“To seek a nobler inheritance”: The Namasudra-Baptist exchange of early twentieth century Bengal Dwaipayan Sen Associate Professor of History Department of Humanities and Languages FLAME University Email: dwaipayan.sen@flame.edu.in This paper presents a study of the dynamics between Dalits and Baptist missionaries in eastern India during the early years of the 20th century. Drawing on hitherto unexamined Baptist publications, it attempts to discern what was at stake in their engagements through a close analysis of the exchanges that ensued between the two parties. Proceeding from a consideration of nineteenth century precedents, the paper focusses attention on the period of their interactions that coincided with the Swadeshi movement in Bengal. It seeks to illustrate not only the considerable density of the collaborations they pursued, but also to argue that their relationships contributed to the formation of a distinctive strand of liberalism. In so doing, the paper invites reconsideration of the idea that subaltern consciousness was anathema to Western, and specifically, missionary influence. 1. While historical studies of Christian missionary activity in colonial India present a rich historiography, a number of themes and regions remain beyond the purview of this literature. One of these elisions concerns how to interpret the work missionaries undertook alongside caste-subaltern communities in colonial Bengal. A region of the country not particularly numerically notable in the subcontinental history of conversion to Christianity, on the one hand, and home to marginalized peoples allegedly impervious if not resistant to Western influences in its varied guises, on the other, the question of interpreting the encounter between missionary and subaltern becomes an especially interesting one. For, how, within such a context, does one make sense of their, in some cases, prolonged alliances? The case analyzed below brings some unique evidence to bear on this question. A consideration of the history of the Namasudra caste’s activism over the course of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries reveals uncanny correspondences between these Dalit actors and the liberal dispositions professed by their Baptist counterparts. While the presence of missionaries amongst Dalits in colonial Bengal has readily been noted, it is clear 1 that the traditional dating of 1872 as some kind of originary moment in their movement may be revisited in light of the history of their interactions with the Baptists. As significantly, the extent and nature of their contact remains under-examined, and quite literally, limited to a mere handful of pages in the conventional nationalist account of the Namasudra movement in Bengal (Bandyopadhyay 2011). Bengali Dalits engaged European interlocutors from considerably prior to 1872, and appear to have held them in great esteem, particularly when it came to articulating their own social and political aspirations. Subaltern consciousness, in this instance, was in no way opposed to foreign influences and alliance which appeared to have been heartily welcomed rather than shunned. Evidently, Dalits in eastern India entertained the outreach of various European missionaries from at least the seventeenth century onwards, but it was with the Baptist Mission Society of the early nineteenth that any meaningful exchange first emerged. By 1838, their missionaries found a reception with one Kangali Mahanta, a contemporary spiritual leader of the Namasudras in Barisal, who agreed to be baptized along with one hundred and fifteen of his disciples to the Christian faith. The trend evidently progressed despite “persecution from orthodox Hindus” (Reid 1912, 139-142). Indeed, a report that noted how nearly four-hundred adults had been baptized and the nominal Christian community numbered around four-thousand souls in Barisal, an area of Namasudra preponderance, between the years 1852 and 1861, also observed as follows: “… they have suffered greatly from persecution. It is with no satisfaction that their Hindu landlords have seen the people of fifty villages breaking from the thralldom of centuries and refusing to pay all the illegal cesses to which idolatrous festivals and observances have given rise. At times, therefore, strong attempts have been made to intimidate them by the violence to which such enemies resort. Beatings, confinements, money fines, have been frequent” (No author 1864, 84). A mid-nineteenth century Baptist Reverend J.C. Page thus noted that while the chandals (as Namasudras were then known, in customarily derogatory address) were “despised by the brahmin, and oppressed 2 by the Zemindar,” some amongst them were at the same time “gaining possessions, aspiring to knowledge, and rising to a kind of respectability” (Wylie 1854, 103). Such aspirations towards social mobility and dignified selfhood very likely contributed to the first recorded massagitation by the Namasudras in 1872, that resolved not to serve any amongst the upper classes and castes “unless a better position among the Hindus castes than what they at present occupy was given to them” (Hunter 1875, 285). Clearly, several decades, if not longer, of Namasudra consideration of the Christian faith preceded their supposed late-nineteenth century origins as a movement and informed their aspirations for social mobility. When “Gurucharan Babu” – Guruchand Thakur, patriarch of the