430 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
field in 1813 and since then the expansion of Missionary enterprize was rapid and continuous.
Thus Christian propaganda has had therefore a long run in India. It had had four centuries before the rise of the Saracens who caused a break in the Mission Activity. Again after subsidence of the Saracens it has had nearly four centuries. This total of six millions is the fruit gathered in eight centuries. Obviously this is a very depressing result. It depressed Francis Xavier. It even depressed Abbe Dubois who, writing in 1823 some three hundred years after Xavier, declared that to convert Hindus to Christianity was a forlorn hope. He was then criticized by the more optimistic of Christian Missionaries. But the fact remains that at the end of this period there are only about 6 million Christians out of a total population of about 358 millions. This is a very slow growth indeed and the question is, what are the causes of this slow growth.
III
It seems to me that there are three reasons which have impeded the growth of Christianity.
The first of these reasons is the bad morals of the early European settlers in India particularly Englishmen who were sent to India by the East India Company. Of the character of the men who were sent out to India Mr. Kaye, an Appologist of the Company and also of its servants speaks in the following terms in his “Christianity in India”:
“Doubtless there were some honest, decent men from the middle classes amongst them . . . .. But many, it appears from contemporary writers, were Society’s hard bargains—youngsters, perhaps, of good family, to which they were a disgrace, and from the bosom of which therefore they were to be cast out, in the hope that there would be no prodigals return from the ‘Great Indies’. It was not to be expected that men who had disgraced themselves at home would lead more respectable lives abroad.
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“There were, in truth, no outward motives to preserve morality of conduct, or even decency of demeanour; so from the moment of their landing upon the shore of India, the first settlers cast off all these bonds which had restrained them in their native villages; they regarded themselves as privileged beings—privileged to violate all the obligations of religion and morality and to outrage all the