Religious anxiety, knowledge, and the corporate ordering of difference

In the seventeenth-century company world, religious anxiety was not confined to private conscience but operated as a problem of institutional stability. English observers frequently warned that long residence abroad eroded Protestant discipline through moral laxity, apostasy, or gradual accommodation to unfamiliar ritual environments. Such fears were not abstract. They touched on contractual loyalty, factory hierarchy, and the credibility of English representatives in diplomatic settings. A servant who crossed confessional boundaries might also cross political ones. Religion therefore entered the practical mechanisms of governance. It shaped systems of surveillance, correspondence with London, disciplinary hearings, and the language through which authority was justified before shareholders and sovereign alike. Conversion discourse, evangelical aspiration, and domestic oversight were incorporated into everyday administration, particularly in settlements where the company exercised only fragile coercive power and relied on negotiated legitimacy.

Religious legitimacy was widely understood to underpin corporate expansion. John Donne described religion as the ‘moral backbone’ of corporations such as the Virginia Company, explicitly linking Protestant evangelism to English authority overseas.Footnote ¹⁵ Corporate enterprises did not regard spiritual mission and administrative ambition as separate pursuits. Rather, they framed religious governance as a means of consolidating discipline, loyalty, and territorial claim. Within this wider imperial culture, the English East India Company adopted what historians term ecumenical governance. It accommodated religious diversity to preserve commercial stability and maintain precarious territorial footholds.Footnote ¹⁶ Conversion in this context carried political weight. Reformation polemics equated movement across confessional boundaries with sedition, reinforcing the belief that collective security depended upon religious conformity.Footnote ¹⁷ The management of faith thus became inseparable from the management of allegiance.

These concerns assumed sharper definition within the jurisdictional order of the Mughal empire. Company servants operated inside a sovereign system whose legal and religious hierarchies they did not control. Farmāns regulating religious status, communal boundaries, and legal privilege circumscribed English intervention and clarified the limits of corporate jurisdiction.Footnote ¹⁸ Company officials were therefore compelled to learn how Mughal sovereignty functioned in practice. They gathered intelligence on judicial procedure, taxation, property rights, and the relationship between Islamic jurisprudence and imperial decree.Footnote ¹⁹ Questions about conversion, marriage, and communal obligation became occasions for sustained administrative inquiry. Ecumenical governance emerged less from principled tolerance than from negotiated coexistence with Muslims, Hindus, Catholics, Armenians, and Jews whose cooperation was indispensable to trade.Footnote ²⁰ Petitions, memoranda, and factory correspondence preserved these negotiations, converting religious uncertainty into bureaucratic record and embedding anxiety within institutional memory.Footnote ²¹

Alongside accommodation stood evangelical aspiration. The company articulated a responsibility to promote Protestant Christianity among non-Europeans, presenting conversion as evidence of divine favour and civilisational purpose. Yet it lacked the missionary infrastructure of Iberian empires and depended largely upon chaplains whose authority rarely extended beyond company settlements.Footnote ²² Patrick Copland’s celebration of the 1614 baptism of an Indian boy, Peter Pope, illustrates both ambition and limitation. Proclaimed the ‘first fruits of India’, Pope was baptised before the king and the Archbishop of Canterbury, transforming a single conversion into a spectacle of imperial promise.Footnote ²³ His highly publicised reception echoed that of Pocahontas in Virginia, where baptism served as symbolic confirmation of providential progress.Footnote ²⁴ Such episodes projected confidence to metropolitan audiences even as large-scale conversion remained elusive on the ground.

Religious anxiety also permeated the governance of intimacy. Company correspondence reveals sustained concern that mixed households might blur confessional boundaries or generate divided loyalties. The Dutch East India Company agent Gerard Demmer warned that mixed children would inherit the supposed defects of the ‘native nation’.Footnote ²⁵ Although expressed in racialised terms, these anxieties translated into administrative deliberation. Marriage, baptism, inheritance, and education became subjects of corporate regulation. Where concubinage could not be eliminated, it was redirected into formal marriage and the Christian upbringing of children, strategies employed selectively by both English and Dutch authorities.Footnote ²⁶ Through these measures, religious order was reproduced at the level of household governance. The stability of the settlement depended not only upon diplomacy and trade but upon disciplining kinship networks and embedding Protestant norms within family structures.

If religion structured governance, it also shaped the English company’s epistemological practices. Encounters in South Asia did not merely reveal diversity. They transformed it into categories, translations, and descriptions that circulated through correspondence networks and were stored in company archives. Rituals were itemised, sects named, and theological distinctions rendered comparable to European frameworks. In this process, religion became both an object of inquiry and a classificatory tool that made communities legible as governable collectivities.

The accumulation of religious and cultural knowledge became a defining feature of corporate rule. The company commissioned and catalogued letters, journals, and reports, cultivating institutional expertise through what scholars describe as hybrid knowledge produced in collaboration with local informants.Footnote ²⁷ Translation formed part of this enterprise. John Marshall’s rendering of the Bhagavata Purana, undertaken with a Bengali Brahmin, demonstrates how theological curiosity intersected with administrative need.Footnote ²⁸ Such projects did not amount to neutral scholarship. They sought to render local epistemologies intelligible within corporate frameworks, allowing officials to anticipate dispute, interpret custom, and regulate interaction. Commercial practice reinforced this classificatory impulse. Cross-cultural trade depended upon regimes of trust, credit, and reputation that traversed confessional lines.Footnote ²⁹ Armenian, Jewish, and Muslim intermediaries supplied linguistic fluency and legal expertise essential to negotiation across polities.Footnote ³⁰ Yet their indispensability complicated Protestant ideals of bounded community.Footnote ³¹ Managing these relationships required both ethnographic attentiveness and institutional discipline, expressed through merchant codes of conduct and corporate expectations of behaviour.Footnote ³²

The gradual development of colonial governance intensified these dynamics. Over the course of the century, the company evolved from a mercantile association into a body exercising judicial and administrative authority. As the company expanded its authority overseas, it acquired many of the functions commonly associated with sovereign rule, leading some historians to describe it as a ‘company-state’. Yet the extent to which the seventeenth-century company should be understood as a state remains contested. Recent scholarship has instead emphasised the corporate, networked, and negotiated character of company authority in Asia, highlighting the extent to which European power emerged through interaction with existing political structures and commercial intermediaries.Footnote ³³ Indeed, as one study observes, the East India Company ‘was not a modern hierarchically structured multinational company in which the directors monitored the performance of their employees’, but rather ‘an umbrella organisation, embracing private trade’.Footnote ³⁴ Whether understood as an emergent corporate state or a more fluid network of commercial and political relationships, however, the company was nonetheless required to confront the practical challenges of governing religiously diverse populations. This transformation occurred through negotiation with local rulers, the establishment of legal forums, and the maintenance of order within diverse urban populations.Footnote ³⁵ English expansion was therefore a transcultural process marked by adaptation and exchange rather than simple imposition.Footnote ³⁶ Mughal legal traditions influenced company codes and procedures, producing pragmatic fusions of European and South Asian norms.Footnote ³⁷ Religious anxiety, knowledge production, and institutional adaptation were intertwined. By classifying difference, regulating households, and negotiating sovereignty, the company converted commercial presence into durable structures of colonial authority.

Adapting sufferance: from Mughal pluralism to company governance

The company’s primary response to plurality involved pragmatic cultivation of sufferance rather than enforcing confessional uniformity. This accommodation is best understood as a learned practice rather than a metropolitan doctrine. As territorial footholds evolved into jurisdictions, company officials confronted an administrative reality: governance could not suppress religious difference when such difference was essential to settlement, revenue, and stability. Sufferance thus functioned as a hybrid technique of rule, shaped by Mughal and regional precedents, refined by company necessity, and later framed as English benevolence. It should be interpreted not as early toleration but as a technology of governance developed within the constraints of minority rule and colonial intimacy.

