Ziegenbalg, who with his colleague, Plutschau, became the first Protestant
missionaries in India. Settling in Tranquebar, Ziegenbalg, a German
seminary dropout, proved to be a resourceful addition to the landscape. He
established elementary schools in both Portuguese and Tamil, contributed
to the development of a Tamil lexicon, and, not least of all, wrote two
manuscripts seeking to describe the religious life of South India. These
manuscripts were deemed by his sponsors to be too supportive of Indian
religion and were not published for over a century.^17
Almost a century later, Serampore became the enclave in which the first
English missionaries lived. William Carey, a Baptist cobbler, arrived in 1793,
established an indigo factory and botanical gardens, set up a printing press,
and began translating the Bible into several languages. Joined by Joshua
Marshmanand William Ward, the trio became active in the critique of
Indian religion and culture. They lobbied the English East India Company
to make changes in their “hands-off” policies, and were partially instru-
mental in the eventual decision to outlaw such practices as satı ̄(widow
burning) and infanticide. It was Ward’s scathing book, purporting to be a
study of Hinduism, that informed the mind-set of evangelical Christians in
Britain and North America for generations.
The British East India Company, founded in 1600, first established a
trading post in Surat (Gujarat) with the permission of the Mughal court and
eventually in Kolkata, Mumbai, once known as Bombay (a gift to the British
crown from the Portuguese), and Chennai (once Madras). The British com-
pany’s presence can be divided into several stages.^18 The first stage, running
until 1813, was one of primarily economic and military activity: siphon
off as much wealth and raw material as quickly as possible for marketing
back home; ward off the French and those local princes perceived to be a
threat to company interests; establish puppet regimes through whom the
company could attain surrogate power and increased wealth. By the 1770s,
in fact, Bengal had been stripped of most of its surplus wealth.^19 When the
company’s coffers were depleted from waging wars with the Mara ̄tha ̄s and
in the Southern Deccan, its leaders, like Warren Hastings, did not hesitate
to “extort large sums” from their Indian allies.^20 It is no wonder the British
East India Company’s men during this period were perceived as robber
barons by the local population and not a few historians.
In 1813, the company became more “imperialistic.” Its hegemony was
extended through alliances and conquest of local leaders. Laws restrict-
ingsatı ̄and other practices were passed. Missionaries were supported.
Development of an infrastructure intended to strengthen British hegemony
began: British-style policies and legal systems were established, replacing
indigenous ones. Transportation systems of trains and roads were developed
to facilitate the export and import of goods; money was set aside for the
174 Streams from the “West” and their Aftermath