Swaraj,the Raj,and the British Woman Missionary in India,c. 1917–1950

Introduction

In her autobiography of life under the Raj, a former memsahib, Desirée Battye recalled an incident which took place soon after her arrival in India in 1939, where she was working as Personal Secretary to the Resident of Mashir, Sialkot and Hunsa. Attempting to leave the house one day wearing her topi (or pith helmet), she was stalled by the Resident’s cry: ‘Take that ghastly thing off at once’. When she asked what was wrong with her helmet, he replied confusingly: ‘There’s nothing WRONG with it, you can’t wear it, that’s all’. Poor Desirée was saved from bewilderment by the Resident’s wife. ‘It’s just that WE don’t wear white ones’, she helpfully explained, ‘they’re missionary topis’. ¹

Through the very colour of their sun helmets – white rather than the khaki of ‘pukka sahibs’ – missionaries were separated from the British imperial regime. This theme of exclusion is emphasized in literature. In E.M. Forster’s famous A Passage to India, the geographical isolation of old Mr Graysford and young Mr Sorely in Chandrapore mirrors their wider social exclusion. These missionaries lived ‘out beyond the slaughterhouses, always travelled third on the railways, and never came up to the Club’. ² Marginalized female missionaries are particularly recurring characters. Most famously, there is the eccentric, amiable and ultimately heartbreaking figure of Barbie Bachelor in Paul Scott’s The Raj Quartet, who is almost universally mocked and shunned by the snobbish memsahibs of Pankot. ³

In reality, however, women missionaries were only ever ‘partial outsiders’ in the Raj. As Francis de Caro and Rosan Jordan emphasize in their article, ‘The Wrong Topi’ – published in 1984 – the fact that missionaries wore topis at all, unlike the Indian masses, signified they were ‘potentially part of the [ruling] communitas’, although these topis were, nevertheless, ‘not quite right’. ⁴ Missionaries were somehow the same, but different.

There has been much historiographical debate about the ambiguous position of missionaries in Empire. While historians like Brian Stanley have emphasized the distinctiveness of missionaries’ priorities in India, others like Gerald Studdert-Kennedy and John and Jean Comaroff have identified similarities in methods and aim between missionaries and imperial rulers, arguing that missionaries also sought to colonize native hearts and minds. ⁵ This article explores the complexities of life as a woman missionary under the Raj at a time of rising Indian nationalism in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. Using letters, reports and photographs from the archives of the two leading Anglican missionary societies in the subcontinent – the high-Church Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) and the evangelical Church Missionary Society (CMS) – it examines the extent of women missionaries’ engagement with the imperial regime and its aims, and women’s views on nationalist politics and the ultimate realization of Independence in 1947. It asks: what did it mean to occupy the ‘no man’s land’ between ‘native’ subalterns and imperial sahibs? How did women missionaries view both the Raj and swaraj?

In 1920, there were 311 single women serving the SPG and the CMS in India, compared to 239 ordained and 31 lay male missionaries. ⁶ These women carried out educational, medical and evangelistic work in mission schools, hospitals, town bastis and villages. Some lived in communities at a central mother house, others alone or in pairs on remote outstations. The vast majority were well-educated with considerable professional qualifications and specialized missionary training. ⁷ They were, therefore, very different to the average ‘woman of the Raj’. Women missionaries subverted the ideal role of a white woman in India: as ‘incorporated’ wives, emblems of imperial honour and guardians of their race. ⁸ For the young Desirée Battye, it was undesirable to be confused with a woman missionary – to wear ‘the wrong topi’ – as it associated one with a separate and challenging set of mores, loyalties and priorities. ⁹ ‘Difference’ was less pronounced among men as male missionaries, of the Anglican variety at least, were not such problematic figures. As ordained ministers of the Church, they fitted more smoothly into the imperial hierarchy, sometimes acting as Chaplains to the British community. Equally, while it was hardly unusual for a white man to work amongst Indians, in working and living amongst Indians, women missionaries overstepped the usual, rigidly-defined boundaries for their sex.

