CHRIST IN THE 
NDIAN VILLAGES 




and the Right Rev. 

HENRY WHITEHEAD, 

formerly Bishop of ^Madras. 



By the Right Rev. 

V. S. AzARIAH, 

Bishop of DornakaL 




STUDENT CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT PRESS 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 



Christ in the Indian 
Villages 



THE RIGHT REV. VrS. AZARIAH, LL.D. 

BISHOP OF DORNAKAL 

and 

THE RT. REV. HENRY WHITEHEAD, D.D. 

FORMERLY BISHOP OF MADRAS 



With an Introduction by 
DR JOHN R. MOTT 

CHAIRMAN OF THE INTERNATIONAL MISSIONARY COUNCIL 



STUDENT CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT PRESS 
32 RUSSELL SQUARE, LONDON, W.C. i 




c 



First published 



June 1930 



^ __*_ >: 




PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BV THE EDINBURGH PRBSS, EDINBURGH 



927607 




CONTENTS 

CHAP. PAGE 

FOREWORD 7 

INTRODUCTION by Dr JOHN R. MOTT . . 9 

I. THE IMPORTANCE OF THE VILLAGE . -13 

II. CHRIST AMONG THE OUTCASTES . . .18 

III. MIGHTY WORKS 31 

IV. THE TRANSFORMATION OF VILLAGES . . 48 
V. A MOVEMENT AMONG THE CASTES . . -59 

VI. THE CONVERSION OF THE ABORIGINES . .80 

VII. THE EVANGELIZATION OF INDIA ... 96 

VIII. CONCLUSIONS 105 



FOREWORD 

THE object of this book is not to give a complete 
account of the work of the Church in the villages 
of India or to discuss fully the many important 
problems which it involves, but to describe the 
wonderful manifestation of the presence and power 
of the Spirit of God in areas where the Church has 
followed the example of her Master and preached 
good tidings to the poor, and where the Christian 
flock has been, in accordance with Christ's com- 
mand, taught and cared for. Unhappily in some 
areas this has not been done. Thousands have 
been admitted into the Church without due pre- 
paration and then left as sheep without a shepherd. 
The results have been disastrous. But we are not 
concerned with these failures. Our purpose is to 
make more fully known the great opportunity 
that lies before the Christian Church to-day in the 
village districts and to urge that a serious effort 
should be made to seize the opportunity before it 
passes away. Hitherto the Church has been ten 
years behind its opportunities. In view of the new 
movements that are beginning at the present day, 

7 



FOREWORD 

it is of supreme importance that the Church should 
be awake to the signs of the times and not wait to 
take action till the door is shut. 

V. S. DORNAKAL, 
HENRY WHITEHEAD 
Bishop. 

May 1930. 



8 



INTRODUCTION 

ONE of the most significant developments in the 
world-wide expansion and mission of Christianity 
during the last half century has been the Mass 
Movement of India. Of the, over three hundred 
millions of India, approximately nine-tenths are to 
be found in the 700,000 and more villages. Of 
this vast rural population, fully 60,000,000 belong 
to the social group variously called outcastes, 
depressed classes or untouchables, not to mention 
the 11,000,000 members of aboriginal tribes found 
especially in the hills and forests of Central India, 
Assam and Burmah. The Mass Movement is con- 
cerned with the untouchables. They stand below 
and are excluded from the caste social organization. 
They are not only ceremonially unclean, but live 
under conditions of extreme poverty and squalor. 
According to Hindu ideas they are engaged in 
work that is regarded as defiling and degrading. 
They are denied most, if not all of the common 
intercourse of life. As a rule custom denies them 
the use of main streets, the village wells and the 
public schools; nor are they permitted to enter 
temples. Their religion might be characterized as 
animism of the crudest form a religion of terror 
and despair. 



INTRODUCTION 

To the multitudes in the midst of such impossible 
conditions the Mass Movement has opened the door 
of hope and has already wrought almost unbelievable 
changes. In the pathway of its influence in nearly 
all of the grand divisions of India the economic, 
social and educational level of these depressed 
people has been markedly lifted. Many a village 
has been transformed. From among the most 
debased have been raised up men and women of 
saintliness and might. Inert and palsied com- 
munities have been vitalized and inspired with 
hope and courage. It is claimed that of the 
1,800,000 Protestant communicants in India possibly 
as many as 70 per cent, are the product of the 
Mass Movement. One of the most notable results 
in recent years has been the conversion of thousands 
of caste people to Christianity as a result of the 
object lesson presented by the transformed lives 
and social progress of the converts among the 
outcastes. It is not surprising that such develop- 
ments have arrested the attention of discerning 
leaders of the non-Christian faiths and of Govern- 
ment. 

Inherent in the very nature of such a movement 
are grave perils. These have been accentuated by 
the alarmingly undermanned state of the Christian 
forces. Owing to the resultant inability to give 
adequate religious instruction to the large and 
increasing numbers being admitted to the Christian 
community, it was inevitable that there be grievous 
lapses not only of individuals but of entire villages. 
This is fully recognized by the leaders of the Mass 

10 



INTRODUCTION 

Movement and of the Missionary Societies, and it 
is reassuring to know that, on the initiative of the 
National Christian Council of India, Burmah and 
Ceylon, a comprehensive and thorough survey and 
evaluation of the entire Mass Movement is to be 
made during the next two years under highly 
competent leadership. This will not only help to 
conserve the great values of the Movement, but 
also point the way to carrying it from strength to 
strength and realizing more fully its wonderful 
possibilities. 

It is most fortunate that at this particular moment 
there should appear this most suggestive and vital 
booklet Christ in the Indian Villages. Of the 
many workers, both missionary and Indian, who 
by their devoted and sacrificial labours have done 
so much to foster the Mass Movement, none 
have more ably and fruitfully wrought on its 
behalf than Bishop Whitehead and Bishop Azariah. 
From the days of its unpopularity, when it met 
with so much suspicion, criticism and opposition, 
Bishop Whitehead has been one of its most in- 
fluential friends and advocates. And it is generally 
recognized that in the Diocese of Dornakal, under 
the wise guidance of Bishop Azariah, has been 
developed the largest, most efficient, and most 
productive piece of Mass Movement work in India. 
This concise and dynamic treatise abounds in facts 
and incidents of living interest. It constitutes a 
present-day apologetic of the reality, comprehen- 
siveness and wonder- waking power of the Christian 
Gospel. It should be widely read throughout 

ii 



INTRODUCTION 

Christendom that faith may be quickened and also 
that the Christian forces may be mobilized to 
press the advantage now afforded by this un- 
mistakable movement of the Spirit of the Living 
and Ever-Creative God. 

JOHN R. MOTT. 



12 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 
CHAPTER I 

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE VILLAGE 

A TOURIST once visited the chief cities of India. 
He saw the sights that tourists always see and 
talked to many persons of note. The ablest and 
most experienced of the British officials in the 
north said to him : " Would you like to see the 
most important man in India? " The tourist was 
delighted. They drove out together into the 
country and came across a peasant bending his bare 
back over his primitive plough and twisting the 
tails of his slow-moving, patient oxen. " That," 
said the official, " is the most important man in 
India." He represented the rural folk who form 
90 per cent, of the total population and produce 
the greater part of the wealth of India. 

While therefore it is natural for us in England 
to think of our people in terms of towns and 
cities, where the majority of the population and 
the largest share of the wealth are concentrated, in 
India we need a different outlook. The big indus- 
trial centres are few in number. There are hardly 
a dozen cities with more than a quarter of a million 
inhabitants and only thirty with 100,000 and up- 

13 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

wards. The 750,000 villages are far more important 
than those thirty towns. 

And next to the families they are the most 
ancient and stable of all the social institutions in 
India. In earlier ages they were largely self- 
sufficing and self-governing. Each of the larger 
villages contained within itself the trades needed 
to supply the simple wants of its members, farmers, 
carpenters, weavers, potters, barbers, shop-keepers 
and money-lenders, Brahman priests to serve the 
temples of the Hindu gods, and at the other end 
of the social scale the labourers, sweepers and 
servants belonging to the despised outcastes. The 
secular affairs were managed by a headman and a 
council of five. The village thus lived its- own life 
and managed its own affairs. Owing to the lack 
of roads and means of transport it was to a large 
extent isolated and cut off from the world outside. 

This independence had its advantages, but when 
the monsoon rains failed and famine came, no 
help could be got from outside and the village 
people simply died by the million; and even at 
other times the isolation of the village kept it sunk 
in poverty, ignorance and superstition. 

Under the centralized and efficient rule of the 
British Government and through the influx of 
Western Civilization this independent, isolated life 
is becoming a thing of the past. Officials appointed 
by Government administer the affairs of the village, 
while railways and motor-cars invade its seclusion 
and bring it into contact with the world outside. 
And the schoolmaster is abroad. Rural education 

.14 



THE IMPORTANCE OF THE VILLAGE 

is still in its infancy, but there is a school now in 
about one village in six, and schemes for rural 
uplift and reconstruction are being devised and 
started all over India. 

A recent report of the Government of India, 
however, shows how much still needs to be done 
for the improvement of village life. In the section 
on rural conditions it says : 

" Even excluding villages on the mountainous 
and forest-clad confines of India, there are places 
from which a visit to a doctor would entail a journey 
of several days, where there is no road more 
pretentious than a footpath through the fields and 
where no educated person has ever lived. To such 
places as these new ideas can hardly penetrate, and 
agricultural processes, social and religious customs, 
and superstitions that are almost as old as the race, 
still exist in full vigour. Even in the bigger and 
less remote villages conditions are sometimes not 
much better, for there is still the same lack of 
contact with progressive ideas, the same lack of 
educated leadership, the same survival of un- 
economic processes and customs. The use of 
machinery is kept down to the very minimum, and 
all power required is supplied by the work of men 
and animals, the latter frequently underfed, under- 
sized and all but useless. There is an immense 
waste of human time and labour caused by this 
lack of all but the most primitive and indispensable 
agricultural implements, a waste which reacts in 
many more ways than those immediately obvious. 

15 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

Again, India supports large numbers of diseased 
and useless cattle which may not be slaughtered or 
otherwise suitably dealt with because of religious 
objections, and yet the annual cost of supporting 
this vast multitude must be enormous. 

" The life of the average Indian agriculturist 
tends to revolve in a vicious circle. After genera- 
tions of arrested progress he has frequently lost 
even the desire for improvement and in any case 
his poverty makes it impossible to grapple with 
his circumstances. He has not the knowledge and 
the education to make the best of his resources, 
and custom holds him in an iron grip. He will 
borrow from the money-lender at ruinous interest 
to perform the various ceremonies demanded by 
religion or social custom, some of them, like 
funeral ceremonies, occurring all the oftener by 
reason of the insanitary conditions of his sur- 
roundings, the lack of available medical assistance 
and, often, his poor stamina. Endemic sicknesses 
like malaria and hookworm, the incidence of which 
could be greatly reduced if only the villagers had 
the knowledge and the will to apply themselves to 
the task, weaken him and affect his work in the 
fields and consequently lessen the return from his 
labour." 1 

It is, then, a matter for profound thankfulness, 
that the Christian Church during the last seventy 
years has won its most signal triumphs in the 

1 Report of India in 1926-27, A statement prepared for 
presentation to Parliament. 

16 



THE IMPORTANCE OF THE VILLAGE 

villages of India where the need of regeneration is 
so urgent and the situation apparently so hopeless. 
In the following pages we have given a brief 
account, drawn mainly from our own experience, 
of the wonderful work that the gospel of Christ is 
doing in some of the rural areas by bringing to 
this stagnant mass of poverty and ignorance a new 
spiritual power and setting millions even of the 
.poorest and most degraded of the village people on 
the path of progress towards a higher and happier 
life. Our Lord Jesus Christ said, " I came that 
they might have life and have it more abundantly." 
That promise we see now fulfilled in the villages 
of India. 



B 17 



CHAPTER II 

CHRIST AMONG THE OUTCASTES 

FOR the last seventy years the Church of Christ 
has grown with great rapidity in India. About 
1860, after the Mutiny when the Government had 
passed from the East India Company to the Crown, 
this rapid spread of Christianity began. There 
were at that time about a million Indian Christians. 
Nearly a third of them belonged to the old Syrian 
church on the Malabar coast, that claims to have 
been established by the Apostle S. Thomas. Nearly 
two-thirds were Roman Catholics, the fruit of 
three and a half centuries of Missionary effort, and 
a few were connected with various Protestant 
churches. But during the last seventy years the 
million Indian Christians have increased to about 
five millions. In some areas the progress has been 
startling. In the Telugu country of South India 
there were in 1880 about 80,000 Telugu Christians, 
to-day there are about 850,000. In the United 
Provinces the Indian Christian community increased 
over 300 per cent, in forty years. In the Punjab 
between 1881 and 1921 it grew from 6000 to 315,000. 
And this rapid increase in numbers has taken 
place entirely in the villages. Of the 5,000,000 
Christians it is estimated that about 93 per cent. 

18 



CHRIST AMONG THE OUTCASTES 

live in the villages. The large majority of these 
village Christians have come either from the out- 
castes of Hindu society or from the aboriginal 
tribes. The Anglican church is in this respect 
fairly typical of the whole Indian Christian com- 
munity. It numbers among its members about 
500,000 Indians, and of these about 450,000 live 
in villages. And of those in the villages about 
280,000 have come from the outcastes and 50,000 
from aboriginal tribes. 

The Church in India, therefore, is essentially a 
village Church. Its problems are village problems, 
its education needs to be adapted to the conditions 
of village life and its leaders must be men and 
women able and willing to live and work among 
village folk. And it is the Church of the poor. 
This fact has often been cast in its teeth as a reproach. 
In reality it is its glory. Psalmists and Prophets 
in the Jewish church proclaimed that Jehovah is 
a God who cares for the poor. The Son of God, 
when he came into the world, was anointed to 
preach good tidings to the poor. The crowning 
proof of His Messiahship was that the poor had the 
gospel preached to them. 

What we see, therefore, in India is only one 
more illustration of a truth, fundamental in the 
revelation of God's will and character given through 
Jesus Christ. Throughout the whole course of the 
history of His Church God has always chosen the 
foolish things of the world to put to shame the 
wise, the weak things to put to shame the things 
that are mighty and the base things and the things 

'9 



CHAPTER II 

CHRIST AMONG THE OUTCASTES 

FOR the last seventy years the Church of Christ 
has grown with great rapidity in India. About 
1860, after the Mutiny when the Government had 
passed from the East India Company to the Crown, 
this rapid spread of Christianity began. There 
were at that time about a million Indian Christians. 
Nearly a third of them belonged to the old Syrian 
church on the Malabar coast, that claims to have 
been established by the Apostle S. Thomas. Nearly 
two-thirds were Roman Catholics, the fruit of 
three and a half centuries of Missionary effort, and 
a few were connected with various Protestant 
churches. But during the last seventy years the 
million Indian Christians have increased to about 
five millions. In some areas the progress has been 
startling. In the Telugu country of South India 
there were in 1880 about 80,000 Telugu Christians, 
to-day there are about 850,000. In the United. 
Provinces the Indian Christian community increased 
over 300 per cent, in forty years. In the Punjab 
between 1881 and 1921 it grew from 6000 to 315,000. 
And this rapid increase in numbers has taken 
place entirely in the villages. Of the 5,000,000 
Christians it is estimated that about 93 per cent. 

18 



CHRIST AMONG THE OUTCASTES 

live in the villages. The large majority of these 
village Christians have come either from the out- 
castes of Hindu society or from the aboriginal 
tribes. The Anglican church is in this respect 
fairly typical of the whole Indian Christian com- 
munity. It numbers among its members about 
500,000 Indians, and of these about 450,000 live 
in villages. And of those in the villages about 
280,000 have come from the outcastes and 50,000 
from aboriginal tribes. 

The Church in India, therefore, is essentially a 
village Church. Its problems are village problems, 
its education needs to be adapted to the conditions 
of village life and its leaders must be men and 
women able and willing to live and work among 
village folk. And it is the Church of the poor. 
This fact has often been cast in its teeth as a reproach. 
In reality it is its glory. Psalmists and Prophets 
in the Jewish church proclaimed that Jehovah is 
a God who cares for the poor. The Son of God, 
when he came into the world, was anointed to 
preach good tidings to the poor. The crowning 
proof of His Messiahship was that the poor had the 
gospel preached to them. 

What we see, therefore, in India is only one 
more illustration of a truth, fundamental in the 
revelation of God's will and character given through 
Jesus Christ. Throughout the whole course of the 
history of His Church God has always chosen the 
foolish things of the world to put to shame the 
wise, the weak things to put to shame the things 
that are mighty and the base things and the things 

19 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

that are despised to bring to nought the things that 
are highly esteemed. 

