Encounter and Interventions: Christian Missionaries in Colonial North-East India [1 ed.] 9781032545868, 9781032545875, 9781003425601

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1: Christianity and Cultural Changes among the Lotha Nagas
Chapter 2: Christian Missionaries in the Plains of Barak Valley
Chapter 3: Missionaries as Stimulus: Interrogating Political Mobilization in Colonial North-East India
Chapter 4: The Coming of the Grace of the Christ: The Christian Baptist Missionaries and the Construction of Hindu Identity in Assam: c. 1840-1900
Chapter 5: Colonialism and Christian Missions in North-East India
Chapter 6: Reading the Open Book: Missionary Print as Hermeneutical and Material Texts
Chapter 7: Christian Missionaries among the Karbis
Chapter 8: Nationalist Discourse, Christianity and Tribal Religion: The Tani Tribes of Arunachal Pradesh
Chapter 9: Straying beyond Conquest and Emancipation: Exploring the Fault Lines of Missionary Education in North-East India
Chapter 10: Health, a Gift of God at Sanatorium and Missionary Activities in Madras Presidency
Chapter 11: Coloniser or Anthropologist?: Locating the Identity of the Christian Missionary vis-à-vis the Tea Garden ‘Coolie’ in Colonial Assam
Chapter 12: Romance of the Wild, the Natural, and the Savage: Glimpses of Evangelism in North-East India, 1836-1900
Chapter 13: Welsh Missionaries and the Transformation of Mizo Women
Chapter 14: Society, Culture and Conversion: The Jesuit Madurai Mission in Tamil Nadu, 1650-1700 ce
Chapter 15: Introduction of New Literature under the Aegis of Christian Missions in Mizoram
Chapter 16: Evangelization among the Bodos
Chapter 17: Cultural Hegemony, First World War and the German Salvatorians in North-East India (1890-1915 ce)
Chapter 18: Christianity vs Indigeneity: Colonial State, Mission and Laipianism in Chin Hills
Chapter 19: American Baptists in Colonial Assam: The Tale of Oscar Levi Swanson
Chapter 20: Early Response to Christianity in Mizoram
Chapter 21: Tribulations of the Catholic Mission in Mizoram, 1925-1946
Chapter 22: Colonial State, Christian Missionaries and the Politics of Persuasion in Early Nineteenth-Century Bengal
Chapter 23: Sociocultural Re-Invention: A Study of Christianity in Arunachal Pradesh
Chapter 24: An Analysis of the American Baptist Missionary Sources for the Construction of Gender History in North-East India
Chapter 25: Naga Conversions to Christianity in Manipur in the Twentieth Century
Chapter 26: Gendered Mission: The Zenana Work of the American Baptist Mission in Assam (1836-1950)
Contributors

Citation preview

ENCOUNTER AND INTERVENTIONS

The advent of colonialism and its associated developments has been characterized as one of the most defining moments in the history of South Asia. The arrival of Christian missionaries has not only been coeval to colonial rule, but also associated with development in the region. Their encounter, critique, endeavour and intervention have been very critical in shaping South Asian society and culture, even where they did not succeed in converting people. Yet, there is precious little space spared for studying the role and impact of missionary enterprises than the space allotted to colonialism. Isolated individual efforts have focused on Bengal, Madras, Punjab and much remains to be addressed in the context of the unique region of the North East India. In North East India, for example, by the time the British left, a majority of the tribals had abandoned their own faith and adopted Christianity. It was a socio-cultural revolution. Yet, this aspect has remained outside the scope of history books. Whatever reading material is available is pro-Christian, mainly because they are either sponsored by the church authorities or written by ecclesiastical scholars. Very little secular research was conducted for hundred years of missionary endeavour in the region. The interpretations, which have emerged out of the little material available, are largely simplistic and devoid of nuances. This book is an effort to decenter such explanations by providing an informed historical and cultural appreciation of the role and contribution of missionary endeavors in British India. Sajal Nag is currently a Senior Professor and Head, Department of History and Dean, School of Social Sciences, Assam University, Silchar. He is the author of The Beleaguered Nation: Making and Unmaking of the Assamese Nationality (2016); and Contesting Marginality: Ethnicity, Insurgency and Sub Nationalism in North East India ( 2002); among others. M. Satish Kumar is in the School of Geography, Archaeology and Paleoecology, in Queens University, Belfast Northern Ireland. His publications include Colonial and Postcolonial Geographies of India (co-edited with Saraswati Raju and Stuart Corbridge).

ENCOUNTER

AND

INTERVENTIONS

Christian Missionaries in

Colonial North-East India

Edited by

SAJAL NAG M. SATISH KUMAR

MANOHAR 2024

First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 Sajal Nag, M. Satish Kumar and Manohar Publishers The right of Sajal Nag and M. Satish Kumar to be identified as authors of the editorial material, and the contributors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan or Bhutan) British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 9781032545868 (hbk) ISBN: 9781032545875 (pbk) ISBN: 9781003425601 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003425601 Typeset in Minion Pro 11/13 by Ravi Shanker, Delhi 110095

To

The Memory of

TH. ROBERT TIBA

&

DONALD TERON

Two of my dear Ph.D. Scholars

Devout Christians, Sincere Scholars

Who are no more;

but their contributions to this volume remains

Contents

Preface

11

Introduction Sajal Nag

13

1. Christianity and Cultural Changes among

the Lotha Nagas Adani Ngullie

2. Christian Missionaries in the Plains of Barak Valley Amol Sinha

3. Missionaries as Stimulus: Interrogating Political

Mobilization in Colonial North-East India Binayak Dutta

4. The Coming of the Grace of the Christ: The Christian

Baptist Missionaries and the Construction of Hindu

Identity in Assam: c. 1840-1900 Bipul Chaudhury

37

49

81

97

5. Colonialism and Christian Missions in North-East India 109

David Reid Syiemlieh

6. Reading the Open Book: Missionary Print as

Hermeneutical and Material Texts David Vumlallian Zou

7. Christian Missionaries among the Karbis Donald Teron

137

167

8. Nationalist Discourse, Christianity and Tribal Religion:

The Tani Tribes of Arunachal Pradesh 185

Jagdish Lal Dawar

8

Contents

9. Straying beyond Conquest and Emancipation:

Exploring the Fault Lines of Missionary Education

in North-East India Hoineilhing Sitlhou

10. Health, a Gift of God at Sanatorium and Missionary

Activities in Madras Presidency B. Eswara Rao 11. Coloniser or Anthropologist?: Locating the Identity

of the Christian Missionary vis-à-vis the Tea Garden

‘Coolie’ in Colonial Assam Anisha Bordoloi

197

223

245

12. Romance of the Wild, the Natural, and the Savage:

Glimpses of Evangelism in North-East India, 1836-1900 273

M. Satish Kumar 13. Welsh Missionaries and the Transformation of

Mizo Women Lalhmingliani Ralte

313

14. Society, Culture and Conversion: The Jesuit

Madurai Mission in Tamil Nadu, 1650-1700 ce Jangkhomang Guite

359

15. Introduction of New Literature under the Aegis of

Christian Missions in Mizoram J.V. Hluna

399

16. Evangelization among the Bodos Luke Daimary

417

17. Cultural Hegemony, First World War and the German

Salvatorians in North-East India (1890-1915 ce) Meeta Deka

431

18. Christianity vs Indigeneity: Colonial State,

Mission and Laipianism in Chin Hills Pum Khan Pau

449

19. American Baptists in Colonial Assam:

The Tale of Oscar Levi Swanson Nabanipa Bhattacharjee

485

Contents 20. Early Response to Christianity in Mizoram Rohmingmawii

9 511

21. Tribulations of the Catholic Mission in Mizoram, 1925-1946 Sangkima

529

22. Colonial State, Christian Missionaries and the Politics of Persuasion in Early Nineteenth-Century Bengal Santanu Sarkar

543

23. Sociocultural Re-Invention: A Study of Christianity in Arunachal Pradesh Sarah Hilaly

559

24. An Analysis of the American Baptist Missionary Sources for the Construction of Gender History in North-East India Shiela Bora

569

25. Naga Conversions to Christianity in Manipur in the Twentieth Century Th. R. Tiba

589

26. Gendered Mission: The Zenana Work of the American Baptist Mission in Assam (1836-1950) Tejimala Gurung

609

Contributors

645

Preface

If there is one ground on which north-east India is differentiated from the rest of India it is in its religious affiliation. Indeed the region is mostly Christian. The Mizo, Naga, Khasi, Garo, Jaintia and many other tribals are Christians. Yet a hundred years back the same people had pursued their own indigenous faith. How did this transformation come about? With the advent of colonialism in the region, arrived Christian missionaries and such transformation was the result of hard work, patience, empathy and involvement. The encounter between the tribal and the missionaries of various denominations who arrived in this ‘wild’ country was quite civilizational; the acceptance of white men into the core of the tribal society was slow; the eventual conversion was rather gradual than abrupt. There are many questions that are raised regarding the process of such a giant transformation in these societies. To answer these questions and understand the processes therein, this volume was planned. There is precious little available for studying the role and impact of missionary enterprises in India. Isolated individual efforts have focused on Bengal, Madras, Punjab and much remains to be addressed in the context of the unique region of north-east India. In north-east India for example, by the time the British left, 90 per cent of the tribals had abandoned their own faith and adopted Christianity. It was a sociocultural revolution. Yet this aspect of colonialism has remained outside the scope of history books. Whatever reading materials available are pro-Christian, mainly because they are either sponsored by the Church or they are written by ecclesiastical scholars. Very little secular research was conducted on hundred years of missionary endeavour in the region. The interpretations, which have emerged out of the little

12

Preface

material available, are largely simplistic and devoid of complexi­ ties. This book is an effort to de-centre such explanations by pro­ viding an informed historical and cultural appreciation of the role and contribution of missionary endeavours in British India. 21 April 2022

Sajal Nag M. Satish Kumar

Introduction SAJAL NAG

The British would like the world to believe that the empire was acquired in a ‘fit of absentmindedness’ even though the unfolded facts tell a very different story. But when such an acquisition procured through ‘absentmindedness’ resulted in the establishment of an ‘empire’, the colonialist became utterly confident and ruthlessly ambitious. They wanted now to shape the empire and transform the people in the colonies according to their own ideas. This was done by first characterizing the newlyacquired territories as backward and regressive and by branding its people as primitive, savage and inimical to progress. Then followed the unleashing of a ‘civilizational discourse’ and by its means the white man was unilaterally allotted the responsibility of civilizing the savages inhabiting the colonies. Among others, the indigenous faith was specially chosen as the target of attack. People’s faith and religions were ridiculed and the responsibility of changing their culture to a higher order was imposed on their own selves. Thus a number of missionaries of the religions of the ruling classes began to pour in to extend ‘God’s Kingdom’ to the colonies. Another project of conquest had thus begun after the territorial acquisition through ‘absentmindedness’. The historian Niall Ferguson1 made a distinction between two important phases of British colonialism, which was the strongest of all imperial powers. According to him, the British Empire was at the most amoral in the eighteenth century. But in the next phase it was no longer enough for them to exploit other races; now the aim became ‘to improve on them’ using morality as the pretext. It was a moral responsibility for the colonizers to civilize them according to Christian standards.

14

Sajal Nag

The Hanoverians had grabbed power in Asia, land in America and slaves in Africa. Native people were taxed, robbed or wiped out. But paradoxically their cultures were largely tolerated; in some cases even studied and admired. The Victorians had more elevated aspirations. They dreamt of not just of ruling the world, but also of redeeming it. It was no longer enough for them to exploit other races; now the aim became to improve on them. Native peoples themselves would cease to be exploited, but their cultures—superstitious, backward, heathen and so forth—have to go. In particular the Victorians aspired to bring (what they called) light to what they called Dark Continent.2

This endeavour to transform and improve upon the natives, however, was not a government project. It was adopted by what can be viewed as a voluntary sector. Like all non-governmental organizations, Victorian missionaries had their own self-pro­ claimed idea that they knew what was best for Africa. Their goal was not so much colonization as ‘civilization’—introducing a way of life that was first and foremost Christian, but was also distinctly north European in its reverence for industry and abstinence.3 This attitude was embodied in the life and ideas of the explorer David Livingstone who was confident that though commerce and colo­ nization were necessary, for empire building was not sufficient in itself. What would make the empire sustainable was to transform the people in their own images so that the colonized could see redemption in white rule. That was possible only through con­ version of the natives into Christians in custom and Europeans in ideas. As Macaulay put it, the time had come to ‘spread over Africa’s gloomy surface light, liberty and civilization. Spreading the word of God and thereby saving the souls of the benighted heathen was a new, not-for-profit rationale for expanding British influence.’4 Thus began ‘Project Christianization’ of colonies under the initiative of the voluntary sector. The Missionary Project, however, was not as autonomous an enterprise as is often presented by ecclesiastical as well as a por­ tion of secular historical literature. This was a crucial connection, which has been the topic of an acrimonious debate between secular and ecclesiastical historians. The organic correlation between the Empire and Christian missions has to be traced to the beginning

Introduction

15

of the evangelical movement in England. Total collaboration between missions and colonialism was the strongest in the case of Spain and Portugal where the colonial state not only sent out missionaries but also looked after their protection and sustenance. In contrast, the English state took help of missionaries only to legitimize colonial rule. As a result, the missionary endeavour did not necessarily turn political. Even though the missionary had not served the colonial power directly, it was only too glad to accept protection and support from it. Often they tried to justify colonial rule as ‘Divine Command’.5 The concern for the spiritual progress of the colonized, referred to as ‘natives’, and the promotion of the ‘ideas of advantages of civilization’ was taken up in the Congo Conference of European States held in Berlin in 1885. Com­ mencing with the ceremonial invocation of Omnipotent God, the Conference identified ‘civilization’ with Christianity and ‘savagery, barbarism and paganism’ with the natives and discussed the neces­ sity of spreading the Gospel amongst them. It was the colonialists’ attempt to cover up their enterprise as a ‘Divine Mission’.6 In England, one of the pioneering attempts to implement this moral project came from the Clapham Sect. The sect started with two primary objectives—abolition of the slave trade in the colo­ nies and opening them to Christian missionary enterprise. They had their first major victory when permission was granted for mis­ sionary enterprise in India in the charter of 1813. Their origins can be traced back to the Society For the Promotion of Christian Gospel (1698) and the Society for the Propagation of the Christian Gospel (1701). But these were almost exclusively concerned with the spiritual welfare of the British colonists and servicemen posted overseas. In 1776, at a time when British Americans were to secede from their mother country, the Evangelical Magazine in an edito­ rial expressed their desire to send the Gospel of Christ to Africa, ‘a much-injured country’, ‘that essential blessings [which] outweigh evils of most suffering life’. Sixteen years later, William Carey, while preaching, announced great things to happen from God. Shortly after, he formed the Particular Baptist Society for Propagating the Gospel amongst the Heathens. This was followed by the formation

16

Sajal Nag

of London Missionary Society that began to accept missionaries from all non-conformist sects and in 1799 the Anglican Church Missionary Society declared that its aim, indeed Christian duty, was to ‘propagate the knowledge of the Gospel among the Hea­ thens’. There were Scottish societies, too, formed in Glasgow and Edinburgh in 1796.7 The two great objectives of the Clapham Sect were to secure the abolition of slave trade in the colonies and opening up of India for the missionary enterprise. Sensing the opposition of the Company to open India for missionary enterprise Charles Grant produced a treatise entitled Observation on the State of Society among the Asiatic Subjects of Great Britain, Particularly with respect to Morals and Means of Improving It in 1797 and placed it before the court of directors of which he, himself, was an influential member. Grant’s objective was to counter the Anti-Church ideas of Thomas Paine and the Revolutionary principles propagated by France. His ideas were developed with an eye to the preservation of Empire. ‘Chris­ tianity of the English sort might keep Indians passive just as it induced contentment in the English lower order.’8 By ‘the English lower order’, Grant was referring to the tension within the English working class that was neutralized by evangelical revivalism in the late eighteenth century. Grant’s plea for the Christian mission in India was motivated more by political conservatism than any radi­ cal ideology. He was one holding Bishop Horne’s view that English in Christianity would inculcate ‘in superiors it would be equity and moderation, courtesy and affability, benignity and condescen­ sion; in inferiors, sincerity and fidelity, respect and diligence. In princes justice, gentleness and solicitude for the welfare of the subjects; in subjects loyalty, submission, obedience, quietness, peace, patience and cheerfulness.’9 Grant was also convinced that conversion to Christianity would ensure permanence of the raj in India. More astonishing was his belief that the raj was providen­ tially ordained. At the same time he was aware about the main objective of the Company—commerce. ‘In every progressive step of this work we shall also serve the original design with which we visited India, that design still so important to this country—the extension of our commerce’.10 Grant was not unconcerned about

Introduction

17

the Indian ‘natives’, too. The poverty of the Indian people and their ‘unformed taste’ were considered to be the main hindrances, which limited the penetration of British manufacturers into India. Grant was optimistic that Christianity and education—the two ‘noblest species of conquest’—could remove these obstacles. Although the British government’s response to the missionaries was unpredictable, there were others who favoured missionary intervention. Charles Simpson at Cambridge provided spiritual leadership. Edward Parry, chairman, and Grant, vice-chairman of the court of directors, in their letter to the president of the board of control, argued that the Christianity could be the bond between India and England. ‘If … they embrace our religion, they would have a new cause of attachment to us … which would give us better assurance of their fidelity.’11 With such high officials and influential members of the parliament behind the cause and the unfailing support of the Evangelical Party, William Wilberforce, a member of at least 70 philanthropic organizations in England, moved the English parliament to secure the opening of India to missionary enterprises. Wilberforce collected 837 petitions from different missions in support of his cause. In course of the debate, Wilberforce argued that ‘the sole justification and strengthening of British control over India lay in conversion of the Indian people’. He even appealed to his countrymen to do their best to strike root into the Indian soil by transplanting their principles, laws, institu­ tions, manners and, above all, religion and morals.12 The support to the cause came from another unexpected quarter—the free trade merchants. They contended that Christianity would change the habits and mores of people, thereby increasing the demand for British goods. Its Clause XXXII allowed the propagation of Chris­ tianity and unrestricted entry of missionaries for the purpose into India thenceforth. The Charter of 1813 was a triumph of colonialevangelical collaboration. Just at the time when the British power in India was being consolidated, the newly-formed missionary societies were begin­ ning to work. This eventually led to the coming of several Chris­ tian missionary societies in India from various countries and the USA. At the end of the eighteenth century the only missionaries

18

Sajal Nag

in Bengal were the Baptists, who had been able to establish them­ selves under the Danish protection at Serampore. But word of their achievements spread far and wide in the West, and the years between 1794 and 1833 were marked by a steady increase of inter­ est in the missionary cause and in willingness on the part of young people to volunteer for missionary service.13 The Charter Act of 1813 incorporated three significant pro­ visions relating to the position of education and the Church. An episcopal organization was established, and missionaries of all faiths were allowed to enter India. The Indian government was authorized to spend one lakh rupees from surplus revenues for Indian education.14 Accordingly in 1830 the first missionary sent by the Church of Scotland, Alexander Duff, came to Calcutta and threw himself into educational work, on the belief that ‘every branch of sound general knowledge which you inculcate becomes the destroyer of some corresponding part in the Hindu system’.15 This ‘general knowledge’ was to be communicated in English and on that point official policy agreed—in 1835 a protected contro­ versy on the issue of English versus vernacular higher education in India was resolved in favour of the ‘Anglicists’. Duff opened a school in Calcutta in 1830. At present, it is called the Scottish Church College. The school offered Western science and literature, and also the Christian teachings. His opinion on matters of education was given great value by the then Govern­ ment of India. He was also engaged in the establishment of the first Indian universities and the grant-in-aid-system. In India he was at the forefront of mission thinking. He pioneered the close relationship between education and mission.16 After this decision Christianity was developed in colleges and universities of India. Although the early Protestant missions in Bengal were those of the Kiernander family in Calcutta 1758-86 and the Moraian Breth­ ern in Serampore 1777-91, the real missionary activity began in November 1793 with the arrival of William Carey. The East India Company’s attitude towards the missionaries shifted with political expediency. Before the establishment of political authority in Ben­ gal the East India Company viewed missionary activity favourably. But after 1757 in pursuance of their policy of non-interference,

Introduction

19

the Company was opposed to their endeavour.17 After 1857 the opposition grew much stronger as it was realized that interference in the cultural and religious affairs could lead to hostility from the people. Even though it assumed political power in Bengal after the Battle of Plassey, it was wary of civil rebellion. Any Christian missionary work was disfavoured because it was feared that such attempt would incite intrigues and disturb the political stability.18 Back in the mother country, however, the rising middle class in England was bursting with ideas of political and social move­ ments. These middle classes wanted to experiment these ideas and what better laboratory could be there than the virgin fields of the colonies. The main taproot of all these ideas was, however, the English liberalist thought. The material and intellectual elements which composed English lib­ eralism in India were threefold—free trade was its solid foundation, evangelism provided its programme of social reform, its force of char­ acter and its missionary zeal. And philosophical radicalism gave it an intellectual basis and supplied it with the science of political economy, law and government.19

The Revolt of 1857 had little immediate effect on the situation of Christianity in India. The 1858 Madras Missionary Conference drew the measure that needed to be brought to bear on the govern­ ment to prevent further outbreaks. All we require is simple Christian consistency in all their proceedings which have a bearing on religion, the introduction of the Bible into all government schools, to be read daily by those of the pupils who do not object to it; and, especially, the entire cessation of all patronage and coun­ tenance of idolatry and caste.20

In 1857, the East India Company’s rule ended, and the Brit­ ish government’s rule began. The new government proclaimed a policy of religious impartiality in which Christianity was deprived of its status as the ‘most favoured religion’. Queen Victoria’s proclamation of 1858 was ‘firmly relying ourselves on the truth of Christianity, and acknowledging with gratitude the solace of religion, we disclaim the right and the desire to impose our con­ victions on any of our subjects’.21

20

Sajal Nag

The Clash of Civilizations If there was truly any clash of civilization in Indian history, it was the encounter between Hinduism and Christianity that began with the advent of Christian missionaries in India. The West had been there for a long time in India, but there was no confrontation between the East and West. Similarly, white men were there in India right from the seventeenth century but it did not lead to any encounter. The British had assumed political authority in India from 1757 but it did not bring about any cultural conflicts till then. But the advent of missionaries actually made the Indians feel the difference between the two cultures. It was because the Christian missionaries spelt out the differences between the two cultures and tried to highlight the superiority of Western civilization while at the same time establishing the inferiority of Indian religion and culture that brought about this consciousness. Indians were made to feel othered by a civilized and superior Europe. Although the Europeans were already in India from the seventeenth century and were emerging as a ruling power, Indian were never ‘othered’ in such a way before this attack launched by the Christian missionaries on Indian/Hindu religion and culture. This precipitated the encounter between the East and West—the Orient and the Occident—and the clash between Hindu and Christian civilizations—simply because the missionaries wanted it that way. The encounter was thus not ‘a simple and straight phenomenon’.22 In fact, earlier, Europe and the West was seen as a civilization based on the proto-democracy of ancient Greece which inspired the East to build a world where liberalism and rationalism were the basic foundations. Now Christianity became the prism through which the West had to be viewed. The new majority of Europeans who brought Bengal in contact with the European civilization laid great emphasis on the religious or Christian aspect of their civiliza­ tion. They tried to assert that the reason and knowledge of Europe was due to its esoteric connection with Christianity. The Indian, by virtue of being non-Christian, was the proverbial ‘heathen’ who, therefore, was not entitled to European enlightenment. The mis­ sionaries tried to attract Indians to their religion by a sustained

Introduction

21

and continuous critique and attack on the Hindu religion, as Hin­ dus were the dominant religious group in India. They ridiculed the Hindu gods and goddesses, decried Hindu rites and rituals and denigrated Hindu customs. The missionaries challenged the very basis of Hinduism and sought to demolish the entire Hindu religion and philosophy as false. Hindus were seen as primitive, polytheistic, idol worshipping savages who were also demon worshippers; practised many mindless rituals; and whose culture comprised child marriage, female infanticide, bloody sacrifice of humans and animals, burning of young widows alive, belief in the caste system, and so on. They had no revealed scriptures and no prophets to follow. The missionaries also mocked the philandering ways of Hindu gods like Krishna who flirted with 1,600 shepherd women, the fearsome bloodthirstiness of Kali who moved around with a blood-dripping human head in her hand and the snake-garlanded tribal Shiva who could destroy the universe. To prove the doctri­ nal superiority of Christianity, they denigrated the Hindu religion in every way. This caused great anguish to Indians. Not only did it alienate orthodox Hindus, it actually generated the strongest opposition from the liberal-minded Hindus who were admirers of Christianity and the Western civilization. The leader of this group was none other than Raja Ram Mohun Roy. Roy was the architect of English and Western education in India and had hailed British rule as a harbinger of progress and prosperity. Roy decried the endeavour of the missionaries to prove the superiority of Christianity by denigrating Hinduism. The weak­ ness of Hinduism would not prove the strength of Christianity, he said. He asked them to desist from arguing with poor, illiterate Brahmin pundits about the weaknesses of Hinduism and chal­ lenged them to argue with erudite persons who could engage with them competently in a debate on the subject.23 In a brilliant satire, he showed the ludicrousness of the attempt to rationally prove the central truth of orthodox Christianity in the form of a conversation between a Christian missionary and his three Chinese disciples. In 1820, Roy published another pamphlet, entitled The Precepts of Jesus, the Guide to Peace and Happiness to praise the values of

22

Sajal Nag

Christianity and explain how the missionaries are misinterpret­ ing it while denigrating Hinduism. Roy studied both the Old and New Testaments before its publication. He even learnt the Greek and Hebrew languages. Indeed, Ram Mohun Roy was deeply influ­ enced by Christianity and its doctrines even before his encounter with the missionaries. This was evident in his letter to William Digby in 1817 wherein he wrote: ‘I have found the doctrines of Christ more conducive to moral principles and better adapted for the use of rational beings than any other which have come to my knowledge.’24 Ram Mohun tried to give a liberal interpretation of Christianity in his book that was ‘a collection of all the moral and spiritual precepts of Jesus as recorded in four Gospels without the narratives of the miracles’. He emphasized that the ethics of Christianity had a greater appeal than its metaphysics. The ideal of humanity and the tendency to promote the peace and harmony of mankind in general to raise them high and the liberal notions of God were to him the chief characteristics of the Christian religion. The counter-attack, which amounted to a critique of the missionary version of Christianity and an inappropriate represen­ tation of a great religion, took the missionaries working in India by surprise. They were deeply offended. The Serampore Missionaries took serious offence at his interpretation of Christianity and then attacked him as ‘heathen’. Roy’s ideas were seen as likely to ‘greatly injure the cause of truth’.25 Roy received the attacks on him with his usual calmness and defended his views through successive publications of Appeals to the Christian Public between 1820 and 1823. He asserted that the moral precepts of Christianity were of much greater value than its miracles and dogmas propounded by the missionaries that had only caused harm to the cause of Chris­ tianity. He attributed the failure of the missionaries to convert any respectable Hindu or Muslim to the ‘introduction of mysterious dogmas and of relations that at first sight appear incredible’. The controversy ultimately centered round the Christian doctrine of ‘Trinity’. To Ram Mohun, ‘trinitarianism’ was essentially a polythe­ istic doctrine. Ram Mohun was willing to acknowledge Christ as ‘the redeemer, mediator and intercessor’ with God on behalf of his followers but he refused to identify Jesus with God. The force of

Introduction

23

Ram Mohun Roy’s argument was such that some leading mission­ aries like John Clark Marshman lost their cool and did not hesitate to use inappropriate language against him. But the strength of his argument was such that one of the Christian missionaries, William Adam, a Baptist, himself converted to Unitarianism.26 This conver­ sion made the missionaries furious and Adam was attacked as the ‘second fallen Adam’. Peeved by this, Dr Middleton, the Bishop of Calcutta offered Ram Mohun Roy a ‘great career’ if he converted to Christianity. Roy refused to be lured by such bribes and rejected the offer. The infuriated missionaries launched their attack on Hinduism and its spokesman Ram Mohun Roy with renewed vigour through their Bengali journal, Samachar Darpan. They refused to publish Roy’s replies to the attacks, forcing him to start his own journal called Brahmanical Magazine in Bengali to coun­ ter the missionary attack on the Hindu religion. Roy ridiculed the missionaries’ attempt to establish the superiority of their religion though the ‘means of abuse and insult [of Hinduism] or by afford­ ing the hope of worldly gain’. Christianity has its own principles and doctrines that were lofty anyway. He, with Adam, formed the Unitarian Committee ‘to remove ignorance, superstition and to furnish information respecting evidences, duties and doctrines of the Christ’ that was actually an attempt to reform Christianity itself. He published another pamphlet called The Precepts of Jesus and Appeals to the Christian Public. Roy also criticized ‘Trinitarianism’ and Calvinistic doctrines and challenged Christian theologicians to defend them. Prof. Tytler of Hindu College came forward to defend orthodox Christianity but Roy’s critique angered him so much that he also began to use intemperate language. Needless to say, that it was not Christianity but the method of proselytization of the missionaries that was being attacked by Ram Mohun Roy. Roy had remained unaffected in his appreciation of the doctrines of Christianity as a modern religion. But the doctrine of Unitarian­ ism influenced him so much that he introduced a new faith called Brahmoism that followed the Christian mode of prayer. It can be seen that the early encounter between Christianity and Hinduism in did not result in acceptance and assimilation but in conflict and repudiation.27 Such conflict and confrontation led

24

Sajal Nag

to something that the missionaries did not intend to do. It gave a revivalist push to one of the great religions of India—Hinduism. But not only did it lead to Hindu revivalist movements in India led by Ramakrishna Paramhamsa and Swami Vivekananda, even the rebels of the 1857 uprising cited missionary attacks on Indian religion as one of their major objections. The early missionaries did provide yeoman service to the establishment of the language of Bengal as a modern one—giving it a structure, a grammar and rendering it into a written language, translating world classics into this language, providing it with a history and helping it produce a rich literature. Besides language and literature, the missionaries also made significant contribu­ tions in the field of English education and social reform, and women’s education. From 1857 onwards, educational institutions, colleges and universities were also established under the influence of the Utilitarianism. It is often said that the greatest mission­ ary in Bengal were not the above-mentioned missionaries but Shakespeare, Milton, Tennyson and such. Missionaries could not convert any elite Bengali but falling under the literary influence of Shakespeare, Milton, Tennyson et al. some from the Bengali elite converted to Christianity which launched the Bengal renaissance in the nineteenth century. In north-east India, too, Christian missionaries employed the same tactic—that of attacking the tribal religion and culture as forms of savagery. The early missionary texts pertaining to the tribes are full of pejorative and uncharitable references in terms defined by the colonial texts in Western parameters. Rev. E.G. Phil­ lips agreed that some of the tribes were ‘bloodthirsty savages’. He even found them ‘most desperate and incorrigible’. For others like D.E. Jones, the fact that some tribes ‘detested excessive labour’ and even ‘laugh too much’ were signs of a lack of civilization. About the Lushai Hill, they noted: The inhabitants were regarded by the few Europeans then residing in Bengal as the fiercest and most barbarous of all the tribes within the province, notorious for their headhunting expeditions to the neighbour­ ing plains. The object of these raids was to obtain human skulls with the object to adorn the graves of their ancestors, the belief prevailing that the

Introduction

25

spirits of the slain would become the slaves of their ancestors in the spirit world.28

Tribals were often associated with liquor and drunkenness, which the missionaries detested. The Mizos were said to be ‘lazy, cruel, superstitious and very prone to drunkenness’29 Thomas Oldham mentioned about the Khasis that of the bad qualities ‘dissoluteness of manners and drunkenness were the most promi­ nent’.30 Of the Tangkhul Naga, William Pettigrew (1934) wrote disapprovingly of their addiction of Zu (rice beer).31 In his annual report, he stated that the Meithei was universally reckoned as ‘liar[s]’ but the Tangkhul Naga could easily beat the former in the art of lying.32 Another characteristic which the missionaries associated with tribalism was their marriage institution. They often frowned upon the sexual openness of the tribals but what they strongly disliked beside polygamy was the ease with which tribal men abandoned their wives. In other words, the absence of divorce laws and the weak institution of marriage itself were associated with tribal life. The worst feature in the manner of the people and one likely to be a serious obstacle to the missionary is the laxity of their marriage, indeed divorce is so frequent that their unions can hardly be honoured with the name of marriage.33

A missionary representation of tribal animism was sketched by Moore as: ‘All these hill people are demon worshippers, but each tribe has its own demons, and its own ceremonies, preserved in pristine purity, or largely modified by their environment.’34 The missionary attempt at conversion to Christianity actu­ ally involved a multi-pronged attack on tribal society and culture. First, it branded the tribal life as ‘savage’. Second, it subjected every aspect of Mizo life—from their nakedness to rituals—to severe denigration. Even their songs, dances, sexual norms and gender relationships were singled out for criticism. Third, they were encouraged to give up their traditions, which they had held dearly from time immemorial and accept a new faith. An alien human form was presented as their god in preference to their own Path­ ian, who was neither visible nor imaginable.

26

Sajal Nag

When physical resistance stopped producing results, the Lus­ hais invented another form of resistance. It was planned silently and first experimented in Phullen village which soon became so popular a form of resistance that it engulfed the entire Lushai Hills. The Lushais were conscious that the missionaries abhorred their dance and songs. Certain traditional songs and dances were revived and aggressively performed throughout the Mizo Hills by the tribals. The Mizo culture, which was losing ground, suddenly saw itself revived. It immediately caught the fancy of the people. They participated in it with renewed vigour. It was an attempt by the tribal to fight back and come on top of the new culture that was being introduced by the combined power of British and the mis­ sionary. Knowing that the missionaries did not like the Mizo way of song and dance as it involved drinking alcohol, free mingling of men and women and sexual innuendo, it was performed more aggressively in front of the missionaries and the recently converted tribal Christians. This was an attempt to spite the white man and isolate the converts from the mainstream of tribal community life. It was part of a cultural revivalist movement of the Mizo popularly known as the Puma Zai. The missionary endeavour even provoked two significant uprisings in the region; one was by the Kukis (1917­ 19) and the other was the Jadonang-Gaindinlu uprising (1928-34).

Opening up of North-East India The American Baptists were first invited to Assam by the British commissioner, Captain Francis Jenkins. This led to the opening of a station at Sadiya in Upper Assam in 1836. The main objective of this mission was to find ways of reaching the Shan territories of Northern Burma and the interior of China. It was not until 1841 that it turned its full attention to the inhabitants of the Brahmaputra Valley.35 For nearly 23 years the mission had been preaching to the people of the Assam plains with a notion and belief that a vast number of people would be accessible to mission work, which would also be a connecting link between India, Northern Burma and China. But they found that the people were deeply rooted in Hinduism. Thus, they turned elsewhere—the frontier tribes.

Introduction

27

The American Baptist missionaries who worked in northeastern India were British nationals but they belonged to the denomination of the ‘Southern Baptist’, United States of America, who formed themselves into the Southern Baptist Convention in 1845. A majority of the Baptists in the American South withdrew support from the Triennial Convention, largely in response to the decision of the Triennial Convention delegates to ban slaveholders from becoming ordained missionaries, and formed the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC).36 Major Jenkins, the then Commis­ sioner of Assam, played an important role in the entry of Baptist missionaries to Assam, assuring them of protection and personal assistance. It is found that the administration of these frontier tribes had not been easy, they made frequent surprise attacks on the people of the plains. It was believed that Major Jenkins had invited the Baptist missionaries into Assam with a view to tame the wild tribes of the frontier and make them loyal subjects. The first contact with the Nagas was made by Miles Bronson in 1839. He made a long visit of three weeks to the Namsang Naga village in the present Tirap district of Arunachal Pradesh. The inhabitants were unfriendly and any white man was suspected as a spy for the British. In spite of such initial discouragements, rigorous language study and other plans for mission works were started. However, Bronson had to leave the place due to the illness and the death of his sister and other misfortunes that had fallen upon him. In fact, the work among the Nagas was interrupted till the arrival of another American Baptist Missionary, the Rev. E.W. Clark.37 After the abandonment of the Namsang mission in 1841, the missionaries had contact with Nagas from time to time. The first Naga Christian was a boy named Hubi who was baptized by Brown at Sibsagar on 12 September 1847. Though his tribe is not mentioned, the fact that his home was originally near Jaipur village suggested that he was either a Namsanghea or Konyak. Unfortunately he died of cholera within a month of his baptism. The second Naga convert was Longjanglepzuk of Merangkong vil­ lage, an Ao. He was baptized at Sibsagar in 1851. In the summer of 1853, he went to his village to find a wife, but he was killed in the course of a Konyak raid on his village. After this, the mission

28

Sajal Nag

did not undertake systematic work on behalf of the Nagas until the 1870s. Godhula Brown and E.W. Clark were responsible for the reopening of Christian work among the Nagas. Clark had arrived at Sibsagar in 1869 to work among the Assamese. He was in-charge of the mission and the press at Sibsagar and became involved in the beginning of the work among tea garden labourers. During these years he had become interested in the Ao Nagas, who frequently attended the Sibsagar bazar. When he mentioned his concern for the Nagas in a meeting of the Sibsagar workers he was surprised to learn that, Godhula was willing to go and preach to the Nagas.38 Godhula visited the Ao Naga Hills in 1871. As a result of the work done by Godhula, the first church was established in 1872 at Dekahamong or Haimong in Ao area. Thus, this became the foundation and establishment of the first church on Naga soil. In 1876, Clark established his first mission station at Molungyim­ chen in order to preach the Gospel to the Naga tribes, and many more came to be converted. But Clark had to move away with his converts to a new place, to establish a new village solely for the Christians because of pagan opposition. And the new village came to be known as Molungyimsen. In 1894, the mission was shifted again to Impur. This became the centre of the American Baptist mission work in Nagaland. In the meantime more Baptist mission­ ary families joined the Naga mission and the work spread beyond the Ao Naga tribe.39 A new mission centre for Naga work had been opened at Kohima and Wokha. In 1878, C.D. King and his wife were appointed to open a centre at Kohima for the Angami Nagas. The third mission centre in Naga Hills was set up at Wokha in 1885 for the Lotha Nagas.40 Although, the American Baptist missionary entered into the Lotha Naga area in 1885, they could not stay there for long. After their departure there was no permanent missionary for the Lothas for many years until the coming of a new mission­ ary couple, Mr and Mrs Howard Huston, in 1949. It has to be premised in the beginning that political and secu­ rity reasons and not so much evangelism had actuated the local authorities to invite and welcome the missionaries into the northeastern frontier. Since the Diwani of Bengal (1765) the colonial authorities came across these tribes who were virtually naked,

Introduction

29

lived by hunting and food gathering and constantly harassed the plainsmen in the border areas through raids, plunders, kidnapping and headhunting. They first came across the Garos and the Lus­ hais (Kuki) on the Bengal frontier and then the Nagas, Singphos and other tribes on the Assam frontier. As the British advanced into the interiors, more so after the successful beginning of tea plantation, the harassment of the border people as well as the white tea planters increased. As the sovereign of the area, it was the duty of the British to protect their subjects from these bloody perpetrations. But a number of violent expeditions into the hills failed to yield any substantial results. Then it was decided to invite the Christian missionaries to work among these tribes. The idea was that, once the tribes, who belonged to an unorganized and uninstitutionalized animist faith, were converted to Christian­ ity; they would not view the white man as hostile foreigners and would then succumb to peaceful co-existence. It was David Scott, a civil servant in Assam (1804-31), who first sought the assistance of the Christian missionaries in humanizing the Garos so as to prevent their outrages.41 Jenkins also confirmed, ‘To put an end to their outrages, there could be no other means than a reformation of their feelings and habits through Christian religion.’42 Although the ostensible catalyst of the Christian missionary works in hill areas of north-east was a civilizing mission, the real push was the ‘colonial conquest’ of the hill tribes. This is evident from the fact that even though the Charter Act of 1813 of the British parliament removed the restrictions on missionary activities in the colonies, the East India Company in India was opposed to such activities. It feared that this form of cultural intervention would disturb the peace in the colonies and eventually jeopardize the Company’s colonial interest. Yet the same Company’s government decided to invite and allow the missionaries to work among the hill tribes when its military might failed to vanquish the tribes which posed an incessant threat to its frontiers. The hypothesis was that the missionaries through evangelizing would ‘civilize’ the ‘savage tribes’ thereby ‘tame’ these ‘unruly’ elements. Thus even before the missionaries had any idea of the tribes, the colonialist had formu­ lated that the tribes were ‘savage’ and ‘uncivilized’ and the Western

30

Sajal Nag

Christian influence which was ‘civilized’ would be able to tame and conquer them culturally. The missionaries who came to the region therefore already had preconceived notion that, they were going to work among the ‘savages’, their task was to ‘civilize’ them and the way to do it was through evangelization. In other words, nakedness, archaic meth­ ods of food gathering, belief in animistic faith, kidnapping, raiding and ‘headhunting’ were already defined as features of savagery and uncivilization. Civilization was equalized with Western living and since the West professed the Christian faith, it was the only religion of the civilized. The missionaries came with this mindset of superior civilized people encountering lowborn savages and evangelization was ordained the white man’s burden which they had to fulfil. In their acts and behaviour towards the tribal, they displayed this patronizing attitude. As mentioned before,43 the early missionary texts pertaining to the tribes are full of pejorative and uncharitable references in terms defined by the colonial texts in Western parameters. Amongst the earliest missionaries to enter the Lushai hills were F.W. Savidge (Sap Upa) and J.H. Lorrain (Pu Buanga) who came to Aizawl in 1884, and stayed for a period of four years. When Savidge and Lorrain came to Aizawl in 1894, they brought with them the gospel and their medicines through which a lot of people lost their faith in their superstitious beliefs. When D.E. Jones (Zosaphluia) came to relieve them on 31 August 1897, Lorrain left in his care the bungalow they had built and their various missions. While he had had a little medical training, it was impossible for him to take on the monumental task of teaching the Lushais alone, and his load was lightened only with the arrival of Edwin Rowlands (Zosap­ thara) in 1898. By 1900, the two of them expanded their mission, with the more adventurous Zosapthara taking over the setting up of schools and the exploration of various villages. However, this successful partnership ended when Rowlands had to leave in 1908, after setting up several schools. The first missionary to visit the Mizo Hills was Rev. W. Williams of the Welsh Calvinistic Church in 1891. William Williams was a young Presbyterian missionary in the Khasi and Jaintia Hills which lie several hundred miles to

Introduction

31

the north of Lushai Hills. Among the Khasis there was already a very strong church of several thousands. He wanted to establish such a church among the Lushai and decided to travel south to visit the country. In early 1891, four months after the Mizos killed Captain H. Brown and a number of others; William Williams took an arduous journey to his Lushai Hills and stayed at Aizawl for a month. Williams found the Lushai Hills to be a potential field for missionary activities.44 It was due to his persuasion that the Welsh Presbyterian Assembly decided adopting Lushai Hills as a mission field. But the sudden death of Williams put the proposal under a shadow. About two years later, J.H. Lorrain and F.W. Savidge reached the Lushai Hills as missionaries sponsored by R. Arthington of Arthington Aborigine Mission, on 11 January 1894. Messrs Savidge and Lorraine came from Sadia (Assam) to Aizawl in 1891 with the avowed object of spreading the gospel amongst an aboriginal people. They failed to do anything in this respect for the first three years, as the Lushai Hills was still under a rebel­ lion against the British. The Lushais were very suspicious of all white men. The government also did not look upon their activities with favour as it felt any interference in tribal culture would incite further resentment against the British. The Lushai administration was already finding it very difficult to govern the tribals. While the administration was uncooperative, there was not much headway in their proselytization efforts either. The first thing that put the two missionaries at a disadvantage on their arrival was their igno­ rance. They learnt the Mizo language, reduced the Mizo language into written form with a simple Roman script and a phonetic spell­ ing, taught a number of Mizos reading and writing, translated the Gospel of Luke and the Bible into Mizo language and a number of other books based on the Bible for use in Sunday school. They also wrote a book, A Grammar and Dictionary of the Lushai Language, and side by side they worked for the propagation of Christianity. They preached mainly in the villages of north Mizoram. Messrs Savidge and Lorraine did their best in popularizing education among the Lushais. Their mission was at the centre of spreading education among Lushai boys and girls. It was a kind of a school. The missionaries went from door to door to apprise the Lushais of

32

Sajal Nag

the necessity of education. At first their centre was at Aizawl, but later they changed their site to nearby Saipuia’s old village. They were very popular among the Lushais and their services greatly helped in the spread of education in the Lushai Hills and also the development of the Lushai language. The two missionaries worked independently from 1894 but were called upon to move to Sadiya to work among the Karbis and Abors in Assam. As a result they had to quit Mizo Hills leaving their work to Rev. D.E. Jones, a Welsh missionary who arrived at Aizawl upon their departure on 31 August 31 1897. It also paved the way for the entry of a large number of missions of various denomina­ tions. Messrs Savidge and Lorraine had to leave the Lushai Hills under these circumstances in 1897. But they came back again and concentrated their energies on other philanthropic activities. They assisted the poor and oppressed hillmen and brought them before the authorities for redress. They helped the Lushais with medi­ cine and books. Their hard labour and loving care made a lasting impression upon the minds of the Lushais. For long the Lushais had looked upon the sahibs in awe for their martial prowess. But now they came in close touch with that dedicated couple and began to realize the virtues and kindness of the British people. The missionaries of Welsh Mission followed them. They started their work from Aizawl and Lungleh. Members of the Welsh Mission did their best in their capacities to improve the lot of the Lushai people. They were more interested in charitable works than prose­ lytizing. They were practical missionaries who realized that the time was not ripe for conversion. The Lushais were divided into so many clans and each clan had its separate language or dialect. But the dialect Dulien or Lushai was the lingua franca among the majority of the clans. But the Lushais never attempted to codify the rules of language. The missionaries of the Welsh Mission did this in 1897-8 by compiling a Lushai primer. This was so simple that a boy of ordinary intelligence could read fairly well after a fortnight’s instruction, and in a month could write an intelligent letter. But the Lushai primer compiled by the Welsh Mission used the method of transliteration adopted by Messrs Savidge

Introduction

33

and Lorraine in giving a written shape to the Lushai language. Messrs Savidge and Lorraine, on the other hand, were indebted to the writings of Captain Lewin. Lewin came in conflict with the Government of Bengal and gave up his lucrative job and dedicated his whole life to work among the Lushais. He wrote books on the Lushais to draw the attention of the philanthropic people in the West. It was he who first compiled a small dictionary of Lushai words. We have already mentioned that the Welsh Presbyterian Mission came to Lushai Hills under the leadership of Rev. D.E. Jones and Rev. E. Rowlands. The Welsh Mission established pri­ mary schools attached to the church at Aizawl and Lungleh. After the missionaries had prepared the ground the Lushai administra­ tion established three schools for education of the Lushai children in 1896-7 at Aizawl, Lungleh and Demagiri. But the standard of teaching was always higher in the Welsh Mission School at Aizawl. The students were taught Lushai in the English character. The stu­ dents of the age group 8-12 years were higher in the roll strength of the school register than the age group 13-18 years. These schools disseminated knowledge to young and impressionable minds. The London Baptist Mission Society set foot in south Mizoram in 1903. The Lakher Pioneer Mission originated in Mizoram itself in 1907 under Reginald A. Lorrain. Later the organization was renamed as the Lakher Independent Evangelical Church. This private mis­ sion continued up to 1925. Very soon Messrs Savidge and Lorraine were joined by the latter’s brother and his wife in their enterprise. The Lushai gradually found their presence reassuring as they pro­ vided invaluable medical and humanitarian services. But as far as conversion to Christianity was concerned there was little to be optimistic. The first conversion took place on 26 June 1899, under the Welsh Presbyterian Mission when two men, named Khuma and Khara, were formally baptized. But since then progress was again insignificant. By the time of Independence in India, half the population of tribal north-east India had converted to various denominations of Christianity. However, it has to be said the com­ pletion of conversion of these tribals into Christianity took place in India after the leadership of the churches were taken over by the

34

Sajal Nag

tribals, themselves, with the departure of the white missionary. A social revolution that was started by the European missionaries was completed by the indigenous people, themselves.

