464 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
lives and worldly happiness of multitudes of our fellow country men to hazard in our attempt to their conversion.”
“The Directors would be doing their duty neither to the shareholders nor the British Nation if they allowed ‘itinerant tinkers to preach the natives into insurrection….. The natives must be taught a better religion at a time and in a manner that will not inspire them with a passion for political change.’ ….. Our duties to our families and Country are set before us by God Himself. We are not at liberty to desert them in order to give a remote chance of conferring greater benefits on strangers at a distance.”
It is arguments such as those which prevailed with Parliament and led to the rejection of the Clause in 1793. Wilberforce twitted members of Parliament by reminding them with, their Christianity was not a religion of convenience but it was a religion established by law. But as has been well pointed out, “for the major portion of those ‘counted’ in the eighteenth century the religion accepted by the State and Society as a convenience was something to be used with fact and discretion at home. There was no need to diffuse it recklessly abroad. The general atmosphere, as has often been pointed out, was remarkably like that of Augustan Rome. To the statesman, thinking imperially, all religions were equally useful, each in its proper place.” [1]
The attempt to open the door to the Missionaries failed and the Missionary was shut out from India till 1813. Not only was he shut out but the Company’s Government kept a strict vigil upon the activities of such stray missionaries who contrived to go to India without their license.
In 1793 Dr. Carey went as an interloper without license. As he was not allowed to enter Calcutta being without license, he made Serampore, 14 miles away from Calcutta as his base of operation. Serampore was a Danish settlement and the Danes had placed no restrictions on missionaries or mission propaganda. On the contrary the Governor of Serampore actively helped them. Carey and his Mission was always suspect in the eyes of the Company’s Government. In 1798 the Serampore Mission decided to engage four missionaries who arrived in the year 1800. They went to reside in the Danish settlement of Serampore. As a matter of fact the Governor General had nothing to do with them. But the unconcealed residence of those unlicensed enthusiasts was too much for the Company’s Governor General and Lord Wellesley wrote to the Governor of Serampore, “Would His Excellency see to the expulsion of these interlopers who
1 Mayhew- Christianity and the Government of India, p. 51.