The outcastes of Hindu society are the last 
people that human judgment would have chosen 
as material for the building of a Ghurch that is to 
be God's instrument for converting to faith in 
Christ the races of India, with their rich heritage of 
religious thought and philosophy and their ancient 
culture and civilization. The total number of 
these outcastes is about sixty millions. The majority 
are agricultural labourers, and in the towns and 
villages they are the scavengers, servants and leather 
workers, doing all the work that is regarded, 
according to Hindu ideas, as defiling and degrading. 
They are miserably poor. It has been calculated 
that the average wage of an outcaste agricultural 
labourer in South and West India is about two 
shillings a week. But what has degraded the out- 
castes more than anything else is the fact that the 
Hindu religion brands them as untouchable. , If a 
caste man touches an outcaste it is a sin, which has 
to be atoned for by religious ceremonies; and 
because the outcastes are untouchable they are not 
allowed to use the village wells or the main streets 
of the villages, or to send their children to the 
public schools. In some parts of South India they 
are not only untouchable, but unapproachable. 
They may not come within forty yards of a man 
or woman belonging to one of the castes above 
them. A typical Travancore outcaste on the 
Malabar coast, in the south-west, has been described 
as " the picture of servile fear " ; and a visitor to 

20 



CHRIST AMONG THE OUTCASTES 

Malabar, describing his experiences among some 
of the outcastes in these parts, said that " the 
shrinking fear was so abject and the cries of miser- 
able fright were so piteous," that he dared not 
approach the wretched hovels in which they 
lived, though he was bent on an errand of mercy. 

An enlightened Indian Prince, himself a Hindu 
by religion, the ruler of a Native State in West 
India, gave the following account of the position of 
the outcastes. 

" Our depressed classes stand in a position which 
has nothing parallel or analogous to it in the history 
of mankind. Slavery is the worst form of injustice 
which humanity all the world over has known. 
But the implications of untouchability, to which 
we in India have condemned a large section of our 
fellow-men, are in some respects worse than the 
worst form of slavery. We treat them as no one 
ought to treat any being, much less a human 
being. They are made to live outside the village, 
in an out-of-the-way-corner which is the dirtiest 
and filthiest part of the village, such as the most 
degraded of the caste Hindus would never dream 
of living in. They are not to come within the 
limits of the temples of the gods, which are the 
common gods of all the Hindu community. They 
are not to draw water from the public wells of the 
villages. They are not to enjoy the benefits of the 
public rest-houses. They may die of thirst, but 
they cannot touch the tank or pond of the village. 
Even for service of the lowest kind they are not to 
enter the Hindu household. Their very touch is 

21 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

a sin to be avoided at all costs, and to be expiated 
by washing your body and the clothes covering it." 1 
The late Mr Gokhale, the ablest statesman that 
India has produced during the last century, spoke 
about the treatment of the depressed classes as 
follows: 

" I think all fair-minded persons will have to 
admit that it is absolutely monstrous that a class of 
human beings, with bodies similar to our own, 
with brains that can think and with hearts that can 
feel, should be perpetually condemned to a low life 
of utter wretchedness, servitude and mental and 
moral degradation, and that permanent barriers 
should be placed in their way so that it should be 
impossible for them ever to overcome them and 
improve their lot. This is deeply revolting to our 
sense of justice. I believe one has only to put 
oneself mentally into their place to realize how 
grievous this injustice is. We may touch a cat, 
we may touch a dog, we may touch any other 
animal, but the touch of these human beings is 
pollution ! And so complete is now the mental 
degradation of these people that they themselves 
see nothing in such treatment to resent, that they 
acquiesce in it as though nothing better was their 
due." a 

A visitor to Travancore says: " I was walking 
down a road one evening on the south-west coast 

1 Memoirs of the Maharajah ofKolkalpur, vol. II, p. 484. 
8 See Speeches by G. K. Gokhale, pp. 8518-9. Published by 
G. A. Natesan, Madras. 

22 



CHRIST AMONG THE OUTCASTES 

of India and a Brahman priest, a member of the 
highest caste, was behind me. Turning a corner 
I came across about twenty outcastes, coming in 
from their work in the fields. As soon as they 
caught sight of the Brahman they scattered about 
thirty or forty yards on each side of the road, 
cowered down in abject, servile fear in the mud 
and slush of the rice fields, put their hands to their 
mouths, lest their breath should defile the high- 
caste man, and cried out in harsh, pathetic tones, 
' Unclean, unclean/ to give warning of the pollution 
of their presence." 

A British official of long experience in Central 
India wrote recently: " I have received a petition 
from the Chamars of a village praying me to 
record in the village-customs paper their right to 
the undigested grain which they wash from the 
droppings of the bullocks which tread the threshing 
floors. They spread the dung on a slope, pour 
water over it and the grain is left high and dry like 
nuggets." This single instance will illustrate the 
depths of poverty to which these people have been 
reduced in some parts of India by the tyranny of 
their fellow-men. 

Added to the tyranny of their fellow-men is the 
paralysing influence of their religion, a crude form 
of Animism. It is a religion of fear. The out- 
castes are, if possible, even more depressed and 
degraded by the terror inspired by their religion 
than by the fear of man. They believe that the 
world in which they live is peopled by a multitude 
of demons, who are the causes of all unusual 

23 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

events, especially of diseases and disasters. These 
demons surround their villages and are quick to 
take offence and inflict cholera, smallpox, fever, 
cattle disease and misfortunes of all kinds on the 
unhappy villagers. They lurk everywhere, on the 
tops of palmyra trees, in caves and rocks, in ravines 
and chasms. They fly about in the air, like birds 
of prey, ready to pounce down upon any un- 
protected victim; and the poor people pass through 
life in constant dread of these invisible powers. 
The sole object of their religious rites and sacrifices 
is to avert their wrath. To the outcastes religion 
is not a source of hope and consolation, but rather 
of terror and despair. 

What strange material for the building of a 
Church in any land, more especially in India! 
And yet these are the people whom God has 
chosen to be His witnesses. It is estimated that 
during the last fifty years about 80 per cent, of the 
converts to Christianity have come from the out- 
castes in the villages. 1 They have come into the 
Church not singly or even in families, but in large 
groups. In some cases as many as 2000 have been 
baptized in a single day. In the large majority of 
cases the groups vary in size from 50 to 200. The 
main centres of these mass movements are the 
Telugu country, the States of Travancore and 
Cochin, the Punjab and the United Provinces; 
but similar movements on a smaller scale have also 

1 See History of Missions in India, by Dr Richter. Eng. 
Trs., p. 233. 

24 



CHRIST AMONG THE OUTCASTES 

been taking place in Tinnevelly and in the northern 
part of the Bombay Presidency. 

THE MOVEMENT IN THE TELUGU COUNTRY 

In one district of the Telugu country in South 
India, which is now included in the diocese of 
Dornakal, the movement of the outcastes towards 
Christianity began in 1849 with a man called 
Venkayya. He could neither read nor write and, 
like the rest of the outcastes, he feared and wor- 
shipped a multitude of evil spirits. Before his 
conversion he was head of a daring gang of out- 
caste robbers, who for many years were the terror 
of the whole district in which they lived. Then 
his son fell ill. In spite of sacrifices offered to the 
village goddess the child died and Venkayya was 
in great sorrow. But just at that time he heard 
from a member of his gang that a new religion was 
being preached in the district, which taught that 
the world was made and ruled by one God, a God 
of righteousness and love, who so loved men, even 
the outcastes, that He sent His only Son into the 
world to die for them. In his grief for his own 
son this message touched his heart. So he gave up 
offering sacrifices to evil spirits and said every day 
a simple prayer that he composed himself. " God, 
teach me who Thou art, show me where Thou 
art, help me to find Thee." He offered that prayer 
earnestly for three years, and apparently no answer 
came. At last he went one day with some of his 
friends to a town called Bezwada, on the river 

2 5 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

Kistna. It was the time of a Hindu religious 
festival, when many thousands of pilgrims had 
gathered there and were bathing in the sacred 
river to wash away their sins. Venkayya stood on 
the bank watching them. Suddenly a Brahman 
priest came up to him and asked why he was not 
bathing. 1 

Venkayya answered boldly that he did not believe 
in it. "Are you, then, a Christian?" asked the 
priest. "I am not, but I want to know God," 
was Venkayya's answer. Then, strangely enough, 
this Brahman priest whispered to Venkayya that 
there was a European, living in a bungalow on the 
hill close by, who could teach him about God. 
So Venkayya and his friends went off to the house 
where Mr Darling, a missionary of the Church of 
England, was living. At the time when they 
arrived Mr Darling was praying in his study. He 
was almost in despair about his work. He had 
just been preaching to the pilgrims by the river 
and they had treated his message with indifference. 
For eight years he had been preaching to the caste 
people, and in the whole of that district he had 
not made a single convert. After he had poured 
out his heart to God, he opened his study door 
and saw Venkayya and his friends kneeling, with 
their foreheads to the ground, in prayer before the 
bungalow. He asked what they wanted. Venkayya 
with outstretched arms went forward and said: 
" O, Teacher, we are men without wisdom, we 

1 The outcastes in this part of India are untouchable, 
but not unapproachable. 

26 



CHRIST AMONG THE OUTCASTES 

have come to see you to learn about God." Mr 
Darling told them the simple story of Jesus Christ 
and His love. When he had finished, Venkayya 
rose to his feet and exclaimed with deep emotion: 
" This is my God, this is my Saviour, I have long 
been seeking for Him. Now I have found Him 
and will serve Him." Soon afterwards Mr Darling 
went to Venkayya's village and taught the out- 
castes the gospel story. Their masters bitterly 
opposed him. But, in spite of opposition and 
persecution, Venkayya and his family with some 
other outcastes were in due time baptized. Ven- 
kayya himself was an ardent witness for Christ to 
the end of his life. Even when he was blind, in 
his old age, he would sit outside his mud hut and 
tell the passers-by about Jesus Christ. And through 
his preaching more than 500 people were converted 
and baptized. 

That was the foundation of the Church in the 
Kistna district eighty years ago. In 1918 there 
were 43,500 Christian adherents of the Church of 
England in that one district, and in 1928 the 
numbers had increased to 122,500. 

In May 1929 the annual evangelistic campaign 
was held in that area. About 4000 Christians took 
part in it. They bore their simple witness to 
Christ in nearly 1000 villages, and over 125,000 
non-Christians listened intently as they told the 
story of the crucified Saviour. Among their hearers 
were about 3000 Mahommedans and 62,000 caste 
people. One caste woman, who owned a con- 
siderable amount of property, lent her cart to the 

27 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

outcaste Christian women, and went with them 
herself, exhorting the caste people to accept 
Christianity. Other caste people offered money, 
grain and fruits and cleared the ground for the 
preachers. As a result of this campaign about 
1000 caste people gave in their names to be 
prepared for baptism, in addition to 2300 outcastes. 

THE MOVEMENT IN THE PUNJAB 

Equally remarkable is the account of the great 
movement in the Punjab, which started with the 
baptism of an outcaste of the despised Chuhra 
tribe in 1873. His name was Ditt, " a dark little 
man, lame of one leg," who made a scanty living 
by buying and selling hides. He heard of Christ 
from a Christian man of higher social position, but 
" a weak brother," and he determined to become 
a Christian. So he walked thirty miles to Sialkot, 
went to the Rev. S. Martin, a Scottish Presbyterian 
missionary, and asked to be baptized and allowed 
to go back to his own people, Mr Martin hesitated. 
It seemed a risky thing to baptize an outcaste and 
then send him away with very little knowledge to 
live isolated from all Church life or Christian 
fellowship among non-Christian relations and 
friends. However, just at this time it became 
necessary for Mr Martin, who had been suffering 
from fever, to go to the hills. But what was to 
become of Ditt? To leave this outcaste at the 
mission station in the care of high-caste workers, 
was a doubtful course to pursue. To take him to 

28 



CHRIST AMONG THE OUTCASTES 

the hills was out of the question. A decision was 
soon made. Mr Martin baptized Ditt and sent him 
home to his own village with instructions to share 
his knowledge with his people. 

Ditt had five brothers and the whole family 
numbered about sixty persons. At first they bitterly 
resented Ditt's lapse from the religion of the clan. 
They abused him as a man " without religion," 
and threatened to excommunicate him from their 
society. " One of your legs is broken, so may it 
be with the other," exclaimed an angry sister- 
in-law. 

Ditt met their taunts and curses meekly, but 
unmoved. " You may attack me and abuse me, 
but you will never induce me to deny Christ." 
In three months he had the great joy of bringing 
to faith in the Saviour his wife and daughter and 
two of his neighbours. He taught them as well as 
he could and then walked with them the thirty 
miles to Sialkot and presented them to Mr Martin, 
who baptized them, and sent them back with Ditt 
to be witnesses to Christ among their own people. 
Six months later Ditt brought four more of his 
neighbours for ^baptism. 

From this small beginning, like a grain of mustard 
seed, the Presbyterian Church in that district has 
sprung up with marvellous rapidity, spreading 
from home to home and village to village. Almost 
every new convert became an evangelist, telling 
the good news of the Kingdom of God. To-day 
the United Presbyterian Church in the Punjab has 
a Christian community numbering 85,000, of whom 

29 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

24,000 are communicants. And over fifty of the 
congregations support their own pastors. 

In the same area of the Punjab there are also 
40,000 Anglican Christians drawn from the out- 
castes connected with the Church Missionary 
Society, and an equal number who are members of 
the Roman Catholic Church and the Salvation 
Army. 

In the whole of India, as a result of these mass 
movements among the outcastes, during the last 
fifty years nearly 2,000,000 people have been 
gathered into the Church of Christ. 



30 



CHAPTER III 

MIGHTY WORKS 

THE mighty works of Jesus Christ during His 
ministry, the healing of the sick and the casting 
out of devils, were signs to the Jewish people that 
the Kingdom of God had come upon them. 1 

The preaching of the Apostles after the day of 
Pentecost was confirmed by similar signs and 
wonders, and by a striking transformation of life 
and character within the Christian community. 2 

The same is true of the work of the Christian 
Church in the villages of India. Devils are cast 
out, men and women are turned from the worship 
of demons to the worship of the one true God, 
thousands and tens of thousands are converted 
from sin to righteousness, and the lives of whole 
communities are transformed. God bears witness 
to the message of salvation " both with signs and 
wonders and with divers miracles, and gifts of 
the Holy Ghost according to his own will." 3 

It is true that the motives that lead people to 
become Christians in mass movements in the villages 
are often strangely mixed. Some become Christians 
because others do. The herd instinct is strong in 

1 See Matt. xii. 28; Acts ii. 22. 

2 SeeActsii.43ff.; iv. 8ff.,2i; v. 14 ff.; viii. 6,7; xiv. 3. 

3 See Hebrews ii. 3-4. 

3 1 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

India. In one village where large numbers gave in 
their names to be prepared for baptism, they were 
asked why they wanted to join the Church. Several 
reasons were given, among others the desire for 
self-improvement and for the education of their 
children. " There is no school in this village," 
said one man, " all these children tend cattle and 
grow like asses." Another said, " We are tired of 
worshipping these idols; they are no good." In 
another village a group of new converts gave as 
their reason for becoming Christians: "Because 
we were bad and wanted to become better " ; and 
that probably sums up the feeling that leads the 
majority to join the Church. In a very real sense 
they long for salvation from a bad, degrading 
life, and see that large numbers of their own com- 
munity have found it in this new religion. 

Providential and supernatural reasons are some- 
times assigned, too, as immediate occasions for 
accepting Christianity. There was a man who had 
been a Hindu devotee and priest and a hater of 
Christians. While still a boy he had become an 
orphan and had been brought up by an old Christian 
aunt for whom he had great regard. Her one grief 
in her old age was that this nephew was such an 
unbending Hindu. The man was a devout wor- 
shipper of the village goddess Gangamma. Every 
Saturday he fasted, and early on Sunday he broke 
his fast after making a meal offering at the shrine 
of Gangamma. One night he dreamt a dream. 
He saw some grand personage approaching him 
and taking tight hold of his arm. He heard the 

32 



MIGHTY WORKS 

command : " Go to the Christian Church." He 
woke, but thought no more of it and continued as 
usual. This was on a new moon night. On the 
next new moon night this dream was repeated. 
Still he disregarded it. The dream was repeated 
on the third new moon night; and the august 
person would not loose his grip until the man gave 
hinv a solemn promise. He yielded, but wanted 
three weeks' respite. He went to the chapel a week 
before the next new moon day. He was con- 
verted: he gave up worshipping Gangamma and 
became a most regular worshipper in the Christian 
Church at daily prayers. In due course he was 
baptized and later was confirmed and is now a 
most faithful communicant and a keen witness to 
the living presence and power of the Lord. 

Then, there are many who come out because in 
Christ they find rest from their evil past* " We 
were tired of that life of drink and robbery and 
we knew that our only hope was in this religion," 
is a familiar answer. "In what ways are you 
different now from what you were before? " was 
asked of a man of a robber caste. " Are we not 
different? " came the ready reply, " men and women 
go to prayer every night; we do not now commit 
burglary; we do not drink; we enjoy heaven 
now: we were in hell before." 

