India of many colours
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| Young women of the Baiga tribe, aboriginals to India. |
The following are excerpts from the book “A history of Christian missions” by Stephen Neill, presenting some very interesting characters from India.
I’d like to start with this one below, because I was impressed by how
the writer rightly uses the word “invasion” to mean what we today insist on
calling “migration”. In the vast majority of human history, the two words have
been synonymous. We moderns ought to take note. The passage below also gives a
good glimpse on the fact that, in view of being closer to God, simplicity does
it. The Barbarian, the tribe with deep roots to their earth and elements and,
thus, living a more natural life, is the one whose heart is closer to the call
of God.
Wonder why Illyrians were the first in Europe to make the Gospel their
own and why they were never fully absorbed into Roman lifestyle? Because who
needs artificiality when you’re the real thing in your own lands!
The Albanian nation is to be proud of, like these aboriginal Indians in
the paragraph below are. To have been and to have remained Albanian in such a
tiny portion of land, naturalized to your land and culture only, and not
absorbed in the powers-to-be that never stopped crossing over here is a
herculean feat indeed. No invader – or migrant – people can ever do that with
no collateral unease and psychosis.
Now, let’s talk India, our Aryan brothers from a darker mother.
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“India is a land of many races. Successive waves of invasion have driven
to the hills and jungles the weaker and aboriginal peoples who are to be found
in their millions in almost every province of India. The process of absorbing
these simple peoples into the Hindu caste system has been going on for
centuries, but is still far from complete; and, just because they are animists
and not Hindus, they are far more responsive than the Hindus to the hearing of
the Gospel.”
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The ancient Illyrians (the “animists”) worshipped as they knew in
nature, God’s chosen cathedral. The ancient Greeks (the “Hindus” of our story)
copied that, brought in their Trojan horses, and “structured” it into the
Olympian theology – though I would say they simply wrote it down. The first
tribe – the indigenous – were first prone to hear His voice. I’m sure the
Greeks and the Hindus of the world would be just as able and much sooner than
they did… had they stayed home, to their natural habitats.
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2 - Imad ud-din Lahiz, the Christian imam.
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| Imad ud-din Lahiz (1830−1900) |
“Imad-ud-din was an earnest and scholarly Muslim who in 1854 had been
present at a famous debate between C. G. Pfander, the noted scholar and
controversialist, and a group of Muslim moulvies. Such was Imad-ud-din’s
reputation for learning that he was himself put up to preach against Dr
Pfander. For years he was convinced that the answer to all his soul’s needs was
to be found in a purified Islam; and it was only after long struggles and inner
agonies that he became convinced that for him the only answer was in Jesus
Christ. His “Autobiography” opens with the words:
- May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ dwell on the whole world. The
writer of this little Pamphlet became a Christian on the 29th of April, 1866,
with the single object of obtaining salvation.”
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3 - Saint Paul of India?
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| Narayan Vaman Tilak |
“Narayan Vaman Tilak (1861-1919) was a Brahman of the straightest sect
of the Marathi Chitpawan Brahmans. A highly intelligent young man with an
intense interest in literature and poetry, he had no interest in Christianity,
which he believed to be dangerous to the welfare of India. But one day an
unknown and unnamed European gave him a copy of the New Testament, in the train
in which they were travelling together, and asked him to read it. When he
reached the fifth chapter of St Matthew’s Gospel, Tilak found that he had the
answer to innumerable problems which had perplexed him. He was baptised, and
later was ordained a minister of the Presbyterian Church. But no Church could
really hold him. He was always independent, intensely critical of missionaries
and Churches, eager that Indians should stand on their own feet and make their
own contribution to the regeneration of India. His great gift was in poetry. Of
his hundreds of hymns, many are included in the book of hymns used by the
Marathi-speaking Churches, and some have found their way into English. At his
death in 1919 he had made a greater contribution than any other Indian
Christian up to his time to the presentation of the Gospel in literary form in
an Indian language.”
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4 – Ramabai: Here be a cool bandit.
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| Pandita Ramabai Sarasvati |
"Ramabai
(1858-1922) was the daughter of a Brahman scholar, a most unusual man who
believed that girls as well as boys should be educated, and who taught Ramabai
Sanskrit with such skill that in later life she was given the title Pandita,
“the learned”, perhaps a unique honour for a woman. While in England in 1883
Ramabai (recently widowed) was led to ask for baptism, though her Christian
faith and experience appear at that time to have
been extremely limited. After her return to India she was brought into that
deeper and heroic faith which led her to exploits such as no other Indian woman
had ever undertaken. Her first concern was for the young and neglected widows
who, under Hindu law, could never hope to marry again. This was extended later
to the care of famine orphans. The multiple institutions at Mukti
(“deliverance”), through which hundreds of girls came to Christian faith,
received help in staffing and in money from many quarter; but at the centre of
everything, until her death in 1922, was the Pandita herself – a frail,
indomitable figure, desiring nothing so much as to give all things and to
endure all things for the sake of Christ."
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