-^
OAMia-JOHHSOri-fLm!:
^\
l?-l
^
2 E
O
"w
<LV<
1
J3
1— I
•->
\"
_'
^^
.-^
^-
'Vft.
- .-' o
'Xi-'t/>vc^
CX<^ QkX.«e.^c^
J2 7i;>*7iUAiH*^
W^^-^-'-Xt^^^
0^
i
THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES
^)U^^
Lw
CA4^^o*t^
Z.^
r- jtyt^Ut.4^,4L^ /^t^
^ JZtM ^S-*-*^M-^
'v^^ ^
s^
•,*/
vJU-^.
5
out-'N^><ija>
,r?N
•^■^^-^--^Lv,^^^^
P^OM
^crU^
P
- ^
v^i^i^ . •- ' , <r.
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2007 with funding from
IVIicrosoft Corporation
'^
X
l1-.L^.
£
«^v.j
http://^v^jw?&fCliive.6rg/details/buildingwithiQdi00f lemjaja ^
k< J /
/) — ■/
--iL^
S-it-^, jt-^
Copyright Ewing Galloway
THE LURE OF INDIA'S TREE-LINED ROADS, GREEN FIELDS,
AND EVERLASTING HILLS
WITH INDIA
By DANIEL JOHNSON FLEMING
Author of Marks of a World Christian,
Devolution in Mission Administration,
Schools with a Message in India, etc.
.r^l^
Published jointly by a^^^C^-Zi:,,.-.^
Missionary Education Movement of the
United States and Canada , _^
New York .^^^^ ^t^j^^.^-^-.u-i^-^Sii*^ *7T^
and ^i^:2iZ, Z'— ^^^•^-''^
The Central Committee on the UnitSi^5toy op
Foreign Missions CL^^,,X<Xi.^etAy
West Medford, Mass.
The publishers of this book are indebted to
the INTERCHURCH WORLD MOVEMENT for
valuable material on the location of mission
stations as indicated on the map in the front
of the book. Records were made available by
the Committee on Social and Religious
Surveys, which is custodian of all survey-
records formerly assembled by the Inter-
CHURCH World Movement.
Copyright, 1922, by
The Central Committee on the United Study of
Foreign Missions
and
Missionary Education Movement of the
United States and Canada
5Y
To Elizabeth Cole Fleming
1641226
CONTENTS
Preface vii
Chapter One: India's Heritage
Page
I. Nature, architecture, and art 1
II. Music and story 3
III. Literature 6
IV. Power of contemplation and philosophic
temperament 6
V. Capacity for renunciation and detachment 7
VI. India's religious consciousness 10
VII. The national spirit 15
VIII. The appreciative attitude 19
IX. The significance of India's heritage 24
Prayer 29
Chapter Two: Handicaps to Progress
I. India's struggle with disease 31
II. Health problems and obstacles 37
III. Progress in sanitation 40
IV. India's burden of poverty 41
V. Causes of poverty 43
VI. Possibilities of economic improvement 45
VII. The conditions of capital and labor 49
VIII. The seriousness of India's economic need .... 51
IX. Handicaps in education 53
X. An outgrown social system 56
XL Inadequate recognition of women's rights ... 61
XII. The fundamental handicap — Hinduism 66
Prayer 73
Chapter Three: Striving and Aspiration
I. Ram Mohan Roy and theistic reforming
societies 74
II. The Arya Samaj 78
III. Conferences and publications urging reform 81
IV. The Servants of India Society 84
V. The modern woman's movement in India 86
VI. The romance of the Indo-British relationship 92
VII. A RESUME OP Indian politics 97
VIII. The World War and the new British policy 103
IX. The Gandhi movement 105
X. Resulting problems of mission attitude and
policy 108
Prayer 115
Chapter Four: Cooperation of the Christian West
I. A NOBLE succession OF DEVOTED WORKERS 116
II. Helping through the mind 120
III. Enabling India to live 130
IV. Medical missions 136
V. Social results and opportunities 142
VI. Aim and method in missions 144
VII. The kind of missionary needed 150
Prayer 157
Chapter Five: The Distinctive Opportunity in India
I. An exploited sixth 158
II. A GREAT TURNING TOWARD THE "CHRISTIAN WAY" 162
III. Evidence of fruitage 167
IV. Times of testing 172
V. Stubborn difficulties 174
VI. Do we merit the name — co-worker? 179
Prayer 183
Chapter Six: The Indian Church
I. The center of gravity in our thought 184
II. The trend toward an indigenous Church:
N. V. TiLAK 185
III. Sadhu Sundar Singh 190
IV. Christians and patriotism 192
V. The burden of Western denominationalism . . 195
VI. Some other problems of the Indlan Church . . 198
VII. Indian leadership 205
VIII. Signs of expansive life 214
IX. Potential India 217
Prayer 221
Bibliography 222
Index 226
ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING
PAGE
One of India's Tree-lined Roads Frontispiece
The Jessamine Tower 20
A Science Class 21
Waiting 60
A Shrine of the Snake God 61
India's Industrialization 76
A Motor Car Clinic 77
An Elementary Mission School 124
Training Christian Workers 125
Laying Foundations 140
"Forward" 141
Church in Peshawar 180
Veteran Indian Pastors 181
Miss Cornelia Sorabji 212
The Bishop of Dornakal 213
FOREWORD
We are happy to announce that this study book is
published jointly by the Central Committee on the
United Study of Foreign Missions and the Mis-
sionary Education Movement.
Many have known the author, Rev. Daniel
Johnson Fleming, Ph.D., through his book Marks of
a World Christian, and will recognize in Building
with India the same spiritual power that breathed
through former series of studies so widely used
by students of missions.
Dr. Fleming's twelve years of missionary ser-
vice in India as professor in Forman Christian Col-
lege, Lahore, and his recent visit to the country as
Secretary of The Commission on Village Education
in India, sent out by the missionary boards of Brit-
ain and America, qualify him to write with au-
thority on India — ^that wonderful land which is
moving forward so rapidly into larger and more
intimate relations with the world of our day.
Central Committee on the United Study
of Foreign Missions
Missionary Education Movement of the
United States and Canada
PREFACE
It would be possible for us to approach the study
of India as a strange, elusive, romantic land, and
to deepen the feeling of distance by calling Indi-
ans the most Oriental of all Eastern peoples. Or we
might think of them as our worthy relatives, recall-
ing the way in which the ancestry of many there and
here go back to a common Aryan stock. It is inter-
esting to be reminded that it was in a great adven-
ture of finding another route to the fabled riches of
India that Columbus discovered America. It might
make India seem closer to note the number of words
that she has given to us^ and to learn that our so-
called Arabic notation, the production of which was
a most important achievement for the race, may
more properly be called the Babylonic-Hindu nota-
tion.
It will be more profitable, however, to stimulate
our imagination until we habitually see all other
peoples as part of our common humanity, inevitably
linked with us in the task placed before the human
race on this planet. The very title of this book is
intended to suggest God's constructive cooperative
enterprise — "for we are laborers together with God
ye are God's building." We shall be studying
India ; but in the background of our thought, let us
try to keep the conception of a better world wrought
out by the cooperation of men of different races as
empowered by God.
^Bungalow, coolie, punch, cashmere, calico, madras, khaki,
almirah, catechu, deva, ghee, gambier, lac, nabob, gharry, etc.
Preface
What more stimulating conception can we have
than that of the Kingdom — a society of ever-devel-
oping, creative, cooperating personalities. Our
vision is of individuals, changed and unified through
thoroughgoing commitment to Jesus Christ and
manifesting through Him, both singly and together,
health, joy, power, wisdom, and love. Our vision is
of peoples who have entered into their birthright as
children of God, some working in the world of physi-
cal things and some in the realm of ideas and ideals ;
some by means of science and others with spiritual
gifts; but all in conscious fellowship under a
cooperating, purposing, and eternally loving Father.
In this volume, therefore, let us think of India as
a potential, and in part as an actual, co-partner in
the world-task. There are six simple questions we
would wish to ask about any other people with
whom eventually we are to enter into Christian co-
operation. (1) What capacities, what attainments,
what helpful heritage do they bring to the partner-
ship? (2) What are the things which are tempo-
rarily keeping them from their best — ^their handi-
caps, their needs? (3) What are they striving for,
what are their aspirations, in what constructive and
helpful ways are they working for themselves and
for others? (4) What has the Church's great enter-
prise known as missions done and what can it still
do in cooperation with this other people to build up
a better land? (5) What movements or conditions
among them are of outstanding significance to the
Kingdom? (6) What is the extent to which the
Christian spirit and force have become organized
and naturalized in the land? For, revolutionary as
Preface
it has been for missionary thinking both at home
and abroad, forward-looking Christian thought is
now for the most part whole-heartedly accepting the
central importance of the native Church. These,
then, are the questions which the six chapters of
this book attempt to answer in regard to India.
D. J. F.
New York City
January
1922 .
CHAPTER ONE
India's Heritage
Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things
are honorable, whatsoever things are just, whatso-
ever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely,
whatsoever things are of good report; if there be
any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on
these things.
I
Those who know India and have spent years in
close friendship with her people delight to witness
to certain characteristics of land and folk which de-
serve high appreciation.
The land itself has elements of great charm.
There are the magnificent Himalayas — abode of
eternal snows. Live for a day in Darjeeling with
the glory of the peaks of Kinchenjanga before you,
and your conception of sublimity will have forever
found its concrete expression. Spend a summer in
the Vale of Kashmir, and in memory it will tower
above every Western resort. Walk forty miles into
the Himalayas beyond Simla to the forest road of
Baghi and let the charm of its mountain ferns and
trees and torrents sink in upon you. Take the
back-water route along the coast of Malabar where,
as you are poled along through over-shadowing
palms, you can hear the surf of the ocean less than a
mile away. Motor along the British roadways
densely overarched with India's brilliantly flowering
trees. Look across the green fields of North India
1
2 Building with India
on a cool December morning. The oxen are busy at
the creaking Persian wheels, causing streams of
water to flow along countless channels on their life-
giving way. The song of men at labor can be heard,
and the graceful poise of the women bearing aloft
their water-pots catches the eye at a distance. Live
in the open on far-stretching plains, beneath
clear skies, in an environment of simple people who
give you their warm affection, with work that you
know is worth while and for lasting good, then you
will forget the monotony and wearisomeness and
languor of the hot weather and the irritations and
long separations that are inevitable for a Westerner
in India.
^^ Drop into a well-stocked library and give yourself
the pleasure of looking into books on Indian archi-
tecture. You will find that Hindu India has its three
distinct styles of temple structure. There will be
illustrations, also, of the great Muhammadan build-
ings. You will see pictures of the lace-like marble
screen-work in the fort at Delhi, and of the ex-
quisite marble buildings inlaid with precious stones
that make the eleven mile drive from Delhi to the
Kutb Minar one of the notable roadways of the
world. At Bijapur is a Moghul tomb which dates
back to the seventh century, with a dome as large as
that of the Pantheon at Rome. Experts say that
it is artistically one of the most beautiful forms of
roof yet invented, and it is constructed entirely
on Indian principles unknown at that time in
Europe. From the standpoint of one interested in
architectural creativeness, India has a wealth of
tombs and temples and mosques. If she had no
India's Heritage 3
other basis of distinction, travelers would refuse to
pass her by.
A study of India's handicrafts opens up a fairy
world of beauty. In the seventeenth century India
was the world's chief center for the finer textiles,
and contemporaneous writers described her cottons
and linens as diaphanous mist dyed with the rain-
bow. Chiseled ivory, miniature painting, wood carv-
ing, beautiful forms in metals with inlaid designs
reveal a skill that has been cultivated throughout
the years. In the best shops one can see carpets and
embroideries of exquisite pattern and gorgeous
coloring, curtains, shawls, and muslins worthy of
a land that for centuries led the world in weaving.
Each large area has a standardization in dress that
is worthy of commendation, and the women have
worked out ways of draping themselves that are very
becoming and often truly beautiful, combining sim-
plicity and economy to a remarkable degree. Many
of the high-caste women do exquisite embroidery
and applique work and take a pride in showing bril-
liant and dexterous handiwork in gold and silver
thread. An appreciation of India's art, like the
knowledge of her language, is one means of gaining
insight into her way of seeing and thinking. Many
of our homes contain treasured brass or wood or
rug — silent witnesses to India's contribution to the
beauty of the world.
II
In the West we usually regard literacy as an es-
sential of culture. It is a surprise, therefore, to one
who has heard about the ninety-four per cent in In-
l
4 Building with India
dia who cannot read and write, to find that often an
illiterate villager can repeat some of the finest de-
votional poems and songs of India's religious teach-
ers. Knowledge of India's classic heroes and hero-
ines is common. How do the people acquire this
culture?
One way by which Indians come into possession of
their classical heritage is through music, of which
they are passionately fond. All over India music
has a great part in the joy of life and in the ex-
pression of religious devotion. From dark to dawn
they will listen with rapture to good singing. In
this way the sweet and beautiful songs of the Gita
Govinda have become an inseparable part of the
heritage of Bengal, and the Tamil singer-preachers
have made their tender lyrics of the soul's devotion
an integral part of the religious life of the south.
In medieval days it was lyrical evangelists who
taught the new ideals of the bhakti^ revival to the
common people through songs.
Indian music presents one of the most highly de-
veloped systems of music in the world. It is very
: different from Western systems in its exclusion of
harmony and in its development of the variations
and grace of melody, in the intricate and elaborate
time measures and the importance given to the
drum-beat, and in the way each raga (melody-form)
iis associated with a particular period of the day or
night and often with a particular season of the year.
i Some Christian missions have depended on transla-
tions of Western hymns set to Western music. But
Western music can never win the heart of India.
*The devotional branch of Hinduism.
India's Heritage 5
Far wiser have been those who have entered the
open door into the hearts of India through lyrical
evangelism designed after indigenous models.
Where this has been done, people sit listening for
hours to the Christian message thus presented. The
singer-preacher, aided by hand cymbals, drums,
drone, and possibly a stringed instrument, unfolds
some Bible story, chanting the prose exposition
and every now and then breaking forth into one of
the chain of songs that develops the various inci-
dents of the theme. Already there is the distinct
promise that India with its passion for song will
some day give rise to a new development in hym-
nology for the Christian Church.
A second way in which the people of India ac-
quire classical culture without literacy is through
the greatly developed art of story-telling and dra-
matic expression. The professional story-teller in
India continues to this day to occupy a place of the
highest importance in popular life. His visit to a
village or a town becomes a matter of absorbing in-
terest. For several nights in succession he holds his
audiences spellbound long after midnight, while he
relates the tales of their two national epics — ^the
Mahabharata and Ramayana. The power of mem-
ory quite surpassing anything we develop in a liter-
ate land, the faculty of dramatic expression, and
the elegant diction contribute to the fascination of
these times of joy in the simple village life. More-
over, the folk-lore known by some of the women is
often quite astonishing. The inimitable stories of
the Bible, when once learned, are told and retold
through the villages for many a day.
6 Building with India
III
Stored up in Sanskrit, Pali, and Prakrit texts is
another great element in India's heritage. Her litera-
ture, extending back to 1500 B. C, is of very un-
equal quality, but contains occasional material of
high value and of extreme interest. Every Indian
is proud of this classic literature. Apart from the
four Vedas, the Brahmanas, Sutras, Upanishads,
and the two great epics — ^the Ramayana and the
Mahabharata — and other classic books, there is a
wealth of vernacular poetry. This has been sung
into the heart of the people for many generations
like some of our own great hymns.
A knowledge of this religious poetry of the ver-
naculars, even more than that of the classic books,
will give the Indian Church a hold on the people.
This vernacular poetry is not always noble and
fine; much of it is saturated with uncleanness; it
is all steeped in the popular beliefs and superstitious
practices of Hinduism. Yet here and there it rises
to great excellence from the point of view of lan-
guage and literature, and some portions are good
both morally and religiously. To every note of it,
the popular heart responds. Since in a peculiar way
poetry is the avenue for truth in India, we are to be
thankful for the growing hymnology of the Church.
IV
Another gift possessed by India is her power of
contemplation. Her spiritual instinct makes it natu-
ral for many of her most earnest souls to meditate
hour after hour. Who knows but that India's devo-
tional emphasis may be a corrective to our overstress
India's Heritage 7
on activity? When, eager for India's good, we at-
tempt to stimulate her to Western standards of
expedition through inculcating business and effi-
ciency methods, should we not be solicitous lest
the talent already there be lost? The two ideals of / | j
meditation and of vigorous action should supplement \ I i
one another.
Akin to this genius for meditation is India's
philosophic temperament. Throughout the centuries
the Hindu mind has turned its attention, not to
science or to history, but pre-eminently to a long
continued wrestling with the most serious problems
of the intellect and spirit. Hinduism itself has six
orthodox systems of philosophy, and Jainism, one.
Hinduism's greatest philosophic achievement is the
realization of the unity underlying diversity. For
many centuries India was the university of Asia, as
Greece once was that of Europe. Many are looking
forward to the time when the Indian Church shall
have developed a theological literature of its own,
with the hope that the natural set or bias of the
Eastern mind will enable it to make invaluable con-
tributions toward the philosophical interpretation
of our Christian faith. In thinking of world
growth, let us be not oblivious to the present and po-
tential reservoirs of intellectual power in the Aryan
mind of India. India's heritage of thinking — not
merely of thought, but of thought power — may be
one of India's greatest gifts to the world.
V
India's capacity for renunciation stands out
among her attributes. She instinctively gives the
8 Building with India
tribute of her admiration to one who manifestly
places things «f the spirit above things of the flesh,
J and one may doubt whether a religious type that
does not markedly show renunciation of the world
will ever appeal to her. Queen Gandhari, feeling
that no wife should enjoy a privilege which is denied
her husband, goes happily blindfolded throughout
her married life, in order to share the misfortune of
her blind husband. Sita voluntarily sets out with
her husband to encounter the dangers and priva-
tions of the jungle when he is exiled for fourteen
years from his royal home. There is scarcely a
Hindu woman throughout the length and breadth of
India to whom the story of the suffering Sita is
not known and to whom her character is not a model.
All over India you will meet wandering sadhus
(monks or friars). Clad in simple, saffron cloths,
and with little more than beggar's bowls, tongs,
and skins on which to sit and meditate, they go from
sacred place to sacred place. According to their sys-
tem, every Brahman should leave work and family
at fifty years of age and should spend the rest of his
life in meditation. Take twenty minutes to read
Kipling's story of "The Miracle of Purun Bhagat" ;
in the Second Jungle Book, and you will never for-
get this ingrained aspect of India's ideal.
It should be noted that while a sadhu at his best
embodies a very prevalent Hindu belief that the life
of the spirit is beyond all comparison more impor-
tant and real than that of the flesh, it is an entirely
self-centered life. India's holy men do not seek to
serve others. By very theory they can have no re-
sponsibility for other men and women. Moreover, a
India's Heritage 9
large proportion of India's sadhus are sturdy beg-
gars devoid of spirituality or devotion who cover up
a life of laziness or fraud with the insignia of pre-
sumptive saintliness. Many stupify themselves by
the use of hemp, thus giving the appearance of in-
difference to things of sense. It is only a small
minority of the mendicants who have high stand- .
ards of spiritual life, but these so take the imagina- 1
tion of India that in her eyes the sadhu's begging ]
bowl is more the mark of a saint than of a beggar.
Sadhus often seen by tourists, a limited type,
manifest their renunciation in spectacular ways —
burying themselves up to their noses in the ground,
lying on spikes, measuring their length prostrate on
the ground for miles to some temple, letting water
drip on their heads while they are parched with
thirst, sitting between four fires with India's sun
burning down upon them, or running spiked wires
through their flesh. On the merely physical plane
Indian asceticism cannot be surpassed. It is a sad
story and we may not approve the form, but what a
capacity for self-abnegation India presents! Down -''
under these ofttimes revolting sights there is not
infrequently something noble — ^the readiness to \
mortify the flesh for the sake of the spirit.
The ideal of "detachment" is an integral part of
the spirit of India. One of her most popular scrip-
tures says : "Thy business is with action only, never
with its fruits ; so let not the fruit of action be thy
motive, nor be thou to inaction attached. Perform
action, 0 Dhananjaya, in union with the Divine, re-
nouncing attachments, and evenly balanced in sue- I
cess and failure Pitiable are they who work for
10 Building with India
fruit. "^ This ideal of detachment from mere things
has sunk into their subconscious selves. Surely
there is something here to build upon by Him who
said that His Kingdom was not of this world. En-
riched and rightly related to the Christian ideal and
dynamic, this deeply founded capacity for renun-
ciation and detachment may yet furnish the West a
corrective for our far too great commitment to ma-
terialistic aims and for our tendency to appraise
success by monetary standards and by the ability to
command luxury and the facilities for self-indul-
gence which money brings.
VI
India's most distinctive heritage is her religious
consciousness. Here one comes very near the heart
of India. It is exceedingly difficult to express the
precise sense in which it can be said that Hindus
have a special aptitude for spiritual things. Cer-
tainly it does not mean what Jesus meant when He
spoke of worshiping God "in spirit and in truth."
But taking religion as a conscious relation between
man and the supernatural and the acknowledgment
of that relation in human conduct, India is unques-
tionably religious. From before birth until after
death, the Hindu's life is full of sacramental obser-
vances.
Numerous shrines draw crowds of pilgrims. As
many as two million gather at the Kumbh Mela,
near Allahabad — almost one out of every hundred
and sixty of the total population. In any orthodox
Hindu home there is the daily worship of the fa-
*The Bhagavad Gita, II : 47-49.
India's Heritage ii
vorite deity in the temple-room of the house or be-
fore the niche kept for images. ^ ^
It is because India beyond any other nation has ^ t
this quest for inner peace that she makes a unique • ""^^
appeal to us to share with her the highest that we ' 'i.^-
know. Her whole life is the expression of an un-
satisfied desire. Suppose you were sending a sower
forth to sow; just what would you consider good
soil? Would you choose to plant, if possible, some
seed in a certain advanced Hindu school where a
whole morning is set aside for the teaching of re-
ligion ; to which each little girl brings her idol-bas-
ket, with some clay, flowers, and sandal paste;
where lights are lit, incense burned, the right atti-
tude of meditation taught, and where the children
are shown how to make and then how to worship
the image? Or would you prefer hard and material-
istic soil? I shall never forget the pathetically ear-
nest faces of the women as they come one by one to
the temples with their offerings of rice and water,
bedeck their idol with flowers, and circle round it
saying, "Ram, Ram, Sita Ram! Ram, Ram, Sita
Ram !" Why should not their manifest capacity for
religious devotion be related to the great Satisfier?
To us should come the overpowering impulse to
say to such, "Whom ye ignorantly worship, him de-
clare I unto you." Although much of the worship of\
popular Hinduism is propitiation of deities by ma-:
terial means for material ends, it is very clear toi
those working among the people that their hearts;
are unsatisfied by these things. The long pil-'
grimages, the self-imposecj fastings and penances
are signs of a restlessness of soul which, like some-
12 Building with India
Chandra Lela or Pandita Ramabai/ spends weary-
years in following every known way to obtain inner
peace.
With such an unquenched desire continuing
I through the centuries, it is not surprising that In-
\ dia has become the motherland of a greater number
\ of living, organized, influential religions than any
other country in the world. She has produced re-
ligions rather than accepted them. Accordingly, any
/ adequate understanding of India requires a philo-
sophic and religious interpretation. India's search
has been embodied mainly in three great religions —
Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism — whose follow-
ers comprise over one fifth of the human race.
We believe that "there was the true light, even
the light which lighteth every man, coming into the
world," and that God has "suffered all the nations
to walk in their own ways, and yet he left not him-
self without witness." We are, therefore, not sur-
prised to find a certain reality and rich variety of
experience in India's religious leaders, and positive
values in certain elements of Hindu thought, litera-
ture, and practice which challenge respect and most
careful constructive appraisal. We remember how
Jesus, even in the face of Jewish pride and conceit,
was able to see God's dealings with the widow of Za-
rephath, Naaman the Syrian, the Roman centurion,
and illustrated the principle in the parable of the
good Samaritan. In like manner we should not hesi-
tate to acknowledge good wherever it is found. The
greater the effort to understand, the more purpose-
*The biographies of these t^Vo Christian women give a fine
insight into what Hinduism is. See Bibliography.
India's Heritage 13
ful the determination to discover what values have
emerged in India's age-long quest for the Divine,
the more positive becomes the assurance that the
coming of the Christ to India, while supplanting
many things, will, on the other hand, enrich and ful-
fil many others.
Gautama Buddha and Asoka embody kindliness
and tolerance; Ramanuja and Ramanand worked
out a distinct theism ; Kabir, Nanak, and Chaitanya
stand out for devotion; and Tulsi Das and Tuka
Ram for simple piety. Poems like the two follow-
ing'^ which have come down for three hundred years
from Tuka Ram are frequent in the bhakti (devo-
tional) school.
The Only Refuge
I am a mass of sin;
Thou art all purity;
Yet thou must take me as I am
And bear my load for me.
Me Death has all consumed;
In thee all power abides.
All else forsaking, at thy feet
Thy servant Tuka hides.
He Knows Our Need
Unwearied he bears up the universe;
How light a burden I!
Does not his care the frog within the stone
With food supply?
The bird, the creeping thing lays up no store;
This great One knows their need.
And if I, Tuka, cast on him my load.
Will not his mercy heed?
^Psalms of Maratha Saints, Nicol Macnicol, pp. 65, 74.
14 Building with India
That the last two elements in India's heritage are
really operative in these days is strikingly evidenced
in the remarkable and widespread influence which
has been wielded by Mahatma Gandhi. It has been
his life of renunciation and sacrifice and his deep
religious nature that have fired India's imagination.
In what other land has a political leader found such
characteristics his deepest source of power?
In granting him leadership, India was un-
doubtedly moved by the fact that Gandhi cared
nothing for sensual pleasures, nothing for riches,
nothing for comfort or praise or promotion. Coming
from a well-to-do family, he has lived on a most
meager allowance. To the West he would seem
ascetic, weighing less than one hundred pounds,
living on fruits, vegetables, and rice, eating no
sweets or spices, dressing like a poor man in home-
spun, and traveling third class. Before taking up
the leadership of India's demand for home rule, he
had already endeared himself to the people by the
heroism and prolonged self-sacrifice with which in
South Africa he used passive resistance to win a
battle for the rights of Indian indentured labor. In
the course of the struggle, he and his wife and chil-
dren were imprisoned, and he was forcibly fed. To
the Indian, this gaunt, wan figure is a saint. He
gave up his law practice in Bombay because of his
religion. In Calcutta he told an audience that the
Indian people feared guns, religious legalists, and
government oflficials more than they feared God, and
that unless they gave up that fear and made religion
the foundation of life, individual and national, they
would never be fit for self-government.
India's Heritage 15
He has been greatly influenced by Christianity in
his methods and message. He has been an earnest
student of the Bible and at one time contemplated
becoming a Christian. But there is a background in
conformity with Indian ideals to such an extent that
the people spontaneously call Gandhi, "Mahatma"
or "Great-Souled One." Mistaken as he has been in
many things, there is suggestion for Christian
workers in this life which embodies so much of In-
dia's characteristic heritage and yet adds other ele-
ments deemed helpful for India's welfare. It isl
noteworthy that all India reveres Gandhi the}
patriot-saint, even when all India does not follow!
Gandhi the politician. Reference is made later to
Gandhi's political methods. These are thoroughly
repudiated by many who would be willing to admit
certain elements of strength in his popularity.
VII
To India's heritage of other days must be added
her present-day throbbing spirit of nationalism.
The average Indian has a far longer time perspec-
tive than we have. An American feels that he is
getting pretty close to the beginning of his country's
history as he visits certain revolutionary sites about
Boston. But the Indian has a literature and culture
that go back over thirty times as far. He can sweep
back over the whole of English history and point to
Indian monarchs and sages two thousand years be-
fore our ancestors ceased to be cavemen and lake-
dwellers, the source of those who Cicero says were
the stupidest and ugliest slaves brought to Rome.
He knows that India's culture grew up from its
1 6 Building with India
own roots with a character of its own, since vast
mountain barriers and an untraveled sea almost
wholly shut India off from the West. He knows that
this culture had a distinct effect on China, and that
Buddhism indirectly from India gave a great im-
petus to Japanese civilization. Even yet a traveler
constantly finds reminders of Indian architecture,
sculpture, painting, and worship in Ceylon, Burma,
Tibet, and Siam, as well as in China and Japan. In
these days we Westerners behold our civilization
taken up by one people after another ; but the Indian
i cherishes the memory of a golden age when Indian
I culture went forth as a fertilizing influence, giving
form and color to the thought of Asia.
The modern Indian looks at other nations, but he
is not envious. He is thankful that he was born in
India and has a share in her peculiar genius. He
talks about an ancient culture that has maintained
its progress unbroken for thirty centuries. He feels
that his land possesses a common tradition to be
found in song and legend, great personalities that
embody the character and ideals of the nation, and
sacred places where the national memory is en-
shrined. He claims that Japan and China accepted
light from India because she was engrossed, not in
obtaining physical power, but in following essen-
tial spiritual purpose. Sometimes this spirit has
gone too far in glorifying every element in the past.
Some political extremists, after detailing what they
consider the humiliating mortifications of the pres-
ent, have pictured the exaggerated glories of the
f past and thus have evolved an unhistorical India.
But Indian nationalism does hot look wholly to
India's Heritage 17
the past. India realizes that in the World War
she sent out one hundred thousand more soldiers
than Australia, New Zealand, and Canada com-
bined, and that the tracks, rolling-stock, engines,
coal, and staff for the strategic railways in Mesopo-
tamia came from her supply. India has twenty-five
times as much arable land as Japan, though the yield
per acre is much lower. With improved methods of
farming, India can supply in increasing quantities
the products which the world needs. At some places
in south India three crops of rice are harvested
from the same land in a single year. India now
leads the world in the production of rice, sugar-cane,
tea, jute, and shellac, and comes second in cotton
and tobacco. The world's lack of leather and paper
can be partly supplied from India's potential re-
sources. There is a distinct revival of Indian art in
Bengal under the leadership of the Indian Society
of Oriental Art. An annual exhibition is held, and
a whole school of Indian artists finds encouragement
in the reception given to their work. There is,
moreover, considerable talk about an all-India lan-
guage, and more than one vernacular has its cham-
pion who would like to displace English with a fa-
vorite Indian tongue.
The Indian will admit our practical bent, our in-'
ventiveness, our wealth and luxury and power; but
he refuses to be dazzled by these things and realizes
that India surpasses us in patience, tact, ingenuity,
and grasp of minute detail. He believes that, al-
though his culture may lack certain qualities which
we rank high, there is still much in Indian civiliza-
tion that is good, beautiful, and valuable, and which
i8 Building with India
can supplement other cultures of the world. To be
sure, Indians are different from us. But differences
do not necessarily imply inferiority. Certain it is
< that the Indian is not conscious of any drawback
from race, nor would he willingly get into the white
man's skin.
The modern Indian has a distinct conviction that
India has her own individuality that must find ex-
pression— her own mission and message to man-
kind. He wants the nations to recognize India's
right and capacity to exert her influence in the
councils of the world, and feels assured that they
will ever be exerted in the interests of peace and
good-will toward all nations and peoples. At one of
the early meetings of the League of Nations, on
whose Assembly India is represented, the Mahara-
'' jah of Nawanagar, speaking for the Indian princes,
pledged their interest in the creation of a fund to
fight typhus although this disease was not an out-
standing danger in India. India, as a member of
the British Empire, had her representative at the
recent Limitation of Armament Conference in
Washington. In India's name, this representative
placed on the bier of America's Unknown Warrior
a wreath bearing the beautiful inscription, "They
never die who die to make life worth living."
Not alone by non-Christians is the national as-
piration felt, but by the educated section of the
' Christian community. It too is insisting that India
be better understood and respected. A Christian
' nationalist will admit that there is a vast amount
in India which is inconsistent with the spirit of
Christ and which, therefore, must be rooted out;
India's Heritage zg
nevertheless he is firm in a conviction that India has
not been without the tutelage of the great Teacher
of Mankind, and moreover is being disciplined in
peculiar ways for some great purpose in God's
world.
VIII
If India has such .a heritage, why is it, then, that
while many tourists treasure for a lifetime the fas-
cination of their glimpse into that interesting land,
many others are repelled even at the thought of In-
dia? Manifestly it is a question of emphasis in
gtteotign. Data for either view in varying degrees
exist in any country. One may stand breathless be-
fore the marvelous beauty of the Taj Mahal while
domes and minarets, pierced screens and inlaid mar-
ble make their exquisite offering to the eye. Or one|
may push aside the impression of beauty in the Taj
and become absorbed in a socio-economic reflection
— ^the ugly fact of enforced labor lasting twenty
years under the whip of a despotic ruler. It is pos-
sible to let yourself be either thrilled or puzzled by
the fact that this most beautiful mausoleum ever
erected to the memory of womanhood is to be found
in India.
Again, as one views the massive rock-cut temples
near Bombay and Madras or the exquisite carving
in the shrines at Mount Abu, one may yield to awe
at the enormous labor involved and realize that in
the broadest sense India's great temples stand as
monuments of the religious consciousness. An old,
lowcaste woman was once asked the cost of a temple
in process of building. She turned to the mission-
20 Building with India
ary in surprise and said, "We don't know. It is for
our god. We don't count the cost." It is said that
sculpture has been cultivated more than painting in
India since it offers opportunity for a more labori-
ous expression of religious zeal. Or one may turn
from these thoughts and be dominated by the re-
flection that the builders were undoubtedly stimu-
lated by the principle of merit, thinking that the
more labor they expended on pious work, the more
benefit they would receive from the gods.
Similarly there are two attitudes which one may
take toward every strange and backward custom
and toward the expression of the religious life of
the people. A real question arises in the minds of
some as to whether the best way to win a great peo-
ple from a bad custom is to be severely condemna-
tory in our judgment or, while still working against
it, to admit the angle of usefulness which has en-
abled it to live through the centuries. Should we
concentrate our attention on the falsehood in a non-
Christian religion or must we also note whatever of
truth it enshrines? Would we feel our enthusiasm
for missions endangered if less emphasis is placed
on the dark views of the social and moral conditions
of other lands as compared with our own or have
we such an unshakable conception of the unique,
priceless, and indispensable value in Jesus Christ
that we fearlessly look at the very best a non-Chris-
tian system can present, confident that only through
Him is the life more abundant to come to the throng-
ing millions?
Let us look at the highest, noblest possible inter-
pretation of an ethnic faith. When we see Christ
ONE OF INDIA'S GEMS OP ARCHITECTURE
The Jessamine Tower in the Fort, Agra, built in the sev-
enteenth century by the Emperor Shah Jehan who also built
the Taj Mahal. Note the three types of decoration: the
pierced marble railings and screens above the doors, the
marble medallions with flowers in relief, and, on the flat
surfaces, the inlay work consisting of semi-precious stones
and black marble.
India's Heritage 21
towering infinitely above even this, what could pro-
vide a surer basis for the cause of Christian mis-
sions? Some day the grossest social and moral evils
which we proverbially associate with mission lands
may have disappeared, for against many of them,
leaders who do not yet consciously acknowledge in-
debtedness to Jesus Christ are even now manfully
working. If that day comes, the missionary motive
will still be keen and absorbing. Men and women will
still need the Christ. Anyone with a spark of love
must yearn to alleviate in some way the grievous
needs which of necessity protrude Into every chap-
ter of this book. But if India had no record of
wasting sickness, grinding poverty, and dwarfing
illiteracy, an inward sense of inevitable failure and
worthlessness apart from Christ would move us by
the most powerful missionary motive. The unmis-
takable need may lead us on, but the necessary
Christ is the motive that abides and sustains.
We should be very careful that we do not sustain
interest in missions at the cost of international re-
spect and good-will. The growth of nationalism has
made India sensitive. Educated, English-reading
Indians, both Christian and non-Christian, are
quick to resent any appeal that is judged unfair or
unproportioned, and to give publicity to their re-
sentment in their public press. The world is so small
that we might well imagine an intelligent Hindu
present at every missionary meeting. The whole-
someness of the atmosphere in which we do our
work abroad depends in part upon the way we pre-
sent the cause of missions in the West. In stimu-
lating the missionary purpose, we must lay stress
^uii^^f^t
22 -^-"'^^ ^uildflir^'th India
not alone upon facts which will stir the emotion of
pity, but upon those which will give a proportioned
view and which are set forth in such a spirit as
would enlist our approval if others used it in ap-
praising our people and civilization.
The careful presentation in its proper perspective
of the good in non-Christian religions does much to
cut the ground from under the parlor groups that
grow enthusiastic over Oriental cults — an occasional
fad for city women. It is easy to see how these
cults gained their influence. The nineteenth cen-
tury, among other things, resulted in two great ad-
vances. One was a vision of the vast moral and so-
cial needs in non-Christian lands. The Christian
Church was filled with compassion for what were
— and are — unquestioned and grievous evils. It often
became so absorbed and preoccupied in its minis-
try to these needs that a country like India became
associated only with idols, pestilence, famine, dis-
ease, and illiterate crowds sunk in animal worship
and quite devoid of culture and civilization.
The other insight, coming from a great company
of scholarly Orientalists — missionaries, traders,
travelers, and anthropologists — resulted in an un-
precedented increase in the accurate knowledge of
the religions of the world. The Theosophical Society
assumed a generous attitude to the ethnic faiths
and invited people to join in the study of these re-
ligions in a friendly, appreciative way. It is this at-
titude of sympathy which has drawn most of the in-
tellectual men and women who have been attracted
to this society.
Now scholars tell us that the bulk of the work that
India's Heritage 23
the Theosophists have done in the exposition of re-
ligion is unscientific and misleading.^ Yet we have
to acknowledge that they have attempted to do in
a wrong way what the Church ought to have done
in a right way. It is the unexpected discovery that,
there are precious gems in non-Christian faiths that]'
causes the uninformed to suspect that there are un-
worked mines of spiritual wealth in these religions.
They are thus lured away to some popular cult. Pos-
sibly fewer would have been captivated if we had
been less preoccupied with needs, and if, while stat-
ing that ninety-nine Vedic hymns quite fail to
arouse our interest and appreciation, we had also
taught that the hundredth is well worth re-reading.
India has inadequately understood the Reality she
has been seeking and has, therefore, lacked ethical f
dynamic; nevertheless, we should not fail to ac-
knowledge that facts and literature prove that In-;
dia's consciousness of the Unseen is very strong in- '
deed. We cannot too clearly see that India's ulti-
mate Reality has no purposeful activity and em-
bodies all the defects of pantheism; but we should!
be ready to admit the attainment of her forest
sages who approached the great realization of the
immanence of the Divine in the world, in statements
like the following: "I, indeed, am below. I am
above. I am to the west. I am to the east. I am
to the south. I am to the north. I, indeed, am this
whole world."^ In short, it is essential that our ap-
proach be sympathetic and appreciative. And then,
'Cf. Farquhar, J. N., Modern Religious Movements in Iv/-
dia, pp. 208-90.
'Chandogya Upanishad, 7. 25. (Hume's translation).
24 Building with India
as long as we keep a true perspective, no fair minded
Indian will object to a picture that has its shadows
as well as its sunshine.