But what gives such a wonderful moral power 
to the movement, is the simple faith in the Father- 
hood of God and the saving power of Jesus Christ 
that inspires the maj ority of the Christians. Nothing 
else but the power of the Spirit of Christ could 
c 33 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

have produced the transformation that has taken 
place on a vast scale in their lives. Dr Stanley 
Jones tells us that at a meeting of educated Hindus 
he once said : " Brothers, what can we do with 
those outcastes? They are a millstone around our 
national neck. Our country will never be strong 
until we lift them. How can we do it?" A 
thoughtful Hindu arose and said, " It will take a 
Christ to lift them." And that is true. 

The accounts given by missionaries working 
among the outcastes in different parts of India 
during the last fifty years are full of stories that 
illustrate this saving power of Christ. The courage 
and steadfastness of new converts under persecution 
is itself very wonderful, when we consider how 
little they know and how brief is their experience 
of Christ. It has been often said that these poor 
people easily become Christians because they have 
everything to gain and nothing to lose by it. 
From a worldly point of view that is often very 
far from the truth. When the outeastes of a 
village first join the Christian Church, especially 
in the early days of a movement, they are often 
subjected to bitter and cruel persecution by their 
Hindu masters ; they are beaten, deprived of their 
land and cattle, if they have any, false charges are 
brought against them and they are thrown into 
prison. Yet they stand firm. 

A missionary in the United .Provinces gives an 
account of a small band of inquirers in a village 
who were persecuted in various ways by their 
master. " Give up Christianity," he said, " and I 

34 



MIGHTY WORKS 

will stop persecuting you." " No," was their 
reply, " imprison us; hang us if you like; but we 
have taken hold of God and we are not letting go." * 
A year afterwards they were baptized with great 
rejoicing. 

One of the C.M.S. missionaries in the Telugu 
Mission tells the story of one man who came to 
him with his right hand terribly burned. When 
he announced his intention of becoming a Christian 
the headman in his village called upon him to 
renounce Christianity. When he refused, the head- 
man threatened to put his right hand into boiling 
oil. As he still stood firm, the threat was carried 
out, and he came to the missionary, having nobly 
stood fast under that trial, with his right hand 
charred and withered and utterly useless. 

In another district an old man was baptized with 
the appropriate name of Job. When he said he 
was going to become a Christian the headman of 
his village took away his cattle ; when he persevered, 
he took away his land. Then the old man came to 
be baptized, rejoicing that he had been thought 
worthy to suffer the loss of all things for the sake 
of Christ. 

The people in another village were asked whether 
they knew of anyone completely changed by 
becoming a Christian. One man replied : " Yesur- 
atnam in our village was a man like that. The 
caste people asked him to offer as usual the sacrifice 
at the boundary festival and kill a chicken and pour 

1 C.M.S. Mass Movement Quarterly, March 1927 and 
March 1928. 

35 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

the blood on cooked rice, and then carry the 
blood-sprinkled rice round the boundaries of the 
land, to invoke the blessing of the goddess on the 
crop. Yesuratnam refused to do this because he 
was a Christian. They threatened to withhold all 
wages, and gathered round him with sticks and 
threatened to beat him if he was obstinate. Yesur- 
atnam explained that as a Christian he could carry 
neither the rice nor the blood, nor offer the sacrifice; 
but he would walk round the boundaries of the 
land and pray to the Lord Jesus for a good harvest. 
They permitted him to do as he suggested. Since 
then, the caste people respect our religion." 

A woman added : " There is one in our village 
also, Samuel. He gave up drink himself, made the 
whole village give up drink, then fought with the 
Sudras to get the liquor shop removed from the 
village. The Hindus afterwards acknowledged that 
Christianity was a good religion." 

The power of Christ to save is often manifested, 
as in the case of Venkayya, 1 among the criminal 
classes. The following is an illustration. 

Lakshikadu was a Yerukala, and did not belong 
to the outcastes. He was a caste man his touch 
was not pollution. He could live near the caste 
quarters, he could take water from the caste people's 
well. The occupation of this caste was basket- 
making, mat -weaving, fortune - telling, house- 
breaking and highway robbery. His father died 
when he was only six months old and his mother 
brought him up by hard work. JLakshikadu was 
1 See Chapter II. 
36 



MIGHTY WORKS 

sixteen years old when four Yerukalas happened 
to spend two days at his hut feasting and drinking. 
When they left, they took the boy with them to a 
neighbouring village where they had planned a 
robbery. His daring spirit soon won their con- 
fidence and he became a regular member of the 
gang and took part in many robberies. It was an 
exciting life as long as it lasted: but the plunder 
was all spent in drink and riotous living and there 
were, of course, regular intervals of poverty and 
starvation. At last Lakshikadu was caught by the 
police and sentenced to two months' imprisonment; 
but in spite of severe pressure he stedfastly refused 
to betray his comrades. On his release he took to 
the forest and became a noted dacoit. 

A body of police was deputed to track him 
down and one of them found him seated on a rock 
in the heart of the forest. Lakshikadu seeing this 
man, slowly climbed down on the other side, but 
left his large turban on the summit of the rock. 
The policeman fired and brought the turban down. 
When he ran up to seize his man, Lakshikadu 
sprang upon him and tied him to a tree with his 
own turban, broke his rifle and decamped. How- 
ever, he was caught in the end and imprisoned 
for six months. On his leaving the prison, he 
spent a night at a police station, where he met 
a Christian police inspector who advised him to 
give up his lawless life and become a Christian. 
When he went back to his home he found that 
his wife had come under the influence of one of 
the Indian missionaries of the Dornakal Mission. 

37 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

She begged him to go with her and hear the 
preaching. For some time he refused in spite of 
her importunity, but at last she adopted the method 
of non-co-operation, and declined to cook or eat 
anything till he went. This brought matters to a 
crisis and he gave way and began to attend Christian 
prayers. He gave up drinking, learnt carpentry 
and began to learn Telugu letters so that he might 
read the Bible. After some months he and his 
wife were baptized and took the names, Thomas 
and Prema (love). 

All was not over yet. His caste pride would not 
let him present himself for confirmation, which, 
he knew, would be followed by Holy Communion, 
and he was not yet prepared to have communion 
with the outcaste converts. After a year the 
husband and wife came and wanted to be con- 
firmed. They said they had thought over it and 
came to the conclusion that there was no pollution 
in partaking of " the sacred food." It took another 
three years before they could reconcile themselves 
to make no distinction in social life. It was a hard 
struggle. At one time Prema said, " I know it is 
not right, but I cannot bring my mind to sit down 
to the same meal with these people. But I am 
praying that God may remove this feeling from 
our hearts." Even this was overcome later on, 
and Thomas and Prema have often been seen 
seated between Mala and Madiga converts and 
enjoying a wedding feast. Thomas has forgotten 
his old life, earns his livelihood by carpentry and 
freely witnesses to the power of Jesus Christ. 

38 



MIGHTY WORKS 

His wife is a Bible teacher arid has a very good 
working knowledge of the Bible. When the police 
saw the change in his life, they recommended that 
he be exempted from police surveillance. He can 
now go anywhere without a pass. He is a member 
of the Parish committee and the local Church 
Council and both Thomas and Prema are respected 
and loved by everybody in Dornakal. 

In many similar cases true conversion comes 
long after baptism, not infrequently at confirmation. 
Joseph belongs to one of the outcaste communities. 
He had been a great drunkard and thief. He 
continued to be so even after his baptism. He did 
not become a Christian from any religious motive. 
He "joined the religion" and was baptized; he 
came up for confirmation, because everybody in 
the village was doing so. But then came the 
change. Two years after his confirmation he 
narrated his experiences : 

" Four years ago I joined the religion when our 
whole village came over. I had been a great 
drunkard. I was in a gang who also occasionally 
committed burglary; there is hardly a crime or 
sin that I have not been guilty of. We came very 
near to murder sometimes. When all the others 
in the village became Christians I became a Christian 
too; but I did not give up any of my bad ways. 
We did give up idolatry and the worship of the 
old gods and goddesses. But that was all. The 
whole village was prepared for baptism, so was I 
and we were all baptized together. But evqi after 

39 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

baptism I continued to drink, to rob and to steal. 
Once my comrades and I succeeded in removing 
our Christian teacher's cow from his house and led 
it many miles to a far off village over night and 
slaughtered it for meat before daybreak and returned 
to our village in the morning. When confirmation 
classes were held I also joined, but had not realized 
what it meant. But I began to feel very bad: 
I thought I was unworthy to receive the blessing 
of the Holy Spirit; and yet I kept on. On the day 
appointed for the confirmation the candidates of 
our village arrived late and we were all, therefore, 
seated last. I was glad of it, because I felt myself 
unworthy of confirmation. We listened to the 
examination and address; but I was inwardly 
feeling very bad. I felt that I did not deserve to 
go up- to be confirmed. When the time came, the 
pastor came to the last row and we stood up and 
I, who was sitting last, was made to go first. This 
was too much for me! I had been feeling that I 
deserved no blessing at all: I was certainly the 
greatest sinner in the crowd: to go last after all 
the rest might be suitable, but to go first, I was 
not ready! But I could not refuse; I had to go. 
Tears were running down my eyes, as I thought 
what a wicked life I had led these many years. 
After confirmation I went back to my seat, knelt 
down and then and there gave myself to be a new 
man. I said, ' O God, Thy love to me the greatest 
of sinners is something I cannot bear. For the 
sake of Jesus Christ who died for me forgive me! 
Hereafter I shall be a different man. Give me the 

40 



MIGHTY WORKS 

strength and power of the Holy Spirit to live for 
Thee.' Instantly a great joy came over me and 
I felt a different man. I went home and nothing 
happened for a week. Then came the harvest and 
my landlord made a present of a pot of toddy for 
all the labourers and asked me to distribute it. 
I said I did not myself drink and so preferred not 
to have anything to do with it. He laughed. 
He could not believe me. I told him that ever 
since our Bishop came I had given up drink. He 
pointed out that the Bishop was no longer there 
and there was no harm in drinking or giving 
others some toddy after a hard day's work. I said 
I could not do that, because I had vowed before 
God that I would be a different man. But there 
was another difficulty. My annual wage was 
Rs. 36 (2, 143.) in cash, and about another Rs. 36 
in grain. This had been sufficient because I made 
up the deficiency by stealing grain, vegetables, 
tobacco and all other supplies from my master's 
farm. This I could no longer do, with the result 
that I was falling into debt. I went to my master 
and said, * My wages are insufficient and I am 
falling into debt. Please therefore let me go away 
so that I may do my own cultivation.' He said, 1 
' What? Do you tell me that after all those years 
your wages have become insufficient all of a 
sudden? ' I said that was what I meant, and asked 
him whether he really thought we were all living 
on the wages he was giving us. I explained how 
all the vegetables for our use came from his garden, 
all the tobacco we used was from his store, how 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

I always brought home without his knowledge 
my share of his gram. But now, I said, I could 
not do these things and the wages were inadequate. 
My master laughed and said it was a strange story, 
though he quite believed it." 

The master wanted time to consider his request, 
and for a month he carefully watched him at work, 
but at the end of the month he made him his head 
labourer and doubled his wages. 

The teacher in charge of one village told the 
following story: "Four years ago Abraham was 
known to be the most wild and quarrelsome man 
in my village. He was an habitual drunkard. When 
the Deanery chairman came to the village for the 
Harvest festival, I went to Abraham's house to 
call him to the service. He said he would come 
later. Again I went; he was not at home; he had 
gone to the liquor shop. I went to it and there 
was Abraham, very drunk and challenging every 
one to fight. I came away very sad. Four months 
later there was a confirmation for our Pastorate. 
Four candidates were ready from my village. 
Abraham wanted to go too. As he did not know 
any confirmation lessons, I left him behind. After 
the Bishop's examination of the candidates was 
finished Abraham appeared in the chapel and sat 
down with the others, without my seeing him. So 
by mistake he was confirmed. After we had all 
returned to the village, a radical change was noticed 
in Abraham. He never touched drink, he was the 
first to come to Church services. That was three 
years ago. This year he has been elected by the 

42 



MIGHTY WORKS 

congregation to be their representative on the 
church council.'* The teacher was asked, " What 
do you think effected the change?" "Nothing 
but the grace of the Holy Spirit," was his reply. 

But the most impressive fact about this move- 
ment is the fuller and more abundant life, intellectual, 
moral and spiritual, that comes to the Christian 
community as a whole through the liberty of the 
Spirit. We see the same thing happening in India 
to-day that happened seventeen centuries ago in 
the Roman Empire. Dr Glover points out that 
Christianity triumphed in the ancient world " be- 
cause essentially it liberated the human mind and 
gave it a chance to develop to the full range of 
God's conception of it." x 

In this respect the parallel between the Church 
in the Roman and that in the Indian Empire is 
amazingly close : in both cases " not many wise 
after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble 
are called," 2 and in both cases there is the same 
wonderful " liberation of the human mind." 
When we consider the oppression, the degradation 
and the starvation of body and soul to which the 
outcastes have been subjected for more than a 
thousand years we should naturally expect that it 
would need many generations of teaching and 
culture to raise them up to the intellectual and 
cultural level of their masters. But that is very 
far from the truth. In the second generation the 

1 The Influence of Christ in the Ancient World, pp. 9, 10. 
By T. R. Glover (Cambridge) University Press, 1929. 

2 i Cor. i. 26. 

43 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

transformation often is startling. A small outcaste 
boy, whose parents were Christians, was taken by 
one of the missionaries to the Telugu country and 
started by pulling the punkahs in the missionary's 
bungalow. He was sent to the mission school 
and is now an able Wesleyan minister, greatly 
respected by Christians and Hindus alike over 
a large district, doing with singular wisdom 
and patience a most valuable work of rural 
uplift. 

Another Tamil outcaste boy, minding cattle in 
the fields for a few pence a week, attended the 
primary classes of a mission school, rose in time 
to be one of the leading ministers in the Con- 
gregational Church of South India, mayor of the 
town in which he lived and a leader in the great 
movement towards Church unity in South India. 
At the beginning of 1929 he died, and at his funeral 
there was a remarkable demonstration of respect 
and affection from all classes, Europeans and Indians, 
Christians, Hindus and Moslems. The shops were 
closed and the leading men of the town attended 
the funeral service. In the whole of South India 
there are more than 200 ministers and priests 
drawn from the outcastes; and in the village 
districts, where they work, they stand head and 
shoulders above the mass of caste Hindus in 
education, character and spiritual life. 

In one of the Anglican stations in the Telugu 
country there is a High School in which for the 
last thirty years there has been approximately an 
equal number of pupils drawn respectively from 

44 



MIGHTY WORKS 

the outcaste Christians and the high-caste Hindus. 
If a comparison were made of the number of 
students from each of these two sections that 
have passed the final High School examination, 
conducted by the Government Education Depart- 
ment during the last thirty years, it would 
be found that there was no great difference 
between the outcaste Christians and the high-caste 
Hindus. 

Recently a Baptist missionary gave a remarkable 
illustration of this liberation of the spirit in a 
family connected with his mission. A Madiga 
Christian woman, belonging to the lowest section 
of the outcastes, married a low-caste convert. They 
had two sons. One is. now a professor in a 
University college and the other is a learned 
Telugu scholar. 

The effect of this new liberty, that is the gift of 
the Spirit of Christ, is even more striking among 
the women than among the men. A poor Madiga 
girl, whose mother would not have been allowed 
to touch the children of caste Hindus or even to 
be in the same room with them, is now the head- 
mistress of a large girls' school attended by the 
children of both high-caste Hindus and well-to-do 
Mahommedans. In another school of this kind 
every single teacher is a Christian girl of outcaste 
origin. In December 1929, after the baptism of a 
large number of converts in a village in the Dornakal 
diocese, some of the leading men from the Caste 
quarter of the village, which has a population of 
about 3000, asked that a Christian girl might be 

45 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

sent to take charge of a school for their girls. And 
a Christian girl in that district would necessarily 
be an outcaste. 

In the large town of Bezwada in the Telugu 
country, when a municipal election was recently 
held, a number of educated women were needed 
to instruct the illiterate female voters how to fill 
up their voting-papers. The only women available 
were Christians. 

And still more striking than these individual 
instances is the outburst of song and drama that 
has swept over the large Christian community in 
the Telugu country during the last few years. 
Christian songs and lyrics are composed by large 
numbers of people and sung to Telugu tunes. 
The women and children especially sing them with 
great delight by the hour together. Musical dramas 
are being composed on various subjects, such as 
the life and message of the prophets Amos and 
Jeremiah, the life and work of St Paul and the 
history of Joseph. One of the most recent is on 
the life of Venkayya, whose story is given 
above. 

During the annual Health Week at Dornakal 
the final item of the programme is a musical health 
drama composed by the school teachers and acted 
by the children. These dramas are extraordinarily 
effective for their purpose. Large audiences are 
held spell-bound for hours and receive an immense 
amount of useful teaching. During one of these 
weeks last year, men and women eagerly bought 
and read 1500 booklets on sanitation, precautions 

46 



MIGHTY WORKS 



against smallpox and cholera, and on other subjects 
connected with health. No doubt they begin at 
a low level in these matters, but the significant fact 
is that they have the desire and courage to start on 
the upward path. 



