2011. 'Missionary medicine & the "separatist tradition": an analysis of the missionary encounter...

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Missionary Medicine and the 'Separatist Tradition': An Analysis of the Missionary Encounter with Leprosy in Late Nineteenth-Century India Author(s): Lauren Wilks Source: Social Scientist, Vol. 39, No. 5/6 (May-June 2011), pp. 48-66Published by: Social ScientistStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41289407Accessed: 06-07-2015 14:45 UTC

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Missionary Medicine and the 'Separatist Tradition'

An Analysis of the Missionary Encounter with Leprosy in Late

Nineteenth-Century India V) J*

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And the leper in whom the plague is, his clothes shall be rent, and his head bare, and he shall put a covering upon his upper lip, and shall cry, Unclean, unclean. All the days where in the plague shall be in him he shall be defiled; he is unclean: he shall dwell alone; without

camp shall his habitation be.1 While it is now widely accepted that leprosy 'cannot be caught by

a handshake', surviving biblical imagery suggests that certain modes of thinking regarding this historically-loaded disease are almost impossible to dislodge.2 Indeed, phrases such as 'avoid like a leper5 and 'the leper's touch' are commonplace in our language indicating that even today leprosy retains a powerful symbolic resonance that distinguishes it from other diseases of the world. However, it has not been in a purely figurative fashion that those with leprosy have been

singled out. In the late nineteenth century the infected 'leper' was among the many who found themselves subjected to the criminalising segregation policies that South Africa's Robben Island and Hawaii's Molokai have since become famous for.3 Ironically, it was this post-enlightenment era, the era that marked the birth of such notions as liberty and freedom that also came to spawn the

'definitively modern institutions of confinement' that sought to

suppress those very same inalienable rights.4 In India, as in other parts of the world, segregation, criminalisation and stigmatisation became bound up with the leprosy-sufferer's experience. For the historian, however, the study of leprosy in this particular historical context makes for interesting work as it is a unique case on several counts. Mark Harrison, speaking of the disease in late nineteenth- century India explained that sufferers 'occupied an ambiguous status, somewhere between that of a patient and a prisoner.'5 In other words, because leprosy was somewhat of a medical enigma - its hazy understanding as laden with biblical connotations of sin and

impurity as it had been in the Middle Ages - there was no clear

government policy for dealing with it or its victims. Moreover, in this context missionaries operated independently, administering basic but vital medical care. Through their commitment to work 'among the lepers', missionaries forced the colonial government and the rest of the world to recognise leprosy as a public health issue, in turn 48




sparking greater scientific interest, new modes of investigation and the development of more effective treatments. It is for this reason, then, that missionaries should be regarded as pioneers in the field rather than the peripheral and 'itinerant evangelist' characters they are often taken for.6

However, while the dissemination of Western medicine in India has been a topic of constant interest and exploration, the study of missionaries and their encounter with leprosy is relatively uncharted territory.7 The little that has been said of this, furthermore, has tended to focus on the stigmatisation of sufferers. Zachary Gussow and T. Tracy in particular have likened the encounter between missionaries and leprosy-sufferers to a modern-day parable.8 While such reductive claims may serve as a lesson in the overuse of abstract language to refer to the experiences of disease across a vast range of

differing social predicaments,9 it seems Gussow and Tracy were correct in

pointing out that missionaries did, almost unanimously, endorse segregation policies in their asylums. This article seeks to ascertain why it was that the 'separatist tradition', to use Gussow's phrase, became the preferred policy amongst British Protestant missionaries in dealing with the problem of

leprosy in colonial India.10 Working within a thirty-year timeframe, using A. G. Hansen's discovery of basciluis leprae in 1873 and the Government of India's 1898 Lepers Act as approximate points of reference, this article focuses on the writings and correspondence of a handful of individuals who offered their services to work 'among the lepers'.11 The two autobiographical works of Wellesley Cosby Bailey, the Irish-born Protestant missionary and founder of the Mission to Lepers (ML), feature predominantly as they offer invaluable insight into the encounter across a wide geographical field.12

In opposition to the perspective that has seen missionary activity in India as a mere appendage to the British political agenda, 'simply imperialism by other means', it is here recognised that there was something driving missionaries that was distinct from the motivations of the colonising elite.13 However, as the work of Talal Asad has highlighted, the term 'agency' as we understand it today, as a type of independent and individual action, may not be applicable to a nineteenth-century missionary who saw themselves as being driven by Divine Providence.14 Rather than imposing a definitively modern understanding of agency on the past, this article discusses how missionaries themselves interpreted work 'among the lepers'. Indeed, it seems many in the field saw their role first and foremost as furthering the greater Christian cause of expanding God's kingdom on Earth. In this way, India became a site of experimentation for those missionaries who sought to create an indigenous and self-sustaining Christian community, a community in which institutions like the leprosy asylum were to play an increasingly vital role.

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Moreover, specific changes in the mission-world, such as the recognition of 'Clinical Christianity' as a valuable tool for breaking down barriers of hostility and the rise of the 'Double Cure' as a respectable and effective means of proselytising, enabled the leprosy asylum to become a key site in the newly-constructed 'Native Christian Community'.15 With its promise of refuge and medical treatment the leprosy asylum not only served as a tangible expression of Christian charity in the 'great age of evangelical philanthropy', but also functioned as a corrective site, whereby in-patients subject to constant surveillance and ward-preaching were rendered increasingly open to the evangelising influence of the missionaries.16 Segregating those with leprosy and locating them within an isolated and regulated space was central to the evangelical enterprise of spreading 'the Word'. In offering one side to the late nineteenth-century encounter between missionaries and leprosy- sufferers, this article hopes to shed light on a largely unexcavated area of India's medical history.

