William Carey (1761-1834)
The cobbler from Northampton who made India his home, to educate Indians in the vernacular languages of India was opposed both by the Orientalists who championed the classical languages of Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic for Indian learning, and the Anglicists who wanted to transform India through and English education.
Carey's printing of Matthew's Gospel was the first prose literature in Bengali. By compiling Bengali grammars, translating the Indian classics from Sanskrit into Bengali -so that ordinary men and women, and not just the pundits or scholars, could read them - Carey and his fellow Serampore missionaries paved the way for the mid-nineteenth-century 'Bengal Renaissance'.
Carey's breadth of vision was rooted in the global reach of the gospel. He provided schools for women and Dalits, an asylum for lepers, persuaded the British officials to outlaw such social evils as infanticide and widow-burning, pioneered forestry projects in Bengal and became one of the founding members of the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India. Little wonder that Rabindranath Tagore called Carey the 'Father of Modern Bengal'.
Excerpt from: - R. Young, 'Ripple or Wave? Protestant Missions and the "Protestantization" of Religion in Nineteenth-Century Sri Lanka', unpublished paper delivered in Colombo, Sri Lanka, 8 February 1992
2004 UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE educational edition by Thom Wolf
Serampore Great Hall in 1827
William Carey baptizes
first convert
William Carey as teacher
in England
Carey translated the Bible into over 40 Indian languages
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