Notes 1. Niall Ferguson, The Mission: How Britain Made the Modern World, Penguin Books, Victoria, 2008, pp. 113-61. 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid. 5. Andrew Porter, Religion versus Empire: British Protestant Missionaries and Overseas Expansion 1700-1914, Manchester University Press, Manchester and New York, 2004; Gerald StuddertKennedy, Providence and the Raj: Imperial Mission and Missionary Imperialism, Sage London, 1998; Stephen Neil, Colonialism and Christian Missions, McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, 1966, p. 414; and passim for the debate; Laldena, Christian Missions and Colonialism: A Study of Missionary Movement in North East India with Particular Reference of Manipur and Lushai Hills 1894-1947, Vandrame Institute, Shillong, 1988, p. 4. 6. Laldena, Christian Missions and Colonialism: A Study of Missionary Movement in North East India with Particular Reference of Manipur and Lushai Hills 1894-1947, Vandrame Institute, Shillong, 1988, pp. 6-7. 7. Ferguson, op. cit., pp. 113-61. 8. Francis G. Hutchinson, Th e Illusion of Permanence: British Im­ perialism in India, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1967, p. 3. 9. Ibid. 10. Eric Stokes, The English Utilitarian and India, Oxford, Delhi, 1989, p. 34. 11. E. Daniel Potts, British Baptist Missionaries in India 1837: The History of Serampore and Its Missions, Cambridge, 1967, pp. 174-95. 12. Eric Stokes, The English Utilitarian and India, Oxford, Delhi, 1989, p. 35. 13. Stephen Neill, A History of Christianity in India, 1707-1858, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1985, p. 549. 14. J.V. Hluna, Education and Missionaries in Mizoram, Spectrum, Guwahati, p. 38.

Introduction

35

15. Robert D. Baird, Religion in Modern India, Manohar, New Delhi, 1995 (3rd revd. edn), p. 227. 16. S.D.B. Vad Kumpadan Paul, Missionaries of Christ: A Basic Course in Missiology, Vendrame Institute, Shillong, 2006, p. 54. 17. Nimai Sadhan Bose, I ndian Awakening and Bengal, Firma KLM, Calcutta, 1960. Reprinted 1990, p. 20. 18. Arthur Mayhew, Christianity and the Government of India: An Examination of the Christian Forces at Work in the Administration of India and of the Mutual Relations of the British Government and Christian Missions, 1600-1920, Faber & Gwyer, London, 1929, p. 50. 19. Eric Stokes, op cit., p. xiv. 20. Robert D. Baird, Religion in Modern India, Manohar, New Delhi, 1995 (3rd revd. edn), p. 228. 21. Ibid. 22. Atul Chandra Gupta, ‘Introduction’ to Atul Chandra Gupta (ed.), Studies in Bengal Renaissance, National Council of Education, Bengal, Calcutta, 1958, revd. edn 1977, pp. xi-xii. 23. Ram Mohun Roy in an essay in the Brahmans Sevadhi (1821) cited in Atul Chandra Gupta (ed.), ibid. 24. Nimai Sadhan Bose, op. cit., p. 38. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid., p. 39. 27. Atul Chandra Gupta, ‘Introduction’ to Atul Chandra Gupta (ed.), op. cit., pp. xi-xii. 28. J.M. Morris, The Story of Our Foreign Mission, Presbyterian Church of Wales, Liverpool, Hugh Evans & Sons, Liverpool, 1930, p. 77. 29. J. Lloyd, On Every High Hill, Presbyterian Church of Wales, Liverpool, Hugh Evans & Sons, Liverpool, 1930, p. 24. 30. T. Oldham, Calcutta Review, vol. XXVII, September 1856, p. 79. 31. W. Pettigrew, Forty Years in Manipur, Assam: An Account of the Works of Rev. and Mrs. William Pettigrew (1934), Reprinted by J.M. Solo and K. Mahangthei, Christian Literature Centre, Imphal, 1986. 32. Lal Dena, op. cit., p. 35. 33. Lieut. H. Yule, ‘Notes on the Khasi Hills and People’. Journal of Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. XII, pt. II, July-Dec. 1894, p. 612. 34. P.H. Moore, ‘Need of a Native Ministry’ in Papers and Discussions of Jubilee Conference of the American Baptist Missionary Union held in Nowgong, 18-29 December 1886, Guwahati, Reprinted in Spectrum, Guwhati, 1992, p. 13.

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Sajal Nag

35. C.B. Firth, An Introduction to Indian Church History, ISPCK, Pune, 1985, p. 267. 36. American Baptist Churches—USA, Extract from Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia. 37. Angelina Lotsuro, The Nagas: A Missionary Challenge, Vendrame Institute Publications, Shillong, 2000, p. 45. 38. F.S. Downs, The Mighty Works of God: A Brief History of the Council of Baptist Churches in North East India: The Mission Period 1836­ 1950, Christian Literature Centre, Guwahati, 1971, pp. 63-4. 39. Angelina Lotsuro, op. cit., p. 45. 40. F.S. Downs, op. cit., p. 67. 41. H.K. Barpujari, The American Baptists Missionaries and North East India, 1836-1900: A Documentary Study, Spectrum, Guwahati, 1986, p. xiii. 42. Ibid., pp. xiii-xx. 43. Morris, op cit., p. 77. 44. Revd V.L. Zaithang, From Headhunting to Soul Hunting, Synod Publications, Aizawl, 1981, pp. 11-16.

CHAPTER 1

Christianity and Cultural Changes among the Lotha Nagas ADANI NGULLIE

The work of Christian missionaries has brought several changes in Naga society over the years. As is widely known, the Lotha Nagas were isolated from the rest of the country. They lived a simple village life and had kept their traditional social customs and culture essentially unchanged. However, with the coming of Christianity and with the imposition of the alien British administration, a change began to take place. This essay analyses some of the important changes that took place in Lotha Naga society. The study will have two sections. The missionaries were not ready to adjust with other frame­ works of social, cultural and religious behaviour. That is why they insisted, from the very beginning, to substitute the old Naga culture and social values for those of their own. To quote R.R. Shimray: One of the most colorful ingredients of the Naga village states was its community life. The Naga individual knew no other life, except com­ munity life. They work in groups, eat in groups and sleep in groups. There was neither individual cultivation, nor harvest, neither individual house building, no feast of merit by the individual alone.… The individual has no existence apart from the community.1

The people led a simple and contented life as their wants were limited. The community life was full of joy, which they shared together. The spread of Christianity and imposition of new culture badly affected ancient Naga social, religious and cultural values. The missionaries asked or rather forced the Nagas to do away

38

Adani Ngullie

with all the traditional cultural values, because these cultural values were considered ‘heathen’ practices and ‘unchristian’. The missionaries insisted that the new converts must not participate in a feast and further prohibited them to take part in any traditional festivals and ceremonies. Clark wrote: May 7, 1888: At a called church meeting the case of Idisungba and oth­ ers who had participated in a feast at the house of Idisungba’s son was called and inquired into. January 4, 1890: There was a convent meeting and Sunday January 5 the Lord’s Supper was celebrated. Also, Kumzuk was suspended for killing animals in sacrifices during his wife’s sickness. March 1 and 2, 1891: There was a covenant meeting on evening of Satur­ day, March 1. And a committee was appointed to ascertain if any church members had participated in a religious feast at Kimazungba’s house because of his illness. Those who have participated confessed and asked forgiveness, the church had suspended [them] from church membership and [they were] was restored to membership on confession.2

That was how the missionaries made strict laws to govern the new Naga converts, and how they forced the early converts to abstain from participating in feast and traditional practices. The British officials tried to preserve some of the important customs of the Nagas, but in strong contrast has been the attitude of the American Baptist Mission. This statement is supported by J.P. Mills’ views: Realizing that on the preservation of customs developed exactly to fit the environment and tested by centuries of use depends the whole fabric of tribal society, the government has to ensure that such change as must inevitably come shall not be destructive in its suddenness. In strong contrast has been the attitude of the American Baptist Mission. As religion plays a part in every Naga ceremony and as that religion is not Christianity every ceremony must go. Such ceremonies, as the great Feasts of Merit, at which the religious aspect is far less important than the social, have not been remodelled on Christian lines, but have been utterly abolished among converts.3

The spread of Christianity and imposition of new civilization badly affected ancient Nagas’ social, religious and cultural val­ ues. The Nagas were asked or rather forced by the missionaries

Christianity and Cultural Changes

39

to do away with all their traditional cultural values. Verrier Elwin remarked: ‘The activities of the Baptist Mission among the Nagas have demoralized the people, destroying tribal solidarity and forbidden the joys and feasting, the decoration and romance of communal life.’4 J.P. Mills further remarked: Of the material arts in these hills wood carving is the chief. It is dis­ played on the houses of those who have given the great feasts of merit, on the ‘morung’ posts of the Aos, Konyaks and Lothas, and on the big xylophones of the Aos. This is doomed to extinction as the power of the mission increases. Feasts of merit are forbidden among them, and no attempt is made to induce rich Christians to decorate their houses in the old way. No Christian boy is allowed to go through his time in the ‘morung’ and they are not built any more in Christian villages. In such villages, too, the old xylophones can be seen rotting in the jungle. The suppression of the ‘morung’, in which young animists learn to be useful citizens, is unwarranted by any good reason that I have heard. It is a part of the tendency to abolish old things just because they are old, and sub­ stitute for the strong communal feelings that enabled the tribes to survive for so long an individualism that is really foreign to them. Not only is this individualism wrapped up with strong emphasis on personal salvation; it is also the direct and natural reaction against the destruction of all the old things that mattered in village life and all the old expressions of the artistic and social genius of the tribe. An animist puts his village before himself. A Baptist puts himself before his village. A ‘civilized’ Naga is apt to call customary discipline restraint, and many of them are eager to leave their villages and live free of all control.5

The American Baptist missionaries infused into their under­ standing of Christian values acquired from their upbringing in the southern Baptist states of America, values that clashed very strik­ ingly with Naga culture and traditions. They saw the Naga way of life from their own Western perspective as culturally inferior, intellectually backward and religiously superstitious. Thus, with­ out in-depth understanding of the Naga culture, the missionaries put a stop to several Naga cultures which they considered as hea­ then practices and unchristian. Mr Yanarao, church member of the First Lotha Baptist, narrated that in the newly converted Chris­ tian Okotso village, the Christian missionaries ordered the new

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converts to collect all their war regalia, ancient weapons, orna­ ments, etc., and then had them consigned to a bonfire. It was believed that, this led to the complete loss of cultural values in that newly converted Christian village. The Baptist missionaries, in general, preached strict Christian teachings and the environment in which they were brought up in their native places to some extent affected the teachings. They were not willing to allow certain cus­ toms to remain.6 Clark insisted his tiny congregation of 15 Naga followers to observe Sunday as a day of rest; this directly interfered with the rhythm and routine of Naga village life. Any interference with that rhythm undermined a village’s economic functioning, not to mention its ritual solidarity. Thus, when the Baptist missionaries came face to face with the Nagas, the two already conditioned by their own cultural backgrounds, could not compromise in many fields. One of the important things the Nagas could not compromise on was the drinking of rice beer, which was central to their traditional feasts. Although the government and the mission agreed concern­ ing education and respecting some areas of Naga culture, they clashed over how much should be preserved, altered or abolished outright. Interested primarily in maintaining peace and security, the government aimed to interfere with native customs as little as possible. However the missionaries felt differently.7 J.P. Mills in his report mentioned that to any one who, unable to reject some of the most hallowed passages in scripture, regards fermented liquor in moderation as not only harmless but beneficial, the strong prohibition policy of the mission cannot but seem a grave mistake. Few of its advocates attempt to justify it from scripture. They use the arguments that brought the Volstead Act into being. Such an abstention from fermented drink became among converts that teetotalism is often regarded as the outstanding mark of a Christian.8

In fact, the neophytes developed such obsession that soku­ eyui (literally drinkers) came to be popularly associated with non-Christians and the new Lotha Naga converts regarded the non-Christians as soku-eyui meaning drinkers.

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One basic Naga institution discouraged by the Baptist mis­ sionaries presumably because of their associations with their old beliefs were the feasts of merit. As mentioned earlier, great quantities of food supplies were expended during these feasts of merit and they occasioned much drinking and merrymaking. Economically, too, they were important since they permitted an equitable distribution of perishable food supplies that, without adequate means of preservation, would otherwise get spoiled. J.P. Mills went on to say that: Such ceremonies as the great feasts of merit, at which the whole village, rich and poor alike, is entertained, and of which the religious aspect is far less important than social, have not been remodeled on Christian lines, but have been utterly abolished among converts. The suppression among Baptists of the ancient feasts in which all joined is not only a loss to the would-be hosts, but to the village as whole, and not least the poor, who always get their full share of good cheer at animist festivals. To abolish these feasts is to do away with the very few occasions on which the awful monotony of life is broken. They are, too, the natural Naga way of distrib­ uting wealth. I have heard a Baptist teacher boast that his granaries were so full of the store of years that some of the grain was black with age. Had he been an animist that grain would not have been left to rot uselessly but would have been eaten by his fellow villagers.9

The converts slowly become estranged from their kinsfolk. They were prohibited by their religion (Christianity) from taking part in the ritual practices and ceremonies that were associated with the worship of spirits.10 During the big religious ceremonies and feasts, singing and dancing were indulged in with full dress worn. To quote J.P. Mills: These have been entirely suppressed among the Ao, Lotha and Sema Christians, the men of whom wear no ornaments at all, having stripped their beads from the necks, their ivory armlets from their arms and even the cotton wool from their ears. The women are more conservative and still often wear their beads, though I doubt if a girl would actually wear her ornaments at a mission school.11

From the various evidences it was found that, the missionaries insisted the replacement of traditional dress with Western dress or

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Assamese dress. The early converts had to wear Assamese clothes and later converts wore European attire. This view was clearly supported by the report of Dr Clark: The missionaries wished the Christians to opt the Assamese dhoti cloth and coats for the men, and sarris for the girls and women. They liked the idea but said they were not ready to act on it yet. That year we gave each school boy a dhoti cloth, and insisted he wear it in school, but the moment school was out, off would come the dhoti cloth to be dragged down the village street to the boy’s home.12

Ms Monsali Lotha who did her schooling at Jorhat Mission School narrated, ‘The missionaries insisted that all the girls studying in the mission schools must wear sari. In other words it was made mandatory for all of us to wear Assamese clothes. Using of traditional dress was not encouraged in the schools.’13 Christian women adopted the use of saris, blouses and petticoats, while men began to wear pants and shirts. J.P. Mills rightly remarked that the suppression of the wearing of all ornaments or tribal finery, of danc­ ing, of singing (except hymns), of village feasts and of all artistic outlet is spreading an unspeakable drabness over village life. Old songs and old traditions are being rapidly forgotten. Told year in and year out that the past histories, all the strivings, all the old customs of his tribe are wholly evil the Naga comes to despise his own race, and no night of the soul is blacker than that.14

One significant change that took place among Christian boys and girls who attended the Christian mission schools were that they gradually stopped using their own traditional attires and subsequently replaced it by eastern dresses. The European style of haircut was made mandatory for the boys. J.P. Mills had observed that, ‘foreign dress is spreading slowly, but steadily. For this the blame must fall both on certain departments of government, who allow their employees to wear it, and on missionaries whose active encouragement amounted to connivance.’15 He found that a Naga with education and a smattering of superficial knowledge considered himself

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entitled to possess a pair of shorts, while a suit complete with a watch chain and Trilby hat almost corresponds to a doctor’s robes. The cus­ tom is bad from every view. It entails waste of money where money is hard to find. It encourages dirt, since no Naga can afford the changes [of clothes] he ought to have in the damp heat of Assam. It spreads disease in two main ways. Adults become more liable to chills and phthiriasis since they do not change their wet clothes, and children who are carried against the wet ‘shirt’ instead of against their mothers’ warm backs suffer as result. From the artistic point of view it is especially and utterly to be condemned. To substitute soiled and poor quality Western clothes, or more often a caricature of them, for the exceedingly picturesque Naga dress is an aesthetic crime. More of the body is covered up, but I have yet to find that this leads to stricter morality.16

The Nagas simply copied the Western form of worship, way of life, living, dress, etc. Practically, the Christian missionaries called for total cultural transformation. One important finding of the study is that some Naga girls who spent sometime in the mission schools upon returning to their native villages refused to demean themselves by working in the fields and gradually started to show aversion towards their own cultures, values, attires, etc. This led to the decay and eventual dis­ appearance of several Naga cultures and traditions. Some young Nagas in schools took life very easy; they regarded education as something that was going to make him outstanding in life without even working hard. To quote J.P. Mills: Very rarely indeed does a Naga regard education as something which is going to make him more fitted for his ordinary life; he regards it as some­ thing which will fit him for a very different life, and he expects that life to be offered to him in the form of a government post—aptly described to me once as ‘sitting-and-eating job’. When the boys apply to me for schol­ arship my custom is to ask them what they intend to do when they have finished their education, and they reply almost invariably is ‘I hope the government will find me job’. The result is half-hearted youths, unwill­ ing to go back to the village life of their fathers and looking in vain for employment which they consider suitable to their talents.17

Without doubt we may say that the work culture which was once the hallmark of the ancient Nagas was finally found to lose

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its importance with the introduction of education and subsequent spread of Christianity in Naga Hills. The impact of Christianity was not seen only in the changed cultural and social values, but it was seen in the material culture, too. It was seen in personal cleanliness—the houses were more hygienic with a better atmosphere all round. It cannot be denied that, the new converts became cleaner, more hygienic and had a better lifestyle. We find a number of references made by Christian missionaries particularly on cleanliness and better lifestyles. S.A. Perrine stated: The Christians keep their person and homes and food comparatively clean, perhaps I should say, cleaner than the heathen. They do not eat rotten flesh, and the money they once spent for drink, opium and false worship is making them prosperous. They have adopted a mode of burial and more decent dress than the heathen. They are becoming more con­ scientious in the relation of the sexes. The power of an endless life seen in the lives of these rude and imperfect Nagas is making a large impression on the tribe.18

In pre-colonial Lotha Naga society, they buried the dead near their houses. In some villages children were buried inside the house near the main entrance. As for the Ao Nagas the burial system was very different from the Lothas. They did not bury the dead bodies but kept them on a raised split bamboo platform and let them rot away. Mr Yanarao said: When we were studying at Impur Mission School we used to pass through Ungama village (one of the biggest village in Ao area). Near the village footpath, dead bodies were laid on a raised split bamboo platform, and the rotten flesh was dripping from the corpse. The smell was just horrible; the worst thing was that, the village pigs were seen enjoying as it was for them a great treat or feast. After seeing this, I stopped taking pork for many years.19

The missionaries emphasized upon hygienic living and bet­ ter living style. At the First Association held in Naga Hills, S.A. Perrine explained; ‘burial of the dead was thoroughly discussed and during the meeting Pitor, the new little boy, died and after

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much talk was buried underground at Molung, the first Ao to be buried’.20 Gradually, the new converts started to adopt the burial system. The Christian community made a village cemetery. Both young and old were buried in the village cemetery. The ancient Naga houses were poorly ventilated, there were no chimney, and so the houses were filled with smoke. The domesti­ cated animals moved freely among the human beings. However, a definite change was noticed here. This change towards healthier houses with air circulation, ventilation and proper lighting could be explained as a manifestation of Christian influence. This new innovation was no doubt adopted through the gradual spread of skill in carpentry and the Christian way of life. It was easily seen that, the very concept of housing and living changed on account of the influence of Christian missionaries. For the first time, not util­ ity alone but beauty too became the criterion of a house. Windows made more light and air possible to come into a room. The Chris­ tian houses stood distinct from the other houses in the village; they were neater and better in appearance. The Christian influence was also visible in the equipment that furnished the houses. Houses of Christians were better equipped than those of others.21 For this, J.P. Mills critically stated: Nagas who have taken wholeheartedly to foreign customs often build houses resembling the worst type of ‘shack’. A Naga house as all fittingly built should seems to have grown out the landscape. The corrugated iron roofs of the ‘foreign’ houses are blots upon it. They are expensive and stuffy. The fashion has been encouraged, I fear, by the Baptist chapels, which as artistic productions are execrable, and widely spread as they are, tend to kill the Nagas’ unconscious but innate sense of architectural fitness. The new model of houses, which were both higher and healthier, replaced the old type of houses.22

The house and its surroundings were kept clean and a separate shelter for animals was maintained. The stress on cleanliness both at the personal and community levels had considerable impact on traditional taboos. The people gradually realized that human beings are more important than observing taboos and started adopting an entirely new way of life. It was further observed

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that, the Christians were cleaner and healthier than the non­ Christians.23 Thus, by studying the various aspects of Lotha Naga society before and after the arrival of the missionaries, it is possible to infer that missionary influence contributed a major share of the changes and development therein. There were many facets of Naga society and culture where changes and a new outlook can be attributed directly to the missionaries.

Notes 1. R.R. Shimray, Origin and Cultures of Nagas, Somson Publications, New Delhi, p. 121. 2. Original Note written by Dr Clark (1888). 3. Mills, ‘Remarks in the Census Report on the Naga Tribes’, Baptist Missionary Review, September 1941, vol. XIVII, no. 9, p. 350. 4. Chandrika Singh, The Naga Society, Manas Publications, New Delhi, 2008, pp. 115-16. 5. Mills, op. cit., p. 351. 6. Clark, op. cit., p. 17. 7. Th. R. Tiba, Conversion of the Maram Nagas to Christianity: 1949­ 2006, p. 7. 8. Mills, op. cit., p. 350. 9. Ibid. 10. J. Troisi, ‘Christianity among the Santals’, in S.M. Channa (ed.), The Christian Mission, Christianity and Tribal Religion, Cosmo Publications, New Delhi, 2012, p. 192. 11. J.P. Mills, op. cit., p. 350. 12. A Letter Relating to 1st Association held in Naga Hills, 12-14 March 1899, p. 25. 13. Interview with Mrs. Monsali Lotha, 9 September 2009. 14. Mills, op. cit., p. 351. 15. Ibid., p. 349. 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid., p. 345. 18. A report of S.A. Perrine in The Assam Mission of the American Baptist Missionary Union. Minutes, Resolutions and Historical reports of the Fifth Triennial Conference (1899), Calcutta, Baptist Mission Press, 1899.

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19. Interview with Mr. Yanarao Ngullie, retired government teacher, Okotso, Nagaland, 9 December 2008. 20. ‘A Letter Relating’, op. cit., p. 24. 21. Nalini Natarajan, op. cit., pp. 306-7. 22. Mills, op. cit., p. 349. 23. F.S. Downs, ‘Faith & Life Style: How Christianity was Understood by 19th Century Converts in North East India’, Bangalore Theological Forum, vol. XIV, no. 1, January 1982, pp. 20-43.

CHAPTER 2

Christian Missionaries in the Plains of Barak Valley AMOL SINHA

It is interesting that the Christian missionaries who had come to north-east India had actually arrived with the objective of converting the plains people and not the hill tribes. While they faced abject failure in the plains, they, on the other hand, had a massive success in converting the hill tribes. The American Baptists first arrived in the plains of Brahmaputra Valley from where they moved into the Naga Hills to compensate for the failure they faced in the plains. Another plain in north-east India that the Christian missionaries ventured to was the Barak Valley plain. In these plains it was the Welsh Presbyterian missionaries who came to Christianize the plainsmen but experienced similar failure. But when they moved to the Lushai Hills, they tasted massive success, converting almost 85 per cent of the Lushai (Mizo) tribals. The present essay discusses the endeavours and experiences of the Welsh Presbyterian missionaries in the plains of Barak Valley in some detail.

The Advent of the Welsh Presbyterian Missionaries in Barak Valley In 1851 the first Welsh Presbyterian Missionary Rev. William Pryse arrived in the valley to visit the princely state of Manipur with an intention to undertake Christian missionary work there. But he returned back from Jiribam, the entry point to

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Manipur from Cachar side and settled down in nearby Silchar for expanding his work. He stayed in Silchar, the capital town, for a few years and in 1856, decided to open a school there. This was the beginning of missionary operations in the Cachar district of Barak Valley. In 1863, he also opened a high school in Silchar, with the enrolment of 150 pupils. During this time Captain Stewart was the government agent in Cachar district and gave full support to the work of Pryse. From 1861 to 1866, William Pryse visited many places in this valley and extended his mission as far as North and South Cachar Hills. But unfortunately the general assembly in July 1867 unexpectedly terminated William Pryse from his missionary work, because he had no connection with the mission. Due to the shortage of persons to serve as missionaries in Sylhet, the general director’s meeting held in December 1872 resolved to discontinue the work in the plains. After 15 years of abandonment, the general assembly of Aberdare held on 13-15 July 1885, decided to resume missionary operations in the plains without delay. Rev. and Mrs J. Pengwern Jones and Miss Sarah A. John were sent and they arrived in Sylhet on 28 November 1887. In 1892, mission work in Sylhet was started by the missionaries, Rev. and Mrs J. Pengwern Jones, Rev. Dr T.J. Jones, Miss Elizabeth Williams and Miss Brownlow. They were assisted by Miss S. Das and Daniel Ghose, who were evangelists. On 15 December 1892, two lady missionaries, Miss Laura Evans and Elizabeth A. Roberts, also arrived in Sylhet. Thus the Welsh Presbyterian missionaries opened their second mission field in the Sylhet and Cachar plains. The Sylhet Mission Station had already been set up by William Pryse and his wife in 1851. He began his missionary operation in the plains on somewhat similar lines to those followed in the Hills. The first four converts, who were baptized in May 1852, were Gour Mohan, Baburam, Bishonath and his mother, Sibi. Pryse adopted various methods to carry on the mission work like public debates between him and the Mohammedan maulvis and Hindu gurus. Essays with questions and answers were circulated and prizes provided by the European sympathizers in Sylhet. Pryse had also established an orphanage at Sylhet.

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A New Station in Silchar The second Mission station in the plains was opened in Silchar, the chief town of Cachar district, Assam in 1893 by Rev. Dr T.J. Jones, Miss Laura Evans and Miss Elizabeth Williams. They opened it after a number of missionaries visited Cachar and on their report the district committee unanimously agreed to recommend directors to establish a new station in Silchar.1 Before they left Sylhet in the later part of May 1892, Rev. Pengwern recommended the opening of another mission station in Sylhet district. Rev. T.J. Jones wanted to include Cachar in this circle of possibilities, especially as William Pryse had previously done some pioneering work there.2 For choosing the best place to establish a new station, a committee consisting of Dr T.J. Jones, Mrs Williams, E.A. Roberts, Miss Laura Evans and Daniel Ghose, the Bengali evangelist, was appointed. They left Sylhet on 29 January 1893, and visited many places like Maulvi Bazaar, Hubiganj, Balaganj, Karimganj. At last, they came to Silchar and stayed for a week. They sold 600 scriptures and also preached the word of God in the market and at a mela being held in Silchar. Towards the end of 1892 and the beginning of 1893, three Indian aborigine missionaries, namely Rev. J.H. Lorrain, Rev. F.W. Savidge and Rev. William Pettigrew, were in Silchar. They actually came to Silchar not for establishing a missionary centre there but for permission to enter Lushai Hills and Manipur. They requested the Welsh missionaries to stay with them. These missionaries con­ vinced them that they were in Silchar only for a short period, ‘We get our wages for working amongst the hill and mountain tribes’.3 They also informed them that they would welcome the Welsh missionaries to come to work in Silchar. They were with the mis­ sionaries till the end of the year 1893 when Messrs Savidge and Lorrain went to Lushai and Mr Pettigrew to Manipur. They helped the missionaries in different ways like preaching the word of Christ in the bazaar and at local melas.4 The Arthington Mission began to function after the arrival of William Pettigrew in Manipur in 1894. It was named after Robert Arthington, a millionaire from Leeds in

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UK. The mission was purely a private organization and Arthington himself was its sole patron.5 The commission visited Rampoor Tea Estate which was situ­ ated eight miles away from Silchar. At Rampoor, there were many Christian coolies; they were employed on the tea estate. The tea garden manager, Mr Ross Jones, a Welshman who came from Aberystwyth, was very keen and desirous for the mission field. He wanted to appoint a teacher to live in the garden and offered five rupees a month towards his wages. It was decided that Daniel Ghose, who had been there for some time, connected with the work at Duldulley in Sylhet, should go to Rampoor for a period and carry on the work of teacher and evangelist. In 1893 there were in Rampoor 21 communicants, five candidates, and 29 chil­ dren, making a total of 55 in the church. There were 36 children in the day school—21 boys and 16 girls. There were 40 girls under instruction in Silchar along with 26 boys.6 In 1893 on 24 February, the commission came back to Syl­ het. The missionary committee of Sylhet decided to select Silchar for the second mission station in the plains. This proposal was approved by the directors in Wales.7 The missionary committee decided to move Miss Elizabeth William from Sylhet and send the new missionary, Miss Laura Evans, with her to Silchar. It is worthy to mention here that according to the report of Rev. J. Pengwern Jones when the Welsh missionaries were in Sylhet they established a school for the lowest castes—the shoemakers, the sweepers8 and the tea garden labourers. They thought of improving their lives every which way. In Cachar, they did not change their policy. Therefore, first of all, they turned their attention towards the improvement of the Christian settlement of Rampoor.9 There, they founded a school which was used as chapel by the Christian tea garden labourers. But the school had fallen into a condition of neglect and was almost roofless. Welsh missionaries repaired the school and in return they demanded help of the tea garden labourers for missionary work. Accordingly, missionaries con­ tributed enough to repair the building. They opened the school not only for the Christian communities but also for the people of other religions. Christian religious services were held in the

Christian Missionaries in the Plains of Barak Valley

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school rooms. Dr Jones said that when he went to Rampoor, he catechized the children and he had been often astonished how well they knew many of the teachings of the Bible. Some of the Hindus answered quite as well as the Christian children. In this way the school at Rampoor did much to evangelize the children connected with the tea garden and through them missionaries hoped that the gospel of Jesus would influence the parents and their families.10 The tea garden manager of Rampoor, Ross Jones helped the Welsh missionaries in their work to convert local people. Every Sunday they went preaching three times and one more time every week. One of the members preached in the Indo-Aryan dialect, and the evangelist preached in Bengali. Occasionally, Daniel Ghose went across the river Dolu to a village where a number of Manipuris lived. After Daniel Ghose and N. Sircar took the charge of Rampoor, services were conducted among the Christians in Bengali and Odiya. Thus, Rampoor emerged to be a significant centre of Christian influence.

The First Three Missionaries in Silchar The first three missionaries in Silchar were, namely, Rev. Dr. T.J. Jones, MA PhD, Miss Elizabeth Williams and Miss Laura Evans. Dr Jones moved to Silchar from Sylhet before the end of March 1893 and Miss Williams and Miss Evans joined Dr Jones at Silchar in the month of May 1893. Among the three missionaries, Miss Laura Evans did not have an academic background. But she had undergone training in Liverpool and London when she heard the call of the mission field. Her health was not good, the doctors had told her that she would not survive for more than a year if she ventured to go out to India. But she went out nevertheless and spent 55 years as a missionary in India.11 Regarding the object of the missionaries, Rev. Dr Jones said: We have also a day school for poor children, which was opened soon after we came here (Silchar). The attendance varies, but we now think that it has taken a more settled form. At the end of the year we had 26 names on the books, but it has increased since the children in this school are taught reading, writing and arithmetic and are instructed in the scriptures, and

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are taught verses of the Bible. Our object is to keep up its religious and moral aspect and make it helpful to the Sunday School which is held in the same building, and thus to became an aid to the evangelization of the poor children of Silchar.12

Silchar is the chief town of Cachar, a division of the province of Assam lying to the east of Sylhet. In 1894, the population of Cachar was over 3,13,000; that of Silchar being about 7,000. According to the statistic received from Dr Jones, there were in Silchar eight communicants, four candidates and 10 children; in the Sunday School 50. The day schools were attended by 86 pupils. The church collection in Silchar was 129 rupees (about £12-18). The missionaries are assisted by an evangelist. B.N. Sarkar, and by Babu Nilkamal Das, a medical assistant at the military hospital.13 Dr Jones reported that in 1894, a mela was held for one month. The Europeans also held horse races. For these two occasions large numbers of people gathered. They sold a good number of books there. On the mela ground a little shop made of bamboo mats had been erected. They kept there some books for sale. The mission­ ary ladies had charge of this shop. They sold nearly 900 copies of portions of the scriptures. A gospel meeting was held on the mela ground. They got large numbers of listeners there. Soon after the mela at Silchar was over, another mela was held at Karimganj. There they held several meetings daily and sold between 600 and 700 gospels and other portions of the Bible. On three nights mis­ sionaries showed magic lantern scenes from the life of Christ.14

Evangelism and Church ‘Planting’ of Welsh Missionaries in Barak Valley From the very beginning for evangelism the Welsh Presbyterian missionaries adopted a policy of indigenous leadership. So they trained the Indian Christians to preach the gospel. For evangelistic works they opened schools, conducted extra classes for Bible reading and hymns. Young men and women went out in groups from their respective churches to conduct evangelistic campaigns in different parts of the land including opening of the home mission fund among others. In 1935-6, the Presbyterian Church

Christian Missionaries in the Plains of Barak Valley

55

of Wales sent a commission to India and they gave the following suggestion: ‘One suggestion we made in India was that individual churches should regard the evangelization of the near villages as their special responsibility, and that they should not depend entirely on the labour of paid evangelists.’15 The British government indirectly encouraged the mission­ aries’ policy of evangelization, which is well evident from the words of British prime minister Lord Palmerstone in 1854. He said that ‘it is not only our duty but it is our interest to promote the diffusion of Christianity as far as possible throughout the length and breadth of India’.16 The British government encouraged the missionaries in their education schemes when they knew that basically it was being used as a means of proselytization. Mission­ aries evangelized the people through the dedicated teachers. The establishment of schools and introduction of literature was seen as the only plan to answer to the good purpose of evangelization. In the words of Cunville ‘the translation of the Bible marks a very important missiological event in the life of the church. In the years before 1891, almost all converts were school pupils. After 1891, the lives of those who lived outside the school were affected and they become Christian’.17 In Sylhet district, William Pryse used various methods of evangelism. He organized public debates between himself and the Mohammedan maulvis, and the Hindu gurus, established an orphanage, and arranged essays on Biblical subjects in a question-answer format.18 Pengwern Jones carried on this work by organizing workshop services in the chapel and held open-air meetings in various parts of the town. The first three missionaries, Dr. T.J. Jones, Miss Elizabeth Willaims and Laura Evans, and their successors were very active in evangelistic work and church plant­ ing in the Cachar district of Barak Valley. In 1893, Dr T.J. Jones, in his report, clearly said that they (the missionaries) endeavoured to present Jesus Christ as a saviour to the people in their own lan­ guage and in English.19 To those who attend their meetings they delivered the gospel in the way of addresses or lectures on ethical or semi-religious subjects. They arranged weekly meetings wherein they taught different subjects such as the version of Christ, the

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work of the Holy Spirit, faith, love, hope and the different books of the New Testament, chapter-wise. Initially, the Sunday service was held at 7:30 a.m. But later they scheduled it at 4:30 p.m. The meetings were held at the mission room. In 1893, Miss Elizabeth Williams, in one of her letters, reported on the church meeting in the following manner: As in hundreds of places in Wales, so here in Silchar, India, a society (church meeting) is held every Wednesday night, and it is carried on much in the same way. We meet in a room in Dr Jones’ house. A hymn book and a copy of the Bible are placed in the hand of each one that enters, so that we may read together the chapter which is read at the beginning. Then the little children (our orphans) repeat their verses, and afterwards those who have grown up.20

In 1899, Dr T.J. Jones, in his annual report, recounted the preaching meetings at the mela like this: The work for the year was commenced as usual by holding preaching meetings in the annual fair (mela) which is held here. Dr. O.O. Williams, Karimganj, came here to assist us and we were thus able to hold several meetings everyday, and to proclaim the gospel for several successive days to large crowds of people. This fair is attended by people from all parts of Cachar and Sylhet and as many 20 different languages will be spoken here.21

The tasks of missionaries proved that they were good travel­ lers. Undoubtedly they travelled far and wide to preach the gospel. For preaching the gospel they adopted many devices like selling scriptures in the market, at the mela and also opened the Sunday School among others. T.J. Jones said, ‘We hope God will see that the good seed which is sown may find deepness of earth, then the fruit will come.’22 The young men had come regularly to the house of T.J. Jones and the missionaries read several chapters of the his­ tory of Jesus Christ to them. In addition to the Sunday School, as T.J. Jones reported in 1901, a class for young men was conducted in their house. In the previous year they read together The Cross Bearer, a commentary on Mathew’s Gospel. It was written by Prof. Farquahan of the London Missionary Society.23 They believed that several of its members have come to know of the way of

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salvation. In 1902, Rev. J. Gerlan Williams, BSc said that at Silchar the average number of Sunday congregations was about 50.24 These were nearly all members and their families. Four or five outsiders also attended. Missionaries arranged special meetings for outsid­ ers and for the educated babus. In that year the presbytery was held in Silchar. So the missionaries arranged the two special meetings that were addressed by Revs J. Pengwers Jones and T.W. Reese. On Christmas night, Rev. J. Ceredig Evans gave an address wherein he emphasized that they would be needed to appoint the native workers for the evangelistic works in the villages and markets of the Cachar. Ordinary week night meetings and soci­ ety prayer meetings were also held at Silchar. Mrs Williams held a Christian Endeavour Meeting weekly for the children, and the later part of the year she held a class to prepare young women for membership. These were received into the Church on Christmas Day.25 In 1903 Rev J. Gerlan Williams gave a progress report of the work of missionaries in Silchar. This was due to the fact that they had extended the work in some directions. One church had been formed in Borkhola, a place 13 miles out of Silchar station and at the foot of the North Cachar Hills. The communities consisted of Khasis who had moved from Jaintia for cultivation of the betel leaf, a leaf that Indians cannot do without.26 In 1904, another new church was established in Kalain. It was also a Khasi Presbyterian Church. When they came down to the plains, only one family, hus­ band and wife, were Christians. But within a very short time by their influence several others came forward as candidates and the numbers swelled to 40.27 They had heard that some of the neigh­ bouring tribes like Mikirs and Cacharies were prepared to become Christians. Regarding the Rampoor Church, Rev. J. Gerlan Williams said that several were baptized in the Rampoor Church. This is a church on a tea garden and the members are all coolies. They came form Orissa and belonged to the Oriya community. Rampoor Church was actually estab­ lished before the arrival of Welsh Missionaries in Barak Valley. In 1885, it was established by the Rampoor Tea Estate manager. When Welsh

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missionaries came in Silchar they took the charge of the Rampoor Church. During the period of Welsh Mission only 13 families of the Rampoor tea estate became Christians. They were, namely, Ananda Senapati, Anil Singh, Salman Das, Jogendra Das, Hemranjan Patra, Philimon Das, Layar Das, Chandra Biswas, Sadan Biswas, Nitay Christians, Chanu Das, Samuel Das and David Das.28

The evangelists of the Rampoor Church during the mission­ ary period were Jenkin Pastor, Khagen Biswas, Candra Biswas, Sadan Biswas, Ananda Senapati and Parit Babu. Parit Babu was the last evangelist of the Rampoor Church. His original residence was in Calcutta. He did not reside at Rampoor regularly. When he had first come at Rampoor he had stayed in the house of Jatin­ dra Mohan Patra. During this period Rampoor Church members were divided into two groups and thereby formed another church at Rampoor that still exists there. The name of the church is ‘All One—in Christ—Church Fellowship Bridal Apostle and Prophetic Philadelphia Church’. It was established on June 1947. The land of the Rampoor Church was not more than three khatas. This dispute ultimately changed the location of the Welsh Presbyterian Church and later on it was established in the gateway of the Rampoor Christian colonies. Before Independence it was under Shillong Synod. But now it is under the Control of the Mizo Synod. At pres­ ent, at Rampoor, 30 families are Presbyterians and others belong to the Philadelphia Church (Under CNI Church).29 The Rampoor Church members built a very nice chapel early in 1896 that cost about 80 rupees. The church developed in self-reliance and did well for itself. The church and the school were growing steadily.30 In 1908, Rev T.W. Reese, in her report, noted her occasional visits to Rampoor Church. She also expressed her desire to improve the Sunday services by sending an efficient young man to Rampoor. In open-air meetings missionaries were not only discussing religious affairs but also other social and educational issues in the country at that time. As Reese noted: A number of meetings have been held for the educated babus in English, embracing temperance, and literary and religious subjects. Papers were given by orthodox Hindus on the caste system, and on early marriage, and the evils of both were recognized and condemned by nearly all present.31

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Concerning the Cachar presbytery, a letter was received under the name of Dr Rowlands, moderator, and the Rev. D.K. Badshah, as secretary, in which it was mentioned that a misunderstanding had divided the church at Rampoor for the past two-and-a-half years and had resisted all efforts at reconciliation. The reconcilia­ tion finally took place in the church and the communion service, which followed, was a success, ten children were baptized and 12 young people were received into full membership. Another church built by the Welsh Missionaries in Cachar district is the Pailapool Church. The church building and quar­ ters were built from mission and Presbyterian funds. During the missionary period, Pailapool was a village situated 14 miles to the eastern side of Silchar town. The church at Cathedral Road, Cardiff, had generously contributed 450 rupees towards the creation of a new chapel there. For the construction of the church at least 1,000 rupees would have been required.32 The land of Pailapool Church belonged to one Sudhir Kumar Basu, a Christian. But he sold the land to one Mr. S.K. Roy, during a bout of mental disturbance. Therefore, the mission worker, Mr. C.K. Biswas, was transferred. Beside the church and quarters, the mid-mission established their mission station and they worked there and eventually established Mission Hospital at Alipur.33 In the initial stage at Pailapool Church area around five Christian families were Presbyterian. They were, namely, Mr Biresh Roy, C.K. Biswas, Binay Bushan Roy, Phillip Sarkar and Santi Chaudhury. The total area of the church land was not more than 18 khatas. It was made with burnt bricks and wood, known as the Assam-type house. Near Pailapool at present, two other churches are there at Hmar Colony. They are called Reform Presbyterian Churches (RPC) and function under Halflong synod. All the believers of this Church are Hmar people.34 In 1935, two important churches were built in the Cachar area—Katlicherra Church and Konakpur Church. Katlichera Church (in present Hailakandi district) was one of the oldest churches in the Cachar plains. In 1960, Mr Chalmers, the owner of the tea garden, erected a church in memory of his late father known as the Chalmers Memorial Church. When these two churches were built the missionaries of Silchar district were the

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Rev, and Mrs T.W. Reese, Miss E.M. Lloyd and Miss Olwen Reese. Reese reported that he paid regular visits to the churches. At Kon­ akpur too, a new church had been built. ‘Four of the churches in this part of the field have, by a resolution of the presbytery, been formed recently into a sub-district. Throughout the year the divine blessing has been upon us.’35 During the time of Welsh missionar­ ies, a small church was built in Sonapur by the local members, and it was built as a tiny chapel, thatched with grass and a mud floor, but was spotlessly clean. And there one day, Rev. T.W. Reese, Miss Unice James and Miss Phyllis Jones, gave baptism to 27 Khasis, 13 adults and 14 children.36 The work on the plains was very difficult and the church could not grow properly. It was evident from the report of Rev J.W. Rob­ erts. He said: The year 1920 was the period of great unrest throughout India and that had coloured the whole work of missionaries. In September, however, a nationalist conference for the Sylhet and Cachar district was held in Sylhet, and great crowds came from every part. This conference adopted, on behalf of these districts, the policy of non-cooperation. The result of this was to make the attendance at our Bible classes’ fall very low and to make the holding of the English meetings impossible.37

However, in that juncture a presbytery was held in Sylhet in August 1920 at which Babu Hem R. Sarkar was ordained to the full work of the ministry. From the beginning of the year, a presbytery fund was established, all the churches on the plains contribut­ ing. In that year the total collection was Rs 750, an exceedingly encouraging figure. This made a step in advance in the develop­ ment of India Church on the plains, and the enthusiasm shown was a very happy augury for future.38 Hem R. Sarkar was the first Bengali pastor in Silchar in 1920. The churches in the plains were organized into three presbyteries, namely, Sylhet-Habiganj with eight churches and Karimganj Cachar with five churches. The first plains assembly met in Maulavi Bazar in February 1925, with Rev. P Jones as moderator. The total number of Christians at the end of 1925 was 1,947. In 1933, Rev. Edwin Adams had given a report about the object of presbytery like this:

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In Cachar, where the Silchar-Karimganj presbytery was held from December 1 to 3. All the meetings of the presbytery were character­ ized from beginning to the end by a warm atmosphere of devotion and spiritual power. All who attended witnessed to a special sense of God’s presence with his people. Subjects dealt with were grace, gods pose to redeem, and prayer. The presbytery was concluded on the Sunday night by a long programme by the ‘Pad Kirtan’ party.39

On 1 December 1933, a presbytery of the assembly of the hill tribes of Cachar was held in Jaintia Hill. Adam said, ‘Here, too, we had evidence of God’s presence in this church.’40 Hill tribe presby­ tery sometimes dealt with the problem of Syntengs who engaged in paan cultivation in the plains. These people, coming down from the Hill churches are exposed to unusual moral and spiritual dan­ gers. Rev Adam again stated: ‘It is feared that in isolated places many fall away from all connection with the Christian church. The presbytery is grappling with this problem, but with altogether inadequate resources.’41 In 1947, with the coming of Independence and Partition, the plains assembly was reduced to a district meeting with headquar­ ters at Silchar and a mission centre at Karimganj. During those days, the church in the plains faced many problems and there was an imminent collapse. However, the assembly took a step to appoint Rev. Zairema as the assembly officer (from 1959 to 1968) to supervise the work of the church in the Cachar district. The year 1953 was very encouraging for missionary works in several ways in Barak Valley. In that year the general secretary of Silchar and surrounding districts paid a visit to Silchar. On that occasion the assembly was held in Silchar. There they discussed about the tribal and Bengali churches. A few prayer groups had formed, whose burden was a revival of the Bengali church. Although the work amongst tribal Christians was greatly handicapped due to the lack of education and financial difficulties, the work of evan­ gelizing had been most encouraging. In one sub-district alone, 10 whole villages were converted to Christianity.42 In all branches of the church in Cachar, progress was achieved mainly due to the initiative of the Indian Christian, themselves.