Certainly, women missionaries were hardly frequent guests at memsahibs’ soirées. Forster’s assertion that missionaries ‘never came to the Club’ seems to have been correct. They rarely socialized with members of the imperial regime. For the most part, however, this seems to be explained more by missionary hyper-activity than by any imperial incivility. Members of St Stephen’s Community in Delhi – a group of missionary women allied to SPG – did go to stay at Viceregal Lodge in Simla. ‘[T]he garden was lovely after the dust of Delhi, and their Excellencies were most kind’, remarked Rita Jackson after one such trip in 1930. ¹⁰ Yet, such visits were exceptional and took place during holiday periods. Most of the time, women missionaries seem to have been simply too busy with work to attend social events, and missionary societies discouraged distractions. When I interviewed Dr Ruth Roseveare, a retired missionary of St Stephen’s Community in 2009, she emphasized that although she was invited to functions, these did not fit easily into the schedule of the hospital where she worked. ‘There was no time for parties’, she told me. ‘Life wasn’t like that. We were caring for people – that was the only thing that mattered’. ¹¹

Yet, women missionaries’ immersion in their evangelistic, educational and medical work did not isolate them from the Raj. Records of the CMS and SPG suggest they were hardly ‘out beyond the slaughterhouses’. Interaction with the imperial regime occurred in a number of ways.

In their reports and letters, women missionaries recorded numerous visits by imperial notables to their institutions. Viceroys, Governors, other important personages from the civil station, or more frequently, their wives, attended fetes and Guide rallies, opened new buildings, and presented prizes in mission hospitals and schools. This occurred particularly in the imperial capital of Delhi. In 1922 alone, St Stephen’s Hospital, run by women missionaries of St Stephen’s Community, was visited by Lady Rawlinson, Lady Edwards (the wife of the Surgeon General of India), and the Vicereine herself, Lady Reading. ¹² The logbook of another mission institution, Queen Mary’s School, which I consulted during a research trip to Delhi, had been signed by two other Vicereines, Lady Hardinge in 1913 and 1914, and Lady Chelmsford in 1917. ¹³ Prizes were also distributed at schools in Delhi in the 1920s and 1930s by Lady Birdwood (who was President of the Delhi Mission Association), and the Vicereines Lady Reading, Lady Irwin and Lady Willingdon.

Eminent personages also donated money. The Minutes of St Stephen’s Community, for example, record a donation of Rs10,000 in March 1931 from Lady Irwin for St Stephen’s Hospital, St Mary’s Home and work amongst women in the city. ¹⁴

Lesser mortals of the civil station also helped women missionaries’ work. They made donations of money and materials, assisted with sales of work and organized other fundraising efforts. Again, most ‘contact’ seems to have been with the infamous ‘memsahibs’ rather than their husbands. In her Annual Letter of 1926, for instance, Miss M.P. Mallinson gave a particularly detailed report to the Home Society of help given to the CMS Girls’ School in Srinagar. Officials’ wives and other residents had contributed soap, combs and towels to the missionaries’ cleanliness campaign, and a Forest Officer had donated a bathtub! Two ladies, realizing the lack of space for games at the school, had invited the girls in batches to their gardens for sports and ‘a sumptuous tea’. The daughter of the British Chaplain also helped out in the school three times a week, teaching drill, sewing and handiwork. ¹⁵

Imperial benefactors supported missionary work for a number of reasons. For a start, it was useful. Like lower-caste and casteless Indians who converted to Christianity in the ‘mass movements’ of the late-19th and early-20th century, the imperial regime recognized that missionaries were valuable ‘resource-providers’. ¹⁶ Medical work enjoyed especially approval, owing to its obvious and quantifiable achievements: numbers of patients cured, operations performed, and Indian nurses trained. Missionary medicine, and to a lesser extent missionary educational provision, supplemented the imperial government’s meagre provision of welfare, acting as an unofficial ‘moral arm’ of the regime. In 1931, for example, there were 38 mission hospitals in the Punjab, North West Frontier and Kashmir, 21 of which were staffed by women. In the same area, there were only five government hospitals. ¹⁷

Sometimes, missionary work was directly co-opted as part of the Empire’s ‘civilising mission’. Between 1919 and 1950, for example, at least nine single women missionaries of the SPG served at the government-sponsored Criminal Tribes Settlement in Hubli in the Bombay Presidency. ¹⁸ ‘Criminal tribes’ were groups identified by the British Raj for whom crime was a profession, passed on from one generation to the next. The 1911 Criminal Tribes Act had extended the powers of a previous act of 1871. It allowed local government to label any suspicious gang or tribe as ‘criminal’, and to insist that its members were registered and compelled to live in a settlement where their movements were strictly controlled. Such settlements were intended to educate and reform their inmates, providing them with alternative means of livelihood. The Governor of the Punjab, Sir John Hewett, had invited the Salvation Army to take charge of settlements in his province. In 1919, the SPG was asked by the Governor of Bombay to take charge of a new settlement at Hubli. ¹⁹

