Christian Vernacular Education Society for India Christian Literature Society for India Christian Literature Society for India and Africa

Towards the end of 1857 representatives of four British missionary societies working in India - the Baptist Missionary Society, the Church Missionary Society, the London Missionary Society and the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society - put forward proposals for a new society, to be named the Christian Vernacular Education Society for India. The proposers did not, according to its First Annual Report, intend the new society to compete with 'existing educational establishments which employ the English language and literature and which are chiefly attractive to the higher classes of Hindu youth ... but rather to reach the village populations, and the masses of the lower orders in towns throughout the country, exclusively through the vernacular of each district'. The new society was formally instituted in May 1858 as a memorial to the Indian Mutiny. John Murdoch was appointed 'Representative and Travelling Secretary in India'. In 1891 the name of the Society was changed to the Christian Literature Society for India and in 1923 the words 'and Africa' were added when the Society extended its work to that continent. The organisation merged with the Religious Tract Society in 1935 to form the United Society for Christian Literature (USCL) For further information see G Hewitt, Let the People Read (London, 1949).