Mary Scott

Mary Harriet Hepburn-Scott (1887 – 1964) was a Scottish missionary and educator who pioneered women's education in Sikkim. Despite her lack of formal medical training, she became the leading medical, educational and religious missionary in Gangtok, educating an entire generation of Sikkimese physicians and significantly improving health outcomes, the Paljor Namgyal Girls' School, which still exists today and has been credited with greatly improving the overall state of women's education in Sikkim both historically and currently. Little is known of her aristocratic upbringing, other than that she received no formal medical education. She had an ambition to be a missionary and in 1905 her parents agreed that she could leave in the care of the established missionaries Katherine and John Anderson Graham.

In 1905, she travelled to Kalimpong to work as a Christian missionary with the Church of Scotland mission. Scott was also considered a highly competent administrator, and proved highly adept at navigating Gangtok's politics despite the heavy suspicion she attracted due to her religion, aristocratic background and gender. In the 1990s, the Mary Scott School for the Blind in Kalimpong revolutionized blind education in Southeast India by being the first to introduce Brail technology.

PNG School

In 1923 Scott succeeded the previous missionary of Sikkim Reverend Maclean, and moved to the Sikkimese capital of Gangtok. This marked a major concession by the raj of Sikkim, because previously Christian missionaries had been forbidden from living in Gangtok. The school began with just two pupils who Scott recruited by asking door-to-door. and formally accredited by the government of India in 1961. Scott's reputation as a friend to the population of Sikkim rather than just the small but growing Christian minority is considered a major reason for the privileges she was given. and the Presbyterian Missionary Church remains the largest Christian denomination in Sikkim. The majority are descendants of those converted by Scott and others in the late nineteenth and early 20th centuries. Her efforts established Christians as a significant minority in Sikkim today.