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Evangelism and Church Planting (Karimganj) In Karimganj district, the first evangelistic work was started by Dr O.O. Williams. He distributed many hundreds of gospels, tracts, catechism, etc., and made use of such works as Peep of Day, Stalker’s Life of Christ, and so on. He proved that those books were widely read. Sometimes, Dr Williams organized Bible classes for the boys who knew English. He got another valuable opportunity to preach the gospel of Jesus every year when Europeans officers and businessmen met for horse races in Karimganj district. For this exhibition, many native people, too, came and they also attended the preaching meetings of the gospel of Jesus which were held by the missionaries in the market. Sometimes, on Sunday they went out to the villages and held meetings there. Miss Das had given a report as follows: About 20 or 30 came together, some of them sick persons, and one a leper. We sang a few hymns and then spoke on the creation, the justice and love of God and afterwards on the verse, ‘Come unto me all ye that labour’, etc.; the majority listened very attentively.43

The Church of Karimganj was growing slowly, the Christian members were very few, but they were very generous. They sub­ scribed 100 rupees for the relief of the people who suffered on account of the floods; besides giving their time and energy in going about helping to distribute rice supplied freely by the gov­ ernment for the use of the starving. Also the Church in Karimganj, aided by some Hindus and Mohammedans, sent 156 rupees, eight annas, to the Belgian consul in Calcutta for the relief of the suffer­ ing Belgians.

First Convert and the First Pastor in Barak Valley Gonga Prosad was the first convert in Barak Valley. He was a young Brahmin, who received baptism on the 26 July 1895. He was baptized by Dr Jones, on his baptism, his name was changed, at his own request to Prem Ronjan Upadhyay, a name signifying ‘love’.44 The local people did not welcome the baptisim of Gonga Prosad which is evident from the report of Dr T.J. Jones. Dr Jones reported

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that ‘the baptism of Prem Ronjon, who had been in the school up to 1894, caused a number of parents to take away their boys’.45 The people of India looked upon baptism as a rite by which a man was made Christian. After he had embraced Christianity, Prosad read with Dr Jones for some time, and afterwards proceeded to the theological institution of Cherra. In March, at the Shangpoong presbytery, he passed the evangelists’ examination successfully. He emerged to be a very talented young man, a good preacher and filled with the spirit of the gospel. In addition to this work as a teacher and evangelist, he had undertaken much work amongst the Khasis in Marwacherra. In 1920, the first Bengali pastor was ordained, Rev. Hem. R. Sarkar, Silchar. About Sarkar T.J. Jones said: ‘He passed the theological examination third on the list. He is really good and substantial preacher and has a very pleasing style.’46 Two other men, viz., Abdul Hamid and Anonda K. Ghose, provided good services for the mission. Abdul Hamid opened a school at Sunaibari, a place six miles distant from Silchar, for the Nagas, a tribe inhabiting the surrounding Hills. By doing this work he brought many poor tribes to Christ. The contribution of Anonda K. Ghose as the deacon was very significant. He did his work well. He preached regularly in the chapel and in the bazaar. During the time of the missionary, the work on the plains was very slow but steadfastly growing. It was slow because plain people did not accept Christianity and their work wholeheartedly. The mis­ sionaries believed that the gospel seed sown may produce more fruit. In Silchar station the members of native Christians had grown so much that the missionaries felt that two Bengali preach­ ing services should be held each Sunday for their benefit.

Work among Zenana The work for women by the lady missionaries is called zenana, because in order to safeguard the sanctity of their homes, the Hindus secluded the females of the family in the part of the house called the zenana. In 1893 two lady missionaries, namely, Miss Williams and Miss Evans, started the zenana because the people of

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this valley could heartily receive the work of the lady missionaries.47 The people continued to favour them due to their good and acceptable work. The native people appeared to appreciate the labours of missionary sisters with their women. In their weekly meeting they delivered lectures on ethical and semi-religious subjects. The primary object of the zenana’s work was to win the women of the village for the Lord. Sometimes they established outstations in the villages to serve as centres of Christian influence. Such centres would enable the women missionaries to stay in the village for a period of one to three months which, in turn, could bring them in closer contract with the people. They could then create the opportunity to share the gospel more effectively by words and deeds. In 1937, they introduced the village residence scheme. Miss Evans, in a letter dated 14 February 1893, reported about her work in the zenanas that they began it with two houses and visited these twice a week. When the number of the houses increased, they visited them once a week. The last month of 1893 saw the number of houses increase to 20. There were 26 families under instruction in these houses. As a rule they spent an hour in every house. In each house for 20 minutes they gave religious instruction like reading a portion of the gospels and the history of Jesus Christ. The houses that they were allowed to visit were increasing constantly. At Karimganj, the first women work or zenana was started by Mrs Williams. She took one zenana regularly. In the last part of the year 1895 they opened 11 zenanas, all of which comprised Hindus. There were 18 women in them, who were taught needlework, Eng­ lish and Bengali.48 In 1902, missionaries of Sylhet started publishing a periodical for educating the women of the plains. The name of the journal was The Friend of the Women of Bengal. In 1900 Miss Williams stated in her report that as the town was growing the number of zenanas, too, was increasing and she had entirely failed to meet all the calls. Three months and more passed by before she was able to visit several of them. At Karimganj, the zenanas work was also in a developed state. There the women were taught to sew, read and to be truthful. Miss Das Looked after the work of zenana

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there. She visited 25 houses regularly. Her chief aim was to bring the gospel to the women. Through the medical work she opened many zenanas. Miss Das said: ‘We have given medicines, too, to a large number of people from villages far and near.’49 In 1904, Miss S.M. Das again gave the report of the zenanas work of Karimganj. In her report she stated that the number of zenanas through the year had been far more than in any previous year.50 The zenana work in Silchar town was rapidly increased. To cover their work the lady missionaries visited some of the zenanas twice a day, in the morning and in the afternoon. All the houses in Silchar had been opened for them. Even the men and old women also came to listen to them. But ‘some of them occasion­ ally defended Hinduism and even all its cruel customs’. In 1905, in Karimganj Miss Das taught the women sewing, crochet and fancy work and then she sang to them and read and explained a por­ tion of the gospels. Her aim at all times was to make known to them the ‘glad tidings’. Miss Das referred to several women in the zenanas who delighted to hear the gospel and to sing Christian hymns, but who had not so far made a public profession towards Christ. The medical training which she received in this country was found of incalculable help in her work. She also desired to thank the kind friends who had from time to time sent her gifts for use in her work with the women. Sewing cotton, fine needles, small thimbles, calico, etc., were very useful.51 The zenanas of Karimganj were under the care of Miss Das. In 1906, she included several new houses in the fold where she met with very bigoted women and changed their way of life by teaching of reading and singing the hymns. By opening zenanas, the lady missionaries could really change the social position of the women in Barak Valley. By their great effort many women received education, acquired vocational train­ ing and knowledge of social services, etc. At that time Mrs Kusum Kumari Ghosh could speak good English. Mrs Sushila Das, Mrs Suroma Raj, Mrs Shalyabala Ghosh, Mrs Dayabati Nandi, Mrs Kiran Bala Das, Mrs Pramobala Das, Mrs Minalini Chatterjee and also many other women acquired the knowledge of social services after regular attendance of zenana. They inspired other women of

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the Valley for zenana work more enthusiastically by handful of rice collection or Musti Bikha. With this they raised the zenana fund. Mrs Uma Dutta became the headmistress of a government girls’ school due to the untiring effort of lady missionaries. They could easily discharge their duties with the help of the women believers.52 In 1908, Miss Das in her report mentioned their visit to a Mohammedan zenana pupil. She met with a Mohammedan woman who was quite broad-minded and took an interest in Christianity. She was educated and very different to most women of her class. In 1910, Miss Laura Evans reported: We had successful meetings with the church women throughout the year, and I think it was of benefit to us all. We had hoped that a num­ ber from the zenana would join with us in our services; a few came but not regularly.53 In that year the zenana of Karimganj was visited by Miss Radcliffe. She taught them the related ways of the Great Salvation. The year 1914 was a very promising year in Silchar zenana. They had sold more copies of gospels in the zenanas than ever before. In that year Sorat and Mrs Ghosh helped them in zenana work by giving scripture lessons, instructing worldly things to the women. The women who wanted to learn English and sewing pay for their education.54

In 1915, the zenana girls participated well for a Red Cross Sale which was held in Silchar. They brought some of the things which they had made themselves. In 1917, the zenana work in Karimganj was successfully carried on by Miss Das despite strong opposition that arose that year among the fisherman class. But this did not discourage the missionaries. In 1919, lady missionaries like Miss Aranwen Evans, Miss Olwen Reese, Miss Launa Evans and Miss Elen Evans carried on work in the zenanas of Silchar and Karim­ ganj in Barak Valley area. Miss Hetty Evans reported that in that year they visited more than 20 villages. There were often 30 to 40 people listening attentively. Regarding the work in Karimganj, Dr Helen Rowlands wrote in her diary: Our women’s committee met once a quarter, when under the able chair­ manship of Miss Laura Evans or Mrs Reese, we discuss our difficulties with one another and shared our joys, and through prayer and following, strengthened and encouraged one another to continue steadfast in the work.55

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At Silchar, zenana work happened regularly. Every fortnight the Bengali women’s meeting had been held under the presidency of Mrs Jenkins. In 1952, a Lushai women’s meeting was held. In the initial stages of the Lushai women’s meeting, the attendance was small but later it grew. The meetings brought them many blessings. In some of the gatherings, tablecloths were made. Thus, lady mis­ sionaries introduced their zenana work not only in the plains, but also in the areas of hills and tea gardens of this valley. By doing this work they easily penetrated the heart of the women of the Barak Valley with their brand of Christianity.

Work for Widows and Orphans (Dipti Nibash) Dr Helen Rowland was famous for her creation of a home for widows and orphans, called Dipti Nibash which, by dint of her ability, was founded on 15 March 1939, in the Mission Compound, Karimganj. Dipti Nibash is a Bengali phrase. It has a dual meaning. Dipti means light and Nibash means house. So the two words unitedly formed a new compound word, Lighthouse. Miss Hetty Evans who was one of the missionaries of Sylhet in 1937 and also a missionary of Karimganj station in 1922, wrote a report of Dipti Nibash: Dr Rowlands and I take charge of the women’s work here (Karimganj) for alternate three months. The other quarter is spent in village work. Miss Das and others help us with this work, and the women always give us a warm welcome.56

The women’s work in Karimganj was set down under two heads (a) work outside in the villages, and (b) work within Dipti Nibash, the women’s home. The main workers of Dipti Nibash in Karimganj were—Miss Minnie Das, Miss Santi Sircar, Miss Esther Singh, Miss Hetty Evans, Mr and Mrs Angle Jones and Dr Helen Rowland. Dr Rowland, in her report, writes: We have had the blind, the maimed and the half of our community, in both the literate and metaphorical sense, and have been truly grateful for the change seen in their lives. We try to keep an open door for women who are in dire need of refuge.57

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For Dipti Nibash, missionaries adopted the two methods— worship and work. They had a little plot of mission land, which was very fertile for cultivation. The women workers did everything except ploughing. They had also worked well in the gardens. They were much interested in knitting work for Red Cross supplies. Many soldiers were stationed in this valley as the Second World War broke out at that time. In 1942, Miss Hetty Evans paid a visit to the villages of Sonapore where in 1924 the missionaries built a mission centre and at present there stood four mission centres and in each centre, there was a local Christian worker for looking after its manage­ ment. When they had been facing financial and other problems in their works, the friends of the missionaries and institutions were extending all possible assistance. They were Mrs Harries, Towy Works, Carmarthen; Rhydageau Church, Cyfeilles, Mrs. Griffiths, Llangain, Miss Jones, Nanternis, Mr & Mrs Morris, and Llanelly. and so on.58 In July 1947, two fly-shuttle looms were set up and a larger one followed next year, another later on and they set up five fly-shuttle looms as well as two of the kind used by hills women, known as ‘Naga-process looms’. The sale of their products had helped them acquire a warping drum, with many threads and looms of vary­ ing sizes and counts, together with a number of spinning wheels and the famous Indian charkha for making bobbins. They used to weave saris, dhotis, bedsheets, bedcover, calico, and so on, and also honeycomb, towelling, curtains, mosquito netting, tablecloths, plaid fabric and dress material for frocks and shirts. Embroidery, needlework, knitting (the bigger boys made their own pullovers), baking—all had their place in their curriculum.59 Older women in select batches took their turns in cooking and other kitchen duties; children being taught by them were also in each group. There were cattle sheds and poultry houses as well. The paddy for the day’s food was husked daily. They had three husking pedals worked by the older and the younger members together. Dr Rowland noted: ‘This Dipti Nibash or ashram is meant to be, first of all, for our own Christian community and then for any woman or child in need of refuge more than shelter.’60 But Dr

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Rowland, who served as a missionary in India for 40 years, did not confine her work to Dipti Nibash; she was a very good teacher as well. She had a very intimate relationship with the Karimganj College. She obtained her PhD degree in Bengali from Calcutta University. She worked in Karimganj college as a honorary teacher in the department of philosophy and English. Sometimes she taught Bengali classes.61 The Library Hall of Karimganj College was later named Rowland Hall in her memory. Dr Rowland had arranged to hold a local examination in order that the local stu­ dents should not have to sit for the Calcutta examination. During her lifetime, a new sericulture department was also set up in Dipti Nibash. The previous year Dipti Nibash was able to produce its first skeins of silk, after going through the whole process from the egg right on through the silkworm and cocoon stages to the actual reeling. For this purpose two mulberry plantations were started. As silkworms are very large and devour enormous quantities of mulberry leaves, a separate house for silkworm rearing with its equipment of frames and trays, etc., was constructed.

Work Amongst the Namasudra Community in Barak Valley Namasudras were considered a socially, economically and educationally backward people in Barak Valley who were a majority in Karimganj district. The Welsh missionaries of this district were always looking for ways to convert these backward Hindu people into Christianity. In 1910, they got the opportunity to start their work among the Namasudras. In the same year, on 3 February, a delegation of leaders of the Namasudras came to consult with Rev. O.O. Williams on behalf of their caste. This was the real beginning of the missionaries’ work among the Namasudras. Their spokesman brought with him a file of their newspaper copies which had been published for about two years. He had carefully read all these, and had noticed and marked all references to missionaries in the paper. After a long discussion with them he promised to help. In 1911 the total number of Namasudra people in the plains area of Sylhet Cachar was nearly 2,00,000, their villages being mainly situated along the banks of the river. Although, in name they connected

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with the Hindu religion in many respects they were outside the pale of Hinduism.61 Dr William was the first missionary who took the great step to improve the condition of the Namasudra people by imparting them education. So in 1910 he established 16 schools for them in Habiganj district and he received a grant from the government. By 1912, missionaries established 19 Namasudra schools in Sylhet district. In 1914, 12 Namasudra schools were established in Silchar and 12 in Karimganj.62 In 1916 in Cachar district two Namasudra schools were closed down owing to shortage of funds. From the mission funds, they gave salaries to the teachers of the Namasudra schools. The missionaries visited regularly the Namasudra schools and villages and taught them the story of Jesus Christ. There con­ tinued to be a movement towards Christianity in the Namasudra villages. On Christmas Day, many villagers would come to Karim­ ganj to attend the church services. Reporting about the response to their evangelistic activities T.W. Reese says: Several have expressed a desire to become Christians, and here some asked for baptism, but so far they have not summoned up sufficient cour­ age to take that stand and remain on in their own villages. And until the time comes that they are prepared to do so we have not encouraged them.63

In 1923 a society was formed at Silchar representing some scores of thousands of people with the object of stimulating prog­ ress among four of the large depressed classes. Members of the society elected T.W. Reese as the permanent president and Aghore Babu, a widely cultured, a high caste Kulin Brahmin, became the vice-president of the society.64 The work among the Namasudras continued to grow. In the year 1925, 120 Namasudras were pres­ ent for Christmas Day service at Karimganj. Miss Hetty Evans reported: I believe that the only way to give people a true conception of Christian­ ity is to live it among them. We are always welcomed to spend a night or two in their houses and villages, and the fact that we take sufficient inter­ est in them to do so is greatly appreciated. We visit some villages weekly, others monthly, or oftener, as circumstances permit. Although there is

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a strong desire among the Namasudras to accept Christianity, there are great difficulties in their way, and should they come over, our difficulties will be multiplied a thousandfold. They are almost all entirely illiterate. The mission schools are doing excellent work.65 The work amongst the Namasudras was carried on as usual. The church was growing slowly. In 1925, 200 Namasudras attended service on Christmas Day in Karim­ ganj Mission. In 1929, 18 members of the Namasudras community were received into the church. Among them one was the teacher of Sonapore village school. With him, one other person in the same village was also received. In 1931, on January 3, two Namasudra boys, Durgyamani and Shadhumani, took baptism from the village of Kamalpur.66 When they took baptism, the missionaries of Karimganj were the Rev. Edwin Adams and Mrs Edwins, Miss J. Helen Rowland and W.A Thomas. Two other Namasudras S.K. Sarkar and Gopal Ram of Sonapore village took charge as evangelist and village school teacher, respectively. In the last part of the same year, two missionaries, Miss Hetty Evans and Miss Edams, were transferred to other stations. In their places, Miss J.H. Rowland and Miss W.A. Thomas took the charge of Karimganj Mission Station. In Sylhet district, for the Namasudras, missionaries established a co-operative credit society. They got an agricultural loan at a low interest. In Barak Valley area for Namasudras, they established many churches and not less than 26 schools.67

Mode and Result of Conversion When the Welsh Mission established their mission centre at Silchar in Barak Valley by Dr T.J. Jones in 1893, Silchar was the chief town of Cachar district. At that time the total population of Cachar district was 3,13,000 and that of Silchar being about 7,000.68 The first Welsh missionary, Dr T.J. Jones, adopted evangelistic work for conversion through preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ to the youth by arranging weekly meetings. In that weekly meeting, they taught The Person of Christ, The Work of The Holy Spirit, Faith, Love, Hope, the different books of the New Testament chapter by chapter. They preached the gospel in English and in Bengali.69 He succeeded in baptizing a young Brahmin of Silchar in 1895 on 26 July. His name was Gonga Prosad. He was the first convert from Silchar. The missionaries also started the Sunday School or Sunday service for the preaching of Christianity in this valley. In their

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Sunday School, both boys and girls studied. In the Sunday service, day labourers of tea garden community also attended. They could not attend the day period during the other six days of the week as they were engaged in the day services of the tea garden. The Sunday services were earlier held at 7:30 a.m. but later shifted to 4:30 p.m. The meeting was held at the mission room. In Sunday School, they taught the children from the Bible. At Silchar, the Sunday School’s average attendance was 20. In the initial stages, the Bible class of Sunday School was taught by Mrs Jones. For preaching Christianity to the non-Christian areas of Barak Valley, the missionaries also adopted openair meetings in the towns and the villages. In the rainy season, when Cachar was flooded, they used a boat to preach Christianity in flood-affected villages. They also arranged horse races in Silchar town during the time of mela or fairs. In this mela they appointed native preachers to evangelize non-Christian people. The native evangelists, like S.N. Sarkar, D. Ghose, and Nil Kamal Das, sold Christian texts and distributed tracts to them. Missionary ladies also opened a little shop on the mela ground for selling the books of Jesus. They sold 500 to 1,000 books and journals every month. It is pertinent to mention here that the Bengali women, even after their conversion to Christianity, did not attend the public meeting or melas. Mrs Jones also started a Christian Endeavour Society amongst the children for preparing the children to work for Christ and His church. Welsh missionaries also set up school and a medical dis­ pensary. With the help of native teachers they had collected the poor and distressed people from the hills and the plains of Barak Valley. They provided them missionary education so that they could read the Bible and convert to Christianity. Moreover, through medical dispensaries, they had given free treatment to the poor people of this area. During the time of flood and natural calamities they also arranged relief camps in their mission compound. They distributed clothes, medicine and arranged temporary shelters for distressed people. The missionaries had arranged all these things to convert the people of Barak Valley. But in spite of their hard labour they could convert only a few amongst the plainspeople of

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Barak Valley. On the other hand, the tribal people were converted easily. It was mainly because the tribal people of Barak Valley were economically and educationally very backward. Their religion was also not an institutionalized one. So when the missionaries pro­ vided them an institutionalized religion, they accepted gratefully. An alternative faith could easily be superimposed on their faith. The total population of Barak Valley who were converted to Christianity in the Welsh Missionary period (1893-1958) is given below: Area

Total no. of Converts into Presbyterian Christians

Barak plain area Barak Hill area Total no. of Converts during the Welsh missionary period

850 (eight hundred and fifty)

6,000 (six thousand).

6,850 (six thousand, eight

hundred and fifty)

Among the total number of converts (6,850), the number of Hindu Bengali converts was 250. Those from tea garden commu­ nities like Adivasi, Oriya, Bihari, Gond (Madhya Pradesh) was 600 in number, Khasi and Jaintias, who were residing in the periphery of hill areas of Barak Valley, after conversion, numbered about 2,500. One thousand Mizos of Satasura Hill, the Cheragi range and Jalnachara range, bordering Lushai Hills, were converted by the Welsh missionaries. A total of 1,500 Hmar and 500 Kuki of Lakhipur area touching Manipur and the borders of N.C. Hill were converted into Christianity during the missionary era. The total number of Presbyterian Christian population of Barak Val­ ley was 20,000. They belonged to different Presbyterian synods. In Mizoram Presbyterian Church synod, there were 9,000 Christians. They were Bengali, Bihari, Bishnupriya, Cachari, Manipuri, Mizo and other hill tribals, excluding Hmar and Khasi. There were 6,000 Khasi and Jaintia Presbyterian Christians in the Khasi and Jaintia Synod. Hill tribes, such as Hmar, Kuki, Paite, Naga, Dimasa and Nepali, comprised 5,000 Presbyterian Christians in the Cachar Hill tribes synod. Other non-Presbyterian Christian denominations

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both in the plains and hills of Barak Valley were 2,650. At pres­ ent, near about 40,000 Christians are living in this valley. The total percentage of the Christian population is nearly 8 per cent. The Welsh missionaries who established their mission centre in this valley in 1893 worked till the end of the year 1958. In these 65 years, they worked tremendously hard but they failed in their mission of conversion to Christianity as they expected results com­ parable with that in neighbouring hill areas Lushai Hills, Khasi and Jaintia Hills and North Cachar Hills. In these hill areas they put in much less toil and endeavour but they gained many more converts. The reasons for the failure of the Welsh missionaries in Barak Valley are as follows: 1. The population of plain area comprising of Hindu, Muslim and a few Jains and Buddhists already had their own religious faith. The Western missionaries could not find any foothold in this firm sociocultural and religious environment. 2. Although Welsh missionaries provided services likeeducation, medical relief and rehabilitation to the distressed people of Barak Valley, these had hardly any impact on the spiritual life of the people. It was mainly because of the fact that the plain people of this valley did not consider the method of conversion by the missionaries attractive. Moreover, during that period, most of the plainspeople of Barak Valley did not consider themselves financially backward. So they did not accept the services of the missionaries. 3. In those days, the plainspeople of Barak Valley did not want to have close relations with the missionaries. They used to boycott the people who attended the preaching meetings, missionary schools and hospitals. Therefore, other native people were afraid of attending those functions or taking part in the activities of the Christian missionaries. In conclusion, it can be said that the Welsh missionaries estab­ lished their mission centre in Barak Valley considering that this valley was the only gateway for them to enter into neighbouring hill states like Manipur, Mizoram and Tripura. The activities of

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Welsh missionaries in this Valley produced some effects that are listed below: That the Welsh mission established the system of higher education as well as that of women’s education in this valley is a historical fact. They are rightly called the pioneers of modern education in Barak Valley. They established several beneficiaries in terms of stipends, vocational training and so on. The Oriental English School of Silchar was started by Welsh Mission at Jail Road Silchar to serve the people of this valley. Baptist Mid-Mission (USA) at Alipur in Cachar and at Markunda in Karimganj district opened educational institutions and hospitals for neglected com­ munities like Manipuris, Rongmeis, Pangals (Manipuri Muslims) and other tribes inhabiting Barak Valley. Besides these, there came up mission employment facilities for deserving native Christian members as pastors, teachers, evangelists, nurses and other mis­ sion workers. The missionaries established schools in Barak Valley for preparing teachers from among native communities like Namasudrus and Brahmins. Moreover, they used Bengali as the medium of instruction in the initial stage in schools. They also provided native leadership through Christian education. The role of the Welsh Presbyterian mission in the transfor­ mation of the position of women in Barak Valley was significant. Before the advent of missionary activities, women lived within the allotted boundaries provided by their superiors in the family. For the uplift of women of the valley, girls’ schools were started. More­ over, by organizing church meetings for native Christian women every Sunday, giving them the responsibilities of rice collection and also other works of the churches, etc., they helped them learn the method of formation of women’s societies and associations. Welsh missionaries were the first workers who played a great role in spreading Western education and Western lifestyle to the tribal people of this valley by setting up schools and churches. Because of the missionary activities, people were brought to one place through churches and schools and thus the earlier minor subdivisions among the tribals were removed. So far as the tea garden communities of Barak Valley were concerned, the Welsh

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missionaries could hardly have any impact upon them. Almost every tea garden in Barak Valley had few Christians and some of them belonged to the Welsh Mission’s care. Moreover, the Chris­ tian members of the tea garden communities of this valley were not the direct converts of the Welsh Mission. They were already Christians from their original home states like Orissa, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh, etc. As a result of this, no significant addition is found in their population as such. Proper assessment clearly shows that Welsh missionaries did not establish any institution for imparting modern education to the tea garden communities of Barak Valley. They gave them such education by which they could only learn the English language for the reading of the Bible. Hence, their education was limited to English language lessons. Welsh Missionaries were not capable of adopting any success­ ful medical mission in Barak Valley. For their purpose of spreading Christianity they started medical work in Karimganj district but it was for a brief time only. Moreover, no other missionaries of the Welsh Mission, except Dr O.O. Williams, was interested in a medi­ cal mission in this valley. For this reason, when he went home, the medical work in Barak Valley could not be continued properly and the medical mission operations in the plains came to an end. Leprosy hospitals of Makunda of Karimganj district and Alipur hospital of Baskandi, Cachar, were hospitals of the Baptist Mission. The traditional structure of the Church is still retained in the churches of Barak area which decrees a subordinate place for women in the church. Due to the old, patriarchal, hierarchical and bureaucratic structures of the churches the theologically trained women were not adequately used in the church services of Barak Valley. The establishment of mission stations in Cachar and Karim­ ganj districts of Barak Valley during second half of the nineteenth century by the Welsh Missionaries was not very successful from the perspective of spreading Christianity in this area. Because, their evangelistic works could not change the firm faith of the people of this valley, Hinduism and Islam, religions which were deep-rooted in this area prior to Christianity. The rate of conversion from the population in Barak Valley by the missionaries was significantly

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poor. Out of 1,000 people, the converts gained were not more than 20 to 30 persons only and this also was an uneven proportion of the demography. Though, the missionaries converted the people of different communities and tribes of Barak Valley like Bengalis, Khasis, Nagas and tea garden labourers in fair numbers, in spite of their conversion to Christianity these people continued to follow their old rituals, customs and traditions. They also used the titles they obtained from their forefathers. Welsh missionaries could not spread Christianity in most of the tea garden areas of Barak Valley. It was due to the fact that tea garden labourers of this valley were the followers of Hindu religion. As orthodox Hindus they thought that if Christianity entered their areas, they would lose their tradi­ tional culture and religion.

Notes 1. ‘Report of the Sylhet Cachar, 1892’, in Rev. Vanlalchhunga (Comp.), Reports of the Foreign Mission of the Presbyterian Church of Wales on Sylhet, Bangladesh and Cachar, India, 1886–1955, Shalom Publications, Silchar, Assam, first edition, 2003, p. 14. 2. Ranjit Goala (ed.), Souvenir Presbyterian Church of Silchar, Souvenir Committee, Barak Presbyterian Church, Silchar, 2002, p. 18. 3. Rev. Vanlalchhunga, Marvelous Mission, Shalom Publication, Aizawl (Mizoram), 2008 (revised edn), p. 147. 4. ‘Report of the Sylhet Cachar, 1893’, in Rev. Vanlalchhunga (Comp.), Reports of the Foreign Mission of the Presbyterian Church of Wales on Sylhet, Bangladesh and Cachar, India, 1886–1955, op. cit., p. 22. 5. T.S. Gangte, Th e Kukis of Manipur: A Historical Analysis, Gyan PublishingHouse, New Delhi, 2003, p. 36. 6. ‘Report of the Sylhet Cachar, 1893’, in Rev. Vanlalchhunga (Comp.), Reports of the Foreign Mission of the Presbyterian Church of Wales on Sylhet, Bangladesh and Cachar, India, 1886–1955’, op. cit., p. 20. 7. Rev.Vanlalchhunga, Marvelous Mission, op cit., p. 147. 8. ‘Report of Sylhet Cachar 1892,’ in Rev. Vanlalchhunga (Comp.), Reports of the Foreign Mission of the Presbyterian Church of Wales on Sylhet, Bangladesh and Cachar, India, 1886-1955, op. cit., p. 14. 9. Ibid., p. 21. 10. ‘Report of Sylhet Cachar, 1893’, in Rev. Vanlalchhunga (Comp.),

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Reports of the Foreign Mission of the Presbyterian Church of Wales on Sylhet Bangladesh and Cachar, India, 1886-1955, op. cit., p. 21. 11. ‘Report of Sylhet Cachar, 1895’, in Rev. Vanlalchhunga (Comp.), Reports of the Foreign Mission of the Presbyterian Church of Wales on Sylhet Bangladesh and Cachar, India, 1886-1955, op. cit., p. 39. 12. ‘Report of Sylhet Cachar 1897,’ in Rev. Vanlalchhunga (Comp.): Reports of the Foreign Mission of the Presbyterian Church of Wales on Sylhet Bangladesh and Cachar, India, 1886-1955, op. cit. 13. ‘Report of Sylhet Cachar 1901’, in Rev. Vanlalchhunga (Comp.), Reports of the Foreign Mission of the Presbyterian Church of Wales on Sylhet Bangladesh and Cachar, India, 1886-1955,’ op. cit., p. 89. 14. ‘Report of Sylhet Cachar, 1924’, in Rev. Vanlalchhunga (Comp.), Reports of the Foreign Mission of the Presbyterian Church of Wales on Sylhet Bangladesh and Cachar, India, 1886-1955, op. cit., p. 253. 15. Rev. Vanlalchhunga, Marvelous Mission, op. cit., pp. 147, 36. 16. Sharmila Das Talukdar, Khasi Cultural Resistance to Colonialism, Spectrum Publication, Guwahati, 2004, p. 40. 17. Ibid., p. 64. 18. Rev. Vanlalchhunga, Marvelous Mission, op. cit., p. 81. 19. ‘Report of Sylhet Cachar, 1893’, in Rev. Vanlalchhunga (Comp.), Reports of the Foreign Mission of the Presbyterian Church of Wales on Sylhet Bangladesh and Cachar, India, 1886-1955, op. cit., p. 21. 20. ‘Report of Sylhet Cachar’, in Rev. Vanlalchhunga (Comp.), Reports of the Foreign Mission of the Presbyterian Church of Wales on Sylhet Bangladesh and Cachar, India, 1886-1955, op. cit., p. 22. 21. ‘Report of Sylhet Cachar, 1893,’ in Rev. Vanlalchhunga (Comp.), Reports of the Foreign Mission of the Presbyterian Church of Wales on Sylhet Bangladesh and Cachar, India, op cit., pp. 73-4. 22. Goala, op cit., p. 20. 23. ‘Report of Sylhet Cachar 1901’, in Rev. Vanlalchhunga (Comp.), Reports of the Foreign Mission of the Presbyterian Church of Wales on Sylhet Bangladesh and Cachar, India, 1886-1955, op. cit., p. 93. 24. Ibid., p. 98. 25. ‘Report of Sylhet Cachar, 1902,’ in Rev. Vanlalchhunga (Comp.), Reports of the Foreign Mission of the Presbyterian Church of Wales on Sylhet Bangladesh and Cachar, India, 1886-1955, ibid., p. 100. 26. Ibid., p. 107. 27. ‘Report of Sylhet Cachar, 1904’, in Rev. Vanlalchhunga (Comp.), Reports of the Foreign Mission of the Presbyterian church of Wales on Sylhet Bangladesh and Cachar, India, 1886-1955, op. cit., p. 115.

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28. Interview with Ambika Roy, aged 85 years, at her residence in Rampoor, 13 September 2009. 29. Interview with Arun Patra, aged 70 years, ex-Chairman of Rampoor Church, and Rana Roy, ex-Secretary of Rampoor Church, at Rampoor, 13 September 2009. 30. Rev. Vanlalchhunga, Marvelous Mission, op. cit., p. 155. 31. ‘Report of Sylhet Cachar, 1908,’ in Rev. Vanlalchhunga (Comp.), Reports of the Foreign Mission of the Presbyterian Church of Wales on Sylhet, Bangladesh and Cachar, India, 1886-1955, op. cit., p. 143. 32. ‘Report of Sylhet Cachar, 1922,’ in Rev. Vanlalchhunga (Comp.), Reports of the Foreign Mission of the Presbyterian Church of Wales on Sylhet Bangladesh and Cachar, India. 1886-1955, op. cit., p. 237. 33. Rev. Vanlalchhunga, Marvelous Mission, op cit., p. 156. 34. Interview with Chiro Biswas, aged 71 years, at his Pailapool residence, 12 August 2008. 35. ‘Report of Sylhet Cachar, 1935,’ in Rev. Vanlalchhunga (Comp.), Reports of the Foreign Mission of the Presbyterian Church of Wales on Sylhet Bangladesh and Cachar, India, 1886-1955, op. cit., p. 366. 36. Goala, op. cit., p. 23. 37. ‘Report of Sylhet Cachar 1920,’ in Rev. Vanlalchhunga (Comp.), Reports of the Foreign Mission of the Presbyterian Church of Wales on Sylhet Bangladesh and Cachar, India, 1886-1955, op. cit., p. 232. 38. Ibid., p. 233. 39. ‘Report of Sylhet Cachar, 1933,’ in Rev. Vanlalchhunga (Comp.), Reports of the Foreign Mission of the Presbyterian Church of Wales on Sylhet Bangladesh and Cachar, India. 1886-1955, op. cit., p. 342. 40. Ibid., p. 343. 41. Ibid. 42. Ibid., p. 494. 43. Ibid., p. 89. 44. Ibid., p. 21. 45. Ibid., p. 35 46. Ibid., p. 93. 47. Ibid., p. 21 48. Ibid., p. 40. 49. Ibid., p. 79. 50. Ibid., p. 114. 51. Ibid., p. 125. 52. Barak Samatal Presbyterian Mondalite Mahilader Sebakarjer Sankhipta Itihas, provide full details.

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53. ‘Report of Sylhet Cachar 1910’, in Rev. Vanlalchhunga Rev (Comp.), Reports of the Foreign Mission of the Presbyterian Church of Wales on Sylhet Bangladesh and Cachar, India, 1886-1955, op. cit., pp. 185-6. 54. ‘Report of Sylhet Cachar 1910’, in Rev. Vanlalchhunga (Comp.), Reports of the Foreign Mission of the Presbyterian Church of Wales on Sylhet Bangladesh and Cachar, India, 1886-1955, op. cit., pp. 185-6. 55. Ibid. 56. ‘Report of Sylhet Cachar 1940’, in Rev. Vanlalchhunga (Comp.), Reports of the Foreign Mission of the Presbyterian Church of Wales on Sylhet Bangladesh and Cachar, India, 1886-1955, op cit., p. 422. 57. Ibid., p. 427. 58. Ibid., p. 438. 59. Rev. Vanlalchhunga, Marvelous Mission, op. cit., p. 176. 60. ‘Report of Sylhet Cachar 1953’, in Rev. Vanlalchhunga (Comp.), Reports of the Foreign Mission of the Presbyterian Church of Wales on Sylhet Bangladesh and Cachar, India, 1886-1955, op. cit., p. 480. 61. ‘Report of Sylhet Cachar, 1911’, in Rev. Vanlalchhunga (Comp.), Reports of the Foreign Mission of the Presbyterian Church of Wales on Sylhet Bangladesh and Cachar, India, 1886-1955, op. cit., p. 160. 62. ‘Report of Sylhet Cachar, 1914’, in Vanlalchhunga Rev (Comp.), Reports of the Foreign Mission of the Presbyterian Church of Wales on Sylhet Bangladesh and Cachar, India, 1886-1955, op. cit., p. 195. 63. Rev. Vanlalchhunga, Marvelous Mission, op. cit., p. 121. 64. ‘Report of Sylhet Cachar 1923’, in Rev. Vanlalchhunga (Comp.), Reports of the Foreign Mission of the Presbyterian Church of Wales on Sylhet Bangladesh and Cachar, India, 1886-1955, op. cit., p. 245. 65. Ibid. 66. ‘Report of Sylhet Cachar 1925’, in Rev. Vanlalchhunga (Comp.), Reports of the Foreign Mission of the Presbyterian Church of Wales on Sylhet Bangladesh and Cachar, India, 1886-1955, op. cit., p. 246. 67. Goala, op. cit., p. 30. 68. Ibid., p. 19. 69. Ibid., p. 20.

CHAPTER 3

Missionaries as Stimulus

Interrogating Political Mobilization in

Colonial North-East India

BINAYAK DUTTA

The second decade of the twentieth century marked the beginning of a long period of flux in world history, when tensions between armed camps in Europe led to imminent conflagration, resulting in First World War. This period was remarkable for a wide range of reasons in anti-colonial India, too, chief among which was the annulment of the Partition of Bengal in 1911. The Indian subcontinent was bursting with political activity, with the shadow of international conflicts casting their own influence on domestic affairs. When the world was a veritable tinderbox, the West and the East could hardly remain insulated from one another. In spite of its reticence, after the 1857 rebellion, in the twentieth century, Western presence, through its ideas and agencies, seemed all pervasive and intrusive in this land, especially in the north­ east. Autonomous politics had developed in this region centring around this Western intrusion and one of the agencies that had come under scanner were the Christian missionaries. They had gradually lost their autonomous character in the perception of the Hindu and Muslim traditionalists, and were perceived to be an extended arm of the colonial state. The Balkan War was considered by many historians as a forewarning of the global conflagration that the world would witness in 1914. According to David Thomson, ‘The Balkan Wars left the international scene more enigmatic than before’.1 It was a situation where the colonial state was pitted against the traditional elements in Mohammedan society in India, and tempers ran high.

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Muslim mobilization was attempted on a large scale to enlist support for Turkey. The missionaries were an easily identified target of violence and criticism as representatives of the colonial state and British imperialism. The British attitude in this war towards Turkey was a cause for increased hostility against the colonial state.2 In this conflict the missionaries were at the receiving end being accosted and assaulted in different places.3 Of singular significance here is the fact that, the other religious communities were mobilizing their own folk on an anti-missionary plank. The focus of the present paper is to examine the role that the missionaries played, through their activities or through ‘per­ ceptions built about them’ in the scheme of political and social mobilization undertaken by both the Hindu and the Muslim organizations and individuals in colonial north-east India. The Christian missionaries became the focal point for community mobilization discourse in this region for some time in the third decade of the twentieth century. Politics in the north-east is often enmeshed in attitudes developed in Bengal over critical issues of mobilization and community response. This is nowhere more evi­ dent than in the study of community relationships with reference to the missionaries. The north-east comes out as an unconscious adjunct of community response and perceptions developed by contending groups in areas outside the north-east, especially Bengal. Both in action and perception, the Christian missionar­ ies were viewed as extension of the colonial arm in inaccessible areas, where cultural reorientation became a conscious substitute for difficult administration. The rise in missionary influence on various themes of their interest was perceived to be the result of conscious encouragement and indulgence of their activities by the colonial state. In the view of these perceptions and develop­ ments centring around missionary activities in colonial north-east India, the native ‘other’ articulated his response through Hindu or Muslim sociocultural mobilization. An essential element of this missionary centric discourse was, therefore, a conscious effort at communal mobilization that, in turn, contributed to rising Hindu-Muslim tensions in this region in the following years. Therefore, for sometime, the missionaries

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acted as a stimulus to commercial mobilization through their activities and through the perceptions built around them, which is examined in this paper.

Missionary Activities and Conflict in Colonial North-east Political hostilities as an adjunct to social tension were not novel to colonial north-east India. Proselytization activities by Christian missionaries ensured the creation of multiple identities in colonial north-eastern society articulated through Christian and nonChristian strands in indigenous tribal society. In a polity mired in anti-colonial movement and rhetoric, this spread of faith by the Christian missionaries, in a consistent and gradual manner, helped to rationalize hectic mobilization of their own cadre by the non-Christian organizations. The mission, in north-east India, was often assisted by local deprivation and colonial administra­ tion. Though the role of the mission and administration seemed exclusive, they became often complementary and mutually benefi­ cial. In the past, before 1857, when the colonial state was inclined towards minimum interference into native and indigenous societ­ ies, penetrative mobilization by the Christian missionaries helped embolden the tribesmen to question traditional practices and beliefs of their own society. The rising tensions in traditional soci­ eties were also a pointer to the rapid and determined nature of missionary activities in the tribal societies of colonial north-east India. Christianity was transforming social norms and practices and new practices were set in place to complement the times.4 Though the actual method for rise in numerical strength of the Christians among the tribesmen was a matter of debate, cen­ sus figures indicate that most conversions took place in those areas directly under colonial control or administration. Though the records reveal that in 1901, the number of Christians in this region were about 3,000-4,000, their number rose to about half a million in 1951 (5,60,987 in Assam, 68,394 in Manipur and 5,262 Tripura). These rising numbers could be interpreted as evidence of aggressive proselytization by the Christian missionaries in the

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early decades of the twentieth century. The cultural and social changes initiated and effected as a result of this mobilization set­ off reactions among the other religious communities in both the peripheral tribal and mainstream Indian societies. In Khasi Hills, that is an example of one of the peripheral societies of Indian sub­ continent in the colonial period, reactions to missionary activities were extremely strong, though not violent, the most vocal being the Seng Khasi movement.5 Similar reactions were also set-off in the Lushai Hills when the missionaries tried to undermine the authority of the traditional chiefs.6 But a more intense struggle against the missionaries was launched by followers and organiza­ tions of other religious communities, such as the Hindus and the Muslims, who were on a lookout for an opportunity to expand their organizational base in colonial north-east India. Though their contact and contest with the Christian missionaries were minimal, they nonetheless aggressively engaged in mobilization activity in this region on the pretext of offsetting a missionary threat of de­ culturization of people whom they looked upon as their probable target groups and tentative adherents. This mobilization can be viewed as a renewal of aggression on the part of the Hindu and Muslim organizations to crystallize their own community identity built around communal lines. It was an effort to take control over an area which, till the second decade of the twentieth century, was a fluid space in anti-colonial politics. These efforts at communal mobilization built on ‘perceptions of missionary threat’ are critical to the construction of communal identity and conflict in colonial north-east India, for missionary activities were merely a slogan for Hindu and Muslim mobilization for a conflict of a later age, when ‘missionaries and perceptions built around them’ ceased to be an issue.

The Missionary as Stimulant Official reports of this region, traced to post-Khilafat days noted with concern the tendency of the people to concentrate on communal interest.7 This mobilization was made even easier by identifying a threat (real or perceived) to a community existence.

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In a charged communal atmosphere where the Hindu and Muslim leadership began to aggressively campaign to protect respective communities from any threat, the perception of missionary threat came in to assist the activities of Tanzeem and Tabligh on one hand and Shuddhi and Sangathan on the other. Considerable passions were aroused among the Muslims of this region against the missionaries with the publication of a leaflet by the Roman Catholic Church missionaries entitled Satya Dharma Nirupani (Delineating True Faith). This pamphlet was viewed as an insult to the Prophet. In Bengal, the publication of this leaflet set-off a wave of protest, one of the forms of which was a series of articles in the Mussalman. The Mussalman dated 17 February 1925, and the Satyagrahi published provocative articles calling upon the Mussalmans of Bengal and its adjoining region to resist such insults to Islam and the Prophet. But of singular importance in this context was the use of this incident as a pretext to appeal for mobilization of Muslims of eastern Bengal and Assam on the perception of a missionary effort to insult Islam and threaten the faith. The Muslim press and the Ulama associated with it were also seen to present this incident as a deliberate effort of the colonial state to insult the traditional religions of the subcontinent on one pretext or the other. The decision of the traditional and the rising middle class Muslim leadership to agitate this issue as a threat to the ‘faith’ was a tactful ploy to mobilize their people on an emotive slogan. The efforts of the traditional leadership at mobilization were presented as the only viable alternative strength as it lay in their success at presenting before their followers a conspiratorial unity of purpose and action between the colonial state and the missionaries, which was articulated in the Satyagrahi declaring that, ‘The arrogance of the missionaries would not have gone so far without the help and indulgence of the missionaries by the government’.8 While not examining at this point, the validity behind such claims, the potency of such slogans built around ‘perceptions of missionary activities’ could not be doubted. It was a clever ploy to kill two birds with one stone so to say, for it was against the mis­ sionaries as much as it was against the colonial state, and finally

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fulfilling the aim of communal consolidation mobilization built on its foundations of threat and hatred. The clever use of print and the oral mediums represented in ‘publication of appeals’ and street campaigns as the two pillars of mobilization was a unique style developed by the Muslim leadership around the emotive issue of ‘perception of missionary threat’. The novelty of this dual tech­ nique was ably put to use in the borderland districts of Bengal and colonial Assam. One such district was Mymensingh where besides protest meetings, public subscription was undertaken to generate funds to prosecute the offenders. ‘Religious emotions’ and ‘threat to the faith’ were cleverly utilized for communal mobilization. These efforts at building communal solidarity often spilled over to Assam where by 1921 there was a sizeable Muslim population.9 Such conflict situation built around ‘perceptions of missionary threat’ are singularly significant in a study of Muslim mobilization in the past Khilafat period. Mobilization on these perceptions were not exclusively an Islamic preserve. The Hindus who had also engaged in communal mobilization through Suddhi and Sangathan in north India were not left wanting in their efforts in colonial north-east India and the ‘perceptions of missionary threat’ became a convenient tool for them as well in their mobilizational discourse. Of importance in this connection were the two organizations, the Hindu Mahasabha and the Hindu Mission. The Hindu Mission was one of the most prominent revivalist Hindu organizations, with its headquarters in Calcutta. By 1926, there was a sudden rush of Hindu revivalist missionaries to Assam, which was for them a relatively unexplored region for communal mobilization. The visit of Swami Satyananda, the manager of the Hindu Mission and Swami Nageshananda, a preacher of the mission, along with a few junior adherents or brahmacharis was the first major wave of such Hindu missionar­ ies who came into colonial Assam to offset the Christianization of indigenous tribes. They visited Dhubri and declaimed against the proselytization and evangelism of Christian missionaries among the hill tribes. Though not directly a part of the Hindu Maha­ sabha, their activities greatly contributed to the rise of communal passion. This development is significant because it was the first

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step at Hindu communal mobilization on a large scale in colonial north-east India, in which ‘perceptions of the missionaries played an important part’. Swami Satyananda also visited Goalpara, Tez­ pur and Nowgong with the object of raising funds for ‘spreading Hinduism among the hill tribes’, especially those converted to Christianity. The team of Hindu Mission also visited Jorhat for the purpose of ‘converting hill tribes’, especially those converted to Christianity.10 Swami Satyananda’s visit to Shillong was especially significant for his lecture on Hindu Sangathan and organiza­ tion. His visit to Tezpur was instrumental in heightening tension because of his disparaging remarks on other sects and religions. The Hindu Mission of Calcutta was one of the most important Hindu organizations which engaged in extensive mobilizations, the impetus for which came from their perceptions of Christian missionary activities in North-east India. The Hindu Mahasabha, also made efforts to make consider­ able intrusion into north-east Indian polity by heightening fears of Christian missionary evangelism in this region and issues of conversion of the hill tribes. This Mahasabha programme also came to be supported by traditional Assamese religious leadership such as Brindaban Chandra Goswami of Nowgong and Pitambar Dev Goswami, the head of the Goromur Satra who acted as the president of the reception committee of the Mahasabha’s All India Annual Conference of 1926. Adhikar Goswami of Goramur Satra also toured Sivsagar district and addressed public meetings to mobilize the Hindus on communal lines.11 In Sylhet, the visit of Pandit Lakhi Narayan Sastri, a Mahasabha preacher, also inflamed communal passions.