IX
The Indian Christian Church will benefit by a
fresh study of the best in India. It is significant
that the Young Men's Christian Association is so
sure that a study of the best in India is advisable that
it is bringing out a series of volumes on the heritage
of India which are cheap enough to be popularly
available. In such work Indian Christians and
missionaries must use constant discrimination to
separate the good from the indiflferent and the un-
wholesome. It would be the height of folly to give
unmeasured praise to everjrthing Indian simply be-
cause it is Indian. The most ardent Christian na-
tionalist, however keen may be his consciousness
of India's great common heritage, should demand
a rigid exclusion of all elements which are out of
harmony with the spirit of Christ. As we shall see,
India has a darker heritage. Let us remember the
lesson of the Fourth Century and the period fol-
lowing, when mass movements to Christianity were
found in Europe. Converts tended to bring over
into Christian worship and thought pagan forms
and spirit. There is a danger that this experience
may be repeated today in India.
It is well to remember with what loathing Pandita
Ramabai turned away from the inheritance of
Hinduism. Herself a Sanskrit scholar, she would
not let her daughter learn Sanskrit. To this re-
markable Christian, whose heart's desire and prayer
India's Heritage 25
to God for India is that India may be saved, Hindu-
ism is the power of darkness, and from it she would
say the Christian can obtain nothing good. Such
strong testimony should warn any who have not had ;
her intimate and tragic experience with the domi-
nant religion in India that only the ablest and most
spiritual souls should assume the task of separating
the gold from the dross. Christianity's purity and
transforming power in India depend upon the active
existence of a Spirit-guided discrimination within
the Indian Church. <■
For us of the West, appreciation of this heritage ^ '*^ '
ought to make it easier to displace the spirit of ^ . *
patronage with the spirit of brotherhood. Perhaps *'
if we valued India's heritage more, the judgment ex- h- *-^
pressed by an Indian Christian saint of great spiri- /.; iZf^
tual penetration would never have been formed.^ « .
Speaking to a Britisher of his relations with West- ,^ ^^^
ern Christians, he said, "You know, you make us'^,;/^
feel that you want to do good to us, but you don't '
make us feel that you need us." The seriousness .*-^
of the situation arises from the danger that, if
Western peoples offer Christianity to India in the
spirit of condescension, she may refuse it.
Furthermore, an appreciation of the extent to /
which the best spirit of India is to be found in her j
folk-lore, art, and literature, is somewhat changing I
our method. Writers of an older day often incul-
cated a disgust with everything Indian. It used to
be that to become a Christian meant almost com-
plete isolation from all that was best in India's tra-
ditions of custom and religious belief. Many a per-
son in a long established Christian community in
26 Building with India
India is almost as ignorant of her folk-lore as if he
had been born in the West. Now, however, in ac-
cord with the demand of the times, our missionaries
are taking the dominant national spirit into consid-
eration in the selection of materials to be used in
their elementary and secondary education. They are
drawing more upon Indian folk-lore, literature, and
art, since the result of their work must be something
that is not only Christian, but also Indian. We must
be ready to encourage the kind of selection from
non-Christian sources that enabled our own Chris-
tianity to become naturalized in the Greek and
Roman and European world.
Westerners have sometimes gone to the East in the
aggressive spirit of Occidental civilization, assum-
ing that there was no need of considering any cul-
ture but their own. However, most missionaries
have long since come to see that if they are to teach
anything to a given people, they must enter into its
spirit and culture and learn to appreciate what these
already contain. When the teaching of Christ links
itself up with the cultural heritage of a country, the
more readily can it make its appeal with power to
the heart of that people. Hence, we do not try to
eradicate a people's habits of thought and ways of
doing things simply because they are not like our
own. In so far as they are not un-Christian, we re-
spect them and endeavor to enlist these indigenous
ways and powers for worthful ends. Even further,
we must realize without reserve that we go to learn
as well as to teach. Every nation is our master in
certain respects.
India's Heritage 27
If we are ever to work with India for a better/
world, there must be a development of mutual ap-l
preciation and respect. Pity and compassion may-
go forth to those whom we do not respect, but if we
are to enter into Christian cooperation with another
people, there must be admiration for what is
worthy in them. We must think of them not only as
recipients of help, but as contributors of a rich store
of customs and habits all their own. This inter-
racial respect does not seem to come naturally.
Every primitive people manifests a high disdain of
other races and other cultures. Even for us, it is
easier to point out the weaknesses of other nations
than to recall their virtues. Their defects seem to
stand out upon the surface for anyone with half an
eye to see. It requires an effort to discover the
goodness. Similarly, when we come to deal with an-
other people, patronage seems to be easier than
partnership, to work for them seems to be a great
deal more fitting than to work with them. How
characteristic was this remark referring to the
people of India: "I'm interested in them and want
to help them all I can, and I am sure our church
wants to help them. Just what can we do for them?"
But when asked, "Do you wish them to help you?"
the person hesitated — "Well, — I had not thought
about that. No, I hardly think so." The two fac-
tors here overlooked — cooperation and mutual ap-
preciation— are those which God is leading modern
missions to emphasize.
We rejoice that India has capacities and attain-
ments which may be brought to the service of the
28 Building with India
Kingdom. Her contributions are essential because
the accomplishment of the world task cannot be an
individual matter. It is not a possibility even for a
nation, for it is becoming more and more plain that
the making of a better world is not the work of any-
one country. It requires that God's purpose shall
be widely shared by men. It depends on the efforts
of all peoples combined. It might be possible for
one people that had caught the vision to goad on
another for an inch or so of progress, but the riches
of the glory of God in the corporate life of man will
not be fully manifested until all peoples are working
together with Him. Herein we find ourselves inex-
tricably interlinked with our fellows around the
world. This is the true basis of interest in other
lands — ^the interest back of this study of India —
not curiosity, not romance, not pity, not largesse,
but an eagerness to enlist the peoples in a great co-
operative enterprise with others and with God.
What a challenge confronts the Church of the
West as it contemplates the heritage of India ! There
is the opportunity of leading a gifted people to adopt
the thrilling program of the Kingdom of God and of
sharing with them the high privilege of world-wide
service empowered by God. There is the possibility
that in them too may be born the stupendous mis-
sionary purpose of co-working with God and all
mankind for a better world. Thus would one more
step be taken toward building up a society of per-
sonalities developed to their best, realizing their es-
sential oneness with one another and with God, and
consciously cooperating with His gracious purpose
for the world.
. Prayer
FATHER of all mankind, who hast planted
good in every race, we praise Thee for the
gifts Thou hast sent to the world through
India. For all that she can place at Thy disposal,
for eJI that can be purged of dross for the service
of the world, and for all upon which the Christ can
build, we thank Thee, O our Father.
€[Grant that, in her effort to develop materially,
India may not lose her spiritueJ capacities, that she
may ever stand for spiritual growth, and that through
Christ she may yet be the means of weaning men
from empty pleasures to fellowship with Thee.
Teach us to see beyond the engrossing activities of
our Western life into the values in other lands, and
grant to us that humility and liberal spirit which
will appreciate and learn. Remove from us all
pride, arrogance, censoriousness, and false assump-
tion of superiority.
€IThrough no merit of our own Thou hast entrusted
us with the revelation of Thyself in Christ — that
which will satisfy the long search of India. Forbid
that we should be dull of discernment or weak of
will when with open mind we find the witness Thou
hast left of Thyself in India and the Light that has
lighted them. May we be true to them and true
to Thee by sharing Him who alone shall bring In-
dia's heritage to its greatest glory. Amen.
29
CHAPTER TWO
Handicaps to Progress
We have been looking at India's attainments ; but
unfortunately she has a darker, sadder heritage —
her handicaps. Some of these are seen most clearly
in the story of India's efforts to help herself.^ Still
others are vividly brought out in the biographies of
Christian converts.^ We want to focus attention for
a time on some of these handicaps, not out of a feel-
ing of superiority to India, or that any response
which is self-congratulatory may be drawn forth.
We need constantly to remember that we too have
handicaps. But if India is our potential partner in
a great world task, it is essential to know the lia-
bilities as well as the assets she would bring to that
partnership. Moreover, an appraisal of those lia-
bilities is essential if our love, prayer, and friendly
help are to be worthily and effectively directed
toward amelioration and cooperative endeavor. We
may admire intensely, but sympathy must be tem-
pered by discrimination.
In thinking of India's needs we must remember
that our condition is by no means the standard.
Our responsibility is not so much to bring India to
our present condition as though that were the norm ;
it is rather to impart the secret of all we deem high-
est in our growth. Our responsibility is to share
our great heritage in Christ, to exhibit the Spirit
*See Chapter III.
'See Bibliography.
Handicaps to Progress 31
He instils, and to urge His Way, not merely as one
among many possible policies for India's fullest de-
velopment, but as her one great, incomparable op-
portunity. We both have a long way to go — v^^e are
brothers in need. The best we have to share comes
from no merit of our own; it has been a free gift.
The important thing is that we both should be de-
veloping in the presence of the Highest.
From what follows it will be manifest that there
is not only abundant opportunity, but urgent need
for the straightforward sharing of things which are
essential to India if she is to make her richest con-
tribution to the world. While in some things India
surpasses us, she sorely needs the Spring of living
progress. We must share Western technique, mod-
ern education, many of our methods of social help-
fulness, but above all a knowledge of the Christ. It
may be that India's recognition of her many and
varied needs will predispose her to the gospel and
provide the stimuli to which its appeal can be made.
I
One cannot contemplate without concern the fact
that the average life in India is only 24.7 years. In
the United States the average term of life has risen
to 44, and medical men are confidently expecting it
to be 60 before many decades have passed. As we
shall see, the figures for India need not be so low.
India's general death-rate is high (31.8 per 1000)
compared with that of Japan (21.9) , Canada (15.2) ,
England, Scotland, and Wales (14.6), and the
United States (14.1). The death-rate of infants^ is
'The number per 1000 born who die in their first year.
32 Building with India
the most positive index of physical welfare which we
possess. Official statistics show that there is scarcely
a large town in India in which the rate is not
above two hundred and in many of the largest towns
it is more than four hundred.^ The rate is not much
more than a third as great in most places in the
West.^ An educational officer of the Government of
India says that India loses two million babies each
year, while many survive only to grow up weak and
feeble. Inattention and bad hygienic surroundings
during infancy are in part to blame. But one of the
main causes is child marriage. A boy has children
before he is supporting himself and before his wife
is ready for the strain. Half the children born are
doomed to an early death under present circum-
stances, and the amount they eat makes less food
available for those who live ; hence, those who sur-
vive tend to grow up inefficient. England's popula-
tion increases as fast as India's with a birth-rate
only a little over half as great as India's. The
abolition of child marriage with a lower birth-rate
would do much to give India the relief she needs for
raising her economic and educational standards.
The appalling handicaps of Indian women on the
battle-field of motherhood are described in Chapter
Four.
The health problems of India are enormous.
Plague in its most virulent form first reached Bom-
bay in 1896, and in the next twenty years took away
ten million lives. Plague is now endemic in some
'Delhi (1917), 256.24; Madras (1919), 360.7; Bombay
(1918), 436.37; Mandalay (1916), 443.3.
'Canada, 99.1; United States, 77; England, Scotland, and
Wales, 73.2; New York City, 81; Cleveland, 95.
Handicaps to Progress 33
provinces, so that India is the greatest reservoir of
plague in the world. At times the death-rate goes
up as high as one in one hundred. But in the most
severely plague infected parts of India there is
always a well defined plague-free season. In these
months the foci of infection are sufficiently small
to justify the hope that the disease can be conquered
if only public opinion can be aroused, reporting
agencies established, and rat destruction adopted.
Do not these times of minimum infection challenge
India — and us — to achieving effort?
Parasitic infections are very common. An officer
working on hookworm inquiry gives the following
figures for this infection where investigations have
been made: — limited areas of Bombay Presidency,
40 per cent ; of the Punjab, 60 per cent ; of the United
Provinces, 70-84 per cent; of Bengal, 80 per cent;
and for thirteen districts of Madras Presidency
97-100 per cent. Conditions are conducive since in
the country folks go about barefooted, and thus a
ready entrance to the germs is provided. Figures
given for whipworm, round worm, and thread worm
ranged from 37 to 96 per cent. And yet as simple
a precaution as the use of permanganate in wells
would do much to lessen these drags on efficiency,
while for hookworm an effective specific has been
discovered. Every one who knows how these dis-
eases sap the vitality of the laboring classes will re-
joice that the Rockefeller Foundation, which has set
before itself the task of eradicating hookworm the
world around and has begun work in forty different
countries, initiated work in India in 1920.
Tuberculosis is spreading in India as a result of
34 Building with India
increased communications, the growth of new in-
stitutions which bring people together in buildings,
and the substitution of factories for house indus-
tries.^ The fringe of tuberculosis around any large
city is demonstrably enlarging with more coming
and going.
The custom of child marriage shows one of its
serious sides in predisposing mothers and children
to tuberculosis. Where purdah^ conditions growing
out of Muhammadan influence exist, vital statistics
show that the death-rate among women is forty per
cent higher than among men. The effect of the pur-
dah system is well illustrated by statistics of a given
town where the Muhammadans happen to belong to
a far higher level than the Hindus, and therefore
should be able to have better clothing and food, but
among whom the purdah system is observed with
special strictness. Here the average death-rate
from tuberculosis among the Hindu men and women
is 1.05 and 1.36 per thousand respectively; among
the Muhammadan men and women 2.15 and 6.7
respectively.
Even where the purdah system does not prevail,
as in south India, women sleep inside with doors and
windows closed for fear of robbers who might tear
from their arms and ears the large gold and silver
ornaments which in India represent family savings.
Others fear evil spirits and so sleep with their rooms
^For a thorough treatment of this subject see Tuberculosis
in India, Arthur Lankester, M. D.
^Literally, a veil or curtain which screens women from
the gaze of men. In common usage it is applied to anything
exclusively for women.
Handicaps to Progress 35
shut as tight as possible. An almost universal habit
is the custom of sleeping with the head entirely cov-
ered with bedclothes. This naturally makes proper
aeration of the blood impossible. Even when this
ingrained habit can be broken, it leaves the new
problem of protection from mosquitoes among peo-
ple who cannot afford to buy a net, and of protection
from cold in northern India on the part of those who
can ill afford fuel or extra blankets.
More communities should be encouraged to follow
Delhi's lead in establishing a purdah garden, a gar-
den exclusively for women, — out of a portion of
waste land, sheltering it from prying eyes by a high
wall. Here women may benefit from fresh air, ex-
ercise, and mental change from close confinement in
their homes.
In the West we are inclined to say that the hous-
ing condition of a community affects practically
every aspect of its social well-being and is, there-
fore, one of the most important factors in determin-
ing the health and morals of a community. It would
be interesting to discuss whether the statement also
applies to conditions in India. Certainly there are
those who hold that next to malaria, bad housing is
responsible for the greatest number of deaths in
India. The Indian Industrial Commission places
better housing in the forefront of its recommenda-
tions for improving the conditions of the Indian ar-
tisan. In the Delhi Child Welfare Exhibit, in order
to show to the people the effects of overcrowding,
deficient air, and bad housing, there was a compara-
tive demonstration where seedlings could grow un-
der favorable and adverse conditions, e. g., in the
36 Building with India
light, in the dark; in good soil, in sandy soil; fed
with water lacking nitrates ; grown sparsely, grown
densely.
Imagination has no difficulty in picturing the far-
reaching effects of bad sanitation. Not only actual
deaths are to be reckoned, but there are the sick also.
It has been calculated that one third of India's labor-
time is lost through illness. There is the loss in time
of those who care for the sick and the reduced effi-
ciency of those who get well, for malaria which
weakens is even worse than plague which kills. How
can India forge ahead when plague alone has for the
past twenty years taken an average of five hundred
thousand per year, bringing wholesale disorganiza-
tion of industry when it is at its height. Finally,
there are those who are born with little strength or
hardihood. India's ability to increase her contribu-
tion to the great problem of feeding the world de-
pends on the capacity of her laborers for hard and
consecutive work. In general, her rate of economic,
industrial, and social progress will be determined in
no small measure by her success in dealing with pre-
ventable disease.
Indians may not wish to change long established
customs and habits, but at least data and demon-
strations should be provided so that they may
be able to estimate the cost in life and suffering
which the continuance of certain habits involves.
It is not easy, however, to rise to new and unusual
standards. It helps our sympathy with India to
seek out examples of inertia in the West, to note our
callous attitude in many states to such evils as child
labor and railway accidents or the way in which we
Handicaps to Progress 37
keep on using white bread when science has shown
the superior quality of a whole wheat type.
II
There are plenty of problems and obstacles mak-
ing the attainment of better conditions difficult.
There is lethargy. The chief medical officer of the
Punjab, speaking of a certain cheap substitute for
quinine as a specific for malaria, has declared that
"the general population are too lethargic and lazy
to take the drug, even if it is at their hand, until the
attack of fever comes along." Government officers
in the Madras Presidency, having arranged new
sites for the congested outcaste communities, have
reported that in many cases such sites only a short
distance away have remained unoccupied three years
because of the inertia of the group. These unfor-
tunate people were so far down in poverty and debt
that they could not, or at least failed to, take ad-
vantage of better conditions.
There is religious superstition. Thousands of the
uneducated still believe that disease is due to evil
spirits and to the "evil-eye" that someone has cast
upon the afflicted. Hosts are gripped by fatalism
and hence resign themselves to conditions as being
brought about by God's will, answering suggestions
for improvement by, "What's the use?"
There is ignorance. Village ponds are still the
common sources for drinking water notwithstand-
ing the facts that they catch all sorts of surface
drainage, that in them buffaloes wallow to their
hearts' content, and on their edge the washerman
beats out the soil from the village clothes. The vil-
38 Building with India
lagers keep on drinking until the pools get so low
that they can see the dirt.
Even though superstition and ignorance could be
overcome, there is lack of an adequate budget to
carry out approved plans, since modern health
I "measures are expensive. The sanitary commissioner
of the Government of India says^ that there is no
organized health staff for more than a mere frac-
tion of India's population, and that only an insig-
nificant percentage of the people w^ho die are cared
for at any stage of their final illness by persons pos-
sessing adequate medical qualifications. Vital sta-
tistics are recorded in rural districts by those who
have little other claim to qualification than literacy,
and yet it is recognized that a more or less accurate
knowledge of the prevalence of preventable disease
is the first essential to any adequate measure of pre-
vention. Furthermore, some Indians think that the
\ substitution of modern Western methods or stand-
i ards for those which have been sanctioned by imme-
I morial usage betokens lack of patriotic feeling.
Then there are real problems of judgment. Sup-
pose you know that one of the most common kinds of
ophthalmia comes from the custom of cooking inside
the house in little fireplaces which fill the room with
smoke. Would you advise chimneys in spite of the
fact that the extra cost for fuel due to the increased
draft would be impossible? Suppose you know that
in winter women are injured from the common
practice of sitting on the cold, damp ground. Would
you advise the introduction of chairs and tables,
with the changed economic standards these involve?
'Report 1917, p. 39.
Handicaps to Progress 39
The introduction of Western schedules and con-
centrated study periods in the schools is making an
additional demand for nourishment and care. When
an Indian village child enters one of our mission
boarding-schools, the change in environment is far
more complete than a similar step would be for on6
in the West. The village child in his home enjoys
extraordinary freedom; there is very little re-
straint ; meals and hours of work are irregular ; the
child rests and sleeps when it wishes ; and practically
no discipline is attempted. The routine hours of a
boarding-school are in absolute contrast to this.
Hence, the diet regime of lax village life cannot be
made a model for our boarding-schools. Bodies that
might have stood the test of the casual life at homei
often develop unsuspected weaknesses when mind
and body come under strains that the village never
produced. We are just beginning to appreciate the
significance of these facts in the management of our
mission schools. That children come to our schools
from homes where adequate sanitary habits and
standards are not inculcated, added to the fact that
India above all countries regards the teacher as a
sacred person embodying the functions of instruc-
tor, parent, guardian, doctor, and, above all, reli-
gious guide, places a tremendous responsibility upon
those who take charge of these schools.
In India, the prayer, "from plague, pestilence, and
famine, Good Lord, deliver us," does not require a
stimulated imagination, as with us. It is a very
heavy burden of responsibility that is carried by our
heads of mission schools with over-crowded dormi-
tories, little possibility of segregation, and an under-
40 Building with India
staffed condition. Whenever cholera breaks out in a
neighboring village, such precautionary measures
as are possible must be taken at once. Suddenly,
however, a morning may dawn when it is found that
cholera has descended upon the school. Possibly
there are three cases on the first day, and two little
boys die before evening. After a very anxious three
weeks' fight, the infection may be mastered, and the
cause traced to some earthen cooking-pots that had
been bought recently at a near-by village where the
disease was active. Or it may be a woman had
washed the clothes of a cholera patient at the com-
mon well, and the germs went down with the bucket
and rope.
Ill
However, through the activities of Government,
missions, and the beginnings of social service on the
part of college students, a progress, even if slow, is
being made. A popular conscience with respect to
sanitation is being developed. In many places, at
the approach of plague, the people already begin to
clean up in their own houses, although one may not
observe much change on the outside. Beds are
sunned more regularly, and an effort is made to be
sanitary. Willingness to vacate houses entirely on
the approach of plague is increasing. Recent experi-
ments indicate that the demand for quinine, the
known specific for malaria, is likely to increase
enormously during the next few years. More and
more attention is being given to the appointment of
sanitary committees in towns, to water-supply and
drainage systems, to special plague and cholera
Handicaps to Progress 41
staffs, to traveling dispensaries, and to malaria and
tuberculosis campaigns.
Consistent efforts through vaccination have been
made against smallpox. The marked success of
these efforts, even when a poorly paid agency was
used, ought to encourage every lover of India. Fur-
thermore, forces emanating from Christianity are
freeing the minds from inhibiting fears which in
many cases are more harmful than the diseases
themselves. Instead of attributing the ravages of
disease to fate or buttressing passivity in the belief
that it is all due to sins committed in a previous ex-
istence, some people — that is, those who hear of Him
— are coming to believe in a Father whose purposes
are love. God does not want His children overcome
by sin ; does He mean that they should be overcome
by disease? Should we not work together with Him
for the day when disease shall be conquered?
IV
In turning to consider India's material develop-
ment, we need to remember that it is an exceedingly
difficult matter to compare with fairness the eco-
nomic conditions of two countries and to determine
the relation of these conditions to general happiness.
Certain facts, however, are available. If per capita
wealth of India be taken as 1, that of Japan would
be 3.7 ; Canada, 18.5 ; the United Kingdom, 22.8 ; and
the United States, 27.9. The number of landlords in
the United Provinces (one of the most densely pop-
ulated areas) whose incomes exceed 20 pounds a year
is about 126,000 out of a population of 48,000,000.^
'^Report on India Constitutional Reforms, p. 112.
42 Building with India
In the Deccan, inquiries as to expenditures con-
sidered necessary by the people themselves per
family of five gave Rs.^ 142 for food; Rs. 48 for
clothing; other expenses, Rs. 10; making an annual
total of Rs. 200.- In some areas people speak of
poverty as their "mother."
Owing to the introduction of railways, the price
of Indian-grown wheat is fixed by the Chicago stock
market so that the simple village people can no
longer afford to eat a grain that their more pros-
perous foreign brothers want; hence they eat the
cheaper pulses. That there is a terrible amount of
actual hunger in Indian villages during certain
months before the harvest is a fact beyond dispute.
Some lowcaste villagers near Benares said that
they ate only once in two days for a month or two
in the cold weather before the Rabi (winter) har-
vest when they get the pulses and barley. But in
the hot, dry months they gorged themselves at mar-
riage feasts. When asked why they did not save up
for the lean season before harvest, they replied that
it would all be taken up for interest and rent. "We
live in fear — ^fear of the money lender, fear of the
landlord's agent, fear of the police." With false
interest and extorted land assessments, they felt
that they would never be able to get any benefit from
saving.
An extended tour among the villages leaves one
with the impression of poorness, of life reduced to
the barest necessities of existence, of men, women,
and children escaping starvation but living below a
*At normal exchange rate a rupee is worth about 33 cents.
"Report on India Constitutional Reforms, p. 136.
Handicaps to Progress 43
level of most meager comfort. Some missionaries
who spend their lives among the villages are not^
most impressed with India's aspiration after tht
Infinite. They would acknowledge that souls like]
Tagore may be found among the leisure class and in
sequestered corners, but they are almost tempted to
doubt the existence of a soul among the masses of
the village working class. Listen to the conversa-
tion going on in a village. Every other word refers
to pice (their smallest coin) or food. The supreme
concern of the people during nine tenths of a vil-
lager's waking hours is to meet the demand of his
stomach and his children's stomachs. How to pay
his rent; the price of grain and cloth; whether he
can pay the interest on the loan he took last year for
his seed ; or whether with heavy mortgages already
on his property he can get an additional loan to re-
place an ox that has died — ^these are the villager's
pressing problems.
What are the causes of this unsatisfactory situa-
tion? One cause is agrarian indebtedness. Over
200,000,000 of India's population are engaged in
agriculture. These are scattered among 700,000
small villages. Suppose we look into one of these
villages near Poona. A systematic investigation
will disclose 111 families, with a population of 556,
and a total debt of Rs. 13,314 upon which there is an
annual charge of Rs. 2,592 — a crushing load de-
manding one fourth of the total profit from the land.
The weight of social customs makes the desire for
money on certain occasions overwhelming. Almost
44 Building with India
a year's income may be spent in entertaining guests
at a wedding or some other domestic ceremony.
Man is a social animal the world over, and India has
fixed on marriage as the great occasion of relieving
life's humdrum by an elaborate entertainment of
friends and relatives. The dowry system, where it
prevails, works like a perpetual nightmare.^ An ex-
travagant desire for jewelry is general, for it is a
sign of respectability. Jewelry is also India's form
of life insurance for the benefit of women in case
their husbands should die, because it is the only kind
of property a woman can inherit. Unlike our form
of insurance, it keeps the capital tied up and idle. It
is as natural for the people to live in debt as for a
fish to live in water. Once a debt is incurred, the ex-
tortionate rate of interest tends to keep the unfor-
tunate person bound. Year after year the money
lender draws the string tighter, till ornaments are
pawned, property mortgaged, and even future crops
pledged. Cases are known where serfdom for debt
has descended to the third generation. This not only
leads to a hopeless economic condition, but paralyzes
a man's will and energy until he sinks down into a
state of resigned fatalism.
Another cause of backward agricultural condi-
tions is the minute fragmentation of land. If a
father has three sons and three plots of land, each
plot, in order to avoid partiality, will be divided into
three parts when the time comes to partition the
property. In this way an acre of land is worked in
as many as nineteen different pieces. A man has to
go forth in all directions to find his small and scat-
*See page 91,
Handicaps to Progress 45
tered holdings, varying from a half to a hundredth
of an acre. One man has been known to till fifty;
such plots. This manifestly gives rise to many hin-
drances; it renders supervision of labor difficult, \
implements have to be carried from one plot to an- '
other, thereby wasting time and making impossible
the use of any but light and portable tools, an ex-
cessive amount of land is lost in boundaries, and
any effort to improve stock is thwarted. Before
capital and modern methods can be widely applied
to Indian agriculture, someone must study the Hindu
laws of property or, from the experience of Eu-
ropean countries and Japan in restripping land, sug-
gest a remedy for this mammoth handicap.
Other causes of agricultural regression are ig-
norance, resulting in inefficiency ; lack of medical and
sanitary science, resulting in sickness, physical in-
capacity, dependence, and premature death; an in-
creasing consumption of liquor ; laziness, leading /
many to stop work when their boxes are filled with
grain and to start working only when they are
empty; and hopelessness, arising from various
forms of oppression such as all surplus being
taken away. Only the spirit of Christ can crowd out
such oppression either in India or in America.
VI
Agricultural methods undoubtedly can be im-
proved. In going about India it is interesting to
notice the various century-old methods used in
raising the priceless water for the fields from the
three or four million wells. Experts confess that
they cannot greatly improve these picturesque, old
46 Building with India
methods. But the modern oil engine — cheap, simple,
efficient — has proved its suitability to Indian condi-
tions. Already the engine has begun to familiarize
the wealthier farmers with the advantages of em-
ploying better tools and appliances.
One great difficulty is the shortness of time the
farmer has to prepare his land and to sow his seed.
The land for wheat and other winter crops has to be
plowed during a break in the rains. In normal
years the breaks are few and short, so that with
slow bullocks and wooden plows the necessary qual-
ity and quantity of work cannot be done. A suitable
motor plow would do the work eighteen times as
fast, and in some places these are already operating.
But when labor is so cheap and interest so high, the
beginning must be made with the lightest, cheapest
plows and work up gradually as wages rise and in-
terest falls.
On the old-fashioned, open threshing floors there
is loss from insects, vermin, and weather. Thresh-
ing and winnowing are tedious and wasteful. Valu-
able suggestions certainly can be made in regard to
seed selection, breeding, the use of manures, the ro-
tation of crops, fodder raising and storing, and new
staples for growing. The introduction of agricul-
tural machinery will release the lower class of labor-
ers and thus make more possible industrial advance.
The Indian farmer seems wretchedly conserva-
tive, but let us get his point of view. He will admit
that the new sugar-cane introduced by the Agricul-
tural Department is better, but it is softer, and the
jackals eat it. Why not build fences then ? But this
is too big and expensive a step to seem attractive.
Handicaps to Progress 47
It is against his religion to inoculate his cattle — he
would rather see them die. The iron sugar mill
works with far less noise, power, and loss than the
old variety, but it blackens the juice. Why not clean
it, then? But again this appears to be too much
trouble. The native custom is to transplant five
blades of rice together. The Agricultural Depart-
ment has been urging single transplantation as a
means of saving four fifths of the seed. But the
farmer argues that the use of the single stock in-
volves a risk of failure; if planting is postponed a
month to make single transplantation safer, there
is danger of bad weather at the harvest. Suppose
you show a new staple crop which admittedly will be
more profitable, but requires more work; there are
farmers who will reject the plan because their lei-|
sure is filled with talking and visiting and singingj
and these things they value. You may be able to
show that by the use of a certain fertilizer the pro-
duction of paddy (rice) is increased thirty per cent
the first year, twenty per cent the second, and ten
per cent the third. But when man is on a bare sub-
sistence basis, he may not be able to make the in-
vestment.
Even if the farmer overcomes all obstacles and
inertia, and some cooperative society lends the capi-
tal, the landlord will probably absorb the increase.
A missionary near Benares persuaded a man to sow
Pusa wheat. In three years his rent was doubled!
The landlord did not see that a small increase from
all his tenants would be better than one hundred per
cent increase from one. Missionaries are needed for
the landlords.
48 Building with India
After all, however, the main causes of poverty in
India have at one time or another been operative in
the West. If we have prospered economically, whj'
should not India? Our own rural individualism and
conservatism are proverbial. There are plenty
among us who find it easier to cling to old habits
than adopt measures of advance. We have our
night-schools, correspondence courses, and other de-
vices for popular advance. But not many even of
our own people have the ambition and persistence to
utilize these means of advance when they are pointed
out. Although we know full well that a typewriter
gives better results in time and legibility, there
are not many of us independent enough to give up
the sentiment of longhand in personal and social
correspondence. The case for insurance of the right
sort has been abundantly established ; but do all of
our Western folk act accordingly?
We must not imagine, however, that Indian work-
men are irrevocably conservative. Singer sewing
machines are to be found in almost every tailor's
shop in the country. The fly shuttle has been widely
adopted in many areas. Adaptations of Western
plows are gaining in favor. Some Western tools are
usually used by wood and metal workers. One finds
them adopting screw-presses for the extraction of
oil from seed, rotary methods for the preparation of
warp, and the device of the subdivision of labor.
They are conservative, but they know their own
business fairly well. Many of the so-called improve-
ments suggested to them are really unsuitable. The
Indian workmen on the whole are as improvable as
our forefathers were.
Handicaps to Progress 49
VII
India has many handicaps to overcome in the
realm of industry. There is plenty of capital, and
year by year it is increasing, for the ruling passion
is still to hoard wealth in the form of gold and silver
jewelry. India is notorious as an absorber of bul-
lion. It has been estimated that in a single year
India absorbed an amount of silver and gold suffi-
cient to replace the whole of the cotton mills of Bom-
bay and the jute mills of Bengal. It is five times the
whole amount spent annually in education. In a
year and a half it would provide the 440,000,000
rupees which the irrigation commission reported
could be judicially expended in bringing six million
more acres under irrigation.^
Unfortunately this capital is diffused and can be-
come useful only when placed in the hands of com-
petent and responsible administrators. But this
would require an instinct for cooperative effort, an
acquaintance with the principles of credit and
finance, a feeling of security and trust, and the
growth of a class of efficient managers. Such bases
of commerce and industry are as yet only slightly
developed.
The rapid advance of modern industrialism is
bringing its vast problems to India — problems
which England faced in the eighteenth and nine-
teenth centuries. About the cities, factories and
joint stock companies are being rapidly formed —
906 new companies were floated in the year 1919-
1920. There is as yet no factory population such as
exists in Western lands, consisting of persons
*Chatterton, Alfred, Industrial Evolution in India, p. 9.
50 Building with India
trained from youth in one particular class of work
and dependent on that for a livelihood. The Indian
factory hand is primarily an agriculturist whose
home remains in his native village. In many cases
Indian artisans leave wives and children behind and
regularly return to them and to the care of their
crops. This plan has the advantage of keeping the
laborer independent of the employer during a transi-
tion stage. But since housing conditions do not allow
the laborer to take his family with him on his mi-
grations, grave moral situations are developing in
the cities. These laborers are content with a very
low standard of comfort. Speaking generally, an
increase in wages results in fewer days' work. As
yet they are not stimulated to more regular work
and greater efficiency by a yearning for an increased
standard pf living. In spite of low wages many
managers testify that production is cheaper by the
high-priced, but more highly skilled Western labor.
There is, however, no inherent reason why
Indian labor should be inefficient. Signs of discon-
tent are arising. Influenza and plague have reduced
the labor supply and revealed the workman's indis-
pensability. The first Trade Union Congress was
held in 1920, although there is probably not a trade
union in India over five years old. Strikes are get-
ting common. At one time in Bombay the postal
and telegraph men, the gas workers, and tramway
employees were all out. Sixteen headlines in a single
issue of a leading north India journal pertained to
strikes. Even the coolie is learning the secret spell
which has made European and American labor a
power instead of a commodity.
Handicaps to Progress 51
India's factory law is sadly deficient. But in
judging India we have to remember that at the In-
ternational Labor Conference in Washington six-
teen countries were listed as having eight-hour laws,
and from that list the United States was missing —
such laws not having been passed by certain states.
Twenty-one nations make special regulations for
the employment of mothers before and after child-
birth, and from this list also the United States was
missing. Nearly every industrial country forbids
the employment in factories of children under four-
teen. Here again the United States falls short —
along with India.
VIII
The seriousness of India's economic need must be
evident for many things depend on its relief. Her
death-rate is so large partly because she cannot
afford doctors and nurses. In part she is illiterate
because she cannot be taxed for sufficient schools
and teachers. Adequate recreational facilities, de-
veloped social life, good churches, communication
with outside forces, and influences making for pro-
gress, a host of by-products in culture, education,
comfort, and efficiency await a better economic
basis. We may well recognize the inadequacy of the
totality of earthly conditions, though improved to
the utmost, if the soul remains unsatisfied because
God is not present in the life. But while men possess
bodies, we must help them to create those outward
conditions wherein an enlarged mind and soul —
among the earliest results of Christian conversion —
can best find expression. Would you expect a Chris-
52 Building with India
tian society of any proportion to grow up from an
indigent outcaste class unless there is a decided im-
provement in its economic environment induced by
outside pressure and consummated by itself?
A surge of questions comes to the Christian thinker
in this realm. What are the relative chances of
India's being exploited perpetually for the commer-
cial well-being of other nations; of India's copying
^ Western methods so thoroughly that she will become
J just another in the feverish international group ; or
/ of India's developing into an independent national
) personality maintaining her own distinct character
^ while contributing her share to the service of the
world alongside of other nations? Should missions
take a part in shaping labor legislation or in direct-
ing labor agitation ? Should they conduct investiga-
tions? Should mission boards assign to India indus-
trial welfare workers? Would as many industrial
experts offer their services as physicians do at pres-
ent? Are we to take our social solutions to India or
quietly leave them at home and let India blunder
along without the benefit of our experience? As the
old village communities break up more and more
under the profound influence of labor conditions,
, who is to help them anticipate the resulting moral
strain? Who is to exhibit the ethical and Christian
use of machinery and power as a model for this new
industrial reign? Who more than Christians can
instil the needed knowledge and incentive and hope
into India's laboring classes? Can the economic
problems of India be solved without a moral change
in the hearts of men?
Handicaps to Progress 53
IX
India's educational handicap is very marked. Out
of 38,000,000 children of school age in India only
about 8,000,000 all told are receiving any kind of an
education. Imagine the sad significance of 30,000,000
children growing up absolutely illiterate — one
only out of every three boys and one out of every
fifteen girls getting to school. In India as a whole
only one in seventeen people can read and write.;
That is, India's literacy percentage is only 5.8 perl
cent as against 92 per cent in the United Kingdom
and 95 per cent in Japan. Three out of four villages
have no school.
In India, however, ideas percolate and propagate
themselves even below the levels of literacy. One
may, therefore, well try to formulate reasons which
will seem cogent to a villager as to why he should
bother with schools at all. The case is by no means
clear to him. You can tell him that if he can read
newspapers, he will not be at the mercy of rumor
and panic ; that if he can get the gist out of a gov-
ernment bulletin, he may be able to save his crop ; or
that ability to write a letter will free him from going
to a professional letter writer when he wants to
send a message to his friend who has left the village ;
that schools would enable him to read the Bible or
(what would strongly appeal to his music loving
soul) the hymns, and that he could avoid the very
common type of cheating indulged in by railway
ticket agents who give the wrong ticket to the peas-
ant who cannot read the name of the station on his
ticket. Since he cannot do simple accounts, the vil-
lager is also at the mercy of the indispensable
54 Building with India
money-lender. Furthermore, ignorance is the cause
of fear, and modern psychology is revealing how
fear drains vitality. Literacy is the key for unlock-
ing the world's treasures of civilization and culture.
However, many of these reasons so obvious to us
will not appeal at all to the peasant farmer. With
more insight than professional educators often have
shown, he sees that the only kind of education of-
fered does not fit a child for the life he must actually
lead. Farmers have a prejudice against education
— ^the kind of prejudice that is found in every rural
society in the world. They think that the shade and
confinement of the schoolroom rob the children of
their hereditary vigor for working in the fields
under the hot sun, and that school life is liable to
wean them away from the village entirely. More-
over, they are so poor that even if they did desire
education for their children, they know that little
children of six and seven must begin to earn a meal
a day and a cloth per year by grazing animals, or
they must look after still younger children while the
mother is grinding grain or working in the fields.
After a child is ten years old, it becomes a real sac-
rifice to send him to school, for the rural economic
system is adjusted to a family's receiving the income
of the children. It is hard for us to realize what it
would be like to grow up in an environment with no
tradition of literacy.
One way of estimating the educational task before
India is to note how slow the progress has been. In
successive decades the number of males per thou-
sand who could read and write is as follows: 1881,
66; 1891, 87; 1901, 98; 1911, 110. Acts permitting
Handicaps to Progress 55
the introduction of compulsory primary education
in local areas have been passed in at least five prov-
inces. But the idea of compulsion with its inevi-
table concomitant of increased taxation evidently
does not appeal to the imagination of local authori-
ties. For although the acts have been on the statute
books for several years, very few municipalities
have taken advantage of them.