47 



CHAPTER IV 

THE TRANSFORMATION OF VILLAGES 1 

CHRISTIANITY is a social religion. It not only aims 
at bringing individual souls under the regenerating 
influence of Jesus Christ, but it also unites the 
disciples of Christ in a society and makes that 
society the instrument for carrying out God's 
purpose in the world. The testimony of the 
individual is effective, but the testimony of the 
society is even more powerful. What then is the 
effect of the Gospel on the Christian community? 
The following incident will serve to illustrate this 
in a village where the people became Christians 
after much hesitation. They were not at first 
particularly strong in the faith. They are typical 
of a large number of Christian communities in the 
Telugu country. 

We were camping in the Traveller's Bungalow. 

I finished the Confirmation one evening, and had 

a service of Holy Communion in the morning with 

the workers and those of the newly confirmed who 

stayed over night for it. It was soon found that 

nobody in the village itself was a Christian. I was 

told that the antagonistic attitude of the Dorai 

the landlord who belonged to a leading Zamindari 

1 This chapter is by the Bishop of Dornakal. 

48 



THE TRANSFORMATION OF VILLAGES 

family of the district made any movement im- 
possible. My wife and I wanted to visit the Dorai's 
house and so started out when the sun was fairly 
down, and on the way visited the outcaste village. 
After seeing the Dorai we returned to the Bungalow, 
and were at dinner, when I noticed a crowd outside. 
I went out and found about twenty men, mostly 
young, and asked them who they were. 

" We belong to Kondur," came the reply. " Did 
you not, with ' Amma Garu ' * come to our village 
this evening? " 

" Oh, yes," I said, " What do you want? " 

" We have come to tell you that we want to 
join the religion." 

"What!" I said. "You did not seem to be 
very keen in the afternoon; what is it that has 
produced this change of mind now? " 

"After you and the Amma Garu left us, we 
began to consult together; and later, when all the 
elders came home from the fields we summoned a 
meeting of the whole village, and we decided that 
we must become Christians now. We want to do 
it at once because the Bishop has come to our 
village." 

" That sounds very nice ; but why do you want 
to become Christians ? " 

" For some years we have wanted to become 
Christians; and we enrolled ourselves once before; 
but as soon as our landlord heard of it he placed 
difficulties in our way and we could not stand the 
persecutions. But now, we see that all the villages 

1 Lady Mother. 
D 49 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

round about us have joined the religion and they 
are all going ahead in every way and we alone are 
left behind. Soon we shall be unable even to get 
brides and bridegrooms for our children unless we 
become Christians." 

" But the Dorai will again persecute you," I said. 

" Let him; we shall all leave the village and go 
elsewhere: but we want the religion, we are not 
going to give it up this time even if our throats 
are cut." 

The Pastor and Mr Adam, the Indian Rural Dean, 
one of our most trusted Indian leaders, were in 
another part of the Bungalow and I sent for the 
latter. He came and I repeated the whole con- 
versation to him. He was very pessimistic. 

" You talk like this now," said he to the deputa- 
tion, " but when the Dorai finds this out, he will 
beat you, threaten to drive you out of the village 
and then you will yield to his threats. I can't 
believe your words." 

" No, no, sir," they said. " We are not going 
to do that. Let him beat us, let him drive us out 
of the village, let him cut our throats. We are not 
going back this time." 

Mr Adam : " If this is true, will you have your 
tufts removed now? 1 Then I will believe you are 
sincere." 

1 Removing the tuft is in certain parts of the Telugu 
country considered a distinctive outward badge of having 
left the Hindu Society and joined the Christian Society. 
In old days the tuft of hair on the top of the' head was 
identified with adherence to the Hindu faith. 

50 



THE TRANSFORMATION OF VILLAGES 

The elders demurred. They were of course 
taken aback at this unforeseen challenge. The hour 
was late ; it would be inconvenient to go and have 
a bath or to wash their hair after the operation. 
My wife, noticing the struggle, pleaded that this 
ceremony might be left over till the morning. 

" No, no," said the young men. " It must be 
done now. If we are allowed to go away now, 
we might find it difficult to make the decision 
later ! " So they all agreed, sat down, untied the 
knots and let down their long hair, ready for the 
scissors. My nail scissors, were the only pair we 
had. Mr Adam took charge of them: the bungalow 
peon, who was a Roman Catholic caste man, held 
up the lantern, and then and there about twenty 
of them had their tufts removed and thus broke 
with the past. 

" When the landlord sees you in the morning 
and notices the tufts gone, then will come trouble," 
Mr Adam said. 

" Come what may," was the chorus of reply. 
They had broken with the past: they were ready 
for anything. We knelt on that verandah and 
committed the village to the grace of God. 

Next evening at nine o'clock was to be the first 
service, when the names were to be enrolled. We 
all went. The men whose tufts had not been 
removed the previous night had " to be done" 
now. Then all the names were taken down 
one hundred and fifty-one in all. 

The elder said : " lyah (sir), we have a request 
to make." 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

"Yes, go on!" 

" Do you know Teacher Sanjeevi of ? That 

is the teacher we want. He teaches well. The 
people improve quickly under him. The children 
love him. We have seen it. Will you not please 
give us that teacher? " 

" But you must find a house for him, you must 
put up a school building; not until then can the 
teacher come ! " was Mr Adam's reply. 

" We shall have the house ready to-morrow ! 
We have a thatched shed now in the centre of the 
village used for common village meetings. That 
can be used as chapel and school. Can the teacher 
come to-morrow? " 

So we decided to effect the change. Money? 
We did not know whether there was money or 
not. But people with such keenness could not be 
left unprovided for. So Mr Adam said he would 
send the teacher at once and take the chances. 
Then we had prayers. I spoke to them about 
prayer that God was our Father and as children 
tell their fathers all their needs, they must learn to 
tell the Heavenly Father all they needed that they 
could pray always and everywhere in the fields, 
in the houses, the last thing at night and first thing 
in the morning and so forth. And we knelt to pray. 

They had taken the first step. They had so far 
given the Spirit of God room to begin His re- 
generating work in their souls. The seed had been 
sown. It was sure to do its work. We left them 
on the following day. That was in October 1924. 
They were baptized a year later in September 1925* 



THE TRANSFORMATION OF VILLAGES 

The first sixty-five. of the adults were confirmed in 
February 1927. The first communion was held on 
the following morning in a mud chapel that the 
people had built for themselves. It was not quite 
finished. The roof was on. The walls were only 
half up. Two windows were in position. We had 
the celebration there in this place made sacred by 
loving devotion. I could hardly recognize the 
faces of the people : they had all so altered ! Their 
cleanliness, order,, their devotion and their loving 
adoration who could tell they were the same 
people that met me on that October night in 1924? 
As I described the meaning of the Sacrament they 
were now to receive their faces shone. They had 
realized what .the Cross of Christ had meant to 
them. They had seen its transforming power. The 
teaching during these two years had centred round 
the Cross. God so loved us and gave Himself 
for us! It was a wonderful service. God was 
near. The Spirit was moving us. As the women 
came and put out their hands to receive the Sacra- 
ment, their eyes were wet with tears ! 

Late in -the evening a messenger came saying 
that the Dorai was coming to visit us. We got 
some chairs in position and were ready to receive 
him. He gave us limes, 1 salaamed us both, placed 
a big dish of fruit in front of us said it was for 
amma garu, and excused himself that he had not 
better fruit. I began: "How are you? How is 
the family? Since we were here last time, these 
villagers have become Christians ; what do you 
think of thqjjr new religion? " 

53 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

" lyah "(sir), came the ready reply, " that is 
what brought me here now. I wanted to come to 
thank you for this religion. I never realized that 
Christianity was such a religion. You have seen 
the people now* How they have changed ! They 
are clean, all their foul speech has gone! Their 
singing, their worship, their devotion is a marvel 
to us I They are honest, they give us better work. 
We are all pleased about this religion. The teacher 
ah! He is a good man! Though he comes 
from the outcastes, he can come into my house 
now. He is our family physician. I want to write 
to all the Zamindars and dorais that no one should 
hinder this religion entering any of their .villages. 
If it were possible we should all become Christians." 

And this was the man of whom they were afraid; 
as a man who might even cut their throats ! 

The impression thus made upon the caste people 
by the transformation of outcaste communities in 
their own villages is the strongest possible evidence 
of the spiritual power of the gospel of Christ. And 
it is very widespread. 

In a village in a remote part of the Hyderabad 
State about twenty years ago a few outcastes were 
baptized, the first Christians in the village. They 
were miserably poor, very dirty and depressed. 
Later on the whole of the outcastes in the village 
were converted to Christianity. And in about 
twelve years there was a miraculous transformation 
of the whole village. Through the influence of the 
outcaste Christians and their teacher, the caste 
people of the village had given up idolatry. The 

54 



THE TRANSFORMATION OF VILLAGES 

sacrifices to the village gods and goddesses at 
times of sowing and harvest, that they and their 
forefathers had offered for thousands of years, 
were abolished. " We offer our prayers and make 
our vows to your God only," they said to the 
Indian pastor. Many of them had given up drunken- 
ness and foul language. " We are ashamed of these 
things now," they said, " when we see the outcastes 
living sober and respectable lives." To anyone 
who knows the strength of caste and the rigid 
conservatism of the Indian villages this was indeed 
a miracle. 
I was about to hold a Confirmation at the 

village of B . After robing, I came out to the 

temporary palm leaf pavilion erected for the purpose. 
There were about a hundred people, young and 
old, arranged on the ground and singing lyrics. 
There were also seated on benches inside some 
Hindu caste gentlemen who had come to see the 
function. I did not like these men to be mere 
spectators inside the pavilion, and so very cour- 
teously I asked them to withdraw until we finished 
our prayers. They got up at once but waited a 
whole hour outside looking on. We met again 
after the service was over. " What did you think 
of our service ? " I asked. " Oh, sir, that is what 
we want to tell you. We know these people very 
well: they are our own servants. Their fathers 
and forefathers worked for our fathers and fore- 
fathers. They are not superior to us in caste, they 
are not superior to us in wealth, they are not 
superior to. us in education, they are not superior 

55 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

to us in looks: and yet, when we sat and looked 
at them before you came in, we could not fail to 
notice the bright rays of the glory of God playing 
on their faces; we have not got that! " 

At K , the village magistrate (who was a 

casteman) was observing my examination of the 
candidates for confirmation, and when the candi- 
dates left I asked him to tell me what he really 
thought of our Christian converts. His reply was 
this : " I must tell you the truth, I cannot deny 
that there is a real change among these people 
since Christianity was introduced among them. 
Formerly they drank heavily, every decent man 
shunned their village after sunset the quarrels 
and the foul language used were too loathsome for 
words. Cattle poisoning by these people was 
common. Now all that has changed. Cattle- 
poisoning is now unknown in Christian villages. 
Instead of drunken revels and quarrels, the music 
of lyrics and songs from the village chapel fill the 
air in the evenings. In short, these people are 
learning, nay have learnt, to live soberly, righteously 
and godly in the villages." 

At N , two caste Reddies, the leaders of one 

of the villages where we have a congregation, 
came to see me. They had walked five miles for 
this purpose. The outcaste people had been 
Christians for seven years ; but they had lived very 
indifferent lives. During the two years previous 
to my visit, however, there had been a change in 
the teacher and in the pastor, and a new life had 
been introduced into the congregation. This the 

56 



THE TRANSFORMATION OF VILLAGES 

Reddy had observed. He said : " Only now we 
have come to see what Christianity is. This 
religion has been in our village for seven years; 
but it produced no impression on us. Since the 
coming of this new teacher everything has changed. 
These people have now learnt good manners, they 
know now how to behave towards us, how to 
work for us, and even how to talk to us; theft 
has stopped, we now respect the Christian people, 
even though they are outcastes: and we respect 
their religion too." 

The importance of having as teachers devout 
men, trained and equipped for rural work was 
never more forcibly brought home to me than 
when this Hindu Reddy gave this testimony. Rural 
evangelism demands first-class men. 

Our largest congregation of Madiga converts is 

at M . There are over 800 people in this one 

place who are members of our church. In its 
neighbourhood is a large village of well-to-do 
caste people. The Christians earn their livelihood 
by working for the caste landowners. Some work 
on* monthly wages : the others get daily wages for 
tasks connected with rice cultivation. Years ago, 
when I held my first Confirmation in this village, 
some of the leading caste men came to witness our 
service. On questioning them as to what they 
thought of our worship, they said it was very 
elevating and they, liked the moral teaching we 
gave the people. I asked them what they thought 
of our Christians. The reply came from one of 
the thoughtful men. " We can say," he said, 

57 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

" that these Madigas have learnt real bhaku (devotion) 
since they became Christians." It was a delightful 
testimony, but I wondered at the time how far it 
came from real conviction. But quite recently the 
Christian houses were all destroyed by fire in one 
night and the condition of the people was most 
piteous. The houses were all small thatched houses 
and burnt themselves out in no time. Very little of 
the meagre belongings of the unfortunate Christians 
was saved. Without clothes or food they were in 
a most hopeless position. As soon as the extent of 
the loss was known, the Hindu gentlemen came 
most generously with offers of help. One leading 
man spent about 200 in giving temporary relief 
in clothes and grain to the Christian sufferers. 
During these many years respect and regard for 
these -outcaste Christians had grown, until it found 
expression in such a splendid act of spontaneous 
generosity. 

Non-Christians have not only given an un- 
qualified testimony to the change that has been 
wrought in outcaste communities by the power of 
the Gospel of Christ, but in many cases they have 
themselves entered into a larger life and faith 
through the example of their Christian servants. 



CHAPTER V 

A MOVEMENT AMONG THE CASTES 

THE conversion of caste people to faith in Christ 
is no new thing. Members of various castes have 
for many centuries been converted to faith in 
Christ in large numbers. The Syrian Christian 
community on the south-west coast, numbering 
at present about 800,000, were originally drawn 
from the caste people in Travancore and Cochin. 
Large numbers of caste people were also converted 
first by the Jesuit missionaries from A.D. 1600 
onwards, and then by Protestant missionaries in 
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. So that 
the total number of Christians gathered from the 
Hindu castes is at present considerably over a 
million. 

One disappointing feature, however, in these 
movements among the caste people in the past has 
been their tendency to stagnation. They -have 
started with great spiritual power and then after a 
time have ceased to progress. That has been the 
case with the old Syrian church in Travancore and 
Cochin, and with the caste converts both of the 
Roman Catholic church and of the Protestant 
churches in other parts of India. The main reason 
for this stagnation is the fact that the deep-rooted 

59 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

caste feeling of Hindu society has persisted after 
conversion and has ultimately prevailed over the 
spirit of Christian brotherhood. In many parts of 
South India the Christian community has not only 
failed to evangelize the depressed classes but has 
actively opposed their admission to the Christian 
Church. The same spirit is manifested among 
many of the more highly educated Christians, 
drawn from various castes in North India. For 
social reasons they are definitely opposed to the 
gathering of the poor and depressed into the Church 
and regard the mass movements of the outcastes not 
as an opportunity for service but as a grievous 
hindrance to the fulfilment of their ambitions. 1 

The inevitable result of this unchristian spirit is 
a loss of spiritual power. A very learned Brahman 
convert, Father Nehemiah Goreh, once said that 
" Christianity with caste is no Christianity at all." 
Unhappily Christian missionaries in the past have 
not been sufficiently alive to this deadly peril. 
The Jesuit missionaries in the seventeenth century 
made terms with caste and admitted it into the 
Church and many of the Protestant missionaries 
followed their example. It seemed the line of least 
resistance, but it was a fatal blunder. A Roman 
Catholic missionary in South India recently re- 
marked that they had admitted caste into the 
Church three centuries ago and bitterly regretted 
it. " But," he added, " it is now too late, we 
cannot get rid of it." 

1 See The Christian Task in India, pp. 244 ff. ; The Making 
of Modern India, pp. 199 ff. Macnicol, 

60 



A MOVEMENT AMONG THE CASTES 

The new movement among the caste people in 
the villages of the Telugu country towards Chris- 
tianity that has been in progress during the last ten 
or fifteen years is all the more hopeful because it 
promises to deal effectively from the start with 
the caste feeling. The movement has been mainly 
due to the witness of the changed lives of the 
outcaste Christians and the personal influence of 
individual teachers and ministers drawn from the 
outcastes. Previous chapters have described the 
effect that this witness and influence have had in 
conciliating prejudice and creating a friendly feeling 
among the caste people towards Christianity. But 
within the last ten years this has begun to bear 
fruit in definite conversions to faith in Christ. 
Considerably over 10,000 caste people in the Telugu 
country have already been baptized, and they have 
joined a church in which more than 800,000 
Christians have been drawn from the outcastes. So 
that in nearly every village where these caste converts 
exist, they worship with outcaste Christians and 
are ministered to by outcaste clergy, catechists and 
teachers ! This strikes from the beginning a power- 
ful blow at the caste feeling. And it is noticeable 
that the higher the caste from which the converts 
come, the more completely they abandon caste 
prejudices, when once they have crossed the Rubicon 
at baptism. It often seems easier for a Brahman 
convert to eat with an outcaste than for different 
sections of the outcastes to eat together. 

This movement among the caste people is taking 
place over a very wide area in the Telugu country. 

