This paper is a historical study of how five Hindu rulers in Rajputana, and the British Christian missionaries that worked in their native states, adjusted their concepts of righteous rule as a result of Hindu-Christian interactions. In Rajputana, in the precolonial era, "dharmic rule and proper social order" were established by "the construction of great public works (particularly cities, tanks, and irrigation projects) and the offering of protection and patronage to Brahmans and religious institutions" (Norbert Peabody, Hindu Kingship and Polity in Precolonial India (Cambridge University Press, 2003), 42). The advent of mission work in certain native states of Rajputana strengthened (though did not initiate) their rulers' desires to provide educational and medical services to their people as part of good government (see Manu Bhagavan, Sovereign Spheres: Princes, Education and Empire in Colonial India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003) for a different motivation for western education in native states). Conversely, when British missionaries first came to Rajputana they aimed to expand Christian belief and practice as much as possible through the land. Over the course of time, they came to see that Christian mission was much larger than conversion of the population. It included, and indeed prioritized the social and medical care of the general population, as well as support of the Hindu king in his kingdom.
Hindu kings in native states of Rajputana, and British missionaries working in those states, adapted their ideas of righteous kingly rule due to their interactions with each other over the course of the British imperial era.