At the other end of the scale are the college stu-
dents. Year after year hundreds of them go forth
in a state of moral and intellectual tension. From
their Western education has come a continuous
stream of ideas and impulses which are usually at
utter variance with their previous ideals of life.
Some of these ideals may be good, some bad, for In-
dia, and these students are eager to be loyal to all
that is best in their own civilization. More than ever
before do these men need sympathetic guidance. In
the depth of their being there is a still more funda-
mental need not always acknowledged — ^the need of
a religion that can command the full obedience of
heart and mind, and that can fill one with inspira-
tion for the reverence of personality, the brother-
hood among all men, and unselfish service beyond
one's group. They need what Christ alone can give.
Closely connected with education is the state of
communication in a country. We are told that de-
velopments in the mechanism of intercourse — rail-i
ways, telephones, telegraphs, printing presses, phoJ
tographs, phonographs, etc., — determine nearly
everything that is characteristic of the psychology of
modern life. These things make for the expansion
of human nature. They make it possible for society
56 Building with India
to be organized more and more on the higher facul-
ties of man, on intelligence and sympathy, rather
than on authority, caste, and routine.^ Looking at
the state of India's means of communication from
several points of view, we see a real handicap. In
1917-18 India had 12 newspapers and periodicals
per million inhabitants as opposed to 50 in Japan,
190 in the United Kingdom, and 225 in the United
States. Post-office articles (letters, newspapers,
and parcels) to the extent of 3.6 per person were
circulated in India. The corresponding figures for
Japan are 34; for the United Kingdom, 123; for the
United States, 136. The telegrams per hundred
people per year in India are 6.3 as opposed to 73 in
Japan, 154 in Canada, and 198 in the United King-
dom. The numbers of telephones in use per 10,000
inhabitants are as follows: Chicago, 1850; New
York, 1170; Montreal, 800; London, 390; Tokyo,
200; Bombay, 4; Calcutta, 3.
X
It is unfortunate that the most outstanding char-
acteristic of Hindu social structure must be placed
/ among India's handicaps. Whenever we think of
' India, we think of caste, and caste is a tremendous
drag on progress. It is very hard to find any anal-
ogy for caste in our Western life. We may recall the
closely interwoven social texture of Europe in the
Middle Ages — clergy and laity, feudal baron and
feudal squire, yeoman and serf, burgher and ap-
prentice, master and servant. Everything was or-
dered and regulated whether by birth or custom.
*Cf. Cooley, C. N., Social Organization, p. 81.
Handicaps to Progress 57
Villeinage bound down the medieval serf to the soil
by birth. Men and women were born to a certain
position, and the system exercised very large con-
trol over man, woman, and child. Or we may notice
how many an Englishman thinks a tradesman can-
not be a gentleman and will absolutely refuse to dine
with one. Many of our trade unions are limited to
sons of members, and each is kept strictly to his part
of the job — ^the shoemaker must not repair, and the
cobbler must not make.
None of our Western class or religious distinc-fj
tions, however, are buttressed with that philosophi-/l
cal justification for separateness and unbrotherli-
ness that makes a Hindu glory or acquiesce in his
status. To the orthodox, the different castes are not
simply different classes, but separate creations from
essentially different parts of Brahma — his mouth,
arms, thighs, and feet. The universally accepted
doctrines of Karma and transmigration provide the
philosophy of the system. According to the former,
life here is measured out to us, both in quality and
quantity, to expiate exactly the deeds of a previous
existence. Thus a Brahman is a Brahman because
of the noble deeds of his previous existence. A Sudra
has merited his low position because of past short-
coming. The classes in society are not fluid as with
us, for an actual soul-difference divides them. In
order to be re-incarnated into a better status after
death, it is essential to conform to the duties and ob-
ligations of the status in which one now is. Hence
the roots of aspirations for this life are cut. Not
only may the different groups not interdine or inter-
marry, but the basis for real friendship and inter-
V
58 Building with India
course is not there. It is not surprising that the
most ardent nationalists are declaring that caste
must go. Rabindranath Tagore says, "The re-
generation of the Indian people, to my mind, directly
and perhaps solely depends upon the removal of this
condition."
If it were not so tragic, it would be amusing to
see manifestations of the caste spirit on every side
in India. A little five year old Brahman boy in one
of our mission kindergartens was given clay with
which to model. He refused to touch it. "The pot-
ter is of low caste." He could not resist watching the
others, however. The next day he poked the clay
with his finger. The fourth day he took the clay
with the rest, and nothing was said about the potter.
A pious Vaishnavite matron will not eat with her
own children for fear of becoming unacceptable to
the Almighty. A stable servant will sweep up the
stall, but will be fined by his caste if he also sweeps
your driveway. There are hosts of taboos. One
must not marry or interdine outside one's sub-caste.
Since there are over two thousand of these exclusive
compartments some are of necessity small. Cases
have been known where men have had to wait for
their wives to be born. A progressive father in a
limited and backward caste has to face the practical
certainty that if he educates his daughter, she will
have to marry an uneducated man.
Religion tends to be reduced to the observance of
countless caste rules. If a man will only observe
these, he may believe anything he wishes and still
remain a Hindu. If he should be excommunicated
by his caste, his relatives would shun him, the mar-
Handicaps to Progress 59
riage of his children would become almost impos-
sible, and he very likely would be boycotted in busi-
ness and socially. Knowing the certainty with
which breach of caste law is punished, a person
tends to dread more the taking of water from the
hand of a lower caste man than he does some ethical
wrong. Furthermore, the caste spirit takes posses-
sion of the mind and tends to encourage closed
groups. This makes cooperation very difficult and
permits a powerful separative force within the
nation.
Yet even in regard to a custom like caste, so uni-
versally condemned by Westerners and increasingly
frowned upon by most modern Indian leaders, there
are aspects of relief to the Indian heart. Caste has
enabled people within narrow limits to unite and co-
operate; it has formed one agency of social control
providing certain moral restraints. To some extent
it has acted as a system of trade-guilds providing
for division of labor. Caste backing is a real sup-
port in times of famine or misfortune, and in this
whole conception of group loyalty we see a finer side
of the caste system. The Hindu gets with the caste
system a sense of cosmic order. Disasters and in-
equalities in this life do not perplex him because
they are the merited results of deeds in a previous
existence. People are born into the various walks
of life according to their desert, and by faithfulness
to the ceremonial and caste observances of that
sphere, they qualify for a higher life. Social posi-
tion is not determined, they say, by wealth or power,
but automatically by the stage of one's inner
development. What Western nation unquestionably
6o Building with India
gives the highest rank, not to trader or soldier or
ruler, but to spiritual leaders such as the Brahmans
have been regarded? If you grant their presup-
positions, caste life takes on dignity and ethical sig-
nificance. One of the causes of the failure of efforts
against caste has been the refusal to admit the ele-
ments of utility in it.
The caste system like a great glacier moves
through India, melting temporarily before some
obstacle only to harden again as it slowly rounds
some corner of its progress. People will travel in
the same coach or take water from the same hydrant
because it is manifestly impossible to have two thou-
sand railway lines or water systems. Similarly,
aerated water, tinned biscuit, and patent medicines
have been accepted. Intelligent, educated men more
and more refuse to be bound by the taboo against
interdining and crossing the ocean. A government
report described a sensational pollution case in Cali-
cut where a Western-trained Indian doctor, who
happened to be of a low caste, was prosecuted for
polluting the village tank by walking too near it and
was in the end acquitted. But one can hardly herald
these adjustments as signs that caste is disappear-
ing. In spite of many concessions to convenience in
non-essentials, caste remains almost untouched in
essentials. The glacier must come into a different
climate to be melted away. Realizing how India can
never come to her own highest self-realization or to
her greatest contribution as a partner in world
service until caste is abolished, how would you at-
tempt to help her overcome it? Would you attack the
philosophical presuppositions at the basis of caste?
'*'^>nW-
11^
WAITING
Many old Hindu women spend their last years in a cease-
less round of religious observances and wait beside their
shrines for death to come to them so that their bodies may be
cremated at a holy place. There is religious devotion here
that should find truer and more satisfying expression.
So
lA 0)
O ^1
o
eS
M
rg O
fH CO
w £-
03
H ^ fH
tH'2
^T3
-O c8
S3
Handicaps to Progress 6z
Or would you dwell on the unsocial results of its
working? More important still is this question:
Would you be able to outline the constructive Chris-
tian principles which could be applied to transform
Indian society?
XI
India is undeniably handicapped by the position
she gives to women. In the pressure of the modern
world, India must make a change here or else lag
far behind. Let us, however, approach this question
with a humble sense of our own deficiencies. Twen-
ty-one different nations gave votes to women before
they could be granted in the American democracy.
Women workers in America have many a grievance
in being refused admission to unions or in being re-
fused a charter if they organize separately. All
around the world woman is the depressed sex. Very
few even among ourselves have begun clearly to
vision, not a man-made world or even a woman-
made world — but a world made just human.
Belief in woman's inferiority is a prepossession of
the man-mind in India. Hindu lawgivers unani- \
mously declare that women can never have any in-
dependence, but must always be in subjection to
father, husband, or son. The essential inferiority
of women is brought out in many a passage of Hindu
doctrine, such as: "Day and night must women
be kept in dependence by the male members of the
family. They are never fit for independence. They
are as impure as falsehood itself. That is a fixed
rule."^ This immemorial teaching has been accepted
"Manu IX, 2, 3, 18.
62 Building with India
by the women. The lower caste women have more
freedom than those of the higher castes. They may
go about from village to village with far less re-
straint. They are free to remarry. They work for
pay, as higher caste women do not, and so are eco-
nomically valuable to their husbands, and therefore
less liable to divorce. The prosperous caste wife
who bears sons is immensely better off than those
lower down, but the unsuccessful high-caste wife
who has no son is immensely more unhappy than the
lowcaste woman.
The desolation of Indian widowhood awakens our
pity. The widow's lot is a hard one. Especially do
our hearts go out to the pathetic little child widows,
so numerous and so helpless. To see the bright jewels
and garments suddenly removed and the head
shaven, to realize the inevitable future of isolation
and drudgery or shameless life, is a terrible shock.
However, one may inquire into the subject far
enough to discover that, strangely enough, all
widows do not have a rebellious spirit. For many
widows the whole ideal of self-respecting woman-
hood is such that they would not want to be jeweled
or dressed in fine linen after their lords had passed
away. A law legalizing the remarriage of widows
has been in force since 1856, but relatively few have
taken advantage of it. Hindu women who have not
come under Western influence have an intense dis-
like of the idea of a second union. Even when re-
formers arrange for second husbands, nine out of
every ten widows refuse to remarry as being con-
trary to the age-long ideal that marriage is for
eternity and that for one woman there is one man
Handicaps to Progress 63
only. Hindus at their best revere these widows.
Widows at their best renounce the world and devote
themselves wholly to meditation on God and service
to man. If wealthy, they will provide for digging
a village tank for water or for building a temple or
for feeding the poor. This is the ideal — by no means
always the practice — ^that lessens the harshness of
this custom to an Indian. Indians themselves ac-
knowledge evils and abuses in widowhood. Reform-
ers make this one of their central causes. But we
only weaken the effectiveness of our remonstrance
if we fail to see the gleam upon this custom as seen
from the other side.
In order to appraise aright the position of women
in India, it is necessary to understand the joint f am- j
ily system which has prevailed for almost twenty- I
five hundred years and constitutes one of the most
marked and characteristic institutions in the world.
It is patriarchal in form. The sons and grandsons
bring their wives to the family home, so that cousins
are as intimate almost as brothers. As many as
fifty individuals and three generations may thus be
living together. All salaries and incomes, no matter
how varied in amount, are brought to the common
purse. Such families will combine to send one boy
to the university, hoping that his future income will
swell the common funds. Those who are entitled
to share in the family property may claim all their
necessary expenses from its income. Such expenses
would include maintenance for the individual mem-
ber, his wife and children, for all usual and proper
religious observances, and for the marriage ex-
penses of his daughters. But the right of mainte-
64 Building with India
nance goes further than this. It extends to those
members of the joint family who, on account of any
bodily or mental defect, have been disqualified from
inheriting, to illegitimate sons, concubines, and
widows of members of the family.
This duty of a householder to maintain the de-
pendent members of his family has always been
recognized as a paramount obligation, even religious
sacrifices being supposed to lose their effect if there-
by a man deprives himself of the means of main-
taining his dependents. This is one place where an
Indian regards his system as distinctly superior to
that of the West, for he is inclined to shudder at the
way we wash our hands of responsibility except for
the nearest of blood kin. He prides himself that no
"united charities" are necessary. On the other
hand, the system may induce some members to be
lazy, it may sap the roots of industry and enterprise,
and may lead a successful man to be proud of the
number of dependents attached to his household.
The oldest male is naturally head of the family. A
full college professor, for example, may still be a
minor in the family with no property of his own,
pooling his entire income. The head mother holds
sway over all the home economy.
Such a system is marked by the solidarity of the
group, as compared with the far greater individual-
ism of the West. Individual initiative, indepen-
dence, and responsibility are not so much developed
as with us ; and lack of privacy, jealousy, backbiting,
and intrigue are often a result of the system. On
the other hand, loyalty, service, and a sense of re-
sponsibility for fellow-members of the family are
Handicaps to Progress 65
often encouraged by the joint family. In these
homes you will frequently find women marked by
poise and dignity, sympathetic and hospitable to a
degree. The vast majority are not restless with
their lot, knowing no other as possible or right. But
what peace they have is secured by the negation of
abundant life.
A little reflection will show how the individual
thus becomes submerged in the family ; life decisions
become family affairs; and the individual woman
has a deep sense of solidarity and ever-present sup- ^
port. Hence, where the joint family is breaking up
under the influence of Western standards, girls are
becoming heads of families without being able to
rely as in former days on the advice of older rela-
tives, and widows have no longer the same care and
protection.
In a marked way this family interest dominates
each marriage in the household. For there is also
a longitudinal solidarity in the family — the fore-
fathers and the present living members are bound
together so that the good of the one is related to the
good of the other. The welfare of the family is de-
pendent upon the condition of ancestors, and their
welfare in turn is entirely dependent upon a certain
simple annual ceremony (the offering of water and |
rice) which can be performed only by a male heir. *
Once adopt this belief, and the pressure on mak-
ing sure of a male heir becomes tremendous. The
entire welfare of your whole family connection
would depend upon it. The marriage of your son
would not be a matter of his individual choice. It
would be the concern of all. Its object would be to
66 Building with India
get a male heir who could continue the essential
ceremonies. It would be not a matter of falling in
love and courtship, but a serious family duty ar-
ranged by the parents. Hence in order to make more
certain of marriage and of offspring, marriage is
pushed down to a younger age so as to take advan-
tage of the first approach of puberty. To marry and
have a son is a debt which a man owes to his ances-
try. To be barren is an exceedingly serious thing.
The unhappy woman who has no child is sometimes
driven away, or runs away because of bad treat-
ment, and then the village will not have her back
again. If she has gone wrong, they will not let her
own mother take her back. Believing that an heir
is essential to the welfare of the whole group, a bar-
ren wife not infrequently suggests that a second
wife be brought into the household so that a son
may be assured. It is against this elemental reli-
gious background that we must think of child mar-
riage and polygamy.^
XII
India's greatest handicap is Hinduism itself. The
masses hold on to social customs which sorely need
reform, but it is not enough simply to say that they
are conservative. The root of the trouble is their
religion. Reforms go hard because they cut across
the spirit and letter of the traditional faith. For
over twenty centuries certain beliefs have been in-
grained— ^that it is sinful not to marry a daughter
^Vivid pictures are given of family life in North India by
"An Elderly Spinster" in The Atlantic, Vol. 121: 43-49, 601-
614; 122: 467-79; 127: 180-8. See also Asia, July, 1921, pp.
575-80.
Handicaps to Progress 67
before puberty; that marriage is for eternity; that
a widow who remarries wrongs her husband; that
the ancestors will fall from heaven and the whole
family be destroyed unless the proper ceremonies
are regularly performed; and that woman is essen-
tially inferior to man. Great Hindu thinkers of the
past did not question these positions. It is not that
the father of a virgin widow is callous to his little
daughter's plight. But he together with all his caste
friends, relatives, and womenfolk firmly believe
that their present-day social customs are based on
the Shastras, and that the Shastras are supernatu-
ral, God-revealed, unchangeable, and that their vio-
lation is sinful. Many are suppressing their innate
sense of right and wrong on the authority of sacred
scriptures. The Indian's conscience is as real a
thing as ours, but the Hindu speculative system
makes the appeal to conscience far less powerful
than when through Christ we are brought to see
the holiness of God. While in modern times many
educated Hindus have given up some of these beliefs,
child marriage continues in order to keep the girls
safe.
Thus the masses are impervious to reform. Their f
practice is determined by religion, not by individual /
conscience and reason. Suppose you get them to ac-'
knowledge that their uneducated women can talk
of little but jewels, needlework, clothes, and chil-
dren, and cannot contribute what otherwise they
might to the welfare of their country. Suppose you
do lay bare the fact that perpetual widowhood com-
bined with child marriage makes marriages of wid-
owers of forty or fifty or even of seventy years with
68 Building with India
girls of twelve by no means uncommon; suppose
doctors do point out the results on the child wife
of the pitiless incontinence of the remarried man;
suppose you do show that child marriage in general
takes away five years of happy girlhood, prevents
all but the most elementary education, leads to physi-
cal degeneration, and constitutes one of the sad-
dest things in Indian life. These arguments are
beside the point, for the position taken by reformers
of necessity implies the displacement of the essen-
tially Hindu foundation of the family, although few
acknowledge this even to themselves. Even many
reformers need to be convinced that the reform of
social customs really involves the repudiation of
principles which gave rise to these customs. Until
the roots in Hinduism are cut, social reform will be
faltering, half-hearted, and inconsistent. Conserva-
tives are quite right in persisting in the feeling
that the adoption of reforms is essentially disloyal
to Hinduism. To ask them to postpone the marriage
of a daughter or to have a widow remarried is to
ask them to do something against their religion —
or, if they do not know the relevant texts, against
the popular ideal of woman's positions and purpose,
which their religion has fostered.
We must leave to more extended treatises^ any de-
tailed evaluation of India's faiths in comparison
with Christianity. Here only a few observations
can be made. In spite of the saying common in In-
dia, that all religions are the same, the fact is that
religions differ fundamentally. Buddhism and Jain-
*J. N. Farquhar's Crown of Hinduism and J. B. Pratt's
India and its Faiths are especially recommended.
Handicaps to Progress 69
ism deny the existence of God, while Hinduism, Is-
lam, and Christianity affirm God's existence as the
center of their systems. Hinduism, Jainism, and
Buddhism teach transmigration of souls and Karma,
while Islam and Christianity repudiate these doc-
trines. Christianity considers sin an act of the will.
Philosophic Hinduism considers sin as ignorance of
the Divine immanence, while popular Hinduism re-
gards sin as an infraction of rites and ceremonies.
Christianity considers the individual as a respons-
ible person capable of choosing the good or the evil,
capable of working with God or against Him. In-
dia's highest thought — ^the Vedanta — ^pictures the
soul as so dependent on God or so lost in Him that
there is practically no place left for individuality
and genuine responsibility and freedom. India's re-
ligions have tended to focus thought on self and on
the acquisition of merit; while Christianity centers
the thought on Christ and leads men to forget them-
selves in devoted service to their fellow-men. Hindu-
ism and Christianity come to grips on the nature and
character of God. He is likened in Hinduism to a
lamp set in a house which neither commands any-
thing nor forbids and knows not what each one is
busy with. This is worlds apart from the Christian
view of God. If religion is taken as man's search for
God, then India stands out as preeminently reli-
gious; but, if religion be also taken as God's out-
reach toward men, then India has not yet glimpsed
the most precious aspect of religion.
Hinduism cannot meet India's pressing modern;
needs. In so far as her people yield to India's age-'
long thought that this world is unreal, and that wel
7© Building with India
are to be released from it through meditation and
mystical ecstasy, they are unfitted to grapple seri-
ously with the problems of economic, social, and po-
litical development. Overemphasis on other-world-
liness leaves one indifferent to conditions of life in
this world. Hinduism of necessity assigns the work
of town and factory to what it considers an un-
spiritual type, since it plainly counts that aspiration
to be highest which plans escape from life's contacts
and life's desires. Hinduism may dictate the de-
tailed ordering of one's life, but since it neither sets
before its followers a great social goal, nor inspires
them with hope and power for its attainment, Hin-
duism cannot touch India's present problems.
It is, however, when one sees the religion of the
great mass of common people that the pathos of
Hinduism sinks in upon one. Fear permeates their
religion. A mother deceives the gods by calling
her child "rubbish heap" or "crazyman," or she dis-
guises her baby by blacking its eyes. Women weave
ugly blotches into silk scarfs to avoid the evil eye.
Propitiation of the gods lies back of an immense
amount of popular religion. This fear, which is
often the child of ignorance, will inevitably hinder a
nation's progress.
Moreover, one is filled with indignation at those
who designed and who permit to continue through
the centuries those obscene panels on some of Hin-
duism's greatest temples and idol cars. As one sees
groups of small boys smirking before these regret-
table carvings, the severe words of Jesus about
offending little ones surge to one's thought.
Another blot on popular Hinduism, especially in
Handicaps to Progress 71
the south, is its toleration of the system of temple
girls. Villages can be found made up wholly of
those who have been dedicated to the gods, and for
whom there exist well recognized customs and regu-
lations. Very commonly Western women travel-
ing in India have to shrink from the gaze of the
priests who frequent the more popular temples.
These are ugly facts — ^facts which show that the
most ardent devotee of neo-Hinduism has but to go
to India to see how inadequate has been the dynamic
behind fine ideas. In facing them we must remem-
ber that Hinduism is a protean religion. It is ex-
ceedingly difficult to define it. Even thoughtful Hin-
dus have had to fall back on the statement, "A Hindu
is one who calls himself a Hindu." Good and bad
come under the same name, and, as we have already
seen, there is a brighter, higher side to Hinduism.
But Hinduism at its highest tends to be complacent
over child-widows, nautch girls, and outcastes. We
believe in meditation; but flatly repudiate a kind
that is never disturbed by evils which destroy a
people. Facts such as these sadly reveal Hinduism's
lack of ethical dynamic. Against the same evils in
the West, Christianity is intolerant and militant.
The greatest tragedy of India has been Hinduism's
failure to bring peace and joy and power to the mil-
lions who have confidently trusted and followed it.
There is a world conscience developing at whose
bar India's social customs are increasingly judged.
Furthermore, modern education will undermine re-
ligious beliefs such as we have been considering in
this section. But something greater is needed. The
Indian people need a new God — the God Jesus re-
72 Building with India
vealed to men. They need the Way, and the recon-
ciliation wrought through Him. They need con-
structive principles as a basis for the newer, freer
life. They need a religion whose clear teaching, far
from being diametrically opposed to reform as is
Hinduism, will lead them ever forward. Friends in
the West may as well realize that mere humanita-
rian service and uplift do not strike at the root of the
problem. A person with the Hindu's readiness to
subordinate the temporal for the eternal is not going
to break what he conceives to be a Divine command
out of consideration of mere expediency or as a re-
sult of calculation of gain or loss. But if their loy-
alty can be won to Jesus' way of living and think-
ing, reforms will naturally follow. The passionate
impulse of human sympathy with the wronged and
afflicted springs up with certainty from a living
touch with Him.
Just here lies the essential difference between In-
dia's religions and our own. For Hinduism has no
parallel to the historical reality of Jesus of Naza-
reth. One who had himself once been a Hindu and
was lecturing on the good in Hinduism nevertheless
spoke of it in comparison with Christ as "a sixteen
candle power incandescent light as against the sun."
It is Jesus Christ, God's greatest gift to our world,
who must come to India in all His winsomeness and
saving power. Not till then will the root of India's
handicaps be removed.
Prayer
WE praise Thee, O Father, for the confidence
Thou hast given us through Jesus Christ
that it is Thy will that not even the least
in India should perish; that none should be strug-
gling on with bare existence or possessed by fear or
left to their own resources orphaned from their Father.
We rejoice that there is no inherent racial or physi-
cal reason why India must permanently remain handi-
capped in life.
C^We pray for the real wealth of India — not for
gems and silks and spices — but for her men and
women and little children. May they have strong
bodies, having learned to be obedient to Thy laws;
clear minds free from all superstition and degrading
fear; adequate means for every necessity, drawing
intelligently upon Thy rich provision in soil and
river, mountain and sea. Above all, increase the
number of glad, free, creative Christian spirits in
that land, who shall take up the great and compel-
ling task for India in an ever deepening friendship
with Christ and the conscious indwelling of His
Spirit.
€LBe, we pray Thee, with all of whatever faith who
are working for the removal of abuses and the puri-
fication of public and private life. Enlighten es-
pecially the Indian Church to see that in Christ it
has a gospel for the whole of man's nature. Em-
power this Church as it seeks to build up high
standards of life, and stir its members with the
vision of a normal, wholesome, and Christian life
for all of India. Amen.
73
CHAPTER THREE
Striving and Aspiration
A NUMBER of questions now present themselves.
What attitude does India take toward her own re-
generation ? If the forces of richer life are brought
to bear upon her, does the initiative in reform pass
to her? In other words, is India a hopeless and in-
ert drag on progress ; or may we take hope and cour-
age from the kind of response given to friendly ser-
vice from without? If these questions can be satis-
factorily answered, it ought to increase our estimate
of India. In this chapter we will limit ourselves to
these forms of response which have not yet ex-
pressed themselves in formal Christian ways. Many
of them illustrate the wide and more or less un-
conscious penetration of Christian ideas and the
permeation of Christian principles in the customs
and institutions of the land. We will take up later
the mass movements to Christianity and the Indian
Church which are most significant evidences of In-
dia's awakening and response under external in-
fluence.^
I
First we will look at India's aspirations within the
realm of social reform. We generally think of mod-
ern missions in India as starting in 1792 when
William Carey began his stimulating work, and 1800
is roughly taken as the time when the West began
'Chapters V and VI.
74
Striving and Aspiration 75
its effective interpenetration of India. Soon the in-
fluence of the West and especially of Christianity
produced the father of modern reform in India —
Ram Mohan Roy. This reformer sprang from very
high-caste and orthodox Brahman parentage. As
a lad of twelve in Bengal he was married by his par-
ents, but his girl-wife soon died. Later he was mar-
ried to two girls.
His awakening began with a revolt against idola-
try. Even for the sake of his mother he would not
do homage to the idols, and as a result, while still
young, he was asked not to darken his father's door
again. He became conscious of the abuses and cor-
rupt practices that had gathered about Hinduism
and, in spite of the opposition of the rigidly con-
servative Hindu orthodoxy, held that India's reju-
venation would come through Western culture and
modernized education. Hence he was a great help to
Alexander Duff, the great Scotch missionary edu-
cator, in starting his school in Calcutta.
Besides fellowship with Duff, Ram Mohan Roy be-
came acquainted in middle life with William Carey
and the Serampore group. The friendship deep-
ened, and in this way he began a serious study of
Christianity. Though he never became a Christian,
he was a devout seeker after truth. After searching
the literature of Sanskrit, Arabic, Greek, and He-
brew, he wrote: "The consequence of my long and
uninterrupted researches into religious truth has
been that I have found the doctrines of Christ more
conducive to moral principles and better adapted |
for the use of rational beings than any other which
have come to my knowledge."
76 Building with India
It will be remembered that William Carey after
witnessing a case of sati — ^the burning of a widow
on the funeral pyre of her husband — went home
with such a ghastly paleness on his face that his
servant at once inquired, "Art thou bitten by a ser-
pent, Sahib?" He bore through life an indelible pic-
ture of that long, yearning look which the widow
cast about before lying down beside the dead body
of her husband, to be covered with dry leaves and
rushes upon which melted butter had been poured.
The shouts of the people drowned out any cry from
the blazing pile, but he could not help seeing how the
bamboos held across the pyre by the men suddenly
moved as though some strong power had thrust at
them from beneath. And then all was quiet. It is"
not strange that Carey should have made unwearied
efforts to persuade Government to abolish the ter-
rible custom, or that Ram Mohan Roy should have
been the outstanding Indian leader in the agitation
which at last led Government in 1829 to make it il-
legal. Against other wrongs of womanhood as he
saw them, Ram Mohan Roy boldly spoke out.
His influence was felt even more in the realm of
religion, his outstanding work here being the found-
ing of the Brahmo Samaj. This was the beginning
of religious liberalism, for in the trust deed of its
first building, it was stipulated that therein there
should be no idolatry or animal sacrifice, but other-
wise it should be open to all.
The Brahmo Samaj has not been marked by wide-
spread growth, inasmuch as in 1911 it had only 183
branches and a little over 5,000 members. But it
has proved to be one of the most influential of the
IN THE TRAIL OF INDIA'S INDUSTRIALIZATION
(1) Workers' huts which have sprung up around a factory
where there is no provision for proper housing.
(2) A section of a model settlement for factory laborers in
Cawnpore. An American social service worker has been as-
signed to this settlement by one of the missions.
Striving and Aspiration 77
many modern religious movements which have been
stimulated in India in the past century. Its wor-
ship throughout has been theistic, and it has taken
a firm stand against idolatry. Breaking of caste is
made a condition of membership in most of its
branches. It was the first Indian body to take up
the fight against child marriage. As the climax
of its policy of reform, a special marriage act was
secured for Brahmans, abolishing early marriage by
fixing the legal minimum age for girls at fourteen,
and sanctioning widow and intercaste marriages.
Just as the Brahmo Samaj is immensely indebted
to Christianity, so the Christian Church in India has
been not a little helped by the Brahmo Samaj. It
has done much to bring people to an unprejudiced
study of Christ and to consider seriously the truth
of a belief in a single God. It would be to many a
source of surprising uplift to attend one of the ser-
vices of dignified and reverent worship at the
Brahmo Samaj. The writer well remembers the un-
hurried prayer consisting mainly of praise and
adoration. Also must he bear witness to valued
friendships with many of its members. One admires .
their high regard for education and the position j
given to their women.
The Prarthana Samaj (Prayer Society) was
started in Bombay in 1867 in close relationship to
the Brahmo Samaj by one who had been deeply in-
fluenced by John Wilson, a missionary of the Church
of Scotland. This society has been less radical than
the Brahmo Samaj, clinging closer to Hinduism.
And yet, in general, its members are theists, oppos-
ing idolatry and urging the abandonment of caste.
78 Building with India
the introduction of widow remarriage, encourage-
ment of education for girls, and the abolition of
child marriage. One would be proud to have the
privilege of introducing a visitor from the West to
any of its leaders, six or seven of whose well-known
names come readily to mind.
II
Very different in its temper and objective is the
Arya Samaj, largest and most powerfully organized
of modern reform movements in India. It was
founded by Swami Dayanand, a man of unusual
gifts and great learning, and now has 25,000 mem-
bers. When a boy of fourteen, Dayanand became
disgusted with idolatry. After a three days' fast,
he had been taken by his father to the temple of
Siva. The powerful god was supposed to give great
blessings to those who out of devotion abstained
from food and sleep at that time. However, dur-
ing the night's long vigil, the temple servants and
even some of the lay devotees were discovered to
be asleep, while Dayanand, expecting great things
of the god and in obedience to his father's command,
kept awake. Near morning he saw a mouse crawl
up to the offerings and nibble at them, even running
across the god's body. This proved to be a turning
point in the boy's life. It became increasingly im-
possible for him to reconcile the idea of the living,
omnipotent God with an image which was allowed to
be polluted without the slightest protest.
When he was twenty-one, Dayanand left his home
and lived under an assumed name in order to escape
the marriage planned by his parents. Two years
Striving and Aspiration 79
later he became a Hindu monk (Sanyasi), thus re-
nouncing home, marriage, property, caste, and a
settled life. From this time on he gave himself to
the study of Hindu ways of salvation, placing him-
self under the greatest teachers, and at last be-
coming an influential master himself.
He founded the Arya Samaj in 1875, with the
watchword "Back to the Vedas," and with the pur-
pose of defending and reviving the ancient faith of
India, after having purged it from acknowledged
superstition. A parallel has been drawn^ between
Martin Luther and Swami Dayanand. The analogy
seems not unfitting as one reads of the epoch-mak-
ing address fearlessly given to a learned audience in
Benares four years before his death. He tried to
prove from the Vedas that polytheism was a mon-
strous fraud devised by blind priests ; that caste was
designed to be only a scientific division of labor
on the basis of inherited and developed skill; that
Hindu women were free and the equals of men, en-
titled to respect and honor and the fullest use of
their opportunities ; that only those could be called
priests who were pure, learned, and industrious;
and that social elevation to the highest caste was
open to the meanest pariahs.^
In many ways the movement was reactionary and
crude. The founder knew very little of Christianity
or of Western tradition. India's culture and India's
religion wholly absorbed him. Yet, notwithstanding
the advocacy of some very objectionable marriage
*See "Arya Samaj" by H. D. Griswold in Hasting's Dic-
tionary of Religion.
*Cf. Bannerjea. D. N.. India's Nation Builders, p. 80.
8o Building with India
customs, he led the Samaj in prohibiting child mar-
riage and in permitting virgin widows to remarry,
enduring in his various efforts years of scorn and
persecution from his orthodox countrymen. In-
stead of the usual procedure by which the parties to
a marriage do not see each other's face until the ac-
tual ceremony, Dayanand suggested at least an ex-
change of photographs.
The Samaj 's ideal for the minimum age of mar-
riage has been definitely set at twenty-five years for
boys and sixteen for girls. But this advanced stand-
ard is rarely attained. The Aryas carry on exten-
sive educational work including primary and high
schools and the largest college in northern India.
They provide considerable opportunity for the edu-
cation of girls, and the seclusion of women is dis-
couraged. A widows' home has been founded, ex-
tensive famine relief work has been organized, and
orphanages have been established. The Aryas exert
a valuable influence in behalf of a belief in one
God who is spiritual and personal, strenuously ridi-
cule the conception of polytheism and idolatry, and
oppose priestcraft, pilgrimages, and self-torture in
the name of religion. Food offerings for the souls
of departed relatives are definitely discouraged as
animistic survivals. Unlike the individualism of
ordinary Hindu worship, they encourage the social
worship of God. Theoretically they hold caste as a
matter of man's nature and not of his birth. Actually,
however, few members have broken with it, and
in practice their efforts do not go beyond interdin-
ing and intermarriage between near sub-castes. The
Arya Samaj ists are bitter and persistent enemies
Striving and Aspiration 8i
of Christianity. The significant thing just here is
that this virile society is advocating many a good '
and constructive policy which used to be urged by j
missions only. It represents a response which puri-/
fies the old, rather than accepts the new.
Ill
A National Social Conference has been meeting
annually at Christmas time since 1888, to which rep-
resentatives go from every part of India. It has
exerted a very powerful influence in the formation
of public opinion through the reported discussions
of its sessions and the formal resolutions passed.
An idea of the stand that the members take and
the terms in which they voice their position may be
gained from the resolutions passed at their thirty-
third Conference (1920). If any Western critic
should be inclined to charge them with much talk
and few deeds, let him remember how much talk
precedes action with reference to our problems of
labor and capital.
The Conference is of opinion that the condition of un-
touchability imposed upon the depressed classes in India
ought to be forthwith abolished and that free and unrestricted
access should be given these classes to public institutions
such as schools, dispensaries, courts of justice conducted for
the public benefit and at public expense, and also to public
places such as wells, springs, reservoirs, municipal stand-
pipes, burning and bathing-ghats, places of amusements and
worship, and, further, gives its wholehearted support to
all peaceful and just efforts on the part of the depressed
classes, to remove their grievances.
The Conference, while expressing its satisfaction at the
progress of education of women in this country, strongly
urges upon the attention of the public the great and urgent
need for greater effort in this direction.
The Conference is of the opinion that the age of consent
in the case of girls should be not less than sixteen years.
In the opinion of the Conference, the institution of caste
82 Building with India
is detrimental to social and political solidarity and national
progress and therefore urges all to make every endeavor
towards its abolition.
The Conference welcomes the growing support to the
widow remarriage movement in the country and urges upon
the public the necessity of starting widow remarriage asso-
ciations or homes to support the cause.
That in the opinion of this Conference the present meth-
ods of charity should be improved and the money at present
wasted in feeding and supporting the idle and undeserving
beggars should be utilized to start in every district charita-
ble institutions like orphanages, homes for homeless, and in-
firmaries, to provide for the needs of the really helpless and
needy section of the population.
Besides such items of social reform hitherto advo-
cated, the Conference intends henceforth to deal
with industrial, economic, and sanitary needs as
well. At the close of the Conference the members
usually dine together, irrespective of caste, race, or
religion. At least three provinces have their own
social reform associations, and local conferences
representing smaller areas are not infrequent. Mis-
sion schools and colleges send forth many graduates
who, though still non-Christian, nevertheless have
been stimulated to work for bettering India's cus-
toms through these associations.
Another powerful and uplifting agency is the
Indian Social Reformer, For over thirty years this
eighteen page weekly has gone forth to coordinate,
encourage, and inspire social workers all over India.
Often these brave spirits carry on their fight in
small towns, fiercely resisted and isolated from kin-
dred spirits. In the Reformer they have found an
organ that has maintained a remarkably courageous,
independent, and high standard for religion, mor-
ality, and progress along social and political lines.
In general, the position taken by its able editor
Striving and Aspiration 83
would gladden the heart of any Christian.^ At the
top of each issue is the following quotation from
William Lloyd Garrison: "I will be as harsh as
truth, and as uncompromising as justice. I am in
earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I
will not retreat a single inch — and I will be heard."
This is only one illustration of the way in which
West and East should ever be cross-fertilizing each
other, sharing the inspiration of noble example and
character.
The immediate occasion for starting the Reformer
arose in 1890 when Hindu society throughout India
was being rent asunder by discussions of the Age of
Consent Act prohibiting a husband from being with
his wife before she reaches the age of twelve, and
finally passed by the government in 1891. One of
its first tasks was to put social reform on a rational
basis. Since for the Hindu all customs are religious
and receive sanction from their sacred books, discus-
sion had naturally centered too much about the in-
terpretation of Sanskrit texts. For example, the
Indian supporters of abolishing sati had attempted
to prove that this custom, if not contrary to the
Shastras, was at least not prescribed by their
sacred books. Also the advocates of the remarriage
of Hindu widows felt that they must show on Shas-
tric grounds that such remarriage was permissible.
Such arguments inevitably led to endless debates as
^jt *It would be very helpful if individuals or societies would
'subscribe for the Indian Social Reformer while studying this
book. The cost for three months would be five shillings.
Address, the Indian Social Reformer, Bombay, India. In few
ways would an American get a deeper insight into all sides
of modern India with so little expenditure of time and money.
84 Building with India
[to the meaning of ancient texts, instead of making
/ reform a matter of reason based on justice and hu-
I manity.
The Reformer has also taken a clear-cut position
for total abstinence, the abolition of the nautch (em-
ployment of dancing girls), the advocacy of a pure
private life for public men, and the removal of the
l^ prohibitory restrictions by caste on all foreign
I ' travel.
IV
A remarkable organization in India embodying
the new spirit of service is the Servants of India So-
ciety, begun in 1905. Its founder, Mr. G. K. Gokhale,
had become at his death in 1915 India's foremost
statesman, in vi^hom the people were placing im-
plicit confidence. In part this was due to Mr.