At Hubli, missionaries’ aims of teaching cleanliness, moral responsibility, and self-support to tribesman coincided with the wishes of the Raj to reform and to educate apparently unsavoury elements in Indian society. The arrangement was mutually beneficial. The government gained an eager workforce, committed to the uplift of ‘criminals’. The Mission gained financially as the salaries, outfit and passages of settlement workers were paid for by government grant. More missionaries could be in the field without cost to the Society. The scope of the Mission’s work was also increased. Indeed, Caroline Edwards, a long-serving missionary at the settlement who received both the MBE and the Kaiser-i-Hind silver medal for her work, declared in her review, Criminal Tribes at Hubli, 1920-1930, ‘we, the workers, are proud to be associated with Government . . . [W]e see in the raising of the Criminal Tribes opportunities of work for God and India such as we have not had before’. ²⁰

Mission’s obvious utility was not its only attraction for imperial benefactors, however. They were also attracted by its values. As Gerald Studdert-Kennedy ²¹ and Clive Dewey ²² have shown, Christian ideals of self-sacrifice, duty and service were at the heart of the imperial regime. Forceful evangelization was frowned upon by government officials, who feared it would incite unrest. By the 1920s, however, missionary evangelism was hardly provocative. Village ‘mass movements’ appeared to be spontaneous and indigenously-motivated rather than a result of missionary coercion or any particular evangelistic effectiveness, and mission institutions were certainly not radical harvesters of souls. ‘I can tell you of no definite conversions to Christianity’, admitted Annie Manwaring of the CMS Hospital in Quetta in her Annual Letter of 1926, ‘our patients come from such a wide-spread area… it is impossible to follow them up…’ ²³ Instead, women missionaries hoped that by teaching and setting an example of Christian service, the seeds of the Gospel would be sown, which would in time yield ‘a bountiful harvest’. ²⁴ This gentler evangelism, concentrating upon patient, philanthropic service, was both understandable and attractive to imperial officials. It tied in comfortably with the ideology of the Raj.

Yet, women missionaries’ own assessments of their position in India were somewhat different from the perceptions of their compatriots in the imperial regime. One particularly extraordinary instance of missionary service to the Raj provides an insight into their unique viewpoints: the case of Lilian Starr. The daughter of missionaries, Mrs Starr had started work for CMS in 1913 as a nurse at the Afghan Mission Hospital in Peshawar. In 1915, she married her colleague, the head doctor, Vernon Harold Starr. Three years later, however, Dr Starr was murdered by two Afridi men who had come to his bungalow at night, apparently needing help. ²⁵ Lilian went to serve at an Indian Military Hospital in Cairo and then returned to England, before persuading CMS to let her return to work in Peshawar in 1920. ²⁶ In April 1923, there was another atrocity on the Frontier. When Major Archibald Jenner Ellis, a British army officer, was away on duty, Afridi tribesmen entered his bungalow at Kohat, murdered his wife and kidnapped his 15-year-old daughter, Mollie. The Chief Commissioner of the North West Frontier Province, Sir John Maffey, suspected the raid had been carried out by the notorious criminals, Ajab and Shazada Khan, in retaliation for the imprisonment of their fellow gang members for stealing rifles from a Frontier Police Post. He also suspected Mollie had been taken by the gang into the mountainous Tirah region near the Afghan border. This was tribal territory – the frontier tribes would not betray the gang and if a British force attempted to rescue Mollie, the gang could easily slip away into Afghanistan. Maffey decided, therefore, to send a highly-unusual and controversial rescue party of Afridi tribesmen, loyal to the Raj, and Mrs Lilian Starr!

With her knowledge of tribal languages and culture, her nursing skills and her fearless nature, Maffey felt Lilian Starr was an ideal choice. Her gender was also tactically beneficial. The rescue party had to pass through five different tribal territories on the way to Khanki Bazar, where it was rumoured Miss Ellis was being held. Mrs Starr’s presence was used as a lever to cross tribal boundaries. It was stressed that in Islamic law, women were not harmed, and foreigners were traditionally welcomed as guests. At 7 o’clock in the morning on 22 April, Lilian Starr was finally permitted to see a tired but unharmed Mollie Ellis in the house of Akhunzada, the mullah of Khanki Bazar. Negotiations then proceeded for Mollie’s release. At one point, feeling that they were being deceived by the negotiators, the Khan brothers burst into the room where Mollie and Mrs Starr were. In the subsequent confrontation, Lilian deployed her knowledge of Islamic custom. It was, she pointed out, against custom for unknown men to enter the women’s quarters of a house, especially a mullah’s house where they were under his protection. This incident angered the mullah who cursed the brothers and insisted Mollie Ellis be escorted out of his territory. By 23 April, the Afridi negotiators had reached an agreement with the kidnappers, and Mollie Ellis was safely reunited with her father. ²⁷