Across 20 pages of an unsent and undated letter, the East India Company employee Streynsham Master recorded a striking transformation: from the familiar early modern fear that exposure to Indian religion would spiritually corrupt English travellers to a grudging admiration for the piety and moral discipline he observed among Indian communities. Writing as Agent of Madras between 1678 and 1681, at a moment when the company was shifting from commercial enterprise to territorial authority, Master was acutely conscious that fewer than 150 English inhabitants lived among more than 10,000 residents.Footnote ³⁸ In this minority context, he reimagined travel not as spiritual danger but as political instruction. India’s religious landscape, he argued, could serve as a model. Only through fostering ‘emulation between the Indians & us’ might English Christians reform their conduct and secure the company’s commercial and moral mission.Footnote ³⁹

Master’s reflections aligned with broader institutional change. As the company evolved into a ‘company-state’, it was compelled to govern across religious difference, articulating a ‘Libertie of Religion’ grounded in pragmatism rather than liberal principle.Footnote ⁴⁰ Leaders such as Gerald Aungier and Josiah Child acknowledged that protecting local worship attracted settlers and stabilised revenue.Footnote ⁴¹ Yet Master criticised the asymmetry of this sufferance. While Indian communities retained space for worship, English servants were repeatedly censured for drunkenness, sexual misconduct, and indifference to religion, despite directives urging chaplains to promote ‘piety and virtue’.Footnote ⁴² His critique anticipated later commentators such as Humphrey Prideaux, who blamed the company’s moral weakness on its failure to advance Protestantism and contrasted it with Dutch evangelical efforts.Footnote ⁴³

More broadly, Master’s emphasis on Indian moral example underscored a structural challenge. Company policy was shaped as much by South Asian conditions as by European precedent.Footnote ⁴⁴ Governing Hindus, Muslims, Catholics, Jews, Parsis, and Armenians made the earlier ambition of constructing compact English religious enclaves untenable. Instead, administrators adopted Indigenous practices of communal regulation. Master observed that Christian groups maintained ‘assemblies of their owne Nations’ to oversee religious life.Footnote ⁴⁵ These assemblies were not mere concessions. They were instruments through which plural populations could be organised, supervised, and negotiated with, reflecting established subcontinental models of religious governance adapted to company rule.

Company correspondence, both internal and external, reveals a complex and often ambivalent English understanding of the religious diversity of Mughal India. Although frequently shaped by prejudice, many officials demonstrated practical awareness of local religious structures and governmental forms. After 1662, as the company sought to secure commercial objectives and administer newly acquired territories, officials increasingly emulated Indigenous practices, establishing religious and political ‘assemblies’ to regulate communities within company jurisdictions. The formation of English governmental authority in India following the marriage of Charles II to Catherine of Braganza thus emerged not simply from metropolitan policy but from sustained encounters with South Asian traditions of religious governance and the adaptive, sometimes contradictory, responses of company servants.Footnote ⁴⁶ This adaptation depended heavily on intermediaries who themselves operated within plural and overlapping religious worlds. Reliance on brokers therefore exposes not only commercial dependency but the ways English authority developed through engagement with existing systems of identity, patronage, and religious negotiation already embedded within South Asian societies.

For the Mughals, religious sufferance was a tool of interaction intended to foster goodwill between the contrasting faiths of leadership and subjects. It could take the form of freedom to practise individual faith, the pragmatic incorporation of religious communities into imperial structures, or selective patronage that offered political and cultural influence to multiple constituencies. By the time Master wrote, this was a long-established technique of governance in India. Like early Mughal rulers, company officials became increasingly aware that some form of religious accommodation was necessary to secure power in a diverse environment. Crucially, however, this policy did not originate in the personal religious experiences of company servants. It had foundations within the governmental practices of Indian leadership in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. One measure of company success was therefore the extent to which officials could establish and adapt forms of rule that emulated Indian frameworks of religious governance.

From the outset of engagement, company personnel remarked on Mughal sufferance. Almost half a century before Master, Thomas Roe described Emperor Jahangir’s religious policy in his account as ambassador at the Mughal court. Roe recalled a dinner party at which Jahangir, in a drunken declaration, announced that ‘Christians, Moores, Jewes, he meddled not with their faith; they came all in love, and he would protect them from wrong’.Footnote ⁴⁷ In such early encounters, Roe’s chaplain Edward Terry argued that this policy allowed Mughal ‘tyrannical government’ to be more easily endured.Footnote ⁴⁸ English writers were often perplexed by what they described as the exotic combination of religious toleration with Mughal despotism. Terry made this point when recalling a debate between the traveller Thomas Coryate and a muezzin, during which Coryate claimed Christians were theologically superior. Terry remarked that Coryate was fortunate to be in India because ‘everyone there hath liberty to profess his Religion freely and if he please may argue against theirs, without fear of an inquisition’.Footnote ⁴⁹ This perceived freedom, however, was not imagined as a right but as an instrument of order that helped hold together a diverse empire.

Master later echoed this observation through his claim that he had ‘observed the Christians there do live a much greater more conformable to all the rules and precepts of their Religion, then in Europe’. This remark sharpened the connection between Mughal plural governance and English self criticism, suggesting that a religiously diverse environment could produce stronger communal discipline than a supposedly more orthodox European setting. Such comments indicate how Mughal practices of sufferance shaped English thinking not only about Indian society but about the moral adequacy of company rule. The cosmopolitan religious atmosphere fostered by Jahangir and his father Akbar might confuse or unsettle English visitors, yet it also provided the ecumenically extensive foundations for the company’s later policies towards religious governance. In this sense, as Susan Bayly argues in relation to caste and social ordering, company practices cannot be explained solely through internal English factors. They emerged primarily through interaction with, and adoption of, policies and ideas grounded in the attitudes of Indian leadership.Footnote ⁵⁰

Akbar’s reign offers the clearest example of these precedents. Akbar believed his court represented a universal ‘assembly of nations’, in which Islam and the many faiths of Indian society, particularly Hinduism, ‘should be in a constant’ and ‘fruitful dialogue’.Footnote ⁵¹ He attempted to shape the court as a space of religious, cultural, and artistic hybridity where peoples of different faiths could encounter each other under imperial patronage.Footnote ⁵² The efficacy of this project was mixed. Akbar’s efforts at syncretisation did not gain lasting popular traction. Yet cooperation between Hindu and Muslim elites at court was ‘responsible for the stability and expansion’ of the Mughal empire.Footnote ⁵³ This collaboration had cultural and political consequences across North India, influencing art, architecture, literature, and politics. Akbar’s patronage of Sanskrit poets and authors revitalised Hindu literary culture and coincided with the expansion of Hindu cultural spaces.Footnote ⁵⁴

Most notable among these building projects was the Gaudīya Temple of Govindadev, completed in 1590, described as the largest single structure ever built in India and a template for later programmes in North India.Footnote ⁵⁵ The temple to Krishna and Radha reflected the growing association of Bhakti devotion with Mughal power. The influence of Vaishnav nobles at Akbar’s court and the spread of Krishnaite worship in North India contributed to what has been described as ‘Mughal Bhakti’, a devotional mode closely linked to Mughal authority and to alliances with Hindu princes across the region.Footnote ⁵⁶ Jahangir continued elements of this approach, and even Shah Jahan, though sometimes positioned as less liberal than his predecessors, maintained forms of religious sufferance towards non-Muslims through patronage of Hindu festivals such as the Ratha Yatra at the Jagannath Temple, Puri.Footnote ⁵⁷ These continuities mattered to later company administrators because they signalled that imperial durability did not depend on confessional uniformity, but on managed diversity.