Gokhale's ability as an Indian publicist, in part to
the abounding enthusiasm with which he gave his
talents, his time, his very all in self-dedication to
India. With a life thus characterized by sacrifice,
study, and service, it is not surprising that he could
inspire others to join his brotherhood.
The objects of the Society have been to train
young men for the service of India, every member
being pledged to devote all his time to public work
and taking the following vows at the time of ad-
mission: That the country will always be the first
in his thoughts and that he will give to her service
the best that is in him ; that in serving the countr^^
he will seek no personal advantage ; that he will re-
gard all Indians as brothers and will work for the
advancement of all, without distinction of caste or
Striving and Aspiration 85
creed; that he will be content with such provision
for himself and his family, if he has any, as the So-
ciety may be able to make; that he will devote no
part of his energies to earning money for himself;
and that he will lead a pure personal life.
A five years' apprenticeship for study and practi-
cal work under guidance is required of each member.
Those under training receive only Rs. 720 a year.
Regular members receive Rs. 900 per year to begin
with and never more than Rs. 1,200. In 1919 there
were thirteen regular members and five men under
training. Practically every member is a university
graduate, and after his completion of five years of
extra study and preparation, each has become a spe-
cialist. Though the Society is but sixteen years old,
its small but well-qualified membership has won for
itself a remarkably high prestige.
Its work consists in enlightening public opinion
through speeches, pamphlets, and newspapers,
owned or controlled by the Society; in stimulating
young men to make a study of public questions ; and
in a great variety of practical service — political, so-
cial, and educational. The very existence of such
a society promises hope for the future of India, and
in its thoroughness and spirit of sacrifice should be
a stimulus to the Indian Church.
The organizations for reform that have been men-
tioned are only a fraction of the varied agencies for
education, philanthropy, and reform that modern
India is producing.^ Even to list their names would
*The unique school work of Rabindranath Tagore, the ad- '
vanced measures introduced by the Gaekwar of Baroda, and'
various other indigenous efforts are described in Schools with
a Message in India, Chapters X-XII.
86 Building with India
take several pages. The land teems with religious
and social conferences and organizations. A study
of them shows us what India feels to be her needs
and reveals at once the most evident points of con-
tact for any sympathetic help. There have sprung
up a hundred orphanages — Hindu and Muhamma-
dan, local temperance societies in great number,
famine-relief and plague-relief organizations, and
many organizations for the spread of education.
Bombay's Infant Welfare Association has passed its
first anniversary, successful baby shows have been
held in Poona, Delhi, and Lahore, several societies
for the protection of children have been organized,
and various social service leagues are in operation.
V
Response on the part of India's women to modern-
izing influences has been veritably surprising within
the past fifteen years. Thus far the movement has
touched a mere fraction of her 155,000,000 women,
but there are literally thousands of them through-
out India who have begun to long for a larger
life than they have hitherto experienced, and
their activities are full of promise. The intense na-
tional feeling has made men see that the prosperity
of their country demands that their womenfolk be
educated, and that widows at least should be trained
as teachers, nurses, or doctors, and thus bear their
share in the uplift of the land.
During the last decade a wave of the organiza-
tion of women has passed over the country. Bom-
bay, for example, now has seven different women's
societies or clubs, and Bangalore has four. A wom-
Striving and Aspiration 87
en's deputation to the Secretary of State for India
and to the Viceroy in 1917 pleaded with Government
to take constructive steps to provide training for
destitute and enforced widows ; to make special pro-
vision by legislation for insuring to Hindu wives
and daughters their rightful property inheritance
from husband or father; to safeguard the interests
of Indian wives by making it criminal and unlawful
for an Indian married man to marry an English
woman; to allow Indian women to enter any pro-
fession they may choose ; and to allow Indian women
to have the right to vote in municipal and other elec-
tions. In northern India there is an All-India Mus-
lim Women's Association which, at a recent con-
ference passed a resolution denouncing the evils of
polygamous marriages and pledged themselves not
to give their daughters as plural wives. Since 1904
a Women's Conference has been held annually in
connection with the National Social Congress and
has drawn to itself hundreds of women from all over
the country to discuss subjects relating to woman's
life. Their findings year by year take a strong po-
sition with reference to various situations that need
attention.
Bombay and Calcutta have associations o£ Indian
women graduates, and a notice signed by ten Indian
women recently appeared outlining a plan for form-
ing a national unit for participation in the Interna-
tional Federation of University Women. For three
years the Indian Woman's Suffrage Association has
been working for the spread of its ideas and as-
pirations, and forty-three branches have been or-
ganized in all parts of India. Representatives of
88 Building with India
this Association presented an appeal to the Govern-
ment asking it to extend the franchise to Indian
women. Delegates were sent in 1920 to the Inter-
national Women's Suffrage Alliance in Geneva.
There is something almost pathetic about such a
movement, for only one woman out of a hundred can
read and write. But in it we can see India's eager
part in the great, surging desire for a larger life
that has come to the womanhood of the world. The
Councils of two provinces (Bombay and Madras)
have recently decided to extend the franchise to
women.
Women are beginning to make public demonstra-
tions in behalf of their objects. Several hundred
women went through the streets of Madras carrying
the Home Rule banner. In many places they are
the backbone of this movement. In 1920 a good deal
of attention was excited by a procession of women
of all castes and creeds in Poona, who went to the
municipal office to ask that elementary education
be compulsory for girls as well as boys.
Many a beautiful and interesting personality is
back of these various movements. And back of
each woman leader is usually some noble-minded
and unselfish husband or brother or father who has
devoted time and thought to the uplift of wife or
sister or daughter. When the history of the awak-
ening of Indian womanhood is written, the names of
these men will have to be mentioned along with
those of the women pioneers. The memory of Jus-
tice Ranade will long be treasured, not only because
he stood out as one of India's greatest modern re-
formers and nation builders, but because of all that
Striving and Aspiration 89
he enabled his wife to accomplish. Perhaps this is
what you would expect from one who out of rever-
ence touched his mother's feet each morning
throughout her life. The story of Mrs. Ramabai
Ranade^ may be taken as typical of what has hap-
pened among high-caste Hindu women in Calcutta,
Madras, Poona, Bombay, and in every town in In-
dia where women's societies have come into ex-
istence.
For that story we are taken back to a summer
night in 1873. A young man of thirty-two had
buried his face in his hands, his soul bent with re-
morse and grief, as he sat in the little, dark room of
his Poona home. He had been one of a small group
of young, enthusiastic social reformers who had
pledged themselves to remain unmarried rather
than marry a child. A month before he had lost his
wife, and now, in spite of protest, he had been mar-
ried again to a little girl of ten. How could he face
his friends? How could he again be happy when,
contrary to his own conscience, he had done a thing
which could never be undone. In the zenana (wom-
en's quarter) with a mother-in-law and sister-in-law
seen for the first time that evening, slept the little
Brahman bride, Ramabai Ranade.
With great care and patience the husband taught
his little girl wife. It was arranged for a mission-
ary to come to teach her English. Her taste for
reading grew. At nineteen she came under the
powerful influence of Pandita Ramabai who later
^Abbreviated from a paper by Mrs. L. P. Larsen, read be-
fore the Bangalore Missionary Conference (Harvest Field,
41:127-139) from which many of the facts given in this
section have been obtained.
go Building with India
became a Christian and one of India's foremost
women leaders. Throughout these years, the op-
position from the other women of her household was
great. They enforced a rule that she was not to
make herself unpleasant by reading downstairs,
but must confine her studies to her husband's room.
Because she attended Pandita Ramabai's meetings,
she was not even allowed to touch the other women
of the family or the cooking vessels of the house.
Many a time as a girl, when ridiculed by the con-
servative women of the household, she would hide
somewhere and weep, not mentioning to her husband
what had taken place. Thus Ramabai Ranade's
mind developed and matured under the guidance of
her husband and through fellowship with Pandita
Ramabai.
In the year 1909, Mrs. Ranade organized the
Poona Seva Sadan, a Society which has now grown
to be the first organization of its kind in India, with
a fine record of services rendered to the general
community. It would interest any forward-looking
Westerner to glance over an annual report of this
organization.' There are on the rolls of the dif-
ferent departments of the society's educational and
industrial classes 741 women, and 141 women are
cared for in their hostels. The objects of the society
are to educate women through regular classes and to
widen the range of their knowledge by means of
libraries, lectures, tours, and excursions; to enable
women to participate intelligently in all domestic,
*A copy would doubtless be sent to any American society
addressing its request to the Poona Seva Sadan, Poona,
India.
Striving and Aspiration 91
social, and national responsibilities; to inculcate
principles of self-reliance and mutual helpfulness;
and actually to train women for educational, medi-
cal, and philanthropic service to the motherland.
Their mottoes are: "One at core, if not in creed"
and "Life is a trust for living and self-sacrificing
service."
English-educated women often take the leading
part in societies such as have been mentioned, but
in many places the leaders have had no university
education and some of them do not speak English
at all. In fact, a remarkable impetus to reform is
sometimes given by a quite uneducated girl. Re-
cently a Brahman student in America was recalling
the tragic sacrifice made five years ago by a young
girl of his birthplace, Calcutta. He spoke with rev-
erence of her startling act which had aroused a
Province. The father of the girl was poor, but had
made every effort to obtain a dowry large enough to
secure a husband for her, but in vain. At last she
had reached the exceptional age of fourteen with-
out being married, and the father determined to
mortgage his farm. Snehalata put on her best
clothes, went up to the housetop, soaked herself in
kerosene, and before the whole neighborhood burned
to death. The following translation gives the call
she made for reformation :
"Day before yesterday, Father, late in the after-
noon, when you returned home, footsore and weary,
after having been out the whole day since the break
of dawn, I saw your face, saw the world of anguish
and despair which was depicted in it, and heard with
my own ears those fatal words, 'All is lost.' That
92 Building with India
face has never ceased to haunt me since. Those
words are still ringing in my ears. Father, I can't
bear that idea. What is marriage to me, except as
a means of lifting the burden of anxiety on my ac-
count, which lies so heavy on your breast? What
social obloquy have you not already endured, be-
cause I am still unmarried? What heroic efforts
have you not already made to find a suitable match
for me, and with what ill success? Not you, adored
Father, but I am to be the sacrifice; and may the
conflagration which I shall kindle set the whole
country on fire !" Many a public meeting followed
this event, to urge reformation in the abusive cus-
tom of large dowries at marriage.
The woman's movement is not confined to any
one caste or creed. The names of Hindus, Parsis,
Jews, Muhammadans, and Christians are found in
the membership lists of the various societies, often
in the roll of the same society. In some cases Chris-
tianity has been directly responsible for the impe-
tus ; more often its influence has been quite indirect,
but none the less causative. One great spring has
been the patriotic enthusiasm accompanying the
strong national awakening of recent years.
VI
A second major question must interest us with
reference to the aspirations of our potential world
partner, India. Does she respond to the democratic
temper when she has the chance? What about her
political sense and aspirations?
In God's providence, Britain and India have been
brought together — one, a proud Oriental people
Striving and Aspiration 93
with an admittedly great past; the other, the bat-
thng, independent pioneer for the whole world in
the development of free political institutions. The
romance of the intermingling and interaction of
these two great civilizations fascinates the student.
Can we catch God's purpose both for Britain and for
India in bringing them together? Did this purpose
go no further than securing for India better roads,
scientifically constructed canals, a peaceful and ef-
ficient administration, and a general amelioration of
life? Can we say that the Divine intention for this
strange, unexpected partnership has been fulfilled?
Certain it is that Britain has played a great part
in the renaissance of self-respect and sense of na-
tional dignity that has come over India, until at last
we see the uprising of a people, passionately seeking
liberty — poHtical, social, and economic. The urgent
and hazardous crisis through which India is passing
bears on the very existence of the British Empire,
and hence upon the welfare of the world. Standing
as we are, face to face with the greatest experiment
in the creation of responsible government which the
world has ever seen — ^the introduction of practical
self-government into a land containing a fifth part
of the human race — an imperative call is found for
all apostles of good-will and all disciples of Christ.
The British admit that they have made blunders in
India and that their policy has often been selfish.
But, after many years experience in India, I desire
to witness to the high estimation which the great
majority of American missionaries in that land have
for the degree of unity, justice, and progress which
Britain has given to India. Despite a bureaucratic
94 Building with India
attitude which tends to arise in any government
scheme, an increasing number of Britishers regard
their suzerainty in India as a sacred trust with all
that this responsibility involves. I believe that
I British rule in India has been better than that of
any other alien government would likely have been,
and that on the whole it has been for the good of
India.
In directing our prayers and thoughts toward
India, every intelligent Christian of the West should
keep in mind a struggle in ideals that even yet goes
on. It is a contest in which magnanimity and self-
ishness, the highest Christian statesmanship and
reactionism are all contending for the mastery.
There is something dramatic in the play of forces.
Unfortunately, there have been always those
ready to exploit India, from the days of the East
India Company to the present when certain mer-
chants draw wealth from India without returning
intelligent sympathy or setting the example of inter-
racial duty and social good-will. In fact, not until
1858 when political control was transferred from
the East India Company to the Crown was there a
worthy and sustained effort to make Britain's con-
nection with India preeminently for the economic,
intellectual, and moral good of the people. It is
selfishness in Britain, for instance, that has been
responsible for such a measure as the abolition of
Indian import duties in the interest of Lancashire's
cotton trade, by which Indian industry received a
great setback.
But the great body of British officials belongs to
Striving and Aspiration 95
another class — ^the school of efficiency. Interested ^
in the moral and material progress of the land and
actuated by a high sense of duty, they have built up
a masterful administrative machine. Trained in the
high traditions of their order, the British civil ser-
vants in India have continued to be second to none
in integrity of purpose and efficiency. In the course
of a few generations they rescued India from an-
archy ; unified her peoples ; secured peace for her at
' home and abroad ; maintained equal justice amid 1
jealous and often hostile communities and creeds; ;
established new standards of tolerance and integ- '
rity; made substantial strides in spreading educa-
tion, conquering famine, combating plague and ma-
laria often in the face of obstruction and prejudice; ;
and raised the whole of India to a higher plane of ,
national prosperity and of moral and intellectual de-
velopment. The British officer in India spends the
best part of his life far from home, often in some re-
mote rural area which has involved the prolonged
sacrifice of the happiest family ties. He has con-
ceived his task to be faithful administration and do-
ing the best in his power for the welfare of the
people.^ But this type of Britisher did not consider
it his task to train up a nation on democratic lines, or
did he regard it as compatible with the suzerain re-
lation of his nation to comport himself democrati-
cally in his contacts with the Indian people. Some
effort was made to consult Indian opinion, but the
dominant attitude was that of autocratic pa-
^Read Kipling's vivid picture of "William the Conqueror,"
in The Day's Work.
g6 Building with India
ternalism, with a strong sense of their responsibili-
ties as guardians and protectors of the simple and
ignorant masses committed to their care.
There is a third British attitude. There have al-
ways been Anglo-Indian statesmen who, with El-
phinstone and Munro, Macaulay and Edwardes,
have regarded the relationship of Britain with India
as temporary and have looked with equanimity and
even pride to the future in which Britain would be
able to resign into the hands of the Indians them-
selves a trusteeship faithfully discharged. Such
men have acknowledged that Britain holds India as
a trust for the Indian people, that the public ser-
vices should be Indianized, and that a policy should
be pursued as generous as is compatible with even
tolerable efficiency and with the safety of the Em-
pire. Many there are who acknowledge a duty not
only to afford India the widest opportunity for self-
development, but also to endeavor positively and
constructively to quicken in India those spiritual
forces which Britain has found to be the soul of
liberty and progress. Some even vision a time when
both India and Britain will see that their destinies
are dependent upon their remaining united in one
great equal and mutually strengthening federation
— an Indo-British Empire. They hope that Britain
and India, mutually educating one another through
their diversity of character, traditions, and gifts,
together may be able to accomplish in the world task
more than they could achieve separately.
India, also, has her struggle. There are the in-
articulate masses who until very recently have cared
Striving and Aspiration 97
little what rulers they had so long as they were left
undisturbed. In contrast with them, there has grad-
ually arisen a body of Western-educated men. It is
very important to remember that these constitute an
infinitesimal minority. They are often separated by
a wide social gulf from the vast village population
overwhelmingly agricultural. Some of them (as we
have seen in the first part of this chapter) have con-
fined their efforts to social reform. They have held
that the social groundwork must be reshaped be-
fore political reconstruction could profitably begin.
Others, finding themselves hopelessly at variance in
regard to questions of social reform, have largely
confined their efforts to political reform and have
ceaselessly agitated for an ever increasing measure
of self-government. They have held that political
changes must take place before any real progress
could be made. A few have been actuated by caste
rivalry and racial hatred, and, with little interest in
or knowledge of the masses, have selfishly schemed
to secure power in the hands of their own hereditary
groups. It is most interesting and significant that
of late these two great streams of self-help in India
— the social and the political — have begun to merge
into a great national movement embracing in its
scope the social, economic, and political uplift of the
country as a whole.
VII
We need not go back into India's ancient history
—the Hindu period from 650 B. C. to 1193 A. D. and
the Muhammadan period 1193 to 1761. But a resume
g8 Building with India
of the next period^ — ^the British — will help to give
the background we need. It is noteworthy that it
began merely in the desire for trade. Only gradually,
partly to protect commercial gains already se-
cured, partly because of a feeling that it would be
morally unjustifiable to permit widespread disorder,
did the East India Company extend its territorial
sway. In this way India, which in her long history
had never before been united under one government
either native or foreign, was unified politically un-
der Britain.2 A series of great administrators
brought order out of chaotic conditions. Finding
themselves arbiters of vast conflicting interests, and
invested with semi-autocratic powers, — executive,
financial, and judicial, — ^they fell into a way of de-
veloping a paternal despotism with order imposed
from without. Foreigners were at its head through-
out and pushed on their work of efficiency and devel-
opment without trying to train Indian public opin-
ion to an intelligent participation in the principles
and aims of British policy.
In the meantime, English education, officially in-
troduced in 1833, was raising up a Western-edu-
cated class. These people began to develop a strong
sense of grievance because they had no adequate
place in the foreign-made administrative structure.
Furthermore, the very literature to which they had
been introduced through the English education they
had received — ^the works of such men as Burke and
Tor this, the files of the Round Table and the Indian So-
cial Reformer, among others, have been consulted.
^Although under this paramount power, to this day 675
Indian princes rule in one third the area and over one fifth
of the total population.
Striving and Aspiration gg
Mill — made them restive for a more liberal form of
government.
Moreover, the means of acquiring a common spirit
were developing. Railways and better roads were
removing the isolation of one section from another.
The universal use of English in the universities was
enabling leaders to get together who otherwise
would have had to speak in seventeen principal and
over one hundred subordinate tongues. A common
currency and a unified post and telegraph system
were aiding communication. Over all was the
foreign Raj (Government) against which common
interest could be stirred; and a press both in
English and the vernacular was rapidly developing.
By 1885, a progressive group of educated Indians
was able to organize the Indian National Congress
which ever since has been a powerful force not only
in focusing India's political thought, but also in
strenuously demanding from the British a remodel-
ing of the machinery of government. But Asia had
not had "responsible" government, or a representa
tive system — ^two methods of deciding public ques-
tions which have been developed in the West. Brit-
ain saw no great gain in turning over government to
a limited class when an electorate to which they
could be responsible had still to be created, largely
from illiterate masses.
The Indian Councils Act of 1892 introduced the
elective idea, but made no efforts to enlarge the
boundaries of the educated classes or to provide
them with any training in responsible government.
The Minto-Morley reforms of 1909 still further in- 1
creased the number of Indians elected to imperial ;
100 Building with India
and provincial councils, greatly enlarged their pow-
ers of criticising the government, but unfortunately
gave them no real responsibility to test and sober
them. Meanwhile, the prolonged difficulties for the
British raised by the South African War, the sensa-
tional victory of an Asiatic over a European Power
in the Russo-Japanese War, and the revolutionary
movement in Russia which compelled the autocracy
to surrender some of its authority to a popular as-
sembly had created a ferment throughout educated
India.
A party of "Extremists" developed who were
more or less openly against British rule. Irritated
by instances of foreign exploitation, they had no at-
tention left for social reform. The one thing neces-
sary was to get the objectionable cinder out of In-
dia's eye. They were aggressively impatient at the
inability of the Indian National Congress to force
the hands of Government by any constitutional form
of agitation, and they very deeply resented the
indifference of Government to the pleas of the "mod-
erates," who disliked revolutionary methods and
who were grateful for the work of past generations
of Englishmen.
Most educated Indians today have their keenly
felt grievances against the British government.
They lament the great proportion of their budget
that goes to an army for which they do not acknowl-
edge a need and that is used for ends in which they
have no voice. The resulting small percentage of
total revenue available for education pains them.
They charge Englishmen with designedly keeping
India a producer of raw materials and a consumer
Striving and Aspiration xoi
of manufactures. They claim that Indians have
conspicuously shown their ability at the bar, on the
bench, in literature, and of late in science, and that
therefore they should receive a greater place in gov-
erning. They contend that the British, v^rrapped
up in the superiority of race and traditions, are too
aloof and conservative; that only Indians — not
aliens — can interpret the needs and interests of
their people. They admit a certain inexperience,
but strenuously object to being kept out of the water
until they have learned to swim.
They say that the Government has been slow to
see that times have been changing ; and that, while
in no way relaxing their efforts for the moral and
material progress of the country, the British could
have definitely adopted a policy of giving Indians
the experience and sense of responsibility and mass
education essential to the development of democratic
institutions. British rulers, they hold, have failed
to see that their mission was to educate the people
entrusted to their charge up to their own level of
political development. Their desire to see things
efficiently done excluded the desire to see Indians
try to do them.
Nevertheless, Britain has been true to her highest
self in the unconscious way in which she has been
educating India to the highest that she herself knew.
Since 1833, the educational system has placed in the
hands of Indian youth the philosophies and histories
and poems which told of England's struggle for pop-
ular rights; how one king after another was be-
headed or driven away until through a series of re-
form bills the franchise was extended to practically
102 Building with India
all her people. Britain has not tried to hide from
India the truth that at heart she abhors autocracy.
Many British are ready to acknowledge with re-
gret the wrongs inflicted upon the people of India in
the days of the old East India Company, but are
proud to recall that it was they themselves who
exposed the wrongs and tried some of the chief per-
petrators. They acknowledge that India's beautiful
household industries have been driven to the wall,
but hold that if British industry had not done this,
the industry of other European countries or
America would have effected the same result. They
admit that free trade and the introduction of ma-
chinery have brought bitter hardships upon Indian
workmen, but show how these have borne down
heavily upon labor the world over. They hold, fur-
thermore, that it is not so much Britain as Western
industrial and competitive civilization that is to
blame; that India has been the victim not of a
personal and racial greed and malice peculiar to
Britain, but of an international system which has
brought all Western peoples to the brink of destruc-
tion.
The British would say that they have sincerely
believed in free trade on the ground that if a given
industry could not survive competition, the country
was better off without it. Through them and
through other Western peoples, the Christian con-
science has been permeating Indian life, rectifying
many a social evil, and establishing new standards.
Common humanitarian impulses of the West have
inspired the struggle against famine and pestilence.
If a critic charges them with having accomplished
Striving and Aspiration 103
little, they admit that relative to the need this is
true, but that if India had not been so poor and if
their staff had not consequently been so limited,
more would have been done. It should be remem-
bered that until a comparatively recent date even in
England compulsory mass education was not ap-
proved.
VIII
The World War brought things to a climax. With-
out conscription, a million and a quarter Indians
went to the front, and Indian princes vied with one
another in contributions of money, troops, and sup-
plies. Grateful for India's loyal assistance, British
ministers solemnly pledged a reward to India. The
War brought to the forefront of public discussion
the problem of imperial reconstruction to follow,
and of India's place within the Empire. Specula-
tions and even concrete proposals engrossed the ar-
ticulate minds of India. India, the people said, was
willing to remain steadfast to the British connection
in the same way as the Dominions, but, like the Do-
minions, she must be given home rule. It has some-
times seemed doubtful whether the Indians could be
restrained until the now illiterate millions had been
trained into electorates capable of giving an intelli-
gent mandate to their representatives or until ad-
ministrators could be found among such representa-
tives qualified to discharge the functions of respon-
sible government. Increasing numbers demanded
that home rule should be given at once and in full.
Even if one were to sympathize with every legiti-
mate longing of nationalism in India, it constitutes
104 Building with India
a tantalizing problem as to what should be done.
Adolescent India may easily hurt herself with unac-
customed instruments. Many a parent has had to
face the same problem with an ambitious and head-
strong son.
At last, stirred by the insistent demands of In-
dia's leaders, the attention of Britain was secured.
In 1917 came a momentous pronouncement, the most
important ever made in the history of British India.
It declared that the future policy of His Majesty's
Government would be: "The increasing association
of Indians in every branch of administration and
the gradual development of self-governing institu-
tions with a view to the progressive realization of
responsible government in India as an integral part
of the British Empire." By it, the principle of
autocracy was for the first time deliberately and ex-
plicitly abandoned.
The Act, which was finally passed in 1919, trans-
ferred certain branches of administration in each,
provincial government wholly to the responsible
control of an actual, though limited, Indian electo-
rate. Under "transferred" subjects Indians have ef-
fective control of education, public works, forests,
agriculture, sanitation, excise, the control and en-
couragement of industries, etc. Legislative and ad-
ministrative responsibility for other branches of
government, such as the army and navy, police, tele-
graph, railway, and other revenue departments re-
main in British control. There is now a majority
of elected Indian representatives in each of India's
eight provincial councils and also in her national
legislature. The members of these bodies have be-
Striving and Aspiration 105
gun to realize their increased powers to such an
extent that the new constitution may be regarded as
a forcing-house which, even more than the War, is
bringing political self -consciousness to maturity.
IX
Unfortunately, the very years which brought the
Act of 1919 brought other events which embittered
the soul of India to an unprecedented degree. At
the close of the War a thick blue book was published
in India, detailing the plots and conspiracies against
the government which had partially developed and
had been suppressed. As a result of this investiga-
tion, the Government passed the Rowlatt Act, ena-
bling them to deal autocratically with possible
anarchy and sedition. Since the Act was passed in
the face of the unil;ed opposition of all Indian public
opinion, it was a severe blow to Indian pride. In
their view, it not only endangered their freedom,
but stigmatized them before the world as a country
of anarchists. They called it the "black cobra act."
Moreover, the Muhammadans had their grievance.
They had interpreted certain statements by British
statesmen as guaranteeing that at the end of the
War nothing would be done to dim the prestige of
the Sultan as spiritual head of Islam. This seemed 1
to them a perfectly fitting return for the loyalty of
seventy million Muhammadans in India.^ When the
peace terms for Turkey came out, Muhammadans
claimed that the pledges as interpreted by them had
been flagrantly broken. Tremendous opposition
^Limits of space have necessitated the merest mention in
this book of this important element in modern India.
io6 Building with India
was aroused, and agitators succeeded in uniting
Hindus and Muhammadans in denouncing Britain
for her part in this decision with reference to the
Caliphate, so central in Moslem thought.
As a third disturbing element, India's long-stand-
ing grievance concerning the discrimination made
by their fellow British subjects against Indians who
had emigrated to the colonies of East Africa again
created bitterness. Finally, largely as the result of
the Rowlatt Act, came a most unfortunate series of
events in the Punjab. The authorities, fearing a
repetition of the mutiny of 1857, used what all In-
dians and many British believed to be quite unwar-
ranted and humiliating severity in dealing with the
situation. These terrorizing measures centered in
the city of Amritsar, so that this name was on the
lips of everyone in India in 1919. Hearts in India's
farthest village were embittered by the stories which
reached them from the Punjab.
It was in these days that Gandhi rose to leader-
ship in India and launched one of the most dramatic
movements in recent history — ^the non-cooperation
movement. This was an attempted boycott of every-
thing connected with British rule. Indians were to
set up their own courjta. and to provide their own
national jchoola. They were not to vote for or serve
in the new legislatures or work in government of-
fices or use any foreign goods» A great prohibition
campaign partly crippled the revenue from excise.
Students lay on the steps of colleges so that anyone
insisting on entering must do so over their bodies.
Titles and honors bestowed by Government were to
Striving and Aspiration 107
be returned. In the end, taxes were to be refused.
By such methods, Gandhi predicted that the Gov-
ernment would be reduced to impotence within a
few months. There were some noble sides to this
movement, but on the whole it was unwise and un-^
practical, and has aroused increasing opposition on
the part of influential and sober-minded Indiana^
Its results, however, have served to reveal the deep
and serious nature of India's unrest, and that the
old-time glamour which surrounded the very name,
"British Raj," has been dissipated. If Gandhi and
his followers persist in carrying out the more ex-
treme features of his program, it will certainly
have most serious consequences for the peace of
India.
It would be quite wrong to associate India as yet
with the so-called "yellow" or "black perils." But it
is terribly significant that some Indians are begin-
ning to trace the root of all India's troubles to one
single principle — ^the menace which they believe
white predominance is to the honor, liberty, and life_.
of non-white races and nations. In Amritsar and
the martial law excesses of the Punjab, they see an
effort to establish white predominance by terrorism ;
in the Caliphate decision, the arrogant assertion of
the whites to rule non-white peoples ; in the humilia-
ting position forced on Indians in the self-governing
colonies and in East Africa, a claim of the whites to
keep down non-whites. Put this way, the Indo-
British problem becomes the concern of every West-
ern person.
io8 Building with India
X
A perusal of this chapter makes it plain that In-
dia has at last become self-conscious. She has awak-
ened to a sense of her own need. Thousands of her
sons are at work to bring in a better day.
As we consider India's many social and political
movements, what should be our attitude and policy?
Indian nationalism raises acutely the difficult prob-
lem as to a missionary's relation to political matters.
It is natural for Indians who believe that their coun-
try is being wronged to feel that those who pretend
to love them should also denounce the wrongs. In
India some of the missionaries are citizens of the
governing nation; others are there by the permis-
sion and courtesy of that nation. Obviously the re-
sponsibility for criticism in these two cases will be
different. Some balance must be found between an
exclusive emphasis on underlying principles without
reference to the time and place of their application,
and action on the conviction that the gospel is for
society as well as the individual, and that one's mis-
sion is to make Christ's spirit dominant in every
aspect of man's associated life.
We can see plainly that what India wants is that
the West should not do all the work, but by example,
encouragement, and cooperation should enable her
to get under way, India does not wish to be super-
intended, managed, or ruled, but longs for the ex-
perience that will enable her to develop and rule
herself. She has come to the place where she will
refuse patronage, but she will welcome respect and
sympathy. These political aspirations all have their
analogues in mission work and the Indian Church.
Striving and Aspiration log
We are, therefore, thankful for missionary states-
men who have the imagination and initiative to re-
shape our methods where necessary, so that the re-
sult will be — not work done or culture transferred —
but a nation assisted to help itself and in touch with
the Highest.
Let us recall the great woman's movement that is
going on in India and inquire what our attitude
should be toward it. Here we must be careful not
to interpret the movement as a conscious trend
toward Christianity. That Hindu v/omen are willing
to meet with European women for a social hour on
more or less Western lines or for philanthropic
work of a range hitherto unprecedented in India
does not mean that they are any the less zealous
about their own religion. Hindu women are very
devout. As they face the enormous problems of the
social regeneration of their land and seek to develop
a larger, freer life for India's womanhood, it is quite
natural for them to turn for solution and support to
their own religion. In fact, some of the societies
conduct a weekly religious meeting, and we need not
be surprised that even educated Indian women at-
tempt to ex:haust all sources of help in Hinduism be-
fore they are ready to acknowledge any debt to the
principles and spirit of Christianity.
Suppose you happened to pass a powerful tour-
ing car stalled at the foot of the Rockies. The owners
of the car are eager to proceed. They are thrilled
with reports of the view from the top, but are
neither experienced in the management of their ma-
chine, nor do they know the road. You would of
course stop to help them. Instead of pushing on the
no Building with India
wheels, — a hopeless, impossible task, — ^you would
examine the gas-tank. Is there any propelling power
there? Perhaps there is an inferior quality of
gasoline. It might run on the level, but cannot
climb rough, steep roads. You would change this
first, then you would give them advice about the
road and how to avoid the worst places ahead such
as you had passed through. If you were thoroughly
eager that they should reach the top in safety, you
would see that someone went along to show the way.
Just so with India's powerful womanhood. Today it
seeks the freedom of higher levels. The machinery
is all right — ^the women have the capacity. They do
not, however, have modern experience and educa-
tion, and Hinduism is an entirely inadequate mix-
ture. It cannot generate enough power. The secret
of climbing successfully is Christ in the heart. Will
India discover this in time? Let someone tell her!
Our women of the West do not claim to have reached
the summit, but they have been making the climb
recently and still remember the hard places. Volun-
teers are needed to help India to pick out the way.
Could any greater appeal be made to the sister-
hood of women than this struggle against great odds
on the part of India's daughters? Reverence for
personality and the respect for women inspired by
our Lord have, after long centuries, given rise even-
tually to our Western woman's movement. In the
great, world-wide process of the emancipation of
womanhood, problems that have long since been
solved by us are opening out before India's women
as at last they are becoming conscious of their need.
We are sadly aware that even in our own country
Striving and Aspiration xxz
there has been all too little direct and conscious
seeking of His guidance and control. Shall we then
let India's women work out their problems alone?
Or shall they be enabled to evolve in the light that
Christ can throw upon their problems, in the pres-
ence of the greatest personality this world has
known, God's revelation of what a human life may
be?
The years of greatest opportunity for befriending
the cause of India's womanhood are passing even j
now. Aspiration for nationalism, which has so ;
stirred the men, has fired the hearts of the women i
also. They may not long welcome an "outside in- ,
fluence." Now, however, things are plastic as never
before.
In some instances Indian Christians and mission-
aries have been members, sometimes the originators
and officers, of these women's societies. As such,
they have given abundantly of the fruits of friend-
ship. To some, this may not be what they have con-
sidered missionary service, but in these days work-
ers must ever be alive and flexible in their methods
— as eagerly alert as love itself. Ways of meeting
the human needs of India which were begun sixty
years ago may not all be suited entirely to this day,
and only lack of imagination will keep on working
in the same old way. However, it is not always easy
for missionary women to be sufficiently in touch
with the class of women who are shaping these mod-
ern movements, for there is a problem here. Where
will one's energies count most for the Kingdom?
How much time should one spend in getting into
touch with women who do not want one's aid?
112 Building with India
Where the women in these clubs wish only to be
amused and almost resent instruction, missionaries
often decide to help the poor to work, rather than
the rich to play.
With reference to social reform in general, so co-
lossal are the needs and so entrenched the backward
customs that the struggle is going to be a long one.
Precious as are the effects on mind and conscience
produced by the Indian reform movements, the ac-
tual results on social customs come very slowly.
Seeing India fighting, and fighting against such odds,
in her struggle to change custom and institution and
belief, are we not going to extend the straightfor-
ward help of a friend? All acknowledge the sym-
pathy and support of Christian missionaries in the
past. In fact it may be said that the Indian social
movement is a direct result of Christianity and
Western influence, for the wider conception of the
worth of personality does not come from Hinduism.
Not infrequently, Hindu social reformers have had
to meet the charge that they were playing into the
hands of Christian missionaries.
It will readily be seen, however, that these modern
religious and social movements make actual accept-
ance of membership in our Western Church system
much more difficult. While many who have been at-
tracted by the teaching and work of the missionaries
identify themselves with Christian organizations,
the great majority are content to accept only the
practical lessons and adopt merely the ethics of
Jesus. Hence, the churches receive relatively few
additions from the higher castes. Yet, neverthe-
less. Christian ideas and standards are rapidly
Striving and Aspiration 113
spreading. High moral and social standards which
a few decades ago were associated solely with Chris-
tianity have now become the accepted standard of
public opinion. Hence, Hindu social and religious
reformers have been diffusing the idea that eyil cus-
toms and superstitions are not of the essence of the .
Hindu religion. This is a great tribute to the in-
fluence of Christianity, but at the same time it de-
prives it of one of its major assets in its evangelistic
appeal.
In Alexander Duff's time there were no half-way
places between unpurged Hinduism and Christian-
ity. Educated men were not defending and inter- 1
preting their old religions, and Hinduism had no^
modern leaders. The decision before a serious and
awakened Hindu was whether Christianity or ag-
nosticism was to be his path. This is undoubtedly
one reason for the contrast between Duff's brilliant
galaxy of high-caste converts and the dearth of
modern baptisms in mission colleges. It was about
the year 1870 that intelligent Indians began to
search for a spiritual basis for a new India in their
own scriptures. As a consequence, there are now
some forty different societies representing various
stages of break with orthodox Hinduism and from
which a discontented Hindu may now choose. No
one need any longer become a Christian merely in /
order to dine or marry outside his caste.
Is this trend toward the Christianization of public
opinion and effort in India really a drawback to mis-
sionary work? Or is this a result for which we
should be devoutly thankful ; one, indeed, which we
may well have expected as a natural outcome of
1X4 Building with India
Christianity's approach to India? May it be pos-
sible that Hinduism, under the impact of a develop-
ing Christian Church, can slough off many of its evil
superstitious accretions and still remain essential
Hinduism? Should we be glad for any ethical and
social progress in India apart from a frank and full
acceptance of Christ's Saviorship? Granted that
India's efforts to help herself have led to reform
movements within her own religions which have
made conversion to Christianity more difficult to-
day, can you still be enthusiastic over India's efforts
to help herself? Can it be that the creation of public
sentiment sympathetic with Christian ideals for in-
dividual and social life is simply one stage, from
which the next step may be taken — a Christian wit-
ness to the way in which the basal spiritual hunger
and urge may be met and satisfied? Surely India's
social reformers and political leaders, awakened and
inspired by the West, have a right to our continued
help and encouragement. Above all, have they a
right to that Life to whom we directly trace our
most precious blessings and truest progress, a Life
that perhaps in new and unexpected ways we may
now commend with poignancy and power to aspir-
ing, yearning, and prophetic spirits among India's
needy folk.
Prayer
At the end of this chapter, where we have been look-
ing at India's endeavor to help herself, it is fitting that
we should follow two of her own great prayers.
dFrom the unreal lead me to the Real, from the
darkness lead me to Light, from death lead me to
Immortality.
Brihad-Aranyaka Unpanishad,
1-3-28 {600 B. C.)
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held
high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken into fragments
by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arm toward per-
fection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever-
widening thought and action;
Into that heaven of Freedom, my Father, let my
country awake.
— Rabindranath Tagore
115
CHAPTER FOUR
Cooperation of the Christian West
I
In a day when the nations of the earth are awak-
ening to the claims of^brotherhood, and when inter-
national trust and goodwill are being stressed as
the'great way to peace and prosperity, people are be-
ginning to recognize foreign missions as one of the
most effective movements in human history. Inter-
nationalism has been implicit in Christianity from
the beginning. Its service, its message, its salvation
could not be confined to individual, to family, or to
community, but must grasp nothing less than the
whole world. In it has been an impulsive power
that has sent forth a noble succession of devoted
men and women who left Western shores to spend
their lives in behalf of the peoples of other lands.