Locating leprosy However repulsive the disease itself in some of its phases may be, there is

nothing, whatever of that nature about its study.17 The neglect of leprosy as a subject of interest and study, its 'repulsive'

features or otherwise has continued to present an obstacle for the historian. In an attempt to explain this academic vacuum in the Indian context, it is first important to note that, because leprosy was never a top priority for the colonial government there is a considerable gap in official recordings relating to this disease. In terms of health care provision the precedence lay primarily with the welfare of the resident European community and the military, the 'ultimate guarantors of imperial rule'.18 It follows, then, that any studies of disease tended to focus on epidemic diseases such as smallpox and cholera, or, more simply, those diseases which claimed the lives of Europeans. Leprosy, on the other hand, a degenerative and for the most part 'native' disease was viewed as a mere nuisance, its wandering sufferer abhorred for

being an eyesore more than anything else.19 Recognising the fact that the British Raj sidelined leprosy for more

'pressing' matters and that care for leprosy-sufferers lay largely outside official jurisdiction, it comes as a surprise to find that non-governmental efforts such as missionary work have been relatively neglected in the story so far.20 What little has been said of mission work more generally, moreover, has tended to categorise it as an accessory to the political agenda of the British

ruling elite. In light of Edward Said's seminal text, Orientalism and the fashionable application of Foucauldian frameworks of power/knowledge in its aftermath, there ensued a tidal wave of criticism which served to unmask



Missionary Medicine and the 'Separatist Tradition9

the evangelists' imperial complicity.21 Catchphrases such as 'colonising the body' and 'tool of empire' have, as a result, become synonymous with the discussion on missionaries and their medical work in India.22 While it has been fruitful to challenge the central tenets of colonial historiography -

namely the now abhorred 'civilising mission' - and to realise the deeply- penetrating impact of Western influence upon Indian society, a tendency for

sweeping statements in historical works has served to lump together 'the West' into a single and united colonising force. Without allowing for the recognition of individual or group-specific motivations, this is arguably the very act of homogenising for which first-wave post-colonialists condemned orientalist scholars.

With the immediate rush of postcolonial criticism there also arrived an academic passion for abstract terminology which, as James Staples explained, has meant that much of the work on leprosy to date has been predicted in

'externally-defined, de-contextualised discourses'.23 A focus on stigma in

particular, by way of reducing a vast range of differing social explanations and

processes into one 'catch-all explanation', has meant that the intricacies of each particular experience have been overlooked.24 A vogue for concepts such as 'social control', 'stigma' and 'social exclusion' - which arguably began with Goffman and Foucault's sociological studies of the European mental asylum in the early 1960s - has, moreover, remained an integral part of the way in which the topic of leprosy has been approached by scholars.25 Gussow and Tracy's relatively recent suggestion that missionaries made 'lepers' out of persons with leprosy as a result of their intervention, has implied that biblical leprosy was

simply transported to the colonial field with little modification along the way.26 Hansen's discovery of the basciluis leprae in 1873 and its impact on the perception of leprosy in the public sphere is a merely a peripheral consideration for the scholars. Arguably, there is an unmistakeable discrepancy between the leprosy of the Bible - now acknowledged to have been a loose term used to describe a variety of skin diseases - and the rather specific and 'medicalised' disease of modern times.27 Indeed, since the last quarter of the nineteenth century leprosy has been inextricably bound up with germ theory and notions of physical contamination. As Gilbert Lewis has quite rightly pointed out, 'the lamentable history of social attitudes towards leprosy is a lesson on the consequences of paying great attention t6 words, but small attention to facts.'28

While steering clear of those homogenising tendencies associated with the discourse on social stigma, this article equally avoids using historically- loaded terms as 'leper' and 'the afflicted', drawing upon them only in their nineteenth-century usage. Considering the great stigma that is attached to leprosy to this day, the somewhat sterile term 'leprosy patient' is similarly rejected, for it misrepresents the all-encompassing nature of the disease.29 The

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term 'leprosy-sufferer', although by no means neutral, is used here as an alternative to the somewhat more problematic terms outlined above.

Moving beyond the immediate postcolonial period, it may be said that the real breakthroughs in historiography have come with the more interdisciplinary and nuanced studies that have surfaced in the last few decades. New perspectives, serving as supplementary histories rather than inversions of the colonial history , have been offered by those academics seeking to restore the 'lost voices' of India's past and have together offered a level of complexity hitherto unachieved. Sanjiv Kakar's study of the various forms of protest adopted by institutionalised leprosy patients is, by its own claim, the first comprehensive study of leprosy and its institutions in colonial India and forms a substantial attempt to restore the agency of the asylum inmate.30 Not only has Kakar's focus on resistance, patient agency and the 'liberating aspects' of Western medicine provided a welcome and refreshing addition to the debate on Western medicine in India, but has also cast doubt upon the perspective which has seen the story of the leprosy asylum in India as a microcosm of the wider project of imperialism- a purely one-sided and 'colonial' affair.31