Mughal plural governance also shaped regional cultures beyond the imperial centre. It has been noted how ‘cosmopolitan and elite’ Rajput communities, as well as a growing number of merchants in North India, embraced and ‘exposed to the world’ a form of ‘Mughal Bhakti’.Footnote ⁵⁸ In western India, historians have emphasised how Bhakti movements encouraged social integration and facilitated dialogue between Islamic and Hindu traditions. Bayly argues that Maratha self-rule ‘would not have been possible’ without Bhakti saints, whose doctrinal emphasis broke down differences between Hindu sects while also stressing comparability with other faiths, particularly Islam.Footnote ⁵⁹ Stewart Gordon similarly notes that such dialogue often proceeded through perceived doctrinal similarities, since many found ideas of faith ‘common to both Bhakti and Islam’.Footnote ⁶⁰ The popularity of Islamic notions of brotherhood and critiques of caste appealed to Bhakti adherents, while overlapping holy sites and shared devotional cultures integrated Muslims within Maharashtra’s social order. Marathi Islamic poets and thinkers such as Shah Muntoji Bahami and Husain Ambar Khan proved influential alongside Hindu figures in shaping Maratha culture under Mughal pressure.Footnote ⁶¹ Even the founder of the Maratha empire, and on-again off-again rival to Aurungzeb, Shivaji instructed that no mosque be destroyed demonstrates how political strategy could reinforce patterns of religious accommodation.

Taken together, these Mughal and regional traditions clarify the environment in which company ‘sufferance’ was learned. The company did not simply tolerate plurality as an afterthought. It adapted an existing grammar of governance that treated religious difference as administratively manageable through patronage, communal autonomy, and negotiated protection. In translating these precedents into corporate practice, company officials fashioned a durable strategy for ruling without demographic dominance, turning Mughal pluralism into a foundation for company governance.

Brokers, religious ambiguity, and the politics of identity

Plurality influenced company governance not only through abstract ‘communities’ but also through intermediaries whose authority depended on their capacity to cross boundaries that European confessional thought sought to maintain. Brokers such as Kasi Viranna exemplify the unstable environment in which company sovereignty developed, revealing that identity was situational, affiliation contested, and religious belonging often strategically ambiguous. Chief merchants gained influence not only through commercial skill but also through their ability to navigate overlapping religious affiliations, patronage networks, and communal loyalties long accommodated within Mughal and regional systems of sufferance. For company officials, reliance on these figures transformed religious diversity from a distant cultural curiosity into a practical governance challenge. Consequently, brokers functioned as conduits through which local structures of legitimacy were translated into English administrative practice, illustrating how early company authority emerged through engagement with plural political frameworks and individuals whose identities resisted rigid confessional categorisation.

For instance, the company’s reliance on local intermediaries, or dubashes, demonstrated the need for cross-cultural interaction in governance, predicated on the company’s ‘reactive’ approach to trade.Footnote ⁶² Local chief merchants, including Venkatappa, Virji Vorah, Beri Timanna, and Kasi Viranna, were ‘key figures in European Trade’ in South Asia and essential actors in European colonial encounters.Footnote ⁶³ They shaped European commercial enterprises in India and were, both directly and indirectly, foundational figures in framing early colonial power. In Madras, it was noted that chief merchants could acquire considerable power, obtaining the ‘trappings of social power and privileges, which were customarily associated with traditional political elites’.Footnote ⁶⁴ Their knowledge of local politics and commerce quickly made them indispensable to European companies seeking to establish themselves in India.

By the early 1670s, multiple European travellers to India noted the importance of local chief merchants in the economic and social life of company territories. By 1681, one chief merchant in Madras had achieved so much notoriety that the company directors declared that he had ‘grown so potent by our indulging him that he menaces and affrighteth persons’ who wished to deal with the company, ensuring that they approached him first as their broker.Footnote ⁶⁵ The individual in question was the local merchant Kasi Viranna, who, since the early 1660s, had developed a status within Madras as a key economic and political figure. One French traveller reporting back on the activities of the Compagnie française pour le commerce des Indes orientales (French East India Company) wrote that Viranna was the ‘Principal merchant who governs everything at Madras’.Footnote ⁶⁶ Viranna’s connection to the company and its leadership was even noted by Master, who disparagingly wrote that he was ‘so much respected that he had the boldness to make Sir W.L. [Langhorne] stay a considerable time at his house when he hath called in there, as he would often do’.Footnote ⁶⁷ Although particularly successful as chief merchant, Viranna was unlike many of his contemporaries, who successfully moved between local and European powers, benefiting those on either side and cementing their importance. In the case of Viranna, he was able to leverage his contacts in the hinterlands of Tamil Nadu to secure the company’s commercial position there. A fact that Viranna did not let company officials forget. In the same year that Master was nominated to be the next company agent in Madras, the council at Fort St George reported that Viranna had been ‘as bold to say’ that the success of the company along the Coromandel Coast ‘was in great part obtained by his interest and merits with the late Nabob [Neknam Khan]’.Footnote ⁶⁸ Although Viranna stands out as one of the most potent chief merchants of the period, he is illustrative of the substantial sway local businessmen had over European powers in the subcontinent.

Moreover, chief merchants like Viranna draw attention to the importance of identity and confusion in ensuring the relationship between emerging European commercial and colonial authorities and the local communities and groups they were engaging with. Like many Indians in this period, much confusion surrounded his faith. Viranna’s religious journey was convoluted, having at various times been claimed by various authorities to be a Muslim, Christian, and Hindu.Footnote ⁶⁹ This allowed Viranna to move between the various communities that lived along the Coromandel Coast, making him uniquely capable of exploiting the economic opportunities a religiously cosmopolitan society offered. Writing in his diary in April 1680, the agent of the French East India Company, Francois Martin, reported the death of Viranna. In his description of the chief merchant’s life, Martin noted that Viranna had been a slave to a Christian in his youth and, while enslaved, he had been baptised.Footnote ⁷⁰ However, at some point in his early life, he is believed to have converted to Islam, having ‘passed from there [Christianity] to the Mores who believed him to be a Mahometan’.Footnote ⁷¹ In his first contract with the company, supplying cloth, Viranna signed ‘Hassan Cawn’ and noted that he had ‘three names, as being a Moore’.Footnote ⁷² Yet, at some point following his conversion to Islam, Viranna also became a practising Hindu, a faith Martin writes he ‘openly professed’.Footnote ⁷³ Viranna was related through marriage to another chief merchant, Beri Timanna, a respected Hindu and a member of Perike weaving caste.Footnote ⁷⁴

The ambiguity surrounding Viranna’s identity extended beyond documentary references and into European perceptions of his social and religious standing. Europeans were so confused by Viranna’s religious background that he was even mistakenly believed to be a ‘Brahmin’ by a French priest who had spent much time in Madras.Footnote ⁷⁵ This is most likely due to his social position and the several Hindu temples he had helped establish. The same priest who described Viranna as a Brahmin noted that in the centre of the Indian quarter of Madras there was a ‘magnificent pagoda’ locally known as ‘Virena’s pagoda’.Footnote ⁷⁶ Another Frenchman noted that on the outskirts of Madras there was another ‘beautiful temple’ that was once ‘maintained by a merchant, Viranna’.Footnote ⁷⁷