The Missionary as Pretext Significantly, an immediate offshoot of this mobilization among the Hindus and the Muslims was the accentuation of the conflict between the two communities themselves. Though rallied around perceptions of missionary threat, the mobilization drives contributed to crystallization of communal identity for both the communities. What started off as a diatribe against the Christian

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missionaries reached a crescendo with Hindu and Muslim organizations and public at large attacking each other. The issue of Christian missionaries and their evangelism became buried and lost with passage of time. It was evident that missionarycentric discourse was only a ploy and a passing concern for both communities and the real motive was communal mobilization among their respective supporters. By the third decade of the twentieth century, when reinforcement of communal solidarity and identity was reaching a criticality, the missionaries and their perceived activities only helped to deepen the battle-lines drawn between the Hindu and Muslim communities, especially when community relationships were at a new low. The role of the press as an active collaborative agent in communal mobilization was all the more strengthened. A trend that was started by the Mussalman in its anti-Christian diatribe was continued by the Muhammadi, dated 17 April 1925, which picked up cudgels against the Hindu Mahasabha. What started as a campaign against the Christian missionary conversion of the people of colonial north-east degenerated into a competition between Hindus and Muslims to convert the adherents/members/practitioners of either community. If the Arya Samaj and Hindu Mahasabha proposed to convert the Muslims and Christian tribesmen alike, the Muslim Ulama (e.g. Maulana Hussain Ahmed of Sylhet at Sibsagar) also engaged in collecting subscription to convert Hindus. If the Hindu Mission worked for Hindu mobilization (Home Poll FR, June 1927, No. 32), the Islam Mission was formed at Shillong with the sole object of spreading Islam among the Khasi people in 1927.12 The visit of Swami Satyananda to Assam was greatly resented by the Muslims who formed a Tabligh Committee to ‘safeguard the internet of Muhammadans in general and to convert Hindus in particular’.13 As mobilization became more aggressive, the communal rela­ tions were far from cordial. The presence of one group was an anathema to the other, more so, when the Hindu and the Muslim organizations were in a keen contest for dominating the same geo­ graphical terrain and enlisting the people in their organizations. Official reports on communal relations note that Hindu-Muslim

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relations were strained and the Mussalman elites were resentful of the speeches delivered by the Hindu Mission missionaries and Hindu Mahasabha activists during their mobilization programmes organized in different urban centers of colonial north-east India. The visit of Swami Satyananda Saraswati of Hindu Mission Calcutta and Bhai Paramanand of Hindu Mahasabha created resentment among the Muslims of this region and in the neighbouring prov­ ince of Bengal. The use of metaphors and mythological stories by the Hindu Mahasabha leaders to arouse communal passion was also not lost to either the colonial state or to the Muslim elites who watched this new aggressive element in Hindu mobilization with much apprehension. The visit of Pandit Lakhi Narayan Shastri, a preacher of the All India Hindu Mahasabha to Sylhet, was an event of great significance. His visit which culminated in a public meet­ ing on the 24 July14 witnessed the Pandit exhorting the Hindus to worship Goddess Durga and assert themselves. The message of the Pandit was not lost on the audience who began to interpret the message as a call to make the Hindu Samaj more aggressive and militant in their approach to other communities. The Pandit’s mes­ sage to his audience to become worshippers of Shakti in ‘critical times and set up wrestling schools’ seem to be much in line with the call of the yogi in Bankim Chandra’s novel Anandamath, which was a Bible for militant Hinduism in the Indian subcontinent. The reaction to this message was immediate and equally aggressive with the audience calling upon Pandit Shastri to guide the people in turning militant. The immediate result of this vituperation was the publication of an objectionable pamphlet in Sylhet entitled Rangila Rasool. Though anonymous, this pamphlet hurt the sentiments of the Muslims of the region, and thus contributed to aggravating the communal rancour existing in this southern district of colonial Assam. This pamphlet which was aimed at defaming the Prophet of Islam, set-off an outrage among the Muslim elite, led by the local ulama. A meeting was held in a local mosque at Sylhet, which was attended by about 700 influential Muslim men of the town, which called the colonial state to come down heavily on such ‘communal mischief ’.15 Influential ulama travelled around Assam to campaign against the tenets of Hinduism which, in turn, led to a launching of

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counterpropaganda by the Hindu Mahasabha preachers, who set about their task of converting the Khasis and hence launching an elaborate fund raising programme. The rhetoric of the Hindu radi­ cal organizations became more beligerant with time. Their main focus was transformation of the Hindu samaj towards radicalism and intolerance and the Hindu Mission, Calcutta, and its leader led the way in Nowgong when he said that ‘India was the kingdom of Sri Krishna, was the property of the Hindus and that the bulk of the Mohammedans were only converts from Hinduism and if the Hindus made an effort, the country would be denuded of Moham­ medans within 10 years’.16 The Mohammedan grassroot leadership of the area struck back with equal vehemence and one Maulana Nasiruddin set out on a tour of Upper Assam to campaign against these radical Hindu organizations. The strength of his campaigns, which took him to Dibrugarh, Jorhat, Lumding, Nowgong and Gauhati, was such that it invited violent protests from the Hindu Mahasabha leaders who objected to his criticism of Hinduism.17 A Tabligh committee was formed at Goalpara under the leadership of the local MLA, Maulvi Miznur Rahman to safeguard the interest of the Mohammedans and to convert the Hindus to Islam.18 In this volatile political situation, two minor incidents at Dinajpur in Bengal reverted the communal gaze back to the Christian missions in 1927. The first incident was the caning of a Santhal boy by a Roman Catholic priest, when he tried to per­ suade some mission hostel students against going to the mission school or padresalas, as they were coloqually referred to. The sec­ ond incident was the conversion of two Christian women, who were wives of two Christian gentlemen, during the absence of their husbands. Both these incidents revived public attention towards the Christian missionaries, their missions and the aggressive conversion drive carried on by the Hindu Mahasabha among the Santhals, along with other tribals of the region.19 While the mis­ sionary action of caning the Santhal boy was quickly denounced, it became another launchpad for an aggressive mobilization cam­ paign of the Hindu radical organizations and countercampaigns by the Muslim grassroot organizations in the region. The Assam

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Moslem Tabligh conference held in Gauhati devoted the session to condemn the conversion drive initiated and organized by the Arya Samaj, Hindu Mission and the Hindu Mahasabha.20 The two com­ munities were moving towards virtual intolerance of each other as could be seen in the rampant desecration of each other’s wor­ ship places and in their public display of disregard for each other’s communal sentiments. While serious communal riots broke out at Digboi over the killing of a cow on the occasion of Bakra Eid,21 a serious communal confrontation was on the anvil when the Hin­ dus staged a play insulting Prophet Muhammad on the occasion of Durga Puja, at Sylhet.22 The passage of the Sarda Act which fixed the age of marriage for girls and its implementation in Assam was another development which returned communal focus on the missionaries. The colonial state was yet again seen as an instru­ ment for furthering the Western colonial and missionary agenda of disregarding customary laws and practices. A printed pamphlet was issued in the Surma Valley, which called upon the Muslims of the area to violate the law, in this case the Sarda Act, for being contrary to the latter and spirit of the Shariat. The Jamiat-ul-ulama Hind and the Anjuman-e-Hifayate Islam in Sylhet called upon the faithful to carry out a ‘religious war’ against the colonial state.23 In all these conflicts, one can witness a text and a subtext. On the face of it the ‘other’ was the enemy, which not only set the stage for communal conflicts in Assam, but occasionally became the imme­ diate stimulant of a conflict situation. This imagined force was the Christian missionaries. The sustained campaigns of the missions that had set-up schools and colleges, hospitals and orphanages in the tribal areas were sufficient stimulants for the Hindu communal organization to launch a sustained campaign in the tribal areas with renewed vigour. If the colonial state attitude assisted the mis­ sionaries, in these hills, the non-Christian, non-state communal organizations such as the Assam provincial Hindu Sabha began to work on their grassroots contacts to expand their support base. Display of demographic strength was an important step towards ensuring a powerful political negotiating position in colonial state, when the negotiations for constitutional change and community representations in government were going on in the run-up to the

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Government of India Act, 1935. By 1931, new census reports for India were due. The Hindu Sabha worked hard to influence the grassroots government officers, such as the mauzadars, to have the hills men of Assam, such as the Khasis, Garos, Lushais and even the Mishmis, enumerated as Hindus in the coming census.24 With constitutional reforms looming on the horizon, communal anta­ gonism reached new heights. Assertion of communal identity and expansion of demographic strength on communal lives was seen by the Hindus and Muslims as an asset at the negotiating table. Conversely, any effort that led to the dwindling of the communal demographic strength was taken most unkindly. Thus, in Assam, efforts by the Christian missionaries to increase the number of Christians resulted in tension and led to communal violence. Thus it was of little surprise that conversion of Mohammedans into the Christian faith in Habibganj subdivision of the Sylhet district of Assam resulted in communal tension between the Christian con­ verts and the Mohammedan community.25 However, as part of these demographic struggles that domi­ nated socio-political mobilization in this frontier region of colonial India, perception of a missionary threat resulted in a cumulative introspection among the upper caste Hindus about the causes for the success of Christian proselytization in this region. It is as a result of this exercise that the upper caste Hindu leadership and their institutional heads identified untouchability as a major drawback in Hindu society, one which facilitated the spread of Christianity or Islam among the Hindus belonging to the lower castes. In an age where numbers were important, the upper caste Hindus were woken up with a rude shock, when, in 1931, in a meeting organized at the Sunamganj Town Hall on 23 June, a large meeting of lower caste Hindus, predominantly Namasudras and Patnis, threatened to go out of the Hindufold, if their social condi­ tions were not improved.26 By 1933, the untouchability question was openly debated in the public sphere in Assam. The importance of this debate lay in the fact that it also revived the focus of Hindu leadership on the issue of the conversion of Hindus in general in this region to both Christianity and Islam. It was thus in tune with this position that the Goramur Satra Gossain held several meet­

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ing at a number of locations in the Darang district to discuss the untouchability question.27 This campaign gradually spread to other areas of Assam, where the Goramur Gossain led this movement vigorously. In Nowgong he held a series of meetings. The vigour of the campaign could be gauged from the fact that, as a result of his campaign in about 25 villages near his Satra, the villagers agreed to hold a religious meeting and some religious ceremonies with the untouchables and partake of food with them.28 The news of these meetings of the Goramur Gossain reached other regions of India; the highlight of this new social movement was the visit of the sec­ retary of the All India Anti-untouchability league to Assam and his meetings at Nowgong and Sibsagar districts. But this was only a short-lived movement, as it ultimately contributed to increas­ ing the conflicts and hostilities in this region between various communities. While the Muslims and Hindus were already at log­ gerheads, the lower castes joined in to aggravate the hostilities in this volatile situation, an example of which was the brutal assault of the manager of the Juthibari Tea Estate in Lakhimpur district, and the defence of the accused, an untouchable by the Goramur Gossain.

Conclusion Though not exclusively devoted to studying evangelism by Christian missionaries, this narrative, tries to construct a picture of socio-political mobilization in colonial north-east India. The effort is to draw attention to the centrality of the perception of Christian evangelism or perception of missionary threat as a slogan for mobilization of Hindu and Muslim communities in the region under study. While it is observed that issues of Christian evangelism receded into oblivion in the path of communal mobilization, with the passage of time, its importance in generating a momentum to Muslim and Hindu mobilization in this colonial peripheral region cannot be undermined. In their rush to extend their influence on their coreligionists in this region, both communities rode the tide of popular emotions evoked out of the articulation of antiChristian rhetoric. While it was evident that the supertext was

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the tussle for hegemony fought by the Hindus and Muslims for the contested north-eastern colonial space, Christian evangelism becomes a convenient tool for weaving communal emotions by both communities. While Christian missionary mobilization is an interesting story, they emerge more as an victim of HinduMuslim machineries in this region when mobilization on the rhetoric of religion and threat from missionaries contributed to the consolidation of communal identity among the Hindus and Muslims alike. In this sense the Christian missionaries were merely a stimulus for the two dominant communities of Indian subcontinent and once the mobilization was complete they were conveniently forgotten or ignored and the Hindus and the Muslim organizations and leaders went back to fighting each other in this marginal land. Though peripheral in political and geographical terms, the north-east represented a contested space in the crucial third decade of the twentieth century, and in this contest, missionaries of all hues played a prominent role.

Notes 1. ‘The Balkan Wars left the international scene more enigmatic than before’, author name??, Europe Since Napoleon, Penguin Books, London, 1990, p. 475. 2. Report of the Director, Criminal Intelligence, No. 88, November 1912, National Archives of India, (henceforth NAI). 3. Ibid. 4. See the discussion on the changing social norms and practices of the Khasi and Jaintia society and efforts by the colonial state to induce settlements between the traditional and Christian elements of these Tribunal societies, 5. For greater detail, see Sharmila Das Talukdar, K hasi Cultural Resistance to Colonialism, Spectrum Publishers, Guwahati, 2004 and S.K. Chaube, Hill Politics in North East India, Orient Blackswan, Hyderabad, 2012, p. 645. 6. Ibid., p. 67. 7. Home Political Fortnightly Report, September 1924, NAI. 8. Home Political Fortnightly Report, April 1925, NAI. 9. Ibid., (Assam).

Missionaries as Stimulus 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

95

Home Political, File No. 112–IV/1926 (Assam), January 1926, NAI. Home Political Fortnightly Report No. 32/1927 (Assam), NAI. S. De, et al., Political History of Assam, vol. II, p. 303. National Archives of India (NAI), Assam, July 1927, NAI. Ibid., August 1927, NAI. Ibid. Ibid., June 1927, NAI. Ibid., August 1927, NAI. Ibid., October 1927, NAI. Home Political Fortnightly Report, July 1927, NAI. Ibid. Home Political Fortnightly Report (Assam), May 1930, NAI. Ibid., November 1931, NAI. Ibid., May 1930, NAI. Also see Home Political Fortnightly Report, April 1925, for similar reactions, that had become much popular by 1925 in the initial years of the Anti-Missionary Movement and which was revived again by 1930. Home Political Fortnightly Report (Assam), November 1930, NAI. Ibid., December 1934, NAI. Ibid., July 1931, NAI. Ibid., March 1933, NAI. Ibid., June 1933, NAI.

CHAPTER 4

The Coming of the Grace of the Christ The Christian Baptist Missionaries and the Construction of Hindu Identity in Assam: c.1840-1900 BIPUL CHAUDHURY

May this beautiful expanse of water, long since dedicated to the heathen deity but now consecrated to the service of Christ, be often thus honoured by the footsteps of willing converts. miles bronson about Sibsagar in 18411 We have, I believe, only a few over 100 Assamese members after more than 60 years of faithful labors on the part of a good number of foreign missionaries appointed to that work. The comparison shows where God wants us to use our strength and our means. rev. c.e. petrick, 18992

The contributions of the American Baptist missionaries towards the growth of modern ideas and institutions in the province of Assam are immense. They not only acted as one of the key vehicles for the interaction of the East and the West along with the colonial state but also helped directly and indirectly towards the growth of the modern Assamese identity. It was the pioneering efforts of the Christian missionaries that the foundation of the modern Assamese language was laid with their publication of the translation of the Bible in 1813 and the first Assamese newsmagazine, the Arunodoi, in 1846. The missionary activities in the province were also an experiment in cultural anthropology and colonial ethnography in which the West tried to view the East as its ‘other’. The present paper tries to highlight the initial efforts of the

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missionaries to understand the varied and complex nature of the Hindu rituals and manners that were practiced in the province. In fact, they were aware of the diverse nature of Hindu religion and this applied to all parts of the country where they had tried evangelization. Interestingly, what the missionaries ultimately did was to construct a new identity of the religion and this later helped in the growth of nationalism in the province. The issue of language played the central role in the growth of nationalism by the latter half of the nineteenth century. In other words, in their effort to promote Christianity the missionaries ultimately helped to cre­ ate virtually a monolithic idea of Hinduism where it was none in the province and a large section of the people were still under the process of Sanskritization.3 This missionary construction was also utilized by the colonial state and the indigenous elites, which later created the problem of ethnic assertions in the state.4 The recent debates on the ‘civilizing mission of the West’ have added a new dimension to this issue.5 The term ‘Hindu’ is to be utilized to denote not a particular creed but a wide ranging spectrum of beliefs and practices with certain shared ideals like caste and purity. It will also emphasize the gendered aspect of conversion. The focus of the paper will be centred upon the Brahmaputra Valley due to the availability of more sources both in the English and in the Assamese language. But, at the same time it must be pointed out that the sources basically belonged to the missionary side, as the contemporary Assamese elite virtually did not respond through the print medium.

Early Colonial Assamese Society and the Missionaries In order to understand the contribution of the missionaries towards the growth of modern ideas in the province, it is very important to look at the status of the Assamese society, which also shaped their mindsets in many cases. Here, apart from the missionary journals and contemporary British and Assamese accounts, the first Assamese news magazine, the Arunodoi, is very important. The Assamese society was gradually recovering from the socio­ economic and political chaos started from the later Ahom period

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and the British rule provided the breathing ground but it required a longer period of recovery. It was the colonial state that welcomed the American Baptist missionaries into the province with the expectation that along with their evangelical works they will also impart some basic ideas of modernity among the natives. Henry Hopkins, the Assistant Commissioner, categorically stated this in 1865 as, At present we take very little from the Assamese, and we do very little for him. We do not intercept the bounty of nature on one hand, on the other hand we do not lead him to look for more than the nature provides, place him in communication with the outer world, and put him in the way of acquiring new material wants; the result is that he remains an indolent, sensual and non-progressive being.6

Regarding religion, the colonial state’s attitude was guided by practical realities of the time. In order to retain the support of the priestly classes it continued the policy of land grants followed by the earlier rulers. This is quite interesting when in the second half of the nineteenth century a series of agrarian riots swept a large part of the province against the repeated enhancement of land revenue.7 This class obviously in return remained very loyal to the colonial state with few exceptions.8 A large amount of revenue-free lands were in the possession of the various satras (an institution associated with the neo-Vaishnavite movement in the province) and temples till the very end of the colonial rule.9 The missionaries had to make some primary research in order to know the existing system of the Hindu religion in the valley. Their sources were both oral and written, collected from different parts of the province. This in itself was not a small achievement as against the overwhelming odds of communication, inclement weather, and non-cooperation of a large section of the people towards their enterprises. Moreover, the Assamese language at that time was not standardized and the people used different dialects. It was through the laborious effort of the missionaries that the first concrete method of language standardization was utilized in the Assamese. They did the same regarding the many other communi­ ties in the province like the Bodos and the Mishings.

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Brahmins and the Missionaries It was the colonial state, which in the process of understanding the Indian knowledge system relied upon the Brahmins and the qazis from the later decades of the eighteenth century. The Asiatic Society of Bengal and the Sanskrit College at Benares are examples of this. But as Vasudha Dalmia has pointed out, by the middle of the nineteenth century, with the administrative consolidation of the subcontinent and growing sense of British might this reliance upon the traditional authorities began to decline.10 In other words, the Orientalist’s knowledge now entered a new phase of identity where it had to be modified by ‘superior’ or ‘scientific’ European knowledge system. Instead of the Brahmins, the European Indologists in particular, like Max Müller, became more acceptable authorities in the eyes of the colonial state as well as to a large section of the educated Hindus. Here the question of racial superiority also played a determining impact in understanding the knowledge systems of the Eastern societies. Although it helped the colonial project of hegemony over the rest it also created several confusions. The American Baptist missionaries in colonial Assam provided several examples of these contradictions during their interactions, particularly with the native intellectuals. The missionaries, through their primary research, came to the knowledge that Hinduism in Assam was basically divided on the Vaishnavite and the Shakta lines, both dominated by the priestly classes. While the latter was the follower of Shiva with innumer­ able god and goddesses, the former followed only one god, Vishnu. There were several diversities among the followers regarding ritu­ alistic principles. To the missionaries these rituals were nothing other than superstitions instituted by the Brahmanical ideology to perpetuate their domination. They became very optimistic at the prospect that once the people could be shown the rightful path, their task would be quite easier to confront the priestly domina­ tion. The Christian missionaries from the very outset tried to criti­ cize the scriptural authority of the Brahmins in order to show the superiority of Christianity. But, the problem for the missionaries

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was that they had no other alternatives than seeking the support of the Brahmanical elites in getting access to the Hindu scriptural texts. In fact, it was Atmaram Sharma, a converted Assamese Brahmin, who was engaged by the Baptist missionaries from Serampore in Bengal before launching their operation in the province to critically engage with the limited literate class, mainly Brahmins.11 Although the newly emerging intellectuals from the Assamese middle class, like Anandaram Dhekial Phukan, Guna­ bhiram Barooah and Hemchandra Barooah, gave full support to some of the socio-cultural reform initiatives of the missionaries like the unequal status of the Assamese women and promotion of education, they had no wish to convert themselves. In fact, the attitude of the contemporary Assamese society was so against the progressive attitudes of these people that they and their family members had to face social boycott. The missionaries followed two methods of confrontation against the Brahmanical hegemony, first they would directly engage in debates, with the priests who were prepared to do so, about the relative superiority of the two religions. Second, if this method failed they would try the indirect method of distributing propaganda literature among the followers. They also utilized the platform of their news magazine, the Arunodoi, to advance the cause of evangelization. The Arunodoi, which apparently seems quite mild in its treat­ ment of the Hindu religion, was in closer scrutiny not quite so. It published two poems written by Nidhi Levy Farewell about the Kamakhya Temple (in Guwahati) criticizing many of the religious malpractices prevalent in them. The contemporary society did not respond to it and the validity of the criticisms was further testified later by a Brahmo preacher, Ramkumar Vidyaratna, in his Udashin Satyasrabar Assam Bhraman.12 The Arunodoi, in several instances, used the term of a single creator or God quite contrarily to the beliefs practised by a large section of the Assamese Hindus. One of the interesting features of the interaction between the native Brahmins and the missionaries was the absence of any written response from the former. The missionaries would have liked to take that challenge with their superiority over modern

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techniques like printing. A few Brahmins were appointed by the missionaries for the purpose of translation, and they showed no interest for conversion. As a result, the contest remained one-sided and the Brahmins remained the acknowledged masters over the Hindu religious affairs. Since the common people also accepted the scriptural authority of the priests, the missionaries had to content themselves by criticizing some socio-religious practices prevalent in the society. Moreover, the missionaries failed to pro­ vide any major intellectual challenge to the native Brahmins, as they themselves, were opposed to several aspects of modernity like the women’s rights movement which challenged many aspects of the biblical authority. The missionaries’ problem became graver as the colonial state also patronized the satras and temples by granting a large amount of revenue-free land grants in order to obtain their support. Miles Bronson, for example, while referring to the priests lands in Nag­ aon, remarked: This one act of government has turned out to be the main prop of Hindu­ ism. The people infer that the government favours the priests above all others in the country, because they are worthy. The priests themselves well know how to turn this matter to the extension of their own avari­ cious aims and self-aggrandizement. From these people arise our greatest obstacles.13

Compared to this governmental patronage the missionaries received no financial assistance from the colonial state. They had to depend exclusively upon the limited funds from the United States and the mission lacked sufficient manpower to handle the situa­ tion properly. It was the determination of Nathan Brown, which saved the situation in the late 1950s when the American sponsors felt that the mission in the province should be abandoned.14 The Arunodoi was also not yielding sufficient profits to stay on.15

Missionaries and the Issue of Caste One of the important characteristics of the Hindu religion is the caste system. The missionaries as well as a section of colonial officials were very much aware of the system, but they failed to

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critically engage with the intricacies of the system in most cases. This was a very important problem for the missionaries as they failed to see various diversities or dynamics of the system. In fact, the issue of conversion also had the added problem of exclusion from the patrilocal society, which acted as a major obstacle to the missionaries. In other words, unless conversion did not offer any higher social status it attracts lesser people and this is clearly mentioned by Mr Baine’s in the Census Report of India, 1891.16 A major issue that the missionaries had to confront while dealing with the question of caste was the process of Sanskrit­ ization that was steadily developing among a large section of the people who now tried to assert their higher status in the society. B.C. Allen, the census officer noted this phenomenon in his Census Report of the province in 1901.17 One of the important aspects, the missionaries soon came to realize was the prevalence of some occult practices among a section of the Assamese people that were not sanctioned by ortho­ dox Hinduism. For example, the practice of Ratikhowa which was prevalent in many parts of upper Assam where the follow­ ers gathered together at particular nights to dine as well as drink irrespective of caste and religion.18 Another important example was of the Nath Jogis who had many religious practices distinct from orthodox Hinduism and yet they did not show any inclina­ tion towards the idea of conversion. The missionaries obviously felt certain that these people could easily be converted. But, this hope of the missionaries was belied against the forces of tradi­ tion. Moreover, by the 1960s, Assam was visited by some Bengali preachers advocating the Sri Chaitanya and the Brahmo doctrines which influenced a section of the native Hindus. In fact, educated Assamese elites were very much aware of the latest developments of the Bengal Renaissance and this, too, provided an obstacle to the missionary agenda. The difference of race, language and culture in most cases worked against the missionary enterprise in the valley. In fact, their resemblance and cooperation with the white ruling class made many people suspicious of the missionary enterprises. To the majority of the educated natives, the missionary efforts of edu­ cation and language were acceptable but not any interference with

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their religion and tradition. A.K. Gurney, a missionary, reported in frustration, In fact, they have an accommodating theory that all religions are true. It is as you think it, they often say: Christianity is true, so is Hindooism, so is Mohammedanism. I regard Hinduism as true; you regard Christian­ ity as true.… For the Europeans Christianity is good; for the Hindoo, Hindooism.19

They had nearly the same experiences amongst the majority of the tea garden workers who were recent immigrants into the province. The idea of caste and class were so deep rooted in contempo­ rary Assamese society that even the limited number of converts followed it in most cases. Richard M. Easton has shown in the context of the Naga’s how even after their conversion into Christi­ anity they were following many of the traditional practices. They made an interesting compromise with their traditional practices and the Christianity preached by the missionaries.20 Similar expe­ riences were echoed by Mrs P.H. Moore, a missionary, regarding the Lalung or the Tiwa (who basically reside in the Nagaon and Marigaon districts of the province as well as in the adjoining regions) converts in the valley.21

Missionaries and the Assamese Women In the construction of the image of the modern Assamese women, the missionaries played a prominent role. The missionaries in their critique against Hinduism made the Indian women a major target of intervention and tried to show that the status of these women was inferior to the Christian (Western) women. But, it was very difficult to directly get access to the women of the higher class and caste without the support of the men who, in turn, had, in most cases, no wish to expose their women to the missionaries. The frustration of the Baptist missionaries regarding the Assamese women was clearly expressed by a female missionary, Orel Keller, in these words, ‘It is of no use to talk to us; our husbands can understand these things, but we can’t learn to read, we have no souls!’22

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Limitations of the Missionary Agenda One of the prime factors for the failure of the missionary agenda of conversion in the valley was that they were trying beyond their means. It was physically impossible to tackle a religion like Hinduism with only a few persons however devoted they might be and who were at the same time foreigners. Abbe J.A. Dubois had clearly pointed out this problem in the context of south India, which is also applicable in the Brahmaputra Valley.23 The caste system that is an integral part of Hinduism posed a very important obstacle against the missionaries. The missionaries were also not free from many of the existing caste and class prejudices themselves. The Arunodoi itself mentions in several instances the word itar to designate a section of the lower caste as was the practice of the time. As a result, many of their criticisms against Hinduism more or less conformed to the existing caste system and failed to tap a large section of the people who were still undergoing the process of Sanskritization. The missionaries, themselves, were aware of this limitation and from around 1855 they seriously began to consider the neighbouring Hill areas as their possible targets of evangelizations. In this respect they began to get some positive response from the latter half of the nineteenth century. But the missionaries were not complete failures as they gained some success among a section of the tribal and tea garden workers who were brought into the province by the tea planters.

Conclusion The greatest difficulty that the missionaries felt in India, as a whole, while tackling Hinduism was the ‘intellectual’ challenge posed by the Hindu elites. Colonial Assam was also no exception to this and here the Brahmins, both of the Shakta and the Vaishnavite fold, equally participated with zeal. Their critique of the Hindu religion helped the native elites to relook at and reform many of the existing beliefs and practices. They also began to utilize the newly emerging printing press. The reaction was spontaneous as the Auniati Satra published the second Assamese news magazine Assam Bilashini to counter the charge against the critique as well as

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to reorganize the religion. The Brahmanical classes were the first to understand the utilities of the higher education and as Monorama Sharma has pointed out, the satras, particularly the Auniati, sponsored scholarships to a section of the Assamese students.24 Assamese elites, like Lakshminath Bezbaruah, consequently became leading advocates of neo-Vaishnavism in the Brahmaputra Valley and the figure of Sankardeva, the pioneer of the movement, received a facelift, sealing the prospects of the missionaries. In fact, it can be said that the missionaries came at such a period when the process of Sanskritization was in full swing among a majority of the people in the valley who had to gain no social hierarchy through conversion. The administrative unification under the British colonial regime and the development in the field of communication and economic opportunities along with the developments of the Bengal Renaissance brought the people closer to the development of new identity and here Hinduism played a great role. It is also important to observe that while the Assamese nationalists utilized in many ways the missionary-defined identity as their own, it never became communal or sectarian.

Notes 1. Maheshwar Neog (ed. & Comp.), The ‘Orunodoi’ 1846-1854, Publication Board Assam, Guwahati, 1983-2003, p. 82. Also see, E.A. Brown, The Whole World Kin: A Pioneer Experience among Remote Tribes and Other Labours of Nathan Brown, Philadelphia, 1890, pp. 352-3. 2. H.K. Barpujari (ed.), The American Missionaries and North-East India (1836-1900), Spectrum Publication, Guwahati, 1986, p. 220. 3. The term ‘Sanskritization’ is used in the context of the paper to show the trends among the educated natives to move forward in the caste and class hierarchy in a generalized form in the lines of M.N. Srinivas. He first coined it in his book Religion and Society among the Coorgs of South India, Oxford University Press, 1952. In fact, there are questions posed by several scholars to apply it uniformly in a diverse context like India. Yet, the term, in spite of criticisms and seemingly old fashioned, helps us to understand the Indian situation

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4.

5.

6. 7.

8. 9. 10.

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in a generalized way, which was also observed by a section of the colonial officials. For example, the Bodo movement heavily relied upon the ethnographic account of Reverend Endle’s, The Kacharis, published in 1911. This also applied to the Thengal Kachari’s movement for autonomy in the later decades of the twentieth century where the issues of language and dialect played central roles. This shows the dominance of the notions in Western written accounts which are perceived as more authentic among a section of the people of Assam, even for asserting their particular ethnic causes and values. Obviously, a majority of the colonial accounts were biased and prepared by officials who had no training in conducting research. Yet, due to the absence of written records among a large section of the people, they continued their dominance. The growth of post-colonial approach in Indian historiography has repeatedly questioned the notion of the Western knowledge system in the country in the wake of the interactions of the West and the East. Ranajit Guha has argued that the British colonial state in India exercised dominance but not hegemony, and the Indian people did not always appropriate the Western knowledge system without questioning its practical utilities in the Indian environment. For details, see, Ranajit Guha, Dominance Without Hegemony, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1999. Lata Mani has further argued about the issues on conversion and the moral issues involved in it in her book, Unfolding the Mask, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2003. H.K. Barpujari (ed.), The Comprehensive History of Assam, vol. V, Publication Board Assam, Guwahati, 1993, p. 15. For details see D ebabrata Sarma, Asomiya Jatigathan Prakriya Aru Jatiya Janagosthigata Anusthan Samuh (Assamese Nationality Construction Process and the Role played by the National and Ethnic Organizations in it), Jorhat, 2006, pp. 574-7. Ibid., pp. 96-104. Ibid., pp. 574-8. For details see Vasudha Dalmia, ‘Sanskrit Scholars and Pundits of the Old School: The Banaras Sanskrit College and the Constitution of Authority in the Late Nineteenth Century’, in Orienting India: European Knowledge Formation in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, Three Essays Collective, New Delhi, 2003, pp. 29-52.

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11. For details see Neog, op. cit., pp. 68-81. 12. For details see Kanailal Chattopadhyay (ed.), A ssame Cha Kuli Andolan O Ramkumar Vidyaratna, Papyrus, Kolkata, 1989. 13. For d etails see Barpujari, The Comprehensive History of Assam, vol. V, p. 7. The attitudes of a section of colonial officials towards the satras can be clearly seen in the accounts of Capt. E.T. Dalton, Political Assistant Commissioner in charge of Kamrup, titled, ‘Notes on the “Mahapurushyas”, a sect of Vaishnavas in Assam’, published in the Journal of the Asiatic Society, no. VI, 1851. Also see, Anil Raichoudhury, Asomar Samaj-Itihasot Nava-Vaishnavbad, (The Role of the Neo Vaishnavite Movement in the Social History of Assam) (in Assamese), Guwahati, 2000, pp. 191-206. 14. Barpujari, op. cit., p. 204. 15. For details see Francis E. Clark, ‘Do Foreign Missions Pay?’, The North American Review, vol. 166, no. 496 (March 1898), University of Northern Iowa Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25118965 accessed on 20-12-2018 07:04 UTC, pp. 268-80. For its impacts upon the missionary families see Harriette Bronson Gunn, In a Far Country (first published in the USA in 1911), reprinted in 2017 (edited with an Introduction by Prasanta Das, Guwahati). 16. For details see H.K. Beauchamp’s preface in Abbe J.A. Dubois, Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies (1906), Low Price Publications, Delhi, 1999, p. xxvii. 17. B.C. Allen, Census Report of Assam 1901, vol. I, p. 63. 18. For details see, Barpujari, op. cit., pp. 209-10. 19. Barpujari, ibid., pp. 214-17. 20. For details see Richard M. Eaton, Essays on Islam and Indian History, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2000, pp. 45-75. 21. For details see P.H. Moore, T wenty Years in Assam, Indian rpt., Spectrum Publication, Guwahati, 1989, p. 79. Also see, Nellie G. Prescott, The Baptist Family in the Foreign Mission Field, Philadelphia, 1926. 22. For details see Barpujari, op. cit. 23. For details see Beauchamp, op. cit., pp. xxv-vi. Interestingly, Abbe J.A. Dubois had very high regard for Brahmins as repositories of sacred knowledge and did not favour their conversion. 24. Monorama Sarma, Social and Economic Change in Assam: Middle Class Hegemony, Ajanta, New Delhi, 1990, pp. 9-11.

CHAPTER 5

Colonialism and Christian Missions in

North-East India

DAVID REID SYIEMLIEH

Colonialism and Missionaries The connection between the colonial administrator and the missionary in north-east India has been little understood. It is not possible in this essay to study the complete details of how these two agencies came to operate in the region and the interplay and interaction between them. The presentation will make an attempt to critique the connection. It is not intended to do a detailed study of any one mission in any one area of the region and its connection with the administrative machinery here. It will make an effort to critically examine the colonial connection with Christian missions and Christianity in the region with emphasis on the official policy towards Christian missions. The discussion will cover a wide span in time between 1822 and 1947. North-east India was brought under British colonial rule in stages through the nineteenth century. Colonial sub-imperialism, the extension of existing European possessions to expand into their influence,1 started with the annexation in 1822 of the Garo foothills alongside Mymensing and Goalpara. Then followed the annexation of Assam in March 1826 after the defeat of Burma and *Colonialism and Christian Missions in North East India, First Yajashree Roy Memorial Lecture, North East India Studies Programme, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, March 2013. Reprinted from original with permission from the author.

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the signing of the Treaty of Yandaboo. Thereafter followed British political control over the Khasis after their defeat in the AngloKhasi War of 1829-33. Cachar was then annexed in 1832 and the Jaintia kingdom lost its independence in 1835. Upper Assam which had been returned to Purandhar Sinha, the Ahom ruler in 1833, was again taken over in 1838 after he failed to meet British expec­ tations. Annexations continued unabated despite Queen Victoria’s assurance in her Proclamation of 1858 that there would be no further annexation under the new dispensation. What remained for the British to annex and to round off the empire in these parts were the hills of present day Arunachal Pradesh, the Naga and the erstwhile Lushai Hills. By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the Nagas were brought under British rule. Similarly, the Lushais inhabiting what is today Mizoram were brought under colonial rule in the last decade of the nineteenth century. 2 Within this same period of time the 25 Khasi states, Manipur and Tripura were brought under British political control through treaties and subjugation. The hills that today constitute Arunachal Pradesh and a small area inhabited by Naga tribes and referred to as Naga Tribal Area were in principle outside British India. The districts in the Brahmaputra and Barak Valley were administered in the same manner as other Indian districts in the mainland. The administration of the hill districts was different. They were referred to as backward tracts prior to the Government of India Act, 1919. The 1935 Government of India Act changed the nomenclature for the tribal areas. The hills were categorized as either Excluded or Partially Excluded Areas. The Excluded Areas, which included the Naga and the Lushai Hills districts, were placed under the executive control of the Assam governor. The Partially Excluded Area including the Garo, Khasi-Jaintia and the Mikir Hills districts came under the control of the governor and subject to ministerial administration, but the governor had an overriding power when it came to exercising his discretion. No act of the Assam or Indian legislatures could apply to these two hill divisions unless the governor so directed. He was empowered to make regulations for the hill districts which had the force of law. The administration of these hills was his ‘special responsibility’.

Colonialism and Christian Missions in North-East India 111 With no representatives in the Assam assembly (other than the Partially Excluded Areas, which sent one legislator each), political activity, above their village and local level, could only just have existed. This brief note on the administration of the region will explain why the colonial administration in distancing itself from direct administration came under criticism, as will be mentioned, in the manner the hills were administered.3 Christianity came into the region before British colonization of India. The history of Christianity in north-east India goes back to when Jesuit priests Stephan Cacella and John Cabral first entered the Brahmaputra Valley in 1626 intending to go on to Tibet and China. Assam had no attraction for them.4 Then followed the pas­ toral visits by Augustinian and Holy Cross priests to the several Indo-Portuguese settlements at Rangamati located on the frontier of Bengal with Assam, Bondashill in Cachar and Mariamnagar in Tripura. Bishop Laynes of Mylapore accompanied by Fr Barbier called on the Rangamati settlers on the easternmost frontier of the Mughal empire in 1714.5 Tripura abuts on Bengal. Augustinian and Holy Cross priests from East Bengal often visited Catholics in the village of Mariamnagar close to Agartala. The earliest visit of a Christian to this native state was that of Fr Ignatius Gomes in 1683. Several priests ministered to the Christians of Mariamnagar in the second half of the nineteenth century and after.6 These visits were occasional and did not establish in any substantial way the Catholic influence in the region other than their pastoral func­ tions. Catholic priests were operating in the region prior to the East India Company foundations of formal empire. It is to be noted that though the Catholics were the first among the Christian mis­ sions to have entered the region they were to be amongst the last to make an involvement in the establishment of their faith. In large part, the reason for this delay was the indecision of the church authorities as to which of its foreign missions should be entrusted the task of the evangelization in the region.7 The consequences of this delay and indecision would affect the Catholic position and gave a distinct advantage to the Protestant missions in setting up churches in the region.

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It may be said that the flag representing the colonial adminis­ tration and the Bible representing one or the other of the Christian missions went almost together into the north-east. This happened after the Charter Act of 1813 which permitted missionaries to propagate their faith in British India. The English Baptists were quick to take advantage of this by establishing missions in Gauhati and Cherrapunji in the early part of the nineteenth century. Unable to sustain their interest they welcomed the American Baptist Mis­ sion whose first missionaries arrived in Assam in 1836. When Alexander Lish of the same English Baptist Mission at Serampore gave up Cherrapunji8 the mission work there was left unattended for many years. The Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Foreign Mission (later called Welsh Presbyterian Mission) was established in 1840. Jacob Tomlin, a missionary of the London Missionary Society who had visited these hills, urged the new mission to take these hills as their mission field. A generous offer to finance the travel of the first missionary enabled the mission to make the decision. Their first missionary, Thomas Jones, was convinced that were he to become a missionary it would be to India where he would go. His arrival at Cherrapuni in the monsoon of 1841 did not require official permission, as the Khasi Hills were not part of the colonial state, though it was politically subdued as a consequence of the Anglo-Khasi war of 1829-33.9 It is at about this stage of British colonial interest in the region that their administrators encouraged and supported the work of the Christians missionaries. David Scott, commissioner, approached his government as early as 1819 for its approval to invite missionaries to work among the Garos. He first wrote to the English Baptist Mission in Serampore. Failing to get their coopera­ tion he wrote to Bishop Heber at Calcutta. The Bishop’s response was encouraging for Scott though nothing concrete took shape. Scott then made another request to government in April 1825. Governments did not think there would be any difficulty to extend financial assistance to Scott’s plan but since religious neutrality was the professed policy of government, he was informed that the missionaries could only be given salaries if they were called schoolmasters!10 Early in 1827 Scott opened a school for Garo boys

Colonialism and Christian Missions in North-East India 113 in Singimari. On the advice of Bishop Heber, Scott appointed W.B. Hurley as schoolmaster. The Garo school and Christian experi­ ment did not last long for want of teachers. It was wound up two years later. Enthusiasts for mission work, however, continued to see the need for sending missionaries to the Khasis and Garos. George Swinton, the chief secretary of the government informed R. Benson, the military secretary to Lord William Bentinck, the governor general, that ‘The Bishop talked of taking them in hand and I wish he could send an army of missionaries to preach the gospel to them’.11 Whereas the Bengal government supported Scott’s plan, the court of directors did not. It reminded Lord Amherst, the Gover­ nor-General, that the declared policy of the authorities in Britain then was religious neutrality towards its Indian subjects. ‘It is well known’, the court of directors remarked in one of its despatches to India12 that we would not engage in schemes for attempting to propagate Chris­ tianity among the natives; it is a matter of surprise to us that an active part in the prosecution of this plan should have been taken by a member of government, and neither the plan itself nor the extraordinary mode in which it came to be recommended to your notice should have appeared to you unobjectionable.

Despite this censure, Francis Jenkins, the chief commissioner, supported the beginnings of the American Baptist Mission in Upper Assam. The son of a clergyman and with strong evangelical belief, Jenkins’ correspondence with the American Baptist mis­ sionaries in Burma reveals his personal faith and conviction. In one such letter he wrote that while he was interested in the educa­ tional work he certainly would not object if that work resulted in the conversion of the people.13  Jenkins’ enthusiasm for mission­ ary work brought in the American Baptist Mission who arrived in Sadiya in upper Assam in 1836. It is striking that the Christian churches spread more comfort­ ably in the hills and plains of the region after the incorporation of these territories into the formal empire. Initially the Ameri­ can Baptist Mission came with the intention to work among the

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Shans of Upper Burma and Yunnan, China. Realizing they could not achieve that end they directed their energies working among, first the hill people in what is today the eastern part of Arunachal Pradesh, the several Naga tribes, the Mikirs, among the people around Nowgong where their headquarters were located; and later opening a mission station in Guwahati. Some years later the same mission was in Goalpara, not to proselytize that Bengal province but to use it as a base to enter the Garo hills, which it did in the 1860s. Their entry into Tura followed in the wake of the estab­ lishment of British administration among the Garos. By then Omed and Ramke, the Garo combination of uncle and nephew had become missionaries to their own people and established a church at Rajasimla.14   A similar situation operated in the Naga Hills. Reverend Clarke’s entry into the Naga Hills came without official support and with a threat to his life. Once in the hills it gave his mission an opportunity to set work among other Naga tribes, the Angamis, the Sema, the Lothas and the Naga inhabited areas of Manipur state.15 There was, however, no general and official support for the ini­ tial missionary activity. A chance visit of William Williams of the Welsh Presbyterian Mission in the Khasi Hills to Sylhet town in the plains below, will perhaps give one instance of this mission activ­ ity. Williams visited Mizo chiefs incarcerated in jail following their last resistance to British imperialism. He then visited the Lushai Hills in 1890. What followed was the Welsh Presbyterian Mission Board agreeing to extend their work to cover the Lushai Hills.16 Meanwhile, J.H. Lorraine and F.W. Savidge of the Arthington Aborigines Mission, had spent several months trying to get into Tripura. Not discouraged by their failure to enter that native state, they made repeated attempts to enter Lushai Hills. Their requests were accommodated only after the Lushai Hills were incorporated into the colonial state. On arrival in Fort Aijal (Aizawl) in January 1894, they called on the British administrator who told them: ‘I can’t do anything more for you. I have orders not to help you…. But you can go anywhere you like.’17 They remained only to hand over that mission to the Presbyterians three years later. The two

Colonialism and Christian Missions in North-East India 115 friends next moved to the south Lushai Hills. Their next mission­ ary endeavour was supported by the Baptist Mission Society.18 

Comity Arrangement Something needs to be said of what came to be known as ‘comity’ agreements. ‘Comity’ was an informal agreement among the Protestant missions and churches whereby only one mission/ church would work in a given area. The comity agreements were administered by regional councils of the respective churches and came into operation sometime in the later part of the nineteenth century. Missions arrived at the decision not to spread their respective stations into the territory of the other. This arrangement worked well with only the occasional intrusion of one mission into the ‘sphere of influence’ of another. Reverend Sydney Endle, the Anglican padre, was concerned when the American Baptist showed interest to work among the tea garden workers who had migrated to Upper Assam from Chhota Nagpur. He wrote to Reverend Bronson of the Baptist mission on 1 February 1878:19 There are many reasons why a second mission should not be established in the same district, especially while so large a part of India is altogether unprovided with any kind of religious teaching (sic)…, I cannot but think that if you had contemplated opening such a mission, you would have felt bound in courtesy to have apprised me of your intensions.

