D1.8.10: Dr Duff

D1.8.10: Dr Duff

Newspaper Clippings

Bleek invokes Francis Xavier's now archaic standards of belief to illustrate that accommodating diverse opinions is not the same as endorsing something or believing in it. Mutual respect facilitates coexistence. In a modern secularised state, religious affiliation should not interfere with a citizen's political privileges. He speaks critically of Revd Dr Alexander Duff's Xavier-like religious intensity and persecution of native Hindus in an ecclesiastically despotic manner typical of colonial bishoprics and their High Church party clergy and missions. Sir Mordaunt Wells's humane ruling on Duff's unlawful interference with Hemnauth Bose (a Hindu minor), ordering the restitution of Bose to his father, suggests that a difference of religion does not entitle the church to deprive natives of their natural rights. Bleek further cites the similar case of Grish Chunder Ghose (also involving the Scotch Church's Dr Duff) and the Italian Mortara case as examples of this morally confused interference by Christians in their attempt to Christianise, which Bleek feels goes against the first principles of Christianity. He ends by remarking that we are responsible for our actions, even if done in emulation.

Printed newsprint glued on paper

23 June 1864

Two cut-out columns of printed newsprint mounted on foolscap folio (warped).

Hemnauth Bose (a Hindu minor), Sir Mordaunt Wells (Supreme Court of Calcutta judge), Christianising (by the British in India), Grish Chunder Ghose (a Hindu minor retained by Dr Duff), Longueville Clarke (a Supreme Court of Calcutta barrister), natural rights (of parents)

Pressed clippings of Victorian current affairs opinion pieces by Wilhelm Bleek. Published in Het Volksblad on Thursday, June 23rd, 1864.

Van de Sandt de Villiers & Co.