influential Namasudra Matua sect – requested the famed Baptist doctor and Reverend C.S. Mead for a large-print Bengali bible in the early 1900s, the gesture came as an important development in a fairly extended period of exchange and intelligibility between the two parties (Mead 1911, 9). How do we make sense of this history of Namasudra and Baptist engagements in a way that reduces none of the actors involved to the caricatures or dupes to which we have become accustomed? While Rupa Viswanath’s recent skepticism as regards the intentions of Protestant missionaries in Tamil country is a salutary reminder of the need for reading their sources with extra care and caution, the problem of motive is all the more muddled with Bengal, for unlike the south, missionary efforts did not result in appreciable numbers of converts, despite a matching intensity of zeal (Viswanath 2014). What did the Namasudras make of these figures? What did they see in them? Even as Sumit Sarkar’s observation that Namasudra motivations were “entirely pragmatic” informs the analysis pursued here, the formulation nonetheless seems to undermine the actual care, deliberation, and close consideration Namasudras appear to have extended their missionary correspondents over the course of their engagements (Sarkar 2002, 74, 236). Surely more than mere pragmatism informed this relationship. Allow me to illustrate the burden of these questions with the following example: apparently, it was in fact a deputation amongst them that first initiated contact with residents 3 of the Baptist mission house in Faridpur. In Mead’s rendition, they asked: “We come as representatives of a great, sad class – hated, despised, downtrodden, treated like dogs for centuries. We have at last waked to the fact that we, too, are men: that the same great God who made the proud Brahmin made us too, and we have it in our hearts to rise to a better and a bigger life. Will you help us?” (Mead 1911, 7). Mead replied with the word of Christ, to which they responded that they were certainly deliberating on the matter, yet no clear resolution had arrived amongst them. “We do not know what to do, only this we know, we are determined somehow to rise to a better life, to seek a nobler inheritance” (Mead 1911, 7). Note the indecision about conversion to Christianity, coupled with the singular focus on securing “a better life, to seek a nobler inheritance,” for the uncertainty offers clues as to what was at stake in their outreach. Based on the analysis of Australian Baptist missionary documents that have not been consulted as yet, this paper argues that the early twentieth century history of interactions between Namasudras and Baptist missionaries contributed to the deepening of a variety of what historians have termed vernacular liberalism (Sartori 2014). By this I mean that the dynamics that evolved between them assisted in sharpening the Namasudra critique of caste inequality, and in clarifying the kinds of freedom and liberties they sought from a caste society. I attempt to demonstrate that despite the misgivings they harbored about wholesale conversion to Christianity, they nonetheless derived great value, both ideational and material, in their exchanges with their Baptist interlocutors that were premised on deeply liberal assumptions about their rightful place in Bengali society. The social and political aspirations to which Namasudras would turn over subsequent decades were born of their contact, and thus constitute an important instance of affinities between subaltern and Western actors that contravene long-rehearsed assumptions about their antinomy. In so arguing, I not only affirm the value of consulting missionary sources for the study of subaltern lives, but also suggest the plausibility of deploying such a method to yield insights about the history of missionaries and 4 subalternity in colonial contexts beyond South Asia. As I hope to show, the Namasudras’ critical embrace of Baptist religiosity led to surprising and unintended consequences. 2. Namasudras actively sought Baptist missionaries’ presence as the presidents of various uplift meetings they increasingly began to organize at the turn of the century. They were invited to attend funeral ceremonies in wealthier homes and encouraged to speak on such occasions, the novel concept of Namasudra education was born of their interactions, as was the notion of their rights. Baptist missionaries and their Namasudra collaborators undertook an astonishing number of initiatives, ranging from schools for youth and widows, industrial training, the construction of dormitories, dispensaries, indeed, the development of an entirely new built environment dependent on a steady stream of donations from parishes in Australia and financial support from the colonial state (Tuck 1928, 3).1 What appeared to characterize Namasudra interpretation of the gospel, as reflected in missionary sources themselves, was a considered appreciation and critical appraisal, coupled with an underlying note of reservation, if not skepticism. At the start of the second decade of the twentieth century, Mead wrote, reflecting on what was to come of their proselytization efforts: “What will happen? We do not know. They do not know. They have no definite ideal… All they see clearly is that the deeps are being broken up, and the beacon fires of liberty are list upon the mountain tops” (Mead 1911, 43). While hardly ready and enthusiastic converts, Namasudras seemingly derived 1 Among the key Baptist figures working in eastern Bengal was one Miss Tuck, who acknowledged that their “school work has from the first had the support and co-operation of the Education Department. Capital and recurring grants have made possible some of the many plans we ever have before us – and Inspectors and Inspectresses have rendered good service by coming to inspect and to encourage us in our work” (Tuck 1928, 3). 