Lilian Starr’s part in the rescue highlights the complexities of the relationship between missionaries and the British Raj. The story was printed worldwide and Lilian was heralded as ‘the Heroine of Peshawar’. ²⁸ She was awarded the highest imperial honour – the Kaisar-i-Hind medal, first class – as well as the life-saving medal of St John of Jerusalem. In his forward to her published account, Tales of Tirah and Lesser Tibet, the British Commissioner, Sir John Maffey, wrote effusively of her great service to the Empire. When ‘[a]ll the King’s horses and all the King’s men could only make matters worse, and British prestige shone dim’, Mrs Starr ‘[w]ith the charm of her fair face and a woman’s course . . . carried our standard for us behind those iron hills where no Englishman may pass’. Not only had she rescued Mollie Ellis, but she had ‘made a British mark on the heart of Tirah better than all the drums and trampling of an army corps’. ²⁹ Lilian herself had not been under any illusions about the wider political significance of the rescue mission. She had been informed of this by Maffey at their initial meeting, ³⁰ and, at the end of her book, she gave details of subsequent steps taken by the British to pacify and better control the frontier tribal regions. ³¹ She stressed her gladness to have been of use to the British administration. ³² Indeed, her book was dedicated to Sir John Maffey ‘in gratitude to him for giving me the opportunity of rendering service’. ³³

This sentence is particularly illuminating. It is clear that Lilian Starr saw the rescue mission as providing her with much more than the opportunity to serve the British Raj. Her celebrity in its aftermath meant she was offered the chance to lecture in America. CMS pressed her to return to England to take part in its new recruitment campaign, but she was determined to stay in Peshawar. ³⁴ She argued her presence was all the more needed now. She did not want to waste the opportunity of being the first Western woman in Afridi tribal territory. During the rescue mission, she had seized every chance to talk to Afridi women and to distribute medicine to those in need. She hoped more Afridis from Tirah would now be encouraged to come to the mission hospital for medical treatment and spiritual teaching. For Lilian Starr, therefore, the trip into tribal territory was an opportunity to expand the scope of the Mission. She did not see it as an act of heroism, but ‘literally just the extension of the normal motive and habit of a nursing-sister’ and a missionary into a region of dramatic urgency and peril. ³⁵ Sir John Maffey had enabled her to render service, not only to the British Empire, but to the Afridis themselves, to CMS, and, of course, to God.

While saving a kidnapped British girl from Afridi tribal territory could be counted as part of usual missionary service, however, supporting a crumbling and increasingly unpopular Empire was a different matter. The effects upon women missionaries’ work of the Indian nationalist campaigns of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s varied depending upon the geography of their Missions. Both CMS and SPG were affected by the Gandhian satyagraha in protest against the Rowlatt Bills and the consequent outbreak of unrest in the Punjab in 1919. CMS was more seriously affected, as it had a station in the storm-centre, Amritsar. The Mission Church was burned down and the book depot and pastor’s house destroyed. ³⁶ The compound of the CMS Middle School for girls was stormed. One of its missionary teachers, Helen Scott, took the girls to hide in an enclosed bathing space. ‘The mob went straight to the big building, set fire to many things, broke open cupboards and desks got bundles of the children’s clothing poured petrol over them and burnt them’, she reported to CMS. At last, the police were able to get through to the school, followed by the Deputy Commissioner and an escort of cavalry, and the mob was dispersed. Miss Scott, the other teachers and the girls were taken to Amritsar Fort for safety, alongside other missionaries from the city. ³⁷ Women from surrounding out-stations were also evacuated to safer places. ³⁸

Amritsar was, of course, the site of the notorious attack upon Marcella Sherwood, a missionary of CEZMS, who had been pursued by a crowd of rioters, knocked off her bicycle and badly beaten. In consequence, General Dyer had issued his infamous ‘crawling order’. He had also used the ‘outrage’ perpetrated against Miss Sherwood as justification for firing upon the crowd at Jallianwalla Bagh. Miss Sherwood lived with two CMS missionaries: Miss Allinson and Miss Claydon. The latter sent an account to Mr Gough, giving details of the attack upon her colleague ‘as I heard them from her own lips’. ³⁹

Women missionaries’ accounts of the anti-Rowlatt agitation provide important indications of their beliefs, priorities, and self-perceptions. The unrest in the Punjab, the attack on Miss Sherwood, the declaration of martial law, and, of course, the Amritsar massacre itself, were discussed in newspapers all over the world. It is curious, therefore, that there was almost no discussion of these events in women missionaries’ letters and reports. One would imagine women missionaries to have been especially concerned by violence against one of their number, yet only one of the CMS and SPG accounts mentioned the attack on Miss Sherwood.

