- Christian missionaries disrupted India’s education system during British rule to facilitate colonial dominance and conversion.
- Routine disparagement of native culture in the classroom is part of their strategy to indoctrinate students and encourage religious conversion.
- Secularization of education and tighter control on foreign funding are necessary to stem the influence of missionary schools on young Indian minds.
A Missionary School, Sahibabad, Uttar Pradesh); 1990
On the occasion of Saraswati Puja, Class X student Jay Shastri (named changed) put up a Goddess Saraswati poster on his classroom’s bulletin board. The teacher who walked in after the poster went up was a Christian woman whose eyes immediately fell upon it. She demanded to know who had pinned the poster. Jay stood up. Her face contorting in anger, the teacher walked up to the 14-year-old, grabbed hold of his hair with her left hand, and started slapping his face repeatedly with her other hand. As the merciless beating continued, Jay, who stood over six feet tall and was well-built, glared at her in anger with bloodshot eyes.
The boy’s defiance infuriated the teacher even more, and she said, “I know just the person who will teach you how to behave in class.” She left the classroom and returned five minutes later with Randolph, the sports teacher. Randolph, who was a terror in school and known to thrash young children over minor issues, started hitting Jay even more ruthlessly. The boy’s torment continued for around five more minutes, during which he was repeatedly asked in between the blows that were raining down on him, “Will you bring such posters to school again?”
Jay was so humiliated that he did not reveal this to anyone until he told me about it a decade later. I asked him one question: “Tell me where this Randolph lives?” Unfortunately, Jay said, “Randolph died in an accident. He crashed into a truck, and they had to scrape him off the asphalt.”
Mangaluru, Karnataka; February 12, 2024
Sister Prabha, while teaching a class of children aged 12-13, dismissed Sri Rama as a myth and the Ramayana and Mahabharata as mere fiction.
Hindus in Mangaluru protested after a catholic nun at St. Gerosa School insulted Hinduism. Sister Prabha, while teaching a class of children aged 12-13, dismissed Sri Rama as a myth and the Ramayana and Mahabharata as mere fiction. She also disparaged Prime Minister Narendra Modi for promoting the Ram Mandir at Ayodhya.[1]
The school claimed such an incident had never happened in its 60-year history. But according to a priest at the school, the nun had been saying such things for the past five years, so what was the need for Hindus to protest now? Basically, he means the normalization of hatred towards Hindus is okay.
Eric Lobo, a Christian leader and a professor at a medical college, said the allegation is false, implying that the Hindu children are lying. He further said that even if the allegation is true, the Hindu organizations should not have protested. Meaning: Hindu students and their parents should keep swallowing such insults to their religion.
Agenda of Conversion
Ask anyone educated in a missionary school in India, and chances are they will have a similar story. It’s doubly ironic when these nuns and priests preach “Christian values” and the “forgiving character” of Jesus Christ in one breath, and in the very next breath, they rain down blows on innocent little children.
But while corporal punishment is a hallmark of these institutions, there is a much darker side to them – the slow and subtle brainwashing of young minds to make them hate their religion and culture so these innocent children can be converted to Christianity. Of course, it can also be fast and unsubtle – there are numerous media reports of missionary schools forcing poor children to convert on pain of expulsion.[2]
Christians claim they introduced education to India’s depressed castes and thereby uplifted them from poverty and low social status. This is a bald-faced lie! What you are about to read will convince you that Christian missionaries did not enter into a vacuum in India. On the contrary, the country had a thriving and egalitarian education system where almost everyone was allowed high-quality education at a nominal cost.