Jane Buckingham has also attempted to reverse the pattern of Eurocentric enquiry, by focusing on how the dual forces of local circumstances and patient resistance combined to modify policy towards leprosy-sufferers in the Madras Presidency.32 Buckingham's work is highly original on the count that it is among the first to use indigenous sources, which have been hitherto largely inaccessible to the historian. Moreover, by shedding light on indigenous treatments such as Gurjon oil and Chaulmugra seeds, it has marked the beginnings of a shift in historiography which no longer seems concerned with upholding the scientific superiority of the West, and can, more honestly, reveal a less confident side to Western medicine in India that has been long suppressed.33

While no one work has specifically focused on the missionary-leprosy encounter in colonial India, bearing in mind the aforementioned scholarship on leprosy and the more general studies of mission work to date, the story can be pieced together. With regards to the scholarship on the missionary presence in the subcontinent, Christopher Harding's study, in particular, has raised important questions about the ways in which historians have spoken of 'the missionaries' as a homogenous entity.34 It is important for the purposes of study, which operates partly on a biographical basis, to recognise the individuality of the missionary with whom it deals. However, bearing in mind the personal quality of missionary sources, there are certain methodological limitations that first require addressing. It appears missionaries often wrote with quite pragmatic considerations in mind,




matters of fundraising and bureaucracy which cumulatively make it considerably more difficult for the historian to gauge any underlying motivations. Coupled with the fact that even reading 'their own words' is somewhat limited in terms of really experiencing what the missionaries did, it is problematic to claim what was driving them at any given time.35 As Wittgenstein's lectures on private experience have highlighted, the language one uses to convey experience is not altogether representative of, nor an adequate substitute for, experiencing first-hand.36 Thus, while recognising the difficulty in moving beyond this perennial limitation, this article endeavours to read missionary accounts alongside an exploration of the wider contours of the evangelical movement in India, and, furthermore, considers the possibility of there having been multiple and co-existing layers of motivation involved with the missionary experience, some of which may not be immediately discernable in their writings.

The Creation of a 'Native Christian Community' Everyone who has been in India knows that young trees in this country

will not grow unless they receive water and care. With it very little seedlings quickly grow up into large trees.37

It can be said that there was a great significance underlying the missionaries' decision to work with leprosy in India. The fact that missionaries opted willingly for the task of serving 'among the lepers', ready as Bailey said 'to spend and be spent' in the Indian field, necessitates further probing.38 It is perhaps first important to recognise the degree of personal motivation that was involved in each missionary's decision to undertake work with leprosy-sufferers. An interesting example is that of Mary Reed, the American-born Methodist who was later appointed superintendent of the Chandag Asylum under the auspices of the ML.39 Reed's is an interesting story in that she herself came to contract leprosy, a diagnosis which she took as a sure sign that she had been 'set apart by God' to minister among those with leprosy.40

John Jackson's 1899 biography of Reed is also telling of the ML's broader considerations as a functioning charitable organisation. Painting Reed as a modern martyr who bore 'her heavy cross in a spirit of consecration' was arguably a strategic manoeuvre carried out to ensure continued financial sponsorship and support for the Mission's cause.41 The aggrandisement of Reed, it seems, was very much in the interests of Jackson, who, as an employee of the Mission, would have been most concerned with impressing the British donating public with such a fine example of the ML's good work.

For Bailey also it appears practical considerations weighed on his mind. The Lepers of our Indian Empire: A Visit to Them in 1890-91 , written twenty-

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five years after the founding of the ML, is particularly thorough in its attention to the details of progress that had purportedly been made. In the

preface to the second edition Bailey reflects, 'We were then at work in 21 centres, we have now 52. We then had 7 Leper Asylums or Homes of our own, we now have 22.>42 There is a similar theme of reflection in other

contemporary missionary tracts, such as Revered J. F. W. Youngson's chronicle of the Church of Scotland Mission (CSM), whereby the trials and

triumphs of mission work in Punjab are endlessly enumerated, with a marked emphasis on the latter.43

While it is important to understand how mission societies like the ML launched fundraising campaigns in order to kept afloat as self-supporting charities, it appears that at the heart of the broader British evangelical movement there was a profound objective to foster a more fruitful form of

religious practice that could substantially and visibly help others on the path to salvation. As the former secretary of the ML, A. D. Miller wrote in his 1965 tribute to Bailey;

The Mission's task was to bring those who were without within, to take the sting out of the word 'leper' by the antidote of love, to be realist

enough to recognise that any stigma attached to the disease could only be abolished by deed and not by word.44

This not only exemplifies the evangelist's desire to act, but also, by mentioning the terms 'without' and 'within', Miller's statement demonstrates how mission work in India was a manifestation of the wider

goal to expand God's kingdom on Earth. Eugene Stock, contemporary chronicler of the Church Missionary Society (CMS), explained that institution -building in the field was considered essential to the Christian cause because it was thought that such grass-roots construction work would in time 'make Christian nations.'45 It follows, then, that missionaries driven

by a desire to bring more people into the Christian fold, reported optimistically of their plans to increase the numbers of schools, hospitals and

leprosy asylums within their districts. Reed, for one, seemed particularly passionate on this matter:

I pray and I hope that the two new buildings recently completed may be

occupied by another fifty of the more than four hundred who are living within a radius of ten miles of us, and who ought to come and share the comforts and blessings so much appreciated by the patients here.46

Furthermore, as Christopher Harding's exploration of the 'Christian

village experiment' in rural Punjab suggests, the evangelical enterprise in India seemed to have been rather an idealistic affair.47 As Harding explains, canal irrigation in the late nineteenth century opened up new land which

provided an irresistible opportunity for those missionaries already active in




the region to create entirely new village communities exactly as they pleased.48 Lieutenant-Governor for Punjab, Sir William Mackworth-Young, speaking of one such model community in 1901 remarked:

Clarkabad is a single instance of what a Christian village can be, with its finance sound, its institutions of a church, school, and dispensary, all self-supporting; and its agriculture flourishing. In these respects it affords a valuable example for the Native Christian community, whose principal need is self-help and self-support.49

As seen here, evangelist zeal for expanding the Kingdom of God on Earth fostered an idealism which came to characterise construction projects like Clarkabad. The leprosy asylum too had a place within this greater evangelical vision of a 'Native Christian Community'. As an isolated site far away from the corrupting influences of Indian society, and as a space which embodied the active and hands-on type of religious practice that was considered so essential to the evangelical enterprise, the leprosy asylum came to play a very important role within the broader proselytising campaign in India.

