Mimicry as Rivalry

Chapter 6 is a detailed study of Sunday schools as sites of pedagogical practice in India. Guided by “tact” as a principle of conducting their work, Anglo-American Protestant missionaries, in order to secure and retain enrollment in their Sunday schools, jettisoned or substantially modified a number of clearly held Christian principles. They denounced racism, but closely allied themselves with a colonial militarist power that would not brook racial integration, and correspondingly instituted racial segregation in their Sunday schools. A second manifestation of “tact” was their borrowing of a number of schooling and cultural practices of the “idolatrous” Hindus, resulting in a type of Christian institution that began to look casteized even to Christian observers. Highly Sanskritized Sunday school hymns, Hindu religious musical forms, visual arts, and festive observances were made a part of the Christian Sunday school. All this benefited a number of Christian converts from the “lower castes” of Hindu society, inasmuch as they were able to acquire those symbolic resources traditionally denied them by the “upper castes.” But at the same time, the mimicking of such practices by Christian institutions underscored the prestige that certain Hindu traditions enjoyed. Also, and worryingly for missionaries, the “upper castes” began to organize their own Sunday schools without Christian doctrine, but mimicking elements of Anglicized, Christian Sunday schools that had seemed attractive to them to begin with. Further, to counter competition, missionaries expanded the Sunday school curriculum, but in the process mimicked secular institutions and undermined the evangelical thrust of their program. And finally, to solicit funds back home, missionaries sensationalized accounts of their work in India. Instrumental reasoning pervaded all aspects of their management of Sunday schools.