Missionaries Impact on Dalit Protest Movement

With the advent of East India Company, European missionaries brought for the first time widening educational opportunities to which all could have access in spite of the open resentment expressed by the Brahmans. They emphasised how the Hindu religion had deprived the lower castes of their rights in matters relating to religion and education. They portrayed India as a loser in the race for human advancement and higher civilisation thanks to its orthodoxy, and its self-seeking priesthood. This idea preached by the missionaries was also echoed in James Mill’s History of British India. For Jotirao Phule and others who attended these schools, the Company rule naturally appeared as opening up new opportunities for their own advancement and for fighting high caste oppression, which could just not have been dreamt of earlier.

The missionaries in particular highlighted the discrepancies and contradictions within Hindu beliefs and expressed humanitarian concern for the social consequences of some of the Hindu beliefs and practices. They thereby did much to convince the more reflective and sensitive Hindus that their society was morally inadequate. The missionaries contrasted their idea of God as the very principle of purity and the source of moral government exercising the same authority over all human beings, with the Hindu belief in a large number of gods many of whom could commit harmful acts against men and hence had to be propitiated with the help of Brahmans. The missionaries also attacked the inculcation of the spirit of acceptance and the notion that religious merit lay primarily in obedience to the dharma (duties) of a present social position, itself determined by past karma or deeds. The missionary newspaper also attacked the evil social consequences of a system based on ascriptive values and stressed the social benefits that would arise from rejecting ascriptive values. The Missionary propagation of human, spiritual and social equality considerably influenced the low caste leaders’ view that the caste system was a deliberate conspiracy of the Brahmans to enjoy social privileges.

Another strategy adopted by the missionaries to undermine the legitimation of Brahman superiority was the large-scale publication of the sacred Vedas and their circulation among the masses. The idea was to demonstrate that the Vedas were mere simple descriptions of the worship of the elements and had little connection with the 19th century popular Hinduism which bestowed privileges on the Brahmans. The demand of low caste radicals for an authoritative Hindu text was the direct result of missionary propaganda. It is significant to note that while the low caste radicals vehemently denounced popular Hinduism and its institutions, they rejected Christianity and refused conversion. Instead they expressed a religious world-view, which was remarkably non-sectarian and spiritual, based on the belief in a unitary creator as the ultimate source of moral authority for human society. This was the result of two factors: the first was the great Hindu tradition itself, and the second, the religious and social ideas of the 18th century European Enlightenment. The rejection of traditional religious hierarchies, the re-examination of the claims of revealed religion, the concern for the natural and political rights of individuals in society and the idea of social progress, encouraged during the period of Enlightenment influenced Hindu reformers in particular.