Such uncertainty over religious affiliation became politically significant at moments when identity required formal definition, particularly in matters of ritual and communal belonging. The confusion around Viranna’s religious identity reached a head at his funeral in March 1680 when it was reported that there was a confrontation between Hindu and Muslim communities who claimed Viranna was a member of their faiths. In a letter read to the council of Fort St George, company officials, including Streynsham Master, heard how Viranna’s funeral procession, which was carrying his body ‘out of town to be burned by the Gentues’, was stopped by ‘some Moors Fackeers’ who declared that Viranna ‘ought to be buried as a Moor for he was a Musselman’.Footnote ⁷⁸ The justification given by the local Muslim community was that he built a mosque in the local town for the express purpose that he ‘be buried in’.Footnote ⁷⁹ The quarrel eventually resulted in the company stepping in and defining Viranna’s religious identity by ordering that he be ‘burned as a Gentue and not buried as a Moore’.Footnote ⁸⁰ Moments such as this demonstrate how the company not only encountered but actively participated in the management of religious ambiguity. Rather than remaining external observers of plural identities, company officials intervened to categorise and stabilise belonging when political order required it. In doing so, the company’s decision to categorise Viranna as Hindu demonstrates how English authorities appropriated existing plural frameworks of religious governance while simultaneously asserting the authority to fix religious identity when administrative order required it.

The precise reasons for Viranna’s shifting religious identity remain unclear. However, his flexibility likely served practical purposes within the religiously cosmopolitan society of the Coromandel Coast. His capacity to navigate multiple confessional worlds enhanced his commercial and political position and provided company officials with both a valuable asset and an administrative example. Figures such as Viranna illustrated the opportunities and challenges involved in governing populations whose identities did not align with European confessional categories. By the late seventeenth century, the company’s relationship with local merchants had been shaped by a prolonged process in which English servants gradually learned to recognise and manage the religious diversity that structured South Asian commercial and political life.

Regulating English behaviour and Protestant order abroad

Efforts by the company to regulate English conduct overseas reveal the internal vulnerabilities of early imperial authority. Prayer books, moral injunctions, and repeated complaints about drunkenness indicate that Protestant authority could erode internally as easily as it could be challenged externally. The legitimacy of company rule depended partly on the visible behaviour of those who represented it. Disorder among servants risked damaging alliances, provoking scandal, and undermining fragile jurisdictional claims. The enforcement of Protestant discipline therefore reflected apprehension rather than confidence, highlighting how corporate governance relied on maintaining moral coherence among its personnel.

Operating thousands of miles from English oversight, the company remained concerned with controlling the behaviour of its employees. Phil Stern notes that maintaining a ‘well-ordered and morally unassailable Protestant society’ was considered essential to the company’s commercial mission.Footnote ⁸¹ Officials attempted to enforce discipline through factory regulations, chaplain oversight, and shipboard routines that emphasised regular prayer, sermons, and communion. Master described how ships were expected to maintain ‘excellent government and order’, with commanders instructed to ensure that none should ‘curse, swear, quarrel’ or ‘be drunk’. Such discipline, when effective, supposedly produced the ‘pious and peaceable conversation of all’. Master also reminded readers that the company had issued a set of moral regulations in 1668 known informally as the ‘Company Commandments’, a series of ten behavioural rules intended to structure daily conduct. In practice, however, these measures often proved inadequate. Reports from factors repeatedly complained that company personnel were ‘dangerously disordering themselves with drink and whores’.Footnote ⁸² Complaints about drunkenness and debauchery were common across the company hierarchy, with officials lamenting the difficulty of governing what one observer called an ‘irregular and almost incorrigible scum of rascals’. Such behaviour threatened commercial interests by damaging the company’s reputation among local populations.Footnote ⁸³

Contemporary observers were acutely aware of the reputational consequences of such conduct. One chaplain recalled how local inhabitants mocked the behaviour of English sailors and merchants who came ashore, declaring in broken English that the ‘Christian religion’ appeared to them a ‘Devil religion’ because ‘Christians much drunk, Christians much do wrong’. For the chaplain Edward Terry, this behaviour represented a profound scandal, bringing dishonour not only upon the company but also upon Christianity itself.Footnote ⁸⁴ These concerns intensified as the company acquired jurisdiction over increasingly diverse populations. After the English gained Bombay in 1661 through the Braganza marriage, company officials were no longer responsible only for disciplining their own Protestant servants. They now governed settlements populated by Hindus, Muslims, Parsis, Armenians, Jews, and Catholics. Maintaining order therefore required not only regulating English behaviour but also establishing forms of governance capable of managing religiously plural populations.

The expansion of English territorial control in India transformed religious governance from a matter of internal discipline into a broader administrative challenge. By the early eighteenth century, the company held Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta, placing English officials in authority over diverse religious communities. Policies of religious governance therefore developed in response to the realities of ruling cosmopolitan populations. Drawing partly on Mughal precedents and partly on local demands for protection and recognition, company officials gradually articulated a policy of religious sufferance that extended beyond Protestant communities. At the same time, they framed this accommodation as evidence of English benevolence, contrasting it with what they characterised as Mughal or Iberian religious oppression.

Company correspondence increasingly emphasised the economic value of such policies. As early as 1665, company official Henry Gary argued that granting religious liberty in Bombay would attract settlers and merchants, suggesting that if local communities were allowed to ‘exercise their religion publicly’, the port would become prosperous and commercially significant.Footnote ⁸⁵ These ideas were formalised in later agreements such as the Articles of Agreement issued by the acting governor Richard Keigwin during the conflict known as the War of 27 Years. Keigwin’s declaration guaranteed inhabitants ‘the liberty of exercising their respective religion’.Footnote ⁸⁶ Such measures built upon earlier initiatives associated with governors such as George Oxenden and Gerald Aungier, who had already promoted policies of religious accommodation in the late 1660s.

The timing of these declarations reveals their broader political purpose. Issued during a period of regional instability and religious conflict between Mughal and Maratha powers, the company’s guarantees of religious liberty functioned partly as a form of advertisement. By presenting English territories as places where diverse communities could worship freely, company officials hoped to attract merchants, artisans, and migrants seeking security and opportunity. In doing so, they adapted existing South Asian traditions of religious sufferance to serve English commercial interests. What had long existed as a pragmatic strategy within Mughal and regional governance was repackaged as a distinctive feature of English rule, intended to strengthen both the company’s reputation and its economic prospects.