The language used in the few existing accounts is interesting. Women missionaries hardly mentioned the motivations of the rioters. Instead, they were constantly described and depersonalized as an unruly, anonymous ‘mob’. In most cases, women differentiated this ‘mob’ from the majority of Indians amongst whom they lived and worked. Helen Scott of the CMS, for example, described how, when hiding from the rioters, she and the Indian schoolgirls had united in prayer as fellow Christians asking for God’s help. ‘Even during their fear’, she wrote, ‘the children and teachers several times over tried to hide me, or get me to hide myself, for they said, “They will kill you first”’. ⁴⁰ While Miss Scott probably recorded this to show the consideration of the Indians with whom she worked, she also highlighted (perhaps unconsciously) her ‘difference’ from them. Although they were fellow Christians, the Indians recognized Miss Scott’s race set her apart.

Although women missionaries recorded the wrongs wreaked by the mob upon imperial and missionary institutions, little was mentioned about wrongs committed against Indians or the actions of British troops in quelling disorder. There was complete silence about Dyer’s notorious actions at Jallianwalla Bagh. Deaconess Kate Hemery of St Hilda’s Society in Lahore (a female community allied to SPG) is one of the few who suggested that Indians may have had some justification for their actions. The Deaconess clearly associated herself with the British administration, using the word ‘we’ when describing British military action. She accepted Indian concerns that the British would ‘hate them after this’ without appreciating that the events of 1919 might have caused substantial Indian ill-feeling. Yet, she did acknowledge the British had ‘been to blame on many occasions’ for their treatment of Indians. ‘The way some English treat the Indian fills one with shame’, she wrote, ‘. . . they forget it is not forgotten and in the case of any trouble, those of us who have treated them in this way cannot hope to be spared’. ⁴¹

It is also significant that while British troops were responsible for the restoration of order and, in many cases, the evacuation of women from places of danger, they were not mentioned in great detail in women missionaries’ accounts. Instead, women wrote of the divine protection they had received: ‘that Great Unseen Hand that seemed to stop the on rush of the maddened mob as they came on to kill us’. ⁴² Their response to the violence was also rooted in their Christianity. The conclusion to Miss Scott’s account of the attack on the CMS Middle School in Amritsar is particularly striking. She noted that both the Middle School and the Alexandra High School had been indefinitely closed, meaning missionary work in the city had ‘suffered sorely’. She felt, however, ‘this will be, under God a strengthening of the Christian life of our community and that God is working His Purpose out . . .’ (emphasis in original). ⁴³

Apart from the disturbances in the Punjab in 1919, subsequent Gandhian non-cooperation in the 1920s and civil disobedience in the 1930s had ‘remarkably little effect’ upon women missionaries. ⁴⁴ In the majority of places, their work continued as usual. Gandhi’s ‘Quit India’ campaign of 1942 was also little mentioned. Only five of the 34 reports submitted to SPG made any reference to unrest. ⁴⁵ Queen Mary’s School in Delhi did suffer from disturbances. A ‘howling’ mob invaded the compound and the girls had been evacuated. ⁴⁶ It is difficult to tell whether other mission institutions in Delhi were also affected. Interestingly, the section of Christine Froggatt’s report dealing with the disturbances at Queen Mary’s is asterisked, and, at the end of the report, Gladys Mowll, the Acting Head of St Stephen’s Community, has written: ‘N.B. Nothing in connection with the riots in Delhi should be put into print or quoted as the Head of Mission would strongly disapprove’. ⁴⁷ The Head of Mission was an Indian, Canon Arabindo Nath Mukerji. Perhaps his disapproval prevented other missionaries in Delhi from writing of the effects of violence. Mukerji may have feared negative images of India would provoke a decline in foreign financial support for the Mission. Alternatively, Miss Mowll may have been self-censoring, frightened of offending her Indian colleague. CMS work seems to have been equally free from disruption. The exception was St John’s College, Agra, which was closed for a month when students went on a sympathy strike over the arrest of Congress leaders. ⁴⁸

In all the accounts of nationalist disturbances, it is interesting to note that women missionaries almost never made any political statements. They hardly mentioned Gandhi or commented upon the legitimacy of the nationalist campaigns. Their silence is especially startling considering the role of missionaries was much debated in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s as Indians attempted to define ‘the Nation’. The new ‘politics of numbers’ meant Christian conversion was feared by Hindu, Muslim and Sikh leaders. Several missionary celebrities, including Charles Freer Andrews and Bishop Samuel Azariah, debated publicly with the Mahatma. In defining ideals of citizenship, Gandhi, Nehru, the ‘untouchable’ leader, Bhimrao Ambedkar, and reformist groups like the Arya and Brahmo Samajs, engaged with missionary notions of social service and uplift. ⁴⁹