Leprosy Asylum as 'Corrective' Site Here they receive not only the tender touch, but hear the loving voice,

and the wondrous message of a Saviour's love; and then it will be easy to understand how their hearts should be softened, how all suspicion will be removed, and how they will be constrained to yield themselves to the Saviour.50

It comes as something of a surprise to find that medical work was not always well-respected in missionary circles.51 Sharing an aim of 'making whole', religion and medicine have long been combined as a means of evangelising.52 Indeed, a glance at the New Testament suggests that the marriage of physical healing with that of the soul would have been a rather obvious option for evangelical missionaries seeking to spread the light of the Gospel to other nations of the world.53 For a long time, however, British Protestant mission work operated upon the principle that ordained men were the best candidates for the job, a sentiment encapsulated in the phrase, 'spiritual men for spiritual work'.54 It was only from the mid-nineteenth century onwards that voices within the mission field began to articulate the need for a fuller picture of Christian civilisation in which medicine had a rightful place.55

In the latter half of the nineteenth century, however, the seedlings of a new outlook were beginning to show. Traditional missionary methods were proving ineffective in India and, more so than ever, missionary societies were willing to listen to those within the field and learn from their valuable first- hand experiences.56 John Lowe, secretary of the Edinburgh Medical

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Missionary Society (EMMS), was perhaps the most authoritative voice calling for a shake-up in strategy at this time.57 By laying out parallels between Jesus - the Great Physician - and the modern-day missionary, Lowe sought to establish Medical work as a valid aid to evangelising.58 To his mind, medical practice was not separate from the primary task of spreading the Gospel, but an intrinsic part of it.

It also became clear that medical work in the Indian field could not be avoided. Those untrained and unequipped to do so increasingly dispensed medicines ad hoc , earning themselves the label of 'pillbox missionary' or worse still, 'quack doctor'.59 As Rev. F. Colyer-Sackett recalled:

Every missionary became a quack doctor! He could not help himself. You cannot say 'poor fellow' and pass on, when you know that a dose of salts or a grain or two of quinine a day might possibly bring back health.60

Rosemary Fitzgerald has argued that the pulling-power of 'Clinical

Christianity' and the lure of the missionary medicine chest were opportunely employed by missionaries for their own ends.61 Indeed, it was quickly realised that the dispensary could act as a 'pioneering agency',62 by providing a first

point of contact with the Indian community; the temptation of Western medicine served to bring Indian people to the missionary and the intimate nature of the medical encounter itself created opportunities for developing relationships.

Certainly, the 'penetrating power of medicine' is a theme echoed in

missionary writings.63 Bailey commented that even the 'bigoted Mohammedans' became pleasant and friendly in sight of the medicine chest,64 and Lowe gave the example of Kashmir where medicine had been used to break down the barrier of 'violent opposition' that had greeted previous missionaries.65 Thus, just as 'women's work for women' was

opening up the zenanas of Indian society at this time, the medical mission allowed the Christian doctor to enter into hitherto inaccessible spaces.66

Medical work, however, was not simply concerned with 'opening new doors to the Gospel'; the offering of Western medicine also symbolised the more practical form of Christianity evangelical missionaries so craved.67 Indeed, missionaries spoke of the importance of 'Practical Christianity', explaining the need for physical example over mere religious dogma.68 As Lowe summarised, 'the Gospel must, therefore, be preached to them, alike by the living voice, and by the unmistakable evidence of loving deeds.'69 Indeed, it was commonsense that such demonstrations of Christian good will would aid the missionary enterprise in India. Having learnt from experiences at their parishes in Britain, missionaries were quick to realise that physical example could be just as persuasive, if not more so, than verbal preaching in the field; simply caring could be a powerful expression of the Christian faith.




To this tune, Dr. Ernest F. Neve of the CMS Kashmir station wrote: A wound carefully dressed, an extra visit, patience under the provocation of disobedience or ingratitude, justice in the control of a large establishment, the maintenance of cleanliness and all that goes to make up discipline. The opportunities for demonstrating the difference between honest work and eye service - these things are more valuable than many a Sermon.70

It follows, therefore, that the missionary doctor, being the very embodiment of evangelical action and as one who could bring 'relief to soul and body at the same time', was viewed in an increasingly positive light.71 As Arthur H. Neve, brother of Ernest and fellow CMS missionary, explained at the Medical Mission Auxiliary Annual Meeting (MMAAM) in May 1898, 'It is the doctor who wins the people's hearts. He goes to them and attracts by his skill, and wins by his sympathy, and convinces by his knowledge, and proves by his life.'72 The 'Double Cure', as it were, quickly became recognised as a pioneering tool for saving 'heathen' souls and the doctor by whom it was administered, the great evangelical agent of the day.