India is rich in missionary heroes, and in these
lives the Church has a great storehouse of inspiring
example and accomplishment. There is Francis
Xavier, who, when he started to India in 1542 to be-
come the founder of Roman Catholic missions there,
abstained from interviewing his widowed mother
and much loved sister lest he should be tempted to
draw back. We see him later living for over a year
among the lowcaste Paravas, on rice and water,
spending sometimes twenty-one hours a day in
prayer and work, and habitually calling the children
together in each new village, by means of his bell,
in order to teach them. Although Xavier, as a
Jesuit, used many methods of which we would not
116
Cooperation of the Christian West 117
approve, it is not surprising that to this day Chris-
tians gather under the banyan tree which he planted
at Rameswaram to mingle the name of this de-
voted, courageous, indefatigable worker with their
prayers.
In contrast with the welcome accorded to modern
recruits is the way the delicate Ziegenbalg was ter-
ribly opposed by the Danish authorities when he
landed in Tranquebar in 1706. The Governor, after
pouring contempt upon the new arrival, withdrew
with his council and chaplain into the fort, leaving
Ziegenbalg and his companion alone in the market-
square. The sun had set, the streets were dark, the
strangers knew not which way to turn, but watched
and waited under the silent stars — ^the first Protes-
tant missionaries to stand on Indian soil.
Another early missionary, whose name still per-
vades the Tamil country like a perfume, was
Christian Friedrich Schwartz (1726-1797). For over
fifty years without return to Europe, he went in and
out among the people, visiting palace and hut alike,
comforting dying soldiers, acting as envoy to
Haider Ali or as the trusted advisor of the Raja of
Tan j ore. He found time to teach in a day-school
and prepare people for baptism even when occupy-
ing the most influential public post. There was a
simple goodness, an unmistakable purity, a capacity
for friendship about his life that won thousands to
Jesus Christ.
Modern Protestant missions in India date from
1793 when William Carey landed in Calcutta. It
would surprise some present-day enthusiasts for
social and economic betterment to survey the pro-
ii8 Building with India
gram of this leader of Serampore's great trio —
Carey, Marshman, aiid Ward. He believed that
every Indian needed individual salvation from sin
and a deep and personal Christian experience. This
conviction took him to India and gave dynamic force
to all his service there. His great work in Bible
translation, publication, preaching, and teaching
demonstrate this. But few personalities in history
can surpass this one-time cobbler as a powerful cen-
ter from which issued streams of social influence,
also. Over a hundred years ago Carey was studying
the natural history of India, laying out experimental
gardens, importing all sorts of vegetable, flower, and
fruit seeds, introducing scythes, sickles, plow-wheels,
and other conveniences, advocating good cattle, and
founding "The Agricultural and Horticultural So-
ciety in India." He manufactured indigo, made
printing type, devised new methods of paper manu-
facture, started the first newspaper, and erected
the first steam-engine in India. Such was the breadth
of conception of the Christian task of one who could
write to his son who had just entered missionary
service in India: "Should you, after many years*
labor, be instrumental in the conversion of only one
soul, it would be worth the work of a whole life."
Henry Martyn, the brilliant Cambridge student
who gave up ambitions of the bar for love of India,
so burned with compassion in prayer and effort "for
men that, when he died at the early age of thirty-
two, on his tombstone was placed the inscription in
four languages, "One who was known in the East as
a man of God."
Those great hymns of the Church, "Holy, Holy,
Cooperation of the Christian West iig
Holy, Lord God Almighty," "The Son of God Goes
Forth to War," and "From Greenland's Icy Moun-
tains," were given us by a missionary of the Church
of England in India — Bishop Reginald Heber. There
was John C. Lowrie who landed in Calcutta in 1833.
Within a month of his arrival he buried his young
wife, but alone and undiscouraged he pushed up the
Ganges to Cawnpore, and then by palanquin four
hundred miles overland to found the first mission of
the American Presbyterian Church in India and the
first Christian mission of the Punjab. In 1856
William Butler laid the foundation of the great
American Methodist missions in India, through
which, before his death, one hundred thousand peo-
ple accepted Christ as Lord. Bishop J. M. Thoburn
gave more than five decades to India and left a
record of masterful Christian statesmanship.
The Lone Star Mission has its story of courageous
faith. In 1862, after twenty-eight years of almost
fruitless labor, an attempt was being made for the
third time to abandon it. It was Jewett, on fur-
lough from the Baptist Telugu Mission, who was im-
movable, declined to be sent to another field, and de-
clared his intention to go back and live — if need be,
die — among the Telugus. Not many years passed
until this mission was in the midst of one of the
greatest movements toward Christianity that India
has seen. Prayer Meeting Hill in this mission em-
bodies one secret of its power. On this hill-crest,
hallowed by many times of prayer, Canadian and
American Baptists were gathered together on one
occasion, and the caste people looking up from be-
low exclaimed, "Their God is hovering over them.
120 Building with India
Our opposition is useless. They are bound to con-
quer."
Often the cost has been great. Graves of brave
wives and little children tell a story of the climate's
toll. The heartache of separation between parent
and child, and the heroism of homeless student days
are keenly felt, but there is an urge that sends them
on. Mary Reed has stimulated thousands to prayer
and to greater consecration. It was in 1891 that
this young American missionary suddenly awak-
ened to the appalling fact that she had contracted
leprosy while in India. Taking this as a sign of
God's will for her life, she has, even to the present
time, devoted her life to work among the lepers.
At the heart of the missionary enterprise is' the
conviction that the greatest need of mankind is to
know God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent. Its
passionate yearning is that others should have the
experience of the priceless treasure that is in Him.
It is the impulsion to share Jesus Christ that above
all other things leads to the determination, heroism,
and sacrifice that characterize the Christian enter-
prise of world friendship. Two marked results of
mission work in India; viz., the mass movements
and the Indian Church, are treated in the next two
chapters. Here let us look at what missions have
accomplished in other lines and see where mission-
ary cooperation is still needed.
II
An imposing amount of educational work is car-
ried on by missions in India. There are 34 colleges
in which one sixth of all the college youth of India
Cooperation of the Christian West i2i
study; 780 secondary schools with 94,099 pupils; 91
industrial training institutions with 5,597 pupils;
12,173 elementary and village schools with 462,818
pupils ; and 58 kindergartens with 2,008 pupils.^
For this educational work, the Christian West has
sent to India throughout the years a galaxy of bril-
liant leaders. Imagination takes us back to a quiet
room in St. Andrews University, where one who
later became one of India's greatest educationists
sat one evening peering into the flickering embers of
his hearth-fire, surrounded by his beloved books. A
brilliant career lay before this young Scotch scholar
who had taken honors in Greek, Latin, logic, and
natural philosophy. His thoughts, however, were
not on himself. Presently he rose and knelt in
prayer. Alexander Duff was making his decision
for India. Next morning, with new purpose in
his heart, he smiled at the many rows of books, for
these were friends which had become part of his
life and from which India need not separate him.
But alas, on a wild night, some months later, his ves-
sel, India bound, was wrecked among the rocks off
the South African coast. All of his thousand books
were lost except two wrapped in chamois leather
which were washed up on the shore — a quarto copy
of the Bible and a Scottish Psalm Book. With un-
hesitating faith and indomitable energy. Duff
pressed on to his great work of inaugurating a new
type of religious appeal to the intellectual Brahman
through English education.
Following Duff came Miller of Madras, Wilson of
Bombay, Ewing of Lahore, and many others. One
^World Statistics of Christian Missions, 1916.
122 Building with India
after the other, Christian colleges were placed in
great centers such as Madras, Bombay, Madura,
Calcutta, Indore, Allahabad, Lucknow, Agra, and
Lahore, until now they number thirty-four. Sys-
tematic religious instruction is given daily in these
institutions to the future leaders. Many strict Hin-
dus send their boys to these colleges because of their
high moral and religious atmosphere. From these
student groups and from those in the high schools,
most of the converts from the high castes have come.
Another far-reaching result is the way in which the
colleges permeate the educated classes, otherwise
difficult to reach, with a knowledge of Christianity.
The first schools for women in all India were
started by missionaries in direct opposition to pub-
lic sentiment and the teachings of India's religions.
Their example and attainments have been so illumi-
nating and significant that they have become a
source of inspiration to India to attempt her im-
mense task of securing a literate womanhood. Al-
though the majority of the Christian community has
in general been drawn from the depressed classes,
the proportion of its female population under in-
struction is five times that for Hindus and eight
times that for Muhammadans. An immense amount
of patient, steady, faithful service has gone into
this work, especially in the boarding-schools with
their unceasing demands. Eliza Agnew of the
American Board, who resolved to become a mission-
ary while studying geography in school, was the
first unmarried woman sent to Ceylon. She pio-
neered and managed a school for forty-three years
without once returning to America for furlough.
Cooperation of the Christian West 123
She has been called "the mother of a thousand chil-
dren," and it is said that every girl who took a full
course under her became a Christian.
The first Christian college for women in Asia
came as the result of the quiet, steady conviction of
Isabella Thoburn that the women of India should be
educated under direct Christian influence. The
work begun in Lucknow in 1870 in a one-roomed
day-school, grew into a boarding and high school
with large enrolment and widespread influence.
College classes were opened in 1886, and in 1919 it
was made a union institution, two mission societies
cooperating. In 1915 twelve mission boards in Brit-
ain, United States, and Canada united in creating
the Woman's Christian College, Madras. Miss
Eleanor McDougall, a gifted member of the faculty
of London University, after having refused a post
with generous salary under the government of In-
dia, accepted the presidency of this institution so
full of hope for the womanhood of south India. Two
professions especially; namely, teaching and medi-
cine, are urgently in need of Indian women recruits.
These two colleges are helping to meet this need, as
well as sending out workers for the Young Women's
Christian Association and the home. Wherever the
graduates go, they manifest spiritual and intellec-
tual leadership.
Even vaster than the tasks assumed by missions
in higher education is their effort to stimulate pri-
mary education. The average village school is held
in a mud-walled building or on the veranda of the
teacher's house or out under the shade of a tree. The
equipment often consists of nothing more than a
124 Building with India
table and chair for the teacher, matting for the
pupils, a black-board, registers, and clock. Some-
times in order to keep up the attendance it is nec-
essary to threaten the parents with the removal of
even this meager equipment. Not half of the twenty
pupils may possess a book, for the parents are not
able to purchase one. A few fortunate urchins have
a slate, but the slate-pencil may be not more than
one inch long. It is on the mud floors of such village
schools that the educational battle is to be lost or
won in India. There are over 12,000 of these ele-
mentary and village mission schools to which almost
half a million pupils come. It may be truly said,
therefore, that Christian education has left its mark
on the whole development of education in India.
Throughout modern times it has been an important
factor, and its contribution has been recognized by
Government.
Missions must not relax their educational efforts
in this hour of India's greatest need. She is the
largest country thus far to be launched on a serious
definite, progressive plan for responsible self-gov-
ernment. She is in the midst of the experiment —
and experiment it is, for her divisions of race, caste,
religion, and language are wider and deeper than
those of any other land. Only eighteen millions out
of her three hundred and seventeen millions can
read, and the present electorate includes only six
millions. From the standpoint of nationalism, edu-
cation manifestly is one of India's greatest needs.
But from the standpoint of the Kingdom, Chris-
tian education is of central importance. If India
is to become a life-center through which God can
o
OS
,0
2 .0
o
o
o
o
3
s
c ^
*» c
•- o
Cooperation of the Christian West 125
express Himself in creative ways, Christian leader-
ship and a Christian society are primary essentials.
Both of these necessitate the Christian school.
Through it Christians are trained to take their
places as leaders with the Christian ideal in the
political, social, and moral betterment of India.
Upon it largely rests the development of an educated
Christian Church able to support the Christian
cause by its money and efforts. It is not surprising,
therefore, that from one third to one half of all
money spent on missions goes to education of one
kind or another.
One of the most difficult and pressing questions
which Indian missions are now facing is raised by
the agitation for a "conscience clause" in our mis-
sion schools. According to a policy begun in 1854,
a large proportion of our schools receive a consider-
able part of their expenses from government grants-
in-aid. Hindus are beginning to claim that since
these grants come out of public taxes, their children
should not be compelled to listen to Christian teach-
ing. The demand is clearly associated with the
growth of the national movement, and it is a seri-
ous thing for missions to be thought to be antagonis-
tic to this national spirit. In general, missionaries
admit that this claim is just in single-school areas
where the parents have no option except to send
their children to a school where Christianity is reg-
ularly taught. In such cases, mission managers as a
rule agree that if objection to religious instruction
is conscientiously made by parents, they should
either allow such exception or give up their grants-
in-aid. But the general consensus of missionary
126 Building with India
opinion thus far does not favor the "conscience
clause" when the parent has a choice of school or
college.
The question is entirely too complicated to discuss
in full here. Only an indication of the variety of
factors in the problem can be given. On the one
side it is claimed that Government does not depart
from its policy of religious neutrality in giving
grants to mission schools, for grants are also given
to schools where Hinduism and Muhammadanism
are taught, and that therefore there ic no moral diffi-
culty involved ; that the demand does not come from
the parents, but from the anti-Christian agitators
who would bring pressure to bear upon those who
really have no desire to withdraw their children
from Christian instruction ; and that mission educa-
tion aims at bringing all pupils into contact with
varied sources of quickening power and that it
would stultify us to treat the witness to Jesus Christ
as optional when we regard it as the very essence of
the service these schools seek to render to the youth
of India.
Other missionaries urge that Americans would
not agree that taxes should go to schools in which a
particular religion is inculcated; that since educa-
tion has been turned over to Indian control, Indians
will very likely compel the acceptance of a con-
science clause anyway as a condition of receiving
grants, and that it would therefore be better to yield
before an embittered struggle develops ; that the ac-
tual Bible teaching would reach a higher level if the
hearing were not demanded through compulsory
attendance; and that the whole conception of com-
Cooperation of the Christian West 127
pulsory teaching of the faith of Jesus Christ is un-
wise since religion is something to be caught, not
taught — a friendship and way of life rather than
primarily a set of dogmas.
A second great problem for our missionary edu-
cators in India is to determine the place of Chris-
tian education in a rapidly growing state system.
Conditions are changing, and missions retain no
longer the unique position of pioneering. The
spread of public education must inevitably diminish
the relative share of the educational burden borne
by missionary effort, even though the actual num-
ber of missionary schools and the enrolment in
these should markedly increase. Does this mean
that Christian education is not to retain a vital and
even an increasing influence in the development of
India?
The answer is given in the life of Pastor Santiagu.
Fifty years ago he was a small boy in one of
India's illiterate, poverty-stricken, outcaste vil-
lages. His home was a thatched mud-hovel amid
people despised as carrion eaters — ^the off-scouring
of India's caste system. From such a background,
Santiagu went to a village school. He was selected
for further training in a boarding-school where he
lived under the earnest care of the missionary. Then
came a partial college course, followed by theologi-
cal seminary — each step upward in a mission insti-
tution.
Years later there came a time when the mission-
ary in charge had to leave Battalagundu near Ma-
dura. There were five churches and over twenty
i2» Building with India
congregations besides nineteen schools served by
thirty-five Indian workers. Santiagu was chosen to
superintend this work. When the evangelistic cam-
paign was on a few years ago, Santiagu was set
apart from his important pastorate to pass from one
town to another, organizing the evangelistic bands,
training the leaders, outlining the policy, and every-
where inspiring the workers to a new earnestness.
Furthermore, he was recognized by non-Chris-
tians as the greatest force for righteousness in his
town. The people, though largely Brahman, elected
him mayor of the town because they considered him
the leader of the practical affairs of the district.
Even India's exclusive high-caste groups see that
Christian education has just this faith and power —
to take men from the mire and in one lifetime fit
them for spiritual and community service. A de-
christianized national education can never make
this peculiar and highly desirable contribution to
the life of India.
Such a life is an illustration of the vital contribu-
tion Christian education can make to India and an
evidence that it can produce a more dynamic person-
ality, a finer, higher type of character than any
other kind. What else could be true since in Christ
we find our way to God and realize God's way to us,
and in Him, moreover, we find the highest manifes-
tation of the character and nature and power of our
Father. The Christian Church can no longer com-
pete in quantity of education provided, but it should
bend every energy and use every resource to insure
that the Christian quality of education is set on a
hill in India. The opportunity to leave an inefface-
Cooperation of the Christian West 129
able mark on the education of India now lies, not in
numbers, but in a type.
Frankly, this will not be adequately accomplished
unless we give much more support to our schools.
Missionary educators are asking for recruits who
will bring to bear upon their task all that is best in
modern educational theory and practice. They are
asking for more adequate staffs so that our schools
may be more pervasively Christian. They are call-
ing for teachers with spiritual aims broad enough to
recognize and serve the needs of family, community,
vocational, church, and national life.
In the training of teachers to impart this Chris-
tian type of education with its emphasis on the for-
mation of character, faith in the accessible and
available resources of God, initiative for community
welfare, and a true and wholesome outlook on life is
found our greatest opportunity to help India educa-
tionally. In training women teachers, especially, a
surpassing service can be rendered. India will have
to starve educationally, and continue to struggle on
with its overwhelming problem of illiteracy, with
only men teachers in the village schools, until chiv-
alry is developed toward women who do not live
under the protection of zenanas. But it is easier
for Christian women to break over binding conven-
tions than for Hindu and Muhammadan women. Al-
ready some girls are being trained as teachers in
the normal classes added to high schools or even to
grammar schools. It is clear, however, that the
relatively small efforts being made at present should
be greatly increased. Non-Christian schools and
government schools, as well as our own mission
130 Building with India
schools, are eager to secure trained teachers. The
Christian teacher — and especially the Christian
woman teacher in India — has a place of great in-
fluence. Why should not the Christian friends of
the West have the initiative to place one or more
well-equipped women's training schools in every
province? Such schools afford a great opportunity
for union effort.
We may well ask ourselves whether we have the
faith and vision to be India's helper at this point of
sore need. Are we raising up in our homes children
who have a vital, living, expectant experience of
God? Do they know the springs of character and
of personality? Are they themselves on fire for the
triumph of Christ's spirit in every personal and
social relationship? Are some of them mastering
the profession of education ? From such young peo-
ple must come those through whom we are to make
our educational contribution to the Orient.
Ill
Face to face with India's poverty, missionaries
have inevitably addressed themselves to the task of
making possible a fuller, more abundant life
through economic betterment. Modern missionaries
do not feel that they can escape the battle with
the human needs of India any more than could
William Carey. In justification of his efforts to bet-
ter the welfare of India's peasantry, he said, "Few
who are extensively acquainted with human life, will
esteem these cares either unworthy of religion or
incongruous with its highest enjoyment."
The experiments being made are manifold. In
Cooperation of the Christian West 131
the Telugu area one missionary has started a dairy
farm, imported a cream separator, demonstrated
the value of scientific feeding, and turned the farm
over to an Indian Christian. Another, in western
India, has improved the Indian loom so that, while
still reparable by the village carpenter, the people
can turn out fifty per cent more cloth. Another, in
the United Provinces, has procured for his garden
high quality mango trees from which grafts are
sold to Christians — one of his attempts to provide
subsidiary industries. Much has been accomplished
through the advocacy of the use of silos, the prac-
tice of trenching, and seed selection.
Lace-making, introduced into Ireland during the
potato famine and now indigenous, has been started
by missionary women in various parts of India,
bringing with it the necessity for cleaner hands,
cleaner dresses, and cleaner houses. In Ceylon one
mission has arranged for marriage clothes and
jewels that can be rented. In Tinnevelly a higher
rate of marriage fee is charged by the officiating pas-
tor if the parents have indulged in the luxury of a
band. At Ahmednagar a church coffin may be bor-
rowed by the poor. The attempt is thus made to
help the people to help themselves and so increase
their ability to support their families, their schools,
and their churches.
In many centers the Christians are so poor that
missions formally recognize that no lasting spiritual
progress can be made without taking the economic
conditions into account. At the Baptist Telugu
Conference (1919), it was resolved that there
should be established a Bureau for inquiring into
132 Building with India
the economic welfare of their people, and reporting
constructive measures of relief to Government.
The American Board's mission at Madura has a
permanent standing Committee on Economic Wel-
fare, whose chairman is the professor of economics
in the mission college at Madura. The body coor-
dinating all missions in India has a Committee on
Industrial and Agricultural Work. The program of
this committee includes the preparation of memo-
randa on such questions as the relation of the educa-
tional, moral, and religious aim to economic necessi-
ties; the place of cooperative credit societies for
missions dealing with rural problems; how to in-
augurate and develop such societies ; how to conduct
an economic survey; reports on economic surveys
already made; information concerning govern-
ment literature on industry and agriculture; re-
ports of successful experiments made in connection
with special problems; and the problem of urban
employment and the need of hostels in this connec-
tion.
When one stops theorizing and tries to help a peo-
ple under actual conditions of life, an indomitable
faith has to be added to creative ability. It would
seem easy to introduce chicken raising. But it will
be found that chickens are easily stolen, that petty
officials on tour unlawfully demand them without
pay, or if they are to be profitable, an old woman
must be found too weak to "do coolie," but strong
enough to look after chickens. Women are kept
busy grinding grain and pounding rice — work that
could be done cooperatively for the whole village by
a machine; but the men would then complain that
Cooperation of the Christian West 133
their women had nothing to do. It would seem very-
practical to add the fly shuttle to the village looms.
But just the twenty-eight inches required to catch
the shuttle would necessitate rebuilding all the
weavers* huts of the district.
One can easily secure a plow that will turn a deeper
furrow than the century-old Indian variety, but
how would you answer the farmer who complains
that the new model is too heavy to bring home on his
shoulder at night, and that it cannot be repaired by
the village blacksmith? He will very likely com-
plain that it requires the use of both hands to guide
it, that an extra pair of oxen must be yoked up to
pull it, or that the initial cost is prohibitive. By no
means least important is the fact that an imported
model is too long for him to reach forward and
guide the oxen by means of twisting their tails. All
these difficulties were taken into consideration by
D. W. Griffen, an American missionary, who had
specialized in agricultural tools and machinery in
the United States, and who in his work at the Alla-
habad Agricultural Institute set himself to the task
of adapting Indian implements to the needs of better
farming. After persistent experimentation extend-
ing into thirty different models, he evolved one
which is light, cheap, easily repaired and which,
while going only about four inches deep, has a cut-
ting edge, digs a square furrow, turns the sod over,
and stays in the ground without effort — ^none of
which the Indian plow does. This new model is
known all over India as the Scindia plow. A gen-
eral principle is well illustrated here. The first step
upward is not in the introduction of our advanced
134 Building with India
types of machinery, but the invention of pumps,
barrows, and other machinery just a step beyond
India's present stage.
It is possible to coach some of the Christian ten-
ant farmers in gardening so that the monetary value
of the yield is greatly increased. But it upsets all
calculations to have the rent go up, as actually did
occur in a given case, from Rs. 8 to Rs. 12 the second
year, and to Rs. 16 the third year. Something more
has to be done so that the landlord will not absorb
all the gain of better methods. It may be possible
to get a little land upon which Christians can be set-
tled, but even if it is not soon alienated to non-Chris-
tians, what of the insatiable land hunger created in
hundreds of homes by the few who have been
placed? So disastrous in certain places has been
the effect on the spiritual work of placing a limited
number of Christians on land, that some mission-
aries say they will never again attempt it. An indus-
trial school may be started, but it was found in one
center that twenty-five out of thirty pupils after
leaving school did not pursue the handicrafts
learned. A missionary endeavoring to establish a co-
operative credit society in some village has had all
but the last form filled up and signed when the sus-
picion of the people reasserted itself, and the project
was blocked until they could be put in the right
humor again.
I shall never forget the series of persistent efforts
which the head of a Converts' Home made before
practical and profitable industries could be discov-
lered. It seemed natural to suppose that a widow
\who had been accustomed in her Hindu home to
Cooperation of the Christian West 135
earn money by hammering metal links together into
a neck chain, should continue such work. But, to
the disappointment of the superintendent, it was
found that, as she had become a Christian, none of
her former employers would give her work. A
sewing-machine was bought for making jackets and
other clothing. But the Muhammadan tailors could
work better and more cheaply, and so this industry
did not last long. Friends in Calcutta, six miles
away, urged them to make good, plain cakes. Regu-
lar orders came in, and there seemed hope for a
profit. But the women were not clever, they did
not understand whether the cakes were "heavy" or
"light," as they never eat such things, so that some-
times a whole batch was spoiled in the making, and
thus the profit was nothing.
Lace-making was introduced, as there was known
to be a great demand for good lace ; but the women's
fingers were clumsy, they could only make a few
inches a day, and hence could not compete with those
who had nimble fingers. Fine drawn-thread work
and handkerchief -making were tried; but these
once-Hindu women had never used their eyes for
any close work, not even reading ; consequently their
eyes gave them much trouble, and they frequently
had to be taken to the eye hospital for spectacles
and treatment. An added difficulty lay in the char-
acter of the women. For they were not naturally
industrious and sometimes feigned or exaggerated
sickness in order to avoid work.
Successful industries, however, were at last found.
By a happy thought they began to make mango chut-
ney for. export to England, and ever since it was
136 Building with India
first tried, this has continued to be a paying indus-
try. To this was added the making of jams and of
curry powder. For guava jelly, orange marma-
lade, and Cape gooseberry jam, a good sale was
found in the neighborhood of Calcutta.
At the suggestion of their gatekeeper, they began
to make Mirzapur carpets. The work was easy and
mechanical, so that the women and children learned
it quickly and were able to produce handsome rugs.
In order to save on the price of wool, they set about
learning how to dye wool, so that now they can buy
wool off the backs of sheep and make it up into
beautiful rugs. Needlework and the making of
necklaces from seeds were successfully introduced
for those who could do this work.
In such ways missions are patiently and steadily
working at the problems of India's uplift, which, to
one without Christian faith, might at first seem
baffling and overwhelming. Missionaries are show-
ing that the Oriental mind is not inscrutable, that it
is capable of adopting change, and that intelligence
with administrative ability can secure progress.
Above air, they are" demonstrating anew that the
spirit of Christ makes people free and impels them
to work their way out of degrading conditions.
IV
India's great need for medical and sanitary as-
sistance has, from the first, enlisted mission effort.
Today in over five hundred centers, mission doctors
and nurses in hospital or dispensary show forth the
love of Christ. Pain is relieved, the sick are healed,
the lepers cared for. Every cure is an object les-
Cooperation of the Christian West 137
son. When a Christian village is inoculated for
plague so that death passes by on either side leav-
ing this village immune, a blow is given to ingrained
fatalism. When death-rates are manifestly lowered,
a more optimistic faith begins to take the place of
pessimism. It will be long before government efforts
will overtake the widespread needs in this field;
hence the help of missions is still urgentlyjieiiUJuced---
In Chapter Two we saw some of the physical
handicaps of India. To illustrate still further the
urgent need of medical missions, let us look with
some detail at conditions surrounding Indian moth- j
erhood.^ One out of every seventy women die in i
childbirth in India. The appalling mortality of
mothers and infants is mentioned in almost every
health officer's report. Back of the high mortality
at this time are various preventable causes. There
is the widespread belief that a woman at the time
of childbirth is ceremonially unclean, more defiling
than the lowest outcastes. This belief determines
many of the conditions. It becomes manifestly ab-
surd to use anything clean, and so the oldest, filthi-
est rags are often hoarded for this occasion. The
dai, one of India's untrained hereditary midwives,
when summoned, will put off the ordinary, none too
clean dress and put on soiled clothes which likely
have not been washed since the previous case. For
the same reason, the room used must be one that
other members of the household do not need to use,
and in practice it is a hovel outside. In some parts
of India the girl's mother may enter the room, pro-
vided she undergoes certain ceremonial cleansing
^Cf. Lankester, Arthur, M. D., Tuberculosis in India.
138 Building with India
afterwards, but in the majority of cases the mother's
presence is forbidden.
Another injurious belief is that fresh air is
dangerous both for mother and child. It is firmly-
held that puerperal fever comes from exposure or
chill, and hence great care is taken to exclude fresh
air. Even in hot weather the door and window — if
there be one — will be tightly shut, every opening
closed with old clothes, and a charcoal fire placed
inside, still further vitiating the air.
The need of reform in native midwifery is un-
questioned by those who know the facts. Unclean
in habits, careless in work, often callous to suffer-
ing, bold in treatment with courage born of crass ig-
norance, the midwife brings untold mischief to her
patients. Under the present conditions, the profes-
sion is limited to women of the lowest class. Fur-
thermore, there is an hereditary system by which a
given dai deems it to be her right to look after a
limited group of families, and this rules out compe-
tition.
The patient is usually left unbathed for from six
to thirteen days. During this time her diet is re-
stricted, milk in any form being forbidden. At
such a time water is given most sparingly. There
are thousands of children blind today in India whose
eyesight would have been saved had there been pres-
ent at birth someone who knew the importance of
carefully cleansing the eyes of the new-born infant
and thus preserving it from a common form of se-
vere ophthalmia.
Now it should be remembered that these things
are done not to torture the young mother, but with
Cooperation of the Christian West 139
the sincere belief that they will minister to her best
good and to that of the child. The people do try to
take precautions, as when the leaves of the akh are
thrown on the house at childbirth to keep away evil
spirits. But their measures are not scientific. This
is all the greater reason why we should share the
modern knowledge that we have. Especially is there
a call today in India for the relief of the sufferings
of women and of the terrible wastage of infant
life. "Ah," said a Hindu woman, "your God must be
a very good God to send a doctor to the women.
None of our gods ever sent us a doctor." A change
is bound to come eventually, but the opportunity of
immensely accelerating the progress is ours today.
Why not use India's conditions of health as a test
case for ourselves? "If anyone has this world's
wealth and sees that his fellow man is in need, and
yet hardens his heart against him — how can such
a one continue to love God?"
John Scudder, while still a physician in New
York, met this test when, as the result of reading a
pamphlet lent him by a patient, he made the decision
that led him to go to India in 1820 as the first Ameri-
can medical missionary. Later he gave seven sons
and ten grandchildren to missionary work. Clara
Swain did not harden her heart when in 1869 she
went out as the first woman medical missionary to
India. The test was met by Margaret MacKellar
who, in order to serve India's sick and plague
stricken people, left her post in the millinery depart-
ment of a store, and, though twenty-two years of
age, took her seat in school with boys and girls in the
eighth grade in order to begin again her education.
140 Building with India
Later came a medical course in Queens University,
Canada, postgraduate work in London, and years
later, in 1911, the honor of being the first woman to
receive the Kaisar-i-Hind medal for distinguished
service to India.
Pennell of the Afghan frontier^ went out to In-
dia in 1892, under the Church Missionary Society.
I love to recall his tall, handsome figure clothed so
like a frontiersman that many would not detect his
foreign birth. One day amid the frowning preci-
pices and towering ranges of the Himalayas, two Af-
ghan mountaineers, hidden by tangled masses of un-
dergrowth, awaited in ambush their enemy, Chikki
(the Lifter) , a desperate freebooter chieftain whose
mountain fortress was at the head of a great, wild,
gorge near by. Each man fondled a beautiful mau-
ser rifle fitted with modern sighting apparatus. Sud-
denly a cavalcade of twenty horsemen emerged from
a distant wood and cantered up the mountain road.
Both rifles were raised and covered the figure riding
at the head, a well-knit man in Afghan costume and
with tanned and bearded face. Their fingers had
almost pulled the triggers when one knocked up his
companion's gun and whispered, "Hold, brother, it
is the Doctor Sahib, Pennell of Bannu. He rides on
the business of Allah."
Illness had broken out in Chikki's household, and
hence Pennell had been summoned to this wild out-
law's mountain fortress. After ministering to the
need, although he knew the cruel treachery of his
*Dr. Pennell's life story Among the Wild Tribes of the
Frontier is full of interest and incident. A Hero of the
Afghan Frontier is written especially for boys.
J3
o
C8
S *^
O IS
o *
us
J3
o
Q.
O.
P
CO
2 ^
O 4)
be
"So
-a
bfl o
:;3 o
a.
l|
"I
c4
Cooperation of the Christian West 141
host, and although Chikki's fanatical Mullah
(priest) was present, Pennell said, "I want to tell
you of the message it is my glory to proclaim." And
then he laid a Pashtu translation of the Gospels be-
fore the Chief, and, turning to the fifth chapter of
the Gospel of Matthew, read the Sermon on the
Mount and spoke of the Lord Jesus Christ as the
Friend and Savior of mankind.
For over twenty years, on innumerable tours,
with absolute fearlessness, this heroic servant of
Jesus Christ lived out the spirit of his Master. We
are told that in one year Dr. Pennell passed no
fewer than 34,000 cases through his hospital, over
8,000 patients were visited in their homes, and there
were over 3,000 operations — all with a staff of four
men and one woman. When Pennell lay dying from
enteric, the entire Afghan borderland was stirred
with the news, and people gathered from every
quarter. One had been found by the doctor on the
wayside, nearly killed by a vicious horse and help-
less with a broken shoulder. Others had come
through Pennell's school and had taken part
in some famous cricket or football match into which
he had tried to put the best ideals of British school-
boy life. All loved him, for his life had been lived
for them.
In less spectacular, but no less heroic ways, four
hundred trained men and women in mission service
are ministering to India's medical need. Increas-
ingly the work is not merely remedial, but preven-
tive, removing the causes. In many a center busy
doctors pressed with work are finding time to train
nurses and assistants who go forth to meet the needs
142 Building with India
of their own people. At certain mission centers
formal medical education is available. One such
center is the Women's Union Medical Missionary
School at Vellore in south India, to which six mis-
sion boards contribute. The graduates of such
schools have no easy path before them for they go
forth to battle with superstition, ignorance, and dis-
trust. However, when once they win a position of
confidence, these Christian women doctors are able
to serve India as no foreign women can do. From
such will come the leaders of movements for better
food, the better care of babies, and better sanita-
tion. This training of leaders, whether among the
men or women, affords a fascinating and far-reach-
ing opportunity. By all such practical modern
methods Christian missions are further demonstrat-
ing Christ's valuation of the individual human life.
V
Missionaries have unquestionably been the pio-
Tipprs nf sft^'f},] rpfnrm. AH missionaries are in ef-
f ect social workers. Evidence of the broad social re-
sults of Christian influence was given in Chapter
Three. We may confidently assert that the teach-
ing, efforts, and example coming forth from Christ
started the streams of social activity flowing in In-
dia, and we rejoice that these movements are be-
coming indigenous and gaining in strength and
volume daily.
It is very striking that so many Indians con-
sciously recognize that the adventure of social ser-
vice as it crosses every barrier is distinctly Christian
and comes specifically out of Christian principles.
Cooperation of the Christian West 143
A passing traveler was talking with one of
India's leaders of thought and action — a Hindu —
who was describing the way his friends were work-
ing among outcaste people, taking them by the hand
and breaking bread with them. "I suppose such
conduct is enjoined upon you by the Hindu scrip-
tures," the traveler remarked. "The whole of such
influence, as a practical matter," replied the leader,
"comes to us from the West; and moreover, if it
could be conceived that we were to be separated
from contact with these Western influences, that
tendency among us would soon disappear."
Our task requires diversity of operation. Our
message is partly expressed when it is stated ; it is
completed only when it is exemplified, lived, and ap-
plied. Hence missionaries must continue the propa-
ganda of deed as a means of instilling the mean-
ing of the gospel into the minds and hearts of the
world. Social problems bristle on every hand. Chris-
tian missions already unhesitatingly use the evangel-
ist, the teacher, the doctor. Missions of the future
will undoubtedly use trained social workers to study
the local territory, to map it out objectively, to
make its human problems clear and interesting, and
in general to be a source of encouragement to all the
other members of the mission staif in the direction
of such interests. It is significant, for example, that
the British Board of Study for the Preparation of
Missionaries has recently circulated a pamphlet urg-
ing the need for further training in moral hygiene
for all women missionaries, and that in a north
India textile factory, a young man and his wife have
been detailed by their mission (at factory expense)
144 Building with India
to go as welfare workers among the Indian opera-
tives, living within the factory confines.
VI
The ultimate aim of missions is to develop a
world-wide society of Christlike individuals. Their
program is to teach men and women and little chil-
dren the love of God and His purpose for their
lives as revealed in Jesus Christ ; to bring them into
a loving, saving touch with Him; to incarnate His
life and spirit in all personal and social relation-
ships ; and to develop a native leadership which shall
be committed to the Kingdom. In giving help where
the need is greatest, the Christian West finds its
most effective opportunity for witnessing to the
Christ. If we can comprehend India's deepest needs
and most urgent problems and can make a substan-
tial contribution to their solution, we shall be demon-
strating most clearly Christ's power to inspire ser-
vice and to transform life.
In sending out missionaries to India or to any
other land, however, we must by no means think
that upon us lies primary responsibility for complet-
ing the work. Our aim is not so much to get things
done as to help people grow. This does not result
from mere teaching, in the sense of telling others
what is worth doing and how to do it. Along with
this there must be emphasis on self -initiated activ-
ity. To do everything for anyone is only to insure
one thing — ^that you will have to continue thus do-
ing. Since our object is to develop Christians who
will act on their own initiative, it has been the task
of the wise missionary to find ways of calling forth
Cooperation of the Christian West 145
this power and developing it. It is growth through
action that counts. Even at the expense of tempo-
rary failure must the rising churches initiate for
themselves. People there, as well as here, are most
interested in what they themselves have planned
and for which they have worked and sacrificed.
This procedure is all the more necessary because
the new spirit of Indian nationalism has been devel-
oping in Indian Christian leaders a marked restless-
ness under foreign ecclesiastical and administrative
authority. When in the political realm attention
is concentrated on securing more self government,
it has been almost inevitable that foreign author-
ity in church and mission matters should lead to sen-
sitive relationships. A Christian nationalist wants
the Indian Church to be open to Indian currents of
thought and life. At an informal conference of
Indian Christians at Allahabad in 1919, it was de-
clared that "the Church must be given an oppor-
tunity to develop itself on its own lines, keeping in
contact with the national currents. This can be ac-
complished only by allowing the Indian Church it-
self to lay down the policy and be responsible for its
actual carrying out, European man-power, wherever
needed, being subordinated to the Indian organi-
zation that may be evolved for this purpose."
It comes about, therefore, that one of the most
difficult and pressing problems in Indian missions is
the satisfactory transfer of powers and responsi-
bilities from the strong foreign missions to the rela-
tively poor and weak Indian churches. There is
a widespread movement on the part of missions to
turn over more and more responsibility to the In-
146 Building with India
dian Church, and some of the best minds on the mis-
sion field are bending their energies toward this end.
But there is often on the part of Indians impatience
at the slow rate at which this devolution is taking
place. Capable, educated Christian Indians believe
that they could manage a great deal more than that
with which they are at present intrusted. They
point out that in the political realm, power and au-
thority are devolving to the people. In like manner,
in their opinion, more Indian participation in the
work now carried on by missions should in some
way be arranged. Few questions facing Christian
statesmanship in Indian missions are more urgent
than the adjustment of relations between the Indian
Church and foreign missions, and between the In-
dian worker and the European worker.
Very significant of the times was the discussion of
the relations of church and mission at the meeting
of the International Missionary Council held in Oc-
tober, 1921, at Lake Mohonk. It was agreed that a
primary aim of missions is the establishment of an
indigenous Church, and that this aim implies the de-
velopment of responsibility and leadership in this
Church. They recognized that only as this leader-
ship and direction of the Christian movement passes
into native hands can it avoid the disadvantage of
having a foreign character in the eyes of the people.
