Paper short abstract:

The American Baptist Mission and the Welsh Presbyterian Mission arrived in Northeast India propagating the message of Christ but religion soon became a 'civilizing mission' seeking to spread not merely the 'message of Christ' but also inculcating notions of piety, domestic space and gender.

Paper long abstract:

The reconfiguration of gender and gender relationships in colonial India was a key element of the Civilizing Mission. Historians and biographers have related the story of female missionaries taking new ideas about femininity, domesticity into the Zenana. Such civilizing agenda was posited as emancipatory in realizing the 'agency' of the Western women who attempted to 'rescue' the 'heathen' women from the oppressive 'native' indigenous patriarchies.

However, the encounter between female missionaries and women from tribal/indigenous societies in northeast India has remained relatively unexplored. American Baptists arrived in the Brahmaputra valley colonial Assam in the 1840s to work among caste Hindus and by the 1860s, the missionaries had ventured into the hills. Always aided by their wives, by the 1880s male missionaries were joined by single women missionaries.

Working among indigenous/tribal societies, missionary women were confronted with problems unknown to their colleagues serving in the plains. Instead of enticing women out of Zenanas and fighting child marriage, they were confronted with societies where gender relations were dictated by tribal customs. As opposed to fighting the 'social evils' of the Hindu and Muslims, they came into contact 'savage', 'barbarian', 'primitive' societies of the hills. Confronted with 'nakedness' of men and women, 'promiscuity' as they defined in sexual mores, and pre-marital sexuality they had to redefine morality, social norms and challenge customary laws to establish a Christian kingdom. This social reordering of morality transformed the 'traditional' norms of love, courtship, marriage and family.