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

Abstract

This article explores the complex position of British women missionaries under the Raj at a time of rising Indian nationalism in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. By 1920, 311 unmarried female recruits were serving the two leading Anglican societies in India – the high-Church Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) and the evangelical Church Missionary Society (CMS) – as opposed to 270 men. Although they transgressed imperial norms of ‘pukka’ female behaviour, these single women had numerous ties to the British regime. Missionary and imperial ideals of service intertwined, and mission institutions frequently enjoyed imperial patronage. Sometimes, as at the Criminal Tribes Settlement in Hubli, women missionaries were even employed in direct government service. Using letters and reports, this article examines women missionaries’ negotiation of their complicated status, traversing the gap between the ruling race and its awakening subjects. It highlights their reticence with regards to all-India nationalist politics and their concentration on immediate, local affairs, arguing that such apoliticism and parochialism were consequences of their distinctive, gendered position within mission and imperial hierarchies. Their responses to nationalism and Independence were also conditioned by their Christianity, in particular their ultimate aim to ‘Indianize’ the Mission, promoting swaraj – not necessarily for India as a nation – but for the indigenous Indian Church. After Independence, this ongoing work, and the ambiguities of women missionaries’ connections to Empire, legitimated their continued presence in the subcontinent.