Hence, various questions were seriously proposed:
whether missionaries should not begin to serve un-
der the direction of the authorities of the native
Church; whether the churches of a given country
should be consulted with regard to the number and
qualifications of the missionaries required by them;
Cooperation of the Christian West 147
whether the expenditure of funds from abroad and
the program of work should be discussed more
largely than at present by nationals and foreigners
meeting together. Still more significant were the
resolutions passed by the National Missionary
Council at Poona in January, 1922. Heretofore the
National Missionary Council as well as the various
Provincial Councils of Missions have been in the
main representative of the mission organizations in
India. It became the unanimous view of the Council
that these bodies should become more representative
of the Indian Church. It was, therefore, recom-
mended that constitutional changes be made insur-
ing that at least half the delegates to each of these
bodies be Indian representatives and that the name
be changed to the National Christian Council of
India, Burma, and Ceylon. The whole question of
transferring responsibility to the indigenous Church
is engaging the earnest attention of our missionaries
abroad and of our boards at home, and a consider-
able advance in this direction has been made in re-
cent years. We must all be prepared to carry out
into every sphere of planning and administration
the logical results of the centric, revolutionary fact
that the indigenous Church is the most efficient ele-
ment in the expansion of Christianity.
The awakened consciousness of nationality is the
most powerful force fo b6 rfiCkuiiyd VVlLTl lUllhy.
There is danger that, in the reaction against foreign
domination. Western ideals, and Western methods,
India may reject the faith that comes to her through
the medium of the West. Already many Indian
patriots are questioning whether the religion of
148 Building with India
Christ is their ally, or whether it is something for-
eign to the genius and needs of India. The impor-
tance of the answer to this question at this crisis in
India's history needs no demonstration. For if the
national spirit should array itself against missions,
opposition would become almost invincible. As
never before, therefore, missionaries are welcoming
Indian initiative, are turning over blocks of work to
their control, and are earnestly attempting to dis-
tinguish between their essential message — ^the eter-
nal truth and life as found in Christ — and the par-
ticular forms and expressions which have grown up
in the West. Indian Christianity must inevitably
express itself in forms of thought and worship dif-
ferent from our own. Our task will be not fully
done until the transformation into the people's
own thought-forms has been completed. There
is a vast difference in attitude between an attempt
to pass on the best we have, and an effort to develop
in India the best of which she is capable.
One may legitimately ask why it is that with so
much of consecration, so many lives poured forth,
so many years of effort, and such prayer, the results
have not been vastly greater. Why is it that India,
among all countries, has proved to be one of the
most difficult mission fields? In a large measure
this is true because of the religious nature of India's
people. Old beliefs and customs have been rooted
in the ancient faith of Hinduism. The warp and
woof of society have been woven out of the religious
teachings of their sacred scriptures, so that we are
dealing with a people who are entrenched in a re-
ligious system to which their hearts cling with fer-
Cooperation of the Christian West 149
vor. Christianity takes mortal issue with these
Brahmanical practices and teachings. Like our-
selves too the Indians are creatures of habit. It is
hard to get them to give attention to an alien faith.
But a deeper reason which grows more acute
every day is that they are watching Western Chris-
tian civilization. Such reports and reflections as
come through cable, cinema, travelers, and students,
do not always tally with the missionary message.
Many Indians will acknowledge Christianity's high
ideals, but see little use in adjusting themselves to a
religion that has come so short in lands where it is
professed. We may as well realize that it is not
alone what missionaries declare Christianity to be,
but what so-called Christians are in practice, that
actually determines the Indian's attitude to Christ.
Travelers see our cities; students come to our uni-
versities; cables bear each day to hundreds of Ori-
ental newspapers the facts of our partially Chris-
tian civilization. If, then, any reader finds it
difficult to discover a way to help India to her best,
let him set about making a stronger Christian pro-
test to the unchristian forces in our own social and
political life. If the Christian Church of the West
were unitedly reacting against the evils of our own
civilization vigorously enough for its protest to be
heard with certainty in India, then — perhaps only
then — would it be a Church that could evangelize
India.
Part of the reason why India does not accept
Christ is that Christianity has been associated with
a foreign government, and has come to her in a
foreign dress with foreign organizations, to such an
150 Building with India
I extent that hosts of non-Christians think that they
' would be denationalized if they identified themselves
with the Church. Our denominational rivalries, our
emphasis on doctrinal differences, and a naive in-
sistence upon our Western forms and rituals all tend
to obscure the Christ.
VII
With so many ways in which we can assist our
world partner, and with a missionary body of five
and a half thousand to be maintained in India by
Western Churches, we may well ask what kind of
missionaries are needed and acceptable.
It would be ideal if every mission could have in
it men and women capable of making different types
of contributions. Educationists are needed to
wrestle with educational problems of the first mag-
nitude. The education of rural India can be no mere
copy of anything in the West, and for the solution
of its problems the best educational background
that our teachers* colleges can give is none too good.
Men and women are needed who have specialized in
religious education and are able to set up curricula
of religious instruction for Sunday and day-schools.
Scholars and theologians are needed with whom In-
dian thinkers can work out intellectual formulations
congenial to India in symbols and forms of expres-
sion. Men with the administrative and executive
gift are needed to help think out the adjustments
that must be made between the missions and the
rising churches, and to bring the experience of the
West to bear upon the Indian Church as it shapes
itself. Evangelists, doctors, social welfare workers,
Cooperation of the Christian West 151
agriculturists, business agents, secretaries, writers,
heads of hostels, personal workers, specialists for
the educated classes or for Muhammadans, are all
needed. Almost any talent that can be used at
home will be welcomed in India — provided it be real
talent worthily trained and there is behind it the
right spirit.
An applicant incapable of sympathetic interest
in India's present-day aspirations may as well with-
draw his papers. A candidate who would prefer to
retain a monopoly of all mistake-making had better
yield to one who can stand by while the Indian
learns by trying. In other words, Indians are be-
ginning to ask us to give up the cult of efficiency for
a willingness to see things less well done for a time
while they learn. Just now, partial failure by anV
Indian may help the Kingdom more than greater!
success by an Englishman or American. While In- \
dian Christians are almost filial in the grateful love *
manifested to the older missionaries who have fa-
thered their church, they do not want the young re-
cruit to assume a parental relationship. India
wants men and women who will be as conscious of
their relation to the Church in India as to the society
that sent them out; who will take joy in identifying
themselves with the Church of India and will in self-
restraining ways help it to fulfil its mission to the
nation.
Naturally it will not always be easy to conform to
these demands of awakened nationalism. But In-
dians are beginning to say that on these conditions
alone shall we continue to be welcome. Opportunity
for acceptable and fruitful service is not likely to
152 Building with India
open up to the one who assumes that he is inherently
superior to the races of India. One must guard
one's self, therefore, against a host of insidious sug-
gestions of superiority which hitherto have sur-
rounded a Westerner in India. Of necessity he has
lived in a better house, he has traveled in a higher
class on the railways, often policemen saluted as he
drove by, and simple country people would show
deference to any foreigner. It is possible to go out
to India with a most democratic temperament, but
slowly and all unconsciously take on the habit and
demeanor of superiority. The mood and temper of
a ruling class tend to be assumed by each member
of the ruling race. But now as never before the ac-
ceptable missionary must be characterized by the
mind of Christ, who emptied Himself and took on
the form of a servant. A combination of able Chris-
tian statesmanship with great self-abnegation is
what is needed.
In these days especially, when interracial sensi-
tiveness, suspicion, and even bitterness are common,
men and women are needed who have a genius for
friendship, for getting on with others, for drawing
out their best qualities, and for creating a friendly
atmosphere. The Master had a simple, natural atti-
tude of brotherly equality. This was no mere
theory with Him, but the attitude and feeling which
spontaneously came forth from One who wanted to
call each person — ^not servant, but friend. Let us
learn of Him.
Our ambassadors will be eager to study Indian
ways of life as well as the Indian language. The
feeling of strangeness toward things Indian should
Cooperation of the Christian West 153
be taken away by systematic training. With cer-
tain groups, we shall wish to sit cross-legged on the
floor and eat with our fingers as our hosts do. For-
tunate beyond comparison is the young missionary
who can stay for a while in some Indian Christian
home which has not lost its Indian traditions. In
some way Indian etiquette, Indian manners and
forms should become natural. And when we set
about sharing the life of India, we shall remember
that the submerged sixth among whom much mis-
sion work is done is not the best interpreter of In-
dia's culture.
After absorbing something of the best in India's
heritage, the true ambassador will help to incorpo-
rate into the Christian tradition all of this that is
worthy. He will aim to help his Christian friends
to appreciate justly the elements of moral and
spiritual worth in their national heritage. For all
things Eastern are not heathen any more than all
things Western are Christian. Just as Western
Christianity has taken over and rebaptized many a
custom once called heathen, such as the Christmas
tree, the use of candles, certain aspects of Easter, so
must we sublimate many a custom found in India.
Suppose yourself there for a moment and decide
what you would do if you found that Indian women
in your district were in the habit of taking their
new clothes to the temple to have them blessed be-
fore wearing. Would you be inclined to adopt the
custom in your church? If you saw that the farm-
ers about you called in a priest and offered up a fowl
in order to secure a blessing upon the sowing, would
you encourage the Indian Church to announce at
154 Building with India
certain seasons that any who would be planting the
coming week might stay and have special prayer
offered for them? Both these things have been done
by the only Indian Bishop yet appointed.
Knowing that the universal custom in India is to
have a "go-between" to arrange for marriage, in-
asmuch as the boy and girl do not see each other
until the marriage day, would you encourage Chris-
tians to use the old non-Christian agents or adopt
our Western plan of courtship or have deaconesses
formally appointed to take over this function, or
would you just let things drift? Do you see any pos-
sibilities in the fact that when a Muhammadan baby
is born the mother will not feed it until some Mu-
hammadan man has said the Kalima (Creed of Is-
lam) in its ear? The first words it hears must be
the most sacred ones of Islam.
Suppose you observe that in non-Christian mar-
riages the bride and groom walk around a bamboo
pole at a certain stage of the ceremony. Will the
substitution of a cross for the bamboo be a proper
step in adaptation, or will this only stereotype the
lower associations of the former system and tighten
the chain of superstition?
One of the most picturesque festivals in India is
Devali, when tiny lights are used to outline public
buildings and often the homes of people. The chil-
dren love the attractive display of these little Orien-
tal lamps with their wicks of cotton in coconut oil.
Will you preach on Christ as the light of the world,
ask them to "let their light so shine," interpret the
festival as a triumph of light over darkness, and
thus take it over into Christianity? Or will you shun
Cooperation of the Christian West 155
its very touch and keep the children from its charm,
knowing that unbridled gambling is associated witW'
this night, and that it really betokens Vishnu's tri^
umph over demons? Those whom we send out to
India to advise the Indian Church will be pushed
back upon all the wisdom they can command and
all the church history they have read, in solving the
various problematic situations that arise.
Most important of all is it that the lives of those
who are sent to India should in some way convey a
deep spiritual impress. India, of course, is changing,
and even now there are many Indians who are in-
terested in efficiency, in lowering death-rates, in
economic uplift, and in the whole round of things
which have to do with this world's betterment. But
fundamentally, India's yearning is for God. Activity
and even social service will not satisfy India's hun-
ger. A missionary could spend himself in organiza-
tion or routine professional work, coming back
weary to his resting place, and yet fail to touch the
heart of India. So real must be our spiritual lives,
so steeped in prayer, that the Indians will catch
some glimpse of God through us. The graces which
appeal to India are simplicity, gentleness, patience,
God-centeredness, a thorough-going indifference to
things which are not eternal. Unless to us the spiri-
tual is extremely real, we may be regarded by them
as competent organizers, but hardly as spiritual
guides capable of meeting the deepest aspirations of
India. Our representatives must maintain a spiri-
tual margin, difficult though this be in their under-
manned stations where the pressure of work tends
to make a man feel like a mere center of operations.
156 Building with India
Are we willing to contemplate the possibility of
India's missing the Christ? Can her leaders afford
to bring in their New India without Him? India
does have great gifts and possibilities, but she has
immense downward tendencies and conditions in
her heritage. The quality of her contribution to the
world and indeed her very life as a people hang in
the balance. Mere changes in external circumstances
will never produce the New India that we long
to see. Will her leaders see in time that Christ is
the most powerful possible means of molding their
motherland after the noblest pattern? India sadly
needs the freedom in social and religious life that
Christ has ever imparted to His disciples of all ages
and all countries. But it will be Christianity at its
highest that will win India, and this ought to spur
the Western Church so to live that from it may go
forth commissioned manifestors of God.
Prayer
ALMIGHTY God, whose love reacheth unto
the ends of the earth, and who dost extend
to us the matchless privilege of being co-
workers with Thee for a better world, we praise
Thee as the Source of the zeal and devotion of those
who in the past have gone forth in their ministry
to India, and for the fruitage of their labors.
€[Grant that missionaries now at work in that land
may be fitted by Thy grace for their delicate task.
Keep them fearless through love, and teachable
through true humility. When criticized and mis-
judged, give them the grace of forgiveness. Guide
and inspire them in their varied service, and through
it all may there throb the one great passion of re-
vealing Jesus Christ, the satisfier of India's need.
May it be their glory to become least, to decrease,
to become the servants of all, if only Christ may
have His way in India.
CLFill each one with the consciousness of Thy sus-
taining power. Amid monotony, discouragement,
or trial, handicapped by limitations of time and
strength, in the face of puzzling issues and stagger-
ing burdens draw them to the Source of confidence,
of rest, of refreshment. May they be guided by
Thee as they attempt to build up a living society
of men and women, born anew through faith in
Christ, inspired by His spirit,- united in a fellowship
of love, and dedicated to the service of their fellow
men. Amen.
157
CHAPTER FIVE
The Distinctive Opportunity in India
We have now come to the most striking phenome-
non in the expansion of the Kingdom in India — a
movement that has increasingly dominated modern
mission thought and policy. In it, the Christian
Church of India finds her greatest opportunity, her
most pressing problems, and her most glorious
proof of power.
I
The greatest charge against Hinduism is that for
more than two thousand years it has consigned a
sixth of India's people to unrelieved degradation.
Lower than the lowest caste, fifty million human be-
ings pass through this life as "outcastes," "untouch-
ables," "the depressed classes." Religious philoso-
phy has aided inborn selfishness by interpreting
their miserable condition as the just and accurately
measured recompense for the misdeeds of a previous
existence. As a result, there is an astounding de-
gree of abject servility on the part of the untouch-
ables and of complacent superiority on the part of
the higher castes.
These lowcaste people — Pariahs and Panchamas,
as they are called — are, for the most part, of Dravid-
ian stock. In religion they have developed little be-
yond their original animism. Belief in spirits satu-
rates their thought — spirits in trees and plants, in
animals and even in human beings. Most of these
spirits are malignant, treacherous, and fickle, so
168
The Distinctive Opportunity in India 159
that religion is summed up in the attempt to pacify
them. If the churel calls at night and you go out,
you are sure to die. If the water from the cooking
of the food falls on the fire so as to put it out, the
household is in terror lest the children be beset by
Masan. Mourners at a funeral wail to drive off the
spirits of obstruction. Perhaps you remember,
when a child, in the dusk of some summer evening
ducking your head to dodge the bats which hovered
near. But that had none of the terror which char-
acterizes the mental state of those who constantly
dread the shadowy presence of unknown forces. The
fiercer the demon, the more she is worshipped, be-
cause she is feared the more. Take from our wor-
ship all adoration and thanksgiving, all gratitude
and love ; instead of a single Father who has more in
store for us than we can ask or think, put a myriad
of spirits — one for cattle disease, one for crop fail-
ure, one for small-pox, others for drought or child-
lessness or deformity; seek from these no spiritual
blessing, but only relief from personal and village
ills by outwitting their capricious desires, and you
will get some feeling of the religious life of these
poor people.
Their idols are on a par with the people's poverty
— ^little six-inch blocks of wood or stone, with holes
gouged out for eyes, black with grease, oil, and the
smoke of many sacrifices. What sadder sight in all
the world than sons of God living as orphans in
their Father's home!
Their disabilities are manifold. They are not
allowed to take water from the village well, for the
caste people hold that their unclean touch would
i6o Building with India
contaminate it. Even when a modern water-supply
is provided from public funds, you may find an out-
caste quarter with a thousand people without a
hydrant, while near by are abundant taps for caste
people. At a recent public meeting in Madras, one
of them plaintively asked why they should be de-
barred from public wells and tanks, whereas their
cattle and dogs were allowed the benefit of them.
Since water is so scarce, they remain in their dirty,
unwashed clothes until they are scarcely approach-
able.
The disabilities of Panchamas vary in different
areas. In some sections they are supposed to clear
off the dead animals and part of their pay is the
flesh to eat as carrion. They live in dilapidated
huts, often with scarcely enough food to keep them
alive. In many places they are excluded from pub-
lic roads, public markets, employment in public of-
fices, and public places of worship. The post-office
may be in the Brahman quarter — ^they cannot ap-
proach, but must wait for a Brahman to take pity.
They may want to register a deed, but find it difficult
to approach the registrar's veranda.
In theory the system of man-mortgage is sup-
posed to be extinct, but in custom it is not. Recent
investigations reveal much of what amounts practi-
cally to slavery. Thousands of Panchamas are still
binding themselves or their children or both to work
for the same master for a lifetime in consideration
of a loan. A boy of eighteen wants Rs. 25 in cash
and some grain in order to celebrate his wedding.
He borrows it, undertaking to work for the lender
The Distinctive Opportunity in India i6i
until the debt is paid, receiving day by day a noon-
day meal. Naturally the lender does not want the
debt paid. Because of extortionate interest or be-
cause he is enticed to take further loans, the debt
descends from one generation to another. In south
India these people are known as padiyals and are
transferred with the land when the creditor sells it
or dies. Even when this rural slavery does not ex-
ist, the outcastes have to work hard in the fields all
day on a small wage and have no prospect of rising
to anjrthing better.
In most provinces the Government recognizes
their right to attend public schools, and they are
now reading in hundreds of such schools. But this
path is exceedingly difficult for them. Official per-
mission is a very different thing from the social per-
mission of the community. The caste people, not
wanting these people to rise, come to the schools to
order them out. The teachers fear social persecu-
tion if they admit Panchama children. Even where
they are admitted, they are usually asked to sit
apart, are not allowed to recite, and are ridiculed so
that it is very hard for them to persist.
Conditions such as have been described tend to
lower their standard of morality and keep them sad
and depressed. They are so poor, weary, and heavy
laden that they have no grievances ; for among any
people it is only when the burden of living is some-
what lightened that social unrest appears. Thus the
faculties of a people equal in number to h£ f the
population of the United States have been benumbed.
i62 Building with India
II
Imagine the surprise of these harassed, weary,
fetish-ridden people when into their segregated and
despised section of the village walks a man speak-
ing of "good news," telling them of a Father who
loves them, assuring them that they are brothers of
all men everywhere, and making this seem believ-
able by his own willingness to touch them, teach
them, believe in them. They begin to awaken from
the lethargy of ages and feel out toward freedom
and the common rights of humanity.
Other forces, economic and social, help to stir
their stagnant minds. Some desire more food for
their families and freedom from the bondage of
caste; some want education for their children and
an escape from oppression and exploitation. Some
have observed that the children of Christians are
better clothed and better taught; that Christians
usually have a more independent and consequential
air; that they are freed from a number of irksome
restrictions and disabilities.
Some are undoubtedly attracted by the thought of
a single, pure, and holy God, and of Jesus Christ
who can free them from the incessant and depress-
ing fear of demons. In one form or another there
is the desire for a more abundant life, for God's
spirit has many ways of beckoning to these unfor-
tunate products of a mistaken religious system.
Those of us who know what motives hastened the
nomi al conversion to Christianity of the peoples of
northern Europe need not draw aside from these
who, through whatever needs, hear the call of the
Christ. Discrimination, however, must be used, for
The Distinctive Opportunity in India 163
the "inquirer" may revert and cause a scandal, or
his desire may be merely to get help in some lawsuit
or an adjustment which will work to his advantage.
There are two distinct stages of conversion in In-
dia. From all the higher castes and communities
converts come as isolated individuals and hence are
cut off from the customs of their old communities
to a very great extent. To declare allegiance to
Jesus Christ is, for such, a very difficult step from
a social standpoint, and only a few are strong
enough to break away from the bonds of caste. But
for the outcastes, the advantages of becoming Chris-
tians are so manifest that it has been possible in
many areas, not only to win the leaders, but also a
large proportion of their following. The pressure
of group solidarity, so characteristic of the caste
spirit in India, may result in the remainder also
coming over into the Christian community. In some
cases this break toward Christianity comes within
a few years; in others, missionaries work fifteen,
twenty, or thirty years before a mass movement de-
velops, and in many cases it has not come yet. In
such mass movements, the converts stay in their
own villages, do their own work, live in contact with
their old communities, and follow many of their old
customs. They do not feel cut off in the same way
as isolated converts from the higher castes, but the
very fact that they came en masse makes it more
probable that unchristian customs or modes of
thought will be carried over. Many missionaries
confidently look forward to a time when converts
from the higher castes, as well, will come in groups
instead of as individuals.
i64 Building with India
The movement of masses toward Christianity in
its present startling dimensions began about 1880.
There had been a severe famine in 1877-78, bringing
terrible suffering and an appalling loss of life in
south India. Missionaries threw themselves into
the work of relief, and the Panchamas began more
or less vaguely to sense a difference between the cen-
tury-old attitude of Hinduism and the new religion
of Christ. The experiences of this famine led thou-
sands to identify themselves with the new religion.
Until very recent years their one hope was in
Christianity. Sensing its sympathy, they have
pressed forward by the thousand. Have you ever
watched a vine kept within some darkened room?
It has no developed eyes, and yet it blindly senses
where the window is and sends out its feelers to-
ward the light. In some such way these outcastes
come to Christianity. They do not grasp its mean-
ing or wholly understand the message, but in their
groping, they discover that in this direction light
and hope are found. When for the first time they
kneel to say, "Our Father who art in Heaven," one is
witnessing the birth of a new life. What limit of as-
cent can be placed on those who begin to look on God
as Father?
These movements toward Christianity cannot be
manufactured by might or force. The Spirit of God
has moved as the wind among the masses. Now in
this part of India, now in that, the stirring appears.
In the Telugu area it was among the Madigas
(leather workers) and the Malas (chiefly agricul-
tural laborers). Among the Tamils the movement
to Christianity was very largely limited to the Sha-
The Distinctive Opportunity in India 165
nans, whose business is to draw toddy from the pal-
myra trees. In Chota Nagpur it was the Kols and
other aboriginal races; in Gujerat, a weaver caste;
in the Punjab and United Provinces, the Chuhras
(scavengers) and the Chamars (leather workers).
Very often these movements toward Christianity
have been unexpected, and usually they have been so
overwhelming in their numbers that they have
found the missions quite unprepared to deal ade-
quately with them. In Tinnevelly in 1802, Schwartz
baptized 5,000 in three months. After the famine of
1877-78, 30,000 in this same region were baptized
by two great English societies. In Travancore, the
London Missionary Society reported 17,000 Chris-
tians in 1857 and 32,000 in 1871. The Christians
in the Lutheran Mission of Chota Nagpur increased
in the ten years after 1861 from 2,000 to 20,000. In
the Baptist Telugu area, Clough baptized 9,000 in
one year, and before he died in 1910 there were
60,000 church members and 200,000 adherents. The
story of how Clough, once Deputy United States
Surveyor, became the '"Hero of Ongole," saved
thousands of lives during a famine by constructing
three miles of an Indian canal, and built up the
largest church in the world at the close of the nine-
teenth century makes stimulating reading. The
Methodist Episcopal Mass Movement Commission
reported that in the sixteen years following 1896
they took in 184,000 Christians, and the present rate
of accession is 30,000 a year. It is because of these
remarkable numbers that the phenomena have been
called "mass movements."
The most effective leaders in these mass move-
i66 Building with India
ments are not the missionaries; neither are they
Christians of the higher castes. Usually the break
has come when some God-filled man from among
the masses themselves leads his brethren to the
blessing he has found. Such was the way the great
movement started in the Church Missionary Socie-
ty's Telugu area. Pagolu Venkayya had been a
seeker after God for three years before he had an op-
portunity of hearing the gospel. He had renounced
idolatry and had learned to pray without hearing
a Christian address. On the other hand, there was
a missionary who had been hunting for eleven years
for a receptive hearer. He had almost come to be-
lieve that it would never please God to let him see a
single convert as a result of his preaching. At last
he and Venkayya met. Venkayya heard, accepted,
became a believer, and was baptized. The whole
aspect of things changed, for the man had been
found who could interpret Christianity's appeal to
his own people.
It was Bangarapu Thatiah who began the move-
ment in the American Baptist Mission resulting in
one of the largest churches in the Telugu country.
As an outcaste he had consciously sought God ac-
cording to his light. He had been taught the doc-
trines of a reformed sect by an old woman, had
learned that God is spirit, and had conceived in his
heart a desire to know more of Him. When at last
he heard of Jesus' way, he became a great leader in
what proved to be the largest ingathering of de-
pressed classes.
Henry Drummond Williamson of the Church Mis-
sionary Society traveled for three years among the
The Distinctive Opportunity in India 167
Gonds seeking for someone to accept the message-,
but he had no converts. At last he found a headman
of a village who had been seeking truth for years
and had spent a whole year meditating under a
pipul-tree. He carried about with him, over his
shoulder, a Hindi New Testament tied up in a cloth,
though afterwards he sadly said he could not under-
stand it all and wanted more light. Finally, this
man braved baptism before all his village, became a
zealous preacher, and the leader of the movement
among the Gonds.
Sometimes the leader is not of thousands, but of
tens. A certain lowcaste boy seemed absolutely un-
able to learn in school. It seemed that he could not
remember. He was tried another year, but finally
had to be sent back to his village. About a year later
the missionary in charge was called to that village
to baptize eighteen people. This boy had started a
night school and had taught them all he knew about
Christ and anything else he could remember. Again
the next year a call came to baptize another group
as the result of his work.
Ill
When missions, many times wofully understaffed
as regards teachers and preachers, work for such
great numbers, the immediate transformation
effected is often slight. But when an5i;hing like ade-
quate instruction and Christian nurture are pro-
vided, the results are inspiring and convincing. Cer-
tain results are visible on the surface. A countenance
through which shine Christian hope and freedom
is very different from one from which fear has
i68 Building with India
never been exorcised. There is a distinct enlighten-
ing of the face from education. Even by a careless
observer, the house of a Christian of some year's
standing can be distinguished by the greater clean-
liness and order from the abode of his non-Christian
neighbor of the same class.
One of the most satisfying experiences life can
bring to a master-builder is to be allowed to remain
twenty years in one of these mass movement dis-
tricts, founding churches, establishing schools, be-
lieving implicitly in the possibilities of all men when
touched by the Spirit of God, drawing out the trea-
sures hidden in their repressed natures, and encour-
aging the people in every way. The change in in-
telligence, ambition, and character throughout the
area is a wonderful reward. In making a tour
through India one is struck with what time and up-
lifting influences can do; for the Christians in the
older mass movements of the south are more ad-
vanced than those in the north in education, knowl-
edge of Christian truth, and in the sense of responsi-
bility for maintaining the work. When the decades
have had their work under steady Christian influ-
ence, as in Tinnevelly or in the London Missionary
Society's area in Travancore, one can but be im-
pressed with the substantial character of the prog-
ress in every way.
Everywhere there is a gain in self-respect. One
day a district superintendent of police was asking a
certain missionary why the people had become
Christians. It was suggested that he let them an-
swer his question, and so he went over to a group of
Christians. "What did you gain by becoming Chris-
The Distinctive Opportunity in India 169
tians?" "Ability to stand before you without being
ashamed," was the self-respecting answer. With a
changed estimate of himself, it is no wonder that all
over India the outcaste who becomes a Christian is
given a new standing by Hindus and Muhamma-
dans. He ceases to be "untouchable." To raise
these millions to a position of honor, self-respect,
and service for the country is to attack Hinduism at
its most vulnerable point. For Hinduism's last cita-
del is its social structure with its caste usages and
laws.
Away off in France a Christian sweeper from the
Punjab was serving in a regiment. Every morning
at five he rose to read his Bible and chant his psalms.
He was faithful. A Muhammadan in the regiment
acknowledged that, if there were anyone among
them who knew God, it was this sweeper. Sometimes
a single center sends forth a group of this stamp.
There is, near Fatehghar, a village called Elephant's
House, where there was once a Christian commu-
nity of three hundred and fifty people. Now only six
families are left, for by actual count, from this hum-
ble outcaste quarter have come forth four preachers,
fifteen teachers, thirty house-servants for Euro-
peans, and two men who register the practice shots
of soldiers. This does not pretend to be a typical
case, but it shows what can be done under favorable
circumstances.
In every area where these Panchamas have come
en masse to Christianity, they have seen men and
women of their own number growing in worth, ris-
ing in the social scale, and gaining a better life. They
have seen their children learning to read ; some have
170 Building with India
gone on to high school and even through college. A
few have obtained good posts under Government
and many have become clerks, telegraphers, teach-
ers, catechists, or ordained preachers.
In the early days of the mass movements, it was
an exceedingly difficult thing for the isolated mis-
sionary to know whether he should start the innova-
tion of receiving outcastes. What would other mis-
sionaries say? What would be the effect on the high
castes? Would it at once and forever prejudice the
whole work among higher castes to which hitherto
missionaries had given their attention? Was there
not danger of identifying Christianity with the most
depressed classes of the community? It was with
fear and trembling before God that the step was
taken in the earlier movements.
Even as late as 1912 there was uncertainty as to
what the general judgment would be about the re-
sultant effect on the high castes. It was known that
many Hindus had come to regard Christianity as the
pariah's religion. Had the mass movements, there-
fore, become an actual hindrance to winning the
major part of India? At the National Missionary
Council of that year the testimony seemed conclu-
sive that the transforming power of Christianity as
shown in raising the outcastes of India was making
a profound impression upon non-Christians. It is
an object lesson that penetrates to their very homes.
They cannot continue blind to the ethical results
from an awakened spiritual life and to triumphant
power over temptation when these things are mani-
fested by their own agricultural laborers and menial
The Distinctive Opportunity in India 171
house-servants. A villager, referring to some out-
castes who had come under the influence of Chris-
tianity but had not yet been baptized, was heard to
remark, "Now that they have become the friends of
Jesus, why should they not be better?" The struggle
for an awakened conscience is reflected in their sim-
ple prayers. Each morning as the pineapples were
ripening, a boy of Travancore was heard to pray,
"0 Lord, prevent me from taking any pineapple
when passing by." A farm hand has prayed: "O
God, let me live in peace with my master. Guard his
property and let him always be pleased with me."
Another offered the picturesque confession, "I have
within me a useless thicket of wild shrubs." When
unclean songs are given up and across the evening
stillness comes the sound of hymn or psalm, a
change in life is sure to follow. Undermining will
yet bring down the whole hill.
Moreover, there is the unconscious witness of the
Christian mehtarani or sweeper-woman as she goes
into a village home for her accustomed work. To
the more confined non-Christian women she is the
newspaper of the place. She tells about the service
of the night before and sings the hjnnn that was
sung. It would be an interesting study to investi-
gate the extent to which the Roman Empire was won
by just such illiterate slaves who had learned of
Christ by word of mouth. Behind almost every
group of Christians gathered under the shade of a
tree to listen to the missionary's message stands a
group of caste men. They are unwilling to be con-
sidered as interested, for they turn away if the at-
172 Building with India
tention of the speaker is given to them. But they
too are catching the drift of a message about a won-
derful rebirth possible even to the lowest.
IV
One cannot doubt the working of God's Spirit in
their hearts when one sees the way these mass-move-
ment Christians bear persecution. There are hosts of
amazing and cruel ways in which caste men may dis-
courage the step toward release through Christian-
ity. Wells from which the Chamars have for centu-
ries taken water are often closed so that they have to
carry water from tanks or rivers. Sometimes their
right to the common village grazing ground is dis-
puted, or the road to the field is closed both to cat-
tle and people. Cattle are poisoned, and the blame
placed upon Christians. Men are beaten, roofs are
burned, wages are held back. Police arrest them
on false charges supported by their persecutors. A
young convert is threatened with eviction from a
house in which his fathers have lived for genera-
tions. Often when a mission school has been started
in a village, a Christian woman is told that she must
take her child out of school or lose her job.
Witnessing such cases of rank injustice, one's
first impulse is to go to the collector or district
superintendent of police and use influence to set
things right. The general feeling, however, among
missionaries is that this natural impulse must be
restrained since in the long run more harm than
good is done.
For one thing, many of the outcastes' customary
rights, such as the privileges of residence, of gather-
The Distinctive Opportunity in India 173
ing wood, of taking mud from the village tank for
houses, of sharing the grain at harvest, are given in
return for the performance of certain immemorial
duties. Manifestly, one should not attempt to judge
these matters without being thoroughly familiar
with the rights and duties of depressed peoples. It
is possible to relieve an individual Christian, but at
the same time incur the ill-will of a whole village
toward all Christians. A particular case of injus-
tice may seem so clear that it is taken up ; but one
has to face the certainty that it will be followed by
a whole troup of requests for aid and influence in
the courts, — and sad experience has shown that
baptism has not turned all these people into honest
saints over night.
But even if a district missionary should hesitate
to go to law in behalf of his persecuted flock, the
needy situation is still there. It is one of his peren-
nial problems. Should he work through his Indian
agents and preachers-in-charge ? Should he confine
himself to sympathy and comfort for the poor,
bruised man, realizing that out of this persecution
is coming a stronger Church? In these trying situa-
tions should Christians be taught to stand up for
their rights, or should they be encouraged to have
a forgiving spirit and to pray for their persecutors?
Perhaps it would be best to meet with the perse-
cutor in a friendly way and endeavor to get him to
see the matter from a different angle.
While some of the opposition is to Christianity as
a religion, much of it arises from economic and so-
cial causes. For example, the outcastes are the
back-bone of agricultural field labor. In the pres-
174 Building with India
sure of harvest-time, the cessation of all labor one
day in seven naturally does not please the farmer.
As long as an outcaste is not a Christian, the flesh
of a dead carcass serves as part payment for mak-
ing the hide into sandals; but since becoming a
Christian leads one to give up carrion eating, the
wage system is manifestly upset. Only certain low
castes will touch leather. It has been their imme-
morial duty, therefore, to repair and to beat the
drums so essential in Hindu ceremonials and proces-
sions. Missionary practice has been somewhat
divided on the question as to whether Christians
must give up this community service with its emolu-
ments. But if they do, it is easily seen that perse-
cution may arise not because the caste people hate
Christianity, but because their religious services
cannot go on without the drums. Then, too, it irri-
tates them to have the child of some despised Pariah
sit in a prominent corner and show off by reading at
the top of his voice, or even to pass through the
bazaar reading. You can hear the zemindars
(farmers) say of the Christians, "Soon their chil-
dren will be badshahs, (kings) and we, their ser-
vants." Looking upon these people much as one
would upon an ox or an ass, they naturally object
when missionaries come in and take away their
subservience.
V
Movements such as these raise many kinds of
problems. The very numbers involved create an ini-
tial difficulty. Embarrassment comes from their
very success. If illiterate people are admitted at the
The Distinctive Opportunity in India 175
rate of 20,000 per year, and a mission can turn out
only twelve teachers or preachers a year, what
should be done? Let us take a concrete situation.
In 1915 in a certain station (Nizamabad) there
were 300 Christians; in 1919, 6,000. Estimating
an average of fifty Christians to a village, this would
make desirable the development of one hundred and
fourteen new workers for this district alone if each
village is to have a worker of some sort, teacher, or
preacher to help them out of their poverty, il-
literacy, and demon worship. In this mission as a
whole, baptisms have been made at the rate of 7,000
a year for the past three years. Whence shall come
the teachers for these new thousands?
Let us take another typical situation in a mass
movement area. The missionary in charge has two
hundred villages to visit during the cold season, and
his itinerary is laid out for months ahead. One day
several lowcaste visitors turn up from a distant
village. The leader takes from his cloth a stone idol
which has been the chief god of the community. He
reports that the whole outcaste section of his village
is willing to come and "take hold of the feet of
Jesus." But every worker is already pressed.
Every available rupee given by the Churches of the
West has been appropriated for schools and
preachers needed for those already Christian. These
new seekers after Jesus are illiterate, and so it is
not practicable simply to provide them with Bibles
and Sunday-school literature and throw them on
their own resources. They do not know the Ten
Commandments. They do not know the Lord's
Prayer. Of what use is a baptized heathendom
176 Building with India
unless there is the assurance of nurture and growth?
Suppose a mother who has relapsed into idolatry-
explains : "My little girl got small-pox. I tried every-
way I could to learn what Christian mothers do
when their little girls have small-pox, but I could
not learn. I did not want my child to die. Not
knowing what else to do, I took out the small-pox
god, killed the hen, offered the blood, and burned
the incense." We may not feel like reproaching the
mother, but the awful risk of an unshepherded flock
is manifest. Situations like these lie back of report
after report from these mass movement areas of
thousands, literally thousands, who could be taken
into the Church if it were properly supported.
To many of the problems, the greatest wisdom and
historical judgment should be brought. For exam-
ple, in many centers these people seem to be in a
hopeless economic situation. Laws and conditions
are such that it is practically certain that they can-
not get a place on the land. It seems almost a trav-
esty to ask them to live and think as Christians, yet
continue their present work suffocated in a blanket
of scorn. How can they ever gain self-respect in
their old environment? On the other hand, in the
cities the factories are calling for labor. Shall the
missionary be responsible for initiating a big labor
migration, thus reducing the supply of workers in
the villages, increasing the demand, and hence bet-
tering the condition of those that remain ? Or are the
risks of bringing these former outcastes into an
urban environment too great? Will it be better on
the whole to leave things as they are and teach that
he who "sweeps a room for Christ" does noble ser-
The Distinctive Opportunity in India 177
vice? It may seem best to attempt to find some way
of raising the level of the depressed classes where
they are. If so, will it be better, with limited funds,
to raise the whole mass a little or to train a few in-
tensively?
The Government in certain provinces makes an
appropriation for the alleviation of the Panchamas.
It is given because of their deplorable economic con-
dition by a government quite neutral in religious
matters. When they become Christians, technically
they are not Panchamas. Both Government and
missionaries are perplexed as to procedure, since the
need of help is still there. In dealing with Govern-
ment, shall they be called Panchamas ; i.e., outcastes
of Hinduism? Or shall they be called Christians
and forego this aid?
If two or three people from a village come for
baptism which, publicly given, will cut them off
from their community and cause their influence
largely to cease, would it be wise to receive them
secretly? Another difficulty is the preservation of
the rich and inner significance of baptism. Non-
Christians in general have come to think of this
ceremony as that which makes a Christian. Perse-
cution usually begins after baptism. Hindus are
not so concerned with what their friends believe,
but they are tremendously concerned when this rite
is administered. Where danger and non-Christian
opinion so emphasize baptism, it is difficult even for
Christians to realize that it is something in the life
itself that should differentiate a Christian — some-
thing more than an initial ceremony.
A problem that has divided missionary practice
zyS Building with India
from the beginning is whether these men and women
should be baptized as soon as they are willing to
receive baptism, or whether there should be delay
until they give proof of Christian faith and works.
It is more difficult than deciding whether you would
have baptized the Ethiopian eunuch. It sends one
back to see what Paul and Peter did and to ask
guidance as to what to do.
