Gender, religion, and medicine: white women missionaries in colonial Bengal, 1880s–1940s

This article argues that much of the literature on the history of medicine and public health in colonial India dealing with missionary medicine is mostly silent on the activities of female mission doctors and nurses. Most research has focused on male missionaries, but there is little recognition of the women who joined the missions with medical training. Only recently have scholars realized the importance of female missionaries’ contribution to fashioning an imperialist image. Scholars have mostly emphasized the educational aspect of the works of white women missionaries in Bengal and the challenges they faced during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This article traces the activities of the medically trained women affiliated with various Christian denominations like the Church of England Zenana Mission, London Missionary Society, and Church Missionary Society, in the areas of Krishnagar, Ratnapur, Rampurhat, Mankar, and the suburbs of Calcutta. Based on the proceedings of the Church Missionary Society, Church of England Zenana Mission, reports of the National Association for Supplying Medical Aid by Women to the Women of India, and archival documents preserved in the archives, this article argues that their work was a pioneering step which helped build a defining space and agency for women’s activities within a patriarchal colonial society.