61 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

GUNTUR 

In the area where the American Lutheran Church 
is working with its head-quarters at Guntur it 
began about twenty years ago in a district where 
there were already a large number of Roman 
Catholics, drawn from different castes during the 
last sixty or seventy years. The beginning of this 
movement in the Lutheran church was due to the 
strong personal influence of a Lutheran missionary 
and his wife working in that district. Many 
hundreds became Christians, but at first, owing to 
the influence of the Roman Catholics who had 
been allowed to keep their caste, there was a 
serious danger of the caste spirit becoming per- 
manent among them. Caste boarding-schools were 
established exclusively for caste children and in 
other ways caste prejudices were respected. Happily 
this policy was reversed, the schools were thrown 
open to outcaste and caste alike and the caste 
Christians learned to accept the ministrations of 
outcaste ministers and teachers. 

Later on the movement started in other districts 
within the area. It was mainly due to the personal 
influence of outcaste teachers and their wives, 
backed by the changed lives of the outcaste con- 
gregations; but in a few cases it began with an 
individual man who was a true seeker after God. 

In one village the munsirT (magistrate) was a 
student of different religions. He studied carefully 
Hinduism, Buddhism and Mahommedanism and 
could find no peace or satisfaction. Then he 

62 



A MOVEMENT AMONG THE CASTES 

turned to Christianity and the study of the Bible, 
and after many talks with Lutheran missionaries 
was convinced of the truth of Christianity. He 
was finally baptized with about sixty of his friends 
and relations. 

In another village there was a caste man who 
belonged to the sect of Lingayets and was a follower 
of the Hindu reformer Ramanuja. A tract was 
given him one day in a railway train by a lady 
missionary and this started him on the study of 
the Bible. He went to Guntur where he was 
taught by the missionaries and baptized. 

Through these various influences the movement 
spread throughout the area with the result that 
about 6000 of the caste people have already been 
baptised. 

DORNAKAL 

In the Dornakal diocese the movement has been 
rapidly growing in strength during the last five 
years. Sometimes it has been due to the witness of 
a single outcaste. The following story told by one 
of the C.M.S. missionaries is an illustration of this. 

"When Ihad been at Bezwada about eighteen 
months a young Sudra man named Ramayya 
appeared one day on my verandah with his wife 
and little boy. He had travelled about eighty miles 
from his home, a village in the Khammamett 
District (C.M.S.) in the Nizam's Dominions. He 
told me that he desired to be taught about Jesus 
Christ, having learnt about him first from a certain 

63 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES^ 

old Christian named Abraham (a convert from the 
outcastes) who was employed by his (Ramayya's) 
father. Abraham had evidently taught the young 
Sudra some of the salient facts about our Lord and 
a few lyrics, and had passed away. But his witness 
had sown seed in the heart of Ramayya, who, no 
longer able to learn from his old friend, determined 
to seek further light from the mission to which 
Abraham belonged. Fearing to go to the mission 
station nearest his village, namely Khammamett, 
lest his relations should discover his intentions and 
bring him back, he came to Bezwada on the plea of 
wishing to visit some relatives near there. I 
received Ramayya, his wife and child, and gladly 
arranged for them to be housed and given regular 
instruction in my compound. But I advised him 
to let me send news of him to his relatives. There 
proved to be no need for this, however, for the 
next day a. crowd of his relatives turned up, having 
somehow discovered Ramayya's real object in 
leaving home. They tried their utmost to dissuade 
him from his intentions and to persuade me to 
send him away; his wife also sided with them and 
cursed her husband in a most distressing way. 
However, Ramayya remained firm and all the 
relatives finally departed. The wife stayed a few 
days, but took herself off with the child later. 
Ramayya stayed with me for about three months 
unmolested and showed great earnestness and made 
good progress in learning the Christian faith. But 
while I was in camp for a few days a message 
came from his village that his old mother had had 

64 



A MOVEMENT AMONG THE CASTES 

an accident and was dying, and besought a sight 
of her son. Ramayya believing the message to be 
true went to see his mother, but found that the 
message had been a ruse to get him back home, and 
that his mother was well ! 

" Since then Ramayya has never returned to 
Bezwada. His relatives seem to have done him no 
physical harm, though they succeeded in dissuading 
him from being baptized for some four years ; but 
in 1921 he made the decisive step and was baptized 
together with his wife and child. Later on fifty 
other caste people from the same village were also 
baptized." 

In many villages the friendly relations between 
the masters and their Christian servants, have 
created an atmosphere in which even high caste 
men and women have found it possible to take 
the serious step of breaking caste and joining the 
Christian Church. The village of Raghavapuram, 
the home of Venkayya (whose conversion is 
described in chapter II) is a case in point. When 
Venkayya was baptized, the Brahmans of the 
village refused to allow even caste servants of the 
missionary to draw water from the only fresh-water 
well. A well was, therefore, dug in the village to 
supply the outcastes with water. Some time after- 
wards there was a great drought. The river and 
all the wells in the village went dry. There was one 
exception and that was the Christians' well! The 
Brahmans came to Venkayya for relief. " Lend us 
your well," they pleaded. " We will draw water 
for you as well as for ourselves." With a true 
E 65 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

Christian spirit Venkayya and the other Christians 
decided to hand over the well to the caste people 
till the rain should again fall. While the drought 
lasted there was no lack of water in the Christians' 
well both for caste and outcaste people. A friendly 
relationship was thus opened up between the 
Christians and non-Christians, which for fifty years 
has never been broken. This kindly feeling is 
bearing fruit to-day. 

In November 1928 the authors of this book went 
to Raghavapuram for a baptism. On Sunday 
morning there was a celebration of the Holy 
Communion in the village church. Among the 
communicants were the representatives of nine 
different castes, ranging from Brahmans to out- 
castes. In the congregation there was a young 
woman dressed in a bright-coloured silk Sari, with 
her husband and a number of his female relations. 
She belonged to the highest caste of Sudras in the 
village and was a Christian. Her husband was not 
yet a Christian, but she was teaching him herself 
and hoped soon to bring him to baptism. The female 
relations were Hindus, but had so far advanced 
towards Christianity that they had no objection to 
sitting with outcastes in a Christian church. Twenty 
years ago a scene like this would have been almost 
inconceivable. In the afternoon 175 people were 
baptized and of these 152 were caste people. A few 
days after we went on to a neighbouring village 
where 300 people were baptized, of whom 150 
were caste people. 

In another area, where during the last seven 

66 



A MOVEMENT AMONG THE CASTES 

years the Church membership has doubled, over 
400 caste people were enrolled as catechumens in 
one year and 150 of them have already been 
baptized. 

Recently in a group of four villages, where 
there has been a large Christian community drawn 
from the outcastes for many years, a remarkable 
movement has begun among the caste people as 
well. Already about 70 have been baptized from 
five different castes, including the highest of the 
Sudra castes in the Telugu country. Many of them 
are very well off, owning from 10 to 50 acres of 
land. Their keenness is very striking. They want 
a good school with eight classes established at once 
and are prepared to find a good part of the money. 
" We would give it all," they said, " if it were 
not for this persecution." The persecution started 
when they decided to become Christians and took 
the form of an attempt to deprive them of their 
land. The lawsuits in which they were involved 
cost them about 225, a very large sum even for 
well-to-do people in a village. They are very eager 
to learn more about Christianity themselves; some 
of them proposed that they should go to the head- 
quarters of the deanery in which they live or to 
Dornakal itself for two or three months during the 
hot weather, when there is no field work to be 
done, in order to get instruction in the Christian 
faith. They will probably learn in three months 
what it ordinarily takes one or two years to teach 
the outcastes. They do not seem to have any 
difficulty about abandoning caste. A few of them 

67 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

came to Dornakal and were baptized. They eat 
with outcastes food prepared by outcastes without 
any hesitation. The one point about which they 
were uneasy was the Anglican marriage service. 
" It is so cold and much too short! " Their own 
marriage ceremonies last about a week and are full 
of significant symbolism. A twenty-minutes service 
with strange, meaningless ritual was a real stumbling- 
block. However, it was explained to them that this 
could easily be altered. A form of marriage service 
was hastily sketched out which would last at least 
two hours and which fairly satisfied them. 

In this group of villages there are in addition to 
those already baptized, about 2000 more caste 
people, many of whom are already attending ser- 
vices, receiving instruction and anxious to join the 
Church. 

MEDAK l 

The recent conversion of about 3000 caste people 
in the Wesleyan mission district in the Hyderabad 
State is a striking illustration of the strength and 
wonderful possibilities of this new movement. It 
is the more remarkable because the work of the 
mission among the outcastes only started in earnest 
at their headquarters in the town of Medak about 
thirty years ago. In 1895 there were only about 
2800 baptized Christians in that area, nearly all 

1 This section is taken entirely from information kindly 
supplied to us by the Rev. C. W. Posnett, the senior 
Wesleyan missionary in charge of the Medak area. 

68 



A MOVEMENT AMONG THE CASTES 

gathered from the outcastes. Now they number 
about 60,000. 

The movement among the caste people began 
five years ago. It started in the extreme north of 
the district on the banks of the river Godavery, and 
was due mainly to the influence of an Indian 
evangelist and his wife backed by the simple faith 
and devotion of many of the poor outcaste Chris- 
tians. An outbreak of plague drove the whole 
population of one of the villages out into the 
jungle to live in booths. The Hindu priests 
deserted their people. The Christian teacher and 
his wife went with the villagers and ministered 
with great courage and self-sacrifice to the sick and 
dying, Christians and non-Christians alike. That 
made a profound impression on the caste people of 
that and other villages. 

Later on a small band of Wodders, who are a 
caste just above the outcastes, came to Mr Posnett 
begging for baptism and for a teacher, and for 
many months they paid for one amongst themselves. 
The teacher left them, but one of their own number 
still taught them to pray and sing. They habitually 
called themselves Christians and regularly subscribed 
to the Mission funds. After about three years 
Mr Posnett visited that part of the district. He 
was greatly struck with their forceful character, 
their earnestness, good habits and splendid record. 

So he baptized about 600 of them during this 
visit. " I never," he wrote, " met any people who 
were better prepared and more thoroughly fit to be 
received into the Church. When we asked them 

69 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

to pray, one after another they got up and simply 
but earnestly put their petitions before God, and 
the way in which they told the story of the death 
and resurrection of Christ in some of these villages 
was a perfect delight to hear. One young man 
describing in his own words the story of the 
resurrection was so vivid and did it so well that the 
great crowd of caste Hindus who were there to 
watch listened spell-bound to the story. I never 
had a better opportunity of preaching to caste 
Hindus. These baptisms were not done in a 
corner, but all the caste village had gathered to see 
and to hear." 

Mr Posnett gives the following account of the 
movement in other villages on the banks of the 
Godavery. 

" I was there more than a week last month and 
I never saw such earnest seekers after God. We 
stayed in camp at a small town, called Ibrahim- 
patnam with about 4000 inhabitants. Every evening 
we had a congregation of 2000 caste people who 
had been under instruction for baptism for about 
eight months. They were splendidly prepared, 
they knew the story of Jesus, and they could sing 
our hymns one after another. They had broken 
away from caste and had accepted three of our 
outcaste evangelists and received them into their 
houses. 

" During the day I went from house to house 
to visit them and talk about Jesus with them in 
their own homes. To my amazement when I came 
to the house of the chief farmer, who is a very 

70 



A MOVEMENT AMONG THE CASTES 

high caste man, and looked up at the carved wooden 
doorway of the house I saw that right in the middle 
of the top of the door he had actually chiselled 
away the image of the Hindu guardian goddess of 
the home, called Vignasvarudu. To those of us 
who know the caste people of India and the powerful 
hold of idolatry, it seemed almost a miracle that 
these beginners should have cut away this image 
from their homes before their baptism. None of 
us knew anything about it and they had done it in 
every house entirely of their own accord. The 
Indian ministers who were with me were amazed 
to see such a thing and were all convinced that this 
was a sign of their sincerity that none could doubt. 
"All day long whilst we were in camp there 
were groups of other people, both caste and out- 
caste, coming from all the surrounding villages. 
They had nothing whatever to gain, and they 
knew that they would have to face persecution, 
but they had already begun to learn about Jesus 
Christ and they simply would not leave me until 
I promised to try and send them an evangelist. 
I should think there must be twenty villages here 
on the banks of the Godavery where they are 
already learning from the visits of our outcaste 
teachers; but they say: ' We cannot read and we 
cannot remember if we are only taught once a 
week. We must have an evangelist and his wife 
to come and live in our midst.' There is no doubt 
at all that this is true. Hardly any of these people 
know how to read; it is absolutely necessary to 
have a teacher who can teach them, regularly hold 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

services for them every evening, and teach the 
children to read the Bible. I am not willing to 
baptize 4000 people this year and then leave them 
to forget all about Jesus Christ. If we are to 
receive these people it is our duty to teach them 
thoroughly and to give them Pastors and Evangelists 
who will really build up a great Christian Church 
in their midst. 

" Meanwhile the movement had spread to many 
other villages round Medak itself and all over the 
district. In 1926 a five-days' convention was held 
in the mission station at Medak for high-caste 
Hindus who were anxious to hear more about 
Jesus Christ. The missionaries did not expect 
more than 20 or 30, but altogether 150 assembled, 
among them three or four Patels (headmen) and 
one Brahman Karunam (village accountant). Special 
preparations had to be made for their food and 
accommodation; but it was a wonderful thing 
that so many caste Hindus came to spend four or 
five days in what was practically an outcaste settle- 
ment and that everything went off happily without 
the slightest unpleasantness. 

" Day by day during the convention there were 
songs and stories from the life of Christ, and the 
visitors listened to the singing and preaching with 
profound interest. Many of the converts from 
different castes gave their testimony to the power 
of Christ in their own lives. 

" At the conclusion of one of the addresses on 
the third day the speaker asked those who were 
going to be Christ's disciples to say so, and one 

72 



A MOVEMENT AMONG THE CASTES 

after the other got up and said 'I will give up 
idols from to-day and will pray to Yesu Swami 
(the Lord Jesus) henceforth.' 

" One dear old man said : * I have given up my 
idols and I shall never cease to worship Yesu 
Swami though I have to starve, and though the 
crows eat my flesh I will not deny Him.' I may 
add that this man right through the meetings had 
been determined to be a Christian out and out 
and begged us to baptize him publicly on Sunday 
morning. The Friday morning meeting was really 
wonderful. It was so spontaneous that you could 
not but believe that God was in our midst. The 
confessions were so brief and so earnest and simple 
that it really took my breath away." 

Some of them wanted to be baptized at once, 
but it was thought better that they should go back 
to their own villages and be publicly baptized 
there. The sequel came a few weeks afterwards 
when fourteen people from different castes were 
baptized by immersion in the river Godavery. 

Six months later, Mr Posnett had the great joy 
of baptizing in the Godavery another band of 
converts from the caste people. They came in 
procession to the place of baptism led by the 
Christian outcaste drummers. When they arrived 
at the camp, " at once it was clear," writes Mr 
Posnett, " how keen and brave they were all so 
happy and bright some beautiful little children. 
There was one wonderful old lady, who was the 
leader of them all, with her sons, sons-in-law and 
relatives to the number of thirty-three altogether. 

73 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

Amongst them were two of the men who came to 
the Summer School in Medak last May and who 
had never ceased to witness till to-day when they 
were to be formally baptized in the name of 
Jesus. 

" The singing was splendid, the old lady and 
the little children all joining in and beating time 
with their hands their faces beaming with joy. 
They knew the hymns, the Lord's Prayer and the 
Life of Christ, and when they were asked whether 
they were ready for baptism, there was a unanimous 
answer, even though Brahmans and others were all 
standing round listening. I asked them if they 
were prepared to be turned out of caste, to be 
troubled about marriage and to be persecuted in 
a thousand ways ; but however I tried to put the 
difficulties before them they answered that they 
had already counted the cost and made their 
decision. 

" The old lady who was the leader had made 
such a bold testimony that all the country round 
knew about her decision. She had been a sort of 
priestess to Shiva and had had the direction of all 
the great sacrifices, receiving by right a special 
basket of rice from every threshing floor. She also 
was the priestess of a special society, but she had 
been so disgusted with their secret impure rites 
that she had denounced them. Some of these 
rites were particularly revolting and the strange 
thing was that they broke caste in these secret 
drunken revels and let themselves go without any 
regard to decency. 

74 



A MOVEMENT AMONG THE CASTES 

" When her son-in-law came from Medak 
Summer School and her own daughter began to 
speak of becoming a Christian she thrashed her and 
would not have the evangelist coming to the house, 
but still she was unhappy and dissatisfied. At last 
she got the teacher's wife to come to her secretly 
and inquired about Christ and gradually learnt the 
Gospel story. Then she determined to throw up 
her post as chief priestess and to stop taking the 
holy begging basket, which she and her fore- 
mothers had used for getting their share of every 
harvest. She publicly burnt it and told every one 
who was there that she had determined to become 
a Christian. She said : * Until then I had no peace 
and I lived asleep in the darkness; but now my life 
is full of light and I am awake. I have worn out^my 
forehead in the dust before the idols which I had 
always been the first to worship, and they never did 
me any good 1 , but Jesus has now come and brought 
peace to my heart? You could see it in her face. 
It was lit from within by the light of the Saviour's 
love. 

