New Delhi, Feb 3 (IANS) By the second decade of the 19th century, the British East India Company (EIC) had ceased to be a mere commercial concern. It was a staggering, debt-ridden empire, ruling over a vast population of seventy to eighty millions of souls.
The tranquility of this immense possession, according to those who governed it, rested not solely on the sheer physical force of its armies, but on a highly volatile mix of “moral influence, and in a great degree even by prejudice”.
In this fragile, politically combustible atmosphere, where governance was openly described by critics as a despotism maintained by rulers who were “despots over” the governed, the issue of religious activity became explosive.
The EIC’s survival depended on maintaining a delicate, artificial political stability, and the introduction of unrestrained Christian proselytisation threatened to ignite the very social structure the Company strove to uphold.
The moment of reckoning arrived with the approaching renewal of the EIC’s exclusive Charter in 1814. This crisis allowed various British domestic factions — manufacturers desperate for open trade, London ship-owners fighting Indian competition, and crucially, evangelical and religious societies — to press their agendas upon a struggling imperial power.
On February 19, 1813, the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge (SSPCK) formally approached the House of Commons.
Their petition, presented by Mr. Wilberforce, sought parliamentary provision in the Charter renewal to allow them to pursue their spiritual duty in the EIC’s territories.
For the inhabitants of India, already subjected to a system widely criticised as being “founded upon blood and supported by injustice”, the language of this petition provided a searing indictment of British cultural arrogance, confirming that the colonial project viewed the subjects not merely as economic resources, but as morally deficient people in desperate need of foreign “civilisation”.
I. The Insult of “Deplorable Ignorance”
The SSPCK, an organisation incorporated in 1709 by Queen Anne’s charter to promote Christian knowledge, viewed India as the perfect field for their efforts, entirely “agreeably to the object of the royal charter”. They highlighted their success in diffusing “the blessings of civilisation and industry, subordination to lawful authority, and attachment to the Constitution and government of the British empire” in Scotland and America. The petition sought to export this civilising process to the Indian territories.
The language used by the Society to describe the Indian populace, however, was saturated with profound condescension, revealing the cultural superiority complex that underpinned the missionary drive: “That while the natives of those countries have long been and still continue in a state of deplorable ignorance, and addicted to various idolatrous and superstitious usages of the most degrading and horrible description”.
This description of “deplorable ignorance” and “idolatrous and superstitious usages” stood in stark contrast to the economic and political realities the British themselves had imposed upon India. While the SSPCK sought to remedy spiritual darkness, the EIC was simultaneously presiding over systemic exploitation and financial crisis:
Financial Bankruptcy: The EIC was not a viable commercial entity, being in a “distressed state” and potentially “15 millions worse than nothing”. Its immense territorial revenues were “largely consumed by the costs of the British administration and its military activities”. By 1813, the debt contracted for political purposes stood at nearly £26,000,000.
2. Judicial Paralysis: The courts, supposedly established to provide “security for persons and property”, were revealed to be in a “deplorable state”. Civil justice was “virtually denied to suitors” because the administration imposed exorbitant fees (up to 50 per cent on claims) and required stamped paper for all documents, making it “almost impossible to obtain justice”. The cost of administering justice in British India was allegedly “higher than in the whole of Europe”.
3. Informational Lockdown: Far from operating an enlightened government, the administration maintained a despotic system where the press was “perfectly fettered” by requiring the “sanction of the secretary of the government”. This censorship was necessary to “keep the people of India in darkness as to the nature of their government” and prevent publications that might reveal “the peculiar tenure by which the British government held their power”.
From the Indian perspective, the true “deplorable ignorance” lay not in the indigenous culture, but in the rulers’ refusal to acknowledge the systemic misery, debt, and political fraud they perpetrated. The very year of the petition (1813) was a time when Parliament was awash in criticism of the EIC for its economic monopoly which restricted Indian potential and created an “unnatural and extremely hard, if not an unjust arrangement” by allowing foreigners to trade more freely with British India than British subjects.
II. The Governor’s Fear: Defending Despotism with Prejudice
The EIC’s restrictions on missionary activity were a calculated political measure of self-preservation, stemming from an overriding fear of native resistance. The Charter Act of 1813 had to address this, as Parliament contained influential evangelicals — like Mr. Wilberforce — who pressed for provisions to allow missions.
The ruling power believed that their empire, acquired partly by conquest, compact, forfeiture, and even “fraud”, was too fragile to withstand ideological challenge. This fear dictated a policy of radical non-interference in religious life, a policy defended in Parliament by R. Dundas and others.
The core justification for the restrictions rested on the recognition that “it was the substratum of the British government in India to uphold the laws and usages of the natives”.
Preventing Irritation and Hostility: Dundas confirmed the government’s duty “to suppress a work calculated to excite irritation and hostility”. He recalled a case where certain persons, though acting with “most laudable intentions”, had printed a treatise containing “animadversions of the most severe nature on the religion and customs of the natives”. Suppression was necessary to prevent a religious backlash.
2. Avoiding Tumultuous Proceedings: The government believed that abstaining “from openly exerting itself to further the cause of Christianity” was necessary, “lest they should be represented to the people as attempting to impose upon them a new religion”, which could lead to “tumultuous proceedings”.
3. The Political Necessity of Darkness: Critics seized upon this defensive posture. Mr. Whitbread argued that to support a “political despotism”, the government would “not let them have the light of that Gospel through which they hoped for salvation themselves”. Mr. Hutchinson observed that the aim was “to keep the people of India in darkness as to the nature of their government”.