In the same way that the power of demonstration served to elevate the position of the doctor within missionary circles, 'Practical Christianity' also explains the missionaries' passion for building institutions. As Arthur Neve remarked, 'A hospital in its entirety, in its work, and in its start should be a very object lesson in Christianity.'73 In this way, hospitals and the affiliated leprosy asylums as charitable institutions were, as a whole, expressions of the evangelical movement - brick and mortar proof that Christianity was 'no barren philosophy'.74

Moreover, institutions like the hospital, the school and the leprosy asylum did not simply stand as symbols of Christian philanthropy, relying on the Indian bystander to draw an association between medical treatment and Christian philanthropy; they actively functioned within their walls as sites for evangelising. It is estimated that 'daily evangelism' - meaning the systematic and uniform preaching of 'the Word' - in the CMS leprosy asylum at Tarn Taran resulted in the conversion of a quarter of the asylum's inmates by 1891. 75 Evidence of the site being an 'evangelistic agency' is, moreover, found in contemporary missionary opinion.76 In a letter to CMS headquarters, Ernest Neve spoke of the 'systematic exposition of the life of our Lord and of the leading Truths of Christianity [that] is carried on from day to day' in the ward services in Kashmir.77 It appears that both Neve brothers recognised the great value of ward-preaching, or 'in-patient work' as Arthur Neve put it, in furthering the aims of the evangelical venture in India.78

There are within these examples noticeable similarities with the corrective sites of nineteenth-century British society. From the 'daily and

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systematic teaching in the Word of God' documented by Rev. E. Guilford down to the layout of asylum grounds in Bailey's two publications, there is the suggestion of a carefully planned programme of operation that is not at all dissimilar from that of Britain's disciplinary society.79 Whilst not perhaps the 'total institution' Goffman has described, the leprosy-asylum documented by Bailey and his contemporaries bears a resemblance to the institutions found in late nineteenth-century Western society.80 In particular, the idea of surveillance, which is a major theme in Foucault's Discipline and Punish , can be noted in missionary writing whereby the likes of the Neve brothers speak of hospitals and asylums as the best possible places for

'evangelising the people', arguably because of their potential for regulating in-patients.81

Moreover, like many of their contemporaries in Britain, it seems missionaries recognised that physical environments could have a truly reformative purpose. Elaine Showalter and Andrew Scull, both prominent names in the history of British psychiatry, have made a substantial effort to

explore Victorian notions of 'moral management',82 and, more specifically, have explained how the asylum site itself could serve a therapeutic purpose, thus aiding the patient's re-socialisation.83 In the same way, then, that the York Retreat in Britain was born of the idea that a 'homelike therapeutic environment' could be conducive to mental and moral reform,84 Bailey's use of the words 'Home' and 'Retreat' with reference to the leprosy asylums in India similarly convey a promise of sanctuary, rest and reform.85 Bailey spoke quite explicitly of the idea that a quiet and restful environment would give leprosy-sufferers an 'opportunity for thinking about the truths which they hear.'86 Therefore, although this visionary aspect within Bailey's writing could

again be an indication of the missionaries' practical considerations - that

missionary societies felt a certain amount of pressure to present a positive and uplifting picture of the ML's work in India - it could also be a reflection of the evangelical belief that 'a wholly Christian environment must inevitably produce Christian minds'.87

The emphasis on environment is especially important considering the

perceived level of corruption in Indian society. As Arthur Neve explained in his justification of isolation measures at the Kashmir Hospital, missionaries had 'to be a little watchful, lest any Muhamadan mullah should come and try secretly to counteract our teaching.'88 The character of the unrelenting 'Muhamadans' thus necessitated strict segregation measures. Isolation, moreover, granted missionaries complete control over the social and cultural environment, allowing sites such as the leprosy asylum and the village of Clarkabad to become evangelical oases in a land of 'heathenism' and focal

points for the under-construction 'Native Christian Community'.




The idea of correction also goes some way to explain the internal segregation practices that were adopted by missionaries. In particular, it was custom in missionary-managed leprosy asylums to separate the 'untainted' children from their infected parents.89 While it may be suggested that such a policy was a practical means of 'staying the spread of the disease* modelled on the practices of the medieval leprosarium - as indeed was the case put forward by Bailey in his justification of the practice - it is equally plausible that this policy was aimed at furthering the greater Christian cause; accommodating healthy children separately was a systematic attempt to spiritually correct the future generations of the indigenous Christian community.90 As evidence for this it is useful to look to how missionaries viewed those children they considered 'tainted'. Speaking of a group of leprous children at the Monegar Choultry and Government Leper Hospital in Madras Bailey remarked, 'They smiled at us brightly, and seemed so glad to be taken notice of; yet doomed to something far worse than death.'91 It is therein suggested that the children's 'taint' was not merely reflective of their bodily affliction, but also of their spiritual darkness with which missionaries were primarily concerned. It can be argued that because it was the younger generations who would be left to carry the fate of the Christian Church in India, it was essential to enlighten them to Christian Truth as early as possible, while their minds were 'awake and keen, [and] ready to receive impressions...'92 Therefore, it was not only with physical edifices that missionaries implemented their vision of an indigenous Christian community in India, but also with the shaping of its future inhabitant population through Christian education and spiritual correction.

