Every Indian learns at some point about how India was educated by the British and how that brought about a cultural renaissance to a degenerated and stagnant India. Linked to this, Indian students also learn how two centuries prior to the colonization of India, Europe had undergone a renaissance and Lutheran reformation.



This had allowed Europe in general and Britain in particular to assume the role of civilizing the heathen world. How true is this grand narrative of the civilizing mission of the British?

The missing links

Mainstream European historiography has always presented Christianity as a positive influence over Pagan Europe. Thus Constantine is shown relieving the lot of slaves, highlighting his appreciation of allowing Church fathers to free a slave in a Church congregation.



In reality such a practice of freeing a slave existed not just for clergy but for all slave owners in Pagan Europe and the ceremony happened at Pagan temples. Factually though, religion became an additional chain for slaves and the slaves who escaped to “barbarian” lands resisting conversions had their feet cut off by Constantine. And this is seldom mentioned in such grand narratives.



Latter day praise of the Protestant movement is seen as a continuum of the same humanizing spirit of Christianity. A closer look reveals Protestant movement more as a reaction to the inevitable raise of modernism in Europe. And the modernism which was on the ascent in Europe was principally because of the rediscovery of philosophical traditions long dismissed as ‘pagan’.



Thus Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism, in his infamous tract against the rebellious peasants opposing the crushing taxes of the high-born nobles, stated without mincing words