The ‘Amsterdam of Liberty’ and corporate religious governance

However, in 1665, Sir Josiah Child did not draw upon the Indian government for a link between religious sufferance and trade. Instead, he alluded to the closest European counterpart, the Dutch, pointing out that in India, liberty in religion grew out of the necessity for freedom in trade and property, writing that English success was down to their willingness to ‘allow an Amsterdam of Liberty in our Plantations’.Footnote ⁸⁷ This striking formulation captures the conceptual fusion at the heart of emerging company governance: the idea that commercial expansion, territorial authority, and religious regulation were mutually reinforcing rather than separate spheres of activity. In Child’s language, liberty was not an abstract moral principle but a corporate strategy embedded within the practical requirements of governing diverse populations in overseas settlements. Yet Child’s formulation must be read as part of a metropolitan programme for reform rather than a direct reflection of company practice in Asia. Policy did not flow seamlessly from London to Madras or Bombay; rather, it emerged through negotiation between directors and servants operating under markedly different political pressures.Footnote ⁸⁸

Child’s interest in the Dutch lay in their commercial success and the ability of the Dutch to control territories, such as Batavia, from fortified positions in religiously cosmopolitan environments. From the middle of the century onwards, English East India Company officials increasingly looked at the Dutch ‘policy of dominions’ as the model to adopt and adapt to meet the strains governing the company’s religiously cosmopolitan territorial acquisitions.Footnote ⁸⁹ For Child, the Dutch Republic stood as the dominant commercial power of the age, describing them as ‘Masters of the Field in Trade’.Footnote ⁹⁰ This was not casual praise but a warning: unless England adopted comparable strategies, the Dutch ‘would carry away the greatest of advantage by the Plantations, of all the Princes in Christendom’.Footnote ⁹¹ By invoking this image of competitive supremacy, Child framed overseas dominion as a contest in which commercial governance determined imperial survival. This competitive logic extended beyond mercantile rivalry to the organisation and regulation of colonial societies themselves. He sharpened the comparison further by suggesting that, without reform, England and other powers would be left with ‘only the trouble of breeding men, and sending them abroad to cultivate the Ground, and have Bread for their Industry’.Footnote ⁹² In this formulation, colonies without effective commercial administration and regulatory discipline would merely supply labour, while the Dutch reaped structural economic advantage. The appeal of the Dutch example therefore lay not simply in commercial profitability but in the demonstration that disciplined governance abroad, including the regulation of diverse religious communities, could consolidate both wealth and imperial power.

By pointing to Dutch success, he framed commercial expansion and its associated systems of governance as empirically proven rather than theoretically desirable. Indeed, in describing Holland’s domestic and colonial policy, Child emphasised first the principle of religious latitude itself, noting that ‘Their giving Liberty, or at least Connivance to all Religions, as well Jews and Roman-Catholicks, or Sectaries’ had become a defining feature of Dutch strength.Footnote ⁹³ What mattered in this formulation was not theological tolerance but administrative pragmatism: the willingness of authorities to permit multiple confessional communities to coexist under a single political authority to sustain commerce. He then connected this directly to political stability, arguing that such policies ‘gives security to all their Inhabitants at home’, thereby presenting religious sufferance as a mechanism through which governments could secure loyalty and social order within diverse populations.Footnote ⁹⁴ Finally, Child highlighted the demographic and economic consequences of this approach, observing that it ‘expels none, nor puts a necessity upon any to Banish themselves upon that account’, suggesting that liberty prevented the loss of productive subjects and encouraged the retention of commercially valuable communities.Footnote ⁹⁵ Taken together, these claims framed religious sufferance as a form of population management and economic policy, reinforcing the Dutch example as evidence that plural governance could strengthen both state authority and commercial prosperity. For company officials operating in India’s religiously diverse environment, such arguments provided both justification and precedent for adopting comparable policies of regulated pluralism within their own emerging territorial jurisdictions.

For Child, the success of religious governance over the behaviour of people across the globe would not only ensure the company’s security in Asia but also trigger a reformation in practical charitable behaviour in England. Religious governance that embodied sufferance would spur the success of the commercial mission of the company abroad and in making trade, which, according to Child, had ‘a tendency to the public good’ would help the poor of England.Footnote ⁹⁶ Child remarked that the Dutch, unlike the English, through the successful governance of trade in their territories abroad, as well as other Protestant nations abroad, had established methods to ‘provide for and employ’ their poor.Footnote ⁹⁷ The religious governance of the Dutch at Batavia established a thriving commercial and cosmopolitan hub in Asia. In the land under their control, the religious behaviour of Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Armenians, Hindus, Muslims, and Chinese peoples were all policed through a policy of sufferance. For Child, this had been one of the reasons for the commercial success of the Dutch East India Company and the betterment of the Dutch nation. Yet Child’s ‘Amsterdam of Liberty’, although a Dutch model, was not necessarily purely Dutch; it was an example of a flourishing form of European corporate religious governance that evolved under both the English and the Dutch outside of Europe, and by the end of the century they could have easily been renamed the ‘Batavia’, ‘Madras’, or ‘Bombay’ of liberty. What Child identified was a broader phenomenon: the emergence of corporate polities in Asia in which religious sufferance functioned as a technology of rule, shaped simultaneously by European precedents and by sustained encounters with South Asian traditions of plural governance. If Child’s writings cannot be read as straightforward descriptions of company administration, they nonetheless illuminate the conceptual vocabulary through which English observers sought to rationalise the challenges of ruling commercially valuable yet religiously diverse societies overseas.

In India’s cosmopolitan religious environment, the English East India Company’s religious governance evolved in conversation with and parallel to Indian forms of governance. The ‘Amsterdam of Liberty’ was therefore not merely a borrowed Dutch metaphor but a description of a hybrid political space produced through interaction between European corporate ambitions and the plural religious landscapes of the Indian Ocean world. Rather than being imposed from London alone, company policies emerged through the interaction between metropolitan theories such as Child’s and the political realities encountered by company servants operating within South Asian power structures.

Religious classification, control, and the colonial gaze

Descriptions of temples, mosques, churches, and sectarian distinctions by the company did more than catalogue unfamiliar practices. Master’s critiques of Hindu ritual, the recurrent differentiation between ‘Hindus’ and ‘Moors’, and the documentation of institutional endowments such as waqf (religious endowments) contributed to a stabilising narrative portraying religious communities as discrete and internally ordered. This writing made plurality intelligible within a shared administrative framework. Even when policy emphasised sufferance, the act of naming and distinguishing communities subtly reorganised them as parallel collectivities subject to oversight. Classification did not replace accommodation but structured the conditions under which accommodation could function.

Throughout this period, company governmental policies evolved in opposition to and in tandem with local religious governance. Despite moments of criticism, English officials often wrote about the religious freedom offered in Indian society and how this could be mirrored within the newly acquired jurisdictions of the company. The religious governance of the subcontinent had long-established precedencies that European travellers often commented on; however, for many company officials, this was not relatable in an appreciable way until the company acquired territory following the Braganza treaty. After their experience in India, Men like Master—who had initially thought that ‘the Customs of the Indians is brutish & of such evil example to Christians’—found this to be to the contrary, going so far as to write that many were ‘very compassionate People’ especially concerning religious governance.Footnote ⁹⁸ Master pointedly remarks no doubt about the religious division in England and Europe, that as there ‘many several nations of people all expressing their way of worship’ and that it was ‘no strange thing’ for Indians to ‘hear of people of differing religions from themselves’.Footnote ⁹⁹ According to Master, this did not create conflict amongst communities but rather ‘they esteem none the worse’ for religious difference, instead saying ‘god almighty hath constituted many people and nations in the world to be of divers religions to serve him in several ways’.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Master’s observations of religious sufferance in India reinforced Jahangir’s remarks to Roe 60 years earlier, when he declared that all faiths in India, not just Christians, were allowed to worship and perform ‘outward show of Sanctity’.Footnote ¹⁰¹

In its new territories, the company policies of sufferance, which included offering substantial religious freedoms, became a means to encourage Indigenous migration into company jurisdictions, thereby securing its demographic and commercial needs. Henry Gary, wrote to Lord Arlington in London about the economic benefits of granting religious liberty to the people of Bombay. Proclaiming that by building Indians ‘pagados and mesquitas to exercise their religion publicly’, the English would transform Bombay into a ‘very famous and opulent port’.Footnote ¹⁰² Building places of worship was an essential element of company officials’ policy of religious sufferance. Company officials saw it as a way to physically advertise a developing policy that Catholics, Hindus, Jews, or Muslims in Bombay and Madras were ‘to suffer them to enjoy the exercise of their own religion without the least disruption or discountenance’.Footnote ¹⁰³ By building temples and mosques, Gary suggested that there would be a benefit to the company, as the funds ‘reaped by it would be so considerable’ and that even if only ‘by a voluntary tribute everyone would give’, the company would be able to maintain the garrison of the city.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ In 1654, the chief merchant of the company, Beri Timanna, acquired five pagodas a month on one of the temple duties, a value of roughly £24 a year, which would have had significant purchasing power in the Indian market. Furthermore, it was certainly enough to cover the cost of maintaining the temples; more importantly, control of the temples gave the company greater control and administrative power.

