Alexander Robertson, Scottish Social Theology and Low-caste Hindu Reform in Early Twentieth-century Colonial India

Abstract

This article analyses the social theology and practice of Scottish presbyterian missionaries towards hinduism in early twentieth-century western India. It reveals a radical contrast in Scottish missionary practice and outlook with the earlier activities of Alexander Duff (1806–78) in India from 1829 to 1864 as well as with contemporaneous discourse on non-christian religion and ethnicity which was prevalent at home in Scotland. The article argues that Scottish presbyterian missionaries selectively adapted and elaborated radical social theology from late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Scotland to deal with the hindu socio-religious out-casting and economic exploitation that they experienced during their christian proselytisation in early twentieth-century western India. In particular, the article analyses the social theology of the United Free Church missionary Reverend Alexander Robertson, who lived and worked in western India from 1902 to 1937. Robertson sought to re-invent and apply radical Scottish social theology to the material development and religious conversion of Dalit or impoverished out-caste hindu populations in western India. The article also contrasts this Scottish missionary social theology and practice with the secular Edwardian Liberal ideas of Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree (1871–1954), which Robertson's colleague and colonial administrator, Harold H. Mann (1872–1961) sought to implement towards Dalit people when he was Agricultural Chemist of Bombay Presidency after 1907 and Director of Agriculture for the Bombay Presidency in Pune from 1918 to 1927. In this context, the article argues more broadly that popular Orientalist discourse on non-christian religion and ethnicity at home in Scotland and perceptions of a subordinate Scottish relationship with the London metropole conceal the radical dimensions of Scottish identity within empire and the ways in which the interaction of radical practices between imperial peripheries like Scotland and India conditioned imperial development.