The EIC’s defense thus revealed a profound cynicism: Religious tolerance was not granted out of genuine respect, but was cynically deployed as a political weapon to maintain “tranquillity” and prevent the massive, sixty-million-strong subject population from recognising the vulnerability of the “one million” British rulers. The British administration, facing economic collapse and military strain (such as the war against the Pindarries which led to conflicts with the Mahratta powers), could not risk any internal ideological fracture.
III. The Irony of Exclusion: Scottish Subjects Denied Their Faith
The SSPCK petition and a related appeal from the Church of Scotland highlighted a cruel irony in the EIC’s system: the religious restrictions primarily victimised not only the targeted Indian population but also the British subjects themselves.
The SSPCK noted that “many of our own countrymen, members of the church of Scotland, employed in the different civil and military departments in India, are precluded from enjoying the ordinances of Christianity agreeably to the forms of the Church to which they are attached”.
The EIC’s control over entry into India was managed through a strict licensing system. Lord Melville explained that while “most perfect toleration prevailed in these parts of the British dominions”, Scottish Church members found it “almost impossible to exercise their functions”. This was because the Company, out of zeal for the Established (Anglican) Church, was “not in the habit of granting (licenses) to such individuals, except they were of the established Church”.
This demonstrates that the Charter system created a powerful, centralised regulatory body (the EIC) whose control extended beyond commerce and governance into the personal spiritual lives of its European employees. The exclusion was not just anti-proselytisation; it was a form of political and religious discrimination enforced by the Company’s authority.
The SSPCK specifically prayed Parliament to provide, in the new Charter Bill, that its members be allowed to afford “religious worship and instruction to our countrymen members of the church of Scotland, who may reside in that part of the British empire”. A separate Church of Scotland petition had also sought provisions for its members to practice their national religion.
The debate made it clear: the EIC’s monopoly was about total control. It determined who could trade (excluding British private merchants in favour of foreigners), who could publish (requiring sanction from the government secretary), and even who could travel to India to practice their faith (excluding non-Anglican clergy).
IV. The Paradox of Colonial “Civilisation”
The SSPCK framed the propagation of Christian knowledge as disseminating the “blessings of civilisation and industry”. This rhetoric perfectly aligned with the broader British belief that their rule, despite its political shortcomings, was a force for modernisation.
Yet, this supposed civilising mission was, from the Indian perspective, deeply paradoxical and subservient to colonial goals:
Subjugation via Education: When missionaries were finally granted official permission after the Charter Act of 1813, they viewed education as a primary tool for cultural change, intending to “Christianising and ‘civilising’ the natives”. These efforts, while sometimes focused on social reforms (like the abolition of Sati), were fundamentally intertwined with the “overarching goals of colonial control, economic exploitation, and cultural subjugation”.
2. Economic Ruin: The economic policy of “colonial underdevelopment” had actively “dismantled India’s pre-existing industrial capacity” and ensured India became a “subservient supplier of raw materials and a captive market for British manufactured goods”. Policies like the exploitative land revenue system led directly to “widespread peasant misery and agrarian stagnation”. The British actively undermined Indian industries, such as shipbuilding, to protect London domestic interests, in an act seen as “injustice and oppression”. The irony of missionaries claiming to spread “industry” while the governing power deliberately destroyed Indian industry was stark.
3.Suppression of Local Agency: The political necessity of suppressing dissent led to the stifling of indigenous intellectual and political responses. The press was fettered, and any information that might empower the natives was withheld. This denial of “moral and political information” was essential to prevent a collective anti-colonial consciousness from forming.
The missionary drive, with its insistence that Indian life was characterised by “deplorable ignorance”, provided a moral justification for the continuation of a rule that was, by the British critics’ own admission, fiscally corrupt and profoundly unjust. It allowed the EIC to frame its military expansion (like the “irrepressible expansion” seen in the Mahratta wars) as necessary for civilising a benighted land, diverting attention from the massive Indian debt incurred for “the defence and protection of the British possessions”.
V. Conclusion: The Perpetuation of Controlled Interaction
The 1813 debate over missionary impediments, ignited by the petition from the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge, solidified the British imperial strategy regarding India. Parliament’s eventual, cautious relaxation of the missionary licensing system (part of the larger Charter Act) was a compromise that sought to placate powerful evangelical interests in Britain without immediately jeopardising the EIC’s carefully managed despotism.
The controversy confirmed that the EIC’s authority was non-negotiable. Whether through immediate embarkation for Europe for a dissenting journalist, the imposition of exorbitant fees for civil justice, or the denial of licenses to non-Anglican clergy, the administration was designed to maintain total control over movement, information, and ideology.
The description of Indians as being in a state of “deplorable ignorance” was ultimately a self-serving myth. The true ignorance was the willful political and intellectual blindness of the EIC regime, which believed it could maintain stability by suppressing facts about its own financial insolvency, military vulnerability, and the systemic injustice underpinning its governance.
The decision to impose restrictions on missions was the EIC’s attempt to manage the immense potential energy stored in the clash between British imperial ambition and Indian cultural and social integrity. It confirmed that the EIC preferred a silent, predictable subject to a potentially enlightened, and therefore rebellious, one. In the context of the “Drain of Wealth” and the “deplorable state of jurisprudence”, the most profound freedom denied to the Indian population was not merely the freedom to hear foreign sermons, but the freedom to organise, to communicate, and to legally challenge the unjust arrangement of their foreign rulers.
(The Author is a researcher specialising in Indian history and contemporary geo-political affairs)
–IANS
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