5 considerable meaning and substance from their association with the Baptists, and saw in them novel means to a much sought after societal freedom.2 Before turning to identify several key moments in their engagements, it may help to briefly recall the kind of social and political-cultural environment Namasudras inhabited over the long nineteenth century, as Nawabi dispensation gradually transformed into the world that Bentinck made and thereafter. It should be remembered that it was in fact missionary efforts at uplift that triggered, in a reactionary fashion, indigenous elite attempts at the same, and that prior to the early twentieth century, no such concepts actually existed in Bengali social practices; in fact, every single instance of collective assertion on their part during much of the nineteenth century – of which there were several – was met with caste Hindu objection, if not retaliatory violence as alluded to above. The idea that “chandals” were to be treated with dignity and respect, that they could be literate, own property, or seek and receive an education, was not exactly available to the repertoire of attitudes that constituted Bengali Brahminical political culture. Namasudra and Baptist engagements thus had the unintended effect of prompting the search for “Hindu unity,” even as it informed the notion of Namasudra right. Tellingly, their seemingly decades long critical embrace of the Baptists – indeed, the gestation of what may be regarded a Namasudra liberalism – coincided with the shift from liberalism to culturalism that the social elites of the region undertook over the turn of the century (Sartori 2008). The simultaneity of this divergence is worth noting for an appreciation of the sensitivities that were unleashed amongst caste-elites apprehensive of the “dying Hindu,” and the growing affinities between Namasudras and Baptists. Early on during his time as a missionary in eastern Bengal, Mead received a letter from a Namasudra lawyer that deserves a lengthy quotation to convey a sense of how 2 A student once confessed to Mead, that he would happily accept Christianity into his heart, if it meant he would receive a formal education in return. Conversion, in this instance, was clearly means to ends that had very little to do with religion at all. 6 Namasudras regarded the British colonial state, as well as the promise they anticipated in appealing to the Baptists: Sir, - I am quite a stranger to you, but hearing of your generosity and kindness, I venture to bring to your notice the following matters: The Nama Sudras form a large class of Hindu population in this province. But the other classes of Hindus, such as the Brahmins and Kayasthas, often ill treat them and do not take the least interest for their improvement and welfare. A very small number of them have, under the benign and liberal administration of the English government, received the first light of civilization and University education. The other classes of Hindus look down upon them with a narrow eye of jealousy and do their best to impede their progress. It has become difficult for them to rise up from the present state of Hindu Society to the fair field of competition and generous consideration of the Government. A number of them assembled have made up their mind to embrace Christianity, if the Baptist Mission can secure to them the benefits they crave for. If you can hold out any hope to them, I shall be glad to communicate to you their wishes, or send some of them on the receipt of your kind reply (Mead 1906, 4). Besides offering clear evidence of the fact that in many cases it was Dalits who approached missionaries as elsewhere in colonial India, rather than the other way around, the letter suggests the transaction implied by the possibility of conversion in the Namasudra mind. Baptists were seemingly regarded a conduit to the acquisition of improvement, progress, and welfare under the aegis of colonial government. The letter-writer appeared to assume that Baptists had privileged access to the colonial state. In 1907, Mead had been approached by two distinguished men amongst the Namasudras. One was the eldest son of Guru Charan Biswas who was the “leading resident of Orakandi and also commander and leader of thousands of Nama Sudras” (Tuck 1928, 1). The other was a member of another prominent family in the region. Sasi Babu and Biswa Das, respectively, made their case on behalf of the caste they represented, as well as for their own positions. The uplift of Namasudras was their paramount desire. “Their plea was “let our caste be lifted to its rightful place amongst other castes.” Higher education was of course discussed. And an out-right invitation was given that we go and live amongst them and give them help they would get from none other than Christians” (Tuck 1928, 2). Following several 7 tours of the villages in the vicinity of Orakandi to determine the available possibilities to pursue their