Charles Grant (British East India Company)

Then, in 1787, having first acquired a personal fortune through silk manufacturing in Malda, Lord Cornwallis the Governor-General appointed Grant as a member of the East India Company's board of trade.

Grant lived a profligate lifestyle as he climbed through the ranks, but after losing two children to smallpox he underwent a religious conversion.

[12][13] His eldest son, Charles, was born in India and later followed his father into politics, eventually becoming a British peer as Baron Glenelg.

The Company administration did not take the proposal seriously, but with Brown's encouragement, Grant sent a copy to the Cambridge cleric Charles Simeon, who recruited Evangelical chaplains for India.

[14] In preparation for the renewal of the company's charter in 1793, Grant wrote a larger and a much more controversial paper titled Observations on the State of Society among the Asiatic Subjects of Great Britain particular with respect to Morals; and on the means of improving it (1792).

The paper also proposed other methods for the welfare of Indians, including the introduction of the English language for communication of knowledge, and application of machinery to agriculture and other fields.

[14][15] This paper has often been cited as one of the foremost examples of Eurocentrism and the ideological foundation upon which colonialism was built, that is, the misconceived notion that the Western world had a duty to "civilize" the natives while they conveniently ignored the many evils like wars, rebellions, racism, class discrimination, religious persecution and a witchcraft hysteria that plagued their own societies in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

[16] This problem was further exacerbated by the lack of a nuanced understanding of the natives' religion and culture and the misbelief of Christianity being the one true faith, which was not only widely used to justify colonialism but also to legitimize forced conversions and brutalization of the masses - a phenomenon witnessed even today in parts of South Asia and Africa.

The "Pious Clause" included in the 1813 charter did not specifically mention the missionaries, but the company committed to supporting the Anglican Bishop of Calcutta and three archdeaconries.

Grant was part of an evangelical Anglican movement of close friends whose notable members included the abolitionist Wilberforce, Zachary Macaulay, John Venn, Henry Thornton, and John Shore, who lived in close proximity around Clapham Common southwest of London.