Many frankly allow early baptism. In the prac-
tice of certain missions, baptism has, therefore, al-
most lost its original significance. It marks the
beginning of an opportunity for Christian instruc-
tion rather than its end. Many of these people in
all their lives have never tried to learn anything,
and hence find it exceedingly laborious to memorize
the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, or the Ten Command-
ments. "Suffered under Pontius Pilate, dead, and
buried" does not mean much to them. Their vocabu-
lary is poor — a paltry list of words representing
material objects. They are not used to abstract and
spiritual ideas. "Yes," said a village woman to
whom the old, old story was being told, "when you
are here speaking to us, we seem to see it, but when
you are gone, and we are hungry, food is all that we
can think about." Difficulties such as these seem to
justify a low standard of admission, and it is argued
that the children, at least, may come under instruc-
tion. With reference to those baptized in middle
life, a promise is remembered that where little is
given, little will be required.
On the other hand, many missionaries and an in-
creasing number of educated Indian Christians are
alarmed lest caste and other non-Christian customs
The Distinctive Opportunity in India 179
may get their hold on the Church of India through
too early baptism. Many feel that there is danger
of cutting them adrift from old customs and
restraints which had weight with them, before the
new Christian controls have taken their place. Some
fear that the way is opened to the use of unspiritual
pressure when, for example, a group who seek bap-
tism are told that they will not be received until all
the outcaste quarter of their village comes with
them. Such missionaries are jealous of the signifi-
cance of the rite of baptism and want the standard
of purity, knowledge, and character kept high.
Faced with the ignorance and servility of former
demon-worshippers, it is no easy question to decide
what should be the conditions upon which people
will be admitted to the Church. It is a serious ques-
tion, for we are told how certain missions took
alarm at the enormous number of accessions and
hence raised the standard of knowledge to be re-
quired of converts. The result was not only that
the movement was checked, but that the congrega-
tions they already had began to die. To meet all
such problems wisdom, forethought, and experience
are needed, but above all, sensitiveness to the move-
ment of God's Spirit.
VI
Today these masses are receptive. There is
scarcely a limit to the numbers who would place
themselves under instruction. But it is a time of
passing opportunity. Various non-Christian organi-
zations are determined to outflank the missionary
movement by sweeping outcastes into Hinduism or
i8o Building with India
Muhammadanism. Still others are stimulated by
political motives. Now that the principle of com-
munity representation has been introduced, both
Hindus and Muhammadans naturally want to at-
tach these millions to their groups. Still other non-
Christians are influenced by the dominant national
consciousness to relieve the wretched conditions of
the depressed classes, since their very patriotism
leads them to see that India cannot go far forward
with such a drag upon it. Most significant of all is
the fact that at last the conscience of India has been
touched by what Christians have dared to attempt
and have actually accomplished. Increasingly, from
the highest motives, non-Christians are taking up
the task of helping the Panchamas.
From the standpoint of urgency it is significant
to note that, although the Indian National Congress
did not recognize this problem in its platform until
1917, now all the important political parties in India
are pledged to the elevation of the depressed classes.
The Liberals have placed the uplift of the Untouch-
ables in the very forefront of their program and
have promised to bring it about by giving them spe-
cial educational facilities. The Nationalists have de-
clared themselves against untouchability and have
promised full rights of citizenship to the depressed
classes. The non-Brahman party attaches great im-
portance to the emancipation of these submerged
sections of the community, while the Non-Coopera-
tors through their leader, Mahatma Gandhi, say that
India is not worthy of attaining full self-govern-
ment unless the stigma of untouchability is removed.
Public opinion is beginning to be aroused. A
K
o
a:
o
o c
c «
.2«
cSjS
p< (-1
'OX
03 u
X s
•t-» at
o m
i^
o
«fH«M
5.2
^«
o
S 2
«s
— . oj
HS
03 U
bO<H
.S °
V g
C cs o
I— I to
VETERAN INDIAN PASTORS
Many more such loyal and faithful men would be
available for Christian service if greater resources for
training could be provided.
The Distinctive Opportunity in India i8i
"Depressed Classes Mission Society," organized by
Prarthana Samajists, but largely supported by Hin-
dus, has been at work since 1906. The Panchamas
themselves in various quarters are finding a voice
to claim their right of being treated as human
beings, thus showing that — as the Indian proverb
runs — "The toad beneath the harrow knows exactly
where each tooth-point goes." If the Christian
Church fails to enter the doors now so widely open
and win these people for Christ, they will, therefore,
be absorbed by other religions, and the task of
awakening them to their birthright will be vastly
more difficult and long delayed. In any case, the
problem is so vast and the prejudices and vested
interests against them are so entrenched, that no
one with the love of Christ within him can leave
them to struggle up themselves. "Inasmuch as ye
did it not unto one of the least of these, ye did it not
unto me."
In the light of this urgent situation, face the un-
dermanning of most missions. It is a matter of
record that certain mass movements have largely
failed simply because the missions related to them
were not sufficiently manned to conserve results.^
Listen to the intense words of one worker. "I have
been in this district three years and have not yet
been able to get once around to the villages. I have
roughly eight thousand Christians. In July and
August the average number of requests for mar-
riage ceremonies works out at twenty per week. To
perform these marriages off in distant and scat-
tered villages, reached by dusty and imperfect
^World Missionary Conference, 1910, Vol. I, p. 291.
1 82 Building with India
roads, there are only myself and one Indian deacon.
Since the task is impossible of accomplishment, they
go off and marry by heathen rites. It is not the
work that kills us, it is this weight of unmet need."
Boarding-schools have not sufficient accommoda-
tions for the boys and girls who might become
future leaders. Education in the fullest sense of
that term is the greatest need — education of the
young and education of adults, education of leaders
and education that will fit for going on with village
life, education for citizenship in the new India and
in the city of God.
Doors are so wide open that the whole of this
depressed community might be led to start its long
course upward in the school of Christ. Further-
more, it comes from such a low general level that it
is a unique opportunity for a great object lesson —
the application of the whole gospel to the whole man.
The Church of Christ has had no greater oppor-
tunity presented to it.
Does our response to this situation justify for us
the name — co-workers with God ? If only we would
set in motion available resources, human and divine,
the ancient prophecy might be again fulfilled; "I
will say to them which were not my people. Thou art
my people; and they shall say. Thou art my God."
The mass movements are an emergency and should
be treated as an emergency in our praying and in
our giving. As we look out upon these multitudes
who will willingly come when we are ready to pro-
vide preachers and teachers to care for them, we
can hear the Master's voice as plainly as it ever
sounded in Galilee, "Give ye them to eat."
Prayer
WE praise Thee, O Father, for the glorious
testimony to Thy transforming power
which is changing the slaves of India into
sons of God. Strengthen them in persecution and
in those dark crises of plague or famine when old
habits pull them back to their idols and worship of
demons.
€[May those who go to them be able to see through
the dull and haunted faces the priceless worth of
human life and love them. Give to us here the
same spirit of insight that we may see beyond the
squalor, the poverty, the ignorance, and supersti-
tion of these outcaste people to a future of devel-
oped dignity and worthfulness for them. Make us
to care, O Lord, that through no selfishness or indif-
ference we may refuse help to those outstretched
arms.
€LFather, we catch glimpses of ourselves in the
outcastes of India. Unexpectant of Thy riches, we
also have been content with the lower levels of
daily living. Awaken us, O Lord, blow upon us
with Thy Spirit that our soul-life may be quickened
until we also reach out for help. Forbid that we
shall miss the miracle of transformation, for Thy
power which looketh upon wasted lives in far-off
India is available for us today. May our faces
catch the Light; may our hearts flame with Thy
love; may our lives reflect Thy Spirit, through
Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
183
CHAPTER SIX
The Indian Church
I
When we think of India, or of any non-Christian
land, what should be the absorbing center of
our thought? When we pray for the growth of the
Kingdom, shall we remember only or primarily our
boards, our missionaries, and their work? When
we read pamphlets and magazines and reports on
missions, should we be content to have them focus
attention on missionary institutions and personnel
abroad and survey the work from the standpoint of
their problems, their needs, and their triumphs?
Or should we educate ourselves to regard something
else as the central factor in the situation?
If the world-task is the development of a divine
society of which God is the father-like ruler, and
of which ministrant, cooperative love is the vitaliz-
ing principle, we can see how the center of gravity
of our thought should be the development of this
spiritual society in the land we are considering. The
goal toward which we move is Christian fellowship
characterized by love and mutual service and con-
tinuously enriched by the special gifts which each
can contribute. The most effective Christian wit-
ness is such a Christian society. On the purely prac-
tical plane, also, a Christian society is necessary,
since the stupendous task before us will never be
accomplished by the isolated exertions of individual
Christians.
In India, therefore, the focus of our interest
184
The Indian Church 185
should be the Indian Church.^ The time is at hand
when India is going to be influenced to accept Christ
primarily by the witness of her own people — ^that is,
by the Indian Church. Friends from the West will
still be most urgently needed to help, to counsel, to
train, to educate, to share experience and aspiration.
But conditions in India and the growth of the Chris-
tian Church are causing Christianity's frontal
attack to pass out of the hands of the missionary.
This enables the missionary appeal to become more
unselfish even than in the past. Its present numbers
are not a matter of primary concern — some five
millions, or, roughly, one in seventy of the popula-
tion, over half of whom are the outgrowth of Ameri-
can mission work ; nor even is its rate of growth of
first importance — varying from twenty-two per cent
to thirty-four per cent during the four decades from
1871 to 1911. These figures enable us to realize a
most significant fact that an Indian Church does
exist. But there is a more vital question than num-
bers. Is it the kind of Church that in due time can
win India to fellowship in the world-wide Christian
society?
II
Such a victorious Church must be of the soil, ex-
pressing its faith in its own characteristic ways —
that is, indigenous. Just as in Europe Christianity
developed a Latin, a Greek, and a Teutonic type, so
there will likely be a Japanese, a Chinese, and an In-
dian type of Christianity when it has gripped the
1 Toward this end I would strongly recommend the reading
of Indian Christian biography. See Bibliography.
i86 Building with India
very soul of each people. Are there signs that Chris-
tianity has become naturalized and that Indian Chris-
tians have begun to clothe it in thought-forms and
institutions which have been immemorial expres-
sions of Indian religious life? More fundamental
even than the assumption of Oriental forms is that
birth of the conviction in the people themselves
that Christ alone can save India. Let two lives —
Narayan Vaman Tilak and Sadhu Sundar Singh —
illustrate the modern trend toward an indigenous
Church.
Y N. V. Tilak, at his death in 1919, was the most
influential Christian leader and teacher in western
India, in fact one of the most notable figures that
Indian Christianity has yet produced. One of the
sources of his power was his remarkable poetic
gift. He sang his way with the Christian message
into the hearts of the people. His simple, beautiful,
vital, vernacular verse clung in the memory of In-
dia's music-loving soul. His hymns and songs were
caught up in the market-place as well as the church,
lifting thousands of Christians to greater heights
of devotion and bringing many non-Christians to
the Master. Only those who know of India's pas-
sionate love of poetry and of song, and have there-
fore coveted the gift of music for the Christian
Church, can appreciate the service he has rendered
in putting into verse the Sermon on the Mount and
the life of Christ.
A second great endeavor of his life was to give a
truly Indian expression to Christianity. He came
into a weak church, which was neither Indian nor
European, and which was tending to adopt Western
The Indian Church 187
dress and Western customs. With wonderful re-
sourcefulness and zest, he devoted himself to stem
the tide toward denationalism. By pen, by voice,
by acts, he showed that in becoming a Christian one
need not necessarily become a traitor to one's heri-
tage. To him Christ was an Oriental, who came to
fulfil the highest longings of Hinduism. He was
proud of all that was best in India's history and tra-
ditions, and gladly claimed himself a child of her
great culture. Through him more festivals, so
loved in India, were introduced into the Christian
year; and forms of worship more in harmony with
the Indian spirit were started in the villages.
His love of country was intense and contagious.
This was carried over from his youth as a Brah-
man. In fact it was patriotism rather than personal
need that first led him to be a Christian. Tilak
became a follower of Jesus to save his country. He
was a mediator not only between ruler and ruled,
but between Christian and non-Christian, calling
the growing Christian community to play its part
in the great events of India's life. His last message,
dictated just before his death, was an appeal to his
countrymen to take the spirit of Christ into their
politics. This unquestioned love of India created
in non-Christians a new respect for followers of the
Christ.
But most precious of all was the way in which
through song he sought to enter into fellowship with
God. The Marathi hymn-book is colored beyond
anything we possess by the hymns he wrote on the
subject of union and communion with God. He
gave passionate poetic utterance to the solace found
1 88 Building with India
in a divine Companion. Those who know India will
recognize at once that in this seeking after God, that
is neither ascetic nor yet intellectual, he was one of
India's great Bhaktas (devotees) . He differed, how-
ever, from those longing searchers in the rest and
victory which he discovered in Christ.
One of his poems, thought to contain the essence of
his message, though missing in its English transla-
tion the singing quality of the original, is as follows:
Insatiate
The more I win Thee, Lord, the more for Thee I pine;
Ah, such a heart is mine!
My eyes behold Thee and are filled, and straightway then
Their hunger wakes again!
My arms have clasped Thee and should set Thee free, but
no,
I cannot let Thee go !
Thou dwell'st within my heart. Forthwith anew the fire
Burns of my soul's desire.
Lord Jesus Christ, Beloved, tell, O tell me true.
What shall Thy servant do?
Another beautifully reveals his strong love of
country combined with a passionate loyalty to Jesus:
My Motherland
My mother is the land of Hind, and all her children are
diamonds and rubies to me.
My heart is absorbed in these precious jewels.
Some are buried deep in rubbish heaps and some still lie
hidden in earth's depths;
Some decorate Hind's princely crowns.
But all, all I long to love — I, the servant of my motherland.
I have a message I must tell out. Listen, all ye children of
the Hind!
All, all is vain without Christ.
Only if He fill our heart till it o'erflow.
Only then can we understand what God means us to be
and do!
'Tis Jesus who makes the true patriot;
So I — His servant — am the servant of my motherland.
The Indian Church 189
Who, then, was this Tilak? He was born in a
Brahman home, and for thirty-three of his fifty-
seven years he was a Hindu. His mother early im-
pressed upon him the fear of God, and her life was
such that Mr. Tilak often declared that he had never
known any woman so perfect as his mother. Another
powerful influence in his early years was a famous
Hindu scholar under whom he studied and with
whom he delved deep into Sanskrit learning. Be-
lieving that idolatry, pantheism, and caste were
holding back his country, he passionately repudiated
them and began to search for a more satisfying
religion. Several years were spent in pilgriming
from one part of India to another, searching for a
satisfying religion.
When about twenty-two years of age, he met by
chance, in a railway train, an unknown European
who, in their brief conversation, opened up the sig-
nificance of Christ, leaving with him a New Testa-
ment. From that time he began to study the life
of Christ. He has told us how he was affected when
for the first time he came across the Sermon on the
Mount. "I could not tear myself away from those
sentences, so full of charm and beauty, which ex-
press the love and tenderness and truth that the
sermon conveys. In these three chapters I found
answers to the most abstruse problems of Hindu
philosophy. It swayed me to see how here the most
profound problems were completely solved. I went
on eagerly reading to the last page of the Bible that
I might learn more of Christ." As a result of be-
coming a Christian, Tilak lost his position and was
reduced to poverty. Wife and child refused to live
igo Building with India
with him. Finally, in 1895, he publicly professed
his faith in Christ. Thus began his leadership of
the Christian Church and the revelation of what
Indian Christianity might become.
Ill
A figure that has even more caught the imagina-
tion of India is that of Sadhu Sundar Singh. Bare-
footed, robed in saffron, ever traveling, with no
center acknowledged as home, living from the alms
of those who see his need, the Sadhu at once sug-
gests one of India's many ascetic mendicants. His
countenance is singularly sweet and benign, and to
many he recalls traditional pictures of Jesus. St.
Francis of Assisi is the nearest Western type. The
narrative of his life reads like a page from the
Bible. In fastings, in peril of rivers, in peril of
robbers, in journeyings often, in persecutions, in
imprisonings, bound, beaten, stoned, fed as by
miracle, released inexplicably, Sadhu Sundar Singh
bears the marks of a friend of Christ.
Sundar Singh deliberately attempts to Indianize
Christianity. He prefers that Indian Christians
should sit on the floor in church; that they should
remove their shoes instead of their turbans; that
Indian music should be sung; and that long, in-
formal talks should take the place of sermons. It
is, however, his adoption of the life of a sadhu or
typical holy man of India, that is his most striking
contribution. It releases him from the distractions
of worldly cares, gives a sense of freedom, and to
Sundar Singh it is the best way of commending the
gospel to the multitudes of India. It might be called
The Indian Church 191
moneyless evangelism. The Indian Church has shown
its readiness to welcome a Christian sadhuism, al-
though as yet scarcely more than a dozen examples
can be found within its circle.
The Sadhu constantly uses word pictures in his
teaching, and by this characteristically Eastern
method, he gives his reason for Indianizing Chris-
tianity. "Once when I was traveling in Rajputana
there was a Brahman of high caste hurrying to the
station. Overcome by the great heat, he fell down
on the platform. The Anglo-Indian station-master,
anxious to help him, offered him water in a Western
cup. But the Brahman would not take the water,
although he was very thirsty. *I cannot drink that
water. I would prefer to die.' *I am not asking you
to eat the cup,' the station master said to him. *I
will not break my caste,' he said, 'I am willing to
die.' When, however, the water was brought to
him in his own brass vessel, he drank it eagerly. It
is the same with the Water of Life. Indians do need
the Water of Life, but not in the European cup."
For seventeen years Sundar Singh has traveled
over the length and breadth of India — with short
visits to Japan, Britain, and America. Probably
no Indian Christian has made so deep and so wide
an impression on his native land. With abundance
of picturesque illustration and parable, with a
directness and simplicity of spiritual perception
which impresses everyone who hears him, he has
borne most effective testimony to the power of
Christ.
We may well inquire what was the early training
that enabled him to bring a new emphasis into the
xg2 Building with India
Indian Church. The Sadhu was born in 1889, his
parents being Sikhs of high birth and great wealth.
His mother constantly held before him the ideal of
India's "holy men," bidding him abandon the things
of this world and strive to obtain inner peace. At
seven years of age he had committed to memory all
the Bhagavad Gita — ^the most popular and influen-
tial scripture of Hinduism. At sixteen years of age,
after a period of bitter opposition to Christianity,
during which he tore up the Bible or burned it when
he had a chance, he became a Christian. Then began
his presentation of his newly found religion in a
characteristic Hindu way — wandering from place to
place, possessing nothing but his robe, his blanket,
and a copy of the New Testament. Thus did his
mother's ideal bear fruit in the Christian Church.
IV
The relation of the Christian Church to national-
ism is naturally a matter of importance. We saw in
the second chapter that there are certain serious
handicaps on India's progress. The Christian com-
munity is making more actual advance in removing
these drags on national attainment than any other
religious group. Let figures with reference to edu-
cation illustrate this fact. Among Christians there
are twice as many literate men and twelve times as
many literate women per thousand as among the
Hindus. In the advanced classes of mission high
schools many hundreds of Christian girls are en-
joying a little of that healthy, care-free girlhood
which we value for our children, while their non-
Christian sisters — Garland-of -Pearls, Playing-Moon-
\
The Indian Church 193
Beams, and Shanti (Peace) — are suffering the cruel
injustice of early motherhood. "School goer" is the
local name for a Christian in one area. The mail
coming and going from the little Christian com-
munity in many a village is greater than that of a
dozen neighboring non-Christian villages. Having
emerged in general from an illiterate class, these vil-
lagers could not have attained this relatively high
literacy without considerable parental sacrifice and
vision. Moreover, they have given to the country
schoolmasters and schoolmistresses out of all pro-
portion to their numbers. In their accomplishments /
toward abolishing illiteracy, therefore, Christians j
may be considered true patriots.
But in more direct ways the Christian leaders
are identifying themselves with India's welfare.
The father of constitutional agitation in India was
the late Krishna Mohan Banner jea, D. L., one of
Alexander Duff's converts. In a recent volume on In-
dia's Nation Builders one chapter out of the fifteen is
given to Kali Charan Banurji (1847-1907), who ex-
erted a powerful influence on the public life of Cal-
cutta and manifested devotion and loyalty to the
cause of India as long as he lived. Moreover, the
very machinery of representative church govern-
ment which has been introduced by many denomina-
tions is playing a very important part in training
for political self-government, just as it did in Colo-
nial days in the United States.
From the Christian community have come mem-
bers of the legislative council, judges of the law
courts, scores of government servants as magis-
trates, sub-magistrates, doctors, and engineers, and
/
194 Building with India
members of city and town municipal councils. When
the reforms went into operation in 1920, the Hindu
governor of Behar and Orissa appointed a Christian
as one of his ministers. Every year an increasing
number of Indian Christians are being sent to the
Indian National Congress. An "All-India Confer-
ence of Indian Christians" has been held annually
since 1914. Between fifty and sixty delegates come
together to discuss such questions as the disabilities
of Christians, the revision of the Christian marriage
act, various representations to Government, means
of fostering public opinion, and the development of
the intellectual, moral, economic, and industrial re-
sources of the country. Compared with twenty
years ago, there is more attention given on the part
of the Christian community to Indian dress and
Indian names.
The reforms have brought a very difficult problem
to Indian Christians. With a greatly increased vot-
ing constituency, the Government has introduced
for certain communities the privilege of separate
electorates. In other words, in order to safeguard
the interest of a given community, the Government
sets aside for it a certain number of seats in the leg-
islative council and gives this community exclusive
vote for such seats. A great problem for the mem-
bers of the Christian community is, whether they
shall seek this privilege or not. Many hold that the
self-interests of the Christian community demand
this separate representation. Others feel that the
acceptance of Jesus Christ should not compel a man
to cut himself off politically from his fellow country-
men. They hold that a separate electorate is a
The Indian Church 195
selfish expedient, and tends to segregate them from
their fellow countrymen. Christians, in their opin-
ion, can exhibit something higher than a scramble
for power and place — something nobler than a
struggle for privileges and posts ear-marked for
themselves. They would like to merge their political
interests absolutely with the non-Christians, and
seek every opportunity to serve their country with-
out the assurance of reward.
No one could claim that Indian Christians have
yet attained an outstanding place in shaping India's
national development. One can, however, say that
their part is creditable and full of hope, considering
the size of the community and the level from which
it has mainly come. When we remember that the
Church's capacity for influencing the nation de-
pends upon the character of its leaders more than
upon its size, the importance of missionary educa-
tion can at once be appreciated. Never before has
the public life of India needed the help of Christian
character and leadership more than in these days of
growth and change. To what quarter shall she look
for honest citizens, for unselfish politicians, and for
men with trustworthy motives, unless it be to the
Christian body?
V
One great difficulty with the Church in India
today is that it is shot through with Western denomi-
nationalism. One hundred and twenty-four dif-
ferent societies have been engaged in evangelizing
India, and the religion they have come to give is one
which has found divided expression in the West.
196 Building with India
Missionaries, therefore, have been busy reproducing
in India the several denominations which sent them
out — Anglicans and Methodists, Baptists and
Roman Catholics, Lutherans and Presbyterians.
Each is doubtless contributing much to the Church
that is to be in India, but the Western denomination-
alism, in its unchanged, imported multiplicity, is
unfortunate. In many cases a given denomination
is limited to the area where a certain mission works,
and hence for such there can be no easy sense of an
All-India Church. To some Christian leaders the
fact that their Church is not an All-India organiza-
tion is its greatest defect. This condition should not
lead us to give less support to the work of our par-
ticular denomination in India, but it should make
us eager to encourage any wise movement toward
union on the field.
Threatened by the great religions of India, the
small Christian minority is driven together as
Christians are not in the West. To many Indians
their denomination is a mere matter of geography,
betokening no more than that their birthplace was
in the area taken over by a certain mission. A group
of four thousand non-Christians in a certain area
wanted to be baptized. The region in which they
lived was occupied by two adjoining missions be-
tween which there was no expression of spiritual
hospitality. United in their previous caste feeling,
these converts were divided in the Church. When
intelligent Christians from different areas come
together, it is inevitable that Western denomina-
tional restrictions on fellowship and communion
The Indian Church 197
irritate. To many a high-caste convert, our divided,
almost competitive sections of Christendom come as
a distinct shock. Expecting to find peace in one
brotherhood under one Leader, they find a set of
negotiating factions. There is a growing recogni-
tion that it is the fundamentals of the gospel, and
not its Western interpretations, that must form the
basis of the missionary message.
The spirit of union, however, is abroad in India.
Most of the thirteen different Presbyterian bodies
have come together into a single, independent
Church. A still more notable union is the young and
vigorous South India United Church made up of
Christians associated with British, Australian,
German, and American missions and including Pres-
byterian, Reformed, and Congregational groups. For
several years this Church has been carrying on nego-
tiations with the Church of England and the Mar
Thoma Syrian Church for a still more comprehensive
union in south India. For the Indians such steps
are in the way of union, — ^not reunion, since histori-
cally they are not dissenters. But it is noticeable
that since the tide of nationalism has come in, the
question of church union does not interest the
younger Christian leaders. Doubtless our fathers
would have found it difficult to throw themselves
into such a problem during the days preceding 1776.
It is hoped that progress toward a united national
Church in India will not be at the price of loss of
communion with the churches of Christ in other
lands.
ig8 Building with India
VI
The Indian Church is faced with a variety of
problems. One danger is that the Christian Church
may not be distinguished from the Christian com-
munity. It is a land where religion sharply divides
the people. It is taken for granted that the son of
a Hindu is a Hindu; the son of a Muhammadan is
a Moslem. Similarly, individual decision with
regard to religion is not expected in the son of a
Christian. He is a Christian by birth and as a mat-
ter of course. The danger is that the bond of union
in the Church may not be a common loyalty to
Christ, but membership in a social group with civil
laws and social usages of its own.
The Indian Church has its race question. In the
presence of the prestige and moral influence of West-
ern missionaries, how is the Church to be given free-
dom of development? How, without fatally dividing
the Church on racial lines, is it possible to see that
Indian thought and Indian enterprise be not stifled
by the weight and authority of their foreign breth-
ren? These are burning questions in India. Many
Indian Christian leaders feel that, while direction in
many spheres has been passing to Indian hands
during the past two years, this movement has lagged
in mission and Church.
The use of the word "community" may be mis-
leading, for it tends to make us think that there is
a single thing corresponding to a single word. As
a matter of fact, the Christian community is made
up of many "societies" more or less loosely connected,
with different customs, traditions, and aspirations.
This appears most plainly in the survival of caste
The Indian Church 199
within the Church — a problem Protestants inherit
from the practice permitted by the early Roman
missions of the sixteenth century. For example,
there are two main castes in the Telugu area from
which Christians come — the Malas and Madigas.
These heartily despise one another. The worst abuse
a Mala can give another is to call him a Madiga.
Even after becoming a Christian it is hard to lay
aside these deeply ingrained prejudices. A devout
Christian Mala woman only after two years of
spiritual struggle gained her victory and consented
to eat in the same room with Madiga Christians. A
crisis in administration arose in one area when a
Mala congregation refused to have its marriages
performed by its Madiga pastor. Converts of higher
castes have been known to seat themselves at the
communion services so that the cup will reach them
before converts from certain lower castes. Adult
Christians have beat their breasts at the thought of
taking water from the same well as Christians of a
lower origin. "What will our relatives think of us
when they know it?" Boarding-school children
have struck when children of a caste heretofore
non-Christian have been introduced. Many Chris-
tians feel a physical repulsion to certain occupations
and cannot bear, for example, to sit beside the de-
spised leather workers. The whole caste problem is
more acute in south India than in the north.
While practically all Protestant missions are abso-
lutely clear that caste is inconsistent with the Chris-
tian spirit and should not be tolerated, certain
practical problems arise. Is it wise for us to exert
pressure to secure interdining and intermarriage
200 Building with India
between Christians of different castes? Or should
we let their old limitations and prejudices be
sloughed off as the spirit of Christ gets increasing
mastery of their lives? Is it best to erase from
church records all trace of the caste from which a
convert has come, and to discourage the retention
of names indicative of caste? These measures would
do away with some of the external data upon which
caste distinctions within the church thrive; but
is there danger that in obliterating family tradition
and history, there would be a lessening of self-re-
spect which frequently degenerates into pride, but
which is in itself a virtue?
To the educated and cultured section of the Chris-
tian community, the mass movements present a
severe test — a test which, on the whole, they are
very nobly meeting. Let us catch their problem.
Christian leaders naturally are eager for their com-
munity's advancement and for the discovery and
expression of a spirit worthy of Indian Christianity.
It is easy to see how they might chafe at the dilution
of their group by a flood of immobile and inarticu-
late outcaste converts. Such additions inevitably
lower the literacy percentage and general standards.
In the present condition of rather tense feeling
between Indians and Westerners, some Christian
leaders are inclined to resent the fact that it is
largely a foreign agency that has been guiding these
mass movements. As one of them said, "It is like a
foreigner deciding who shall come into my drawing-
room and associate with my children, without giving
me any choice in the selection or invitation." The
analogy is not exact, but it serves to show the prob-
The Indian Church 201
lem. Many missions are now devising ways by
which all or practically all their work can be carried
out under the advice and even under the control of
representatives of the Indian Church. What criti-
cism there is of the mass movements usually disap-
pears when these representatives face the problems
and take part in the discussions from the inside.
When we pray that the Indian Church may have
light on the great problem of caste within the
Church, let us not forget our own similar needs.
America has its great racial problems. There are
classes and races that are by no means sure that
they would receive a cordial welcome into pews of
our churches, and with whom many would not want
to interdine. Suppose Indian Christians should
gain a victory over their caste prejudices and from
the vantage point of distance should be able dis-
passionately to see what our Christian duty is in
America, would we be willing to receive their
prayers and messengers in the spirit in which we
want them to welcome ours ?
Again the question arises for Christians as to
whether they shall live in more or less separated
groups, or in the streets and bazaars with their non-
Christian fellow countrymen. In the one case,
they preserve their young people from the contami-
nation of the bazaar and secure greater freedom
of social life and intercourse, especially for the
women. But if they live in close contact with non-
Christians, they tend to avoid the selfish and self-
satisfied attitude that is apt to develop in an isolated
Christian group, they have a much more natural
opportunity for influencing their Hindu and Muham-
202 Building with India
madan neighbors, and the unfortunate impression
of denationalization is likely to be less. The same
question arises in connection with college dormi-
tories. The National Missionary Council in 1913
advised mingling Christian and non-Christian stu-
dents both in class-room and in boarding-halls at
college grade. But in certain centers this is strenu-
ously opposed by the Christian community.
A very vital question- is whether the Indian
Church is able to finance itself. The answer here
is disappointing., One board that has conducted
work in India for eighty-seven years and whose
annual expenditure there amounts to $520,000 has
only five churches in all India that are self-support-
ing. After investigation, the Wesleyan Methodists
of the Hyderabad District found that the contribu-
tion of the Indian Church in their area to the sup-
port of its ministry varied from one twelfth to one
sixth of the total cost. Their considered judgment
was that with effort and good management this pro-
portion could be raised in three or four years only
to a general average of one fifth.
Manifestly, Western churches cannot indefinitely
expand their work on this basis. Somewhere there
will come a financial limit, so that a remedy must be
found. The main cause of this dependent condition
is the extreme poverty of the people. Most missions
now see that a very definite part of their ministry
must be planning a type of education that will result
in raising the economic level of the people so that
a self-supporting church may be possible. No ser-
vice to the Indian Church can be complete without
taking her economic conditions into account. Fur-
The Indian Church 203
thermore, dearly bought experience is bearing fruit
so that the dangers of pauperization are now widely
recognized. Many are wisely emphasizing from the
first this matter of self-support, and ways of giving
unfamiliar to the West have become common, such
as, gifts in kind, rice set aside meal by meal in little
bags, assessment of plows, dedication of coconut
trees or fowls, first fruits, harvest festivals, or the
refusal to proclaim the banns if a young man is in
arrears in his church offering. In areas where a
large number of Christians were recruited for the
labor corps and for the army during the War, a con-
siderable amount of money came into the hands of
Christians. The fact that the income of the Church
was favorably affected shows that, with improve-
ment in the earning capacity of the villager, the in-
digenous support of the Church becomes more
practicable and possible.
The rapid economic change and uplift of the
Christian community have their own danger. Chris-
tianity has brought a new spirit of freedom and of
effort. With it for many have come a change of
status and new opportunities. The considerable
body of Christian clerks, traders, schoolmasters and
small landowners is being continuously recruited
from the bottom upwards. This process is bound
to be present when you bring the stimulus of Chris-
tianity and the needs of mass movements together.
Under these circumstances Indian Christianity
should receive special help to avoid the emergence of
an ultra-practical or even a somewhat worldly and
materialistic type of religion.
Christians have to face many problems connected
204 Building with India
with the family. They generally give up the joint
family system — ^where sons and grandsons bring
their wives to the father's house — and adopt the
Western plan instead. But this is far less economi-
cal, and difficulties of adjustment are inevitable in
the transition stage. Poverty leads some Christians
to betroth their daughters for money, as do the non-
Christians about them. Since a Muhammadan
marriage is automatically dissolved when one or
both parties change religion, should a Muhammadan
couple be remarried after either has received bap-
tism? Should the Church excommunicate a man
who marries a non-Christian woman? What was
Paul's practice in this regard ? Would the fact that
we expect the Hindu and Muhammadan to have
religious toleration affect this question?
There is great need of revision of the laws relat-
ing to Christian marriage. For example, Hindu
law permits no divorce. If the marriage of certain
Christians took place before conversion in accord-
ance with Hindu rites, there can be no relief through
divorce even when unfaithfulness is proved accord-
ing to existing statute law.
There is the perennial question as to what should
be done when a man with more than one wife applies
for baptism. Shall he be asked to set aside all but
one wife and thus work hardship on upright women
who married him in good faith? Shall he be
received with all his wives and thus risk the purity
of the Church? Or shall he be asked to attend the
services, but wait outside the fellowship of the
Lord's Supper? And if he is refused Church mem-
bership because he has more than one wife, shall
The Indian Church 205
the wives be admitted because they have only one
husband ?
VII
All over India one can find exceedingly interesting
and valuable pieces of work being done by Indian
Christians. One of the most stimulating places
under Indian management that one can visit is
Dornakal, in the Dominions of the Nizam of Hydera-
bad. THis is the center of the diocese of the Rt. Rev.
V. S. Azariah, consecrated in 1912 as the first Indian
Bishop of the Church of England. His Manual
Training Institute^ has been developed on lines
that are attracting attention, and the spirit and
methods of work of this wise executive are full of
suggestion for all those who are working in India.
In the Punjab is a missionary district which for
forty-eight years was under the superintendence of
Rev. Kali Charan Chatterjee, first Moderator (1904)
of the Presbyterian Church in India, and the recipi-
ent of the degree of Doctor of Divinity from Wash-
ington and Jefferson College in 1901, and from the
University of Edinburgh in 1910. Dr. Chatterjee
came from the highest Brahman caste. As a boy he
was deeply influenced by his aunt, who had been a
widow from her childhood and gave much of her
time to prayer, to memorizing the Shastras, and to
alms-giving. As a result of Christian teaching in a
mission high school, he was baptized on entering
Alexander Duff's college in Calcutta. In consequence,
this boy of fifteen was cast out by relatives and
friends, who regarded him as dead and worse. In
*See Schools with a Message in India, Chapter III,
2o6 Building with India
time he married a consecrated Christian girl and
then began a life of wonderfully blessed service
rendered by the devoted pair. He was placed by the
Presbyterian Mission in charge of the Hoshyarpur
district. This area included 900,000 inhabitants
scattered in 2,117 villages. Much of the work was
among the outcastes. For over fifty years this Chris-
tian leader of Brahman birth, strove among them to
build up the Church. He had good gifts of organiza-
tion and left behind him at his death in 1916
churches with over three thousand Christians,
although he had started out with none. No one who
had ever seen his tall, venerable figure with the long,
flowing beard, clear, tranquil eyes, and kindly, dig-
nified bearing could ever forget the noble Christian
spirit manifested there.
In Bombay is a dispensary of the American Board
under the charge of Dr. Gurabai, who for over thirty
years has been helping to minister to the needs of
this great city. Her husband, the late Rev. Sumant
Rao Karmarkar, was one of the first Indian Chris-
tians to come to America for study. He became
known as "the St. John of Western India," and as a
distinguished evangelist was asked to go to Japan to
an international conference. Dr. Gurabai received
her medical training in Philadelphia. In 1914 she
represented India in the World's Y. W. C. A. Confer-
ence in Stockholm; and in 1917 came to America as
a Christian representative from India to the jubilee
meeting of the Congregational Woman's Board of
Missions. An inspiring international touch is found
in the fact that her brilliant adopted son. Dr.
Vishwas Karmarker, gave his life in unselfish ser-
The Indian Church 207
vice to America, during the influenza epidemic of
1918. Letters of recognition and appreciation came
to her from the Mayor of Pittsburgh and the Gover-
nor of Pennsylvania after his death.
Off in one of the Punjab's quiet Httle villages — by
name Asrapur, or the "Village of Hope" — a steady,
pervasive piece of work has been going on for thirty-
two years largely under the direction of Miss
Kheroth Bose, of the Zenana Bible and Medical Mis-
sion. A testimony to the value placed upon her sound
judgment is the fact that she has been one of the
Indian members of the Missionary Council for All-
India from its beginning in 1913. Government has
bestowed upon her the Kaisar-i-Hind silver medal.
Her hospital in the Village of Hope is an object
lesson in love for that whole region. The proudest
and most bigoted find that money and position can
bring them no more of the physician's attention and
care than is given to the poorest. Each one of the
staff, from the doctor down to the youngest nurse,
takes a share in the spiritual work, — singing hymns,
explaining pictures, or giving addresses. Since all
the servants and helpers are Christian, the patients
come into a Christian atmosphere and find a new
interpretation of womanhood in the happy, useful
lives of the Christian women. In the same way
women in the early Church filled a place and per-
formed a part at which the pagan world wondered.
On Sunday, the patients who are able go to the
near-by chapel, where the hymns are lined out verse
by verse, as is the custom for those who cannot read.
Many have learned so to love this Sunday service
that long after completing their treatment, they have
2o8 Building with India
returned for the week-end to catch again the spirit
of Asrapur. Sometimes as many as forty villages
will be represented among those who come in a
single morning to the hospital. Hence, as one itiner-
ates about the area, in village after village one
comes across former patients and old friends of
Miss Bose, who treasure in their hearts memories of
prayer or verses of hymns that they have heard at
her hospital.
In this Indian-managed center, with its wonder-
ful spirit of simplicity, understanding, and sympa-
thy is held each year the Prem Sangat Mela — a
gathering of religious-minded people of whatever
creed or race. Men and women come from far and
near. The chairman is usually a non-Christian of
good repute. It is agreed that all who come shall
call one another brethren in the spirit of love; that
speakers may say frankly what they believe or have
experienced about their own faiths, and especially
on sin and its remedy. Singing both of Christian and
non-Christian hymns forms part of the program.
