SCOTTISH MISSIONARY ARCHIVES

Part 3: Conference: Quarterly Paper of the United Free Church of Scotland Missions in India, 1902-1969.

Conference was a quarterly periodical issued by the United Free Church of Scotland in India from 1902 to 1969, describing their work in missions Missions in all regions of India (and what later became Pakistan).

The first issue in February 1902 has many interesting articles on topics such as mission industries, work among the Bhils, the furlough system and ‘experiences of a district missionary’ and also reflects on the recent Nagpur Conference – a get together of missionaries where they sought to learn from each other.  Reports on such conferences were a regular feature of the journal as it went forward with accounts of the Madras conference in 1902, the South African conference in 1906, the Poona conference in 1921, the Calcutta conference in 1928, the Bombay conference in 1936, the Jaipur conference in 1943 and many other conferences.

Biographies and obituaries were also an important feature of the journal.  There are lengthy accounts of figures such as Pandita Ramabai (in 1927), Mahatma Gandhi (in 1948) and Premanand Mahanti (in 1959) and there is a mine of information for anyone wishing to understand the lives and careers of individual missionaries serving in India.

Conference continued on through two world wars and through Independence and so witnesses many changes in Indian society and in the organisation of the Church in India. 

Cultural Historians, Missiologists and Indian specialists will all be interested in articles such as:

• The relation of missionaries to Anglo-Indians (1903)
• The religious reform movement in Western India (1904)
• The Presbyterian Church in India (1905)
• Witches and Witchcraft in Santalia (1907)
• Tuberculosis in India (1910)
• Industrial Work of Village Christian Girls (1911)
• The Coronation (1912)
• History of Chingleput Church (1912)
• Christianity and the Hindu mind (1914)
• The War (1914)
• The War – Our Lesson Book (1916)
• The present political situation in India (1918)
• The End of the War (1919)
• The Santal Mission Jubilee (1922)
• The Christian Council of India, Burma and Ceylon (1929)
• The Duff Centenary in Calcutta (1931)
• The Congress of the Forward Movement (1932)
• Health Work in villages (1934)
• The Christian message in a non-Christian world (1939)
• The War and German missions in India (1940)
• Let us remember (1942)
• The revolution in Asia (1950)
• A social anthropologist in Rajpatana (1951)
• Modern India’s oldest university (1955)
• The work of WHO in South East Asia (1957)
• The Church in South Arabia (1961)

There was also a special Jubilee Number in November 1952, packed with reminiscences.

Conference finally closed with issue 244 in 1969.  The editors declared that “it has served its purpose”, which had been to describe the work of United Free Church Missions in India.