However, this policy of religious tolerance was not merely pragmatic but also influenced by broader intellectual debates about toleration in Europe. John Marshall, an early company factor, engaged with Hindu religious scholars in Bengal, seeking to understand Hindu theology through a lens of comparative religion. ‘On 25 June 1674, Madhusudana Rarhi Brahmin and a young [company] factor, John Marshall, secluded themselves within the English factory at Kasimbazar … to begin a project that must have absorbed much of their spare time for the next two years.’Footnote ¹⁰⁵ His dialogues with Madhusudana resulted in one of the earliest English translations of the Bhagavata Purana. This translation effort reflects the intellectual curiosity among some company officials, who saw Hindu traditions as complex and sophisticated rather than merely idolatrous or superstitious.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ Likewise, Marshall undertook studies of Islamic texts and engaged in theological discussions with Muslim scholars, seeking to understand the legal and philosophical underpinnings of Islam. He wrote of his encounters, noting that ‘these learned men debate with reason and precision, and though we differ in creed, I find their insights illuminating’.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ Others viewed Islamic customs with scepticism, particularly practices surrounding charitable giving and waqf. A British observer dismissed these traditions, claiming that ‘the waqf system, while ostensibly pious, is too often a means for the priesthood to amass wealth at the expense of the productive classes’.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ This ambivalence mirrored broader colonial attitudes towards both Islam and Hinduism, wherein British officials both admired and sought to control Islamic institutions, seeing them as both valuable mechanisms of governance and as obstacles to British legal and economic policies.

Master, reflecting on his experiences in Madras, keenly observed the diversity of religious communities and their adherence to structured worship practices. He noted that Hindu and Muslim communities were distinctly organised in their religious devotion, having their respective places of worship—Hindus in temples and Muslims in mosques—where they observed their rituals with remarkable regularity. He was particularly struck by how religious observance was deeply ingrained in daily life, contrasting this with the more irregular religious adherence he had witnessed in England. ‘The several sorts of the Indians are so strict to the rules of their Religion in keeping their set times of Prayer and fasting and other ceremonies’, he wrote, suggesting that the diligence of these religious communities, rather than leading to religious neglect among the English, instead prompted an ‘emulation between the Indians and us, who serve God most and best’.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Alongside the Hindus, Master observed that ‘the Moors or Mahometans are those that generally have the rule & government of the country’.Footnote ¹¹⁰ He further remarked on their adherence to religious practices, stating that ‘the Mahometans have also since this King’s time been more zealous in the profession of their own Religion than formerly; Strong drink being more forbidden than before … their times of Prayer five times a day more frequently, & their anniversary month fast more strictly kept’.Footnote ¹¹¹

Despite his recognition of the peaceful coexistence of various religious communities, Master’s reflections also reveal a distinct colonial condescension, particularly in his descriptions of Hindu priests. He viewed them through the lens of European superiority, portraying them as figures whose elaborate rituals lacked actual spiritual depth. He remarked upon their outward displays of devotion but implied that such practices were excessive and misguided. His description of Hindu religious figures aligns with broader colonial attitudes that sought to characterise Indian religions as fundamentally different from and inferior to Christianity despite acknowledging their social importance. ‘For whereas some think that the Customs of the Indians is brutish and of such evil example to Christians … I rather find the contrary’, he wrote, demonstrating his evolving but still patronising perspective.Footnote ¹¹²

Master was particularly dismissive of Hindu rituals, describing the practices as excessive and unnecessary. He noted that the Brahmins ‘receive vast sums of money, grains, and cloth from the people, who bring these gifts in hopes of divine favour’. He viewed these offerings as misguided faith, commenting that ‘these things serve more to enrich the priests than to provide any true benefit to the people who give them’.Footnote ¹¹³ He further criticised the priests for their perceived indulgence, writing that ‘they live in ease while others toil, content to subsist on the labour of the poor whilst offering nothing of substance in return’.Footnote ¹¹⁴ Master found it particularly troubling that even the lowest classes would give their limited resources to the temples, stating, ‘Even those who have little to eat will spare what they can to satisfy their superstitions, rather than providing for their households.’Footnote ¹¹⁵

He also commented on how these religious sites operated, observing how ‘the temples are filled with ornaments of gold and silver, yet outside their gates, beggars sit starving, uncared for by the very priests who claim to act as intermediaries between man and God’.Footnote ¹¹⁶ This direct critique highlights Master’s inability to perceive Hindu religious customs outside of a Western framework, where Christian charity played a more central role in religious institutions. Rather than recognising these offerings’ deep significance for Hindu devotees, he saw them as evidence of corruption and misplaced faith. His reflections, while providing insight into the religious landscape of Madras, ultimately reinforce the broader colonial notion that Indian religious traditions were wasteful, superstitious, and in need of European reform.

The colonial entrenched hypocrisy of Master’s comments is further exemplified when we look at English engagement with Muslim communities and authorities in the same period. The imposition of British legal frameworks on regions with entrenched Islamic legal traditions often generated friction. For instance, when the company sought to codify Indian laws, it initially relied on Persian-speaking Islamic jurists to interpret Sharia, yet this process often led to distortions of Islamic law in favour of British administrative interests focusing on ‘concision, clarity, accessibility and blind-justice’ characteristics of European legal systems, the result of which was the ‘rigidification of Islamic law’.Footnote ¹¹⁷ Furthermore, the company’s taxation policies sometimes clashed with Islamic practices of waqf endowments, which were designed to support religious and charitable institutions.Footnote ¹¹⁸

While the company sought to project an image of religious tolerance to maintain political stability and commercial prosperity, its interventions often revealed an undercurrent of strategic control and cultural superiority. The selective patronage of religious institutions, such as the incorporation of Islamic legal scholars and the financial manipulation of religious endowments, underscores the colonial objective of using religion as a mechanism of governance rather than as a reflection of genuine pluralism. The company ‘attempted to cement local loyalties by confirming the tax-exempt status of religious endowments, collecting pilgrim taxes for the maintenance of shrines and their priests, giving police support, and showing marks of respect such as the firing of salutes at major festivals’.Footnote ¹¹⁹ This practice mirrored Mughal precedents but was ultimately driven by the company’s broader aim of embedding religious governance into its administrative strategy.