" The headman of the village was there and he 
had not a word to say. Appadorai, my Indian 
colleague, publicly called upon him : ' O Patel 
(headman), are these people doing right? ' and he 
said, * Yes, they are. Yours is the Truth/ and a 
little later he asked us to come to his house and 
pray over his sick daughter who he said was 
possessed by a devil." 

Another convention for high-caste Hindus who 
were seeking Jesus followed in May 1927. It was 

75 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

even more remarkable than the one held in 1926. 
The following is Mr Posnett's account of it : 

" Once more we have invited to Medak all 
high-caste Hindus who were seeking Jesus. Twenty 
years ago they would have considered themselves 
polluted by eating in our compound, but for three 
days they have been our happy, friendly guests, 
not a single grumble has been heard. Men who 
used to cover up their hands with a cloth to shake 
hands threw their arms around me. Women, who 
are always the last to 'give up idols and old customs, 
travelled 100 miles to come in the hot weather. 
They had a dreadful journey, but no one com- 
plained. Every hour of the day has been filled 
with the one subject, * The Call of Jesus.-' 

" On Sunday morning we had a Love Feast of 
broken cocoanuts and sugar (the Hindu sacred 
symbols of love), which the Hindu leaders first 
brought up with their thankofferings. so that we 
might bless the trays. Every man gave a thank- 
offering, and then they took the trays and dis- 
tributed with their hands both to the caste people 
and to the outcastes. After the service I asked 
those who were really determined to confess Christ 
and to follow Him to come and talk it over with 
us quietly. Quite fifty people came straight away 
to my house and for two hours we talked together. 
They counted the cost and shirked nothing. Some 
of them spoke with the greatest determination and 
courage, others said they would first pers'uade all 
their family and call us to their villages. But some 

76 



A MOVEMENT AMONG THE CASTES 

were very eager to be baptized at once in our 
Church. Its perfect, simple beauty has greatly 
appealed to them, in fact no one can calculate the 
immense influence that this beautiful Church has 
had upon all these people. Their behaviour and 
reverence were a perfect joy and they wanted to be 
baptized there. So we chose out eighteen about 
whom we felt quite certain and promised the rest 
to come to their villages when their families were 
ready. 

" The first to be chosen was a Brahman village 
chief a man of good position and great influence. 
He had already seen others in his village baptized, 
but I had never dreamt that the day might come 
when he too would kneel humbly at the feet of the 
crucified Saviour. Yet he had travelled 120 miles 
to be here, and this morning he came forward 
first of all to give his witness at the Baptism Service. 
The whole crowd of 220 visitors were there and 
they listened spell-bound as he confessed that he 
had gradually come to know that Jesus Christ was 
the only Saviour, and, whatever it might cost, he 
was prepared and determined to delay no longer. 
He then knelt down at the steps of the font and I 
baptized him with the name of John at his own 
wish, for he had read and loved the Gospel that 
appeals so much to Indians. After the baptism he 
came and asked if he might take ' Prashatham,' the 
feast of friendship, with' me. He was a Brahman 
who had never in his life touched water from a 
Christian hand or drunk from a Christian's glass. 
He had been taught from boyhood that this was 

77 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

horrible pollution, yet when I poured out the 
water he begged me to drink first and then he 
quietly took the glass and drank it to the bottom, 
pouring the remaining drops upon his head then 
kneeling down he asked me to bless him. Anyone 
who knows India will not wonder at my amazement ; 
to drink after anyone from the same cup is anathema ; 
but for a Brahman to drink from an outcaste's 
glass is simply amazing beyond words. This man 
had broken away from Hinduism at one stroke and 
had acknowledged Jesus as his only Master. 

" The congregation that had listened and watched 
this Brahman's testimony and baptism were greatly 
moved. Many said to me afterwards they had 
never seen such a baptism service in their lives. 
When he had returned to his place, the remaining 
seventeen high-caste Hindus, all of them men of 
solid position and respected in their villages, came 
up in small groups and our Indian ministers baptized 
them in turn. 

" Twelve months ago this work for which we 
have waited and prayed for 100 years in South 
India began. Our first confessors are standing 
firm to-day in the midst of bitter persecution, tyit 
this has not hindered the coming of the Kingdom. 
The numbers are slowly creeping up and we are 
looking forward to a great ingathering, amongst 
these privileged leaders of Hinduism. God has 
given us the outcastes in tens of thousands and 
now He has crowned all by this wonderful drawing 
of the high-caste Hindus to Himself. No one can 
tell where it will stop, but we all know that if we 

78 



A MOVEMENT AMONG THE CASTES 

are faithful it will become an immense strength to 
the Church of God in Hyderabad. 

" During the last three years about 3000 of these 
caste Hindus have been baptized and 3000 more 
are under instruction for baptism, and this in the 
face of bitter and relentless persecution." 



79 



CHAPTER VI 

THE CONVERSION OF THE ABORIGINES 

THE power of the Gospel of Christ among the 
aboriginal tribes of India and Burma has been 
almost as remarkable as its power among the out- 
castes. According to the Government Census 
they number about 11,000,000. They live apart 
in separate areas, mainly in the hills and forests of 
Central India, Assam and Burma. Their con- 
version to Christianity, therefore, has not as direct 
an influence on the Hindu and Mahommedan 
peoples as that of the outcastes who are scattered 
throughout almost all the towns and villages of 
India. But the transformation of their lives is a 
striking witness to the power of the living Christ, 
and the simplicity and independence of their 
characters will, under the influence of the Holy 
Spirit, enable them to make a very valuable con- 
tribution to the faith and life of an Indian Church. 
About 600,000 of the Aborigines in different 
parts of the Indian Empire have already been 
converted to Christianity and the number of con- 
verts is rapidly growing. The largest Christian 
communities are in Chota Nagpur, 260,000 ; the 
Santal Pargannahs, West of Bengal, 35,000; among 
the Khasis and Lushais in the hills of Assam, 

80 



THE CONVERSION OF THE ABORIGINES 

120,000 ; and among the Karens and other aboriginal 
tribes in Burma, 170,000. But a considerable 
number of the Bhils in the western part of Central 
India and of the aboriginal tribes in the hills of the 
south-west coast have also become Christians during 
the last half-century. 

Strong testimony is given not only by the 
missionaries but also by Government officials and 
others to the changed lives of the people through 
the influence of the Gospel. 

A Bengali writer, not a Christian, speaking of 
the work of Christian missionaries in Chota Nagpur 
says : " The most careless observer can tell the 
house of a Christian convert of some years standing 
from that of his non-Christian fellow-tribesman by 
the greater cleanliness of the Christian's house and 
the general neatness and orderliness of everything 
about it." The contrast, he says, between Munda 
and Oraon Christian men and women, boys and 
girls on the one hand, and, on the other hand non- 
Christian Mundas and Oraons at their feasts and 
elsewhere is a visible sign of " the brilliant achieve- 
ments of the Christian missions in their noble 
work of civilizing and educating the aborigines of 
Chota Nagpur." J 

An experienced missionary who has worked 
among the Karens of Burma for many years states 
that Christianity has " transformed them beyond 
all recognition." Before the coming of the Gospel 
they were quarrelsome and violent, always fighting 
among themselves, split up into hostile clans, 

1 The Mundasy p. 168, by Babu Sarat Chtmdra Roy. 
F 8l 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

ignorant and intemperate. Under the influence of 
Christian teaching they have become peaceable and 
united, sober and educated, inspired with a real 
missionary spirit which leads them not only to 
convert their own people to faith in Christ but 
also to set about the conversion of the Burmese 
Buddhists. 

The testimony of Government officials and 
missionaries alike to the changed lives of the tribes 
in the Santal Pargannahs is equally striking. 

i 

THE LUSHAIS 

The Government Census of 1921 gives the 
following account of the spread of Christianity 
among the hill tribes of Assam. 

" Perhaps one of the most marked features of 
the decade (1911-21) is the extraordinary progress 
made by Christianity in Assam. Mr Lloyd writes : 
* In the Khasi and Jaintia Hills a sixth and in the 
Lushai Hills over one-fourth of the population are 
now Christians. In the Khasi Hills, where the 
movement is oldest, the increase has been only 
31.6 per cent., possibly owing to curtailment of 
staff and work in war time by the Welsh Calvinistic 
Methodists, the principal body working there. The 
spread of Christianity in the Lushai Hills is pheno- 
menal. There has been a sort of revivalist wave 
over the whole Lushai population. ... In a dis- 
trict of 7000 square miles, sparsely peopled by less 
than 100,000 people, there are now 27,000 Christians 
where ten years ago there were only 2000. At 

82 



THE CONVERSION OF THE ABORIGINES 

present it is quite the fashion to be a Christian and 
even the Chiefs are joining the movement. At 
first I was inclined to cast doubt on the accuracy 
of the figures and suggested that zealous Christian 
enumerators might have made entries according to 
their own wishes rather than the facts. The super- 
intendent, however, thinks the case is rather the 
reverse. Mr Scott has tested many entries himself 
and he quotes an instance of the rigorous standard 
adopted by the new converts; the five-year-old 
son of Christian parents being entered as an Animist 
because the young scoundrel was so greedy that 
he failed to say grace before meals 1 ' " 

In 1921 Mr Lorrain, one of the senior missionaries 
of the Baptist Missionary Society in the Lushai 
Hills, wrote : 

" Forty years ago the whole of this forest- 
covered, mountainous district was still under the 
pall of age-long darkness. Satan held supreme 
sway. The people, believing that his emissaries 
lurked everywhere in order to do them harm, 
spent all their religious energies in seeking to 
appease these malignant demons. They were in a 
very real sense captives and slaves of the Powers of 
Darkness. For all but a few favoured folk there 
was not even hope of a happier life in the Great 
Beyond. ' Dead Man's Village ' was the soul's 
destination; but before reaching there the ordeal 
of passing the half-way house of the dreaded 
' Papawla ' and being pelted with pellets from his 
unerring bow-like catapult, must be undergone, 

83 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

and the wounds inflicted by these stinging missiles 
must through all the future ages fester and burn 
without hope of remedy. Even the favoured few, 
who, because of their prowess in head-hunting 
raids or in the chase, or because of the merit 
acquired through giving a number of public feasts, 
were entitled to pass Papawla's house without 
molestation, and to cross the Pial River beyond 
' Dead Man's Village ' and to enjoy the delights of 
the Lushai Paradise even these were often assailed 
with doubts and fears as to whether after all their 
passport to the Happy Land would hold good, and 
for them as for the rest of the people there was no 
light to cheer the darkness of the tomb. 

" But even then God was at work in opening 
up the way for His salvation to be made known. 
Repeated raids into British Territory had brought 
about the taking over of the Lushai Hills by the 
Government, whose officers proved to be veritable 
pathfinders for God's Messengers. 

" Soon after this one of the chiefs had a dream, 
he heard a voice saying to him, 'A great Light 
will come from the West and shine upon Lushai: 
follow the Light, for the people who bring it will 
be the ruling race/ 

" In the morning he gathered together his family 
and many friends and told them of his dream. 
' This Light,' he said, ' may not shine in my lifetime, 
but when it comes, follow it.' 

"In 1900 Mr Rowlands, a missionary of the 
Welsh Calvinistic Mission came to visit this village 
and to tell the people of the Love of God revealed 



THE CONVERSION OF THE ABORIGINES 

in Jesus Christ. To his surprise he found attentive 
listeners and when he asked if there ,were any who 
would wish to give in their names as inquirers he 
was amazed to find that several came forward as 
volunteers. He warned them that to follow Christ 
would inevitably mean suffering and persecution 
and might lead to eviction from their village by 
the chief and possibly death; but they would not 
be denied, and when in due course trouble did 
come, it merely served to strengthen their faith. 
' Did not the white man say it would be so? ' they 
declared; 'therefore his teaching must i>e true; 
this is the light of the dream/ 

" Two Baptist missionaries, Mr Savidge and 
Mr Lorrain, began work in North Lushai in 1893 
and in four years learned the language, reduced it 
to writing, and translated two Gospels and the 
Book of Acts. They wrote hymns, a catechism, 
a simple primer, a grammar, and produced a 
dictionary of seven thousand words. 

" They left the Northern territory to the Welsh 
mission later on and started work in South Lushai, 
which is a wild, forest-covered, mountainous region 
with an area of 2700 square miles and a population 
of about 28,000 people, living in about 1 66 villages, 
all situated on, the tops of the mountains. In 1903 
there were about 125 converts, to-day the Christian 
community numbers about 10,600, scattered over 
the country in no different villages; so that more 
than one-third of the people are now Christians 
and there are Church congregations in more than 
three-fourths of the villages." 

85 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

In 1920 Mr Lorrain wrote: "As I look back on 
the last ten years I see how wonderfully God has 
been working to bring about the blessings which 
so many enjoy to-day. The Great Famine of 1912 
caused by an invasion of rats, the pneumonia 
epidemic and remarkable revival of heathenism in 
1914, and the War which drew so many of our 
untravelled hillmen to France and Mesopotamia 
were all overruled by Him for good. But by far 
the greatest factor in the work has been the presence 
of God's Spirit in the midst of His Church, manifest 
more especially in 1913 and 1919-20 in mighty 
power. It is a fact which should be recorded that 
since the first out-pouring of the Holy Spirit upon 
the Lushai church in 1907, every six years has 
witnessed a similar but ever-increasing pentecostal 
experience, empowering believers for joyful and 
fruitful service, and greatly affecting the heathen 
as well. Each gracious visitation has raised the 
church on to a higher plane of Christian experience 
than the one preceding it and has resulted in a 
large ingathering of souls. 

" These last ten years have witnessed marked 
progress in church organization and activity. In 
1914 a modified Presbyterian form of Church 
government was adopted, elders were elected, and 
the first Lushai superintending pastor was ordained, 
followed in 1915 by two others. In the same year 
a Summer School was inaugurated on the Mission 
Station for the annual instruction of the honorary 
pastors of village churches. In 1916 the New 
Testament in the language of the people was com- 

86 



THE CONVERSION OF THE ABORIGINES 

pleted. In 1918 a class was started for the training 
of candidates for the ministry (evangelists and 
superintending travelling pastors), and in the same 
year a new era was ushered in by the arrival of 
Nurse Dicks and Miss Chapman from England for 
medical and educational work amongst the women 
and children. In 1920 the first Lushai woman 
evangelist was appointed by the church, followed 
this year by a second. Both these workers are 
supported by a special fund raised by their Lushai 
sisters for the purpose." 

Among the aborigines, as among the outcastes, 
the history of the Church is never one of uninter- 
rupted progress. Floods, famines and epidemics 
are visitations that often bring periods of depression, 
and from time to time strange " tidal waves of sin " 
sweep over the Church. 

" But whenever we are tempted to get down- 
hearted," writes one of the missionaries in a recent 
report, " we have only to take a retrospective view 
of what God has done for the Lushais and adjoining 
tribes since January 1894, and straightway we find 
our hearts beating with renewed courage and hope. 

" It was then that my friend Savidge and I, after 
three years of patient effort, succeeded in gaining 
an entrance to the North Lushai Hills. From the 
breezy height upon which we first pitched our 
little tent there stretched away on all sides to the 
horizon, range upon range of forest-covered moun- 
tains, with villages perched here and there upon 
the most inaccessible peaks. We two young 

8? 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

missionaries of the Gospel were there to claim the 
whole beautiful land for God and His Christ 
a land which for ages had been in the grip of 
demon-worship, and where tidings of the world's 
Saviour had never penetrated. Our hopes were 
high, but how far short they were of God's wonder- 
ful plans for these tribes! The years of rough 
pioneering and wrestling with the unwritten lan- 
guage soon slipped away, followed by the coming 
of the Welsh Mission to North Lushai, and our 
own eventual transfer to South Lushai under the 
auspices of the Baptist Missionary Society. Then, 
when the Gospel message had gained a firm foothold 
in the Lushai Hills, both North and South, the gift 
of a copy of the Lushai Gospel of St John, by one 
of the Welsh Missionaries, to a visitor from a 
neighbouring tribe, led to a call for Christian 
workers in those regions beyond. The missionary 
spirit of some of the North Lushai converts was 
roused and volunteers were soon forthcoming, and 
thus began a movement which has developed into 
the North East India General Mission, which is 
now occupying strategic centres and outposts among 
several different tribes beyond the Lushai border. 
The work is unique, for it is almost entirely run 
and staffed (though only very partially financed) 
by Lushai and Kuki Christians, with but a single 
European in Calcutta as superintendent of its far- 
flung field the very missionary whose gift of a 
printed Lushai Gospel was instrumental in starting 
it seventeen years ago. In looking through a long 
list of the workers in that mission I count 81 super- 



THE CONVERSION OF THE ABORIGINES 

intending pastors and evangelists, 76 schoolmasters, 
5 dispensary compounders, and 4 printers; and 
I rejoice to find among them quite a number of our 
South Lushai converts who have, through this 
organization, been able to find a real opening for 
their missionary zeal. Three of them are holding 
posts of great responsibility and privilege, and 
others are doing good work as schoolmasters and 
missionary-evangelists. One of these latter a 
splendid young fellow named Lianthawnga has 
recently laid down his life for the people among 
whom he laboured. The climate was bad and he 
suffered continually, but he would not think of 
relinquishing his work. At last, wheri he came 
back to us for a holiday, his health was so shattered 
that he passed away, leaving a young wife and little 
son to mourn his loss. So rapid has been the 
transformation of the Lushais from head-hunting 
savages to Christian missionaries, that, when 
Lianthawnga and his colleague first went to the 
Bawm tribe, the people would not receive them. 
They believed that they had come to ' spy out the 
land' preparatory to organizing a bloodthirsty 
Lushai raid such as the older folk still remembered. 
Their fears were not really set at rest until two 
men got their wives and families to come and join 
them in their work. The accompanying table will 
show at a glance the wonderful work God has 
done amongst the Lushais and neighbouring tribes, 
where thirty-three years ago the Saviour's name 
had never been heard." 