As mentioned earlier the Catholic missions were in disagree­ ment as to which of their missions would work in Assam. When it was decided that the Salvatoraians, a newly founded German mission would commence work in the Northeast it was to Shillong where they first went as it was the provincial capital and outside the comity restrictions. The mission activity of the Salvation Army in the Lushai Hills in 1922 brought in inter-denominational rivalry. After Kawlkhuma returned from Bombay following an officer’s training course, the Salvation Army intended to post an European officer in Aizawl. The Presbyterian missionaries objected to the encroachment into

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their mission field. Meetings in Calcutta with officers of the Salva­ tion Army, and Shillong with the government and letters to the governor of Assam by the Presbyterian mission influenced the government to take a stand that there should not be two missions operating in the same tribal region which could disturb the peace­ ful situation.20 The government tacitly approved this arrangement. Another test to the comity agreement came up in 1925 on the application of a Catholic priest to visit the Lushai Hills. The gov­ ernment carefully handled this situation by giving Fr Boulay of the Holy Cross Mission restricted permission to visit the hills.21The First World War affected the administration and position of the Christian missions in many ways. It particularly affected the newly arrived Catholic mission in the north-east. The correspondence of the German and Austrian missionaries was inspected, they were required to sign a document to the effect that they would not do anything to damage the interest of the British government; those under 45 years of age were declared prisoners of war and were put under police surveillance. Christopher Becker, their Prefect Apostolic,writes that as the war progressed the Catholic missions were seriously affected. Communication with Germany was diffi­ cult if not impossible; funds became scarce; the missionaries were suspected of having wireless sets to communicate with ships in the Indian Ocean and that they had an arms depot in order to arm the people against the British. In mid-1915 the German Salvatorian missionaries were transported to Ahmedabad. Becker’s appeal to the governor of Assam brought no assurance for their continued stay. He then approached the Belgian priests in Calcutta. They came to take over the work of the Salvatorian mission but only for some time before the Salesians of Don Bosco arrived in 1921.22 Very soon the Salesians were able to leave their mark in the Khasi and Jaintia Hills, in the Brahmaputra Valley, and from the 1930s in the Garo Hills. Other Christian missions in the region were the Lutherans, working chiefly among the tea labourers from Goalpara to Upper Assam; the New Zealand Baptists in Tripura; the Australian Bap­ tists in some parts of the lower Brahmaputra Valley; the Salvation Army in the Lushai Hills; and the Anglican Church in Assam and

Colonialism and Christian Missions in North-East India 117 parts of the Khasi-Jaintia Hills was patronized by the British offi­ cial establishment. By the year of India’s Independence all these missions mentioned above had established themselves in some part or larger areas of the north-east. By the turn of the nineteenth century each of the mainline missions had carved out their respective ‘spheres of influence’.23 The government was unwilling to have more than one mission in any tribal area. Another case for decision came up in 1935 when Holy Cross missionaries from Chittagong and Dacca applied for permission to visit Aijal. Permission was granted but only to visit the district headquarters and for a brief stay.24 The Hill Officers Conference of 1937 took a policy decision not to allow more than one mission in any one tribal inhabited area. Consequently, Cath­ olic entry into the Garo Hills was delayed till the 1930s for just this reason as the Baptist mission was at work there. The comity agreement came to a close shortly before Independence. The Con­ gregation of Holy Cross was given permission in December 1946 to set up a mission in Aijal.25 In the year of India’s Independence, a congregation of Spanish sisters was requested to manage the gov­ ernment hospital at Kohima which was constructed as a gesture of gratitude for the support Nagas had given in the war.26 Within a century of organized missionary activity, Christian­ ity had made its impact on the lives of a large population in the region, particularly in the hills other than what is today Arunachal Pradesh. Mission activity picked up momentum towards the turn of the nineteenth and the early part of the twentieth centuries. Historians have attributed this growth in part to the effects of two natural occurrences; the 1897 earthquake and the mautam, the famine followed by the flowering of the bamboo. Church histori­ ans have also explained church growth after the revival movements within the Presbyterian church in the Khasi-Jaintia Hills in the first decade of the twentieth century and its spread to the Lushai Hills.27 These brought in large numbers to the church.28 By then Christi­ anity had become the preferred agent of ‘acculturation’. Though Hinduism and Islam had already made some advance in the tribal areas among the Bodos , Khasi-Jaintias, Dimasas, Hajong, Mikirs, Miris and other groups, the arrival of Christianity halted the fur­

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ther progress of ‘Sanskritization’ and other processes. However, conversion to the new faith brought in a break with their primal religion. It also had its effects on the social and community life of the converts. Some tribes including the Nagas, the Mizos and the Garos had very large numbers professing the Christian faith.29 There is reason to understand then why the more educated Khasis set up the Seng Khasi in 1899, the intention being the preservation of their religion and culture.30

Government Concerns of Missionary Activity Major A.G. McCall, the superintendent of the Lushai Hills, admitted in his memoir that it was not known by the administration what instructions were given to missions operating in backward areas by their mission directorates. He was, however, clear that the administration would not seek to interfere in any doctrinal practice by a mission which was operating with full government sanction unless and until a breach of peace was threatened. The same officer was of the opinion that administration should seek to limit the degree of licence afforded by missions in any control by the natives of mission enterprises. Acknowledging that administration was unable to meet increased measures of decentralization thereby gave missions increased functions which could create political problems. He candidly wrote in retirement:31 When we recall that some missionaries openly claim that it is their privilege and their prerogative to blaze a trail, and for others to meet the resulting situation, the need for some form of limitation on missionary activity among a backward people becomes a very real matter.

Several officials were witness that Christianity was disturbing the social fabric of the tribal societies. Two deputy commissioners of the Naga Hills district, in particular, were concerned about the impact Christianity was having on the Naga tribes. John Hutton in his preface to the second edition of The Sema Nagas lamented in the 1930s that the past was being quickly lost to the tribe and that their pagan past was likely to be forgotten in the breach of continuity which conversion to Christianity was bringing about.32

Colonialism and Christian Missions in North-East India 119 In another of his monumental monographs, The Angami Nagas (1921), he showed his aversion towards the missionaries and the government of which he himself was a part, for the steady advance their changes had made in the lives of several Naga tribes. He wrote in one of his pioneering monographs: ‘Old beliefs and cus­ toms are dying, the old traditions are being forgotten, the number of Christians or quasi Christians is steadily increasing and the spirit of change is invading and pervading every aspect of village life.’33 An American Baptist missionary noted that to the Nagas, a people already guided by their own taboos, came Christianity with its own set of taboos. He noted a grave danger that Christianity as presented to these people had come to mean the adoption of another set of do’s and don’ts.34 Thus Naga observance of genna to Christian Sunday restrictions was a relatively easy transition. As Christian missions expanded, administrators placed their concerns on a number of issues that involved the Christian mis­ sionaries. They found that Naga boys attending the mission schools had to dress up in the fashion of the Assamese boys, in dhotis and shirts. The girls too had to dress in saris. The district officials were critical of the American Baptist missionaries for making the Naga students dress in this manner. They preferred Nagas to wear their own attire in order to preserve their tradition and culture. Even­ tually and after much correspondence, the missionaries provided Naga students of the mission schools with more comfortable attire, but then again of a different culture. There were also concerns by the Naga Hills administration when Naga converts to Christianity refused to observe certain traditional rites and ceremonies. They could not see why the Christians should refuse to participate in their agricultural festivals, the hauling of village gates, the pro­ tection of villages, and sleeping in the morung. Naga converts to Christianity, it was observed, did not follow genna observance. In all this the official position was largely in favour of the continuance and participation of all Nagas in their traditional observances.35 The question may be asked why there was so much difference between the colonial administration and the American Baptist mission in the Naga Hills when it came to the mission work. Could this have been so because of the different nationalities involved?

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Could these issues have been raised in the Naga Hills because two of their administrators (J.H. Hutton and J.P. Mills) were more sen­ sitive than others to the changes Christianity was having on Naga life? These questions are asked because we have not noted admin­ istrators elsewhere in the region raising such issues. Elsewhere, the missions and the government appeared to have worked in union. Both missionary and government officials were concerned about the prevalence of what was considered a form of slavery in the Naga and Lushai Hills districts. The anthropologist-govern­ ment official wrote about its occurrence but could do little. The missionaries were often more in direct touch with the people. Their beliefs and convictions and their contact with the people brought a number of missionaries into the slavery controversy.36 After the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society pub­ lished a letter addressed to Montague, the secretary of state for India in July 1913, momentum picked up against the bawi practice among the Mizos. A situation was reached when Dr Peter Fraser purchased the freedom of 40 bawis. His involvement in question­ ing the practice embarrassed the government. It was considered he was exceeding the sanction given to him as preacher and medical practitioner. He was asked to leave the hills or sign an agreement not to interfere in any way whatsoever in Lushai customary dis­ putes and avoid giving expression to Lushai customs. Dr Fraser preferred to leave the hills and take the matter up with parlia­ ment.37 Apparently, the government did not want the missions to get too involved in stimulating social change and customs as the district had only recently been bought under British rule. Whatever were the benefits to the people that the Christian missions brought there were administrators who questioned their activities and impact. John Hutton was critical of the ‘spread of quasi-European culture’, brought about by the Christian missions. He was of the opinion that the pace of change had laid upon the protecting power a heavy obligation to see that the changes that were taking place: shall be beneficial rather than detrimental and shall benefit the many rather than a few and in particular that whatever the greatly desired

Colonialism and Christian Missions in North-East India 121 education may take, it shall be of real benefit to the people themselves in advancing their moral and material welfare.38

The Governor of Assam at the time Hutton wrote this to Andrew G. Clow. He noted that the older generation of officers generally tended to look upon Christianity, especially in the form in which it was presented by the American Baptist missionaries, with grave misgivings, if not hostility. He, too, took the position there was much in the tribal culture that was desirable to preserve and that with gradual growth of education there would be increas­ ing change in cultural outlook.39

Roman Script Christian missions were made an instrument for the colonial state. In like manner, it may be argued that the missions, too, benefited from their interface with the colonial state. The missions’ collective efforts at education, for instance, were envisaged by British officers as an integral part of the overall policy of civilizing the hill tribes. ‘Civilization’ to them meant affecting moderation in such customs and habits such as their frequent raids into the plains and head­ hunting. The tribes were not easily amenable to the state’s rules and regulations (which many tribesmen possibly just could not comprehend). This called for a policy to effect the change. If the government of the land could not achieve this, by administrative procedures and by coercive measures, it would be left to the missionaries to do so in their own manner. Christian missions championed the cause of providing written scripts for the tribal communities, encouraging the use of Assa­ mese script; pioneering education and ministering to the health of the people of the region. Arriving in their missions at a time when the East India Company was only just beginning to have political control of the Assam Valley and later its hill periphery, the Christian missions stepped in, to assist the government authorities to provide these ‘civilizing’ effects. Before schools could be estab­ lished it was thought proper to give a tribe a script, for none of the tribes had any written form of language.William Carey of the

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Serampore Mission is credited with first translating the Bible into the Khasi language using the Bengali script. Five hundred copies were printed but his efforts had little lasting contribution, as the translation was so imperfect it was unintelligible to the Khasis. Alexander Lish of the same mission while he was posted at Cher­ rapunji translated portions of the Bible and is reported to have prepared a Khasi grammar. The medium was Bengali, a language many of the hill people were conversant with as a consequence of centuries of interaction with the Bengalis of Sylhet. Thomas Jones, the first Welsh Calvinist Methodist missionary to the Khasis, arrived in Cherrapunji in 1841 without knowledge of any Indian language. He, too, attempted to give the tribe a written script, first with Bengali characters ‘which proved an insuperable difficulty to his pupils’, and in spite of much adverse criticism then adopted Roman characters for the school primers and other translations.40 Thomas Jones today is held in high esteem by the Khasis as the father of Khasi literature. Missionaries who came after him further developed the literature. The early American Baptist missionaries in the Garo Hills had one advantage over the Welsh Calvinists in the Khasi-Jaintia Hills—they had experience of India before moving into the Garo Hills in the early 1860s and, therefore, it was not too difficult for them to converse and write in Bengali characters for the Garo script. They preferred the Bengali characters as better suited for the Garo language and more useful to the tribe who were generally ‘adverse to the acquisition of their own language and anxious to learn only Bengali and English’.41 The arrival of Reverends Phil­ lips and Mason in Tura, the district headquarters, in December 1874 was significant as F.S. Downs has shown. These missionaries brought with them a Remington typewriter, perhaps one of the earliest models, and with this machine they began to propagate the use of the Roman script for the Garo language. They first prepared and printed a few primers and found visible signs of interest in reading among the Garos. Experimenting further, they realized that 21 Roman letters were sufficient to represent every needed sound in the Garo language. Two thousand copies of a primer were printed as a feeler to substitute the Bengali for Roman

Colonialism and Christian Missions in North-East India 123 characters. The American Baptist Mission Conference of 1893 in Tura resolved that the Roman alphabet was best suited for the hill tribes of Assam who did not have their own written language. However, it was not till some 10 years later that the decision was taken to make this change effective for Garo literature.42 The several Naga tribes did not undergo this difficulty. For one thing they had relatively less interaction with the people of the plains to justify use of the Assamese characters for reducing their languages into written form. Baptist missionaries applied the Roman character to the scripts of the larger of the Naga tribes— the Angamis, the Lothas, the Aos and the Semas. They reduced to writing, 19 tribal languages. The Welsh mission’s success in encour­ aging the growth of the Khasi language influenced them to give the Mizos and their kindred tribes the Roman script and to signifi­ cant accomplishment. The Christian missionary also reduced into written form many other tribal languages for the Naga tribes of Manipur and the Mikirs of Assam, while their efforts to give the Bodos of Assam and the larger tribes of Tripura the Roman script has faced a counter-move in support of the Devanagari script. Missionaries contributed in no small measure to the shaping of tribal and Assamese identities. Were it not for the persistent efforts of American Baptist missionaries, the Assamese might have had to accept the use of Bengali script for their language. The missionaries aided by their first convert, Nidhi Farwell, developed the language in what has been compared to the influence of the Serampore mis­ sion for encouraging the Bengali language. They stimulated the Assamese with a literary renaissance with a modern literature and literary style, both through their own compositions and the publications of the Baptist Mission Press at Sibsagar. Grammars, dictionaries, school textbooks, translations from Christian texts and reproductions of Assamese literary works, including novels, were printed in those early years in great flourish. The publica­ tion in 1842 of Arunodoi, a monthly periodical devoted to science, religion and general information, gave the Assamese language a boost. All this prepared the Assamese, led by the Baptist mission­ aries, to agitate against the government decision to use Bengali in the law courts and schools of Assam. Beginning their stand around

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1838 that Assamese was a distinct language with its own literary style the debate strained the relationship between the missionaries and William Robinson, a former missionary of the English Bap­ tist mission, who subsequently became inspector of schools and supported the more extensive use of Bengali. By 1853, the debate became public but it would take some more years for the govern­ ment to order in 1873 that Assamese should be reinstated as the language of the courts and schools in Assam.43

Education Another important contribution made by Christianity to the process of acculturation was in providing education. Invariably, each mission set-up schools soon after they were set-up in any area. Lish set-up three schools in and around Cherrapunji. Jones continued the work of his precursor. By 1851, when the Welsh Mission had completed 10 years of activity in the Khasi Hills, five schools were in operation, though their missionaries in the field complained that the Khasis were not enthusiastic towards receiving education. Whereas much of the expenses for the printing programme of the missions were borne by the individual missions, the government encouraged the mission of education by giving occasional financial grants. It is of interest to note that the Welsh Mission was the first religious organization in India to receive a monthly grant of rupees fifty toward the effort of educating the Khasi-Jaintias. We need not go into the details of this development. It would suffice to say that in time the initial opposition of Khasis to learn the three R’s turned into a favourable desire, the impact of which will be mentioned shortly. Similar was the contribution of the American Baptist Mission in educating the tribes of Upper Assam where the mission first pitched tents; then their schools around Nowgong, the Garo Hills and in Lower Assam to do their little known work among the Adivasis; and the more difficult and challenging task of teaching the Naga tribes because of the multiplicity of dialects.44 The Catholic missions were to be especially important in providing a broader base and a high degree of education. The Salesians of Don Bosco added a

Colonialism and Christian Missions in North-East India 125 new dimension to the cause of educating the youth with a chain of vocational institutions offering a variety of professional courses.45 The distinctive feature of education among the hill tribes was the part played in it by Christian missionaries. Missionaries appar­ ently found the hill tribes afforded the most fertile field for their labours. As they attached great importance to and had initiated education among the hill tribes it was convenient for the govern­ ment of offer ‘pecuniary aid and leave the work to them’.46 However, education was not the primary object of missionary activity. Edu­ cation went hand in hand with their religious work but suffered whenever the priorities of the two interests were raised. The mis­ sion schools were often faced with a dearth of qualified teachers and were severely affected when the missionaries returned to their countries or went home on furlough. Some details may be provided to see the advance of education at the turn of the nineteenth century and into the early decades of the last century. Education made great strides in the Lushai Hills. In 1934, there were two schools at Aizawl, one managed by the government and the other by the Welsh Presbyterian Mission. An official report noted, ‘For a savage tribe who have so recently come under British rule the Lushais show a remarkable opting for civilization.’47 The Gazetteer noted that education had not made much progress in the Naga Hills where there was but one second­ ary school and 22 primary schools.48 The government, however, noted with appreciation the efforts of the Welsh Mission in edu­ cating the Khasi-Jaintia for whom there were 348 primary and eight secondary schools. It recorded that in 1901 the proportion of literate persons in that district was higher than any other dis­ trict of Assam. The same report mentions that education was in a very backward condition in the Garo Hills despite the 94 primary schools in the district.49 We may hazard to note that the Welsh Presbyterian Mission gave more attention to education than the American Baptist Mission. The government set-up the first high school in Shillong in 1878. In 1891, the Welsh Mission, too, established a high school in the provincial capital. That same year, the two schools were amalgamated, the mission retaining the right of nominating the

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headmaster while the government bore the cost of maintaining the school.50 Further progress was made in education in all the hill districts. The Khasi and Jaintia Hills in 1912 had five middle schools and 425 primary schools; there was but one middle school for the Garos and 110 primary schools; primary schools for the Nagas dwindled to 22 in the same year; the Lushai Hills recorded 29 primary schools; 12 primary schools served the Mikirs.51 Even after 50 years of education in the province of Assam, it was reported that, ‘education in the hills is still in a very experi­ mental stage. It has not yet acquired a definite tendency. Its aim is not defined’.52 An inspector of schools after visiting the hill districts made mention in his report for 1909-10 that: ‘that the missions have not sufficiently systematized the training arrangements, that there is paucity of school books, that female education requires organization and that the education imparted has become uncon­ trollably literary in its tendencies and has foolishly divorced itself from the life of the people’. He noted the necessity of introducing more industrial instruction, as hill people appeared to do well in carpentry and other manual work.53 Very early in the development of modern education in the region was the attention given to the education of girls. This in part reflects the position girls had in society. The more prominent schools for girls were at Tura, Shillong, Gauhati, Golaghat, Aizawl and Kohima. University of Calcutta in 1902 included the Khasi language in the subjects for the entrance examination. Three dif­ ferent Catholic congregations set up degree colleges in Shillong; St Edmund’s in 1916, St Anthony’s in 1935 and St Mary’s in 1937, besides two schools preparing students for the Senior Cambridge School Examination. Till 1947, therefore, education in the hills and to a large mea­ sure in the plains, too, was a mission activity financially supported by the government. Missionary control over education gave them a considerable instrument of influence over the lives of the people. Initially, the primary objective of the missions was to make good preachers of their brighter converts. Many schools were started to educate the children of the chiefs after their initial opposition changed to collaboration. But the missions in general did not go

Colonialism and Christian Missions in North-East India 127 far enough. Before Independence, the Nagas had only one high school started in 1938 and located in Kohima. The Mizos, too, were restricted in their opportunities for higher education as their district had only one high school started in 1944 and located in the district headquarters at Aizawl. Likewise, the Garos had only one high school in Tura. J.P. Mills, the Deputy Commissioner of the Naga Hills district, was of the opinion that the control of education by the Ameri­ can Baptist Mission in the Naga Hills was so pervasive that: ‘The animist parent objects … strongly to his boy being taught only by someone likely to proselytize him.… There is a feeling that the government in the past has not always been neutral when mis­ sions were concerned.’54 It was also remarked by A.G. McCall, the superintendent of the Lushai Hills district, that the church in that district had became a centre of power and patronage following the excessive reliance of the government on the church as an agency of education and other social services.55 Similar would have been the situation in several other hill districts of Assam. Education had been a powerful agent of social change. It has brought awareness among the tribes that there should be an adjust­ ment between modernity and tradition. Education further brought political consciousness. The Khasi-Jaintias were among the first of the tribes of the region to respond to the changing political and administrative situation and the prospects of their participation in the government provided by the Act of 1935. It is of interest to note that the two representatives of these hills in the Assam legislature ushered in by the Act were churchmen.56 Political consciousness among the Garos, the Nagas and the Mizos and other hill tribes came much later but was very assertive in the case of some tribes at the time of the transfer of power from Britain to India.

Medical Mission Church histories of north-east India have not given much attention to the medical missions. This reflects in a way the attitude of the Christian missions towards their medical service that was not looked upon as a primary function of their missionary cause but as

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an auxiliary in the propagation of the faith. Out of 480 missionaries of the American Baptist Union in 1902 only 27 were physicians of whom only two were in the Assam field. Physicians who went out under the auspices of the Union were first supposed to be missionaries. It was their Board’s aim to make ‘physical healing entirely subordinate to efforts for soul purification’.57 The Welsh Mission on the other hand sent out medical missionaries to the Khasi Hills soon after their mission was started and they arrived in fairly large numbers.58 Invariably, all missionaries were given some training in medical sciences before their departure for the mission. The turning point of greater emphasis on this service came at about the time of First World War with larger numbers of men and women entering the service. For the American Baptist Mission the involvement of its women’s branch was of significance as its women physicians made a beginning with the opening of a Women’s Hospital in Gauhati in 1924. Of the more serious diseases that afflicted the people of the region were leprosy, tuberculosis, malaria, cholera and smallpox. Less serious medical problems were goitre, which was widespread, hookworm, decayed teeth and torn earlobes. The larger of the mission hospitals were at Shillong, Jowai, Gauhati, Jorhat, which included a T.B. Hospital, Tura which was the first town to have a hospital managed by the missionaries, Kohima which was given a hospital by the government in 1946 as a gift for their support in the war managed initially by Catholic missionary sisters from Spain and Chabua in Upper Assam which was provided a hospital by the Anglican Church while the Mizos had health centres at Durtlang and Serkawn. It is of interest to note that Dr Sidney Rivenburg, a missionary in the Naga Hills, had worked with Dr Ronald Ross when he worked out the experiments that led to the discovery of the cause of malaria.59 The mission hospitals initiated the training of nurses for their own hospitals and dispensaries and later pre­ pared nurses for employment in other health centres and spread the lessons of hygiene and other related subjects. Catholic sisters staffed several government hospitals in the region for a period of time before other arrangements were made.

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Conclusion The colonial masters and the missionaries both benefited from each other’s presence in the region. Both took support from the other. There were difference between them in approach to the tremendous changes taking place in the lives of the people one administered and the other ministered. Both agencies were aware they were bringing about changes in the lives of the people. We may refer to the beginnings of missionary endeavour in the region as the ‘mission phase’ of the history. Starting in the early decades of the nineteenth century it is convenient to use 1947 as the date this phase comes to a close and another is ushered in. Well before Independence, the Protestant missions had started handing over the management of the mission to Indian members of their churches. The post-colonial phase witnessed a complete transition of the management of the mission, which, by then, had become self-supporting churches. The post-colonial phase also witnessed a phenomenal growth in the number of Christians in the region.60 There were many reasons for this, not the least being the close of the ‘comity system’ that areas in the region given to only one mission in the ‘mission phase’ were opened to other churches to expand into areas hitherto excluded to their activities. Missions were free to move into areas hitherto restricted. Catholic mission­ ary activity was fast to take advantage of this to set up missions in the Naga, Lushai and Garo Hills and the hill districts of Manipur. In time these missions registered spectacular growth. Evangeliza­ tion in Tripura was slow. There has been little growth in the two valleys other than among the several plains tribes. The Khasi, Jain­ tia and Garo Hills received more focus with enthusiastic response to church growth. Whereas other foreign missions had by then transferred much of their mission/church authority to Indian hands, the Catholic mission/church continued to be in the control of expatriate missionaries. Things were to change though. We are witnessing in our time a third phase of Church expan­ sion and activity. Even allowing the three mainstream churches growth which is normal, that of the Pentecostal churches is

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significant, of which there are so few studies. The opening up of Arunachal Pradesh to Christian missions and the response of the people of that state to Christianity, likewise, has not been studied in any detail. Despite all the opposition and obstacles to the church’s endeavour to reach out to the tribes of this state, the people have today welcomed the Christian missions; opposition is guarded but not stiff, with the different missions operating in this frontier state excited about their efforts yet concerned not to go too fast. This brief account of the work of the different Christian mis­ sion in the region is to emphasize that that the beginnings, spread and present position of the Christian churches is not the preserve of any one church but a common and shared tradition. The postIndependence interface between the Christians and their churches and the state indicate both appreciation and criticism. Some may say that this is a much more interesting theme for study given the attention there is on this subject today. The Indian states’ percep­ tion and understanding of Christianity has changed a great deal from the colonial perception, not the least being that Christian­ ity is an Indian religion. The Christian communities, despite their small numbers, have made significant contribution to Indian life and ethos. At some later stage, I hope to take this theme forward in some depth.

Notes 1. D.K. Fieldhouse, Economics and Empire 1830-1914, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London, 1976, pp. 80-1, 173-5. 2. There are numerous histories of British expansion into the region. Among them, these may be read, Edward Gait, A History of Assam, 3rd edn, Thacker, Sprink and Co., Calcutta, 1963; H.K. Barpujari, A Comprehensive History of Assam, vols. 1-5, Publication Division Government of Assam, Guwahati, 1990-3; Barpujari et al., Political History of Assam, vols. 1-3, Government of Assam, Guwahati, 1977­ 80. 3. Read, for instance, the critique of S.C. Chaube, in Hill Politics in North East India, Orient Black Swan, Telangana, reprinted 2012, pp. 38-42, 50-4, 59-62. 4. Refer to Sir Edward Maclargan, The Jesuits and the Great Mogul, Burnes, Oates and Washbourne Ltd., London, 1932, p. 355. In their

Colonialism and Christian Missions in North-East India 131

5.

6.

7.

8. 9.

attempt to reach China, Cabral and Cacella left Hooghly in 1627, reached Cooch Behar and entered the kingdom of ‘Comberasis’ (Kamrup) and pushed as far as U-Tsang. When their mass wine ran short, Fr Cabral returned to Hooghly. He returned a second time accompanied by Fr. Emmanuel Dias only to be confined there due to a fratricidal struggle. There, they were joined by Cacella. Cacella and Dias and made another attempt to reach Tibet by way of Nepal. Dias died in Nepal. Cacella succeeded in reaching Tsaparang where he died due to the arduous journey. For details of this mission read Lt. Col. C. Eckford Luard assisted by Father H. Heston, Travels of Frey Sebastian Manrique 1629-1643: a translation of the Itenario De Las Missions Oriental with Introduction and Notes, vol. II, pp. 391-2. F.S. Downs, ‘Rangamanti: A Christian Community in North-East India during the 17th and 18th Centuries’, in Sangma, Milton and Syiemlieh, David R. (eds.), Essays on Christianity in North East India, Indus Publishing Co., New Delhi, 1994, pp. 39-51; David R. Syiemlieh, They Dared to Hope: The Holy Cross Congregation in India, The Fathers of the Holy Cross, Bangalore, 1998, pp.1-22. F.S. Downs, ‘Rangamanti: A Christian Community in North-East India during the 17th and 18th Centuries,’ in Milton Sangma and David R. Syiemlieh (eds.), Essays on Christianity in North East India, op. cit., pp. 39-51. The details of the Catholic Mission in Assam is best covered by Christopher Becker in The Catholic Church in Northeast India 1890-1915, revised and edited from the original German edition by Sebastian Karotemprel, Sacred Heart Theological College, Shillong, 2007, Chapters IV-XIV. George Kottupallil has made mention of this issue of indecision in History of the Catholic Missions in Bengal 1855­ 1886, Shillong, 1998, pp. 206-10; and so has David R. Syiemlieh in They Dared to Hope: The Holy Cross Congregation in India, op. cit., pp. 25-6. For a general reading on Christianity in the region read F.S. Downs’s History of Christianity in India, vol. 5, part 5, Northeast India in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, The Church History Association of India, Bangalore, 1992. Log on to Brahmaputra Studies Database for Alexanders Lish’s, ‘A Brief Account of the Khasees’, The Calcutta Christian Observer, vol. 7, 1838, pp. 129-43. F.S. Downs, History of Christianity in India: North East India in the 19th and 20th Centuries, op cit., F.S. Downs, Essays on Christianity in North East India, op. cit.; N. Natarajan, The Missionaries among the Khasis, Sterling Publishers, Delhi, 1977; John H. Morris, History of

132

10. 11. 12. 13.

14. 15.

16.

17. 18. 19. 20.

David Reid Syiemlieh the Welsh Calvinistic Methodists’ Foreign to the End of the Year 1904, reprinted by Indus Publishers, Delhi, 1996; David R. Syiemlieh, Survey of Research in History on North-East India 1970-1990, Regency Publications, Delhi, pp. 66-70. Ibid., pp. 353-4. Nottingham University Library, Portland Collection, Bentinck Papers, PWJF2781/XLIV, Swinton to Benson, 22 July 1831. The reference is to Bishop Turner who had succeeded Bishop Heber. India Office Library and Records, London, Political Despatches from Court of Directors, 2 February 1831, para 86. F.S. Downs, History of Christianity in India, vol. V, part 5, Northeast India in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, op. cit., pp. 38-9. In his reference to conversion, Jenkins was making an allusion to the tribals in Upper Assam. Also read Puthenpurakal, J., Baptist Missions in Nagaland, Vendrame Missiological Institute, Shillong, 1994. M.S. Sangma, H istory and Culture of the Garos, Books Today, New Delhi, 1981, pp. 255-6; Mathew Muttumana, Christianity in Assam and Interfaith Dialogue, Ishvanai Kendra, Indore, 1984, pp. 54-7. Muttumana, op. cit., pp. 62-7; Puthenpurakal, Baptist Mission in Nagaland, Vendrame Missiological Institute, Shillong, 1984; Puthenpurakal, ‘Evangelization among the Nagaland Tribes’, The Catholic Church in Northeast India 1890-1990, Vendrame Institute, Shillong, 1993, pp. 216-25. C.L. Hminga, The Life and Witness of the Churches in Mizoram, Baptist Church of Mizoram, Serkawn, 1987, p. 45. For other histories of the growth of Christian missions in the region read D.R. Syiemlieh, They Dared to Hope: The Holy Cross Congregation in India, op. cit.; J.V. Hluna, Church and Political Upheaval in Mizoram: A Study of the Impact of the Political Development in Mizoram, Aizawl, 1985; J. Puthenpurakal (ed.), Impact of Christianity on North East India, Sacred Heart Theological College, Shillong, 1996. Hminga, ibid., pp. 47-8. Lalsangkima Pachuau, ‘Robert Arthington Jr and the Arthington Aboriginese Mission’, Indian Church History Review, December 1994, pp. 105-26. Cited in F.S. Downs, History of Christianity in India, op. cit., p. 81. Lal Dena, Christian Missions and Colonialism: A Study of Missionary Movement in North-East India with Particular Reference to Manipur and Lushai Hills 1894-1947, Vendrame Institute, Shillong, 1988, pp. 65-8.

Colonialism and Christian Missions in North-East India 133 21. Ibid., pp. 69-70; David R. Syiemlieh, They Dared to Hope, op. cit., pp. 27-31. The concern of the Presbyterian Mission in the Lushai Hills is pointed out in Hminga, op. cit., pp. 158-9. 22. Refer to Christopher Becker, The Catholic Church in Northeast India 1890-1915, op cit., Chapter XIV, pp. 401-42. 23. David R. Syiemlieh, ‘The Beginning of the Catholic Church among the Mizos, Proceedings of the North East India History Association, Thirteenth Session, Shillong, 1993, p. 273. 24. Syiemlieh, They Dared to Hope, op. cit., pp. 41-6. 25. The Archives of the Holy Cross Congregation in Rome has an interesting note that the opening of the Lushai Hills was decided on the playfield of St. Edmund School Shillong! This could have been the result of a meeting between the Governor of Assam and Fr. Bianchi, Secretary to the Bishop of Assam, in late 1946. They were noticed to have been in close conversation sometime during that event. Soonafter, the government issued orders on 18 December, permitting two Holy Cross missionaries to reside in the Lushai Hills. Syiemlieh, They Dared to Hope, op. cit., pp. 56-7. 26. David R. Syiemlieh, A Short History of the Catholic Church in Nagaland, Shillong, 1990, p. 39; O. Paviotti, The Works of His Hands, The Story of the Archdiocese of Shillong, Guwahati, 1934-1984, Archbishop’s House, Shillong, 1987, pp. 102-3. 27. After 60 years of mission among the Khasi, there were 2,147 members of the church. This member doubled within a year of the 1897 earthquake, J.H. Morris op cit., pp. 187-8. The revival story among the Mizos is told in some detail in Lalsawma, Revivals: The Mizo Way, Aizawl, 1994. 28. C.L. Hminga informs that the North Lushai Hills registered an increase in the number of Christians from 57 to 6,134 in the decade 1904-14. During the same period the number of Christians in the South Lushai Hills rose to 2,647. By the time of the second revival, the numbers crossed 14,000 in the North and 3,400 in the South. The Life and Witness of the Churches in Mizoram, Serkawn, 1987, pp. 81, 91, 123. So zealous were a section of Mizos with the revival that the local administration had to intervene and advise revivalists of a Mizo village had to go back to their fields that had been neglected. Robert N. Reid, Years of Change in Bengal and Assam, London, 1966, p. 112. Also read Sajal Nag, ‘God’s Strange Means: Missionaries, Calamity and Philanthropy among the Lushais’, in T.B. Subba et al., (eds.), Christianity and Change in Northeast India, Concept Publication Co., New Delhi, 2009, pp. 285-304.

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29. The Census of 1901 registered 35,969 Christians in the north-east, see Downs, The History of Christianity in North-East India, op. cit., p. 77. 30. Fearing that Khasis were being affected by changes, including the spread of Christianity, Jeebon Roy and others started the Seng Khasi in November 1899. The object of Seng Khasi was to foster brotherhood among the Khasis who retained their socio-cultural and religious heritage, to encourage sports, dances and festivals, the advancement of education and the preservation of Khasi religion. 31. A.G. McCall, Lushai Chrysais, (Reprinted 1977), Firma KLM. Tribal Research Institute, Aizawl, pp. 212-14. 32. John H. Hutton, The Sema Nagas (1921), reprinted, Bombay, 1969, p. ix. 33. John H. Hutton, The Angami Nagas (1921), reprinted, Bombay 1969, p. vii. 34. W.C. Smith, The Ao Naga Tribe of Assam, Macmillan and Co., London, 1925, gives a whole chapter in his conclusion on the effects of Christianity on the tribe. 35. Wati Imchen, ‘Relations between the Baptist Mission and Government in the Naga Hills 1872-1947’, Proceedings of the North East India History Association, 24th Session, Guwahati, October 2003, pp. 308-21. 36. J.P. Mills, The Ao Nagas, Oxford University Press, Bombay, 1973, op. cit., pp. 210-11; J.P. Mills, The Lhota Nagas, (1922), Macmillan and Co., London, op. cit., p. 111; Hutton, The Angami Nagas, op. cit., pp.154-5. 37. Accounts of Dr Fraser’s involvement in the bawi controversy are mentioned in McCall, Lushai Chryslis, op. cit., pp. 121-31 and Lloyd, J. Merion, History of the Church in Mizoram: Harvest in the Hills, Synod Publication House, Aizawl, 1991, pp. 152-7. Sajal Nag’s article, ‘Rescuing Imagined Slaves: Colonial State, Missionary and Slave Debate in North East India (1908-1920)’, Indian Historical Review, vol. 39, no. 1, June 2012, pp. 57-71, has added to our understanding of the government’s attitude towards churches and social issues. 38. J.H. Hutton, ‘Problems of Reconstruction in the Assam Hills’, Presidential Address 1945 at The Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, p. 4. 39. Sir Andrew G. Clow, Th e Future Government of the Assam Tribal Peoples, Shillong, 1945, pp. 23-4; David R Syiemlieh (ed.), On the

Colonialism and Christian Missions in North-East India 135

40. 41. 42. 43.

44.

45.

46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

Edge of Empire: Four British Plans for North East India 1941-1947, Sage India, New Delhi, 2014, pp. 178-9. D.R. Syiemlieh, British Administration in Meghalaya: Policy and Pattern, New Delhi, pp. 103-4; citing John Hughes Morris, op. cit., pp. 80-1. Ibid., p. 133; Foreign Political Proceedings, National Archives of India, October 1873, no. 123. For details see D.R. Syiemlieh, op. cit., pp. 133-4. Refer to Downs’ article with illustrative documents, ‘Missionaries and the Language Controversy in Assam’, Gauhati University Journal [1981]. This has been included in Downs’, Essays on Christianity in North-East India, op. cit., pp. 81-141. Also read Jayeeta Sharma, ‘Missionaries and Print Culture in Nineteenth Century Assam: The Orunodoi Periodical of the American Baptist Mission’, in Robert Eric Frykenberg (ed.), Christians and Missionaries in India: Cross Cultural Communication since 1500, Routledge Curzon, London, 2003, pp. 256-73. M.S. Sangma, The History and Culture of the Garos, op. cit., pp. 225­ 58; Downs, Essays on Christianity in North-East India, op. cit., p. 195; David R. Syiemlieh, British Administration in Meghalaya, op cit., pp. 102-6, 133-4. O. Paviotti, The Works of his Hands, The Story of the Archdiocese of Shillong, op cit.; J. Puthenpurakal (ed.), Impact of Christianity on North East India, Sacred Heart Theological College, Shillong, 1996, pp. 406-9. Report on the Progress of Education in East Bengal and Assam 1901­ 1907, Shillong 1907, p. 108. B.C. Allen, Gazetteer of Bengal and North East India, reprinted by Mittal Publishers, New Delhi, 2001, p. 466. Ibid., p. 479. Ibid., p. 510. John H. Morris, The Story of Our Foreign Mission, The Synod Publication Board Aizawl, Mizoram, 1990, p. 39. This is in a shorter history of Morris’ earlier book. He takes the history up to 1930. Quinquennial Review of the Progress of Education in East Bengal and Assam, 1907-1912, pp. 120-2. Report on the Progress of Education in East Bengal and Assam 1901­ 1907, pp. 108-9. General Report on Public Instruction Eastern Bengal and Assam 1909-1910, p. 31.

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54. Progress of Education in Assam 1927-1932, Quinquennial Report, 1933, p. 54. 55. Chaube, Hill Politics in North-East India, Orient Longman, Delhi, 1999, p. 57. 56. They were Rev. J.J.M. Nichols-Roy, the founder of the Church of God and Rev. L. Gatphoh of the Church of England. 57. American Baptist Historical Society, Valley Forge, ‘Wither Medical Missions’. 58. D. Ben Rees, (ed.), Vehicles of Grace and Hope: Welsh Missionaries in India 1800-1970, Welsh Christian Council, Aberystweth, 2002, pp. 129-36. 59. Narola Rivenburg, The Star of the Naga Hills: Letters from Sidney and Hattie Rivenburg: Pioneer Missionaries in Assam 1883-1923, Philadelphia, 1941, p. 90. 60. For an update on Christianity in the region read Downs, ‘Christian Conversion Movements in North East India’, in Rowena Robinson, and Sathianathan Clarke (eds), Religious Conversion in India: Modes, Motivations, and Meanings, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2003, pp. 381-400.

CHAPTER 6

Reading the Open Book Missionary Print as Hermeneutical and Material Texts DAVID VUMLALLIAN ZOU

Unlike the story of writing, historian S.R. Fischer heard ‘the voice of civilization itself ’ (2003: 7) while documenting the history of reading. Before the coming of print culture and e-books, the experience of reading had been historically associated with stones, walls, barks, clay tablets, scrolls, codex, among others. Reading comes before writing, and even non-literate societies ‘cannot do but read’ (Manguel 1997: 7) to interpret the world around them. It is more than metaphorical to say that palmists ‘read’ palms, travellers ‘read’ maps, and the blind read Braille. In one form or another, modern men and women spent a lot of time reading— especially texts. Be it on paper or on screen, reading informs or inspires the human mind; it educates as well as entertains. Over time, ‘ways of reading’ varied to remain supple in new circumstances. In fact, the topic is a sub-field of enquiry within ‘book history’, literacy studies and literary theory. As an erudite reader, Alberto Manguel (1997) probed into his own ‘reader­ response’ while artfully inscribing his personal readings within a broader historical canvas. As a book historian, S.R. Fischer (1980) provides a global perspective to the story of reading. And a liter­ ary critic like Stanley Fish (2003) underlined the role of readers within ‘interpretive communities’ (p. 14) in the making of mean­ ings. Such general overviews have enriched our understanding of different aspects of the reading experience. In particular, Fish’s

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take on reading is theoretically engaging. In contrast to the for­ malist quest for objective meaning in a given text, he insists on the centrality—not the neutrality—of the reader in producing mean­ ings. Stanley Fish contends that ‘the reader’s response is not to the meaning; it is the meaning’ (Fish 1980: 3). Ultimately, he argues that a ‘meaning experience’ (ibid.: p. 4) proceeds neither from the text nor the reader, but from interpretive communities whose members share interpretive strategies as community property. Those interpretative communities are by no means stable. Nobody has the last word, and no authority can impose a ‘correct’ read­ ing on others. But the community of readers frequently arrives at a consensus that ‘some readings are better than others—more informed, more lucid, more challenging, more pleasurable, more disturbing’ (Manguel 1997: 86).

Readers and Reading in Colonial North-east India The present case study benefits from critical insights provided by the existing literature on reading. But here the main focus is on the evolving story of readers and users of printed books in colonial north-east India. The chapter examines the ‘meaning experience’ of readers and users of key texts like the vernacular Bible and religious journals in the region. As religion had been the chief mentor of literacy, it is no surprise that the history of reading often gets intertwined with religious texts. Further, I want to draw attention to the extra-textual meanings and materiality of the book as a cultural artefact in the hands of book users. Today we are accustomed to imaging reading as a silent and solitary activity. Yet it is worth noting that the printed book is not simply ‘a source of ideas and images, but a carrier of relationships’ (Davis 1975: 192). In British India, literacy figures became available during the last decades of the nineteenth century. Indian censuses of 1881 and 1891 defined three levels of literate competence: first, learning category included those under instruction; second, literate per­ sons; and finally, illiterate persons which excluded children under the age of five. However, this triple classification was abandoned in

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1901, when literacy meant a ‘degree of proficiency in reading and writing’.1 There was still enough room for census enumerators to interpret the test of literacy in their own way. So, a ‘clear instruc­ tion’ was issued in 1911 in which literacy was defined as the ability to ‘write a letter to a friend and read the reply’.2 In the context of nineteenth-century north-east India, both American and British missionaries were primarily concerned with a specific type of literacy—they were keen to impart Biblebased literacy. In other words, the target was to produce preferably passive readers (not writers) of gospel tracts, scripture portions, hymnbooks and, eventually, mission journals. The Baptist mission in the Brahmaputra Valley published a widely read journal like Arunodoi (1846-80). The Welsh mission, too, launched their own journals—U Nongkit Khubor (1889-91) in Khasi-Jaintia Hills and the long-surviving Kristian Tlangau (1911 till date) in the Lushai Hills. In principle, Bible-based literacy desired to mint readers who would consume evangelical products rather than train writers who could interrogate the missionary scripts or the master texts.

Pedagogy of Reading: Its Purposes and Practices The story of Mizo literacy began in the 1890s with the advent of British rule and Christian missions. As typical Protestant missionaries, the first thing the two pioneer missionaries of the Lushai Hills (J.H. Lorrain and F.D. Savidge) did was to reduce the local dialect into writing, compile a dictionary, translate portions of the gospel and teach literacy skills to children. Until a semblance of vernacular literature existed, there would be no point in preaching the benefits of reading. To teach reading as a desirable skill, some kind of reading material also needs to be created. But scarcity of books was a perennial problem in colonial Lushai Hills. So, the primary purpose of reading in the early decades of Christian mission was to enable potential Mizo converts to read the newly translated portions of the gospel. The missionaries believed that literate Mizos had better chances of becoming and remaining good Christians. The possibility of ideal Christian life among illiterate Mizos was considered an exception rather than the norm.