It seems the evangelical vision of a 'Native Christian Community' allocated a special place for the leprosy asylum. The medical treatment such a site offered not only provided a first point of contact with the Indian community but, also served as an olive branch in those more hostile territories like Kashmir. Moreover, as a physical edifice itself the leprosy asylum stood for, and actively functioned as, an aid to evangelism. Within its walls and without, modes were at work to 'cure' and 'enlighten' the future inhabitants of the indigenous Christian community. By isolating leprosy- sufferers and placing them within an evangelically-moulded social environment and by constructing physical sites which would serve as beacons of the Christian faith, missionaries were engineering their ideal of a 'Native Christian Community'.

Conclusion We believe that Christianity will prevail, and that the day is coming, and

perhaps very near, when the mountain of the Lord's house shall be exalted in

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these lands above all other hills, and many people shall flow into it; for we see that Christ himself is now both 'searching His Sheep, and seeking them out,' and bringing them into His fold.93

Though this analysis has offered just one side to the story of the missionary-leprosy encounter in late nineteenth-century India, it has been no straightforward exercise. Reaching any conclusion with regard to evangelism in a colonial context requires a degree of personal judgement. Maintaining balance and academic distance has thus been a problem throughout, especially when confronted with hard evidence that mission work in India was, in many cases, a numbers game: a fervent form of proselytising that often manifested in a calculated targeting of the sick. Moreover, the full effects of segregation practices across the globe are only now coming to light; as seen in the case of Abu Zabaal, Egypt's last leprosy- asylum, the stigma of

segregation continues to affect the lives of sufferers even after the walls of the

asylum have been allowed to come down.94 Such developments have, in turn, cast a shadow on the legacy of missionary activity in the colonial world and have made missionaries themselves a subject of academic distaste.

On a more positive note, the destruction of the asylum site in more recent years and the refinement of life-transformative treatments such as

Multi-Drug Therapy have enabled those once held captive by the disease to

integrate back into society. Carrying with them the secrets of asylum-life, their side of the story can now be told. In academic terms, this has traced a new trajectory in the study of leprosy in India, whereby oral testimony is now

being used to shed light on the experiences of those at the receiving end of

missionary medicine. Kakar is leading the way in this regard, developing the

'patient perspective' and producing a more nuanced understanding of what was, lest it be forgotten, a two-sided episode in India's history.95 'Oral narrative', Kakar explains, 'is the only means for such patients, especially those without access to literacy, to enter into the arena and tell their own

story.'96 In particular, a 'special effort' is being made to restore the voice of the female sufferer, who has remained virtually silent in the narrative so far.97

This new dynamic will perhaps reveal the deeper psychological trauma of

segregation. The evangelical project in India, which at its heart sought to

question the Indian worldview, arguably added a great deal of distress to the

leprosy-sufferer who was already struggling with the physical disease itself. It would, moreover, be interesting to explore the effects of the internal

segregation practices briefly discussed in this article. While leprosy-sufferers arguably had little choice but to give up their 'untainted' children in

exchange for medical treatment, there was an element of resistance on their

part that deserves proper attention. As Rev. E. Guilford noted in a letter dated 1895, some parents simply could not be persuaded to 'make over their



offspring'98 Oral history can play a pioneering role in this respect, by uncovering the impact of such practices upon the family.

Although it would be erroneous to wholly dismiss the argument that medical work was never simply a humanitarian gesture on the part of the Christian missionaries and that their real aim extended beyond the alleviation of bodily symptoms, such an assessment is condemning to the point of completely obscuring the strength of the evangelist's conception of Divine Providence. As this article has shown, a profound sense of religious vocation underpinned the decision to work 'among the lepers'. British Protestant missionaries not only felt duty-bound to expand the Kingdom of God on Earth, but also destined to do so, speaking of their determination for a Christian world with an air of idealistic optimism and visionary force. It was the drive to engineer the ideal of a self-sustaining 'Native Christian Community' that lay at the heart of the 'separatist tradition' in India. Constructing corrective sites like the leprosy asylum was, in a sense, a small step towards the realisation of that even greater Christian goal: 'the evangelisation of the world'.99

Lauren Wilks has completed Scottish Masters, specialising in modern Asian history at the University of Edinburgh. She has been with the History Department, Delhi University, under the UK-India Students' Exchange Programme (2009-10).

Notes 1 Leviticus 13:45-46, Old Testament, The Holy Bibley King James Version

(HarperCollins, 1998) 2 The phrase 'cannot be caught by a handshake' was taken from the Leprosy

Mission International website, www.leprosymission.org/web/pages/leprosy/ leprosy.html, accessed 6th January 2011.

3 For an overview of segregation on Robben Island and Molokai see, R. Edmond, Leprosy and Empire: A Medical and Cultural History (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 143- 177.

4 C. Strange & A. Bashford, 'Isolation and Exclusion in the Modern World: An Introductory Essay' in C. Strange & A. Bashford (eds.), Isolation: Places and Practices of Exclusion (London, 2003), p 2.

5 M. Harrison, Empire Review Article on "Leprosy in Colonial South India", History in Focus website, August 2002, www.history.ac.uk/ihr/Focus/Empire/ reviews/harrison.html, accessed 2nd July 2010.

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6 J. Cox, Imperial Fault Lines: Christianity and Colonial Power in India , 1818-1940 (Stanford, 2002), p. 7.