calling, Mead and his co-workers assented to the entreaty. It was in fact Mead, who regarded his work with the Namasudras as the greatest opportunity of his missionary life, who intervened on their behalf with the colonial government in 1907 to advocate for a share of appointments in government service. He had presided at a meeting of Namasudras “when the matter of the social advancement of the caste was discussed. They are looking to us for advice and leadership. At present the movement is mainly social, though their attitude to Christianity is friendly” (Mead 1907, 5). Mead noted how their primary considerations included the “securing of a fair share of Government posts, and the advancement of education among them” (Mead 1907, 5). Indeed, he obliged both desires, recording how he had “brought the claims of the caste under the notice of the Government…” (Mead 1907, 5-6). Mead’s intercession was absolutely critical in enabling the very possibility of political representation; the central issue over which Dalits throughout Bengal and elsewhere in colonial India would mobilize in the decades to come. Despite the well-known tensions between missionaries and state officials in colonial India, the fact that they in some cases actually worked in tandem by assuming the other agencies’ role and function in curious ways, seems germane to the matter at hand. As one of Mead’s co-workers, Edith L. King, reported, it was “difficult to rid their [Namasudras’] minds of the idea that we are ‘Sarkari lok’” (King 1907, 3). The blurring of distinctions between the Baptists and colonial administrators in the Namasudra mentality is revealing in more ways than one. It is quite unlikely that Namasudras’ desire for a better life would have met the kind of response it did from the officialdom, were it not for Mead’s advocacy, nor that their aspirations would have taken the form they eventually did if Baptists did not attempt to undertake their work amongst them. In a letter describing the gathering, Mead introduced those he hoped to convert as follows: 8 They are the yeomanry of the district. Down through the centuries they have been downtrodden and despised. Now at last they are seeking to lift up their heads. They are discovering that they, too, are men. But this awakening only calls down on them the hatred and antipathy of the higher castes. “Downtrodden they have been, downtrodden let them remain,” say the upper castes. But the Nama Sudras think they have had about enough of the down-stairs apartments, and have an idea of taking a flat a bit higher up. Will anyone give them a helping hand? Will anyone sympathise? (Mead 1907, 2). Of particular import to the trajectory the movement would chart in subsequent years, the meeting decided, for the first time in history, to form a Namasudra association that intended to expand its branches in surrounding districts, to start a newspaper, and discussed matters “wholly social” (Mead 1907, 2). This was the crucial formation of institutions that would enable the articulation of public opinion within the caste, a development that would only grow in complexity and variety in the years and decades to come. Mead’s address, a “plain and unvarnished appeal to accept Christ” received a “reverent and sympathetic hearing” (Mead 1907, 2). Those present expressed their gratitude for “the fact that I had brought to the notice of the Government the claims of the people of the caste to a share in appointments in Government offices” (Mead 1907, 2). They were especially eager about developing a school into a high school to advance the higher education of the youth, and agreed to a Christian teacher as well as the introduction of the bible in educational establishments. In Mead’s understanding, “What they are saying to us is this – “Make our schools your own. Teach the Christian religion as freely as you please. In fact, take control of us, and make men of us… They appeal to us to raise them” (Mead 1907, 2-3). There can be little doubt that at the peak of the indigenist Swadeshi movement, Namasudras decisively turned towards the Baptists as a source for their social aspirations and political ideals rather than the caste-elites of the region. Edith L. King’s impressions appear to confirm this sense of Namasudra outreach to Baptists for their interventions. King and several of her associates had undertaken a tour through the district of Faridpur in mid-1907 that revealed to her the following: “… like the Nama Sudras of other districts, these people are anxious to improve their position and are begging Dr. Mead to help in establishing schools. Generally speaking, the people’s attitude shows that they do not 9 want religion, at present their one thought is for the betterment of their class” (King 1907, 4). A letter that another Baptist figure, John Takle, who worked in Brahmanbaria received from a Namasudra student further illustrates such inclinations. The student had written to solicit information about a Bible examination. His impressions of the Namasudras with regard to the colonial state, and the Baptists, are of particular worth. He observed, for instance, how, “Only through the grace of the Benevolent and Impartial British Government we could make some progress, being permitted to enter schools” (Takle 1907, 4). Further on, he recalled a meeting in early 1907 called by Mead that was intended primarily for Namasudras. “How delightfully our class received the intelligence and joined the meeting! As soon as that magnanimous began to deliver lecture for our improvement we thought ‘God has sent him to deliver us from our degraded condition.’ So, sire, we too want your benevolent care and interest at this momentous epoch of our life” (Takle 1907, 4). The student in question in no uncertain terms welcomed the presence of Baptists in their midst. Mead and his Baptist coworkers continued to shape the principles around which Namasudras mobilized. Consider, for instance, a conference that took place in Jessore in late 1907 composed of a majority of Namasudras alongside several Muslims and Christians. The resolutions passed called for the “need of the spread of education among the Nama Sudras, freedom of trade, racial uplift, and unity of action” (Takle 1908, 213). Both Namasudra and Muslim speakers complained of the Swadeshi boycotts afoot at the time: “They expressed their earnest determination to stand together in the defence of their liberty – the heritage of all free subjects to buy and sell according to their own convenience. They look with confidence to the Government to secure them this liberty” (Takle 1908, 213). Revealingly, Mead was present at this conference and appeared to take the side of the Namasudras’ movement – what he termed “genuine Swadeshi advance” – against the “agitators,” of whose methods he did not approve. He added that, “When we are asked for our help in any case of oppression we would not be worthy of our Christian name if we did not do our best to stop it. When such complaints are made to 10 us by the Nama Sudras – and they are made again and again – we are always careful to warn them against anything of the nature of retaliation” (Takle 1908, 213).3 Here again, we observe the appeal to secure Namasudras’ liberties in collaboration with the key Baptist figure of the region. The following year, a conference in Khulna that drew attendees from throughout the district and adjoining ones formulated objectives including the spread of education, the establishment of a permanent fund, and the removal of social evils. Resolutions included the establishment of an annual conference for the discussion of social matters and educational advancement, the formation of village committees, the acquisition of funds, and the adoption of active measures towards social reform (O’Malley 1908, 66). One witnessed the gradual formation of the associational life of the caste, so integral to the formation of a public, in conjunction with the aid of Baptist missionaries. A letter initially published in the caste’s first periodical, Namasudra Suhrid, but reprinted in Our Bond, thus spoke with enthusiasm of the help the caste was receiving from Baptist missionaries in exceedingly glowing terms. The writer began by noting the present context of the Swadeshi movement, yet expressed his deep skepticism about what the country’s uppercaste leaders were doing for the welfare of the people: “They do nothing at all for the improvement of those who have always lived in a backward state…” (No author 1909, 6). By contrast: “But our kind, well-wishing friends of the English race make the uncivilised into a civilised people. As the Philosopher’s stone brightens iron at its touch so is the touch of the Englishman upon the oppressed and down-trodden. Now through the efforts of this kingly race the troubles of the Namasudra caste are gradually being removed” (No author 1909, 6). 3 The upper-castes of proximate localities, were far from enthused at the prospect of the meeting of minds between the two parties. Some amongst them had tried very hard to prevent the Nama Sudras from coming together. Likewise, the editor of a local paper had warned them that Baptists were not the proper persons to advance the Nama Sudra position in any way (Mead 1908, 3). 11 Such declarations cut directly against the grain of anticolonial sentiment so strongly associated with the contemporary moment. The Baptists were also quite closely engaged with the matter of Namasudra women’s reform. In April 1910, for instance, they orchestrated the first known meeting of Namasudra women at Guruchand Thakur’s home in Orakandi, the geographical center of their movement (Tuck 1911, 3). B.S. Tuck recalled their second major effort at bringing them together in the mission bungalow, and had approached Thakur in this regard: Happily he was not counting his money – a rather favourite occupation with him – but reading his Bible. The signs were favourable. “May the ladies go to-day instead of tomorrow to the Mission Home?” “Go in and see for yourself, why do you want them today especially?” “we are going to have a women’s meeting.” “Splendid! Splendid! Take them all, go to so and so, and so and so, and so and so, tell them all they are to go… At the meeting say very pointed things. Tell the women how quarrelsome they are, and teach them to do better. Mention everything that is bad amongst them – their envy, evilspeaking, superstitions, lying and bad practices of every kind, etc.” (Tuck 1911, 3). The meeting convened was larger than expected, and one of Tuck’s Bengali helpers spoke to the gathered about subjects that touched on their everyday lives. “As the address was given, there were sounds of approval from this and that one. “We have not been taught in this way before. If one could hear things like this everyday, we would soon be different women,” was the remark from many” (Tuck 1911, 3). Namasudra Baptist exchanges thus also included the attempt to address the reform of women’s lives as well, that eventually evolved to include subjects of child marriage, widow-remarriage, the construction of a widows’ home, and education. This was yet another dimension of the growing liberal instincts of the caste. 