanishad, there is a verse which basically talks about the fact that there is but one God, and all the different religions (the “rivers”) talk about ways to reach to God:

As rivers, flowing down, become indistinguishable on reaching the sea [that is, God] by giving up their names and forms …

In todays day and age, we cannot live in a divisive manner; in fact – we have to understand that all religions have the same elements of truth. All religions talk about ways to realising God.

If we examine the following verse from the Koran.

The Opening

In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful.

[1.1] All praise is due to Allah, the Lord of the Worlds.
[1.2] The Beneficent, the Merciful.
[1.3] Master of the Day of Judgment.
[1.4] Thee do we serve and Thee do we beseech for help.
[1.5] Keep us on the right path.
[1.6] The path of those upon whom Thou hast bestowed favors. Not (the path) of those upon whom Thy wrath is brought down, nor of those who go astray.

 

The day of Judgement is the act of understanding that all of us are a part of God/ Allah.

The “right” path is the path which allows us to understand God – that we are not separate from God; not to realize this – is to go “astray.”

 

The conundrum lies in the fact: can a “Beneficent” and “Merciful” God also be “wrathful”? a kind and generous God cannot be “wrath[ful]”. Does the cohesiveness of the text collapse as it deconstructs itself?

The lure of Maya.

From the Mundaka Upanishad.

The Purusa is transcendental, since S/He is formless. And since S/He is coextensive with all that is external and internal and since S/He is birthless, therefore S/He is without vital force and without mind. S/He is pure and superior to the (other) superior imperishable (Máyá).

All that we are, and all that we see and feel and touch - is a part of Máyá. We live every day within social systems of nations and communities and amongst our families; and we talk about our histories of the past and of wars fought long ago and being fought in the present  – all of this is Máyá. We believe this to be Life; this life is so extremely tangible and tactile and visceral -  we assume this to be Real. We love our children; and we love our lovers and we love our parents – and we are caught in this love. And because we believe in this life with absolute conviction – it is nearly as perfect as Brahman/ Purusa Itself from within which we all emerged.

Why is Máyá imperishable? – is it not obvious? -- we are caught in the cycle of life.

And Máyá is nearly as superior to the Purusa/ Brahman which is “coextensive” with the whole Universe and is “birthless.”

Can Europe undo the epistemic violence of the past?

Can Europe undo the epistemic violence of the past?

What is an undisputed fact is that the epistemic violence that accompanies any Eurocentric discourse about the Other, enables and allows for the emergence of an unfathomable kind of a civilizational difference, where the writing Self-Subject and the Other are always caught in static binaries. There is a large body of theoretical scholarship that examines the nature of western colonial encounters with the colonies. For the most, postcolonial theory has tended to focus on the engagement between Europe and the colonies they acquired in Asia and Africa. Frantz Fanon (1925-1961), for example, in his works arrives at a disenfranchised Alegrian identity which underwent absolute rupture in the presence of the French colonizer.^[1] In Black Skin, White Mask, he writes that the black psyche undergoes alienation in the presence of the superior French culture. He describes the black man in the following manner:

The black man has two dimensions. One with his fellows, the other with the white man. A Negro behaves differently with the white man and with another Negro. That this self division is a direct result of colonialist subjugation is beyond question. …

Every colonized people – in other words, every people in whose soul an inferiority complex has been created by the death and burial of its local cultural originality – finds itself face to face with the language of the civilizing nation; that is, with the culture of  the mother country. The colonized is elevated above his jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the mother country’s cultural standards. He becomes whiter as he renounces his blackness, his jungle.^[2]

For Fanon, European cultural engagement leads to a complete erasure of his black African identity. What we draw from Fanon, who was writing around the 1950s, is a kind of an idea of the hybrid subject, where he describes a socio-psychical situation where the colonial subject was absolutely at the mercy of the colonial powers.

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[1] His following works are representative of his ideas: Black Skin, White Mask, Reprint of Peau noire, masques blancs (London: Pluto Press, 1986) and The Wretched of the Earth, Reprint of Les damnes de la terre  (New York: Grove, 1968).

[2] “Remembering Fanon, Introduction,” in Black Skin, White Mask, ed. Homi Bhabha, pp. 17-18.

Gandhiji's bhajan in these divisive times? .... ishwar allah tero naam.

Extracts from the Mundaka Upanishad:

Who is God? – God creates all we are; and we have to be willing to belief that everything around emerges from God.

 

From God emerge all the oceans and all the mountains. From It flow out the rivers of various forms. And from It issue all the corns as well as the juice, by virtue of which the internal self verily exists in the midst of the elements.

All the religions – “the rivers of various forms” – emerge from God. We have to be willing to believe that.

 

As rivers, flowing down, become indistinguishable on reaching the sea by giving up their names and forms, so also the illumined soul, having become freed from name and form, reaches the self-effulgent Purusa that is higher than the higher (Máyá).

 

We have to believe that all religions – the “rivers” - lead the way to realizing God; they become “indistinguishable on reaching the sea[God]” – all religions – Hinduism and Christianity and Islam – become “freed from name and form” and from their individual characteristics and realise that there is but one God.

 

Every school going child in India knows Gandhiji’s song: “Raghupati Raghava Rajaram”; which is basically a Tulsidas bhajan. Tulsidas lived in the middle of the 16^th c in Benaras; he was a devotee of Sri Rama; and in this particular bhajan – which glorifies Sri Rama – there is this couplet tucked in and it is the central refrain of the song:

Ishawar Allah tero naam [your name is Ishwar or Allah]

Sabko sanmati de bhagwan.  [give all of us this mind frame to understand it]

That this idea was propounded 500 years ago – by a Hindu poet – does reflect a lot about the socio-cultural systems from within which he emerged; despite being a devotee of Sri Rama, and this particular bhajan of Gandhiji sings the glories of Sri Ramachandra, Tulsidas argues for the truth that God is synonymous with both Allah and Ishwar.   

heathens and more? ....

Monotheistic religions fundamentally refuse to accept that the Other might have something to offer;

if we look closely at how Christian missionaries proselyted in the early years of the East India Company settlements in Bengal, India (late 18^th C)– and there is ample documented evidence regarding this -- we will conclude that monotheistic religions define themselves through exclusionary terms; the Other cannot exist and so the Other has to be denied.

Below is an extract from a tract Rammohun Roy wrote regarding this:

From:

THE BRAHMUNICAL MAGAZINE OR THE MISSIONARY AND THE BRAHMUN BEING A 

VINDICATION OF THE HINDOO RELIGION AGAINST THE ATTACKS OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONARIES.

CALCUTTA, 

1821. 

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 

For a period of upwards of fifty years, this country (Bengal) has been in exclusive possession of the

English nation; during the first thirty years of which, from their word and deed, it was universally believed that they would not interfere with the religion of their subjects, and that they truly wished every man to act in such matters according to the dictates of his own conscience. Their possessions in Hindoostan and their political strength have, through the grace of God gradually increased. But during the last twenty years, a body of English gentlemen who are called missionaries, have been publicly endeavouring, in several ways, to convert Hindoos and Mussulmans of this country into Christianity. The first way is that of publishing and distributing among the natives various books, large and small, reviling both religions, and abusing and ridiculing the gods and saints of the former: the second way is that of standing in front of the doors of the natives or in the public roads to preach the excellency of their own religion and the debasedness of that of others: the third way is that if any natives of low origin become Christians from the desire of gain or from any other motives, these gentlemen employ and maintain them as a necessary encouragement to others to follow their example.