For a start, women missionaries’ reticence might be explained by a concerted policy on the part of mission societies to keep out of politics in the countries in which they worked. This had been advocated by the Edinburgh World Missionary Conference in 1910. ⁵⁰ Societies may have feared missionaries’ involvement would draw attention to their foreignness, fuelling nationalist campaigns that Christianity was denationalizing. Missionaries may have been deterred from giving their opinions in letters and reports because they knew they could not be published. It was not impossible, however, for missionaries to raise controversial matters in these documents. They did so often, simply marking contentious sections as ‘not for publication’. Perhaps they feared the Society’s disapproval if they went against its policy of political neutrality. Delays in the postal service between India and England might also have meant missionaries were reluctant to comment on ever-changing political circumstances.

The rare occasions upon which women missionaries gave an opinion of Indian nationalism are particularly illuminating therefore. The Minute Books of St Stephen’s Community provide us with one important indication of missionary attitudes. In a meeting of 7 November 1930, the Community agreed to sign its assent to a letter to be sent to the British press by various missionary societies on the occasion of the Round Table Conference. This letter attested that the present ‘misunderstanding, distrust and bitterness’ in India was due to ‘the growing sense of ignominy in the minds of Indian people that the destiny of the nation lies in the hands of another people’. ‘To us the national awakening is a very real thing’, the letter continued, ‘and it is our belief that no settlement will be satisfactory that does not respect Indian sentiment and make for the recovery of national self-respect. India is now of age and can speak for herself’. ⁵¹

This letter is especially interesting for three reasons. It is important to highlight the subtleties of the language used. Firstly, the Christian perspective and motivations of its signatories were clearly defined. The letter admitted that missionaries usually kept apart from politics: ‘We are not politicians, and we realise that party politics as such lie outside our sphere . . .’ Its authors declared they had been compelled to write because the present movement transcended politics. The misunderstandings and bitterness caused had had a profound impact upon Indian life. The letter also proposed explicitly Christian solutions to the unrest. Its signatories asserted their ‘deepest Christian conviction’ that Indians should be allowed to decide their future constitution. They also argued for ‘an adequate and final solution’ of the political problems, ‘a wide diffusion of a more Christian spirit of good-will, and a restoration of mutual respect and trust’. Secondly, and linked to the first point, it is noteworthy that the letter did not propose any political solutions for India. Although its signatories were in favour of allowing Indians to speak for themselves, this was in the context of peaceful negotiations with the British Government, where ‘Indian representatives’ had been chosen by the latter. They did not endorse Gandhian methods of protest or Congress demands for complete Independence. Lastly, there seems to have been no lengthy discussion of the letter and its contents by the missionaries of St Stephen’s Community. The Minute Book records the letter was read aloud and it was agreed that the Community should sign. While the missionaries of St Stephen’s engaged in long debates about their work and their Rule of Life, they do not appear to have thought it necessary to discuss politics. Indeed, the letter was the last point to be raised in their meeting, suggesting other matters were considered of greater importance. This was the only time politics was mentioned in the Minutes of the Community between 1917 and 1950.

Silence over the nature and legitimacy of British governance in India also remained all-pervading in missionary reports and letters of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. The only exception to this is a report from 1942 by Winifred Briscoe, an SPG missionary at the Criminal Tribes Settlement in Hubli. Miss Briscoe candidly expressed her sense of guilt at being connected with imperial rule in India. She described her disappointment at the failure of the Cripps proposal. ‘I felt so happy when I read [it]’, she recalled.

At last I thought we are doing the right thing. I remember . . . for the first time feeling that I should no longer be in the miserable position of being one of the ruling race who was ruling over a people who bitterly resent it, and who are panting for the freedom, we so talk about.

She recounted how the police in Hubli had been obliged to fire to disperse a crowd of protestors – two young boys were killed and a 14-year-old boy lost his leg. ‘I happened one day to be in the hospital where he was and I saw him’, she wrote. ‘I felt somehow guilty . . . I felt that however mistaken the Congress and other Indian people may now be, things need never have got to this state if we British in India had behaved differently, and had had a different attitude’. Miss Briscoe had begun to realize that her Indian friends had grievances that she, as a British person, could not begin to understand. She had been particularly shocked when a ‘most delightful’ Brahmin convert of high standing had objected to having a victory sign painted on his door as he did not think it was necessarily right for the British to win the war. Following her shock, she had considered why Indians might think like this: ‘I think a good many do feel that if we win we shall be more uppish than ever’. ⁵² It is likely that Miss Briscoe’s awareness of politics and her feelings of complicity in the actions of the Raj were heightened by the fact that, as a missionary of the Criminal Tribes Settlement, she was in direct government service. Once again, missionaries’ location seems to have affected their involvement in politics.