89 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

Christian Full Sunday 
Com- Church School 
munity. Members. Scholars. 

North Lushai (Welsh Mission) 35,577 15,660 21,222 
South Lushai (B.M.S.) . . 9,935 3,484 4,811 
Outside Lushat (N.E.I.G.M.) 9,959 3,754 5,338 



TOTALS . 55,471 22,898 31,371 

THE BHILS 

The following account of a movement among 
the Bhils, an aboriginal tribe in Central and West 
India, illustrates the strange ways in which God 
works and the still stranger instruments that He 
uses. 

" In 1886 Dr Shepherd began those cold-weather 
tours in the Bhil country which he continued 
without break to the end of his service in 1920. 
The camp moved through the rugged, roadless 
hills under the triple aegis of a Bhil safe-conduct, 
a survey map and a pioneer axe. In these days 
there was no presumption of safety for the life and 
property of the wayfarer. The famine of 1868 had 
revived the marauding habits of the Bhils, while 
it had also so reduced the population that there 
was little or no co-operation amongst the isolated 
remnants of the people. So the ' padri sahib ' was 
passed from hand to hand, from glen to glen, by 
chiefs somewhat anxious over meeting neighbour 
and enemy at the boundary. The young men of 
the glen slept round his tent at night, and the aged 

90 



THE CONVERSION OF THE ABORIGINES 

chief watched alert, hunched grimly in the shadow 
beyond the camp-fire light. Dr Shepherd's camp 
was never raided, partly because of that unceasing 
watch and ward, partly because the healing influence 
which his tours were to exert began to have effect 
at once. Bitter enemies met at the borders to 
demit and assume responsibility for the padri. 
There was Huarji of Sera; Amri, the woman chief 
ofPaduna; Kawa of Lori Madri; LakhmaofPai, 
whose grandson was married in 1927 under Christian, 
rite in the Bhil country; and Dewa Damar of 
Saldari, the father of Poona. These, and many 
another, wild hill folk, fearful of one another and 
of all mankind, gave their confidence to Dr Shepherd. 
" On his advice, they sent their boys into Udaipur 
for education. Amongst these boys was Poona, 
second son of Dewa Damar. He stayed in the 
Bhil Home till 1891, when, a grown man of eighteen 
or so, he returned to his country. He was not 
baptized. Others came and went up till 1904. 
Some were baptized. One of them is now pastor 
of the Udaipur congregation. Another, Manji, 
has been a wanderer since 1904, never coming near 
the Church, although sometimes in and out of 
Udaipur hawking firewood. A wizened figure of 
a man, unmarried, he spent his spare cash on drink 
and his sober times, when money was not, on 
poring over his Bible. One evening some ten 
years ago, I met him where the Udaipur road ends 
and the Bhil track begins. Wearily putting his 
eight-foot bundle of wood off his head end-up on 
the ground, this haggard wisp of humanity told me 

9 1 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

that the prophecies of Daniel were shortly to be 
fulfilled and that the beginning would be in the 
Bhil hills. 

"All unknown at the time, 1891 was a great 
date for Udaipur. For Poona, unbaptized, un- 
persuaded, left the Bhil Home. For thirty-one years 
he was to remain so. The Bible he took with him 
disappeared ; his memories of Christianity became 
vague, but his education he used and retained. 
He saw the dreadful famine of 1900 and the lesser 
one of 1906. He saw the Bhil risings of 1917 and 
1921. What was his part in either of these no one 
will ever know. But, son of the shrewdest Bhil 
of night or day, his dreams were of better days for 
his people. In 1922 he began teaching the doctrines 
of one God and one True Teacher (' Sat Guru '). 
His recollections of Christianity seem to have been 
limited to that, for he neither taught, nor seems to 
have remembered the name of Christ. He quickly 
gathered disciples. Their greeting to one another 
was, and is, ' Jai ! Sat Guru ! ' (Hail, the True 
Teacher). Every disciple on joining the brother- 
hood paid twenty pence to Poona. It was a ' gift in 
God's name/ In Hinduism the food offered to the 
god is called ' parshad.' This twenty pence was 
* parshad,' therefore; but Poona called it 'the 
Lord's Supper (Prabhu Bhoj).' This went on 
till 1925. 

" In 1925 Manji heard of this Brotherhood of the 
True teacher. He walked twelve miles over the 
hills with his Bible, met Poona and the disciples, 
read Genesis i and ii to them and asked them 

92 



THE CONVERSION OF THE ABORIGINES 

whether any other book had such knowledge of the 
very beginning of life. They acknowledged the 
claim. Then Manji said, ' This same book tells you 
who the Sat Guru is. His name is Jesu Messiah.' 
He further told them that they must get the ' guru 
chhap ' (seal) on their forehead, and that the padri 
in Udaipur was the one to do that. So Poona and 
his disciples came to Udaipur in 1925 for the seal 
on their foreheads. They were not in any way, 
except desire, ready for baptism, and such temporary 
arrangement as was possible was made for instruc- 
tion. Memories became clearer in Poona's mind. 
He began studying and teaching the Bible, for he 
was a lettered man. They ploughed through the 
books of Moses, trying to live the life of the Book. 
They gave up eating hare and pig when they came 
to that law. They had all become teetotalers at the 
beginning and are still. Manji did not delay long 
to direct their attention to Daniel. 

" Early in 1926 the first thirteen were baptized, 
Poona and twelve disciples, having more than 
satisfied the Udaipur Session as to their readiness. 
Before the end of February 1926, 73 adults and 
37 children in all had been baptized. Maqbul 
Masih, who had had twelve years experience of the 
Bhil country in another district was sent out as 
Mission agent. For him the Bhils of Pai built a 
house. His parish is 26 miles long with a very 
rough range of hills, 9 miles wide, intersecting it. 
It takes him five days' tour merely to visit his 
flock. Only to give the necessary religious in- 
struction to these people is more than one man 

93 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

can do; and there are young lads who wish to 
learn to read and write as well. Maqbul has 16 such 
scholars in ones and twos throughout the glens. 
But those who have learned a little become teachers 
of those who know less. At Pipalwas, I found a 
youth of fifteen, handicapped by a painful stutter, 
who had taught his chum to read with a complete 
Hindi Bible as their only textbook. Some of the 
double letters they had never been able to guess, 
and my visit was a chance to clear up such mysteries. 

50 Maqbul, with Poona's zeal plus the willingness 
of the Bhils to be taught, has achieved a further 
addition to the number of Christians. In 1927, 
38 adults and 60 children (some of them 16, 17, 
1 8 years of age) have been baptized. The large 
number of children is due to the baptism of the 
families of parents admitted in 1926. Altogether 
there are now 204 42 men, 54 women, 57 sons, 

51 daughters. Four men have been admitted to 
full membership of the Church. Only four, but 
what understanding they have of the Cross 1 

" And here a strange thing emerges. Poona, 
himself, has not become a full member and is, 
I think, avoiding it. When Maqbul went out and 
when the converts began to understand their new 
faith more fully, the giving of twenty pence ' par- 
shad * ceased. The first 73, however, had paid and 
Poona maintains that he and they have ' partaken of 
the Lord's Supper.' Poona is probably a little 
jealous over the trend of the movement. If it is not 
that, it is, perhaps, that the son of Dewa Damar 
is a Bhil of the Bhils, absolutely intolerant of any 

94 



THE CONVERSION OF THE ABORIGINES 

dictation, hostile at once to any suggestion of 
authority. Manji, alas, has lost all his reputation, 
partly through his drinking habits, partly because 
the Bhil Christians would have none of his inter- 
pretation of Daniel. He is not counted as one of 
them ; otherwise he might again plead the authority 
of the Book. 

"A most interesting thing happened in con- 
nection with Manji's reading of Daniel. Somehow, 
in certain wanderings of his, far afield from Raj- 
putaria, he had picked up the views regarding the 
prophecies which belong to the ultra-apocalyptic 
school. He pressed these views on the Bhil 
Christians. They gave him a hearing and un- 
animously condemned his views as ' not in accord 
with the teaching of the rest of the Bible.' I heard 
this long after. Manji has now (1929) completely 
abandoned his drinking habits." 

What the movement will grow to it is impossible 
to forecast, but when we consider the difficulties 
that this small body of Christians had to encounter 
and their determination in overcoming them, 
coupled with their simple faith and reverence for 
the Scriptures, we feel that a Bhil church will have 
an important contribution to make to Indian 
Christianity. 



95 



CHAPTER VII 

THE EVANGELIZATION OF INDIA 

IN his Mission and Expansion of Christianity Harnack 
has traced from early Christian writings the factors 
that operated for the spread of the Christian religion 
during the first three centuries of its history. At 
the very outset of his investigation he makes this 
significant remark. " It was by preaching to the 
poor, the burdened, the outcaste, by the preaching 
and practice of love, that Christianity turned the 
stony, sterile world into a fruitful field for the 
Church." 

History repeats itself and this same experience is 
again being reproduced in India. A brief review of 
Harnack' s points will show how far conditions in 
India to-day are similar to those in the Roman 
Empire. 

i. The first factor in the successful issue of the 
Christian propaganda, says Harnack, was the varied 
character of th.e Mission-preaching. It was not the 
preaching or understanding of Christian dogma 
in any complete sense that was effective. " In 
countless instances it was but one ray of light that 
wrought the change." " One person," he .goes on 
to say, " would be brought over by means of the 
Old Testament, another by the exorcising of demons, 

96 



THE EVANGELIZATION OF INDIA 

a third by the purity of Christian life; others again 
by the monotheism of Christianity, above all by 
the prospect of complete expiation or by the 
prospect which it held out of immortality or by 
the social standing which it conferred. As long as 
Christianity did not yet propagate itself naturally, 
one believer may well have produced another." 

Very similar are the causes that lead to the 
expansion of Christianity in rural India. Here, too, 
the causes are varied. Different aspects of the 
Gospel appeal to different people. The fact that it 
has been preached to and accepted by the poor 
outcastes of Hindu society compels many to give 
their serious consideration to those elements in this 
religion that produce such a striking change in its 
followers. The monotheistic ideal in contrast to 
the village gods of the Hindu polytheism; the high 
ethical demands made upon the followers of Christ, 
the promise of salvation or deliverance, not from 
re-births but from sin, the teaching of immortality 
and resurrection; the doctrine of the Cross, the 
knowledge that the supernatural Ruler of all things 
is a Father of Love these are the elements that 
compel attention from the Hindu observer. All 
these have in one form or another appealed to the 
outsider. What, however, has made that appeal 
effective is, not the statement of abstract doctrine, 
philosophically demonstrated, but the doctrine 
clothed with flesh and blood in the lives of the poor 
and illiterate villagers. 1 

1 See The Influence of Christ in the Ancient World, pp. 96-98 
By T. R. Glover. 

G 97 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

The immediate causes that lead to the conversion 
of villagers are various. One caste convert con- 
fessed that what first appealed to him was the joy 
and happiness of the Christian people as evidenced 
by their songs, praises and thanksgivings. Another 
high-caste man became a Christian attracted by the 
message of the resurrection and the practice of 
Christians burying their dead. Some caste people 
are drawn to Christianity by the fact that Christian 
worship consists, not only of worship without the 
aid of images, but also of instruction in godliness 
and morality. But the divine message makes its most 
irresistible appeal when it is incarnated in experience. 
Incarnation is God's method^ of saving the world. 

2. Another factor in the spread of Christianity 
in the early centuries was the proclamation of the 
Gospel as a gospel of redemption. Celsus declared 
as lucidly as one could desire the cardinal difference 
between Christianity and the ancient religions. 
Christianity, he said, offered the Kingdom of God 
to anyone who was a sinner, a thief, a burglar, 
a poisoner, or a sacrilegious man. " Why ! " he 
said, " if you wanted an assembly of robbers these 
are just the sort of people you would summon! "- 1 

That is exactly what is sometimes cast in our 
teeth in India; but that was the glory of Christianity 
in the Roman Empire, and it is its glory in India 
to-day. Repeatedly converts say in effect what 
Clement is said to have written: "He bestowed 
on us the light, he spoke to us as a father to his 

1 Harnack t p. 104. 
98 



THE EVANGELIZATION OF INDIA 

sons, he saved us in our lost estate. Blind were 
we in understanding, worshipping stones and wood 
and gold and silver and brass, nor was our whole 
life aught but death." 1 The foregoing chapters 
afford illustrations that the Gospel of Christ is 
still the gospel of redemption. These trans- 
formations are the living forces of the Gospel of 
the Saviour : these miracles of grace are the divinely 
appointed signs to India. 

3. A third cause of the expansion of the religion 
of Christ in the first three centuries is said by 
Harnack to be the character of Christianity as 
"the religion of the spirit and of power; of moral 
earnestness and holiness." In the first sixty years 
of the history of the Church, the outward and 
visible manifestations of the gifts of the Spirit 
were most conspicuous, and they existed all through 
the second century though in a diminished volume. 
During the third century, however, these ceased 
almost entirely; though this cessation hardly in- 
flicted any injury upon the mission of Christianity. 
The evidence of power then as in the days of 
St Paul was " that God had not called many wise 
after the flesh, nor many noble, but poor and weak 
men whom he had transformed into morally robust 
and intelligent natures." " The entire labour of 
the Christian mission," continues Harnack, " might 
be described as a moral enterprise, as the awakening 
and strengthening of the moral sense. The conflict 
undertaken by Christianity was one against the sins 

1 2 Clement, i. 
G* 99 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

of the flesh, such as fornication, adultery, and un- 
natural viceSj and it exhibited to the Roman world 
a hitherto unknown example of personal purity. 
This is abundantly proved by the writings of the 
Apologists and other early Christian writers. 
Aristides asserts most forcibly the high moral life 
of the Christians. Diognetus speaks of the love of 
the Christians to one another in such glowing 
terms that it puts us to shame. Athenagoras says : 
' Among us are uneducated folk, artisans and old 
women, who are utterly unable to describe the 
value of our doctrines in words, but who attest 
them by their deeds.' " 

When Celsus urged that " Christians must admit 
that they can only persuade people destitute of 
sense, position, or intelligence, only slaves, women 
and children to accept their faith," Tatian replies: 
" Not so ! Our maidens philosophize and at their 
distaffs speak of things divine." Justin says: 
"Among us you can hear and learn these things 
from people who do not even know the forms of 
letters, who are uneducated and barbarous in speech, 
but wise and believing in mind, though some of 
them are even maimed and blind. From this you 
may understand that these things are due to no 
human wisdom but are uttered by the power of 
God." 

These factors that operated so strongly in the 
early centuries of the Christian era are operating 
with equal power for the rapid spread of Christianity 
in India to-day. 

One of the most important lessons, therefore, 

100 



THE EVANGELIZATION OF INDIA 

that we have learnt from the movement among 
the outcastes is that by far the most powerful 
evangelistic agency in India is the witness of the 
Indian Church itself. In the preaching of the 
foreign missionary the Kingdom of God comes in 
word. In the life of the Christian Church it comes 
in power. There is no testimony so convincing as 
the power of transformed lives. It has been so 
from the beginning. 

A very striking illustration of the evangelistic 
forces latent in the Christian community in India 
comes from the Punjab. A splendid work has been 
carried on among the strong, virile and independent 
Moslem tribes of the North-West Frontier for 
many years by both Anglican and Presbyterian 
missionaries. The chain of mission hospitals on 
the frontier have done a magnificent work. But 
for some time the missionaries were seriously con- 
cerned by the lack of success in the matter of 
converts. The building of an indigenous Church 
had been practically at a standstill for fifty years. 
The missionaries, therefore, met together recently 
and prayed to know what was the reason for this 
and to find out :God's will. Gradually it became 
clear that the problem of the evangelization of the 
Moslems is the preparation of ,a Church both to 
win the harvest and to take care of it. The reason 
for their lack of success had been their neglect of 
the Indian Church. So they called the elders 
together and put before them this duty. The work 
of preaching was then handed over to the Indian 
Church and a yearly campaign was planned lasting 

101 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

a week, in which every Christian was to take 
part. 

