Meanwhile James Owen of the British and Foreign Bible Society contended that government should promote the Bible because “the sooner it supersedes the Shaster and the Koran, the sooner will the happiness of India be consummated.” Others objected. Thomas Twining, a senior merchant for the Company in Bengal, argued that either the conversion of India’s people should be left to god or British efforts would be met with unrelenting hostility. 78 In the end, Buchanan’s publications proved particularly consequential (as did the efforts of William Wilberforce), and when Parliament renewed the Company’s charter, they included greater latitude for missionary work.

Peter Gottschalk and Gabriel Greenberg, Common Heritage, Uncommon F…, loc. 112