7 The missionary encounter with leprosy is mentioned briefly in J. Buckingham's Leprosy in Colonial South India: Medicine and Confinement (Basingstoke, 2001) and more extensively in S. Kakar 's article, 'Leprosy in British India, 1860- 1940: Colonial Politics and Missionary Medicine', Medical History , Vol. 40 (1996), pp. 215-230. However, these are the only two recent works in the field. Kakar has commented on how leprosy, and its relationship with Western medicine, has been 'bypassed' as a subject of study. See, Kakar, 'Leprosy in India: The Intervention of Oral History', Oral History , Vol. 23, No. 1, (Spring, 1995), p. 38.

8 Z. Gussow & T. Tracy, 'Stigma and the Leprosy Phenomenon: the Social History of a Disease in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries', Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Vol. 44, No. 5 (1970), p. 446.

9 J. Staples, Peculiar People , Amazing Lives: Leprosy , Social Exclusion and Community Making in South India (New Delhi, 2007), p. 18.

10 Z. Gussow, Leprosy , Racism and Public Health: Social Policy in Chronic Disease Control (Boulder, 1989), p. 21.

1 1 Basciluis leprae is the bacteria specific to leprosy. Its discovery confirmed what many European medical experts had been claiming for years, that infectious diseases were caused by living organisms and transmitted by human contact. For a summary of the 1898 Lepers Act see, Buckingham, Leprosy in Colonial South India, pp. 157-188.

12 W. C. Bailey, A Glimpse at the Indian Mission-Field and Leper Asylums in 1886- S7( London, 1888) and W. C. Bailey, The Lepers of our Indian Empire: A Visit to Them in 1890-91 (Edinburgh, 1899).

The Mission to Lepers was founded by Bailey in 1874. It is still active today, operating under the name, The Leprosy Mission International. See, www.leprosymission.org/web/pages/abouttlm/index.html.

1 3 Cox has discussed and challenged the ways, in which missionary activity has been talked of as an appendage to British imperialism in India. See, Cox, Imperial Fault Lines, p. 10.

14 T. Asad, 'Comments on Conversion' in Peter Van der Veer (ed.) Conversion to Modernities: The Globalization of Christianity (London, 1996), p. 271.

15 See, R. Fitzgerald, "'Clinical Christianity": The emergence of Medical Work as a Missionary Strategy in Colonial India, 1800-1914', in B. Pati & M. Harrison (eds.), Health , Medicine and Empire (New Delhi, 2001), pp. 88-136.

16 Williams, C. Peter, 'Healing and Evangelism: The Place of Medicine in later Victorian Protestant Thinking' in W. J. Shields (ed.) Studies in Church History , Vol. 19, (Oxford, 1982), p. 278.

17 J. Hutchinson, On Leprosy and Fish-Eating. A Statement of Facts and Explanations (London, 1906), p. 1.

18 M. Harrison, Public Health in British India: Anglo-Indian Preventive Medicine , 1859-1914 (Cambridge, 1994), p. 2.

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19 For an indication of how leprosy-sufferers were viewed by the colonial state see the comments of H. H. Risley, 1901 Census Commissioner for India, cited in Buckingham, Leprosy in Colonial South India , p. 19.

20 Kakar has commented on this in, 'Leprosy in British India', p. 215.

21 E. Said, Orientalism , [1978] (London, 2003). Cox has spoken of a 'Saidian Master Narrative'. See, Cox, Imperial Fault Lines , p. 9.

22 See, D. Arnold, Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth-Century India (Berkeley, 1993); D. Headrick, The Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1981).

23 Staples, Peculiar Peopley p. 17.

24 Ibid., 19.

25 See, E. Goffman, Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates (Harmondsworth, 1961); E. Goffman, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (Harmondsworth, 1963); M. Foucault, (trans.) A. Sheridan, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York, 1973)

26 Gussow & Tracy, 'Stigma', p. 446.

27 G. Lewis, 'A Lesson from Leviticus', Man , New Series , Vol. 22, No. 4 (December 1987), p. 596.

28 Ibid.

29 Staples has commented on how the term 'leprosy patient' not only completely overlooks the social ramifications of living with leprosy, but is also highly unrepresentative in that it assumes all sufferers are receiving some form of medical care. See Staples, Peculiar People , p. 5.

30 S. Kakar, 'Medical Development and Patient Unrest in the Leprosy Asylum, 1860-1940', Social Scientist, Vol. 24, No. 4/6 (April-June, 1996), pp. 62-81.

31 Ibid., 78.

32 Buckingham, Leprosy in Colonial South India , pp. 1-4.

33 Ibid, 89.

34 C. Harding, Religious Transformation in South Asia: The Meanings of Conversion in Colonial Punjab (Oxford, 2008), p. 4.

35 See, L. Wittgenstein, 'II. Lectures on "Private Experience" and "Sense Data'" The Philosophical Review , Vol. 77, No. 3 (July, 1968), pp. 275- 320.

36 Ibid., 275.

37 R. Clark, The Punjab and Sindh Mission of the Church Missionary Society: Giving an Account of their Foundation and Progress for Thirty-Three Years , from 1852- 1884 (Stand, 1885), p. 356.

38 Bailey, Glimpse , p. 47.

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39 J. Jackson, Mary Keed; Missionary to the Lepers (London: Marshall Brothers, 1899).

40 Jackson, Mary Reed , p. 28.

41 Ibid., ix.

42 Bailey, Lepers , p. vi.

43 J. F. W. Youngson, Forty Years of the Panjab Mission of the Church of Scotland, 1 855- 1 895 ( Edinburgh, 1896).

44 A. D. Miller, An Inn Called Welcome: The Story of the Mission to Lepers 1874- 1917 (London, 1965) p. 25.

45 Stock, History of the Church Missionary Society , Vol. 1, p. xiv. 46 Cited in Jackson, Mary Reed , p. 34.

47 Harding, Religious Transformation , p. 209.

48 Ibid., 208.

49 Mackworth- Young quoted in ibid., 228.


51 Fitzgerald has argued that medicine was 'largely dismissed' by mission societies before the second half of the nineteenth century. See Fitzgerald, 'Clinical Christianity', pp. 94-95.