The missionary schools started with the arrival of the British, who wanted to create a class of Indians educated in the English language and way of thinking to uphold the colonial rule. This self-alienated group would act as an intermediary between the “white masters” and the “dark subjects.” Thomas Babington Macaulay, the British educationalist, did not mince words in his recommendation to the British parliament in 1835: “We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern – a class of persons Indian in blood and color, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect.”[3]
“It is our belief that if our plans of education are followed up, there will not be a single idolator among the respectable classes in Bengal 30 years hence” – Macaulay
When the British forcibly closed down indigenous schools, thereby leaving no choice for Indians, especially Hindus, to join the new schools and colleges that imparted Western education, Macaulay saw this as a means of achieving the mass conversion of Hindu society to Christianity. He made this candidly obvious in a letter to his father in 1836:
“Our English schools are flourishing wonderfully. The effect of this education on the Hindus is prodigious…. It is our belief that if our plans of education are followed up, there will not be a single idolator among the respectable classes in Bengal 30 years hence. And this will be effected without any effort to proselytize, without the smallest interference with religious liberty, by natural operation of knowledge and reflection. I heartily rejoice in the project.”[4]
While Macaulay’s dream did not come true, by the early 1900s, Christianity had grown deep roots in many places across India. Take Meghalaya, a remote state in northeast India. Before the arrival of Christian missionaries and post-conversion, almost all Khasi people practiced an indigenous tribal religion. The European missionaries used cruel tactics to achieve their goals. Non-Christian children in Welsh schools were ill-treated and “sometimes made to remain in the same class for two to three years without any reason and compelled to attend church on Sundays.”[5]
The evangelization carried on by the mission schools, apart from educating the Khasis, succeeded in indoctrinating the children with Christian beliefs and principles, and many converted to Christianity. The Christian Khasis began to look down upon their own culture and religion, described by the Welsh missionaries as “demon worship.”[6] Today, the Christian population of Meghalaya stands at more than 84 percent, and the state’s diverse indigenous religions, which had survived under the benign protective umbrella of Hinduism, have been almost extinguished.[7]
Indian Education System – More Advanced than Europe
The reality of India in the 18th century was that despite all the destruction caused by the Islamic invaders over the past 600 years, the core of the indigenous education system survived in many parts of the country. Due to this, Indians of all classes and castes enjoyed a high standard of education, which was, in some cases, superior to the education offered at that time in England.
In fact, in 1792, when Charles Grant of the East India Company recommended sending missionaries and schoolmasters for the “mental” and “moral” reform of Hindus and the introduction of Western education with English as the medium of instruction, the Board of Directors of the Company, were not convinced of the veracity of Grant’s description, and while rejecting his plea were constrained to say:
“The Hindus had as good a system of faith and morals as most people, and that it would be madness to attempt their conversion or to give them any more learning or any other description of learning that which they already possess.”[8]
Extensive evidence now indicates that before the arrival of the British, India maintained a relatively self-sufficient educational system across the country. British-conducted surveys in the Madras, Bombay, and Bengal presidencies provide insights into the state of education. According to William Adam’s 1830 report covering Bengal and Bihar, approximately 100,000 schools existed in the region. G.W. Leitemer’s 1882 survey in Punjab expressed satisfaction with the spread of education in that area.
Reports from an earlier period, such as the Madras Presidency report from around 1820-1830, offer detailed accounts of schools in nearly every village. Similar surveys conducted in the Bombay Presidency in 1824 and 1828 yielded comparable results, further supporting the existence of a well-established educational system in India before British intervention.[9]
“There is hardly a village, great or small, throughout our territories in which there is not at least one school, and in the larger villages more” – GL Pendergast, member of Governor’s Council in Bombay Presidency, 1821
In his iconic work, ‘The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century,’[10] Dharampal cites G.L. Prendergast, a member of the Governor’s Council in the Bombay Presidency, who recorded the following about indigenous schools on June 27, 1821:
“There is hardly a village, great or small, throughout our territories in which there is not at least one school and in the larger villages more, many in every town and in larger cities in every division, where young natives are taught reading, writing, and arithmetic, upon a system, so economical, from a handful or two of grain to perhaps a rupee per month to the schoolmaster; according to the ability of the parents, and at the same time so simple and effectual that there is hardly a cultivator or petty dealer who is not competent to keep his own accounts with a degree of accuracy, in my opinion, beyond what we meet with amongst the lower orders in our own country; while the more splendid dealers and bankers keep their cake with a degree of ease, consciousness, and clearness, I rather think fully to those of any British merchant.”
What about education for the depressed classes? According to Dharampal, in a large number of schools, the Shudras were the majority, while the Brahmins and Vaishyas were the minority. In Tamil-speaking areas, the Shudra students ranged from 70 percent in Salem and Tirunelveli to over 84 percent in South Arcot. In Malayalam-speaking Malabar, Brahmin students constituted only 20 percent of schools, while Shudras were 54 percent and Muslims 27 percent.[11]
The same trend was reported in Kannada-speaking Bellary and Oriya-speaking Ganjam. Only in the Telugu-speaking districts did the higher castes form the majority of students. Some collectors who furnished data spoke about poor Brahmins who taught children without expecting compensation.
Girls mainly were home-schooled. However, in the Malabar district and certain areas of Visakhapatnam district, the percentage of girls was close to 30 percent, a very high number for that era.
