Missionary Education and Marginalization of Indigenous System of Education in India

Authors(1) :-Shivam Chaurasia

In the 15th and 16th centuries, the discoveries of new sea routes enabled the Europeans to travel to far-off places all over the world. To expand their empire, they travelled to countries in Asia and Africa and tried to establish their supremacy. Those events and activities were known as the ‘Age of Discovery and Expansion’. With the European travellers and businessmen Christian missionaries also began to travel worldwide for evangelization and proselytism purposes. Among them, the Portuguese, the French, the Dutch and the British missionaries started to venture into the territory of vanquished countries. There were various branches of missionaries from European countries: Protestant, Catholic, Lutheran and Baptist. All of these started their mission in the age of discovery and expansion. The major objectives of missionaries were proselytizing the natives using education, health services and welfare activities. Jesuit was a major school of thought for Christian missionaries. The Jesuit congregation was working in the field of Catholicism. Christian missionaries have been active in India since the fifteenth century. These missionaries have been converting people by holding out promises of the betterment of their social and spiritual life. They act in an indirect way through welfare and philanthropic activities. In colonial India, there were three main agencies of education: the Christian missionaries, the British Indian government and individual Indians. These agencies had their own respective goals of education and the main debate and issues revolved around Government versus private, indigenous versus western and imperial versus nationalist. And the core idea behind all these things was to not only anglicise Indian education but the whole country. One can see a glimpse of the roadmap of the British idea of the Indian education system in ‘Wood’s Despatch of 1854’ because after its release the Colonial Government implemented the majority of its recommendations.

Authors and Affiliations

Shivam Chaurasia
Research Scholar, Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India

Missionary, Conversion, colonial, Marginalization, Indigenous, Education.

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Publication Details

Published in : Volume 7 | Issue 1 | January-February 2024
Date of Publication : 2024-01-15
License:  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Page(s) : 03-21
Manuscript Number : SISRRJ181893
Publisher : Shauryam Research Institute

ISSN : 2581-6306

Cite This Article :

Shivam Chaurasia, "Missionary Education and Marginalization of Indigenous System of Education in India", Shodhshauryam, International Scientific Refereed Research Journal (SHISRRJ), ISSN : 2581-6306, Volume 7, Issue 1, pp.03-21, January-February.2024
URL : https://shisrrj.com/SISRRJ181893

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