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
Fulltext (pdf)
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.
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