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Historisk tidskrift 130:1 • 2010

Innehåll (Contents) 2010:1

Uppsatser (Articles)

Kald og udviklingsbistand i det uafhængige Indien. Postkolonial selvforståelse i to skandinaviske missioners institutionsarbejde

Av Daniel Henschen

 

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Summary

Calling and development aid in independent India: Post-colonial self-understanding in the institutional work of two Scandinavian missions

The article explores the transformation of praxis among Scandinavian missionaries in relation to Indian decolonisation in the years 1945–19 6 6. Tracing their heritage back to the world’s first Lutheran mission, founded in Tranquebar in 170 6, the Lutheran missions Church of Sweden Mission (CSM, in the article: SKM) and the Danish Mission Society (DMS) were established under British rule in India in what is now the state of Tamil Nadu. As an integrated part of local society, the missionaries maintained their organisations after India achieved independence in 1947. The missionaries understood their secular and local work as well as their relations to Indian Christians as parts of a divinely determined process encompassing all of humanity. Their self-understanding consequently collided with the ideology of independent India, which was expressed in nationalist and non-Christian terms. Worried about the future of their missions to India, the CSM and the DMS aimed to preserve the Christian congregations in three ways: 1) by strengthening their organisations to counter the allegedly illegitimate authority of what they saw as a “pagan” state; 2) by maintaining the missionaries’ authority in theological issues as a means to counter the threat of syncretism; and 3) by questioning activities involving too much intermingling between Christians and non-Christians.

In the second part of the analysis the long-term results of these policies and their transformation in post-colonial India are examined. From the mid-1950s the CSM and the DMS began to associate themselves with the development strategies and cultural nationalism of Jawaharlal Nehru’s government and the missionaries gradually came to see themselves more as practitioners of certain functions in Indian society, mainly in the field of social and economic development – and less as servants of God following a divine call. Thus the secular work in institutions such as schools, hospitals and various development projects increasingly drew their attention. In practice the missions therefore began to resemblance secular development organisations like the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) or the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA), which were founded in the 19 6 0s and built to a certain extent on the personal and ideological heritage of the Christian missions.

Keywords

India, twentieth century, Christianity, Sweden, Denmark, mission history, development history, faith-based organisations, Scandinavian postcolonialism.