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In 1907, J.H. Lorrain confirmed such an opinion: ‘A Christian able to read the Gospels for himself makes rapid progress in the new life, whereas it is most difficult, as a rule, for an illiterate convert, in a far-away village, without any fellow Christians near, to make much headway’.3 Missionaries in south Lushai saw reading as a tool not only for recruiting, but also for retaining new converts. Among the Pawih tribes of this area, there was high incidence of converts backsliding into ‘pagan’ way of life.4 Literacy was seen as a remedy for the problem as a mission report remarked, ‘We believe that if the Christian could read and write there would be less backslid­ ing.… We emphasised the teaching of reading after Sunday school, as this has been somewhat neglected lately (emphasis added).’5 The early vernacular books were not meant to provide information or entertainment to readers. They were devotional readings to moti­ vate and remind the new converts what they had known. Reading for salvation could also ‘explain their everyday experiences in religious terms’ (Gillespie 2005: 152). What such readings lacked in terms of informational values, it compensated by ‘sustaining and transmitting cultural values among the communities of the already converted’ (Brown 2004: 145). Revd David Edwards once lamented, ‘Books are all too few in Lushai … and it is easy for our workers to get stale and out of touch with the real things.’6 In this case, the ‘real things’ pertained to other-worldly concerns such as spiritual books and conversion statistics. At a period of high mor­ tality, readings were appropriately geared to the other world than the present world. In the early years, the Baptist mission in south Lushai initiated a reading club in their lone boarding school. Lushai boys met there each month on the first Wednesday. Based on their private Bible reading, the boys would jot down questions on a piece of paper and deliver them to the moderator a few days before the schedule meeting. With the onset of the rain-bearing monsoon, this would be supplemented by ‘reading lesson by the story method’ as out­ door activities got disrupted. The boys welcomed these diversions, as F.W. Savidge remarked, ‘To while away some of the time during the long rainy days we have devoted certain hours to storytelling

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and question-asking. This had given a good deal of pleasure as well as instruction.’7 The Bible was intended to be the focus of such reading groups; but things did not always develop according to the wishes of the mission. Interestingly, one of the questions asked by a boy was: ‘Who invented reading?’ Of course, the missionaries were the pio­ neers of reading in their mission fields, but that did not necessarily equip them to answer the question. So, they found some of the questions ‘alarmingly complex’.8 In 1908, F.W. Savidge reported that the problems posed by the schoolboys often transcended reli­ gious issues: Another day is set apart for asking questions on any subject under the sun, and very often questions go above the sun, too. If a philosopher wished to be considered encyclopedic, some of these questions might make a good test of his knowledge, for example—Who invented reading?9 (emphasis added)

In his monumental study of catechism in early modern Eng­ land, Ian Green found a ‘catechetical tradition’ (1996: 45) with a high level of consensus and continuity across the country. Simi­ larly, this appears to be the case in colonial Lushai as the southern Baptists and northern Presbyterians shared a common literature committee—perhaps due to lack of human and financial resources. It would be difficult to find the doctrinal difference between the Calvinist and non-Calvinist textbooks. But there existed a hier­ archy in the level of difficulty. While children read ‘the Christian’s ABC’ of simplified dogmas, candidates for the office of church eldership had to assimilate more demanding and sophisticated doctrinal instructions. Compiled in 1915, here is a list of a few Mizo textbook titles that reflect both their difficulty level and ideological bias: Children’s Catechism; The Story of the Bible; The Story of Jesus; How to Pray; Catechism on Baptism; Life of Charles Finny; and The Lord’s Supper. Text of a more advanced category included The Christian Instructor; Rules of Discipline and Confes­ sion of Faith; Notes on the Miracles of Jesus’ Notes on the Parable of Jesus; and Pilgrim’s Progress.10

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Reading for Reference and Pleasure Reading rooms in colonial Lushai Hills housed only modest collections of books. In 1935, Revd David Edward said, ‘Books are a rare luxury, and for the non-English speaking deplorably few are available’.11 The only libraries were located in emerging urban centres like Aizawl and Serkawn. However, the last decade of British rule saw the establishment of the first rural library in Lushai Hills. In 1945, the chief of Hualtu village by the name of Tlânglianchhuma Sailo donated a plot of land for the construction of a library building.12 Sailo was an enlightened chief who had pursued his higher education at Poona College in western India. The young chief believed that the construction of a library was an index of ‘national progress and social awareness’.13 The library building was constructed like a fine colonial bungalow. With donations from the public, Hualtu Library purchased all the books available in Mizo vernacular besides some collections in English and Hindi. Secular literature in Mizo was as yet unavailable. In that situation, the library managers had little choice but to hope for the spiritual progress of its readers in a vague way: ‘Except for the Hindi and English primers, all our collections deals with the words of God; so we hope to progress towards the Christian path… We shall be able to make progress in every direction if the number of libraries increases’.14 From the perspective of book history, Hualtu Library pro­ moted ‘reference reading’: it catered to the needs of different library users—lay preachers or church elders working on their sermons, or busy Sunday School teachers preparing their lessons.15 Informed by evangelical ethos, the Mizo converts turned to the Bible ‘as the ultimate authority on economics and politics no less than on religion and morals’ (Hill 1993: 31). The tribal converts were fully immersed in evangelical reading, defined by a resident Welsh missionary as ‘wholesome literature’.16 As a policy matter, the missionaries consistently viewed secular education as a threat to their evangelical vision for the Mizos. Yet a later missionary like H.W. Carter began to see the dangers of religious overdose and secular deficit in the general outlook of this tribal community; and he observed that ‘in order to preserve a sane balance he [the Mizo]

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needs to have his religious knowledge tempered with general knowledge of things outside his own tiny, isolated country and his own limited experience’.17 Meanwhile, the Young Lushai Association (YLA)—established in 1935—had been an advocate of pleasure reading. Their advice to cultivate the habit of reading and their definition of ‘wholesome literature’18 was not confined to religious and devotional books only. An YLA circular acknowledged that ‘celebrated books exist both within the religious as well as secular circles’.19 The YLA con­ trasted the experience of reading novels against religious books, yet it was not judgemental about the relative merit of the two genres of literature. Their implicit suggestion was to read widely across all genres as an YLA circular in the monthly Kristian Tlangau put it: We are not supposed to move with one-track mind. As we are meant to be broad-minded, a person with just one interest will end up being less than a perfect human being. Therefore, wide reading is necessary: one should try to read good books. There are different kinds of reading materials related to news, science, religion, etc. While all of them have something valuable to offer, some books may be renowned and widely appreciated. Such is the mark of a good book.20

The YLA differentiated the reading requirements of school­ ing from private reading for pleasure and self-improvement. It lamented that many educated Mizos did not cultivate the habit of reading after schooling. The YLA contended that reading was not simply the key to a paid job. Therefore, the organization made this public appeal: Some persons get jobs after successful schooling. Unfortunately they give up reading as soon as they have the leisure to continue it. During the days of schooling, they cannot indulge in pleasure reading—the pre­ scribed syllabus has to be read, the course has to be completed. Then they quit reading as soon as the opportunity arrives. Are there plenty of such people among the Mizos?21

Reading ‘Literally’ the Vernacular Bible The Bible’s accepted cannon was more of a library than a book; and it meant quite ‘different things to different people at different

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times, in different circumstances’ (Hill 1993: 4). Like any great book, it accumulated commentaries by learned readers over the centuries. Hill rightly said, ‘There are few ideas in whose support a Biblical text cannot be found. Much could be read into and between the lines’ (Hill 1993: 5). In its original tongues, the Bible was virtually a closed book; only classical scholars had access to the Bible. In fact, the Bible that most converts came to know was the vernacular yet equally sacred text. Andrew Walls calls this ‘the translation principle’ (1996: 26) in the history of Christianity. So, the vernacular attained the status of a revelatory medium wherein ‘converts heard God addressing them in the old, familiar idiom’ (Sanneh 2002: 184). Those Words might be read literally, allegorically or analogically. They were all acceptable ways of reading, yet none of them was immune to allegations of false reading. Readers may distrust a ‘historical’ reading if they lack the historical sense; others may dismiss the ‘allegorical’ reading of Christology as anachronistic; and an ‘analogical’ reading may appear too far-fetched to many readers (cf. Manguel 1997: 87). In colonial north-east India, the biblicism of Protestant mis­ sions and the principle of sola scriptura disentangled most converts from traditions of Western commentaries. The predominance of Protestant missions ensured that the tribal converts could jettison the need for the Saints and the Virgin along their pilgrim path, provided they knew the Holy Writ in their own vernacular. Biblical literalism exerted strong appeal particularly to readers with ver­ nacular literacy, but no English literacy. The Western missionaries battled against the ‘excesses’ of literal readers of the vernacular Bible. They felt nervous at a biblicism that spawned ‘blockheaded fundamentalism’ (Sanneh 2002: 203). In 1937, a Baptist mission­ ary in Lushai Hills by the name of W.H. Carter mused about the pitfalls and perils often associated with literal readings: The primitive mind is very easily attracted to the miraculous and the bizarre, and a mere surface acquaintance with the Christian scriptures often results in perfectly sincerely, yet dangerously foolish interpretations of scriptural facts and teaching. The extent to which such childish ideas may take root, and the excesses to which they may lead have been clearly illustrated this year. (emphasis added)22

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Carter imputed rather uncharitably the literalism of some Mizo readers to ‘a love of, if not a sheer inability to avoid, excesses’.23 He felt relieved that the problem in the Baptist mission field of south Lushai was less severe than in the Presbyterian area of north Lus­ hai. Some interpretations were simply childish and harmless; but such ‘excesses’ could be infectious if left unattended. Carter went on to cite general examples of reading the Mizo Bible literally: One man opens his Bible and, reading that David danced before the Lord, proceeds to follow David’s example in the village church. Another finds references to speaking in unknown tongues, and decides that he cannot be a true Christian without gibbering. Another learns that in order to enter the kingdom of heaven he must become a little child, and immedi­ ately drops on all fours and sucks his thumb.24

The problem of Biblical ‘excesses’ that missionaries later lamented was a testimony to the success of the vernacular literacy they had created. It was a reflection of the deep root the vernacu­ lar Bible had struck in the local culture. If excited Mizo readers committed excesses, they were ‘indigenous excesses rather than Western ones’ (Sanneh 2002: 203). A literal reading of the ver­ nacular Bible in Mizo led readers to challenge unwittingly a basic sacrament like the Lord’s Supper. Based on the translation of ‘Do this in remembrance of me’ in the Mizo Bible, a reader came to the conclusion that the Lord’s Supper was meant to be done only once, not as a ritual. As the main translator of the Mizo Bible, J.H. Lorrain had to insert the Lushai adverb, thin (‘periodically’) to render the continuous sense of the Greek (Lloyd 1991: 201). This plain reading of the Bible, though naïve, was revelatory of the Mizo converts’ hostility to elaborate and learned doctrines, and equally reflective of their love for amateur prophesy and preaching (cf. Hobsbawm 1996: 227). The combination of literal exegesis and ambiguous translations often led to radical readings of the vernacular Bible. Associated with Revival movements, at least four Christian concepts (Original Sin, End Times, the Cross and Holy Ghost) had deep impact upon the Mizo mind and their ways of reading the Bible. It is possible to draw up a Revival chronology which broadly corresponded to

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a sort of thematic progression over time. Yet the chronology was not as neat as one may wish, and themes often overlapped in real life. The idea of ‘Original Sin’ impressed the newly colonized high­ landers during a Revival in 1906; the harsh existence of the gaunt highlanders might have found an echo in the grim theology of sin, hell and damnation. Then, the craze for the Second Coming came during the Stirrings25 of 1913-14 and the Judeo-Christian con­ cept of lineal time left a permanent imprint on the Mizo psyche. Meanwhile, the ‘End Times’ book of Revelation became available to Mizo readers around this time. This was followed by the ‘Cross of Self-Sacrifice’ (akin to the Mizo ideal of tlawmngaihna) during the Stirrings of 1919-23. Mizo converts had a special fascination for the Cross on an imagined ‘beautiful Mount Calvary’.26 In fact, a local poet passionately declared, ‘I fondly cherish you of all hills on earth, O Mount of joy.’27 The Presbyterian (Calvinistic) church at Durtlang reportedly had such unrivalled fetish for the Cross that other Mizo Christians fell short of their benchmark. As a resident missionary at Durtlang, Dr John Williams had remarked, ‘The Cross is the central theme of the preaching here. One young man, a candidate for the ministry, had been sent to preach to Durtlang, on probation, but the church rejected him because his preaching was not definite enough on the Cross’.28 As a symbol of divine and human self-sacrifice, the Cross res­ onated well with Mizo preachers and hymn writers. Ironically, the traditional value of Mizo tlawmngaihna (altruism) found expres­ sion in the theology of the Cross. On the face of it, this tendency was out of sync with Protestant ethics and the pursuit of enlight­ ened self-interest that gave birth to the spirit of capitalism. Finally, passages dealing with the Holy Spirit were the subject of excited discussion during the Stirrings of 1930-7 (cf. Kipgen 1997). Hence, they were especially vulnerable to irrational inter­ pretations. In the context of southern Nigeria, J.D.Y. Peel (1968) also noted the appeal of the Trinity’s third person to the tonguespeaking Yaruba Christians during the 1920s. While millennialism was an import from medieval theology, Mizo revivalist stirrings had certain affinities with their pagan religion. Or, they were rooted locally at least. Despite the absence of nationalist

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sentiments, it is possible to discern a strong desire to assert indig­ enous independence in ecclesiastical matters. An archaic Mizo possessed a vivid mental picture of a highly stratified ‘spirit world’. For the first generation of Christian con­ verts, the power of the ubiquitous spirits was still all too real in their everyday lives—including mental and physical activities. So, it would seem quite natural for them to encounter spirits of various descriptions in their Bible readings. The vernacular Bible employed the Lushai ramhuai (a detested jungle spirit) to represent collectively a host of biblical evil characters, including demons and ‘evil spirits’. In assuming its new role as a universal super-villain, the pagan ramhuai had to sacrifice in the process its distinctive and parochial character. No doubt, perceptions of the pagan spirits partly informed how early converts read the Holy Spirit, who ‘indwells’ or ‘possesses’ believers. The Welsh missionary, Rev. David Edwards witnessed the Revival Stirrings of 1930-7. He was apparently taken aback by what he saw as a ‘scene of the most vio­ lent forms of religious ecstasy’. Ironically, Edwards described the days of Mizo mass conversion as ‘a difficult period’. He went to report, ‘The phenomena were crude and primitive, and the people were referred to as those “drunk with the Spirit”. It is very difficult to explain the effect upon a European mind.’29 In fact, some dia­ lectal Bibles of the Lushai-Kuki group provide enough room for the notion of being ‘drunk with the Spirit’ as if it were the spirit of rice-beer (zu). Ephesians 1: 13-14 talks about the Spirit as a seal or a pledge of redemptive promise, which the Mizo Bible renders as za khamna. In most Lushai-Kuki dialects, the term khamna is a pun: it denotes being sealed with a pledge as well as being fully satiated or drunk. The term za khamna of the standard Duhlian (Mizo) Bible was relatively free from ambiguity unlike the Bible translations in the Kuki dialects, which render it as khamna. In 1939, the Revd E.L. Mendus also described the Revival ‘as the darkest cloud-storm I have ever seen on our ecclesiastical horizon’.30 He conceded that there was an ‘element of good in it … we can know God truly through His Spirit, etc’.31 Despite its anathema to the rational mind, he instinctively sensed ‘a valuable mystic strain in it … however primitive and crude its forms may

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take’.32 Yet he felt disoriented as the ‘supernatural becomes often more real than the temporal’ and feared that the anarchy might ‘endanger the normal healthy life of the community’.33 In fact, the American psychologist, William James, once remarked, ‘Spiritual excitement takes pathological forms whenever other interests are too few and the intellect too narrow’ (1902: 340). In this vein, Mendus proposed a dual solution to Mizo spiritual pathology: to divert their mystic interest into other avenues, and ‘to teach what is the true meaning of the Holy Spirit and spiritual life’.34 Lecturing about the Holy Spirit to a ‘mystic’ Mizo was trickier than the mis­ sionaries thought. That was an area where every lay believer could put the Word to work by becoming Bible interpreters in their own right. In this democratic logic, the Spirit of a lay member com­ manded as much authority as the Spirit of church leaders. Though the Rev. Mendus saw a method to the madness, he was quite frus­ trated by ‘this most subtle and pervasive problem’35 encountered by the Welsh mission in Mizoram: ‘One of our chief difficulties is that many of these people will not listen to teaching or respond to guid­ ance from church leaders, for they say they have the Spirit of God Himself within them. Who is man that he should be listened to?’36 The bulk of biblical references to the Holy Spirit were to be found in the New Testament. Except the concept of ‘original sin’ in Genesis, most of the biblical metaphors that deeply impressed the imagination of Mizo readers—millenarianism, Mt Calvary’s Cross, and the Holy Ghost—were to be found in their translated New Testament. In 1941, the Rev. E.L. Mendus, too, sceptically remarked how Mizo readers loved their New Testament: ‘Apart from a few here and there the majority are devoted readers of the New Testament, especially those passages that deal with the Holy Spirit. When they meet together they are absolutely thrilled with their religion; whether it is the right kind of thrill is another mat­ ter’.37 In the history of reading, the idea of being guided solely by the light of the Holy Spirit was neither a new one, nor peculiar to the Mizo case. The medieval church had a hard time with such inde­ pendent readers. In eleventh century Orleans, a group of lay nobles

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relied on the Holy Spirit to the point of rejecting the scriptures as ‘the fabrications which men have written on the skins of animals’ (Moore 1975: 32). In fact, that radical reading of the Spirit claimed its first victim in history to be burnt at the stake (Manguel 1997: 52). But the arrival of such reading controversies in different soci­ eties signaled print culture’s coming of age. In colonial Mizoram, this crucial moment of autonomous reading came as quite late— during the closing decade of the Raj in the 1940s.

Disciplining Kelkang: ‘Subversive’ Bible Readers In May 1937, A.G. McCall, the Superintendent of Lushai Hills, received intelligence about a potentially subversive ‘revivalism cult’ in Kelkang. Located in east Mizoram, Kelkang is 15 km from south-west of Champhai. What the colonial administration labeled as a ‘cult’ was inspired by an innovative reading of the Mizo Bible. At Kelkang village, some enterprising Bible readers were determined to put their new literacy skills into best practice. A.G. McCall remarked, ‘Three fairly hard-boiled Lushais put their heads together and conceived the great idea that it would be possible to capitalize the words in the Bible, where it was recorded that the people ‘spoke in Tongues’ (1949: 220). Possessed by the Holy Spirit, they claimed to be the medium through which Pathian (God) spoke to human beings. Spirit possession by Pathian or Khuavang was nothing new in traditional Mizo society. These readers-turned-leaders uttered words which neither the speaker nor the audience understood. These intoxicating exhibitions were called vantawng (literally ‘heavenly speech’). It spawned several imitative performers beyond Kelkang village. With regular practice, the advocates of such novel practices emerged as natural revival leaders. Thanghnuaia Ralte, Thang­ zinga and Pasina collectively guided this innovative exercise (Chhawntluanga 1985). Ralte employed the triple technique of vantawng performance, random Bible reading and down-to-earth exegesis. Since he was illiterate, Ralte depended on literate others while the random selection and exegesis remained his prerogative.

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But Pasina was equipped with literacy skills which enabled him to assume the role of a Sunday school teacher and membership of the local Church Committee (Lalsangmuana 1997). To the outsider’s eyes of McCall, Ralte’s triple technique of using the Bible appeared like tribal sorcery. So, the superintendent punished the village chief for failing to contain ‘these sorcerers, who had capitalized tradition with the help of the Bible …’ (McCall 1949: 223). As an assessment of Mizo revivals, this official opin­ ion was superficial and prejudiced. But this telling commentary confirmed the subversive power of reading an open text like the vernacular Bible. Even to the contemporary Christian audience, the ecstatic speakers of unknown tongues would certainly resem­ ble the esteemed Khuvang-zawls, who were the local prophets possessed by Khuavang spirit. After all, the performances greatly impressed everyone in Kelkang. Encouraged by their initial success, the Kelkang leaders invented another new technique of Bible reading. McCall said that ‘they conceived the idea of opening the Bible at random and seek­ ing some direction on the open page’ (1949: 220). That involved using the Bible as a divination tool. The traditional method of divination, as practised by the village priest, was done through fowls. In a lucky draw, a stray Bible passage might refer to animal sacrifices. That would be a divine signal for feast time and sacrific­ ing animals. In fact, 27 animals were killed for feasting from July to December 1937 (Kipgen 1997: 292). Other draws might trigger unbelievably great expectations such as a passage about raining of manna from heaven. That signalled nothing less than the ful­ filment of the millennial dream. It opened the way for at least a momentary respite from relentless jhuming and ceaseless toiling. Lloyd claimed that the Kelkang revivalists were ‘very persuasive and, being convinced by their logic, the villagers has stopped all work in the rice fields’ (Lloyd 1991: 298-9). Stretched to the limit, the new technique of Bible reading hinted that Pathian could ‘rain rice down from the skies’ (McCall 1949: 221). The Mizo preferred rice to manna. If only the Mizo could unlock the secrets of the Book, the solution to all their problems might be hidden inside their Mizo Bible. At Kelkang village, the new reading technique had already

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delivered meat; and the open sky still held promises of rice. The Bible, even as a translated text, appeared reassuringly authentic. It provided inexhaustible ammunition for various Mizo readers. The revivalist readers literally raided this classic treasure house. In the past, the Mizos used to raid the tea gardens of Assam for booty, now they raided the Bible instead. They saw in that Book a house of treasures and ammunitions. The Kelkang revivalist lead­ ers snatched away usable tools. Armed with biblical ammunition, the Kelkang revivalists boldly resisted both established Christian­ ity and colonial authorities. The local pastor was hounded out of his own pulpit. Then they targeted the British Raj. As war clouds for Second World War were gathering, they prophesied that ‘there will be war and that the British will be found wanting’ (Kipgen 1997: 294). In the superintendent’s ears, no soothing music. Mil­ lennialism served as an unconscious conduit for generating a sense of Mizo dignity and ‘redemption’. Though religious in form and content, it was an expression of general discontent with British Raj and missionary hegemony. Reflecting on the Kelkang incident, the governor of Assam later remarked that it ‘contained dangerous possibilities … to which Lushais are always prone and it has to be carefully watched’ (Reid 1942: 47). The Kelkang revivalists contrived an abortive plot to eliminate the superintendent (A.G. McCall) from this world. The idea was to dance in the fullness of the Holy Spirit and trample the superin­ tendent to death. In May 1937, Kelkang issued death threats to the superintendent ‘if he interfered with the work of the Holy Spirit’ (Lloyd 1991: 299). A.G. McCall decided to act swiftly and took Kelkang villagers by surprise at dawn. He was escorted by 36 Gur­ kha riflemen of the first battalion of the Assam Rifles. The houses of all the revivalist leaders were surrounded. But Thanghnuaia Ralte (whom McCall dubbed the ‘main ringleader’) was missing, having gone out to the wilderness to pray. A search was ordered and he was eventually arrested. Ralte was 36 years old at that time. ‘All the way to the camp a mile away’ remarked McCall, ‘this man clutched a Bible and jumped about with dazed unseeing eyes … talking in tongues as he went.… It took 10 solid days to drive a little sense into the folks’ (1949: 222). In the new Mizo converts, the superintendent saw nothing but

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the ‘wild Lushai within a Christian framework’ (McCall 1949: 223). Behind the veneer of biblical theology, Mizo revival experiences inscribed new ways of reading Christianity. The culturally alien Book became user-friendly in indigenous idioms. As the local representative of the British Raj, McCall assumed that the Welsh missionaries had the final word on biblical exegesis within colonial Lushai Hills. But he knew the Mizos increasingly challenged the missionary monopoly of scriptural meaning. So, McCall predicted that ‘the day would surely come when their own Lushai church leaders and colleges would deny to their European preceptors their right to give a final ruling on what the Bible did or did not sanc­ tion’ (McCall 1949: 223). Adopting a ‘subaltern culture’ perspective, Vanlalchhua­ nawma read in such events creative tensions between the local church and the Welsh mission. He claims that the Mizos ‘having been subjugated and disarmed by the alien power, had nothing but the milieu of cultural heritage to fall back upon, to stand the wholesale assimilation threatened by Western imperialism and the mission’ (Vanlalchhuanawma 2006: 456). Year of Census 1901 1911 1921 1931 1941 Source: Hluna 1992: 225.

No. of literates

Literacy rate

771 3,635 6,183 13,320 29,765

0.93 3.98 6.28 10.70 19.48

Gendered Literacy: Male Authors and Female Readers The spread of the alphabetical culture (often followed by print technology) was unequally distributed across gender and class. For the first time, Lushai language was reduced to writing in 1894 by two pioneer missionaries. In the Lushai Hills, Suaka and Thangphunga were the earliest persons to learn and master the new alphabets. Both became chiefs of Durtlang and Chaltlang, respectively (Hluna 1992: 52). It was no accident that chiefs or their

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sons happened to be the first batch of pupils to acquire literacy skills. More importantly, the practice of literacy was essentially gendered. Literacy statistics for the Lushai Hills (available since the 1901 census) showed considerable gap in literacy rate between the sexes throughout the colonial period (see table): Literacy rate by sex in the Lushai Hills, 1901-195138 Year of Census 1901 1911 1921 1931 1941 1951

Female literacy % 0.14 0.34 1.06 2.78 8.44 19.47

Male literacy % 0.53 3.64 5.22 7.92 11.04 11.67

Not only did the literacy rate of Lushai women lag behind men in quantitative terms, there was also a qualitative difference in the type of education they received. As a rule, women acquired vernacular literacy alone while some men had the benefit of Eng­ lish literacy. That may be the reason why writing remained a male monopoly in colonial Mizoram. Within this gendered literacy, male authors wrote for female readers. Secular literature was either non-existent or too scanty. The bulk of reading material was religious—Bible commentaries and devotional pieces. As the flagship Christian journal of the Mizo readers, Kristian Tlangau regularly featured stories of pious people intended as conduct manuals. They were often plucked out of context to make them fit for uncriti­ cal imitation. Typical examples included Mary Jones, Pandita Ramabai and Miss Chemi. The name of Mary Jones, a Welsh girl, was a household word for readers of Kristian Tlangau. The story of this Calvinistic Methodist girl best exemplified a fetish for the Bible and a desire to buy one’s personal copy. At the age of eight, she reportedly ‘knew everything about God’s Book.… She knew about the lives of Abraham, Joseph, David and Daniel’.39 Later, she had an appetite not only to hear about the Bible, but to read it by herself. Then Bibles were rare and dear since they were not yet mass-produced. In 1800, Mary walked 26 miles from her village

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to Bala town in North Wales just to buy a copy of the Welsh Bible! The Mizos were no less enthusiastic for their own vernacular Bible. No wonder they never had enough of Mary Jones. Her story kept appearing in the Mizo monthly from time to time. The fact that the protagonist was female must have lent extra attraction to the emergent women readers with vernacular literacy. As a mother of eight kids, Mary ‘found comfort for her tears … in her con­ stant companion, her old Bible’ when some of her children passed away.40 Different stories stood for different virtues for emulation. Mary Jones represented a virtuous fixation for buying the Book to devout readers. If familiarity breeds contempt, unfamiliarity made Western women (e.g. Mary Jones, Helen Keller,41 etc.) appealing to Mizo readers as moral examples. Yet there were models nearer home. As an obituary, Kristian Tlangau published the conversion story of Ms Pandita Ramabai42 (1858-1922) in India and recast her both as a defiant heroine and a woman of prayer. Born in a highcaste Hindu family, a Brahmin, she converted to Christianity in 1883. Another example was of a Mizo girl called Chêmi who had migrated to Kalemyo town (Burma) during a Mautam (bamboo) famine43 in the Lushai Hills. She travelled 250 miles to Mandalay in pursuit of high school education. She went on to become a nurse during Second World War. By that time, nursing was not a new career for Mizo girls.44 So, Chêmi was chosen here because of her unusual degree of self-sacrifice amidst Japanese air raids. Kristian Tlangau projected ‘her life as a beautiful testimony … so that every girl in Mizoram may learn how to help others during hard times.’45 With the initiative of lady missionaries, the practice of holding women’s meeting on Friday came into vogue. Bible reading was one of the main focuses of the assemblies of women. Given the nature of the audience, one may expect the focus of such reading groups to be more women-oriented. But that did not seem to be the case. Missionary reports in the 1920s and 1930s made occa­ sional references to the topics chosen for Bible readings. In 1929, Ms Chapman and Ms Clark reported from the Baptist mission in south Lushai, ‘The girls have taken a keen interest in the Bible

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study circles on the “Fatherhood of God” which the teachers have led.’46 The Welsh mission in north Lushai, too, conducted the same type of women’s meeting on Fridays and they apparently discussed the same sort of topics. For, Katie Hughes, a Welsh resident mis­ sionary, said they took classes on ‘the Manhood of the Master’ and read Psalms together. She further said, ‘Then we tell (sic) what we have learnt and felt, and pass on what may be of help to each other.… The meeting I like best of all is the Women’s Meeting, held on Fridays.’47 Though Friday Bible readings catered to an exclusively female audience, the mission depended heavily on theologically trained teachers to interpret the Biblical text. In colonial Mizoram, only men received theological training as a preparation for full-time ministry in the church. For a long time, it was assumed that women had no business with this ‘serious’ subject. A hill woman may aspire to be hospital nurse, school teacher or even Bible teacher in the disguise of ‘Bible woman’—but not an ordained minister of the Word. So women’s Bible readings often had little in the way of choice in terms of the selection of topics. In 1930, Sister Olivia reported a Bible class conducted by the Lushai nurses to study the epistle of St Paul to the Philippians. She said their ‘desire might be expressed in words something like Paul’s, that Christ shall be magnified in us and in our service’48 (emphasis added). It was a bit odd that a confirmed bachelor—if not a misogynist—like St Paul should be held up to the tribal girls as a nursing model. The devout nurses harboured a desire something like Paul’s, but not quite Paul’s. To begin with, Lushai mothers did not share the enthusiasm of lady missionaries about the Apostles or about Apostolic names. While male models continued to be held up for emulation, a Baptist mission report in the 1930s noted that ‘some talks have been given on some of the women of the Bible’.49 This report from south Lushai did not elaborate about women characters in the Bible. However, there was a hint that the chosen biblical women must have been very generous; for the same report proudly claimed ‘a very successful effort made to get women … to give more liberally

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to the women’s fund for the church.’50 Meanwhile, report from the Welsh mission in 1933 rejoiced that parental opposition to female education had been largely overcome: ‘Lushai parents, at last, are awakening to the value of education for their girls, and are deter­ mined to send to school however difficult it may be to spare them from their homes. . . . One man said to me very seriously, “This is women’s year.”’51 That improvement was more attitudinal than statistical. In reality, statistical figure for female literacy in the 1930s was not so impressive. It was an abysmal 2.78 per cent according to the 1931 census—about one third of male figure. Yet female literacy quadrupled within that decade while the figures for male did not even double. Mizo women began to participate actively in Sunday Schools and scripture reading where they picked up and practised their Bible-based literacy. In north Lushai, women in the 1930s seemed to enjoy reading the Psalms and gradually moved on to doctrinal debates. The Welsh missionary report in 1933 said: At their request, we held a class with the women to read the Psalms. By the end of the year we had reached the 22nd Psalm. Some of them cannot read, but they have good memories, and a member of the family will read the Psalm to them the night before. One woman said: ‘I couldn’t understand these Psalms at all before coming here, but after getting a little explanation, I can go home and give my husband a lesson!’ It was delightful to think that she knew more than her husband!52

Understandably, literate women relished their new dignity associated with the skills to read and understand the Bible for themselves. They had access to nothing less than the authorita­ tive texts of the church. In the past, pagan priests maintained that Mizo women had no sakhua (ancestral religion). But literate Mizo women in the 1930s, though still a minority, did acquire a new sakhua, which provided space for female agency. Another Welsh mission report in 1935 remarked, ‘In the Women’s Meeting we have gone as far as the 46th Psalm. The women are quite as anxious as the men to learn God’s Word, and also to argue on questions of doctrine. On the way to the market and in the rice fields, and after the day’s work is over, God’s word is the topic of conversation’.53

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The Mizo journal, Kristian Tlangau, published in April 1937 a letter with a pseudonym (Mizovi, literally meaning ‘Miss Mizo’); it was addressed to women readers.54 The anonymous author sym­ pathized with the idea of women’s uplift while showing concern about the unknown consequences of such social change. Though the editors intended this ‘woman’s letter’ to be read as if by a fictive female author, the context and content suggested otherwise. The open letter reads, ‘In today’s Mizoram, women are entering into strange and wonderful times. Gone are the days of our ancestors, we are in the modern age. In an attempt to achieve our full poten­ tial, we even go to high school.…’55 Then, it strangely argued that such transformations were pos­ sible only ‘due to the efforts of our men and the ruling British sahibs (Bawrh sap)’.56 The letter expressed concern that changing attitudes toward domestic life, child care and bride price may erode ances­ tral customs. Mizovi evoked the Biblical injunction that man, as the head of women, deserved respect: ‘Who should feel ashamed if a house and its utensils get dirty? Howsoever intelligent our nation may become, remember this is our eternal duty. . . . By nature, man is not meant to wash up babies or train up the kids.’57 Later, Kristian Tlangau published an unsigned note penned by a female writer in June 1940. Though the editors omitted the name of the writer, they indicated that she was a resident of Tachhip village. They even inserted an editorial comment, ‘Women never write such self-oriented stuffs and this may be the first of its kind; nevertheless they are valuable words.…’ The anonymous writer took off from the premise that man is the head of women; but she subverted the dominant patriarchal ideology with a hint of irony: We allot loads of burdens beyond the strength of women; that is why our nation remains wretched. Since man is the head of women, he ought to look after more tasks in better ways. If the weaker sex works, the stron­ ger man should help her in any situation.… Men of other nations work harder than women, and they earn respect.… Are our men weaker than other men? Far from it, it’s just the lack of will power!58

A section of the hill women in colonial Mizoram (especially since the 1930s) emerged as active readers of vernacular literature

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produced by male authorship. Women relatively lacked both social confidence and English literacy to assert their authorial voice. They were not supposed to have opinions of their own, but the nameless writer from Tachhip village showed that they did have different points of view. In the absence of a liberal concept like ‘women’s right’, the Tachhip woman made her plea on macho nationalist pride; and thus addressed Mizo men, ‘Those who work harder have stronger mind and broader knowledge.… Let us move toward maturity so as to beautify our nation.’ Unexpectedly, proto­ feminist voices found expression in the pages of evangelical print.59

Users of Printed Matter as Material Object The translation of the Old Testament60 into Duhlian (Mizo) had to wait 12 years even after the end of the British Raj. Till then, readers got only the gist of the Old Testament as it was narrated in The Story of the Bible (Raper 1961: 35). And F.W. Savidge remarked that ‘the story of the Judges and the Kings of Israel and Judah, had a fascinating interest for these warlike people’.61 In any case, the tribal conflicts of ancient Israel could not fail to appeal to the hill tribes of colonial north-east. In those barbarous stories, the tribal converts could read back their own recent past; they could even find legitimacy for the vices of tribal societies—sexism, patriarchy, parochialism, sectarianism, clan divisions and national arrogance (cf. Hill 1993). But these remained stories about the Old Testament, but not the book itself. So, what we called the vernacular Mizo Bible during the colonial era was actually the New Testament. The Mizos got their first portion of the Bible in 1898 comprising of the Gospels (according to Luke and John) with the Acts of the Apostles. Due to its novelty, literate Mizos eagerly awaited these Bible portions. They were thrilled by ‘the joy of being able to read it for themselves’.62 Many Mizo readers cherished the memory of smelling, touching and reading their first Bible portion long after they got the New Testament in 1917. A resident Welsh missionary Dr John Williams later remarked, No other book will ever take its place in their affection, for this was the first portion of the New Testament which they had read in their own

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tongues. In those days they carried John’s Gospel with them to their work, in order to glance at it during their dinner hour, and for fear something might happen to it if they left it at home.63

The book gave credibility to the early converts and lay preacher; it was a piece of material evidence that lent seriousness to the whole business of propagating a new faith. The Mizo Book was a cultural artefact, the new symbol of the birth of literate Mizo print culture—something that can be admired by every Mizo despite religious differences. In the Mizo psyche, the printed Bible portions were an embodiment of their mythical story about a lost leather scroll. An early Mizo convert, L.M. Chhinga thus recalled the arrival of the Gospel of Luke in 1898: People were fascinated to hear the verses of the Bible being read in their own tongues. ‘So this is what the “Jehovo Book” is like which you are always talking about.’ They were eager to look at it. Some of the elders said, ‘We used to have a book at one time, it was made of leather.…’ (Lloyd 1991: 58-9)

Of the books of the New Testament, the Mizos best loved their first gospel portions, but they were perhaps most fascinated by rich symbolism of the Revelation. The last book of the New Testament was replete with scary references to end times prophecy by the Spirit. Where no other entertainment offers, literate Mizos could not be blamed if they loved to be frightened by the Apoca­ lypse. In 1929, Katie Hughes reported from north Lushai, ‘They are rather afraid of the Revelation, as there are so many different views regarding its meaning.’64 At another level, this book of end times offered the Mizo converts a new way of reading the future— through linear Judeo-Christian teleos. Though printed matters or books were primarily meant for reading, their materiality readily lent themselves to several social and extra-textual uses. In the eyes of an illiterate book user, books would obviously be cultural artefacts. A bound book or printed matter is a social product that enframes its expressive message in a material medium (cf. McKenzie 2002). R.J. Mayhew, therefore, cautions that ‘historians need to be aware of the material spatiality of the texts’ (Mayhew 2007: 487). In the Lushai Hills, perhaps the

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earliest encounter with printed paper took place during a British military campaign in the late nineteenth century. In his military memoir, Woodthorpe observed that both newspapers and bottle labels fascinated the invaded highlanders. They immediately saw a possibility for adapting newspapers as fans or hoods for the head. Traditionally, the Mizos used feathers of colourful birds for hair decoration during festive seasons. No wonder they found the bold colour of bottle labels irresistible for their hair knots. To quote from Woodthorpe’s own account of the Lushai campaign: Paper possessed great charm for them, and they would take newspapers up and walk quietly off with them, not being at all abashed if stopped and made to restore them; but when a paper was given them, they went proudly away with it sticking up from the back of their turban (such as they wore them) in the shape of a large fan or hood. Green and gold labels of pickle bottles and brass labels of sardine boxes, found great favour as decorations for their hair knots. (Woodthorpe 1873: 184-5)

The publication of a monthly Kristian Tlangau since 1911 made paper increasingly available throughout the Lushai Hills. So, a number of village artisans started using pages from the monthly as an alternative, if not a full substitute, to the rare hnahthial leaf as an inner lining for Mizo bamboo-hat.65 Hnahthial (Phrynium capitatum) is the name of a plant and also of its leaves. In his Lushai dictionary, Lorrain remarked, ‘When growing in favourable soil this plant produces large tough leaves used extensively by the Lushais for wrapping up rice for eating on a journey and for other purposes’ (1940: 168). Before the coming of paper, the hnahthial leaf was inventively utilized for packaging and the craft­ ing tribal hats. This popular leaf even found a place in Mizo folk tale66 in which an injured lobster hurled curses on the hnahthial leaf. The folk story-teller was at pains to explain the growing scarcity of hnahthial supply in the Lushai Hills. The scarcity was self-righteously attributed to the curses of the lobster, not to over­ harvesting by humans. Besides the Mizo hat-makers, Christian as well as pagan smok­ ers fancied Kristian Tlangau for their own ends. The Mizos were (and still are) heavy smokers; it was almost like a national pastime.

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The first leaves of tobacco arrived in India around the seventeenth century ad through Portuguese traders at Goa (Gokhale 1974). In colonial Lushai Hills, male smokers used vaibêl (pipe) and female smokers used a different type of water pipe. Paper-rolled cigars offered more ease and convenience than pipes. A reliable supply of paper in the hills was ensured by the steady increase in printed materials, especially by Christian missions. Apparently, some enterprising local folks even attempted to make money by selling cigars rolled from the pages of the Tlangau. By 1915, the new fash­ ion of literally smoking the Mizo journal provoked a Christian by the name of Hlova of Theiriat village to write: Some persons are in the habit of rolling into cigar the leaves of godly books, the Tlangau, or other periodicals. The Bible is our guidebook to eternal life for Christians; so it is most unwarranted to roll its leaves into cigar for sale. It would be better to use vaibêl for our Mizo people. The use of Tlangau pages for smoking purpose is a disincentive to the journal producers.67

It was not difficult to understand why Mr Hlova felt disturbed by the way Mizo smokers used the Tlangau. Mizo Christian con­ verts would agree with the editors who accorded a sacred value to their journal. They considered the Tlangau not as an ordinary monthly, but as a valuable book. The editors urged the monthly readers to compile all half-yearly issues into a single volume. That volume would be a family asset and Christian resource; and the editors advised, ‘You may like to read again old issues which con­ tain valuable thoughts and divine teaching.’68 Apart from the Tlangau monthly, printed portions of the gos­ pel were the earliest kind of books known to the Mizos. The New Testament in Mizo was not published till 1916. Even with their Bible portions, the Mizos lost no time in assigning symbolic and ritualistic merits to their sacred booklets. Among others, Bibles were given away as symbolic prizes in competitions, especially during Children’s Festivals.69 In 1914, a Baptist mission report from south Lushai reads: ‘The fact that during the past year they [Lushais] have either purchased or won as prizes for learning to read 2,648 scripture portions (some of which were bound together

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in volume form) shows what good use they are making of what they already have’.70 Early Christian converts in the Lushai Hills recognized the ritualistic merit of enlisting the Bible in their rites of passage like burial and funeral custom. The missionaries noticed this unexpected use of the Bible, but they did not interfere with this ‘endearing custom’ of the Lushai. A resident Welsh missionary, Lloyd remarked how the Bible found a niche as a popular burial item: It had always been the Mizo custom to bury certain things along with the body.… Some were obviously an extension of the personality of he one who had died.… Christians also often maintain this rather supersti­ tious but endearing custom and may place a Bible in the coffin along with other items. (Lloyd 1991: 113)

Conclusion As a pioneer of literacy and schools, missionary print (especially by the Welsh Calvinistic mission) provided unique access to the history of reading and literacy for the Lushai Hills of British Assam. In terms of intent, the use of paper (or books) as material artefact (rolled cigar, hat lining, etc.) usually predated the reading of books as hermeneutical texts. Moreover, the historical shift was broadly from education to entertainment. By the late colonial period, reading for instruction gave way to reading for pleasure among Mizo readers. This study includes English-language as well as Mizo-language texts to identify various categories of emergent textual readers and book users. I have noted the gendered and vernacular character of Mizo readers. Against stiff opposition by Mizo church elders, the gradual arrival of Welsh women in the Lushai Hills resulted in the beginning of schools for the girl child and literacy for adult women. The history of reading sheds a ray of light on how Mizo women make use of their literacy and literary skills. With the spread of Mizo-language literacy, the history of reading recorded another level of social tension between the Welsh foreign mis­ sionary establishment and the subaltern lay readers. The Kelkang

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incident of 1937 illustrates how literal interpretation of the ver­ nacular Mizo Bible resulted in local millennialism. The event was subversive enough to push the Calvinistic missionary to take more rationalistic positions in Biblical interpretation and to bet­ ter appreciate the value of secular type of education in the Lushai Hills. The vernacular Bible caught the British off guard with its potential use as a tool of anti-colonial protest.

Notes 1. Census of India 1931, vol. III, Assam Part I – Report by C.S. Mullan, MA, ICS, Shillong: Superintendent, Assam Government Press, p. 174. 2. Ibid. 3. BMS Report 1907, ‘Arthington Mission to the Lushai tribe’ by J. Herbert Lorrain and Mrs. Lorrain, pp. 36-46. 4. The missionaries explained such ‘backslidings’ in terms of illiteracy and strong ‘emptations’. In the Biblical idiom of F.J. Raper, ‘the temptations around them [Pawihs] proved too strong’. From the tribal point of view, this is a testimony to the tenacity of pagan culture in interior Pawih areas where the colonial contact was less intense. In Lushai mission history, the south was the last bastion of pagan culture. See BMS Report 1935, ‘South Lushai Hills’ by F.J. Raper, pp. 321-5. 5. BMS Report 1935, ‘South Lushai Hills’ by F.J. Raper, pp. 321-5. 6. Reports of FMPCWM 1935-6, ‘The Report of the North Lushai Hills’, by Rev. David Edwards, pp. 133-4. 7. BMS Report 1914, ‘Education’ by F.W. Savidge, pp. 119-20. 8. Ibid. 9. BMS Report 1908, ‘Education’ by F.W. Savidge, pp. 54-6. 10. BMS Report 1915, ‘Lushai Literature’, pp. 128-9. 11. Reports of FMPCWM, 1934-5, ‘Report of the North Lushai Hills’ by Rev. David Edwards, pp. 122-4. 12. ATC Arhives, Durtlang (Aizawl), ‘Hualtu Library Chanchin’, Kristian Tlangau, pp. 5-7. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid.

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16. Reports of FMPCWM, 1941-2, ‘The Report of the Lushai Hills’ by Dr. Gwyneth Roberts, pp. 169-70. 17. BMS Report 1937, ‘South Lushai Hills – Boys’ Education’ by H.W. Carter, pp. 352-5. 18. ATC Archives, Durtlang (Aizawl), ‘Lekha bu chhiar’ by YLA, Kristian Tlangau, pp. 93-4. 19. Ibid. 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid. 22. BMS Report 1937, ‘Boy’s Education’ by H.W. Carter, pp. 352-5. 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid. 25. The Mizo theologian Vanlalchhuanawma (2006) characterized this religious and cultural event as the ‘Stirring of 1913’; he interpreted the event as ‘subaltern’ and ‘revivalist’ response to the missionary domiance. Led by almost invisible local leaders, these cultural awakenings resembled millenarian movements elsewhere. 26. Free translation from Kristian Hla Bu (No. 141) compiled by Synod Literature & Publication Board, Aizawl, 2004. 27. Ibid. 28. Reports of FMPCWM, 1931-2, ‘Report of the North Lushai Hills’ by Dr. John Williams, pp. 107-8. 29. Reports of FMPCWM, 1936-7, ‘Report of the North Lushai Hills’ by Rev. David Edwards, pp. 136-9. 30. Reports of FMPCWM, 1938-9, ‘Reports of the North Lushai Hills’ by Rev. E.L. Mendus, pp. 154-7. 31. Ibid. 32. Ibid. 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid. 37. Reports of FMPCWM, 1941-2, ‘Report of the North Lushai Hills’ by Rev. E.L. Mendus pp. 163-4. 38. Compiled and computed from the data available in Census of India 1931 (Assam) and Tribal Research Institute (1991) Mizo Women Today. 39. ATC Archives, Durtlang (Aizawl), D.E. Jones, 1944, ‘Sap Nula Mary Jones leh a Baibl’, Kristian Tlangau, June, pp. 59-63.

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40. ATC Archives, Durtlang (Aizawl), Kristian Tlangau, June 1944, pp. 59-63. 41. ATC Archives, Durtlang (Aizawl), ‘Hellen Kelleri’ (Helen Killer), Kristian Tlangau, pp. 7-8. 42. ATC Archives, Durtlang (Aizawl) Kristian Tlangau, July 1922, ‘Pandita Ramabai Hriatrengna’. 43. The Lushai hills were visited by bamboo famine in 1862, 1880, 1911, 1929 and 1959 (see Zawla 1964). Chêmi’s family must have migrated to Burma during the famine of 1929. 44. ATC Archives (Durtlang), Kristian Tlangau, June 1942, pp. 50-1. 45. Ibid. 46. BMS Report 1929, ‘Women’s Work’ by Miss Chapman and Miss Clark, pp. 257-60. 47. Reports of FMPCWM, 1937-8, ‘Girls School and Women’s Work in Aijal’ by Miss Katie Hughes, pp. 147-8. 48. BMS Report 1930, ‘Medical Work’ by Sister Olivia, pp. 270-1. 49. BMS Report 1933, ‘South Lushai in 1933’ by Miss E.M. Chapman, Sister E.M. Oliver, Sister I.M. Good, Mr. & Mrs. Carter, Mr. & Mrs. Raper, pp. 295 - 305. 50. BMS Report 1930, ibid. 51. Reports of FMPCWM, 1932-3, p. 115. 52. Ibid. 53. Reports of FMPCWM, 1934-5, p. 126. 54. ATC Archives (Durtlang), Mizovi, ‘Hmeichhe Hnena Hmeichhe Lekha Thawn’, Kristian Tlangau, April 1937, pp. 36-7. 55. ATC Archives (Durtlang), Kristian Tlangau, April 1937, pp. 36-7. 56. Ibid. 57. Ibid. 58. ATC Archives (Durtlang), ‘Tachhip Khuaa Hmeichhe Pakhat Ziak’, Kristian Tlangau, June 1940, p. 45. 59. ATC Archives (Durtlang), Kristian Tlangau, June 1940, p. 45. 60. The complete Mizo Bible appeared both in Mara dialect (1956) and standard Lushai (1959) during the post-colonial era. A radical reading of the Old Testament led to the theory of the Mizos not only as a ‘chosen tribe’ figuratively, but as a ‘lost tribe’ of Israel literally. Some Mizos claimed to be a lost Bnei Manashe tribe and had imigrated in hundreds to their ‘homeland’ (Israel) with the support of rightwing Jewish and fundamental Christian bodies. This politics of lost tribes, S. Weil suspects, was ‘inspired by a fanciful interpretation of the Bible’ (2003: 51).

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61. BMS Report 1915, ‘Education’ by F.W. Savidge, pp. 130-3. 62. Reports of FMPCWM, 1934-5, ‘Report of the North Lushai Hills’ (North-East district) by Dr. John Williams, pp. 124-5. 63. Ibid. 64. Reports of FMPCWM, 1928-9, ‘The Report of the North Lushai Hills’, p. 89. 65. This information was first divulged to me during an interview with B. Lalthangliana, a Mizo historian—author of Mizo Literature: Mizo thu leh hla (2004)—interviewed at Chhinga Veng, Aizawl on 27 April 2005. 66. Laltluangliana Khiangte (1997) said there were two versions for the tale of Chemtatrawta (meaning ‘Sharpener of Dao’). Khiangte recorded the later version from his grandfather Rev. Liangkhaia and his grandmother. There was no reference to the hnahthial plant and the curse of the lobster in the older version. Evidently the new version was an interpolation at a later time when the hnathial plant was becoming scarce due to increasing demand on this forest resource. 67. Synod Office Archives, Aizawl, ‘Lekha Zial Zuk Pawi-mawh Thu’, Kristian Tlangau, September 1915, p. 147. 68. SOA, Aizawl, Kristian Tlangau, ‘Hriat-tirna’ by Editors, November 1911. 69. Reports of FMPCWM 1938-39, ‘Girls’ School and Women’s Work’ by Miss Katie Hughes, pp. 157-8. 70. BMS Report 1914, ‘Translation Work’ by J.H. Lorrain, p. 118.