The Indian pastor, Rev. Wadhawa Mai, who has
been the moving spirit in the Mela, attributes much
of the tolerance to the influence of the hospital to
which women of all classes come. Prejudice and
bigotry against Christ are breaking down since all
who come to the Mela are guests. On their return
home, the people welcome Christian workers, and
many begin to read the Bible. One great feature of
this Christianized Indian Mela is that women come
with the men. to hear the same message — a step
toward the realization of higher family life. Chris-
tians go to this Mela, not only to teach, but because
The Indian Church 209
they feel that they have something to learn from
others who are living devoutly according to their
lights. They are thus discovering how to interpret
that aspect of the gospel which especially meets the
needs of their non-Christian friends. The decided
Christian atmosphere of these gatherings along with
the very explicit Christian witness is exciting a
marked influence on that whole region.
Noteworthy work by Indian Christians is by no
means all connected with missions. A Christian
visitor to India should not think of passing through
Poona without seeking to see St. Helena's School
under the charge of Miss Susie Sorabji, the distin-
guished daughter of an early Parsee convert. You
will be interested from the time when a shower of
rose-leaves gives you welcome until you are taken
out to see the geography lesson in the yard. A
relief map of India has been formed in the sand with
water surrounding it. One child will recite on the
exports of India, and as she does so, taking a toy
boat, she wades barefooted through the ocean to a
port at Karachi, Bombay, or Calcutta. She loads
her ship with such exports as tea, rice, cotton, etc.,
actually picking these up from the proper locations
and taking them to the toy boat which lies in the
harbor.
One could ask no greater privilege for a visi-
tor to the very picturesque city of Lahore, than to
be guided through one of its thirteen gates into its
narrow, winding lanes between tall buildings with
their carved and artistic balconies to the old palace
of Nau Nihal Singh. From its terraced roofs one
can look out over that crowded city dotted with
210 Building with India
mosques and temples. This old relic of Sikh glory
is now used as a school for eleven hundred non-
Christian girls, and here lives Miss Mona Bose, its
Christian head, who for over thirty years has been
trusted by the non-Christian committee with the
management of their school. Who can measure the
Christian influence of this dignified, cultured
woman who continues to live within the walled city
in close contact with non-Christian homes and far
removed from the freer, more open and congenial
Christian centers outside the walls?
At Benares, sacred city of the Hindus, where
Brahmanism displays itself in the fulness of its
power, and where temples and idols, symbols and
sacred wells abound on every side, one finds a Chris-
tian secretary of the municipality. Rai Bahadur
A. C. Mukerjee has been repeatedly chosen for this
important post by his non-Christian fellow-citizens
because they value his sterling character and un-
selfish service. He is also managing director of the
district cooperative bank, whose other officials —
except one Britisher — are Hindus, and he is an in-
fluential member of the Provincial Committee on
Cooperative Societies.
In the last decade long steps have been taken in
Indianizing the Christian Association work in India.
Since 1916, Mr. K. T. Paul, constructive thinker and
Christian statesman, has been General Secretary of
the Y.M.C.A. The editor of the Young Men of India
since 1919 has been Dr. S. K. Datta, author of The
Desire of India, whose advice has been more than
once sought by government commissions, and whose
spiritual and prophetic addresses have been the in-
The Indian Church 211
spiration of many a conference in Britain and India.
Fifty years ago a high-caste Hindu youth of twen-
ty-four, after a sleepless night spent in prayer,
started to an appointed place for baptism only to be
assaulted, carried away by a mob, and made pris-
oner in his own home. Later, when success and
recognition made it possible, he built a beautiful
home near the very tree where he had been beaten
on becoming a Christian, and out from his large and
happy family of fourteen have gone streams of
Christian influence. One daughter. Miss Mohini
Maya Das, after graduating from Mt. Holyoke and
serving as principal of the Kinnaird College in
Lahore, has become General Secretary of the
Y.W.C.A. for all India.
Some day a history of the Church in India will be
written from the Indian standpoint. It will mean a
great advance in the intelligence of missionary in-
terest in the West when we have trained our imagi-
nation to see the growth of the Kingdom from the
standpoint of the people of the various mission
lands. When this is done, Carey's great work will
be mentioned ; but we will see in clearer outline than
at present his first convert, Krishna Chandra Pal,
one of whose hymns has been translated :
O thou, my soul, forget no more
The Friend who all thy sorrows bore.
Let every idol be forgot;
But, O my soul, forget Him not.
Judson's pioneer work in Burma will be recog-
nized, but his famous convert, Ko Thah-byu, will
be emphasized. The United Presbyterian Mission
has carried on most excellent work among the out-
212 Building with India
castes of the Punjab, but the Indian Church will
want to know more about Ditt of the much despised
Chuhra caste, a dark little man, lame of one leg, who
with quiet and modest manner and with sincerity
and earnestness of purpose went about his business
of buying and selling hides; and along with this
started the great mass movement in that area. A
place will be given to Bhaktula Abraham, the first
convert in the S. P. G. Telugu work, who led the
whole outcaste community of his village to accept
the gospel. Other centers followed this example;
and thus began a mass movement which has con-
tinued to advance through sixty years.
In such a history of the Indian Church Pandita
Ramabai will stand out as the greatest Indian Chris-
tian of this generation. In her long, toilsome pil-
grimages, in her arduous search through the entire
range of Sanskrit literature for some satisfying
truth, the Church will see the impotence of Hindu-
ism taken at its highest. In her remarkable com-
bination of executive, intellectual, and religious
powers ; in her great work near Poona for thousands
of India's widows; in her unhesitating loyalty to
Jesus Christ and her humble, devoted service for
Him ; in what she is even more than in what she has
done, the world may see what an Indian soul may be
when possessed by Christ.
Here we can merely name a few out of many
worthy of mention. But such a history will tell us
much more of Ram Chandra Bose who became an
evangelist under the American Methodists rather
than pursue to high position his career as an educa-
MISS CORNELIA SORABJI
One of seven distinguished daughters of an early Parsee
convert, the first lady barrister of India, and now serving
under the Government of India in the Court of Wards, Cal-
cutta, where she is the guardian and friend of widowed Ranis
(Queens) and baby Rajahs (Kings). She is a powerful ad-
vocate and a brilliant writer, as is testified by her illumi-
nating books interpreting the women and children of India —
Between the Twilights, Love and Life Behind the Purdah,
and Sun Babies.
Copyright Ewing Galloway
THE BISHOP OF DORNAKAL
The lives and distinguished service of devoted and states-
manlike Christians such as the Rt. Rev. V. S. Azariah give
hope that the powers and responsibilities of missions may
increasingly be transferred to the Indian Church.
The Indian Church 213
tor ; of Ram Chandra, known in foreign universities
for his work on problems of maxima and minima;
of Rajah Sir Harnam Singh Ahluwalia, K.C.I.E.,
who gave up being ruling prince in order to be a
Christian; of Lilivati Singh, chosen as successor of
Isabella Thoburn as principal of the first Christian
college for women in India ; of Mrs. Paul Appasamy
of Madras, whose recent tour through India greatly-
advanced the interest in the National Missionary
Society; and of Deaconess Ellen Lakshmi Goreh, /
who wrote our beautiful hymn :
In the secret of His presence how my soul delights to hide!
Oh, how precious are the lessons which I learn at Jesus' side !
Earthly cares can never vex me, neither trials lay me low;
For when Satan comes to tempt me, to the secret place I go.
Thus at one extreme in the Indian Church are the
educated leaders whose capacity seems equal to that
of the ablest foreign missionaries, and whose claim
to have a voice in the evangelization of India is fully
justified. At the other extreme and vastly prepon-
derating in numbers are the simple and undeveloped
congregations drawn from the depressed classes.
Owing to their poverty and ignorance they cannot
bear heavy responsibilities. Their place of Chris-
tian worship may be a mud-walled building, larger
and better built than their own village houses ; or it
may be merely a raised, level, shaded place for
prayer out in the open. Such congregations will
naturally require a great deal of training, nurture,
and discipline before they can be built up into useful
citizens and can take an adequate place in the life of
the Church and the nation.
214 Building with India
VIII
A matter more important than the actual num-
bers in the Church is the evidence of inner expan-
sive force. Are there signs that the Indian Church
wants to pass on the Light?
The Indian Missionary Society of Tinnevelly is
one answer to this question. It is the missionary
expression of a strong community with a Christian
tradition of several generations; for Tinnevelly is
the center of one of the oldest non-Roman missions
in India, and one tenth of the population of the area
is Christian. They are mainly Anglicans and their
Church has attained a high degree of self-support,
self-government, and self -propagation. Their society
was founded in 1903, and raises over Rs. 18,000
for their work in what for them is a foreign mission,
since it is in another language area.
In 1905, in the very pagoda where Henry Martjoi
used to pray for India, there was organized the In-
dian National Missionary Society. Its object is the
evangelization of the unoccupied areas of India by
means of Indian missionaries under Indian man-
agement. A very definite appeal is made to the na-
tional spirit in its constituency. It has fourteen
missionaries, working in six different parts of India,
with a budget of Rs. 37,000 (1920).
Still another hopeful sign is found in the awaken-
ing of the ancient Syrian Church. Few in the West
realize that a Christian Church has existed for
fifteen centuries in the feudatory states of Travan-
core and Cochin along the south-western coast of
India. In popular tradition this Syrian Christian
Church goes back even further, being attributed to
The Indian Church 215
the work of the apostle Thomas. In the two states
named, the Syrian Christians number one in four
in the population, and in intellectual power and
vigor they are equal to the Brahmans. Ancient
rulers have accorded them important privileges re-
corded on copper plates, and today some of them
hold high and important posts.
Joy and sorrow mingle as we think of the Syrian
Church in India. We rejoice that a church has con-
tinued all these centuries without being lost in the
Indian religions. But we lament its lack of vision
and aggressive evangelism. They have often had to
suffer for their faith, and may have exercised a leav-
ening influence on Hindu thought, but through the
centuries they have shown almost no missionary in-
terest. They simply settled down as a good caste.
Moreover, they have been bitterly divided into five
different groups. This Church after sleeping for
a thousand years has shown distinct signs of quick-
ening. There is a very definite rapprochement
between some of its branches, and they have in
recent years begun to send out foreign missionaries
of their own to learn another language and work for
the Christianization of India. Christian leaders of
exceptional beauty and winsomeness of character
have come from this ancient Church, and much is
expected from the revival stirring among them.
The recent Evangelistic Forward Movement has
given a great and widespread impetus to personal
evangelism. Beginning in the south the movement
spread throughout a great part of India. The aim
has been to lay upon individual members of the
Church responsibility in regard to those immedi-
2i6 Building with India
ately about them. Tens of thousands have re-
sponded. In some parts of the country the work has
been directed by bodies composed exclusively of
Indians. Women as well as men have taken part
in the campaigns, and often Indian methods have
been used. The villagers begin to take notice saying,
"There must be something in this thing that makes
successful, well regarded men take it so seriously."
The movement has been distinctly encouraging, and
it may be said in general that the churches show a
growing sense of responsibility for the evangeliza-
tion of India. The greatest annual Christian gath-
ering in the world is a convention entirely managed
by the Indian Christians of Travancore, when 30,000
people spend a week in inspirational meetings and
Bible study.
Beyond and above all the Christians may do,
however, is that which they are. It is impossible to
tabulate the results of pure and aspiring lives.
Christian students in the colleges. Christian teachers
in the schools, Christian women demonstrating in
manifold forms of service the unused resources in
Indian womanhood. Christian homes — just to be
Christians is a great witness. Very often even in
crowded thoroughfares it is possible to distinguish
Christians merely from outward appearances.
Many a traveler witnesses to the immense relief
it is to get away for a time from non-Christian India
and sit in the midst of a Christian audience even
when the vernacular is not understood. Hymns are
sung by women at their work in the rice fields or as
they pick the cotton or weave their cloth. Over
many a Hindu village there steals, night after night,
The Indian Church 217
the sound of the native drum accompanying the
praises not of Ram or of Krishna, or yet of some
more questionable earthly love, but some Christian
lyric in praise of their Lord Jesus. And the people,
chattering as they smoke, whisper to one another,
"The Christians are making prayers." Thus in
organized and unorganized ways the message is
passed on.
IX
Nineteen centuries ago three wise men from the
East placed gold, frankincense, and myrrh at the
feet of Jesus. More varied and far more precious
than such material gifts are the capacities and en-
dowments which today a great Eastern people can
place at Christ's disposal. The beauty of life and
character already revealed in the Christian Church
of India is but a foretaste of the rich contribution
and spiritual insight which India will give to the
world when Christ has His way in that land. Do
we find within ourselves a passionate longing that
the religious devotion now lavished on rude stones
and inadequate symbols of divinity should be turned
as a flood to the Way, the Truth, and the Life? Only
then will Christ be formed in India, through making
over her individual and corporate life into the image
of God.
We have seen how her God-given capacities are
handicapped, limited, and suppressed by many a
grievous burden. Most of these drawbacks are en-
tirely removable through forces which issue from a
Life whose witnesses we are. Can we, then, be in-
different when it is within our power greatly to
2i8 Building with India
accelerate the time when India will be freed from
the drag of ignorance, poverty, and superstition ?
We have seen that India is trying to help herself.
She is not a dead, inert load. Even non-Christians
are responsive to new light and to fresh influences.
Many of her sons are, according to their lights,
striving for her higher self-realization. All this
gives promise that an awakening leadership will
carry on and complete the work when once they
catch the vision. In these days when the new India
is shaping so rapidly before our eyes, are we going
to hesitate to do all in our power to train leaders
and to share ideals?
Of those responding to new influences, growing
numbers acknowledge the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
In Him individuals find themselves re-created in
their innermost personalities and full of gratitude
for new and unexpected light and life. One by one
from the higher strata and in masses from the out-
castes they are being stimulated to consciousness of
personal accountability, worth, and mission. From
such men and women the Indian Church is forming.
We have seen this Church emerging from the lowest
depths of Hindu society, confronted with problems
of great difficulty, weighted down with the inheri-
tances of prejudice and contempt, yet triumphing,
witnessing, and producing Christian citizens and
leaders. Could any greater call come to the Chris-
tian friendship of the West than the opportunity to
help this rising Church in its task of winning India
to the inclusive Christian fellowship at work for a
better world?
The cooperation which we long to establish with
The Indian Church 219
India does not end with us as human beings. At
the center of the Christian's universe is Love, eter-
nally creative and purposing good. The wonder ever
is that He welcomes us to fellowship in service. He
has a place for us, and yearns for our cooperation.
"I call you not servants, but friends." A very real
part of our message is to share with India the trans-
forming experience of being a "co-worker" with
such a God. Together and with God we will attempt
the task of missions — ^the Christian's conscious
cooperation with the indwelling Spirit in promoting
the development of life, the bringing of life at its
highest as found in Jesus to bear upon other life,
individual and social, that it may be raised to
greater perfection and ever increasing potency. We
are to work for India that we may the better work
with her in behalf of a common goal — ^the Eangdom
of God.
Friends of India, what are the passion and con-
viction which move upon men's hearts, forcing them
either to go or send their best into such places of
need as this book has described? Surely statistics
alone cannot do it. Neither mainly is it the deline-
ation of every hideous form which lifts its head in
a non-Christian land. It is something far more
fundamental than that. Any careful student will
see that the great need of our times, underlying the
need for all other reforms, is for a transformation
of character. For this achievement there is no
other force remotely comparable to the person of
Jesus Christ. Balance on the one hand all the
truths and beauties that the most careful search and
the most generous interpretation can glean from all
220 Building with India
the non-Christian faiths taken together, and on
the other the Gospels and the Person they make
real to us. It is because of the infinite superiority
and necessity of the latter for the world's need and
hunger that Christian missionaries offer themselves
in a glowing, beautiful service among the neediest
on earth.
In the last analysis the measure of our Christian
outreach to the world is the measure of our valua-
tion of Jesus Christ and of the forces and life ex-
pressions to which He gives rise. Even non-Chris-
tians can see this. Commenting on the shortage of
medical missionaries, the Indian Social Reformer
said, "If men and women are less interested in mis-
sions than they formerly were, they must be less
interested in Christ ; and a revival of vital religion is
the only solution of the problem." Unless to our-
selves He has become the gripping force in life,
unless we are conscious of utter failure without His
saving power in our own lives, unless we have caught
some of the spirit and love that come from Him, we
are not likely to pay the price of giving Him to
others. God grant that we may live so deeply in
Him that the impulsion of a great experience will be
sufficient to overcome inertia and selfishness. Then
we will spontaneously say with Paul, "The love of
Christ constraineth us" — to yearn, to pray, to give,
to go.
Prayer
FATHER of all nations, we bring to Thee our
thanksgiving for the Church of India. For
India's great, yearning heart and for the rest-
lessness that draws her people for satisfaction to the
Christ; for the first converts in every field; for suc-
ceeding generations of Christians; for the growing
strength and numbers of those who are called by
Thy name; for the steadfastness of the ancient
Syrian Church and for the riches of Christian char-
acter it contains; for the signs of vitality and power,
we praise Thee.
C^Hear, O Father, otir prayer for this growing
Church which is eis a light shining in a great dark-
ness, where counter forces are strong, and the task
is almost overwhelming. Strengthen its members
for the long and arduous battle which must be fought
against old and ingrained habits of thought and act
which tend to cling. May they not stop with the
mere language of Christian faith and experience,
but grip the very mind and heart of the Christian
message.
€[As they begin to express Christianity in their own
way, protect them from mistakes. May the vigor
and quality of their spiritual life, freely expressed
according to their distinctive powers and capacities,
be a winsome witness to all India. Inwardly per-
suaded that Christ is the secret and power of
life for their own people both collectively and indi-
vidually, may they be richly blessed and guided in
interpreting Him to their fellows. Amen.
221
^tf*'\-e-L.WW^ V ^t*A^*xo,>-«J!*» /\«-fc*--*-H--lt.4>».,^
/•
BIBLIOGRAPHY^^^
Conditions in India have changed so rapidly in recent
years that the following bibliography has been limited for
the most part to books that have appeared within the last
decade. The prices quoted are subject to change. If one
were limited to six supplementary books on India, the six
that are starred (*) might well be chosen, considering
both cost and range.
For other valuable bibliographies, and especially to those
which contain full lists of missionary biography as well as
general subjects, we would direct the reader to:
A Selected Bibliography of Missionary Literature. Compiled
by J. LovELL Murray. Student Volunteer Movement, 25
Madison Avenue, New York City. 60 cents.
Ten Years' Selected International Missionary Bibliography,
1912-1922. Published in International Review of Mis-
sions. January, 1922. 25 Madison Avenue, New York.
75 cents.
Home Base of Missions, The. Report of World Missionary
Conference Commission VI. 1910. Fleming H. Revell
Co., New York. Out of print. May be found in mis-
sionary libraries.
Readers should obtain from their mission boards all de-
nominational literature on India available.
Geography and Statistics
World Atlas of Christian Missions. Edited by James S.
Dennis, Harlan P. Beach and C. H. Fahs. 1911. Stu-
dent Volunteer Movement, New York. $4.00.
World Statistics of Christian Missions. Edited by Harlan
P. Beach and Burton St. John. 1916. Committee of
Reference and Counsel, 25 Madison Avenue, New York.
$2.00.
The India Year Book. Edited by Sir Stanley Reed. Issued
annually. Bennett, Coleman & Co., 187 Fleet Street, E.
C, London.
History
Oxford History of India from the Earliest Times to the End
of 1911. Vincent A. Smith. 1919. Maps. Oxford
University Press, New York. $6.25.
222
Political
Government of India, The. J. Ramsay MacDonald. 1919.
Huebsch, New York. $3.50.
History of the Indian Nationalist Movement, A. Sm Verney
LovETT. 1920. F. A. Stokes Co., New York. $4.00.
Indian Nationalism. An Independent Estimate. Edwyn R.
Bevan. 1914. Macmillan Co., New York. $1.40.
Indian Nationality. With an Introduction by Ramsay Mum.
R. N. Gilchrist. 1920. Longmans, Green & Co., New
York. $2.75.
Nationalism. Sir Rabindranath Tagorb. 1917. Macmil-
lan Co., New York. $1.25.
Social and Economic
India's Silent Revolution. F. B. Fisher and Gertrude M.
Williams. 1919. Macmillan Co., New York. $1.50.
*Peoples and Problems of India. Sir Thomas W. Holder-
NESS. 1912. Henry Holt & Co., New York. 50 cents.
Social Ideals in India. William Paton. 1919. United
Council for Missionary Education, London. Is. 3d.
Statement Exhibiting the Moral and Material Progress and
Condition of India. Published annually. Wyman. Lon-
don. 4s. 6d.
Education
Education of the Women of India. Minna G. Cowan. 1913.
Fleming H. Revell Co., New York. $1.25.
Our Christian Debt to India: A Plea for a United Christian
Effort to Meet the Educational Needs of Indian Villages.
J. N. Oldham. 1918, Conference of Missionary Socie-
ties of Great Britain and Ireland, London. 6d.
Schools with a Message in India. Daniel Johnson Fleming.
1921. Oxford University Press, New York. $2.40.
Village Education in India. A Commission of Inquiry. 1920.
Oxford University Press, New York. $2.50.
Art and Music
Arts and Crafts of India. A. K. CooMARASWAMY. 1914.
Phillips, Leroy Co., Boston. $1.75.
Handbook of Indian Art. E. B. Havell. 1921. E. P. Button
& Co., New York. $10.00.
Handbook of Musical Evangelism. L. I. Stephen and H. A.
POPLEY. 1914. Madras Methodist Publishing House.
12 annas.
Indian Painting. Percy Brown. 1919. Oxford University
Press, New York. 70 cents.
223
Indian Religions and Christianity
Chamars, The. George W. Briggs. 1921. Oxford Universi-
ty Press, New York. $2.70.
*Crovm of Hinduism, The. J. N. Farquhar 1917. Oxford
University Press, New York. $2.70.
Dravidian Gods in Modern Hinduism. W. T. Elmore. 1915.
Printed by University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Neb.
$1.00.
*India and Its Faiths: A Traveler's Record. James Bissett
Pratt. 1915. Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston. $4.00.
Modem Religious Movements in India. J. N. Farquhar.
1915. Macmillan Co., New York. $2.50.
Primer of Hinduism. J. N. Farquhar. 1912. Oxford Uni-
versity Press, New York. 85 cents.
Redemption, Hindu and Christian. Sydney Cave. 1919.
Oxford University Press, New York. $5.25.
ViUage Gods of South India, The. Henry Whitehead.
1921. Milford, London; Oxford University Press, New
York. 6s.
Christianity in India
Among the Wild Tribes of the Afghan Frontier. T. L. Pen-
NELL. 1909. J. B. Lippincott Co., Philadelphia. $3.50.
*Goal of India, The. W. E. S. Holland. 1918. United Coun-
cil for Missionary Education, London. 5s.
History of Missions in India. Julius Richter. 1908. Flem-
ing H. Revell Co., New York. $2.50.
India in Conflict. P. N. F. YouNG and Agnes Ferres. 1920.
Macmillan Co., New York. $1.40.
India on the March. Alden H. Clark. 1922. Missionary
Education Movement, New York. 75 and 50 cents.
Lighted to Lighten. Alice B. Van Doren. 1922. Central
Committee on the United Study of Foreign Missions,
West Medford, Mass. 75 and 50 cents.
Our Task in India; Shall we Proselytise Hindus or Evan-
gelize India. Bernard Lucas. 1914. Macmillan Co.,
New York. $1.00.
*Outcastes' Hope, The: or Work Among the Depressed
Classes in India. G. E. Phillips. 1912. United Council
for Missionary Education. London. 2s.
Renaissance in India: Its Missionary Aspect. C. F. An-
drews. 1912. United Council for Missionary Educa-
tion, London. Is. lOd.
Social Christianity in the Orient: The Story of a Man, a
Mission, and a Movement. John E. Clough. 1914.
Macmillan Co., New York. $1.50.
224
Biographies of Christian Indians
An Indian Priestess: the Life of Chandra Lela. Ada Lee.
1902. Morgan and Scott, London. Out of print.
Jaya. Beatrice M. Harband. Marshall Brothers, London.
Kali Charan Banurji. B. R. Barber. 1912. Christian Lit-
erature Society for India, London.
Lai Bihari Day. G. Macpherson. 1900. F. & T. Clark.
Edinburgh.
Life and Letters of Torn Dutt. Harihar Das. 1921. Ox-
ford University Press, New York. $8.00.
Life of Father Goreh. C. E. Gardner. 1900. Longmans,
Green & Co., New York. $1.75.
Lilavati Singh. Florence L. Nichols. 1909. Woman's
Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal
Church, 581 Boylston Street, Boston, Mass. 29 cents.
Message of Sadhu Sundar Singh. B. H. Streeter and A. J.
Appasamy. 1921. Macmillan Co., New York. $1.75.
*Pandita Ramabai. Helen S. Dyer. 1911. Fleming H. Re-
vell Co., New York. $1.25.
Ponnamal: Her Story. Amy Wilson Carmichael. 1918.
Morgan and Scott, London.
Prince of the Church in India, A. J. C. R. EwiNG. 1918.
Fleming H. Revell Co., New York. 75 cents.
Stories of Indian Christian Life. Samuel S. Satthlanadhan.
1898. Madras, India.
Sunder Singh; the Apostle of the Bleeding Feet. Alfred
Zahir. Included in a collection called A Lover of the
Cross. Published in India, An American edition pub-
lished by B. T. Badley is out of print but may be ob-
tained through some missionary libraries.
Stories about India
Eyes of Asia, The. Rudyard Kipling. 1918. Doubleday,
Page & Co., Garden City, N. Y. $1.00.
India, Beloved of Heaven. Brenton Thoburn Badley in
collaboration with Oscar MacMillan Buck and James
Jay Kingham, with an introduction by Bishop W. F.
Oldham. The Abingdon Press, 150 Fifth Avenue, New
York. $1.00.
Kim. Rudyard Kipling. 1918. Doubleday, Page & Co.,
Garden City, N. Y. $1.50.
On the Face of the Waters. Flora Annie Steel. Mac-
millan Co., New York. $1.50.
Outcaste, The. F. E. Penny. Published in London.
Potter's Thumb, The. Flora Annie Steel. Harper and
Brothers, New York. $1.50.
Sanyasi, The. F. E. Penny. Published in London.
Tara. Meadows Taylor. Published in London.
225
<A
^it-iyX^
INDEX
Abraham, Bhaktula, cited, 212.
Age of Consent Act, 83.
Agnew, Eliza, cited, 122.
Agricultural and _ Horticultural
Society in India, cited, 118.
Agriculture, possibilities _ of, 17;
causes of backwardness in, 43-47;
improvement in possible, 45-46,
48; control of, transferred to
Indians, 104; experiments in,
131, 132-134; committee on indus-
trial and agricultural work, 132.
All-India conference of Indian
Christians, 194.
All-India Muslim Women's Asso-
ciation, 87.
Appasamy, Mrs. Paul, cited, 213.
Arya Samaj, the, 78-81.
Asrapur, "Village of Hope," hospi-
tal at, 207-209.
Azariah. Rt. Rev. V. S., cited, 205.
Bangalore, women's clubs in, 86.
Bannerjea, Krishna Mohan, 193.
Banurji, Kali Charan, cited, 193.
Baptism, problems of, 177-179, 204.
"Black Cobra Act," 105.
Bombay, women's clubs in, 86, 87;
American Board dispensary in, 206.
Bombay Infant Welfare Ass'n, 86.
Bose, Miss Kheroth, 207.
Bose, Miss Mona, 210.
Bose, Ram Chandra, 212-213.
Brahmo Samaj, the, 76-77.
Buddhism, 12, 68-69. _
Bureau of Economic Welfare in
Telugu area, 131-132.
Butler, William, cited, 119.
Carey, William, 74-75, 76, 117-118,
130, 211.
Caste, problems arising from, 56,
58-59. 77, 158, 170, 199-200.
Chandra, Ram, cited, 213.
Chatterjee, Rev. Kali Charan, 205-
206.
Childbirth conditions, 137-139.
Child marriage, evil effects of, 32,
34, 66, 67, 68, 77, 78, 80.
Christianity, essential _ differences
between India's religions and,
68-72; effect of social reform _ on
acceptance of, 113-113; nationalism
and, 145-150; opposition to, 148-
149, 173-179; results of, on a
community, 168-170.
Christians, Indian, national as-
pirations of, 18; influence and
work of, 127-129, 193-194, 205-213;
evidences of change in, 168, 215-
217; persecution of, 172-173, 177;
problem of, in legislative^ council,
194-195; problems of living con-
ditions among, 201, 203-204.
Datta, Dr. S. K., cited, 210.
Dayanand, Swami, 78-80.
Death-rate, 31, 33, 34, 51, 137.
Delhi Child Welfare Exhibit, 3S.
Denominationalism, effect of, on
Indian Church, 195-197.
Depressed classes, 158; disabilities
of, 159-163; mass movements
among, 164-170; rights of, claimed,
180-181.
Depressed Classes Mission Society,
181.
Duff, Alexander, 75, 113, 121, 193.
Economic conditions, in relation
to crops, 42, 43, 47; seriousness
of, 51; Christianity's responsi-
bility to relieve, 52; relation of
the missionary to, 130-136; op-
posed to Christianity, 173-174;
the Indian Church and. 177.
Education, mission schools, 39-40;
handicaps and progress in, 53-56;
work of Arya Samaj in, 80; wom-
en's demonstration in behalf of,
88; effect of Western, on political
structure, 98; British system of,
101; control of, transferred to In-
dians,_ 104; work of, carried on
by missions, 120-130; importance
of, 124-125; "conscience clause"
and, 125-127; some problems of,
125-130; problem of Christian, and
state, 127-129; unique contribution
of Christian, 128-129; need of sup-
port for, 129-130; among depressed
classes, 161; insufficient means
for supporting, 182; result of, on
economic conditions, 202-203; St.
Helena's School at Poona, 209.
Evangelistic Forward Movement,
215.
Family system in India, 63-66;
problem of, under Christian con-
ditions, 204.
Gandhi, 14, 106-107.
Gokhale, G. K., 84.
Goreh, Deaconess Ellen Lakshmi, 213.
Great Britain, government of, in
India, 92-93, 95; policy of, toward
Indians, 95, 96; India united
under, 98; attitude of, toward a
"responsible" government, 99;
Indian grievances against, 100-101;
defense of policy of, 102-103;
pledges of, during World War,
103; control divided by, 104-105.
Griffen, D. W., 133.
Gurabai, Dr., cited, 206.
Health problems, 32 ff.; 38, 40-41.
Heber, Bishop Reginald, 118-119.
226
Hinduism, systems of philosophy in,
7; recognition of that which is
worthy in, 12; effect of, on social
customs, 66-68; compared with
Christianity, 69-71; evils of, 70-
71; development of an ethical
religion in, 112-113; growth of
societies in, 113; as opponent to
Christianity, 148-149; result of
philosophy of, 158.
Home rule movement, 88, 103.
Hymns, of India, 4-S, 6; 187.
India, architecture of, 2, 16, 19
handicraft of, 3; culture of, 3-6
15-16, 17, 20, 25-26; illiteracy in
3-4, 53, 124; music of, 4-5; story
telling in, 5; classic literature of
6, 15; attributes of, 6ff., 17-18
sadhus of, 8-10; religious con
sciousness of, lOff. ; quest for in
ner peace in, 11; nationalism in
ISfF., 21; pride of country in, 16
resources of, 17; recognition de
manded by, in world councils
18; health problems of, 31-41 ;eco
nomic problems of, 41-44, 51-52
agricultural conditions of, 44-48
industrial problems of, 49-51; ed
ucational handicap of, 53-56; caste
problems of, 56-61; position of
women, 61-63; family system
among, 63-66; handicap of Hindu-
ism to, 66-72; aspiration of, to
social reform, 76-86; modern
women's movement among, 86-92;
democratic aspirations, 92-94; 100-
107; native political reform in,
97ff.; effect of wars on, 100; de-
mands of, after World War, 103;
post-war grievances of, 105fT. ;
the missionaries relation to polit-
ical affairs in, 108-109, to wom-
an's movement, '109, to social re-
form, 112-114.
Indian Christian Church, the, 7, 24;
development of, 125, 145-150, 151;
present opportunity of, 181-182,
184; characteristics of, 185-186; re-
lation of, to nationalism, 192;
Western denominationalism and,
195-197; spirit of union growing
in, 197; problems of, 198-204;
financial ability of, 202-203;
famous converts in, 211-213; need
of depressed classes in, 213; evi-
dence of inner expansive force in
214-217; contribution of, to Chris-
tianity, 217-218.
Indian Industrial Commission, 35.
Indian Missionary Society of Tin-
nevelly, 214.
Indian National Congress, organi-
zation of, 99; pledged to elevate
depressed classes, 180; increasing
number of Christians sent to, 194.
227
Indian National Missionary So-
ciety, 214.
Indian Social Reformer, 82-84.
Indian Society of Oriental Art, 17.
Indian Woman's Suffrage Associa-
tion, 87.
Industrialism, 49, 51, 104, 131-136, 143.
International Federation of Uni-
versity Women, 87.
International Missionary Council
of 1921, 146.
International Women's Suffrage
Alliance in Geneva, 88.
Jainism, 7, 12, 68-69.
Jewett, cited, 119.
Karmarkar, Dr. Vishwas, 206-207.
Karmarkar, Rev. Sumant Rao, 206.
Limitation of Armament Con-
ference, India represented at, 18.
London Missionary Society, mass
movement report of, 165.
Lone Star Mission, 119.
Lowcaste peoples. See Depressed
classes.
Lowrie, John C, cited, 119.
McDougall, Miss Eleanor, 123.
MacKellar, Margaret, cited, 139-140L
Marriage, 131, 154; debts incurred
at time of, 44, 160; dominated by
family interest, 65-66; effects of
Hinduism on, 66-67, 68; need for
revision of laws relating to
Christian, 204.
Marshman, cited, 118.
Martyn, Henry, cited, 118, 214.
Mass Movement, beginning of, 119-
120; development of, 163-167;
changes observable after, 168-
170; problem of, resulting from
caste, 170; economic and social
problems due to, 173;179.
Maya Das, Miss Mohini, cited, 211.
Medical Missions, 136-142, 207-208.
Methodist Episcopal Mass Move-
ment Commission, report of, 165.
Missionaries, pioneer, 116-123; hard-
ships of, 120; aim of, 144-145;
types of, needed, 150-156; present-
day problems of, in India, 153-
155; training of native, 214.
Missionary, the, relation of, to
growth of nationalism, 21; to
the best in Hinduism, 22-24; to
the Indian Christian Church, 24-
25; to India's folk-lore, art, litera-
ture, 25; to her culture, 26-27; to
political affairs, 108-109; to
woman's movement, 109-112; to
social reform, 112-114; to modern
trend of Hinduism, 113-114; to
educational work, 120-130; to eco-
nomic betterment, 130-136; to
medical work and sanitation, 136-
^
'i
>
142; to social reform, 142-144; to
the Indian Church, 145-150; to
native customs, 152-155; to the
problem of caste, 170, 173, 200.
Missions, basis of, 20-21; some
problems of, 20-26, 14Sff. ; impor-
tance of, in history, 116; aim of,
144ff. ; the Indian Christian
Church and, 145-150; inadequacy
of, 181-182.
Mukerjee, Rai Bahadur A. C, 210.
Nationalism, development of, 15-19,
21, 97fl.; effect of growth of, 21;
health problems and, 38; effect of,
on condition of women, 86; de-
velopment of leadership in Indian
Church due to, 145-148, 192.
National Missionary Council, 147,
170, 202.
National Missionary Society, 213.
National Social Conference, 81-82.
National Social Congress, 87.
Non-co-operation Movement, 106.
Nurses, training of, 141-142.
' Outcastes," 158-161. See Depressed
/ classes.
Pal, Krishna Chandra, 211.
Paul, K. T., 210.
Pennell, Dr., 140-141.
^ Plague, 33-33, 40, 137,
Poems, quoted, 13, 188.
.. Poena Seva Sadan, 90-91.
, Prarthana Samaj, the, 77, 181.
Punjab, the, unfortunate events in,
106, 107; mass movement in, 165;
missionary district of, 205.
Purdah, evil effects of, 34-35.
Ramabai, Pandita, 12, 24-25, 89, 212.
Ranade, Justice, 88-90.
Ranade, Mrs. Ramabai, 89-91.
Reed, Mary, 120.
Rockefeller Foundation, work of, 33.
Roy, Ram Mohan, 75.
Sanitation, problems of, 37-39, 136-
142; progress in, 40-41; control of,
transferred to Indians, 104.
Santiagu, Pastor, 127-128.
Schwartz, Christian Friedrich, 117,
165.
Scudder, John, 139.
Self-government, 193.
> Servants of India Society, 84-85.
' Singh, Rajah Sir Harnam, 213.
Singh, Lilivati, cited, 213.
= Singh, Sadhu Sundar, 186, 190-192.
Social customs, debts incurred be-
cause of, 43-44, 160; effect of world
conscience on, 71; problems re-
sulting from, 153-154.
Social reform, 74, 107, 194; Hinduism
a handicap to, 66-68; beginnings of,
in India. 75; the Brahmo Samaj,
76-77; the Prarthana Samaj, 77-
78; the Arya Samaj, 78-81; Na-
tional Social Conference, 81-82;
the Indian Social Reformer, 82-
84; Servants of India Society,
84-85; women's activities in, 86-
92; missions and, 142-144.
Social service, 142-144.
Sorabji, Miss Susie, 209.
Swain, Clara, 139.
Syrian Christian Church, 214-215.
Tagore, Rabindranath, quoted, 58.
Telugu area, 119; economic develop-.
ment in, 131; mass movement in,
164, 165, 166, 199, 212.
Thah-byu, Ko, cited, 211.
Thatiah, Baugarapu, cited, 166.
Theosophical Society, The, 22-23.
Thoburn, Isabella, cited, 123, 213.
Thoburn, Bishop J. M., cited, 119.
Tilak, Narayan Vaman, 186-190;
Tinnevelly, mass movement in, 165,
168, 214.
Trade Union Congress, 50.
Travancore, mass movement in, 165,
168, 214, 216.
United Presbyterian Mission, 211-212.
United Provinces, mass movement
in, 165.
"Untouchables," 158.
Venkayya, Pagolu, cited, 166,
Ward, cited, 118.
Widows, 62-63, 86-87.
Williamson, Henry Drummond, 166-
167.
Wilson, John, 77, 121.
Woman's Christian College, Ma-
dras, 123.
Women, India handicapped by po-
sition given to, 61-62, 63; organi-
zations of, 86-92; steps taken to
better condition of, 87; schools
for, 122-123; industrial work
among, 134-136; need of medical
missions for, 137-139; influence of
lowcaste, on spread of Christi-
anity, 171.
Women's Conference, 87.
Women's Movement, direct and in-
direct causes of, 92; the mis-
sionary's relation to the, 109-113.
Women's Union Medical Mis-
sionary School at Vellore, 142.
World War, India and the, 17, 103.
Young Men's Christian Association,
books on India, 24.
Young Men's Christian Association
of India, 210.
Young Men of India, 210.
Young Women's Christian Associa-
tion in India, 123.
Ziegenbalg, cited, 117.
228
^^^T
\-
t-*/— > i^'O
o
^ /#- '^-"
. .^'«— *^
ij-iX>^-<
tC'i^'C'yvvit
/- Y P T
*v-
,nifcr-
'hnr^^-^^>^^ "
■ ,./
, . ^. ^^
ULx.f
:>^
Tt.*. „ I S:-
z^^-w
Los Angeles
This book is DUE on the last date stamped below.
Form L9-Series 4939
7
i:
University Research Library