3. 12 Despite the evident and sustained intimacy of their interactions however, a recurrent theme in later Baptist reflections nonetheless concerned the relative paucity of converts their efforts at proselytization brought forth. Dr. Mead’s report to The Furreedpore Missionary Society of 1909-10 for instance, observed of the “present position of the multitudes of the Nama Sudras” that they were, “not yet disciples, but standing on the beach, gathered near Him, listening, looking, thinking, wondering… Deep sympathy has been called out, earnest prayer has been made, and a wonderful spirit of liberality been evoked” (Mead 1909-10, 3). Ms. Tuck’s report of the same year noted a similar duality, a hesitant willingness, as it were, to engage with their intended message (Tuck 1909-10, 4). Most revealing was when Mead described the matter rather more bluntly the following year as he noted with disappointment that there was …still no sign of the desire to accept the pearl of great price which we hold out in our right hand. For the gifts that we hold in our left hand there is the same eager pressing forward from all sides. Education, help, protection, healing, all these left-hand gifts bring us into close contact with the people, and give us opportunities we should not otherwise have of urging on them at close quarters the pearl in our right hand, but still it is true that the proffered gift is not taken… (Mead 1910-11, 4). Namasudras thus do not seem to have been particularly enamored at the prospect of conversion to Christianity, but nonetheless perceived great value in their solidarities and partnership. It was the “left-hand” gifts in which they were most interested. What was being sought was not the word of Christ, but the accoutrement that would enable enhanced worldly prosperity and progress. Mead exclaimed with evident frustration in his annual report a couple of years later that although their church was crowded during a Sunday service, “It meant nothing. They wanted money from the magistrate, not truth from God” (Mead 1911-12, 11). He had received a postcard from a petitioner who proposed his baptizing were he to receive financial assistance with his education. Mead felt that, “It meant nothing” (Mead 1911-12, 12). The two incidents illustrated to him the failure of their efforts to proselytize, but spoke expansively of “what fills the thoughts 13 of those living around us. There is plenty of thought being given to matters of finance and to matters of education, but little indeed to that which is the burden of our lives and of our message” (Mead 1911-12, 12). Clearly, Mead was unable to comprehend the nature of the Namasudras’ qualified appeal to them. Especially illustrative were the dynamics that ensued upon the year’s crop failure due to insects having consumed a large portion of the harvest. The Namasudras were distraught and approached Mead for his help. Hundreds of them surrounded the mission house to communicate their distress and declared that Mead alone was “the saviour of the land” (Mead 1911-12, 12). In response, Mead wrote to the authorities which elicited a visit from the magistrate to investigate the situation: “… efforts were made to develop the resources of our Orakandi bank, and in other ways we have tried to befriend the people. We live among the people, and our lives touch theirs at a thousand points, and yet “The child is not awaked”” (Mead 1911-12, 12).4 Mead’s sense of shortcoming belied the very substantial gains Namasudras sought and received from him and his Baptist colleagues. Indeed, the condescension of posterity need not necessarily inform our understandings of the actual significance of their exchanges. This is especially true if one considers the effusive expressions of gratitude and affection Namasudras proclaimed to their Baptist counterparts. A letter that students of the school Mead helped found addressed to him upon his return from furlough in Australia for instance, spoke of how downcast they were on learning of the period of separation. Their interest and welfare, they believed, depended entirely on him. They wrote to express their “…joy to get back our protector, guide and preceptor” (No author 1911, 3). Additionally, this was how a Namasudra paper described the import of their interactions with the Baptists: “Someone one day planted a little sapling. But an enemy put a great rock on its tender springing head, and it could not rise. Then came a friend, and rolled the rock away. Then did the sapling start skywards, again, and 4 It nonetheless seems quite significant, that Guru Charan Biswas evidently continued to toy with the prospect of converting till as late as 1928; it appears to have been a matter of considerable internal conflict with him. 14 though gratitude was thrilling through every fibre of it, it could not speak to express it. So are the Christians lifting the rock from off us, and we are getting a chance to rise, but we do not know how to express the gratitude we so deeply feel” (Mead 1911, 110). Evidently, the hesitance to convert was not accompanied with any shortage of thanks and