Such gestures of accommodation operated within a broader intellectual environment in which religious plurality was increasingly subject to description, comparison, and conceptual consolidation. Early modern encounters did not merely observe difference; they contributed to the gradual formation of religion as an abstract, comparable category through which diverse practices could be grouped, contrasted, and stabilised.Footnote ¹²⁰ Distinctions between ‘Hindus’ and ‘Moors’, while appearing descriptive, presupposed a movement towards treating heterogeneous devotional, ritual, and social formations as internally coherent collectivities. The act of naming contributed to the process of ordering. Administrative accommodation and epistemic consolidation progressed simultaneously, as recognising communities for governance necessitated conceptualising them as bounded entities.Footnote ¹²¹

Master’s accounts, while admiring religious discipline among Hindus and Muslims, also reflect a colonial gaze that sought to rationalise, categorise, and ultimately reshape religious traditions to fit within an imperial framework. The company’s engagement with religious institutions was not merely a matter of tolerance but control. Something that was openly acknowledged in the eighteenth century when ‘long-serving Company officials, like Warren Hastings, argued that Britain’s Indian government was not Christian but in effect Hindu and Muslim, administered by Christians for their benefit’.Footnote ¹²² This perspective highlights how the Company positioned itself as a neutral yet authoritative arbiter over religious matters, ensuring that Indigenous traditions functioned within British imperial objectives. In this respect, Master’s narrative sits within a longer genealogy of classificatory writing. Earlier seventeenth-century attempts to catalogue caste, sect, and ritual practice had already begun to stabilise Indian social and religious life through taxonomic description.Footnote ¹²³ Master’s prose is less overtly schematic, yet his arrangement of temples, mosques, chapels, convents, priests, and ritual observances performs a comparable epistemic labour. Plurality becomes intelligible through juxtaposition; diversity is rendered governable by being narratively contained. Even in the absence of formal tabulation, descriptive sequencing inscribes differentiation into textual space, producing a vision of society composed of parallel and internally coherent religious bodies.Footnote ¹²⁴

Master’s reflections on religious spaces highlight the practical role of temples and mosques in urban life. He noted their function as community centres where people gathered for prayer and social and economic activities. His observations extended beyond doctrine to the lived realities of religious practice, acknowledging these institutions’ integral role in maintaining social order. However, his assessments were always tinged with an implicit hierarchy, as he evaluated Indian religious structures and customs compared to Christian norms. His perspective, while evolving, remained tethered to the colonial impulse to categorise and judge non-European traditions through a lens of European superiority. Encounters of this kind were rarely epistemically neutral. Translation, whether textual or observational, operated not simply as mediation but as conceptual alignment. Devotional practices were situated within familiar grids of comparison, measured against Protestant norms, and rendered legible through categories such as ‘religion’ and ‘sect’.Footnote ¹²⁵ What appeared as empirical observation was structured by theological and philosophical vocabularies that made unfamiliar practices intelligible by positioning them within recognisable frames. Master’s urban descriptions, grounded in proximity and experience, nonetheless participate in this reframing: ritual, space, and authority are described in ways that assume comparability and separability. Knowledge and governance thus become mutually reinforcing practices.

This was evident in the company’s handling of Hindu temples, as ‘by the late 1840s, anti-Christian meetings were taking place in both Calcutta and Madras’ due to concerns about Christian influence in religious governance.Footnote ¹²⁶ The company’s approach, though pragmatic, was deeply entangled in the broader colonial ideology that sought to balance economic interests with cultural hegemony, ensuring that religious institutions operated within the constraints of British administrative and commercial priorities. By embedding religious governance into its colonial strategy, the company reinforced its authority while attempting to reshape Indigenous religious practices that aligned with British imperial objectives. Many in the company began to develop a policy of religious ‘neutrality or toleration’ which often translated into subtle forms of religious control as the company managed and regulated religious spaces and figures.Footnote ¹²⁷ Ultimately, the company’s religious policies were not simply about tolerance but about control, employing a blend of accommodation and intervention to maintain dominance over a complex and diverse society.

The more rigid articulation of such impulses would emerge later in the nineteenth century, when enumeration transformed fluid affiliations into administratively exclusive identities.Footnote ¹²⁸ Yet the intellectual preconditions for such exclusivity were already in formation. Narrative differentiation preceded bureaucratic fixation. By distinguishing communities, enumerating practices, and situating religious groups relationally within a shared civic order, seventeenth-century company writings contributed to an emerging imagination of society as composed of discrete confessional collectivities. Master’s account reveals an intermediate stage in this development, where identities remain situational and contested but are increasingly described as internally bounded and externally distinct.

Christian communities, Catholic anxiety, and institutional competition

Religious plurality within company territories manifested within Christianity itself. The establishment of St Mary’s Church in Madras, negotiations concerning Armenian privileges, and tensions involving Jesuit and Capuchin missions illustrate how Protestant officials managed a complex ecclesiastical environment. Grants of land, permissions for worship, and jurisdictional disputes were influenced by both commercial interests and confessional tensions. Consequently, the company’s governance of Christian diversity reflected its broader approach to pluralism. Authority was asserted selectively, concessions were made strategically, and institutional arrangements were developed through negotiations with actively engaged communities.

The company leadership encouraged not only Hindus and Muslims but also Christian communities, including Catholics and Armenians, as well as Jews, to resettle on company lands by constructing places of worship. These groups were highly valued as interpreters and intermediaries. While some advocated building temples and mosques, the lieutenant governor of Bombay proposed granting land to Armenians to establish a ‘church for the service of God’.Footnote ¹²⁹ Whether factual or speculative, officials viewed the company’s ecumenical governance as an incentive for diverse religious communities to migrate and escape the dogmatic local and European regimes surrounding the company’s territories. The company offered governmental and religious freedoms alongside financial incentives to attract Hindu, Muslim, Armenian, Jewish, and Catholic merchants, traders, and artisans, thereby securing its commercial objectives. Consequently, the company’s cosmopolitan urban spaces were not neutral mosaics but structured environments where religious identity was both accommodated and constrained. Recognition did not eliminate difference; it required explicit articulation. Temples, mosques, chapels, and convents were acknowledged as corporate religious bodies within a shared urban framework, each positioned in relation to the others. This spatial and textual ordering naturalised the concept that religious communities existed as parallel entities inhabiting a common but administratively segmented space.Footnote ¹³⁰ Governance functioned not by erasing plurality but by organising it.

Master was particularly observant of how Christian communities in Madras conducted their religious practices and engaged with each other, noting that the English performed all their public devotions within the company’s factory house, where a specific room had been set aside as a chapel for divine worship.Footnote ¹³¹ The Dutch similarly maintained their place of worship within their company house.Footnote ¹³² The Armenians, distinct in their religious identity yet firmly embedded in the mercantile landscape of Madras, also maintained their place of worship through communal support.Footnote ¹³³ The French, in contrast, had established a convent for the Capuchins, which served as a place of worship and a base for missionary activity, further solidifying their religious presence in the city.Footnote ¹³⁴

The English struggle to establish a Protestant church in Madras was emblematic of their broader challenges in asserting religious authority in a multi-faith environment. The complaints of company officials regarding the lack of a church, particularly when contrasted with the presence of Catholic places of worship, highlight the Protestant anxiety about religious visibility and legitimacy. A letter from 1660 lamented that while the French friars had built a church to ‘boldly perform their idolatrous rites’, the English had failed to provide a similar space to ‘serve God in a better manner’.Footnote ¹³⁵ Until St Mary’s Church was completed in Madras in 1680, church services were conducted within the confines of the company’s factories, often taking place in small rooms with multiple functions, sometimes even being used as dining spaces.Footnote ¹³⁶ The lack of a dedicated Protestant church was seen as damaging to the company’s reputation and authority.Footnote ¹³⁷

