Page - 77 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 07/02

Unruly Images | 77www.jrfm.eu 2021, 7/2, 55–86 However, and in contrast with such depersonalising depictions, most im- ages showing the natives in the volume are portraits, featuring people posing in costumes and in a rather flattering light. This description fits images com- menting on successful cases of conversion, depicting native Indian “evange- lists” who, it was hoped, would continue the initiated evangelising process on their own. The image in Figure 21 shows a group of Indian Christian male evangelists from Benares posing in elegant costumes around books that are probably Christian Bibles. While quite different from the depersonalising visual discourse of Figure 19, this composition has been carefully staged to suggest that Christianity was slowly but surely percolating through the local cultures, a picture that did not accord entirely with reality.39 39 The original image appeared in The Church Missionary Intelligencer 12, 1861, 74 and 89. The text accompanying this initial publication focuses on the difficulties experienced by these Indian Christians, both in their conversion and in their work as evangelists. One of them (first from the right), a certain Nilakantha/Nehemiah Goreh (1825–1895), was a Brahmin from Maharashtra who had converted to Christianity before living a life of full renunciation as a “Christian Sannyasi”. See Fox Young 2005 for an analysis of Goreh’s life and the polemics between Christianity and Brahmanism in that context. Fig. 21: Panel 43, “The Ganges river region”, “Evangelists in Benares”, Bilder-Tafeln, Calwer Verlagsverein.39