References Fischer, Steven Roger, 2003, A History of Reading, London: Reaktion Books Ltd. Peel, J.D.Y., 1968, Aladura: A Religious Movement among the Yoruba, London: OUP (for International African Studies). Vanlalchhuanawma, 2006, Christianity and Subaltern Culture: Revival Movement as a Cultural Response to Westernisation in Mizoram, Delhi: Indian Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge (ISPCK).

CHAPTER 7

Christian Missionaries among the Karbis DONALD TERON

Among the various Christian denominations working in north­ east India, it was the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society, followed by the Welsh Presbyterian Mission and the Roman Catholic Mission, that came to work among the Karbis of present Karbi Anglong district. While work among the Karbis by the American Baptist Mission was undertaken from the Nowgong station, the Presbyterian Mission entered from the N.C. Hills district through a native convert when he migrated to Umpanai in West Karbi Anglong in 1892. He, Sangbar Kro, happened to be the first Presbyterian convert among the Karbis and the seed of the gospel was sown by him among his people at Umpanai.1 The Roman Catholic Mission initially did not venture into the Karbi area but worked from the Khasi and Jaintia Hills of Meghalaya. Even baptism for the early converts was undertaken inside the Khasi-Jaintia area. A mission station in the heart of Karbi Anglong could be established by them only in 1967. By virtue of being the first to contact with the Karbis and, perhaps, due to the existing comity agreements, the American Baptist missionaries got the major responsibility of working among the tribe. Even today, the majority of Karbi Christians belong to the American Baptist denomination.

The Advent of the American Baptist Missionaries The plan of working among the Karbis was initiated in the year 1857 when Rev. Miles Bronson and William Ward undertook a

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tour of the Karbi inhabited area. In his diary, William Ward writes, ‘The Mikirs, one of the hill tribes of Assam, have been repeatedly noticed on our pages as holding out peculiar opportunity, and encouragement to evangelical labour.’2 In the Baptist Missionary Magazine of November 1854, Nathan Brown writes: The Mikirs are one of the most interesting tribes in Assam … and are a mild, quiet and industrious race. They very much resemble the Karens. We should be glad to make some efforts for their conversion, but it would be a folly to extend our labours, while we are unable even to carry on the mission we have already established among the Assamese.3

In spite of the dearth of missionaries at that time, Miles Bron­ son did not hesitate to include the Karbis in their mission’s list and after his tour in 1857 he wrote to the Home Board, to spare a mis­ sionary for them. In his journal which was published in February 1857, he writes, I have taken a most interesting excursion, accompanied by Mr Ward, over a section of the Mikir Hills where no missionary and probably no European has ever been this tour, which I can truly say was the most interesting of my whole missionary life. These simple-hearted people seemed ready to welcome us everywhere, and listened eagerly to all we had to say … which led me to devote some effort to preparing an elemen­ tary catechism in Mikir, giving them, as simply as possible, the out lines of Christianity in their own tongue.4

The tour that Miles Bronson and William Ward undertook was accompanied by a Karbi young man who acted as an interpreter. In one of their reports, it reads: A few understood Assamese pretty well; but we depended chiefly upon the young man, Long Bong, to interpret and explain what we had said. Though a young man of most quiet manners, we were astonished at the eloquence and power with which he seemed to electrify and sway the minds of the whole company. In perfect naturalness and beauty of gesture, and control over the passions of others, he could hardly be sur­ passed by the most studied orator; but he seemed to be as self-forgetful and artless as a child. As he explained and enlarged upon what we said, a burst of approval broke forth from the whole company, and sometimes

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paroxysms of laughter. Had you been present with us, as we sat on the floor, with this company around us, you might have seen tears; and you could not but have felt with us an agony of prayer that God would make that young man a preacher of the gospel to his countrymen. He has promised to come to Nowgong to learn during the next rains, and become a true Christian.5

The report sent by Rev. Miles Bronson to the Home Board of the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society (ABFMS) was accepted and in 1859 the board appointed Rev and Mrs C.F. Tol­ man for the newly created Mikir department of the Nowgong Mission. Rev. Miles Bronson deserves to be called the ‘torchbearer’ of all mission activities in Karbi Anglong. Rev and Mrs C.F. Tol­ man arrived at Nowgong in May 1859.6 Tolman was the son-in-law of Rev. Miles Bronson. The Tolmans were specially designated to work among the Karbis, but upon their arrival they had to take charge of the Nowgong station. However, they made a tour to the Mikir hills the following winter and in this tour Rev. Tolman had been infected by malaria which broke down his health. He was compelled to go back to America in June 1861 having been on the field for only two years. Revd Cyrus Fisher Tolman was born on 25 October 1832, at Meridian, New York.7 He was ordained on 20 October 1858, at Calvary Baptist Church, New York. He completed his theological course in the Hamilton Literature and Theological Institute in 1858. He married Rebecca Bronson, the daughter of Rev. Miles Bronson who was the first Christian missionary to arrive in Assam. The marriage took place in Octo­ ber 1858, the date he was ordained. He had four children from the marriage, two sons named Edgar and John Newell and two daughters named Minie Luzzio and Julia Ruth. He was assigned to work among the Mikirs (Karbis) of Assam on 17 September 1858, and he sailed for Assam two months later in the same year on 26 November 1858, to reach Nowgong in Assam on 25 May 1859. He returned to the United States in June 1861 due to ill health after working among the Mikirs for less than two years. In the United States, he served as a Pastor of St Laurence Church, Massachu­ setts. After the departure of the Tolmans, the station was left at the hands of Dr and Mrs Bronson, the in-laws of C.F. Tolman. They

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worked without any companions till November 1863 when Rev. and Mrs E.P. Scott arrived, having been assigned specially for the Mikir department. Rev. and Mrs E.P. Scott were the second des­ ignated American Baptist missionary couple to the Karbis. They arrived at Nowgong in 1863 and started serving with deep love and commitment. Rev. Scott died at Nowgong on 18 May 1869, due to cholera and was buried there. His wife continued to serve until January 1971.

The First Karbi Convert The first recorded Karbi convert was baptized in October 1863 by Rev. Miles Bronson.8 The convert namely Rongbong Killing, a government mauzadar, was baptized at Nowgong and later became a member of the Nowgong Baptist Church. Andrew was his given Christian name. He married an Assamese lady who was then a teacher at Nowgong Christian Patty. His native place was Amguri bordering the present Karbi Anglong district. The missionaries at Nowgong greatly hoped that Rongbong would act as a catalyst among his people and bring many to Christ. But unfortunately, he was a weak Christian who had to be frequently disciplined by the Church at Nowgong. He died while he was under discipline. 9 When Rev. and Mrs E.P. Scott entered the field, they worked with enthusiasm but soon fell ill because of the unhealthy climate of Karbi Anglong. They worked very hard for about two years but had to return to America owing to ill health. They were able to return in 1868 but could remain in Karbi Anglong only for one year. Rev. E.P. Scott died of cholera at Nowgong on 18 May 1869. According to Rev. P.H. Moore’s report, he had been greatly inter­ ested in the Mikir people and had endeared himself to them so that they felt his death as a real benevolent.10 Rev. and Mrs R.E. Neighbour who had been designated as the successor of Rev. E.P. Scott in the work among the Mikirs arrived in January 1871. 11 Rev. Neighbour took up in earnest the work for the Mikirs but due to ill health he had to retire from the field in 1878. 12 F.S. Downs writes, ‘Missionary service among the Mikirs was proving to be

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an unhealthy occupation.’13 In 1874, the Neighbours were left in charge of Nowgong station and the works for the Mikirs were neglected. When Rev. and Mrs Neighbour went to America on furlough in 1878, from that time until January 1891 there was no missionary for the Mikirs. During this 13-year period, Rev. P.H. Moore included the Mikirs in his work as much as possible and in 1883 the Church at Nowgong supported a preacher to them. 14 The evangelist namely Sarlok Tokbi, a Karbi, was the first convert from the eastern part of Karbi Anglong. He received a monthly hono­ rarium of Rs. 8 to preach the gospel among his people. 15 In January 1891, Rev. P.E Moore, the brother of Rev. P.H Moore, came to work among the Karbis. He married Mrs Charlotee Pursell and at once set up a temporary headquarter at Krungjeng (modern Kolonga) in West Karbi Anglong. Rev. P.E Moore spent three winter seasons and Mrs Moore one at Krungjeng.

The Search for Permanent Headquarters In January 1895, Rev. J.M. Carvel, an Englishman by birth, arrived and joined the Moore family in the Mikir Hills. Rev. Carvel married Miss Amy of Nowgong and proceeded to Krungjeng. Krungjeng was not a suitable place for establishing permanent headquarters for the Karbis. Immediately, after the conference in 1895, P.E. Moore and J.M. Carvel made an extensive tour in the Mikir Hills trekking south, north and east as far as Golaghat. They made this tour on foot covering hundreds of miles. But due to the nomadic nature of the Mikirs they could not find a permanent concentration of population. They returned to Nowgong on 7 April 1896. In May of the same year, P.E. Moore made another tour south of the Borpani tea garden and finally found the right building spot. In October, P.E. Moore accompanied by his brother P.H. Moore and J.M. Carvel went to the spot and selected Tika Anglong (Tika Hills) as the future home of the missionaries.16 Besides Tika Anglong, the missionaries inspected Socheng, Tirkim and Sermanthu, but Tika Hills seems to be the right choice as it is near to Kampur Railway Station and the Sidgamari Tea Estate

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where a European family resides. Rev. J.M. Carvel proceeded at once to building and Rev. P.E. Moore went to Krungjeng where he had already spent two winters. Mrs Moore joined him at Krungjeng on 1 December 1896. On 18 January 1897, they left for Tika Anglong. Arriving there the next day, Mrs Carvel came out from Nowgong in February 1897. Four happier, more hopeful men and women would have been hard to find. The houses were finished, plastered and whitewashed before the rains set in. The American Baptist Missionary Union had allowed Rs. 500 for a temporary house in the hills. The houses at Krungjeng with out­ house and servants’ houses had been built at a cost of Rs. 130. The remaining Rs. 370 was spent on the building at Tika Anglong.

Deaths of Missionaries The mission work was upset by the death of Laura Amy Carvel in August 1897. She was the first missionary to be buried at Tika Hills. On 19 December of the same year, Rev. J.M. Carvel remarried Miss Alice Parker of Nowgong and he began to work at Tika again. Laura Amy Carvel was born in 1862 at Wisconsin.17 She was appointed as a missionary in 1890. She was married to Rev. J. M. Carvel on 3 August 1895. During the period of her stay in Mikir Hills she was stationed at Tika Hills from early 1897. She died on 1 August 1897 during childbirth. Another death that unsettled the missionary work was that of Mrs Moore. Mrs Moore died at Tika on 9 May 1907 when Rev. and Mrs Carvel were on a furlough. Due to the death of his wife Rev. P.E. Moore, too, was deeply hurt and his health deteriorated. He went on a furlough to America in 1909. Mrs Moore worked dedicatedly and loved the Mikirs till the end of her time.18 Char­ lotte Pursell Moore was the younger sister of Mrs M.C. Mason of Tura, Garo Hills.19 She was married to Rev. P.E. Moore on 9 October 1891, at Tura, which was solemnised by Rev. William Carey (grandson of William Carey, father of modern mission). The Moore couple had their temporary station 18 miles away from Nowgong. Their son, Carrey Pitt Moore, was born on 9 September 1892. Mother and son went to America in June 1894 and returned

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to Nowgong in December 1894. She died at Tika in 1908. After returning from America, Rev. J.M. Carvel was transferred back to Nowgong and for a while to Golaghat where he was given other responsibilities in addition to the Karbi work. Rev. Carvel then returned to Tika where he served until his death in 1925. Mrs Alice Parker Carvel, the second wife of Rev. Carvel, went to America taking with her their young son. According to the inhabitants of Tika Hills, particularly Sri Chandra Timung, who celebrated his 110th birthday in 2007, Mrs Carvel left her hus­ band because her husband contracted a severe skin disease.20 Rev. Carvel was relieved from the mission’s activities and did not stay at the mission station at Tika but constructed a house in Tika village. After his retirement, his relatives, particularly his sister, used to send him money from America. During the years of his loneliness at Tika Hills, he became intimate with a Karbi woman, a widow named Kajek Terangpi who used to attend to his domestic chores.21 Rev. Carvel presented a diamond and some silver jewellery to Kajek. Later, the diamond was sold to Hijal Ingti and the silver jewellery, nothengpi, to the sar-ik Terang (governor of Terang) of the Bordongka Baptist Church. According to the account of Kave Ronghangpi, Rev. Carvel committed suicide out of shame, frustra­ tion and loneliness. However, Sri Chandra Timung recounts that Rev. Carvel did not show any sign of suffering but died in his sleep. The doors and windows of the house were locked from inside when the domestic helper went to the house in the morning. Find­ ing no response from Rev. Carvel, she alerted the villagers. The villagers had to break the door down and they found Rev. Carvel already dead. The matter was communicated to the nearest British authority, the tea garden manager of Sidgamari Tea Estate. Thus, Rev. Carvel might have died in his sleep or he might have com­ mitted suicide by consuming poison as told by Kave Ronghangpi. Rev. Carvel was buried at Tika Hills alongside his first wife. A long obituary note written by Rev. G.R. Kampfer on 8 December 1925, was sent by Rev. Tom Horn for the sesquicentennial celebration of the gospel in Karbi Anglong (1859-2009) which is reproduced below.

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John Moses Carvel, the Most Loved Missionary in Karbi Another deep-felt loss was sustained by the missionaries in Assam on 30 October 1925, in the death of Rev. John Moses Carvel, missionary to the Mikirs. This sad message was brought into Nowgong by runners who made the trip from the hills post haste and it was 10 days before one of our missionaries in the plains could reach Mount Tika where the remains of our brother lie beside those of his first wife in the mission compound. The blow was felt all the more coming at a time when so many other losses had already left our hearts very heavy. Mr Carvel was born in London, England on 28 January 1866. In 1887, he was brought to America, where he became a conse­ crated Christian and pledged his life to Christ in foreign mission service. He arrived in Nowgong, Assam, on 5 January 1895, where for two years he gave his undivided attention to the study of the Mikir language. And here he was wisely mentored by the Late Rev. P.H. Moore. He also became acquainted with Miss Amy of the Nowgong Girl’s school whom he married and took to Mount Tika but she was not destined to share the trials of an almost unap­ proachable hill station with her husband for long. Death claimed her on the altar of mission service. In 1908-9, Rev. Carvel was again in Nowgong and from 1909 to 1921 Golaghat was his head­ quarters for work among the Mikirs. He was married again to Miss Alice Mound Parker of England. A son, Doughlas J., was born to him by this marriage on 28 March 1901, who is now living with his mother in Kansas City. Two sisters, Jane and Elizabeth of Augusta, Michigan, also mourn his loss. Mr Carvel was a man of a generation of missionaries who walked in paths where we, men of a younger period, cannot fol­ low. People sometimes thought he preferred the company of his Indian friends to that of men of his own race. His heart was in the Mikir Hills and he often passed the remark that it was there that he would be buried. He, himself, said that he had become a Mikir in body and spirit. And yet he was no recluse, nor had he lost touch with the thought of this day and generation. In conversation, he

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spoke well informed. He translated and preached the old gospel and contended for the faith once for all delivered to the saints. We have every reason to rejoice that his efforts were not in vain for a work began that bids fair to lead a host to Christ. He made the spreading of the message of salvation his first duty, the translation of the word his second duty and conversation and building up of leaders his third unceasing task. Few will ever realize what the task was that confronted him and his colleague in this work among the Mikirs, a race hedged in behind by the sturdy Khasis and in front by the clever plain Assa­ mese; ground between these millstones, the Mikirs became the most notorious opium eaters in Assam, neglected and intimidated. Mr Carvel told a number of us of some of his early difficulties. When he came to Tika the first time to begin his labours he was obliged to carry his own luggage and tents up to the summit on his own back. It took him four days. The people fled. One man, braver than the rest, left some plantains and an egg and ran. The second day he left some more supplies. The Mikir king, hearing of this, fined the poor Mikir Rs 10. This mount was taboo, supposedly inhabited by the demon, Tika. Here, this courageous missionary built his bungalow on the very summit and defied all the demons of Mikir land. The Christian community increased to its present strength of about 500 souls. For the last year and eight months, Mr Carvel had spent his days here alone as an independent mis­ sionary, adding his knowledge of the people, of the language, and of the prospects of the gospel to the feeble efforts the missionary society could put forth during those days of spiritual famine and depletion of our forces. He had built himself a modest house near Tika and was about to build himself another house two days jour­ ney farther in the interior and at a much higher altitude and had already felled a number of trees for this purpose when he came down with a two-week attack of obstinate malaria from which his death resulted. He had given himself unreservedly to his people. And no greater blow could have come to his poor bewildered flock than that he should rise no more from his shelter to watch beside their

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beds of pain through the long night hours, to visit them no more in their affection, nor to advise them in their difficulties nor be their spokesman in affairs that affected their government. Mr Carvel left a beautiful legacy in Assam, in the numbers of buildings he erected among which are the mission bungalows of Jorhat, Golaghat and Satribari (Gauhati), the girls school building, Gauhati, the spacious boys dormitory, Jorhat, and last but not the least, the Shirk Memorial Church, Golaghat. But most precious of all is the legacy he left in his life wholly devoted to the service of others, the memory of his serene spirit and the faithfulness of his walk in the steps of the Master.

Disappointment of the Mission’s Secretary Rev. A.J. Tuttle, the mission secretary, felt that effort of the missionaries for the progress of the Karbis was discouraging. In spite of their relentless sacrifices, very few Karbis accepted the Christian message. The mission secretary felt that this is a waste of time and money and decided to abandon the Tika mission compound. Establishment of a new station for the Karbis at Jamnamukh near Nowgong was planned by him, but this did not materialize, work for the Karbis was thus carried on from Nowgong. To add to the woes of the missionaries, the Tika station was burnt by fire due to a ‘bolt from the sky’ on 15 October 1916. Rev. P.E. Moore reported that medicines, mission records, books, film materials, pianos and other valuables were destroyed in the fire.22 Thus, as per the order of the mission secretary, Rev. P.E Moore left Tika Hills on March 1917, but he continued his work for the Karbis from Nowgong.

The Coming of Rev. W.R. Hutton In spite of the abandonment of the Tika station, the missionaries did not give up hope and continued their work from Nowgong station through the likes of Rev. P.E. Moore, Rev. J.M. Carvel and O.L. Swanson. In 1918, Rev. W.R. Hutton left America and arrived at Nowgong. The same year, Rev. O.L. Swanson gave the charge of the Karbi field to Rev. W.R. Hutton. In 1924, when Rev. P.E. Moore

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left for America, Rev. W.R. Hutton became the sole in charge for Karbi affairs. Of all the missionaries designated for the Karbis, Rev. W.R. Hutton served for the longest period. He gave his service for about 30 years in the midst of trials and suffering. Rev. W.R. Hutton was born in the state of Iowa, USA, on 18 October 1889. For about 10 years, he remained in his birthplace and was an obedient child. From his early years, he helped his parents in the field and attended church services regularly. He even used to present songs during Christmas in the church. At the age of eight, he read the whole Bible from Genesis to Revelation and could remember most of the Bible stories. His mother used to accompany him to the church and she became the source of inspiration to young William. In the living room of the Hutton’s, there hung a picture of Dr Livingstone and young William used to be curious to know the story of the greatest missionaries of all times. The state of Iowa is extremely cold during winter and it did not suit the Huttons, especially William’s father. Due to this rea­ son they migrated to Oklahoma, a much warmer place. Being an agriculturist, William’s father cultivated cereals like wheat and also varieties of fruits at Oklahoma and young William often helped his father alongside attending school regularly. School was situated at a distance of two miles from their home. Before passing high school, William was compelled to teach primary school. While as a teacher, he read the stories of the mis­ sionaries working in China, and he decided to become a missionary. In 1908, he passed the matriculation examination and joined South-Western College for further studies. After four months of his enrolment at the college his father died but his mother contin­ ued to support him and he got his BA degree in 1912. For a year, he joined service and later enrolled himself at Groyer Theological Seminary in Pennsylania. After studying for a year at the seminary, he enrolled himself at the school of divinity in Chicago Univer­ sity and got his MA and BD degrees in 1918. While studying at Chicago University, he met Miss Elsie Cloe Sprecer and they got married in 1917. After his marriage, the American Baptist Foreign Missionary Union appointed him as a missionary for India and

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after the end of the First World War he sailed for India along with his wife and reached Gauhati in the month of March 1918. After a year, he went to Nowgong. In 1920, a daughter, Virginia, was born to them. In the annual conference of 1920 held in Nowgong, Rev. O.L. Swanson attended and he handed the charge of Nowgong district to Rev. W.R. Hutton. The same year Rev. Hutton visited Tika and conducted a Bible class at Golaghat. With the departure of Rev. P.E. Moore, the responsibility of looking after the Tika field was given to Rev. W.R. Hutton and by 1924 he was given the charge of the whole Karbi field. After taking the new assignment, Rev. W.R. Hutton went to America for a furlough and during his stay he learnt Greek for the purpose of bringing out the New Testament of the Bible in Karbi. In 1925 he came back to Assam and settled at Furkating. During this time he started learning the Karbi language from Rev. Mongve Ronghang, the first ordained reverend from the tribe. In 1940, Rev. W.R. Hutton again went for a furlough. As the Second World War was still on, he returned to Assam leaving his wife in America. In the year 1954, he took complete retirement and returned to America.

Arrival of New Missionaries After the departure of Rev. W.R. Hutton, Rev M.J. Chance took over the responsibility of looking after the Karbi field but he could not continue for long as he died after only a few years. The Council of Baptist Churches in North East India (CBCNEI) appointed Rev. K. Savino, a Naga, in 1957. After the demise of Rev. M.J. Chance, Rev. Savino came to Diphu and made an attempt to establish the mission centre. But due to various difficulties he did not succeed in his attempt. Since the departure of Rev. K. Savino, the baptist in the district of the then Mikir Hills, became independent in administration. At present, the Karbi Anglong Baptist Convention looks after the entire Baptist population of the district with its headquarters at Diphu. At present, there are 11 associations having 272 local churches and a membership over 18,000 under the Karbi Anglong Baptist Convention.

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Other Denominations among the Karbis: The Welsh Presbyterians The Presbyterian Church of Wales was formerly known as the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist and the Mission Board was known as The Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Foreign Missionary Society. It was founded in 1840 with its headquarters in Liverpool. The first Welsh missionary to India was Rev. Thomas Jones, who arrived at Cherrapunji in Meghalaya with his wife on 22 June 1841. After 18 months, Rev. and Mrs Williams and Dr Owen Richard joined the Jones on 22 January 1843.23 The Presbyterian missionaries worked in the Karbi area from their stations at Jowai, Shangpung and Wahijer of Meghalaya. The first Presbyterian convert from the tribe was Sangbar Kro, who was baptised in 1880. He became a schoolteacher at Sangbar, a village near Umrongso (Garampani) in N.C. Hills district. Later on, he shifted from Sangbar and came to Umpanai in West Karbi Anglong and spent the rest of his life there.24 Mr Daniel Sykes opened a school at Pynthor Mynsong, a place on the other side of the Klopi River in North Cachar. In about eight months the school was given up. Sangbar, who joined the school, had learnt to read the first part of the first Khasi book when the school was given up, but he continued to study by himself. Soon after Mr Jerman Jones had come out and taken the charge of Jowai district, Sangbar came to Jowai and became a stipend holder, remaining in the school at Jowai for five years. While in school, Sangbar became a Christian. At the effort of Jerman Jones, two or three girls from Pynthor Mynrong came to study at Jowai. One of them was Ka Ior (Kajor Timungpi) who afterwards became Sang­ bar’s wife. Later they both went back to their village and became teachers. One day when Kajor, Sangbar’s wife, was cutting firewood, a tiger came by, seized her by the shoulders, and carried her some distance to the forest. The villagers and their dogs followed the tiger and the tiger let go his hold of Kajor. These circumstances was fatal to the school as the villagers took it to be a sign of the wrath of the demons against the school and the Christian religion. As

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parents would not send their children to school it had to be given up. It was arranged that Sangbar should be sent to Nongsawlia for further training. After remaining there for two years and a half, he became a teacher in Dr Griffith’s district in Mawphlang and after­ wards under Mr Robert Evans in Shangpoong. After sometime he returned to his own people who had removed from Pynthor Myn­ rong to Madan Ritong and then he, along with his family members, came to Umpanai in West Karbi Anglong. Sangbar’s father, Sar Kro was the basiko, chief of judges of the village. Sar Kro was a noble old man. Though inclined favourably to Christianity, he did not have sufficient courage to profess it publicly. When Sangbar returned to his people again, the people were not desirous of having a school. But in about a year, a few were induced to favour it. From that time, until the present, the work has continued to make progress from year to year, and its influ­ ence is felt in the surrounding villages. Through the kindness of Miss Hannah Jones of Rhyl, Sangbar was able to begin schools in Ningkring and Langweh where there are seven Christians in one of these villages and 22 in the other. Thirty children altogether were placed under instruction of whom 15 were able to read the Khasi Testament.25 Sangbar Kro, along with his family members, left their native village, Pynthor Mynrong, for Umpanai in 1892, due to some rea­ sons. First, the British commissioner stationed at Haflong issued a strict order to contribute free labour for the construction of rail­ way line to connect the Brahmaputra Valley with the Barak Valley. In order to avoid this, Sangbar and his followers left the area. Sec­ ond, the Jaintia daloi (minister) under whom the Karbis of N.C. Hills were living was very oppressive. Therefore Sangbar and his brother-in-law left for Umapanai. Last, the school established and taught by Sangbar and his wife at Pynthor Mynrong was boycotted and abandoned and they were looking for an alternative place. After a long and weary journey traversing through Madan Ritong, Horkanghong, Mukiaw of present Meghalaya, Sangbar reached Tapat and Am-ih by crossing the Kapili and Amtereng rivers with a raft and finally reached Umpanai where he spent the rest of his life.

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Sangbar Kro was fluent in English. At Umpanai, he was once again engaged in his old profession as a teacher and medicine distributor of the Welsh Presbyterian Mission. In 1893, the Welsh Presbyterian missionaries, Rev. John Jones, Mr Jenkins and Dr Williams, paid a visit to Umpanai travelling through the Jaintia Hills in the midst of dense forest and unfamiliar geographical con­ ditions. At Umpanai, they were welcomed by Sangbar Kro and his group. The schoolchildren presented a song in Karbi. By the tune, the missionaries could understand that the song was, ‘We have heard the joyful sound; Jesus saves, Jesus saves.’ Even to this day the older folks of the Biate tribe inhabiting North Cachar Hills have kept their memories alive by fondly call­ ing Sangbar Kro ‘Pu Sangbar’ because he was not only one of the missionaries who brought the gospel among the Biates but was also a teacher in their area at what is now called Sangbar situated near Umrongso (Garampani) in N.C. Hills.26

The Roman Catholic Missionaries among the Karbis The Salvatorian Fathers adopted Khasi Hills as their main field of missionary activity. They reached the boundary of Karbi Anglong but not really entered it. A certain Langtuk Hanse from the village of Marjong just a few kilometres from the present parish centre of Umswai was the first to hear of the Gospel message. On 25 January 1914, he led a group of six people from Marjong to Umtyrkhang in the Khasi Hills and received baptism at the hands of Fr. Christopher Becker. These six became the bearers of the ‘good news’ to others in the village. In May 1916, 31 others received baptism from the hands of the catechist, Stephan Manik. On 15 May, another 22 received baptism from Fr Grignat, S.J. In 1920 some of those who received the faith went to settle at Umpanai and thus a Christian community was started there, too. Later on, a church was started at Mynser. The work in this region was not restricted only to the Karbis as the Tiwas (Hill Lalungs), too, responded to the faith. In 1950, the people of Bor Marjong and Umswai received the faith and they became agents of evangelization. The first one to receive baptism from Jirikinding area was a certain Joseph Millik

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and his four children. They went to the Raliang mission and were baptised by Fr Mellina, SDB on 6 March 1942. From Umkhyrmi, the Catholic faith spread to the Karbis of Mawthade, Langsomepi, Amreng and later on to Tapat, Langkeroi and Rongpangbong. In Karbi Anglong, not everyone who became a Catholic came from their original animistic faith. Some of the Protestants, too, became Catholics. Thus in 1949, a certain John Kathar, with a group of 27 others, was received into the Catholic Church by then Fr O. Marengo, SDB. In the same year in the month of November 18; on February 14, 1950, and in May of the same year, ten others joined the Catholic Church. Thus the Church gained quite a strong foothold in the area of Rongkhang, which for the Karbis is one of the main centres.27

Notes 1. J.F. Jyrwa, Reports of the Foreign Mission of the Presbyterian Church of Wales on Khasi-Jaintia Hills, 1899 (1864-1897), Christian Communication Department, K.J.P. Synod, Shillong, 1998, p. 527. 2. Hillary Terang and Anderson Tokbi, Daybreak in the Hills, Karbi Anglong Baptist Convention, Rukasen, Diphu, 2009, p. 8. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid., pp. 8-9. 5. Ibid., p. 9. 6. Milton Sangma, History of the American Baptist Mission in North East India, vol. 1, Mittal Publications, Delhi, 1987, p. 90. 7. The material was supplied by Rev. Tom Horn, USA, for the Sesquicentennial Celebration of the Gospel in Karbi Anglong, 1859­ 2009. 8. F.S. Downs, Christianity in North-East India, ISPCK, Delhi, 1983, p. 58. 9. Davidson Ingti, Christianity Among the Karbis and its Impacts, Published by the author, Diphu, 1998, p. 14. 10. P.H. Moore, The American Baptist Missionary Union Report, Nowgong, 18-29 December 1886, p. 33. 11. Downs, op. cit., p. 58. 12. Moore, op. cit., p. 36. 13. Downs, op. cit., p. 58.

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14. Sangma, op. cit., p. 58. 15. Moore, History of Nowgong Field Report, Assam Mission Jubilee of the American Baptist Missionary Union, p. 37. 16. Sangma, op. cit., p. 92. 17. Information vide Rev. Tom Horn, USA, for the Sesquicentennial Celebration of the Gospel in Karbi Anglong, 1859-2009. 18. Peter Tisso, Pastor Ari (Pastor’s Handbook), Christian Literature Centre, Guwahati (2nd Edition), 1967, p. 8. 19. Information vide Rev. Tom Horn, ibid. 20. Interview with Sri Chandra Timung on 21 January 2007, at Tika Hills. 21. Kave Ronghangpi of Borthoipi Baptist Church used to tell the story. 22. Tisso, op. cit., p. 10. 23. J.F. Jyrwa, op. cit., pp. 527-8. 24. Ingti, op. cit., pp. 1-17. 25. Jyrwa, op. cit., pp. 7-8. 26. Daniel Teron, ‘A Glimpse of the Early Christian Missionaries with Short Reference to the Early Convert’, Arleng Daily, 29 April 2010, Diphu, Assam. 27. S. Karotemprel, The Catholic Church in North East India (18901990), Vendrame Institute, Shillong, 1993, pp. 6-7.

CHAPTER 8

Nationalist Discourse, Christianity

and Tribal Religion

The Tani Tribes of Arunachal Pradesh

JAGDISH LAL DAWAR

Introduction The Tani group of tribes is a confederation of tribes constituting the Nishis, Tagins, Hill—Miris, Na, Apatanis, Adis, Gallos and Mishings [also in Assam]. All of these tribes claim to be the direct descendants of their legendary human father, Abo Tani. They inhabit the central areas of Arunachal Pradesh and constitute the majority of population in the region. These tribes have been coming under the influence of alien religions, specifically Christianity. The history of Christianity in the areas of present Arunachal Pradesh can be traced back to nineteenth century when the American Baptist Missionaries opened Sadiya as a mission station in 1836.1 But it is only in the last decade of the nineteenth century that the local tribes started accepting the Christian faith.2 However, missionaries were not successful in converting a large number of people till the 1950s.3 This paper makes an humble attempt to study how conversion to Christianity became a site of contestation on the part of officials of the Indian state, Hindu missionaries, the indigenous intellectuals and, in turn, the Christian missionaries, thereby leading to the rampant politics of religious identity.

Official Discourse and the Politics of Protectionism The official attitude to conversion was marked by hostility. It can be comprehended in the light of the discourse provided by the

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policy-makers during 1950s. This discourse emerged in the process of grappling with the question of ‘integration’ of Arunachal Pradesh with the Indian ‘mainstream’. The tenor of this official discourse may be summed up in Verrier Elwin’s words: Our policy is to develop the tribes along the lines of their own tradition and genius. The whole stress of NEFA policy is on change. We are all aware that very great changes, which we hope will be enriching rather than impoverishing, will come, but we would like to see these come, not as imposed break with the past, but a natural evolution from it . . . there shall be no forcible imposition of another culture and . . . the old culture should be helped to grow and develop into the new.4

The most effective method of ‘integration’ was by means of exercising cultural hegemony by ‘appropriating’ tribal cultural practices.5 The critique of Christian missionaries formed an important aspect of this discourse since the former were perceived to be antithetical to tribal cultural practices.6 Some of the members of the Lok Sabha were apprehensive of the proselytizing activities of the Christian missionaries in NEFA and they had been raising this question in the various sessions from time to time. In fact, some of the members related it to antinational activities, but it had always been denied by the respective ministers.7

Protection of Tribal Religion The officials of the Indian state were in favour of providing protection to the tribal religious beliefs and practices. Thus an official report from 1956-7 states: ‘The people’s religious beliefs are to be respected and sympathetically understood and on no account, are any efforts to be made to draw them into the rituals and faith of another religion.’8 It was being presumed that the tribal religion ‘may survive as it is, provided the official attitude becomes one of respect for it and provided also the senior officers show a kind of official patron­ age to the tribal religious functions’.9 However, it was also felt that the existing religion would not be able to ‘meet the spiritual needs

Nationalist Discourse, Christianity and Tribal Religion 187 of changing situation’.10 Therefore, the officials were in favour of developing the tribal religion by providing state protection.11

Indigenous Voices The indigenous leaders ‘appropriated’ the official discourse and perceived the missionaries’ activities as a threat to the survival of their traditional culture.12 They responded in a dual way: (a) violence to the converts’ property during the 1970s13 and (b) pres­ sure on the government to protect their beliefs and practices from the onslaught of the organized religions specifically Christianity. Therefore, the Arunachal Pradesh legislative assembly passed ‘The Arunachal Pradesh Freedom of Indigenous Faith Bill, 1978’ (Bill no. 4 of 1978) to ‘provide prohibition of conversion from indig­ enous faith of Arunachal Pradesh to any other faith or religion by use of force or inducement or by fraudulent means and for such matters connected therewith’.14 While introducing the bill, P.K. Thungon, the then chief minister, outlined the objectives and rea­ sons for its introduction.15 The bill got its assent from the President of India in 1979. It was promulgated as the Indigenous Faith (Pro­ tection) Act 1979.16

Christian Voices The Christian leaders perceived this bill to be ‘unconstitutional and anti-Christian’ and aimed at ‘legalising the persecution of Christians’.17 It was perceived to be against the spirit of secularism and democracy.18 In spite of the hostility towards Christian missionaries’ activi­ ties and the existence of the protection of indigenous Faith Bill the Christianization of the indigenous people of Arunachal Pradesh had been taking place very rapidly in a large number of areas of the state. The missionaries had been refuting the allegation that they were opposed to the local culture.19 There had been emphasis on ‘now-on-wards’ integration of ‘Christian ethos’ with the ‘local customs’.20

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Hinduism and Appropriation of Tribal Religion Some powerful Hindu organizations, too, had been trying to ‘appropriate’ tribal cultural practices and thus exercise Hindu hegemony in the region. For example, the Ramakrishna Mission was encouraged by the officials of the Indian state to open a hospital in Itanagar and school in the Along area,21 the district headquarters of the then Siang frontier division. Though the mission’s activities were related to social service, health and education and the conversion of the tribes did not figure in its agenda, yet in the Ramakrishna Mission school at Along, the ‘appropriation’ of tribal cultural practices has been attempted in subtle ways. A close observation of the lifestyle and everyday activities of the students and teachers of the school reveals to us how nationalist and Hindu hegemony has been exercised among tribal children.22 However, this hegemony seems to be multi-vocal in its nature, that is, it has tried to inculcate the values of Indian patriotism, Arunachal patriotism, multi-culturalism and liberal Hinduism.

Right Wing Hindu Organizations/Hindutva The right-wing Hindu organizations have been actively operating in the tribal areas of north-east India, specifically Arunachal Pradesh. Their activities became particularly intense in Arunachal Pradesh during the 1990s. It is significant that it is during this time that globalization and Hindutva forces were becoming dominant in the rest of India. It was also the period when a number of cultural and literary societies were being established by the educated leaders of different tribes of Arunachal Pradesh which aimed at protecting their cultural heritage. Hindutva has been operating through ‘Arun Jyoti’ and ‘Arunachal Vikas Parishad’ (Kalyan Ashram) among others. Kalyan Ashram was ‘founded in 1952 at Jashpurnagar of Chhattisgarh but it came to the Northeast only in 1978’.23 Outlining its role in the north-east Dharmaraj writes: The only message that it has delivered to the people of Northeast is that the ‘traditional faith and culture’ of different janajatis is precious preserve it and protect it to re-establish peace and tranquillity among the different

Nationalist Discourse, Christianity and Tribal Religion 189 ethnic groups and the Northeast region as a whole. If the traditional faith and culture (sanatan dharma-sanskriti) is protected the society could be protected which is essential for national security and integration. Because, Bharat is known to the world for its sanatan dharma-sanskriti for which it survived long, since the inception of this creation as a whole.24

The writer equates Sanatan Dharma with the traditional faith and culture of the tribes. This organization was virulently opposed to the activities of the Christian churches. As Dharmaraj points out: ‘Kalyan Ashram is going to “undo” the blunders committed by the church. The church has divided the society on ethnic lines and Kalyan Ashram is trying to bring them together on a common platform’.25 The Hindutva forces had been trying to appropriate the tribal religion and in the process trying to ‘Hinduize’ their gods and incorporate them into the Hindu pantheon. The mainstream interest surrounding ‘Donyi-Poloism’ is one of the best examples of an attempt at this kind of ‘appropriation’. Thus, the biographical sketch of the founder of Donyi-Poloism movement, Talom Rukbo, along with biographical sketches of all the tribal leaders of India, who strived to maintain their tribal reli­ gion, prominently figures in the booklet published in Hindi by the Akhil Bhartiya Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram.26

Tribal Cultural and Religious Movements The influence of alien religions created an acute identity crisis in the society. However, the social base for this had already been created by various changes resulting from: (a) institutional changes in agriculture; (b) various changes in traditional occupations; (c) the expanding urbanization; (d) migration, internal as well as from outside the state;27 (e) gradual abandonment of the so-called Nehru-Elwin policy; (f) super-imposition of ‘mainstream’ political structure over her traditional autonomous socio-political institutions, thereby bringing about series of changes in tribal polity.28

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These developments threatened the traditional way of living, especially of the educated class and, therefore, created an identity crisis in the society. However, it was the intellectuals29 who were able to articulate this identity crisis and give it a coherent form. The movement for cultural and religious identity may be traced back to 28 August 1968, when some intellectuals belonging to the Adi tribe held a meeting at Along, the district headquarters, to consider the means for forming a ‘larger socio-religious asso­ ciation for forging a larger identity’.30 It was decided to construct a Donyi-Polo-Mopin-Solung Dere (Donyi-Polo, or sun and the moon, being the deity and divine figures of the Adis; Solung and Mopin being the most important festivals of Minyong and Galos, respectively; and Dere being the community hall) which would provide a common meeting place for all communities residing in the area on the occasion of important ‘social, cultural and religious celebrations such as Mopin and Solung’ and ‘veneration for the universal deity Donyi-Polo’.31 The ‘germination’ of the idea which ‘aimed at unification of the Adi faith in the supreme “Donyi-Polo” was welcomed by all.’32 The next step taken by the intellectuals was the formation of cultural and literary societies.33 These formed an agenda for cultural defence against the onslaught of alien religions. The Adi Cultural and Literary Society was formally inaugurated at Along, the district headquarters of Siang, with a two-day pro­ gramme on 14 and 15 November 1971.34 Simultaneously, an Adi Cultural and Literary Society was formed at Pasighat.35 The most important aims and objectives of these societies have been the preservation of traditional cultural heritage.36 The intellectuals were aware of the fact that their folklores, myths, rituals, songs, dances, etc., were not only important for sustaining their identity but also a great source of their cultural history.37 Therefore, they felt it of the utmost importance to record their oral traditions. The intellectuals felt the need to develop an Adi (common for all the sub-tribes) language and literature, and a suitable script for it. It led to the formation of Adi Agom Kebang (Adi Sahitya Sabha) on 12 November 1981. Talom Rukbo, a leading literary personality and vanguard of the cultural movement among the Adi groups, was one of the prominent founding members of this organization.

Nationalist Discourse, Christianity and Tribal Religion 191 Literature for him had been an important weapon for forging cul­ tural identity among the Adis. The leitmotif of his poems and other writings had been the cultural rootedness and cultural defence which is an important expression of cultural identity.38 One of the important aspects of the movement for cultural identity has been a search for forging a religious identity based on indigenous traditions. It had been a recurring theme in the writings of the Adi intellectuals. They have constructed the belief systems, religious ethics and philosophy of this religion based on tribal traditions. It has been given the denomination, ‘Donyi-Polo­ ism’.39 This nomenclature has been derived from the recognition of Donyi-Polo, the combined divine figure of Donyi (the sun) and Polo (the moon), as Adis’ popular gods.40 Some of the intellectuals led by Talom Rukbo have further given more concrete form to Adi religion by establishing Donyi Polo Yelan Kebang (a society of Donyi-Polo faith) in 1991. They have started a ‘service of prayer on the evening of every Saturday and mass gathering on every second Saturday for day service’.41 On 31 December 1992, the foundation of Donyi-Polo Altar building was laid along with the raising of Donyi-Polo symbol.42 Since then, 31 December is being celebrated as Donyi-Polo every year. Nowa­ days on every Saturday morning, mass gathering takes place in Donyi-Polo gangin (temple) and mass prayer is performed accom­ panied by select rituals. However, this form of religious identity is being contested by many intellectuals among the various sub-tribes of the Adis.43 Some of them argue that it is an ‘invention’ and not ‘an original religion’. Nevertheless, the leaders of this form of religious identity refute all the allegations including the alleged ‘imitation’ of Hindu­ ism.44 They do not rule out the ‘influence’ of outside religions but it does not ‘indicate imitation’. One may ‘borrow’ certain ideas from outside but ‘that does not amount to imitation’. All the rituals and ‘innovations’ are ‘derived from our own indigenous traditions’.45 Though the Adi group of tribes was the first to start the move­ ment for religious identity, gradually, it spread among other tribes of the Tanis. Thus, among the Nyishi, who are numerically the largest group, the movement for forging religious identity, based

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on indigenous traditions, began from the early part of the 1990s. First, it expressed itself at the cultural level with the formation of the Nyishi Culture Society. However, the leaders of this society were not interested to take up religious questions since the aim of the society was to preserve select aspects of Nyishi culture and, moreover, it was a broad-based forum and was open to Christian Nyishis as well. Therefore, some of the leaders established another society, which was named as the Nyishi Indigenous Faith and Culture Society (NIFCS). The aim of this society was to ‘preserve, promote and propagate indigenous faith and culture’ and it was decided to promote the slogan, ‘loss of faith is loss of culture, loss of culture is loss of identity’.46 However, for the purpose of forging religious identity, a religious body, Nyder Namlo (literal meaning, spiritual house) was established on 27 January 2001, at Doimukh under the aegis of Nyishi Indigenous Faith and Culture Society. A booklet containing prayers had been published in order ‘to develop socio-religious, moral and spiritual value’ among the Nyishis.47 The Nyder Namlo organizes regular prayer meetings at a fixed spot. Branches have now been established in different parts of the region inhabited by Nyishis. Donyi-Poloism, as a movement, has similarly been spreading among other groups of Tanis—the Tagin, Apatani and Hill Miris. Thus had a movement for cultural and religious identity among the Tanis of Arunachal Pradesh evolved out of the dialogue with the official state, Christian missionary and Hindu mission­ ary discourses. The tribal intellectuals, in the process of creatively engaging themselves in the dialogue with these discourses, evolved a counter-hegemonic agenda and carved out their own space for forging a process of identity formation.

Notes 1. N.P. Mason, These Seventy-Five Years, 1911, cited in M.S. Sangma, ‘Attempts to Christianize the People of Arunachal Pradesh by the American Baptist Missionaries (1836-1950)’, Proceedings of NorthEast Indian History Association, Pasighat, 1986 (Seventh Session), p. 263.

Nationalist Discourse, Christianity and Tribal Religion 193 2. M.A.Z. Rolston, ‘Persecution of Christians in Arunachal Pradesh’, National Council of Christian Review, vol. XCIX, no. 1, January 1979, p. 73. 3. Sangma, op. cit., p. 263. 4. Elwin papers, file no. ATA/G/55, Secret, serialized as file no. 96, p. 2, the manuscript section of the Nehru Memorial Centre for Contemporary Studies, Teen Murti Bhawan, New Delhi; also see Nehru’s note on his tour of the Northeast Frontier areas in October 1952, p. 5. 5. Jagdish Lal Dawar, ‘Movement for Cultural Identity since 1950 among the Mishmis of Arunachal Pradesh’, Proceedings of NorthEast India History Association, Silchar, 1995, p. 323. 6. This generalization is based on the following writings that fairly well represent the official position on the role of Christian missionaries in the tribal areas. (a) Verrier Elwin’s views in Nari K. Rustomji, Verrier Elwin and India’s North-Eastern Borderlands, North-Eastern Hill University Publications, Shillong, 1988, pp. 58-9. (b) Smali, G.A., a retired ICS, had expressed similar views as early as 1946: See Smali’s letter to the Chairman, British Parliamentary; Delegation, c/o Secretary, Information and Broadcasting, New Delhi, 11 January 1946, in G.N. Bordoloi Papers, Nehru Memorial Centre for Contemporary Studies, Manuscript Section, p. 7. (c) Elwin’s views are also narrated in Ramachandra Guha’s Savaging the Civilized, Verrier Elwin, His Tribals, And India, Oxford University Press (first published in 1999), 2001, pp. 165, 242. (d) Also see Elwin to T.N. Kaul, ICS, Joint Secretary to the Government of India, Ministry of External Affairs, New Delhi, 12 February 1953, File no. ATA/C/6, listed as File no. 8/88 in Elwin Papers. (e) File no. ATA/T/2. Listed as File no. 133, pp. 71-2 in Elwin Papers. (f) Nehru to B. Das, 19 May 1951, in S. Gopal (General ed.), Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund, New Delhi, 1994, vol. 16, part 1, 1994, p. 283. (g) Nehru to B.R. Medhi, August 1952, in S. Gopal, ibid., p. 199. (Footnote No. 5). (h) S. Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography, vol. 2, 1947-56, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1983, p. 209. (i) Nehru, ‘A Note on a Tour of the Northeastern Frontier Areas’,

194

7.

