Maina Chawla Singh - Gender, Religion, and the Heathen Lands: American Missionary Women in South Asia, 1860s-1940s

GENDER, RELIGION, AND HEATHEN LANDS

GENDER, CULTURE, AND GLOBAL POLITICS
VOLUME 4

GARLAND REFERENCE LIBRARY OF THE HUMANITIES
VOLUME H2059

GENDER, CULTURE, AND GLOBAL POLITICS

CHANDRA TALPADE MOHANTY, Series Editor

INTERVENTIONS

Feminist Dialogues on Third World Womens Literature and Film

edited by Bishnupriya Ghosh and Brinda Bose

WOMENS MOVEMENTS AND PUBLIC POLICY IN EUROPE, LATIN AMERICA, AND THE CARIBBEAN

edited by Geertje Lycklama Nijeholt, Virginia Vargas, and Saskia Wieringa

CHINESE WOMEN TRAVERSING DIASPORA

Memoirs, Essays, and Poetry

edited by Sharon K. Hom

GENDER, RELIGION, AND HEATHEN LANDS

American Missionary Women in South Asia, 1860s1940s

by Maina Chawla Singh

GENDER, RELIGION, AND HEATHEN LANDS

AMERICAN MISSIONARY WOMEN IN SOUTH ASIA (1860S1940S)

MAINA CHAWLA SINGH

First published 2000 by
Garland Publishing, Inc.

Published 2013 by Routledge

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Copyright 2000 by Maina Chawla Singh

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 13: 978-0-815-32824-7 (hbk)

The research and writing for this project were undertaken between 1995 and 1998, a period during which I lived in New York, Moscow, and New Delhi. Given the cross-cultural nature of this study, the many people and some institutions whose support have been invaluable in its completion are also spread across cultures.

My first thanks go to Professor Dorothy O. Helly of City University of New York, with whom I first discussed this project and for whose unfailing encouragement, mentoring, and affection words are not enough.

In India, Professor Mushirul Hasan of Jamia Milia University (New Delhi) provided valuable intellectual support at a crucial stage in my writing. I thank Professor Malashri Lal, Professor Gyan Pandey, Dr. Parkash Chander, and Professor Ravinder Kumar for being supportive in many ways. The sabbatical granted to me by the College of Vocational Studies (University of Delhi), enabled me to begin the research in New York in 1995. The support of the National Council of Research on Women enabled me to complete the research in 1998, and subsequently to shape it as a book. I thank the General Board of Global Ministries for supporting my project on Isabella Thoburn, which is now a chapter of this book. The affiliation granted by the City University of New York (199596) gave me access to its libraries and seminars and the luxury of auditing a variety of eclectic graduate courses on Womens History, Cultural Studies, Post-Colonial Film Theory, and Gender and Philanthropy. I am indebted to Kathleen D. McCarthy, Dorothy O. Helly, Barbara Bowen, Sumit Ganguly, and Ella Shohat for the interdisciplinary stimulation they provided through their seminars and for their personalized interest in my work at a time when I most needed a sense of academic community in New York.

The research for this book was conducted at libraries in the United States and India. The Burke Library (Union Theological Seminary, New York), provided a wealth of primary material and the additional bonus of two very knowledgeable librariansSeth Kasten and Andrew Kadel. Many thanks to them for patiently responding to my endless demands for missionary documents, pamphlets, and letters.

My research at the New York Public Library, the Graduate Center (City University of New York), Missionary Research Library, New York, the Divinity School (Yale University), the Schlesinger Library (Radcliffe College, Cambridge), the Andover-Harvard Library (Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge), and in India at the Teen Murti (Nehru Memorial) Library was facilitated by helpful librarians to whom I am grateful. I thank the Schlesinger Library for granting permission to quote from the private papers of Dr. Ida Scudder; and the Photo Division (Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India) for providing photographs.

In the course of my research in the U.S. in 199698 I was fortunate to find many wonderful people who had missionary connections with India. In seeking information from the Vellore Christian Medical College Board in New York, I discovered that Dr. Robert H. Carman, the Executive Director, was born in India and worked at the Christian Medical College, Vellore, for over twenty years. At Wooster College, Ohio, I met Professor Gordon Schull and Margo Warner Curl, both of whom had grown up in India in American missionary families. During my conversation with Margaret Schaffer of New York, whose parents had served as Presbyterian missionaries in Punjab (after Indias independance), I discovered that she and her family had lived in Ferozepur (North India), and that her mother had been a friend of Dr. (Miss) Dorothy Ferris, an American missionary physician heading the local mission hospital, who also had been my mothers obstetrician in the mid 1950s.

Similarly, in India, the alumnae of missionary colleges whom I interviewed were a joy to meet. They were enthusiastic during their oral narratives as they recalled the good old days. In sharing their memories and their collections of papers, all these people kindled in me an enthusiasm that went beyond historical inquiryit made both the research and the history come alive for me. I am grateful for their generosity.