Hume, Robert Allen (1847-1929)

American Congregational missionary in India

Hume was born in Bombay, India, of missionary parents serving with the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM). He graduated from Yale University and Andover Seminary and was sent by the ABCFM to India, where he was assigned to the Marathi Mission, based in the city of Ahmednagar. He remained there his entire missionary career (1874-1926) and thus became known as Hume of Ahmednagar. In 1878 he founded and headed the Ahmednagar Divinity College, his main responsibility for 43 years. One of his most notable students at the seminary was the Marathi Christian poet Narayan Vaman Tilak. During that time he was superintendent of the Partner mission district near Ahmednagar. He also served as English editor of Dnyanodaya, the mission’s Anglo-Marathi newspaper, as president of the Bombay Christian Council, and as the first moderator of the United Church of North India when it was formed in 1925. In 1893 he addressed the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago on “Christian and Hindu Thought.” Hume received an honorary D.D. from Yale University in 1895, and Queen Victoria conferred upon him in 1901 the Kaiser-i-Hind gold medal for his public service in India. He was the author of Missions from the Modern View (1905), An Interpretation of India’s Religious History (1911), and nearly 200 pamphlets in English and Marathi. Hume returned to the United States in 1926 where he retired and died in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Gerald H. Anderson, “Hume, Robert Allen,” in Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, ed. Gerald H. Anderson (New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 1998), 309-10.

This article is reprinted from Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, Macmillan Reference USA, copyright © 1998 Gerald H. Anderson, by permission of Macmillan Reference USA, New York, NY. All rights reserved.

Bibliography

A series of autobiographical articles, “Hume of Ahmednagar,” was published in The Congregationalist during 1921 (vol. 106). Additional material on Hume can be found in issues of The Missionary Herald (1874-1929), especially those of February 1925 and September 1929.

Digital Texts

Hume, Robert Allen. Missions from the Modern View. New York, Chicago: Fleming H. Revell, 1905.

_____. An Interpretation of India’s Religious History. New York, Chicago: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1911.

“Robert Allen Hume.” In History of the Class of 1868: Yale College, 1864-1914. Compiled by Henry P. Wright, 160-65. New Haven, CT: The Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor Press, 1914. [Includes photos of Hume as an undergraduate and an older man]

Woolsey, T. D. “Christian Missions and Some of Their Obstacles.” In New Englander and Yale Review 33 no. 4 (Oct. 1874): 770-83 [The substance of this article was delivered as a sermon at the ordination of Robert Allen Hume on May 3, 1874].

Primary

Hume, Robert Allen. Christianity Tested by Reason. Bombay: Bombay Tract and Book Society, 1893.

_____. Introduction to Barrows Lectures, 1896-97: Christianity, the World-Religion. Lectures Delivered in India by John Henry Barrows. Madras: The Christian Literature Society for India, 1897.

_____. Indigenous Missions: The Right Way and the Wrong Way of Conducting Them. N.p.: n.p., [1898?].

_____. The Simplicity of Christianity. Bombay: Bombay Tract and Book Society, 1899.

_____. How Gangaram became Acquainted with God. New York; Chicago: Fleming H. Revell, 1905.

_____. Should America Enter the War? Ahmednagar: n.p., 1916.

_____. The Supreme Person and the Supreme Quest. Calcutta: Association Press, 1916.

Hume, Robert Allen and American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Some Criticisms on Mission to India and a Reply. Boston: ABCFM, 1894.

Hume, Robert Allen and American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Marathi Mission: A Condensed Sketch, 1813-1888. Boston: Press of Samuel Usher, 1889.

Hume, Robert Allen, James L. Barton and American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Signs that India is Becoming Christ’s. Boston: ABCFM, 1901.

Secondary

Clark, Alden H. “Hume of Ahmednagar.” Missionary Review of the World 52 (1929): 821-27.

“Robert Allen Hume.” In History of the Class of 1868: Yale College, 1864-1914. Compiled by Henry P. Wright, 160-65. New Haven, CT: The Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor Press, 1914.

Portrait

“Robert Allen Hume,” in History of the Class of 1868: Yale College, 1864-1914, compiled by Henry P. Wright (New Haven, CT: The Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor Press, 1914), 161.