52 R. Porter, 'Religion and Medicine' in W. F. Bynum & R. Porter (eds.) Companion Encyclopedia of the History of Medicine, Vol. 2 (London, 1993), p. 1449.

53 See, for instance, 'The Story of the Man Born Blind', John, 9:1-7.

54 Stock, History of the Church Missionary Society , Vol. 1, p. xiii.

55 Rev. James Lewis spoke of 'an embodied Christianity' at the Liverpool Conference on Missions in 1860, cited in Williams, 'Healing and Evangelism', p. 276.

56 G. A. Oddie, Imagined Hinduism: British Protestant missionary constructions of Hinduism , 1793-1900 (London, 2006), p. 295.

57 The EMMS was established in 1841 to encourage the acceptance of the principle of medical missions. It was the first Western missionary society to confine its interest to the promotion of medical work.

58 J. Lowe, Medical Missions: Their Place and Their Power (London, 1886), p. 1 1.

59 A. F. Walls, 'The Heavy Artillery of the Missionary Army: The Domestic Importance of the Nineteenth-Century Medical Missionary' in Shields (ed.) Studies in Church History , Vol. 19, p. 297.

60 F. Colyer-Sackett, Vision and Venture: A Record of Fifty Years in Hyderabad 1 879- 1 929 (1930) cited in Fitzgerald, 'Clinical Christianity', p. 108.

61 Fitzgerald, 'Clinical Christianity', p. 108.




62 Lowe, Medical Missions , p. 53.

63 Fitzgerald, 'Clinical Christianity', p. 111.

64 Bailey, Lepersy p. 33.


66 Zenanas are apartments reserved for secluded women. For more on the women's medical mission movement see, Oddie, Imagined Hinduism , pp. 235-240.

67 A. H. Neve quoted in Mercy and Truth: A Record of C.M.S. Medical Mission Work, Vol. 2, No. 18, (June, 1898) CMSA, p. 138. [Hereafter, MT'

68 A. H. Neve quoted in Extracts from the Annual Letters of the Missionaries for the year 1893-1894 , CMSA, p. 385. [Hereafter, EAL]


70 EAL 1890-1891, p. 54.

71 Bailey, Glimpsey p. 65.

72 MT, Vol. 2, No. 18, p.136. 73 Ibid.

74 E. F. Neve, EAL 1890-1891, p. 54.


76 EAL 1891-92, p. 232.

77 EAL i 890- 1891, p. 54.

78 MT, Vol. 1, No. 3, p. 60.

79 Extracts 1891-1892, p. 231. For an overview of the disciplinary society see Garland, Punishment, pp. 131- 146; P. Rabinow, The Foucault Reader (Harmondsworth, 1986), pp. 188- 224.

80 For the 'total institution' see, Goffman's Asylums. 81 MT, Vol. 2, No. 18, p. 138. Foucault's Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the

Prison was first published in 1975.

82 E. Showalter, 'Victorian Women and Insanity', Victorian Studies , Vol. 23, No. 2 (Winter, 1980), p. 158.

83 A. Scull, 'A Convenient Place to Get Rid of Inconvenient People: The Victorian Lunatic Asylum' in Anthony D. King (ed.) Buildings and Society: Essays on the Social Development of the Built Environment (London, 1980), p. 45; Showalter, 'Victorian Women and Insanity', pp. 157-181.

84 Showalter, 'Victorian Women and Insanity', p. 158. The York Retreat was established in 1796 by William Tuke and became a model for asylums around the world. See, Scull 'A Convenient Place'.

85 Bailey, Glimpse, p. 132.

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86 Bailey, Lepers , p. 24 1 . The York Retreat was established in 1 796 by William Tuke. Pioneering methods of moral treatment, the Retreat soon becoming a model for asylums around the world.

87 E. F. Neve, EAL 1890-1891 , p. 54.


89 MT, Vol. 1, No. 3, p. 60.

90 'Untainted Children' was a phrase used by missionaries. One such example can be found in a letter written by Rev. Guilford in 1895, titled 'Our People at the Leper Asylum'. See, EAL 1894-1895 , p. 101.

91 Bailey, Lepers , p. 113.


93 C. A. Newnham, EAL 1899-1900 , p. 536.

94 R. Clark, The Punjab and Sindh Mission of the Church Missionary Society: Giving an Account of their Foundation and Progress for Thirty-Three Years , from 1852- 1884 (Stand, 1885), p. 363.

95 A recent article in The Guardian explained how the legacy of confinement is a limiting reality for past sufferers, with in-patients choosing to remain in the asylum. Jack Skenker, 'Egypt's last leprosy colony broaches time of integration', The Guardianf 10th October 2010, The Guardian Website, www.guardian.co.uk/ world/20 10/oct/10/egypt-leper-colongy-leprosy, accessed 22nd December 2010.

96 See, S. Kakar, 'Leprosy in India: The Intervention of Oral History'. 97 Ibid., 38.

98 Ibid.

99 EAL 1894-1895> p. 101.

100 A. H. Neve, Modern Medical Missions (London, 1899), p. 7.

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