Missionary pedagogy and Christianisation of the heathens

The Basel Evangelical Missionary Society came to India in 1834 and established its first school two years later. Through the formation of a carefully structured and disciplined pedagogic community at its mission school, the Basel Mission hoped to insert its version of Protestant Christianity into a society that already possessed its own well-entrenched religious traditions. In the years to follow, the Basel Mission Schools increased in number and diversified in structure and curriculum. This article studies how this resulted in unforeseen socio-religious restructurings of the local people, even as it recontoured the Christianity brought by the missionaries.