Destruction and Appropriation
However, the British, while dismantling the Indian system, shrewdly adopted numerous methods from it. Writes R.V. Parulekar, Director, Indian Institute of Education, Mumbai, “During the early years of the 19th century, Andrew Bell and Joseph Lancaster introduced a system of instruction in England commonly known as the ‘Monitorial’ or ‘Madras system.’ The fundamental concept of scholars instructing fellow scholars, with the teaching scholars referred to as ‘Monitors,’ was central to this system.”[12]
This cost-effective instructional approach led to significant progress in educating the people of England. Bell is acknowledged to have drawn inspiration from the indigenous schools in Madras. Hence, the system is labeled the ‘Madras system.’ Lancaster, in turn, derived his ideas from Bell.
Many contemporary documents confirm the Indian origin of the monitorial system introduced in England during the early 19th century. A dispatch dated June 3, 1814, from the East India Company’s Court of Directors to the Governor General in the Council of Bengal explicitly recognizes the system’s roots in India: “The mode of instruction that has been practiced from time immemorial under these masters has received the highest tribute of praise by its adoption in this country, under the direction of the Reverend Dr. Bell, formerly Chaplain at Madras. It has now become the mode by which education is conducted in our national establishments, acknowledging its efficacy in simplifying the process of instruction and facilitating language acquisition.” [13]
Missionary Schools – Soul Vultures
“It is only through the Christian college and school that a very large section of India’s population can be brought at all into real contact with Christian truth” – James Ewing, American missionary, 1910
In 1910, in Lahore, James Caruthers Rhea Ewing, a prominent American Presbyterian missionary, commented on the aim of Christian education in India: “The Christian school or college has another, and, in a sense, no less important, work to do. It receives non-Christians as students and aims definitely to bring them individually to know the Lord Jesus Christ as the Savior of sinners.”[14]
And he added, “It is only through the Christian college and school that a very large section of India’s population can be brought at all into real contact with Christian truth.”
Therefore, never believe the white lies of Christians that they brought modern education to India. Their so-called education was no different from the fake service rendered by Teresa – the mother of all soul vultures.
How to Regulate Christian Schools
Since missionary schools are arrayed against India’s civilizational ethos and are setting up the stage for future ethnic strife between Hindus and converted Christians, India should take active measures to regulate their workings. Since these schools are built on land allotted free or next to nothing by the government, they must abide by a set of rules that should include:
- Schools should be secular; therefore, the “Lord’s Prayers,” or any other Christian prayer or psalm, should be stopped.
- No displays of Christian icons such as Jesus statues, crosses, or nativity scenes.
- No readings from the Bible.
- The subject ‘Moral Science’ should be removed as it is a subtle attempt at promoting Christianity.
- No foreign funding.
- No foreign teachers or visiting faculty.
- Complete dissociation from foreign churches.
- All schools must fly the national flag and sing the national anthem and national song.
- Profits, if any, must be used only for educational purposes, not for promoting Christianity.
- Missionary schools must promote respect for cultural and religious diversity. This involves recognizing and appreciating indigenous cultural backgrounds rather than imposing a single cultural or religious perspective.
Citations
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2Em7n2Zjdo&t=54s
[2] https://www.opindia.com/2022/01/forced-conversion-harassment-justice-for-m-lavanya-cases-where-missionaries-have-traumatised-hindu-children/
[3] https://franpritchett.com/00generallinks/macaulay/txt_minute_education_1835.html
[4] https://www.prathaculturalschool.com/post/the-guru-shishya-parampara
[5] https://www.jstor.org/stable/44156618?read-now=1&seq=6#page_scan_tab_contents
[6] https://www.jstor.org/stable/44156618?read-now=1&seq=6#page_scan_tab_contents
[7] https://blog.cpsindia.org/2016/10/religion-data-of-census-2011-xxx-st.html?m=1
[8] https://www.orientalthane.com/speeches/Education_in_Ancien_India_BedekarVijay_1995.htm#:~:text=%E2%80%9CNo%20Hindu%20who%20has%20received,effected%20without%20any%20effort%20to
[9] P. Radhakrishnan, Indigenous Education In British India a Profile, Contributions to Indian Sociology Vol. 24 No.l 1990
[10] Dharampal, The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century, page 73
[11] https://www.indica.today/long-reads/india-worlds-education-capital-depths-illiteracy-part-iii/
[12] https://archive.org/stream/SelectionFromEducationalRecordsBombayPart21815-1840_520/JP-36_djvu.txt
[13] https://archive.org/stream/SelectionFromEducationalRecordsBombayPart21815-1840_520/JP-36_djvu.txt