Alexander Duff
India and India Missions (1839)
MissionaryPresbyterian
Chapter XII, p. 387
The English language is the lever by which the edifice of Hinduism must be overturned. Through it, we introduce the youth of India to the sciences of the West, to the history of nations, and above all, to the truths of our holy religion. Once the mind is opened by Western knowledge, the shackles of superstition fall away.
✦ Commentary
Duff explicitly states that English education is a conversion tool — the "lever" to overturn Hinduism. This is not education for its own sake but education as subversion.
Themes
Missionary Schools as Tools for ConversionChristianity as the ApexSuperstition and Reason
Discursive Strategies
Civilizational Comparison
Source Type
Published Book
↯ Tracing the Causal Chain
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Missionaryinfluenced
Charles Grant, Observations on the State of Society among the Asiatic Subjects of Great Britain
“The Hindoos err, because they are ignorant; and their errors have never fairly been laid before them. The communication of our light and knowledge to them would prove the best remedy for their disorde...”
Grant's diagnosis — Indians err because of ignorance, "our light and knowledge" is the cure — directly provides the rationale for Duff's program 47 years later. Duff makes explicit what Grant implied: English education is the "lever" to overturn Hinduism. The civilizing mission generates the conversion infrastructure.