appreciation for the many assistances the Baptists had rendered. A retrospective essay published by Ms. Tuck thus took stock of the long-term effects of the Baptists’ work (Tuck 1928, 3). Tuck observed that of the Namasudra boys who were early students in their schools, were those who had successfully attended college, and now held positions of importance as School Inspectors, Deputy Magistrates, Police Inspectors, Head Masters, and other government positions. Others still were studying in Europe on their way to becoming barristers, engineers, and artists. Of the four men who had travelled to Europe in the recent past, two were grandsons of the Bara Karta, Guru Charan Babu, and another was a nephew of Biswa Babu, former member of the Legislative Council of Bengal, one of the first men to seek out Dr. Mead to undertake work in Orakandi. The work the Baptists and Namasudras had undertaken contributed in no small measure to fulfilling the latter’s utmost desires. As Tuck would conclude, “Most truly some of the Bara Karta’s dreams of his family and his caste rising in social scale were coming true” (Tuck 1928, 3). Despite Mead’s disappointment over the Baptists’ failure to secure a substantial number of converts from amongst the Namasudras, it should be clear that these sentiments were not reciprocated in kind. Rather, the Namasudras appear to have gladly and selectively adopted from the Baptists those elements of their interactions that would prove most meaningful to their liberal aspirations of seeking justice for their community in the context of the caste society of eastern India: political representation, education, finance, residence, medical aid, and women’s reform. These were hardly an insignificant clutch of objectives to have acquired of their heartfelt solicitations, and indeed, would continue to characterize the core components of their mobilization in the years to come. 15 4. Here is the point, and the set of related concerns my presentation of the preceding materials help me address: for some time now, historians of colonial India have become accustomed to regarding Western engagements with South Asia with suspicion, on account of the generally demeaning, negative, and misleading representations of Indian society and culture in these traditions. A corollary gesture has been to locate an authenticity within the allegedly untrammeled and autonomous domain of subaltern consciousness. This state of affairs is also starting to change, as a growing body of argument and evidence accumulates that confounds such binary instincts, particularly with respect to the history and historiography of Dalit pasts that suggest, as in the analysis pursued above, complex entanglements between Dalit actors, missionaries, and the colonial state. In the instance illustrated here, the history of Namasudra and Baptist exchanges certainly confound the usual historiographical distinctions between subaltern subjectivity and its Western other, even as challenging questions about intentionality and interpretation from the vantage of either set of actors deserve close deliberation and debate. I certainly do not wish to imply in any straight-forward and unproblematic fashion, that Namasudras successfully imbibed liberalism from their Baptist interlocutors, even though this is a possibility that perhaps ought not to be jettisoned in entirety; a more plausible claim would underscore its dialogical formation born of the practical activities they jointly undertook. Nor am I suggesting that the Baptists ushered Namasudras into the modern. But I am asking about the role of unintended consequences of their conjuncture. For it does seem to be the case, that unbeknownst to the proselytizing will, Namasudras strategically derived whatever they found valuable from the thought and practices of their Baptist interlocutors in their search for “a bigger and better life.” And that, at the risk of overstating the matter, they instrumentalized the Baptists, as much as vice versa, in their quest for a “nobler inheritance” 16 amidst a world that offered little by way of fraternity or egalitarianism. In this respect, the Namasudras proved to be “subaltern collaborators” par excellence. As the late C.A. Bayly argued, “If there was any distinct ‘subaltern’ ideological sphere… then this, too, was also heavily tinctured with liberal ideas of rights and justice by the end of the colonial period” (Bayly 2012, 4). What the foregoing pages suggest is that Namasudras sincerely perceived in the Baptists an indispensable means to their justified ends of securing a better life for their community. They appropriated from them, and by extension, key figures in the colonial officialdom, those elements that would enable them to live a more desirable existence. Indeed, it was through these fairly sustained engagements that they became empowered to articulate their community’s hopes with greater confidence than before and ultimately to express deeply liberal assumptions about their place in Bengali society and politics. The implication of the foregoing analysis is thus that their engagement with Christianity, ironically, prompted Namasudras to formulate entirely worldly objectives. The Christian religion – routinely identified as external to, or in tension with, indigenous life-worlds in South Asianist scholarship – had become an indispensable resource for the secular aspirations of castesubalterns in colonial Bengal. 17