Across India, Catholic and Armenian Christians were often more successful in securing religious spaces. The Armenians, who had long-standing trade networks with Persia and the Ottoman empire, played a crucial role in commerce, which allowed them to negotiate privileges, including maintaining their places of worship.Footnote ¹³⁸ In 1688, the East India Company signed an agreement with Khwaja Phanoos Kalantar, representing the Armenian community. It allowed them to use company ships for trade, granted them religious freedom, and permitted them to establish their church and communal institutions.Footnote ¹³⁹ English officials frequently remarked on the Armenians’ business acumen and ability to integrate within different mercantile and political structures, making them invaluable commercial intermediaries. In Madras, Master observed the strong presence of Armenian Christians, stating that they ‘have a house, chapel and priest maintained at their common charge’.Footnote ¹⁴⁰ He further noted that the Armenians were diligent in their religious practices, keeping to ‘all the rules and precepts of their religion here, then in Europe’.Footnote ¹⁴¹ The English reliance on Armenian merchants extended beyond commercial matters; they also depended on them for diplomatic negotiations and cultural mediation. Ruquia Hussain emphasises that Armenian merchants often brokered deals between the English and local rulers, securing trade privileges otherwise unavailable to Protestant merchants.Footnote ¹⁴²

Despite their usefulness, the Armenians were sometimes viewed with suspicion by the English due to their close ties with Catholic authorities, particularly the French and Portuguese. English records from the period reflect anxieties that Armenian merchants might secretly support Catholic missionary efforts.Footnote ¹⁴³ Nevertheless, their role as intermediaries remained indispensable, and by the early eighteenth century, Armenians had carved out a stable position within the English economic and political framework. Ronald W. Ferrier notes that their ability to operate across multiple religious and political spheres made them invaluable to the company’s broader strategic interests in South Asia.Footnote ¹⁴⁴

English interactions with Catholic groups were shaped by deep-seated suspicions but tempered by practical considerations. The French Capuchins were particularly successful in expanding their congregation, which led to fears that Protestantism would be overshadowed.Footnote ¹⁴⁵ To counter this, the English sought to build St Mary’s Church as a visible assertion of Protestant faith in Madras, marking a shift in religious policy towards a more assertive Protestant presence.Footnote ¹⁴⁶ English officials often expressed concerns about the political implications of Catholic missionary activity, worrying that it could strengthen French and Portuguese influence in the region. Portuguese Jesuits were a particular source of concern for the English due to their aggressive missionary strategies and deep entrenchment in South Indian society. Master himself commented on the influence of Jesuits, noting that they were particularly adept at using ‘subtle insinuations’ to convert both Europeans and Indians to Catholicism.Footnote ¹⁴⁷ The Jesuits had established extensive educational and religious institutions, including seminaries and schools, that played a significant role in local communities.Footnote ¹⁴⁸ Their presence was religious and political, as they acted as intermediaries between Portuguese colonial authorities and South Indian rulers. English officials feared that this influence could be used to undermine Protestant efforts in the region.Footnote ¹⁴⁹

The English closely observed the methods by which the Jesuits operated in the region, often linking their activities with political instability. A report from Bombay described how Jesuits ‘entice those of the poorer sort, feeding them and their families to make them Catholics’.Footnote ¹⁵⁰ The fear of Catholic conversions leading to divided loyalties was a frequent theme in English assessments of Portuguese governance, particularly in Goa. The Portuguese Inquisition in Goa was another focal point of concern. English officials noted that ‘many of the gentiles flee from Portuguese territory to avoid the tyranny of the Jesuits and their Inquisition’.Footnote ¹⁵¹ The comapny used this migration to English-controlled areas as a propaganda tool, portraying their governance as one of religious tolerance in contrast to the Portuguese system.

Both economic and religious concerns shaped the company’s response to the Jesuit presence in Bombay. Jesuits had established a significant influence in the region, operating schools and orphanages that provided shelter and education to local converts. The company, wary of Jesuit influence, viewed these institutions as mechanisms for expanding Catholicism and undermining Protestant efforts.Footnote ¹⁵² Company officials sought to limit Jesuit landholdings and restrict missionary work to counteract this. In 1673, an official report noted, ‘The Jesuits have established themselves with great subtlety, securing properties under the guise of charity, yet their true aim is the expansion of Popish influence.’Footnote ¹⁵³

These anxieties also shaped the company’s policies towards orphans. Protestant officials feared that Catholic-run orphanages would produce a new generation of Jesuit-educated converts loyal to the Portuguese. Consequently, the company encouraged Protestant missionaries to establish orphanages and educational institutions to counteract Catholic influence.Footnote ¹⁵⁴ In a letter from 1681, a company administrator wrote, ‘It is most necessary that provision be made for those children left without kin, lest they fall into the hands of the Papists and be bred in their superstitions’.Footnote ¹⁵⁵ Despite these efforts, the Jesuits remained powerful in Bombay, continuing their work under Portuguese protection. The tension between the company and the Jesuits reflected broader struggles over religious authority in colonial South Asia, with both groups seeking to assert their influence over local communities.Footnote ¹⁵⁶

Despite their apprehensions, the English found themselves in occasional alliances with Portuguese Catholics, particularly when mutual interests aligned. The shared opposition to Dutch mercantile dominance in the Indian Ocean led to instances of pragmatic cooperation between English and Portuguese authorities.Footnote ¹⁵⁷ In some instances, English merchants even sought the assistance of Portuguese Catholic officials in resolving disputes with local rulers. Hussain notes that while ideological differences remained stark, economic and political considerations often overrode religious hostilities.Footnote ¹⁵⁸

As colonial governance evolved, the East India Company began incorporating religious policies into its administrative framework, using Christian institutions to solidify its influence. The establishment of St. Mary’s Church was not merely a religious act but a calculated move to assert English Protestant hegemony in the region.Footnote ¹⁵⁹ English officials understood that religious identity was intertwined with political authority, and controlling religious spaces meant exerting control over communities. Religious grants and land allocations were often used to favour Protestant settlers and traders while limiting the influence of Catholic and Armenian communities.Footnote ¹⁶⁰

By the 1690s, the company had effectively imposed religious governance that mirrored the traditional religious autonomy of India. In Madras, the English mayor of the town was supported by numerous aldermen and burgesses, several of whom were made up of different Indian religious and ethnic groups: one Armenian, one or two Jews and Portuguese, Hindus, and one Muslim.Footnote ¹⁶¹ In Bombay, the governors Cooke, Lucas, Gary, and presidents Oxenden and Aungier adopted de facto religious tolerance, fuelled by the need for the company to appease religious groups within the port. In 1673, under the governorship of Gerald Aungier, the council in Bombay proposed that for better regulation of the port government, as well as encouraging migration, they should offer the different religious communities their councils, declaring that:

By politically solidifying religious sufferance in the governance of Bombay and other towns that came under the company’s jurisdiction, company officials secured their own aims and met those of local Indian peoples. The extensive religio-political dialogue of petitions and acts between the company and locals emphasises that discussions on religious sufferance were not just ones the English had with themselves but were initiated by a proactive local population.

Between 1672 and 1680, the company at Bombay received from many Hindus, Muslims, and Catholics 14 petitions relating to political and legal representation and territorial and business disputes. In the incidents involving political representation, the company often ruled in favour of the religious communities, ensuring that Muslim and Hindu communities in Bombay had a certain level of company autonomy.Footnote ¹⁶³ In a moment, Master, in his observation of religious governance in India, paradoxically questions European cultural superiority whilst reinforcing the growing necessity for the English to emulate Indian practices to impose English Protestant religious governance in India. With a hint of respect and even admiration, Master wrote that under India’s religious governance, Christians, concerning their religious needs, customs, and laws, lived more comfortably ‘than in Europe’.Footnote ¹⁶⁴ The religious governance of India was noticeably different from that of Europe, exceeding it in many ways. Master also points out that the devotion of Indians to their faiths far exceeded that of the English. Going on, Master paradoxically concludes his discussion by suggesting that by mirroring the practices of Indian religious governance along with their devotion to religion, the English would once again gain cultural superiority as they ‘serve God most & best’.Footnote ¹⁶⁵