In general terms, it seems women missionaries’ attitudes to the British Raj and to Indian nationalism were influenced by complex and, sometimes contradictory, factors. On the whole, they kept apart from politics. It may have been mission policy to do so, but even in private letters and Minute books, political issues were hardly discussed. ⁵³ Their reticence seems to have stemmed not so much from adherence to a deliberate policy of non-interference as from their disinterest and parochialism. It was only when their work was directly disrupted by nationalist upheaval that they made any political comment. This happened rarely after the initial waves of anti-British protest in the Punjab in 1919, as violence became inter-communal. Geography was also important: women missionaries in the South wrote almost nothing about nationalism.

For the majority of women, Evelyn Ashdown’s remark in 1930 about Queen Mary’s School: ‘we are too busy to take part in politics’ seems to have been the rule. ⁵⁴ Missionaries wrote instead about immediate, local affairs – their daily work of preaching, teaching and caring for the sick. This suggests that consciously, and subconsciously, they sought to identify themselves, not with their compatriots, the office holders of Empire, but with the Indian subalterns with and amongst whom they lived and worked. Localized, Indian concerns were their concerns. Indeed, Miss Stuttaford of the SPG explicitly stated in her report of 1930 from Karanji in the Nasik diocese:

The crash of air ship, the Round Table Conference, these big matters leave us unmoved. The failure of the cotton crop, the price of corn, the building of a bridge or new road which means work, these are the things that matter. (emphasis in original) ⁵⁵

Women’s apoliticism and parochialism were also consequences of their gendered status in imperial and mission hierarchies. In the management of the Church and the mission society, as in the Raj, men held official power. Between 1929 and 1930, for example, three CMS women missionaries (and one Indian woman worker) sat upon the Executive Committee of the Church and Mission Council for the Punjab compared to 14 men. ⁵⁶ Women’s representation upon Anglican diocesan boards was also minimal. Even in the 1940s, there were still only two or three female attendees at meetings of the Madras Diocesan Council. ⁵⁷ Excluded from male-dominated administrative networks, and therefore travelling rarely from their posts, it is unsurprising that women missionaries focused upon their immediate parochial surroundings.

On the rare occasions when women missionaries did remark upon politics, they seemed reluctant to condemn the British Government of India. Their statements do suggest, however, that while they did not endorse Gandhian methods, they were sensitive to India’s awakening to national consciousness and in favour of self-determination in the political sphere. Here, perhaps, missionaries’ actions in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s can speak louder than their words. In the aftermath of the Edinburgh World Missionary Conference of 1910, missionaries pursued a strategy of ‘Indianization’ in their medical, educational and evangelistic work. This new policy was directly linked to Empire and the rise of nationalism. The Conference had acknowledged the difficulties that nationalist movements posed to global missionary work. It emphasized, however, that such movements should not be condemned. Instead, their presence should lead missionaries to a greater realization that their far reaching aim was to ‘decrease’, so that the ‘native’ Church could ‘increase’. Measures needed to be taken to transfer administrative power and financial control of ‘native’ Churches to indigenous Christians. ‘Native’ workers needed to be trained and promoted to positions of authority and responsibility in missionary educational, medical and evangelistic work. In 1844, Henry Venn, the Secretary of the Church Missionary Society, had declared missionaries’ ultimate aim to be ‘euthanasia’. This was reiterated. Missionaries would render themselves redundant, leaving in their place a vibrant, self-governing, genuinely Indian Church. ⁵⁸

The realization of this strategy of ‘Indianization’ was undoubtedly a slow and complicated process. It was not until the 1940s that ‘native’ teachers were promoted to the positions of Principal in mission schools, and it took even longer for missionary control to be ceded in hospitals. Women missionaries struggled to translate their Western institutions, methods and ideas in an Indian context. ⁵⁹ Yet, missionaries’ attempts towards this end in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s show that they were not insensitive to Indian wishes for self-government. It is important to recognize, however, that their policy of ‘Indianization’ was subtly different from the coterminous and contemporaneous government strategy of ‘Indianization’ pursued by the British Raj during the same period. This latter sought to transfer imperial authority into ‘native’ hands in the Indian Civil Service and military, in order to prepare Indians for the eventual responsibility of running their own nation state. The intention behind the ‘Indianization’ of the Mission was not primarily political, but religious. Missionaries wished to prepare Indians for the responsibility of running their own national Church – a Church capable of caring for the sick and teaching the lost. Yet, they did recognise the political benefits to creating such a Church. They believed that if Indian Christians could take spiritual responsibility for themselves, they would be better able to cope with the onset of political self-governance in the future. Despite being greatly outnumbered in an independent India, they would be able to defend Christian interests.