It was at once discovered that an aggressive, 
awakened Church was by far the most effective 
evangelistic agency. " In one city where regular 
bazar preaching had been efficiently carried on by 
the missionary without the result of even one 
inquirer, when it was taken over by a band of 
Indians of the local church, volunteers for the 
work, inquiries were made after every service. 
The Campaign week, with the handing over of 
definite evangelistic work to the Indian Church, 
proved successful in bringing in many inquirers all 
over the Rawal Pindi district, where previously for 
years there had been no baptisms. Since then 
there has not been a single year when some at 
least of those who came forward did not go on to 
confession by baptism." 

The second discovery was the value of the out- 
caste Christians for evangelistic work, even among 
the Moslems. No one had thought of employing 
them for so hard a task. " They are a very mixed 
lot, many of them still ignorant and dirty. . . . The 
cleaning out of the filthy open drains of an Eastern 
city does not tend to elevate the mind. . . . Some- 
how no one had faith to believe that they could be 
of use to God at all. . . . But gradually in answer 
to prayer, nothing less than this was borne in on 
men's minds. It was to be these Christians from 
the Mass Movements who were themselves to be 
the agents used by God to work among the Moslem 
people; they were to be the aggressive Church. ... 

102 



THE EVANGELIZATION OF INDIA 

It was found that there are thirty-five or more of 
these groups of humble Christians north of the 
Jhelum, that is, in the North Punjab and on the 
North- West Frontier. Through the foolishness 
of God, which is wiser than men, they are settled 
in many places where there is no other Christian 
witness, and in some cases (such as in the fort of 
Landi Kotal at the summit of the Khyber Pass, and 
in Manzai, an armed camp actually in Waziristan), 
where no other Indian Christians would be able to 
live. They are sweepers, and there must be sweepers 
for the troops. They are in the most improbable 
places to find Christians, and actually paid by 
Government to work there. Government is obliged 
to forbid proselytizing in Indian regiments, but 
they must have sweepers ; and, if these be Christians, 
here is at once the only influence that can touch 
the Indian Army. 

" In certain schools and colleges where the only 
religious teaching is Islamic, Christian sweepers are 
employed.'. . . Whether in border cities such as 
Peshawar and Kohat, or in the peaceful country 
districts of the Punjab, sweepers are a necessity. 
The great advantage is that they are scattered 
everywhere, and are not confined, like most 
missionary effort has been, to the school, the 
college, and the hospital in the larger cities. 

" Then, too, they are not sensitive. The sweeper 
is used to rebuffs and bad treatment at any time. 
He carries on. He is one of the things which are 
despised, but it appears he is one of those whom 
God has chosen to use. They are far from perfect, 

103 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

these sweeper Christians ; fighting, immorality, and 
other sins exist among them, yet even a man who 
is ignorant and not too upright may be used to sell 
gospels, and we find that these men have, on the 
whole, sold far more than the educated. It is 
worthy of note that almost every convert has 
originally been drawn through buying a gospel 
portion. 

" At one place several young Indians of wealth 
and good birth came as secret incpiirers. Through 
a servant of very humble birth, who could not 
himself read, they had heard, and bought, and then 
read for themselves. In a British regiment the 
sweeper boot-boys sold about one hundred gospels 
and testaments to the British soldiers; and a 
number have been already sold to the Indian troops 
in the same way by the sweepers." 1 

The experience of the Missionaries in the Telugu 
country has been exactly the same. They taught 
the Brahmans and higher castes in school and 
college and preached to the caste people in town 
and village for many years with very little result. 
Then God called the outcastes. An Indian church 
came into existence and bore a powerful witness 
to Christ. And now through that witness many 
thousands of the caste people are being brought 
to faith in Christ. 

1 C.MS. Review, June 1927. Article on the Afghan 
Frontier by Mrs Underbill. 



104 



CHAPTER VIII 

CONCLUSIONS 

THE main conclusion that we draw from the facts 
stated in the preceding chapters is that the one 
thing needful, the one thing of absolutely vital and 
essential importance in India at the present time is 
the thorough education, training, equipping and 
inspiring of this rapidly growing Church to enable 
it to go forward with faith and power to achieve 
the tremendous task of winning India for Christ. 
Nothing else can compare with this in importance. 
It is the one thing upon which the educated 
Christians in India and the missionary Societies of 
the west need to concentrate their thoughts and 
plans, their energies and resources. If this task is 
done thoroughly and well, all else will follow. If 
it is not done well, or worse still not done at all, 
all else that is attempted by the missionary Societies 
or, by educated Indian Christians will be of little 
value for the furtherance of the Kingdom of 
God. 

It is a task of great magnitude and peculiar 
difficulty. Year by year many thousands of the 
outcastes and aborigines are being swept into the 
Church. And in South India the new movement 
among the caste people promises a still more rapid 

105 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

increase in numbers and a whole sheaf of new 
problems in education and pastoral care. 

In view of these facts it is high time for the 
missionary Societies in the west and the Church in 
India itself to overhaul their machinery and see 
how far it is adequate not only to present needs 
but also to the larger work of the future. 

First, there is the machinery for village education. 
It obviously needs considerable extension even now. 
According to the census of 1921 only about 25 per 
cent, of the whole Christian population, Indian and 
European, in town and village, was then literate. 
In the villages alone the percentage is very much 
smaller. It is difficult to find out what number of 
Christian children are at present at school, as many 
of the missionary Societies give no statistics on this 
important point. But in the Dornakal diocese 
there are 17,000 out of a Christian population of 
about 160,000, rather more than one-tenth. In 
European countries it is reckoned that about one- 
sixth of the population are of school-going age. 
There is, therefore, room for considerable extension 
in the Dornakal diocese. And education is far less 
advanced in many of the village areas where the 
Christian Church is established than it is in Dornakal 

But a far more serious question than the extension 
of education is the provision of a kind of education 
suitable to the villages. Parents will not send 
their children to school beyond the first two or 
three classes because they feel, and in most cases 
rightly feel, that the education given is of no use 
to village folk. 

1 06 



CONCLUSIONS 

The Report of the Indian Statutory Commission 
on Education in British India, presented to Parlia- 
ment in October 1929, says with regard to Mass 
Education: "Even when we make all possible 
allowances and discount the figures liberally, the 
hard facts of wastage and stagnation are shocking." * 

" On the assumption which we have made that 
on the average no child who has not completed a 
primary course of at least four years will become 
permanently literate, we find that, taking British 
India as a whole, the present system produced in 
1925-26 only eighteen potential literates out of 
every hundred who joined Class I in 1922-23." 
In other words 82 per cent, of the education given 
in the village primary schools was largely wasted. 

The " hard facts " of missionary education in 
the villages may not be as bad as this : but even in 
them the wastage may well be termed shocking. 
For example, in the Anglican diocese of Dornakal 
there are 1500 village schools with about 17,000 
Christian pupils enrolled. Of this number 87 per 
cent, are in the first two standards and 97 per cent, 
are in the first three standards. In a report of the 
Wesleyan Mission in the Hyderabad State it is 
stated that out of 6147 children in their schools, 
5650, that is 91 per cent, of the total, are in the 
infant and first classes. These statistics show that 
a very small percentage indeed of the pupils reach 
the fourth class and are likely to become "per- 
manently literate." 

This state of affairs is, with few exceptions, 
1 Report, p. 48. 
107 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

universal in the village primary schools of the 
Christian Churches throughout India. And the 
reason for it is that the education given in village 
schools is out of touch with the conditions of 
village life. 

Experiments are now being made in most rural 
missions to rectify the main evils of the present 
system. Vocational schools and industrial schools 
are being started and efforts are being made to 
bring the schools into close touch with village life 
and make the education given in them to bear 
directly upon the welfare and uplift of the rural 
community. What is needed in order to establish 
a better system on these lines is : 

i. A body of educational experts, men and 
women, from Great Britain, Europe and America, 
and, we would add, from India itself. 

ii. A more highly trained and better paid body 
of teachers, both men and women, who know the 
conditions of village life. 

iii. A new curriculum, which is not simply the 
first rung of a ladder leading up to high schools in 
the towns, but which is designed to play an effective 
part in rural reconstruction and directly promote 
the prosperity and well-being of the villagers. 

This improved system of primary education will 
undoubtedly cost more money than the existing 
one; but it is better to spend more money on an 
education that will be really useful to the Christian 
Church and will also make a valuable contribution 

108 



CONCLUSIONS 

to the regeneration of village life in India, than to 
go on spending a much smaller sum on a system 
that involves a waste of over 80 per cent, of the 
money and labour expended. 

Then secondly, there is the pastoral work. In 
the building up of the life of the Church the 
ministry of the word and sacraments is of primary 
importance. The Church cannot be built up apart 
from the Christian life of its individual members. 
The Christian life of the individual cannot ripen 
and fructify apart from the Church. If the Church 
in rural India is to be an effective witness for the 
Lord, attention must be paid to the spiritual con- 
dition of the individual and the Church. At 
bottom, the problems of the rural church are 
spiritual problems. Given a passionate devotion to 
the Lord and a love that constrains men and women 
to bear witness for Him, self-support, self-govern- 
ment and self-extension become easy problems to 
solve. How can this spirit be fostered? 

i. By the Ministry of the Word. " The entrance 
of Thy Word giveth Light " ; and the foundation 
of all spiritual life is the knowledge of God's will 
and purposes as revealed in the Scriptures, in our 
Lord Jesus. Christ and in the Church. The im- 
portant rule in all rural work is Teach, TEACH, 
TEACH. Daily services, carefully . planned lec- 
tionary, the use of song, verse and plays as means 
of instruction, distribution of literature all these 
are indispensable means of increasing in the people 
the knowledge of divine things. 

109 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

ii. By the Ministry of the Sacraments. We 
believe that the sacraments are gifts of the Lord to 
His Church. The sacrament of Holy Baptism is 
the sacrament of entrance into the sacred Fellowship 
and \he sacrament of the Lord's Supper that of 
intimate communion with the Lord and with one 
another. The Apostolic Church " broke bread " 
daily during the early days of the Church and 
later it was their custom to come together to 
break bread each Lord's Day. How can we expect 
our Christians to grow strong in their devotion to 
the Lord, if we deprive them of the sacrament of 
holy communion? It is, however, a fact that a 
large proportion of baptized Christians do not 
have a chance of coming to this oftener than once 
in two or three months. The breaking of bread in 
each church every Lord's Day is impossible as 
long as we confine the celebration to a highly- 
trained pastor who often has ten to twenty separate 
and distant village congregations to minister to. 
And yet the Indian people are sacramentarian by 
temperament and religious training. We know of 
nothing that inspires devotion, touches the emotions 
and strengthens the will of the village folk so 
powerfully as the reverent and intelligent observance 
of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. 

At present the provision made in almost all 
rural areas for this regular, systematic ministry of 
the Word and Sacraments is woefully inadequate. 
Even in the Dornakal diocese, where there are about 
eighty Indian clergy, at least sixty more are required 
to minister to the existing congregations; and 

no 



CONCLUSIONS 

new converts are coming in at the rate of 8000 
a year. 

But here, again, there is the difficulty of increased 
cost. The people cannot at present pay the salaries 
of both teachers and pastors, and it is not desirable 
that the pastoral work of the Indian Church should 
become increasingly dependent on foreign money. 

Has not the time come when vigorous experi- 
ments ought to be made to make village work 
independent of outside support, standing on its 
own resources? The following measures are 
suggested : 

i. Serious attempts should be made from the 
initial stages to make the converts build their own 
places of worship, and their own village schools. 
All Oriental nations have a passion for temple- 
building. Indian Christians are not free from it. 
This passion should be fostered and the people 
ought to be encouraged to build a place of worship 
plain or ornamental, cheap or expensive some- 
thing which they can call their own. 

ii. An unpaid, honorary ministry for the Church 
should be systematically developed. Men with 
independent means should be encouraged to give 
of their service freely to the Church. The ambition 
to serve the Lord " without charge " must be 
inculcated in boys who learn a trade, so that when 
they go back to their villages they may undertake 
as honorary workers the responsibility for the local 
congregations. Village elders, too, ought to be 
encouraged to learn to read and to teach, so that 

in 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

they may lead the worship and instruction in the 
village of which they are the natural leaders. 

The ordination of such village elders and honorary 
workers, commissioning them to administer the 
sacraments, has been vigorously advocated by the 
Rev. Roland Allen in his well-known books on 
mission policy. 1 Doubts have been expressed as to 
the practicability of these proposals for rural India 
where illiteracy dominates. But Mr Allen's main 
contention need not be set aside simply because of 
the abnormal conditions at the initial stages of mass 
movements. The encouragement of the honorary 
ministry ought to be the aim of all rural 
missions. 

We have only touched briefly on the most out- 
standing needs of the village work at the present time 
and in the immediate future. But what has been said 
above will be sufficient to show both the magnitude 
and difficulty of the problems that confront us in 
the great task of building up the Church in India. 
Does it not also show the urgent need for both 
foreign missionaries and Indian Christian leaders 
alike to concentrate their resources and energies on 
this main issue on which depends the future of 
Christianity in India? This concentration does not 
necessarily mean that methods of work which have 
been employed in the past should be entirely 
abandoned; but it does mean that they should all 
be brought to bear directly upon and made more 

1 Missionary Methods St Paul's or Ours? ; The Spon- 
taneous Expansion of the Church. Both published by the 
World Dominion Press, i Tudor Street, E.G. 4. 

112 



CONCLUSIONS 

effective for the one main purpose the building up 
of the Church of Christ. 

For example, the present system of higher 
education was started by Dr Duff nearly a hundred 
years ago with a view to the conversion of Hindus 
and Moslems in the cities and larger towns. At 
that time it was assumed that Christianity would 
first be accepted by the intelligentsia and would 
filter down from them to the masses and spread 
from the towns to the villages. This assumption 
has been proved to be fallacious. But to-day 
High Schools and Colleges are needed partly to 
produce leaders for the Christian Church, and 
partly as strong centres of Christian life and light 
to influence the non- Christian intelligentsia. And 
it is clear that for both purposes our institutions 
need a far more intensive Christian atmosphere. 
The delegation of the Church Missionary Society 
that visited India in 1921-22 said in their Report: 
" The essential thing in mission education is the 
creation of a Christian atmosphere in its institutions." 
And they added : " We have not yet, nor have we 
the power to produce the far-spreading Christian 
atmosphere that should pervade all our institutions." 
The Society cannot under existing conditions secure 
a sufficiency either of Christian teachers and tutors 
or of Christian pupils to produce such an atmo- 
sphere. The first thing needed then is to reorganize 
the system so as to make this possible. Till that is 
done we cannot expect the institutions to be effective 
instruments either for the education of Christians or 
for the conversion of non-Christians to faith in Christ. 

113 



CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES 

So, again, with regard to medical work. The 
mission hospitals were originally established mainly 
in the towns at a time when there was very little 
provision of medical aid for the mass of the people 
either in town or country. But to-day they are far 
more urgently needed in the village districts, 
especially in areas in which there are large numbers 
of Christians. They have an important part to 
play there in the social, moral and spiritual progress 
of the village Church. At the present time Govern- 
ment hospitals and doctors are provided for almost 
all the large towns, and it is not uncommon to find a 
mission hospital in a town where there is a well- 
equipped Government Hospital, while thousands of 
Christians and non-Christians in adjacent villages 
are left without any medical aid of any kind. 

It is the same with the evangelistic work. Seventy 
years ago this was regarded as the special province 
of the foreign missionaries and was carried on over 
many areas with little or no relation to the Christian 
community. The illustration given above from 
the experience of the Missionaries on the North- 
West Frontier reveals the weakness of this system. 1 
Professor Harnack and Dr Glover, as we have 
pointed out above, emphasize the truth that in the 
Roman Empire it was not the mere preaching of 
the word, but the witness of changed lives that 
enabled the gospel of Christ to triumph over the 
ancient world. 2 That was true, says Dr Glover, 

1 See Chapter XII. 

2 See Chapter XIII; and The Influence of Christ in the 
Ancient World, p. 96. By T. R. Glover. 

114 



CONCLUSIONS 

even of the preaching of the Apostles. " The 
witness of the resurrection was not the word of 
Paul (as we see at Athens) nor of the eleven; it 
was the new power in life and death that the world 
saw in changed lives." What is needed in our 
evangelistic work in India to-day is to bring this 
new power to bear strongly and effectively upon 
all classes of Indian Society. To do so will not 
only make evangelistic work more effective, but, 
what is even more important, will greatly develop 
the missionary zeal and foster the spiritual power 
of the Church itself. 

It is natural to shrink from such a large re- 
construction of our methods of work; but it is 
long overdue. We have already in the past lost 
many golden opportunities. There is no reason 
why what has been achieved in the Telugu country 
or among the Lushais should not have been done 
with equal power and similar results in many other 
parts of India. In a recent report of the Santal 
mission it was stated that there were 8000 Christians 
connected with the Anglican Church and might 
have been 80,000. But it is useless now to lament 
over what might have been. Many doors are still 
wide open. It is still a great day of opportunity. 
But if opportunity is persistently neglected, the day 
comes at last when the door is shut. 



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