INTRODUCTION

The Roman Catholic church is perhaps the most widely extended Christian fellowship in India. If so, it has been preceded, or closely followed, by the Church of England, or, as it is more properly called in its later developments, the Anglican Communion. This body has penetrated to every corner of the Indian sub-continent. It has undertaken to minister to Europeans, to Anglo-Indians, and to Indians of every race and community. It has won converts among adherents of every religion which exists in India, and on every social level from the exclusive Kulin Brāhman of Bengal down to the despised and rejected sweeper, and from almost all the remote peoples of the mountains and hills.

In 1707, though most of the English people in India were nominally members of the Church of England, the effective force of that church consisted of no more than a handful of chaplains intermittently appointed and casually replaced, and with few regularly consecrated buildings in which to worship. By 1858 it had become a well-organised church, with three bishops and three stately cathedrals, with a rapidly increasing staff of European chaplains and Indian priests, and with Indian Christian laymen already holding posts of considerable importance in government service, in education and in the professions. Two chapters in this volume will attempt to show how this remarkable evolution had taken place.