Anna V. Bochkovskaya Converting to the Thought, Ideals and Principles of the Christian Religion: Educational Activities of Protestant Missionaries in North-West India (First Half of the 19th century)

Abstract

By the 1830s, Punjab, or the Land of Five Rivers, in the northwest of the South Asian subcontinent, remained out of the reach of Christian missionaries. With the establishment of the Ludhiana Protestant Mission by American Presbyterians in 1834, their engagement with the local population focused on three domains: preaching the Gospel; preparing, translating into local languages, printing, and distributing books, primarily the Bible; and providing education options through specially established schools. All the steps taken by the missionaries were described in detail in their annual reports; the missionaries (J. Lowrie, J. Newton, E. Wherry, and others) provided detailed accounts in their notes and memoirs related to the activities of the Ludhiana mission and other stations in Punjab and in the neighboring regions of North India. Based on these sources, the article analyzes educational aspects of the missionaries' activities at the initial stage of their work in Punjab: issues of the students' ethno-religious and social background, the combination of secular and religious subjects in missionary schools, and the attitude of Punjab's ruler Ranjit Singh (1780–1839) to the educational activities of the first missionaries.

Keywords

India, Punjab, Christianity, missionary аctivities, Protestantism, еducational аctivities

For Citation

Bochkovskaya A.V. Converting to the Thought, Ideals and Principles of the Christian Religion: Educational Activities of Protestant Missionaries in North-West India (First Half of the 19th century) // The Historical Reporter. 2025. Vol. 53. P. 282–305. DOI: 10.35549/HR.2025.2025.53.007

Anna V. Bochkovskaya

C.Sc. (History), Associate Professor, Department of South Asian History, Institute of Asian and African Studies, Lomonosov Moscow State University. Moscow, Russian Federation.
email: abochkovskaya@iaas.msu.ru
SPIN-код: 2600-2048
ORCID: 0000-0001-6666-4246
AuthorID: 573061

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