If women missionaries’ responses to Indian demands for self-government in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s were shaped by their Christianity, therefore, so too were their reactions to Independence itself. The subsequent outbreak of violence and the upheavals of Partition severely affected missionary work in Delhi and the Punjab. In their letters to England, for example, the women missionaries of St Stephen’s Community described in great detail the crisis around them. ‘[T]rains are being attacked in every direction near Delhi, travelling is impossible’, wrote Evelyn Ashdown on 4 September 1947. ‘We are under a perpetual curfew, and Delhi is swarming with Punjab refugees all vowing vengeance and taking it out on any harmless M[uslim] they can get hold of . . . It is really massacre going on all round’. ⁶⁰ The Mission’s servants, Mir Jan, Mohammed Jan, and their families, had been murdered. St Stephen’s Hospital was closed, as a group of Hindus threatened to attack it for treating Muslim patients. Miss Ashdown and other members of the Community went to help at the refugee camps.

Once again, despite describing the disturbances, women missionaries made little comment upon politics or upon the legitimacy of Independence itself, even in their personal letters. Instead, they interpreted the upheaval in religious terms. Dr Ruth Roseveare of St Stephen’s Hospital in Delhi drew comfort amidst ‘the vast horror of fear and suffering’ in her knowledge of ‘a new Kingdom’ of Heaven in contrast to the ‘littleness of the present time’. ‘It is we who are on the march to the promised land, who here on earth find no permanent dwelling place, whose loyalty is not here but whose citizenship in heaven’, she urged. Dr Roseveare believed the message of Christ: ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life’ took on a new and practical meaning amidst such ‘Satanic evil’ where men had rejected God for ‘love of self and man’s kingdoms’. She hoped some, in the midst of the chaos, would find Christ’s way. ⁶¹ For the majority of missionaries, once again the focus was upon practicalities and opportunities, not politics. They simply tried to carry on their work as best they could. Indeed, the minutes of the first meeting of St Stephen’s Community since Independence in November 1947 did not even mention the change in governance or the upheaval in Delhi. They simply recorded, as usual, the movement of Community members, plans for the Annual Retreat, and discussions over the Provident Fund! ⁶²

In conclusion, far from being isolated from the British Raj, women missionaries had many connections to and similarities with the imperial regime. Although they were hardly the toast of ‘pukka’ imperial society, and would not have wanted to be such, their medical and educational work, in particular, was often co-opted as part of imperial welfare provision, and their ideology of service shared much with officials of the Empire. In the eyes of Indians, they were surely virtually indistinguishable from the Raj due to their race and nationality, their Western living conditions, clothing and behaviour, and their receipt of imperial honours and patronage. Missionaries almost never criticized the imperial regime or remarked upon the legitimacy of Indian nationalist demands for self-government. By removing themselves from high politics, and focusing upon their immediate, local work, women missionaries (whether consciously or unconsciously) acknowledged their problematic and conflicting temporal ties – caught between Indian subalterns and imperial sahibs. Their apoliticism and parochialism does not reveal them to have been hostile to the nationalist aim of swaraj, however, but merely to have promoted it from a distinctive, Christian perspective. Regardless of who was in government, missionaries sought to establish a vibrant and responsible Christian community in an independent, self-ruling Indian Church.

By promoting this distinctive aim, missionaries ultimately differentiated themselves from the departing Raj at Independence. Unlike their compatriots in imperial service, they were not rendered redundant by the end of Empire. Swaraj in the Indian Church had not yet been attained – the need to serve the Empire of Christ and to train conscientious Indian Christians persisted. Just as it had enjoyed imperial support, missionaries’ medical, educational and welfare work was valued and respected by India’s new leaders, in particular Jawaharlal Nehru. Their usefulness as ‘resource-providers’ was once again recognized. Instead of Vicereines, it was now Congressmen and women who visited missionary institutions. ⁶³

Women missionaries themselves were not frightened or unhappy at the end of Raj and the coming of swaraj. Though they were sad at the departure of old friends from the civil station, frustrated by the inconsistencies of new government ministries, and concerned at the potential curtailing of religious teaching in their institutions, particularly in Islamic Pakistan, they embraced the challenges, ‘unlimited potentialities’ ⁶⁴ and opportunities of Independence. They, and Christianity itself, would no longer be connected with a foreign, oppressive power. In the words of Miss Atkins of the CMS, they were positive that ‘separation from British Imperialism [would] mean a new birth, a new freedom, and a new inspiration’. ⁶⁵