Book Description

The Oxford academic F.M. Müller, and B.F. Westcott, Bishop of Durham, were both Victorians who posited an idealist relationship between India and the West. Müller believed them part of the same Aryan culture; Westcott, that they were essentially members of the same Church. Missionaries absorbed these ideas. Many read Müller. The Cambridge University Mission to Delhi embodied Westcott's notions. He also influenced a mission from Trinity College, Dublin, and had several children who were themselves missionaries. Such links permit a close analysis of idea becoming practice. Evidence from the World Missionary Conference, 1910, shows that missionaries accepted such liberal thinking. Ultimately, though, Müller and Westcott's ideals proved inadequate. They were grounded in Romanticism and semantics, and could not bear the weight of experience in India itself.