and Buddhists) decided to fight the encroachment of Christian teachings and values by setting up rival educational establishments. In the process, the Indian groups managed to formulate a nationalist discourse in which education and religion became bound up with Indianness. The intensity of the rivalry is evident in the constant complaints in the journal against the Brahmin schools set up by the Hindu Tract Society in particular. The missionaries' dismay at the growing power of schools set up by Brahmins and other Indian religious groups went beyond religious concerns. The Indian culture reinforced by the various Indian groups negated or altogether erased the effect of missionary efforts to spread a British Christian culture in India. Ultimately, then, the role of missionaries in co-opting the women of India into British cultural imperialism became ambiguous at the very least. Even while the advancement of females (no missionary would ever see herself as a feminist or suffragist) was embraced and celebrated as a triumph by the Society that had begun as the Ladies' Committee for Ameliorating the Condition of Women in Heathen Countries, their initiative resulted in triggering intense Indian nationalism within the religious arena and unwittingly subverted the cultural basis of British imperialism in India.

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