A Cross-Cultural Conflict Reexamined: Annette Akroyd and Keshub Chunder Sen

A well-known conflict over girls' education between a Victorian reformer and the leader of the Brahmo Samaj, a Hindu reformist sect, has often been held up as an example of British imperial condescension, or at least a failure of a westerner to understand Indian culture. A closer reexamination of events shows that there was greater complexity to the encounter. The conflict is clarified by discussion of the circumstances of both parties: Annette Akroyd's Unitarianism and education, and Keshub Chunder Sen's shifting theological position and role in the press activities of his zealous young missionaries.