Romance of the wild, the natural, and the savage: glimpses of evangelism in North-East India, 1836-1900

This chapter contends that the practice and performance of the missionary project generated imperial hermeneutic situations and focuses on the need for an appreciation of it in the colonial context of north-east India. The identity of the indigenous tribal population of the north-east and its liminality emerged from the peripherality of their location in the colonial discourse and had little to do with the colour of their skin, race or religion. The chapter aims to interrogate the construction of English identities, which resulted in the formation of an ambivalent class in the colonies. The debate between Englishness and Britishness had important implications in the empire. The invention of Englishness was a subversive category and helped to reduce racial and ethnic tension, which otherwise would have destroyed the fabric of the empire. Fractured modernity in this chapter is about failures, of incompleteness of the colonial project.