American missionaries and hinduism

American Protestant missionaries were the largest and the most articulate single group of Americans living in India in the nineteenth as well as the early decades of the twentieth century. They played the most significant part in the history of the cultural relations of U.S.A. and India. This book is an analytical study of the role played by American Protestant missiona ries in the field of Indo-American relations from 1813 to 1910. Based on primary sources like unpublished and published official records of various missionary societies in the U.S.A., letters and dis patches of individual missionaries to their home-boards, government records as well as writings reminiscences and auto biographies of American missionaries, this authoritative study is the first comprehensive work by an Indian historian examining the policies, activities and attitudes of American Protestant missionaries working in India.

The author approaches the missionary movement as an objective outsider, primarily interested in the study of the interculural relations of the U.S.A. and India. The book goes beyond purely missionary activity to show the reactions of American Protestantism and Hinduism towards each other. It also sets forth of changes that gradually occurred in American missionary policies and attitu des due to the growing strength of Hinduism.