Page | 1 Serampore Mission and its Impact Paominlen Kipgen INTRODUCTION: Serampore Mission we see now is the outcome of the hard work and unceasing toil of William Carey, Joshua Marshman and William Ward, who were known as Serampore Trio. They formed a close-knit alliance of mutual support and administration which was to make their labours together. This was one of the most illustrious examples of Missionary teamwork in the history of the church. They stood by one another inseparably, in good times and bad, during years of severe trial, and through seasons of harvest and joy. 1 They landed in India as an unwelcome guest by the British East Indian Trading Company, yet they did their best for the propagation of the gospel through their missionary works. They started School, College, Hospital, and did many work for the upliftment of the society. This writing deals with their missionary works among the Indian, and its impact on the church and society. 1. BACKGROUND The British East India Company was a commercial organization and its primary motive was trade and profits. Though it paid lip-service to the missionary work, it never took keen interest in the conversion of the people, nor did it encourage the missionaries to do any kind of evangelistic work. Although the Act of 1698 ordered the company’s chaplains to instruct the Gentoos in the Protestant faith apart from their duties as chaplains to the Company servants, the company took no interest in it, fearing that the introduction of a new religion would excite the already religiously torn country and that the empire would be brought to ruin. As a result, the Directors of the Company got a resolution passed in England that any adventurer or missionary should get the license of the company to enter India. An unlicensed adventurer or missionary was liable, on discovery, to expulsion from the Company’s territories. 2 In spite of the exclusion policy of the Company, William Carey, the first self- sponsored Baptist Missionary from England, arrived in Hooghly in November 1793. William Carey had a very humble origin – very rural and professionally very low. Thus he had said, “not even a shoemaker, sir, just a cobbler, a mender of other people’s shoes.” That 1 Ebenezer D Dasan, “Evaluation of the Serampore Mission from the Perspective of a Holistic concept of Mission,” UBS Journal Volume 5/1 (March 2007), 38. 2 J.S. Dharmaraj, “Serampore Missions and Colonial Connections” Indian Church History Review Volume XXVI/1,( June 1992), 21.