“Making His way to the heart of India”: British Missionaries, Indian Nationalism, and Religious Belonging in Post-World War I India

Abstract

In 1929, Mary Gardner, a British missionary worker in Kurseong, India, wrote home to her church secretary describing a particularly difficult day during her work in village houses, schools, and mission homes. She outlined instances of child abandonment, incest, and abuse, but ended on a note of hopefulness when explaining the redeeming nature of her society’s missionary homes: “What a blessing the Homes are to poor, unwanted children!” Despite this optimism, in the same letter Gardner angrily criticized the Swaraj movement and decried the “deplorable state” of India in the midst of increasing Indian nationalism.1 Her tone, shifting from faith in her mission’s redeeming promise to fear regarding alternate movements of belonging, reveals some of the many tensions of British identity within the context of interwar fears of imperial decline and colonial nationalism. Following the brutal conflict, Britons across the empire grappled with their imperial identities as the muscular Christianity and competitive imperialism of the Edwardian period shifted to more subtle articulations of Commonwealth, trusteeship, and internationalism. During the interwar period, despite a widespread desire to return to “normalcy”