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Dissertation Information for William Mitchell Numark

NAME:
- William Mitchell Numark

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- History

SCHOOL:
- University of California, Los Angeles (USA) (2006)

ADVISORS:
- James Gelvin
- Vinay Lal

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- Aamir Mutti

MPACT Status: Fully Complete

Title: Translating religion: British missionaries and the politics of religious knowledge in colonial India and Bombay

Abstract: This dissertation explores the ways in which British Protestant missionaries in British India and particularly Scottish missionaries in nineteenth-century Bombay conceptualized "religion" and the "religions" of India. Protestant missionary formulations of Indian religions contributed to the refashioning of Indian ideas of their religions into distinct "species" of the religion "genus." In contrast to conventional accounts of Protestant missionaries in India, the missionaries this dissertation examines were respected Orientalist scholars. These British missionary-scholars investigated Indian religions through what they considered were "objective" scientific methods. Yet, despite their disinterested intentions, British missionary-scholars understood Indian religions through an a priori Protestant Christian template. Through examining how British missionaries uncovered, translated, and disseminated their ideas of "religion" and the different Indian "religions" this dissertation explores how particular Indian forms of knowledge were transformed into specific British objects of thought: the religions. The many religions of Bombay's population that the British missionary-scholars excavated and explicated---Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, and Christianity---did not, however, correspond to the actual ways in which Bombay's Hindus, Parsis, Muslims, Jains, Jews, and Christians understood and practiced their purported religion . But this disjuncture did not matter for the British missionary-scholars because they imagined the religions of Bombay's population as distinct and exclusive scripturally based systems of belief and propositional knowledge that were necessarily in conflict over a singular "truth." By exploring the ways in which Protestant missionaries understood Indian religions and how they directly and indirectly encouraged Indians to understand and compare the "world religions" this dissertation seeks to elucidate how the conceptual ground was prepared that later made purportedly vernacular and modern Indian religious conceptualizations possible. In other words, this dissertation seeks to illuminate a significant and neglected part of the foundations of an "Indian religious modernity."

MPACT Scores for William Mitchell Numark

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calculated 2008-08-09 09:35:16

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Students under William Mitchell Numark

ADVISEES:
- None

COMMITTEESHIPS:
- None