8. 9.

10. 11. 12.

13.

14. 15. 16. 17.

Jagdish Lal Dawar 19 October 1952 to 25 October 1952. This note was found in Elwin Papers. (j) Nehru to Amrit Kaur, 30 October 1953, cited in S. Gopal, vol. 2, op. cit., p. 209. See Lok Sabha Debates, Third Series, vol. XLI, 2-19 April 1965, p. 8906, col. 843; Lok Sabha Debates, Fifth series, vol. 20, nos. 1-5, 13-17 November 1972, 15 November 1972, col. 528, p. 130, written answers; Lok Sabha Debates, Fifth series, vol. 22, nos. 21-5, 1972, col. 4,254, p. 14. Elwin Papers, File no. 110, p. 8. K.L. Mehta’s comments in a note dated 2 June 1955, on some of the points arising on Dr Elwin’s note on a summary of experiences and ideas gained during 1954-5, in Elwin Papers, file no. ATA/T/2 listed as File no. 133, p. 32. Ibid. Elwin Papers, F ile no. 153, p. 43; in a confidential note, Verrier Elwin stated that it was Shri Jairam Doulatram, the then governor of Assam who had mooted the idea of developing the tribal religion. The indigenous leaders submitted a long petition dated 22 April 1971 to the then prime minister of India wherein they stated that they had been following their age-old traditions and that they follow their own religion but the proselytising activities of the Christian missionaries have disrupted the social and religious ecology of the Adis. This document was found in Talom Rukbo’s archive. Talom Rukbo was a leading cultural activist and had been in the forefront of cultural struggles against alien forces. He allowed me to consult his huge archive. It is based mainly on Christian sources. When I interviewed a number of indigenous leaders about the violence on Christian converts, they were silent on this issue and some of them denied the violence while others replied that they don’t remember. Either it was feigned ignorance or there were actual lapses of memory. It is possible that they were playing politics with their memory. The Arunachal Pradesh Code, vol. III, pp. 7-9. Government of Arunachal Pradesh, Law and Judicial Department, Itanagar, 1982. Cited in NCCR, vol. XCVIII, no. 8, August 1978, p. 399. Ibid. Reported in NCCR, vol. XCVIII, no. 9, September 1978, p. 462 (News Column: ‘News From Many Quarters’, India).

Nationalist Discourse, Christianity and Tribal Religion 195 18. See NCCR, vol. XCIX, no. 1, January 1979, pp. 51-73; NCCR, vol. XCIX, April 1979, no. 4, pp. 179, 180, 182, 223; nos. 6-7, June-July, 1979, p. 361. 19. NCCR, vol. CIVI, no. 7, August 1984, p. 369. 20. Reported in NCCR, vol. C., no. 3, March 1980, p. 154. 21. Urapnam (Awakening) Sixth Issue, 1984-5, Ramakrishna Mission School, Viveknagar, Along, West Siang District, Arunachal Pradesh. 22. See Urapnam, 1980-1, ibid., p. 4. Swami Hiranmayananda, General Secretary, Ramakrishna Mission Headquarters, West Bengal, 25 February 1986, in Urapnam, 1985-6, p. v. Along, 27 March 1986, ibid., p. viii, emphasis added; Urapnam, 1980-1, p. 11. Message sent on the auspicious occasion of the post-centenary golden jubilee birth anniversary of Sri Ramakrishna observed at our institution on 13 January 1987, in Urapnam, 1986-7, op. cit., p. vii. 23. Dharmaraj, A Rousing Call from the Northeast, Heritage Foundation, Guwahati, 2004, p. 40. 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid., p. 41. 26. Akhil Bhartiya Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, Swarna Jayanti Varsh, 2003 (Souvenir of Golden Jubilee Year, 2003, of the All India Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram), p. 11. 27. For migration see A. Mitra, Internal Migration & Economic Development in the Hills, Omsons Publisher, New Delhi, 1997, pp. 50-73. 28. Atul Chandra Talukdar, Political Transition in the Grassroots in Tribal India, Omsons Publishers, New Delhi, 1987, pp. 91-159. 29. I have derived the concept of ‘intellectuals’ from the following writers: Antonio Gramsci, Selections From The Prison Note Books, p. 9; Karl Marx, German Ideology, edition of 1965, London, p. 61; Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, ‘Notes on the Role of the Intelligentsia in Colonial India: India from Mid-Nineteenth Century, Studies in History, vol. I, no. I, January-June, 1979, p. 98; K.N. Panikkar, ‘The Intellectual History of Colonial India: Some Historiographical and Conceptual Questions’ in Sabyasachi Bhattacharya and Romila Thapar (eds), Situating Indian History, Oxford, New Delhi, 1986, p. 412. 30. Donyi-Polo Mopin Solung Dere, Along. The history of this event was inscribed on a board. Field Survey 1998, February 1998. 31. Ibid. 32. Ibid.

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33. These associations have been registered and are listed in General File no. SR/ITA, Arunachal Pradesh Secretariat, Political Department. 34. Jayanta Kumar Sarkar, ‘Development of Identity Consciousness in Arunachal Pradesh’ in K.S. Singh (ed), Tribal Movements in India, vol. I, Manohar, Delhi, 1982-3, p. 234. 35. Listed in General File no. SR/ITA, op. cit. 36. Ibid. 37. Oshong Ering, Preservation and Revitalization of Cultural Heritage of Arunachal Pradesh, Adi Cultural and Literary Society, Pasighat, 1976, p. 5; Talom Rukbo, Echo, 19 June 1987, p. 3; Tumpak Ete (Comp.), Myibu Agom: The Sacred Lore of the Adi, vol. I, Singhania Press, Shillong, p. 2. 38. Talom Rukbo’s poems ‘Kaabom Kaaboma’ and ‘Turmona Yelot’ bring out the representation of the theme of cultural rootedness very effectively. 39. Donyi-Poloism: Its Faith and Practices, vol. 1, published by Adi Cultural and Literary Society, Pasighat, September 1987. 40. Oshong Ering, ‘The Tanis and the Donyi-Polo Cult’, NEFA Information, February 1970, pp. 22-5; Oshong Ering, ‘Adi Belief and Faith’, Arunachal News, vol. 12, no. 5, August 1983, pp. 25-6; Lummer Dai, ‘Donyi-Poloism: A Scientific Religion’, Arunachal News, vol. 6, no. 4, 1977, pp. 56-8; Talom Rukbo, ‘Donyi-Poloism: A Religion’, Arunachal Review, July-December, 1985, pp. 1-4. 41. Donyi-Poloism: Its Faith and Practices, vol. 1, published by Adi Cultural and Literary Society, Pasighat, September 1987. 42. Talom Rukbo to the chairman, Donyi-Polo Mission, Itanagar, 8 December 1982, file no. ACLS-7/85-86 (Archives of Adi Cultural and Literary Society, Pasighat). 43. Interview with Oshong EringI, Pasighat, 15 February 1998; interview with Tumpak Ete, Along, 23 February 1988. 44. Interview with Talom Rukbo, Pasighat, 15 February 1998; interview with Kaling Borang, Pasighat, 21 February 1998. 45. Interview with Talom Rukbo, Pasighat, 15 February 1998; interview with Kaling Borang, Pasighat, 21 February 1998. 46. Nyishi Indigenous Faith and Culture Society, Bye-Law, Nahaarlagun, 1999, p. 16. 47. Aan Donyi Khumlaju, published by Nyedar Namlo Committee, Doimukh, 2001, p. 1.

CHAPTER 9

Straying beyond Conquest and Emancipation

Exploring the Fault Lines of Missionary Education in

North-East India

HOINEILHING SITLHOU

Introduction The coming of Christianity in the north-east of India can be earmarked by the Treaty of Yandaboo concluded at the end of the first Anglo-Burman war between the East India Company and the kingdom of Burma on 24 February 1826 (Downs 1992: 6). Politically, in accordance with contemporary usages, north-east India comprises the eight states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura. The subcontinent is bordered in the south and south-west by Bangladesh, in the east and south-east by Myanmar, and in the north by China, Tibet and Bhutan (Pachuau 1998). It emerged during the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century directly out of the colonial project of ruling India. In the nineteenth century, the Baptists of Serampore showed missionary interest in the north-east of India. The American Bap­ tist and Welsh Presbyterians, who picked up where the Serampore mission left off at Cherrapunji, were the major Christians missions in the region throughout the nineteenth century (Downs 1994: 65). The establishment of schools was one of the principle means adopted by these missionaries for the introduction of Christianity. In addition to preaching and translation, Protestant missionaries often celebrated the Bible as the ultimate source of authority, thus making it a condition that if an individual had to worship God in the manner, the person must be able to read. This is how education

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and evangelism were interlinked and the former constituted the basis for ‘praeparatio evangelica’ (Visvanathan 1993). In the north-eastern context, the schools, particularly the cen­ tral station schools, where the members of different villages and tribes studied together, made an important contribution to the development of the new tribal polity and identity. In this, Chris­ tian missionaries played a central role because amongst many hill tribes of the north-east India, the British government turned over to the missions almost complete responsibility for education, thus providing them with an instrument of influence far beyond any that they would have in ordinary circumstances, especially in the early days when their numbers were small. Under the government patronage, the mission established a network of schools through­ out each tribal area. In fact, a school was established before a church in most villages. While there were some government schools at major centres, throughout the tribal areas of the present Meghalaya, Nagaland, Manipur, and Mizoram, the responsibility for educational work was entrusted by the government to the mis­ sions for many years.

Parallels between Education and Evangelism When the missionaries, notably the American Baptist Mission, began their work in the Brahmaputra Valley, now in Assam, they began with open preaching in the bazaars, streets and in the villages to the teeming millions of people. But when this method failed to bear any fruit, they switched on to other methods, such as, opening of schools, publication of literature in local languages, translation and publications of religious tenets and the Bible, and the openings of dispensaries and hospitals and other humanitarian works. They adopted these methods as an additional method of evangelization (Sangma 1987: vii). When Alexander Lish of the Baptist Mission, the first mission­ ary to serve in Cherrapunji of the present Meghalaya, had come, he immediately opened a school. The first missionary work in the Assam plains consisted of the school started by the Serampore Mission at Guwahati (Downs 1992: 196). The Welsh missionaries

Straying beyond Conquest and Emancipation

199

similarly became involved in schoolwork in Cherrapunji and neighbouring villages as soon as they could. In fact, every time a new station was opened, the first thing done after preliminary study of the language was to establish a school (Downs 1992). Thomas Jones, the pioneer Welsh Presbyterian missionary, gave this explanation of his decision to start schools in several villages near Cherrapunji in 1842—and his letter is described as impor­ tant by Morris, the official historian of his mission, because it ‘laid down the principles upon which the work on the hills has been carried on from the beginning’. The only plan which appears to me likely to answer a good purpose is to establish schools in the various villages, to teach the Khasis—children and adults—to read their own language; and to instruct them in the prin­ ciples of the Christian religion; or in other words, to give them the same kind of instruction as is given in our Sunday School at home, and not to introduce any other feature, except what may be necessary to draw the children to the schools, or to train native teachers; and to make use of the natives to teach their fellow-countrymen to read.… In this way we shall not only bring up the young people in the knowledge of gospel doctrines, but we shall also teach them to read; and when we shall have translated and printed the Holy Scriptures into their language, we shall have some, at least, in every family, able to read them, and I may add, able to under­ stand them also; and I would regard this an important step towards their evangelisation. (Morris 1996: 90)

One finds similar arguments on behalf of educational work in the writings of nineteenth-century American Baptist missionaries. Thus, for instance, in the important report of the Jubilee Confer­ ence of 1886, a pioneer missionary among the Garos, E.G. Phillips noted: In aim and plan, the great thing ever before the mission has been evange­ lisation. The Garos are ruined by sin. The gospel alone can restore them. But the gospel must be communicated. Almost of necessity, the written page needs follow the preached word. Such has been God’s plan in all his­ tory. Hence the absolute necessity of education among savages, as a chief handmaid to religion. Little call would there be, by a people who cannot read, for scriptures and Christian literature, the foundation through their revealed Christ of Christian civilization. (Phillips 1886: 67)

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Numerous rationalizations on the impact of education can be found in the official reports, published books and private corre­ spondences of the nineteenth and even early twentieth centuries. The reason there is so much of it was that there were a number of people in the home board as well as in the mission field itself, who questioned the legitimacy of educational work as a mission­ ary enterprise. These people felt that only itinerant preaching (bazaar preaching) was acceptable and any other work constituted a diversion from the main responsibilities of the missionaries. The argument given by E.W. Clark of the Nagaland mission on the sub­ ject of ‘mission schools’ in the jubilee conference of the American Baptists Missionary Union, held in Nowgong in 1886 was that: I agree with the essayist in all important matters, but think there is an error creeping into many missionaries’ minds, as to the power of educa­ tion to mould character, using education in the sense of ordinary secular education. At home they are learning that education is practically worth­ less to mould character. Moses, instead of introducing Egyptian sciences, etc., taught simply the law. Schools cannot do the work. Our need is of the work of the Divine Spirit. (Burdette 1886: 181)

Thus, we find from our analysis that the proposal for the employment of education as a method of evangelization was char­ acterized by a mixture of opposite feelings or attitudes even within the missionary community. There were some missionaries like Clark, and mission sponsors like the Arthington Aborigines Mis­ sion (Dena 1988) who objected to all expenditure of missionary resources upon schoolwork. Still there were others who consid­ ered intellectual enlightenment and discipline the sole requisite for the conversion of the local people. They believed that some­ thing more than what commonly goes for knowledge was needed to bring about repentance, and that the almost total lack of such knowledge was not incompatible with genuine conversion.

I Missionary Education as an Arm of Colonial Conquest Education in India under the British government, remarked Howell, ‘was first ignored, then violently and successfully

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opposed, then conducted on a system, now universally admitted to be erroneous’ (Sen Gupta 1971). The interest of colonial officials in such missions’ educational programmes was not necessarily religious. They understood that the education imparted by the missionaries was effective not only in ‘civilizing’ the natives, but also in making them ‘peaceful and loyal subjects’ (Dena 1988: 90). The colonial rulers could do nothing besides annexing the populace and subjecting them to an unfamiliar system of administration. The work of reforming them from within was handed over to the missionaries. Where the government failed, the missionary work often succeeded and their valuable work had materially assisted in the pacification of the natives. In the arguments given by E.G. Phillips in his reports on the Garo field, he highlighted the acknowledgement of the work of the missionaries by the government in the following way: Government has not been slow to see, as the Chief Commissioner put it in his Resolution on the Educational Report for Assam, of 1891-2, that ‘it is difficult to convince a Garo or a Khasia of the advantage of learning. The only lever that has been found effective is that of religion’. In other words, they consider that Christian education is the education needed by the Garos. They were quick, too, to see that the Mission was a better instrument to introduce education than the government. Hence, from the first, they were desirous that the Mission have charge of the educa­ tional work, as far as they were in a position to conduct it effectually. The Mission was of the same opinion with the Government, and hence accepted the schoolwork with the grant-in-aid as rapidly as practicable. It was accepted, from the first, on the condition, willingly conceded by Government, that we were at liberty to give as much religious instruction in the schools as we chose. (Phillips 1886: 67-8)

The missionary was ready to cooperate with the government if he was convinced that its policies were of benefit to the subject people and for his mission. In this circumstance, both mission and colonial governments had to expand beyond their current resources; missions needed funds, and administrators needed staff and educational facilities (Beidelman 1982: 26). In the Manipur field, Williiam Pettigrew, the American Baptist missionary, was appointed by the state government as superintendent of the Census of the Hill Tribes (1910-11). This was because the missionary was

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the only man who knew the language of the hill tribes. The census work definitely enabled the missionary and his native workers to explore more areas hitherto unvisited. On the other hand, his close association with the colonial establishment made him behave as a prisoner under the colonial establishment (Minutes of the ABMC 10th Session, Gauhati: 81). Throughout the missionary writings, we find that the word ‘heathen’ is used to refer to the hill-people of north-eastern region, whereas, the word ‘savage’ or ‘barbarian’ is commonly used by the colonial administrators. The report given by Rev. E.G. Phillips at the Assam mission of the American Baptist Missionary Union jubilee conference held in Nowgong, 18-19 December 1886, includes that: For generations the Garos had been regarded with dread by their neigh­ bours, and were an annoyance and perplexity to government, so much so, that in 1867 the Chief Commissioner of the province pronounced them “blood-thirsty savages” most desperate and incorrigible and expressed what seemed to him a precarious hope that the work of our society among them might meet with success (ABMU, Nowgong, 1886: 54).

The presence of the missionaries would have been a welcom­ ing sight for them in cases such as this. The government was most willing to hand over the burden of civilizing their subjects to oth­ ers. The Christian missions were a means for lightening the task of government through the work of education. The most common dilemma is often whether to look at the Christian missions as a part and parcel of the colonial structure or seek to construe it within that system. Christian mission and colonialism were two movements opposed to each other funda­ mentally. They were two distinct institutionalized entities drawing their inspiration from opposite conceptual extremes (Dena 1988: 12). Even when the missionary had not served directly the colonial power, he only too gladly accepted the protection and develop­ ment through the colonial power (ibid.: 4). However, the moment the missionary movement threatened political stability, the gov­ ernment did not show any hesitancy to curb such movement. Pettigrew’s original plan of preaching the gospel among the plains

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of Manipur had been shattered by a notification of the political agent on 11 December 1894: Under instructions of the local government I have the honour to inform you that owing to the Manipur state being administered on behalf of the minor Raja, no missionary of any denomination intending to work in the state territory can be admitted into Manipur without the precious sanc­ tion of the chief commissioner of Assam. (Notification no. 806, dated Manipur December 11, 1894, addressed to Revd W. Pettigrew, mission­ ary, Manipur as documented in Singh, 1991)

According to Singh (1991: 61), since most of the Manipuris hold to the tenets of the Hindu religion bordering in fact almost to fanaticism, Mr A. Porteous, the acting political agent, could easily conceive the trouble, which would arise because of the introduc­ tion of the new religion. Similarly, in Mizoram discrepancy developed between the dis­ trict administration and the local missionaries in 1910-11 when the then medical missionary, Dr Fraser, took strong opposition to the bawi or the slave system, which had the blessings of the gov­ ernment. Dr Fraser started a movement against this system calling it slavery and actually freed some people by paying compensation to the chiefs. The government supported the system as it provided some sort of security and it also lent a good support to the chief on whom the British leaned heavily for the sake of peaceful admin­ istration. The superintendent served a notice on Dr Fraser not to interfere with local customs. Dr Fraser, however, left the district ending the confrontation (Roy 1982: 656). Thus, the missionary could, at times, become a challenging and de-stabilizing force to the dominant voice within the colonial establishment (Zou 2002). The Report of the Lushai Hills (1903-04) records how the mis­ sion schools in Mizoram attracted the neighbouring villagers in Manipur border. Rev. D.E. Jones and Rev. Edwin Rowlands wrote that there were a number of young men who expressed their desire of learning how to read and write. They would stay for some months in the mission compound and were willing to do manual work in return for their education and lodging. The missionaries, sensing the need to expand the education system, requested the

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political agent in Manipur for permission. The political agent was reluctant to grant them permission and replied to their request in the following manner: ‘I have no objection to Paites being taught in the schools in Lushai land, but for many reasons I cannot sanc­ tion the opening of any mission school in the Manipur state (as documented in Thanzauva, 1997: 19).’ The variability of the socio-political and economic relation­ ship, between colonists and missionary educators, from our analysis, represents an image of inconsistency rather than of co­ coordinated conspiracy. In practice, the nature of the relationship fluctuated from territory to territory: missionary groups differed in the degree of the willingness to embrace government sponsor­ ship; and the governments varied in their enthusiasm to support through funding the native educational initiatives of missionaries (Phillips 1886).

II Missionary Education as an Agent of Cultural Colonization A colonial strategy works to consolidate power by inducing its subjects to imitate the forms and values of the dominant culture. This theory is relevant in understanding the relation of converts to the missionary as exemplified in the comments made by Rev. A.K. Gurney: Our modes of life, habits and thoughts are different from those of the native Christian. There is a great gulf between them and us. Our position is much above them. We cannot avoid this. We cannot bring ourselves down to them or lift them up to us. For the missionaries to live like a native not only would be a great hardship, but it would ruin his health. To the native it is no hardship as he has always lived so. The mission­ ary in education and knowledge is far above his native brother, and he belongs to the conquering race, the English and Americans being all the same to a native. All this cannot help having an influence upon the native Christian. The missionary is so great in the eyes of his native brother, and the latter feels so inferior in knowledge and wisdom that he does not feel like taking the lead but instinctively waits for him. (Gurney, A.K. 1886: 118-19)

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Though missionary work did not of necessity spring from the same ideological font as colonial administration, it usually shared with its colonial hosts a common ‘Westernized’ heritage, and one that was removed from the experience of the local population. Missionary education, even if it openly professed to be opposed to colonial power, could not help enculturation by dint of its inherent ‘foreignness’. The establishment of a school in the Western mould, staffed by teachers trained in Western pedagogies and implicitly committed to the value system of an alien culture, could not hope to leave intact the indigenous character of those destined to receive its education. This was especially so since the gospel, the text of instruction, was at the heart of the learning process. Indeed, some critics have regretted the suppression of ‘indigenous expres­ sion’ brought about by this ‘harmful combination of the gospel and western culture’ (MacKenzie 1993: 54). Let us take the example of marriage. Sanctified, monogamous marriage must be said to be the Christian ideal. Divorce is always frowned upon and illegitimacy and sex outside marriage stridently condemned. The missionaries tended to be horrified by what they perceived as tribal permissiveness with regard to matters concern­ ing sex. Tribal traditions could accommodate pre-marital sex and children born of unmarried mothers. Among the Khasi, court­ ship was the traditional mode of entering a matrimonial alliance, and the free interaction of the sexes meant that pre-marital sex and pregnancy were treated with a certain amount of tolerance. Divorce was allowed and illegitimacy was unheard of because a child would belong by birth to its mother’s house (Robinson 2003: 142). Among the Ao Naga of the present Nagaland state, the boys’ dormitories were known as morung, and these were central to the organization of social life. The morung provided labour teams for village work, trained boys in hunting and other skills and con­ stituted a locus for the organization of many social and cultural activities. Free interaction of girls and boys was permitted and they often gathered in the evening, after a day’s work, for singing and dancing. The missionaries forbade their converts from using the dormitories, for in them they would have to interact with those

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who had not converted, the ‘heathen’ (Furer-Haimendorf 1976 cf. Robinson 2003). They further objected to the unhindered sexual interaction between girls and boys that the system seemed to per­ mit. Among the Christians, families attempted to take over the care and socialization that had been the responsibility of the elders of the morung (Robinson 2003: 142-4). Typically, the educative process provided by missionary teachers challenged the fabric of indigenous society. The mission­ ary educator, by definition, sought a disharmonization of society through the construction of an alternative societal structure. To the Christian, this was indeed social amelioration, but it challenged, sometimes irresistibly, the richness and the individuality and the identity of the indigenous religio-cultural system. The missions threatened many of the traditional institutions of the tribes. They opposed dancing, drum beating, village feast and festivals, the ceremonies surrounding births, marriages, and deaths, traditional styles of clothing, polygamy, and initiation ceremonies, in short anything that was related to the old pagan worship (Robinson 2003: 63). Hence, we see the Christian Khasis of Meghalaya do not take part in the Sad-Suk-Mynstem festival or the Nongkrem festi­ val. The phenomenon continues in many tribal populations. They remain aloof from their traditional dances; accept Western names for their children, start wearing Western clothes, sing Western music and so on. Society was transformed, but whether entirely for the better is questionable. Missionary education brought with it the accoutrements of Westernized instructional techniques and systems. The very notions of a written mode of expression in some cultures carried with it a powerful spur for social change. Enculturation, of some sort and to some degree, was inevitable.

III Missionary Education as an Agent of Social Amelioration The role of the missionary educator as converter brings into perspective the second missionary archetype, namely the missionary

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education as agent of social amelioration. Social amelioration here means ‘to make better’ or ‘to improve upon’. Missionary conversion through social osmosis rather than through direct proselytization is an attractive concept. It gives the impression of missionaries as community workers first, and proselytizers second, and assume even greater legitimacy when it is backed up by the suggestion that the natives, themselves, requested intervention. This part of the article would like to highlight the prominent contribution made by the missionaries, particularly in the areas of women’s education, removal of irrational beliefs that were hindering their development and formation of a sort of common identity, which even today acts as the integrative principle among the various tribes of north-east India.

Education of Women The early work of the missionaries was almost wholly confined to the world of men. As the schools opened the minds of the men and boys to new ideas, the gap between them and the women widened; Christianity as it was actually being practised, increased the difference in the status of the sexes, instead of diminishing it (Sykes 1968: 5). The education of girls contradicted the stereotypical role of women in the tribal society. It was a role that saw them as the centre of domestic life but not, in fact, active participants in the kinds of decision-making positions and processes that education encourages of those who receive it (Sykes 1968: 59). Education of girls was thus a task beset with difficulties in India. There was still a great lack of appreciation of female educa­ tion (Sangma 1987: 148). Even among the Garos and Khasi-Jaintias of Meghalaya where the women have liberty and personal rights, it was not easy to convince the people of the advantages of female education. Mrs Lewis, the wife of Rev. William Lewis, encountered great difficulties in educating the women in Khasi Hills. There is an adage in Khasi Hills that says, ‘The mother is the head of the house and the ruler of the kitchen.’ The logic of their rebuttal for women’s education is that when women are already leading in the sphere of religion as its keeper and reigned in the house (the core

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of the house symbolized by the kitchen), where was the need for them to take up work in another sphere? (Natarajan 1977: 64). There were evidences where the girls exhibited natural bent for learning, but the need of the girls’ help at home and the lack of interest on the part of the parents regarding the education of their daughters made progress in this sphere very slow (Sangma 1987: 146). Among the American Baptist Mission field, the missionaries’ request for a single lady to be sent to open a school for Garo girls was answered by sending Miss Miriam Russell in 1879. She wrote upon her arrival at Tura, In this field, there are 20 schools for boys, but no school for Garo girls. A few girls are found in some village schools, but they are ridiculed by the boys and the timid ones are kept away. The boys point the finger of scorn at them and cry out—‘A great girl like you in school! You ought to be ashamed. You are big enough to be married.’ (Safford cf. Sangma 1987: 148)

The missionary, Mr Lewis of the Welsh Presbyterian, too, attested to have faced a degree of difficulty in training the girls than the boys or the men. Some parents of the scholars had taken the counsel of the village ‘diviner’ or ‘egg-breaker’ in the matter of women’s education. The oracle had declared that every girl who touched a book would be childless, and thus the clan would become extinct. No objection, however, was raised to their learn­ ing to sew and to knit (Morris 1996: 96). According to J. Meirion Lloyd, by tradition, men in Mizo soci­ ety thought women to be inferior creations. A traditional saying gave popular expression to this attitude: ‘A woman’s mind does not reach across the stream’, ‘neither crabs nor women have any religion; a fence can be changed; so can a wife’ (Lloyd 1991: 109). A woman had no rights at all. Body, mind and spirit, she belonged from her birth to her death to her father, her brother, her husband. The women did most of the work of the village (ibid.: 13). ‘It was the women who did the burdensome chores, carried the heaviest loads, rose earliest in the morning and if they had any opinions those were never regarded as important’ (ibid.). She cooked for the pigs, spun the cotton for cloth and carried all the burdens up and

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down the hills whether it is wood, water or rice (Sykes 1968: 14). The traditional marriage practices of the Mizos also contributed and reflected the denigrated position of women in the society. At the time of marriage, the man has to pay bride price of a mithun or more as per the agreement made between the two families. She became a possession of the husband and this also made divorce easy. All children belong to the father and the fathers’ family (ibid.). It was quite clear that the men had no wish to see any change in the status-pattern of society. So, keeping in mind the context, when schools for girls started, the work and lessons were done out-of-doors as much as possible, school life was not supposed to spoil them for village work (ibid.: 109). Therefore, the women mis­ sionaries, like Chapman and Clark, who were trained in such arts, formulated the curriculum by including practical works, which the girls were made to do in addition to their normal subjects. The practical works included weaving, needlework, basket work in bamboo and cane, infant care, simple pottery, knitting and crochet work, improved methods of gardening and farm work, household management, drawing, painting, singing and tonic-solfa, games and simple dances, etc. (Dena 1988: 97-8). Education as pioneered by the missionaries helped the women gain the self-respect that was due to them as human beings. It did not make them become like men as predicted but enabled them to become better women. Emancipation of women became possible as recorded by missionaries of Mizoram, We saw the boys thoughtfully looking at the girls. How different they were from village girls! They could not despise these women, nor ill-treat them. They began to respect them, not because we told them that men should behave well to women folk, but because the girls unconsciously showed themselves worthy of respect. (Sykes 1968: 52)

Commenting on the state of society in Mizoram after the introduction of education by the missionaries, a local of the village by the name Hminga commented that: In the pre-Christian society divorce was easy and common because women had very little right if any at all. Husband and wife relationship were not cooperative. Every husband was afraid of being dubbed as ‘hen­

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pecked’ and so would not lift his finger to help his wife in any domestic work. In fact, members of the family often would not speak to one another kindly. Christianity has transformed Mizo family life, divorce is rare, husbands are less bossy and more helpful to their wives, love and kindness are seen in the relation of the family members. (Hminga cf. Downs 1992: 160-1)

Western culture interprets the domestication of women as an indicator of social disadvantage, and it applauds female emancipa­ tion. It views, as well, the lack of formal educational opportunity as an index of social disenfranchisement—and the provision of an educational franchise as a worthy endeavour of any social orga­ nization (MacKenzie 1993: 59). This ideology had now become a part of north-east India through the introduction of education.

Removal of Irrational Beliefs Another important contribution made by the mission schools is in getting rid of the superstitious beliefs that confined the native into a rigid categorical mould. There was a custom among the Mizos to bury the baby alive with the dead mother. When the government took over the district, this practice was forbidden, but what happened then was really more cruel for the baby. No one would do anything for a motherless baby because of superstition and fear. They thought the mother’s spirit would haunt whoever tried to keep the baby from her and the spirit, which had killed the mother, would be angry with anyone trying to keep the baby alive; so the poor baby died a much more lingering and painful death of starvation and neglect (Lloyd 1991: 15). The missionaries established infant care centres both to disprove their belief and to educate them in pragmatic terms the irrationality of their belief. As prevalent in most tribes of north-east India, among the Thadou clan of the Kuki tribes of Manipur, there was a belief in a place called Mi-thi-khu (abode of death men) where the spirits of men and women, great and small, must go. A sort of female demon, ‘Kulsamnu’, sitting by the roadside, seizes all poor wander­ ing souls, and troubles them sorely unless their relatives who have gone on before come to their rescue (Shakespear 1975: 199). The

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advantages obtained by the spirits of those who have slain men and beasts and given feasts over others was that she does not dare detain them. The belief indirectly encourages wars, headhunting and violence in other forms. The missionaries were able to reach to these tribes through mission schools started by A.G. Crozier and others subsequently after him (Downs 1971). Education offered a new form of consciousness, which was more peaceful, pragmatic and reasonable. The superstitious fear of diseases, especially of the infectious kind had always oppressed the Northeast indigene greatly. Lloyd (1991: 211) narrates his experiences in the hills of Mizoram where in cases like small pox or cholera, they unwittingly made matters worse by trying to squeeze all the villagers into the same small house. The belief was that this would leave the ramhuai (demon) no room to enter, and it would go away. The missionaries did not merely impose Western medicine on the natives, but they in their zeal to convert and gain their trust, patiently educated and explained to them about the cause and cure of such diseases.

Tribal Identity: Consonance and Conflict Before the advent of the British, the primary units of identity were clan, family and village or small groups of villages as in the Khasi states. The several village states were frequently at war with each other, and in many cases had developed dialectical differences (Piang 2000) so great that communication among them was difficult if not impossible. Each village state had its own culture and, often, its own religion. There was a general awareness that a group of villages living in a particular geographical area were somehow related to each other in a way that they not were related to others. There were similarities of myth, religious and social customs, and languages, but the differences in these same areas were even greater. T.C. Hodson, one of the first scholars to struggle with this problem, in his The Naga Tribes of Manipur (1911) admits failure in the end. ‘In most respects’, he wrote, ‘the idea of tribal solidarity meets with no recognition’. He did find that a Kabui Naga, for instance, was ‘acquainted with the general legend that all Kabuis

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are descended from one of the three brothers, but probably regards it as a far-off event destitute of any real importance’ (1911: 81). One of the most obvious means of determining the tribe to which people belong is language. Unlike other parts of India where tribes often speak the language of neighbouring non-tribals, in the north-east each tribe has its own language. But language was a weak unifying factor due to the development of dialectical differ­ ences (Piang, 2000). The first modern scholar, to note the linguistic diversity among the members of a single tribe, was P.R.T. Gurdon. Speaking about the Khasis and Jaintias, he wrote in 1907: The inhabitants of the Khasi and Jaintia hills may be said to be divided into the following sections: Khasis, Synteng or Pnar, War, Bhoi, and Lynngam. These divisions represent collections of people inhabiting several tracts of country and speaking dialects which although often deriving their origin form the Khasi roots, are frequently so dissimilar to the standard language as to be almost unrecognizable. (Gurdon 1907: 62)

Thus, while it is clear that during the pre-British period tribal language was not a primary reference point for identity among the hill people of north-east India, it is equally clear that during the British and non-British periods it became increasingly so. British bureaucrats needed to classify and name the peoples they gov­ erned. They were the first to systematically assign names to the tribes, often using names given by neighbouring peoples or even names apparently arising out of misunderstanding of informants (the name ‘Garo’ is a case in point) (Downs 1994: 32). The social and political ideologies that were partially a product of their class background were a very important part of the luggage that the missionaries brought with them to India. For instance, Assamese today honour Miles Bronson and his colleagues as the saviours of their culture, of their distinctive identity as a people and as pio­ neers in the development of modern Assamese literature (Downs 1994: 69). The creation of a centrally controlled network of schools pro­ vided an agency that contributed to tribal unity. Sangma (1987) discussed how the opening of schools by the American Baptist Mission Society in strategic locations in Nagaland contributed to

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tribal unity by bringing together different sub groups of the Nagas from different regional backgrounds. Similarly, L. Jeyaseelan, in assessing the impact of Christianity on the tribal society of Mani­ pur, wrote that education and the development of literature has encouraged the study of origin, migration and settlement. The hill tribes are discovering their identity as ‘Naga’, ‘Kuki’, ‘Mizo’, ‘Zomi’, etc., and this has changed their outlook, thought patterns regard­ ing their neighbouring tribes and communities (Jeyaseelan 1999: 85). In the process they are redefining the notion of who is the ‘outsider’ as against who constitute the ‘insider’ to the community. It was not only the Christian revival movement that spread across and beyond geographical boundaries to neighbouring countries, but so do literatures and ideas. According to Zairema (1978: 37-40) Mizo literature has been used beyond the areas of Mizoram in the Chin Hills of Burma and southern region of Manipur where there are speakers of the Lushai (Mizo) dialect. Besides Mizo literature, inter-marriages and inter-migrations and the location of a mission school also brings together people from far-flung areas. The written language was used to create the first literature of the tribe, a literature that was used in the schools. They not only propagated the standard language so that at least the educated could begin to communicate with each other’s across dialectical barriers, but they also provided a common social space, through their boarding departments in which student from different vil­ lages of the tribe lived together (Downs 1994: 238). Inevitably, their work on education provided the material basis for the emergence of Westernized and articulate elites who became critical of the colonial rule. Animesh Ray traced the development of a new class of intelligentsia or new elites due to the education system of the missionaries in Mizoram. They wanted freedom from the chiefs, from customary community discipline and from the restraints of colonial rule (Roy 1982: 66). While it is true that to a large extent the people modified and indigenized the gospel proclaimed by the missionaries, there were nevertheless certain features of the received forms of the new faith that brought about changes in world view, and in doing so contrib­ uted to the development of tribal identity. The missionary schools

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through the creation of a standard language unintentionally pro­ moted the geographical integration of societies and a creation of a tribal identity that could replace the traditional village-oriented identity.

IV Local Agencies: Confrontation and Engagements The presumption in favour of the conduct of mission schools as stated by Rev. C.E. Burdette was that, It is an advantage to have access to the minds of heathen, old or young, while in the receptive, trustful attitude of a school. Schools have always been considered a good means of disseminating knowledge of any kind, and especially for the instillation of new principles, good or bad. (Bur­ dette 1886: 167)

The clear implication that underpins these statements is that the mission school will generate a society out of the young generation that is fundamentally different from that of the old. That this should be so is neither surprising nor new, for the logic of sending missionaries to difficult and remote areas of the world is founded unambiguously on a wish not to preserve the status quo but to change it. According to them, educational institutions served double purposes: first, as a means of teaching the Christians truth, and second, as a means for recruitment or training of future native workers. Naturally, therefore, the missionaries gave priority to the study of local vernaculars as the basis for the formulation of their educational programmes. Even before their entry into Manipur and Lushai Hills, the Arthington missionaries, Messrs William Pettigrew, J.H. Lorrain and F.W. Savidge started learning the languages of the respective regions at their camp in Cachar (Dena 1988: 91).

The Mission Schools: Problems and Prospects The local people, on their part, initially looked upon the introduction of education with suspicion and as an attempt for

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intrusion that threatened the existing social structure. Even when the missionaries fondly hoped that the antagonism to their efforts was almost at an end, they found that in reality it had hardly yet began. In the Khasi-Jaintia Hills, as soon as it became apparent that their teaching was influencing the young people with whom they came in contact, the most zealous supporters of the old religion became enraged. The superstitions and prejudice of the people was more deeply rooted than the missionaries had believed. ‘Breaking of eggs’, and other means of ‘consultations with the demons’ were resorted to daily; the children were closely questioned as to what they had been taught in the school; and sternly warned to heed neither the teacher nor their lessons, lest the wrath of the demons overtake them, and their clan be destroyed. The excitement became intense; parents, far and near, were cautioned against sending their children within reach of the missionaries’ influence, who credited with possessing a mysterious charm, by means of which they could make the children ‘obedient to themselves in all things, and disobedient to their parents’ (Morris 1996: 978). Another problem faced by them was the irregularity in the attendance of the students. William Carey had to abandon his schools at Madnabati because he said ‘poverty of the natives caused them frequently to take their children to work’, especially during planting and harvesting seasons (B.M.S., M.S.S., Carey’s Journal, 18 January 1795). The diary of a village teacher, Kunga, in Mizoram narrates the day-by-day difficulties faced by a school­ teacher. In the day school the course of the children’s education seldom ran smooth. There were too many interruptions. One weekend was particu­ larly exciting. On Monday morning they heard that a wild dog had come into the village and killed a pig, and that a tiger, too, had mauled a pig the previous night. News also came that a villager had just died. This was something which called for immediate action. So, the boys had to go off to dig the grave and the school duly closed for the occasion. Gravedigging was a task which nobody relished for the ground was often very rocky, but it was a chore which the Mizos would ever refuse. The Mizo tradition of ‘tlawmngaihna’ (mutual help) would not permit even small boys to ignore a call for help. On this occasion, as a rather dubious and

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dangerous compensation for their labours, the lads were permitted to join the other villagers in chasing last night’s tiger off the village land (Kunga’s letter to a missionary name. (Sandy cf. Lloyd 1991: 196-7)

The government schools at the centre created the tribal elite who later on became the leaders of the revivalist movements, and who effectively opposed both the colonial rule and the proselytiza­ tion of the missionaries. The development of literature extended to the secular field where the educated natives used it to revive their cultural past, which sometimes stood in opposition to the mission­ ary’s enterprises. A significant example of this is the Seng Khasi movement, which started at the end of the nineteenth century in Meghalaya. The movement aims at the revival of traditional Khasi culture, traditional belief, customs and forms of expression. It con­ sidered the missionaries’ activities as a threat to it. These sorts of movements were largely led by modernized elements within the tribes (Downs 1994: 206). Education also enabled the local agencies to negotiate with the colonial rulers through the advantage of a common language. In the Naga Hills, those who went as labour corps to France during the First World War had returned with a greater consciousness of the need to forge unity, cooperation and understanding among the Nagas and of their political rights as a nation within the larger world politics (Asoso Yonuo 1982: 64-5). Those who were ben­ eficiaries of modern education and related social mobility could not agree more with this concern, and as a result, in 1918, a group of Nagas comprising of certain lower rung government officials, a few village headmen, and some teachers and other educated men came together to form the Naga Club (Naga Club: Historical Background, 1985). The objective of this club was to create a space where some of the social and political concerns confronting the Nagas could be discussed and deliberated upon, and find ways in which they could be addressed. It was one of the first efforts to forge unity and understanding among all the Naga tribes across village, clan, tribe and religious loyalties, and develop a feeling of oneness among the Nagas. In 1929, when the Simon Commission came to the Naga Hills, the Naga Club first articulated their yearning to be

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left to themselves in order to determine their own political future. It submitted a memorandum stating the cultural and political dis­ tinctness of the Nagas, explaining why they should not be brought under the reformed scheme being planned for the administration of India and expressing their wish to live as an independent nation (The Naga National Rights and Movement, 10 January 1929: 9-11).

Shared Enterprise The interaction between the missionary and the colonial and the indigene was complicated. Instances of close collusion did exist; as did examples of open dissent. But, for the most part, the relationship was marked by a good deal of mutual pragmatism. This is hardly surprising as colonized territories were, by definition, frontier territories—often dangerous and unknown. For these very reasons, missionary work relied on the goodwill not only of colonial administrators but also on the benevolence of the indigenous people for its success (MacKenzie 1993: 55). In fact, the expansion of Christianity in many parts of the north­ east of India has indeed been about such a ‘shared enterprise’. The ‘planting’ of churches in various parts of the nineteenth century could never have been accomplished without the active initiatives of local people, who freely appropriated the Christian message, for themselves and commended that message both within their own societies and beyond. Local people were as much missionaries as were members of the mission societies. The significance of the role of the native interpreter is not difficult to imagine in a region like north-east India, which is characterized by linguistic and cultural diversity. Besides the early converts and the lambus (interpreters) who helped in translation works, the native clerks, chaparasis and village chiefs were also involved as informants at various points in the codification of customary laws and textualization of ethnographic works. In fact, they were active participants in the process and acted as an indispensable aide to the missionaries. They were often the driving force in the work of evangelization, Bible translation, printing, creating education and health facilities, and building up and providing pastoral care for the community.

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Conclusion The study accepts the limitations that come with generalizing on an area as vast as the hills of north-east of India, which is marked by cultural diversity and is bound to have different set of experiences with colonialism. The commonality, parallelism and differences in features, phenomena, cultural practices and belief system, etc., are utilized to bring to us a better understanding of the nature of encounter between the three agencies—colonial administrators, missionaries and the local inhabitants. The missionary education served different, but equally useful purpose for both the missionary and the administrator. The col­ laboration between them, if any, were often temporary and would cease to exist at the slightest instances of incongruity to the goals of each party. Regarding the impact, the introduction of educa­ tion greatly impeded on the social structure. Enculturation did happen, in which many aspects of the cultural elements were cur­ tailed, done away with or remodelled to suit the convenience of the missionaries and their goals. On the other hand, it contributed prominently in the areas of women’s position, removal of irrational beliefs and fostering a common space in which the different tribes who were divided by linguistic or geographical differences could come together. The local people regarded the education system with suspicion in the beginning. However, it later on became the instrument for them to engage with colonialism. The local people were not passive observ­ ers to the colonial project. They were active participants, either in assisting or in resisting it. So, the site of the missionary education is a contested terrain of various actors and agencies, exhibiting both manifest and latent consequences simultaneously and, therefore, cannot be viewed as a singular historical entity.

Note The essay was earlier published with the same title in the Indian Anthropologist, vol. 39, nos. 1&2, January-December 2009. A revised version was also published in chapter 3 titled, ‘Exploring the Faultlines

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of Missionary Education in North-East India’, in my edited book, Deconstructing Colonial Ethnography: An Analysis of Missionary Writings on North East India, Ruby Press, New Delhi, 2017.

References Baptist Missionary Society. 1904-5. Annual Report: 36-7. Beidelman, T.O. 1982. Colonial Evangelism: A Socio-historical Study of an East African Mission at the Grassroots. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Burdette, C.E. 1992. ‘The Claims and Conduct of Mission Schools,’ in The Assam Mission of the American Baptist Missionary Union, Papers and discussion of the Jubilee conference held in Nowgong, 18-29 December 1886, Guwahati and Delhi: Spectrum Publications: 166­ 83. Dena, Lal. 1988. Christian Missions and Colonialism. Shillong: Vendrama Institute. Downs, Frederick S. 1971. The Mighty Works of God. Guwahati: Christian Literature Centre. . 1992. History of Christianity in India, vol. V, part 5. Bangalore: The Church History Association of India. . 1994. Essay on Christianity in North East India, in Milton Sangma and Syiemlieh R. David (ed.). New Delhi: Indus Publishing Company. Durkheim, Emile. 1956. Education and Sociology. New York: The Free Press, London: Collier-MacMillan. Furer-Haimendorf, Christoph Von. 1976 (1939). Return to the Naked Nagas: An Anthropologist’s View of Nagaland, 1936-1970. New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House. Gurdon, P.R.T. 1907. The Khasis. Delhi: Cosmo Publications. Gurney, A.K. 1992. ‘Self-Support’, in The Assam Mission of the American Baptist Missionary Union, Papers and discussion of the Jubilee conference held in Nowgong, 18-29 December 1886, Guwahati and Delhi: Spectrum Publications: 116-31. Hodson, T.C. 1911. The Naga Tribes of Manipur. Delhi: Low Price Publications. Jeyaseelan, L. 1999. ‘Impact of Christianity on the Tribal Society of Manipur’, in Kamei Gailangam & Gina Shangkham (eds.), Change and Continuity in Tribal Society of Manipur. Imphal: MUTSU. Lloyd, J. Meirion. 1991. History of the Church in Mizoram: Harvest in the Hills. Aizawl: Synod Publication Board.

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Mackenzie, Alexander. 2001 (1884). The North East Frontier of India. New Delhi: Mittal Publications. Mackenzie, Clayton G. 1993. ‘Demythologizing the Missionaries: A Reassessment of the Functions and Relationships of Christian Missionary Education under Colonialism’, Comparative Education, vol. 29, no. 1: 45-6. Memorandum to Simon Commission 10 January 1929. 1993. The Naga National Rights and Movement, Nagaland: Publicity and Information Department, Naga National Council. Morris, John Hughes. 1996. The History of the Welsh Calvinistic Methodists Foreign Mission, to the End of the Year 1904. New Delhi: Indus Publishing Company. Naga Club: Historical Background. 1985. Kohima: Nagaland State Archives: Sl. No. 151. Natarajan, Nalini. 2002. ‘Impact of the Missionary on Khasi Society’, in Subhadra Channa (ed.), The Christian Mission: Christianity and tribal Religion. New Delhi: Cosmo publications. Natarajan. Nalini. 1977. The Missionary among the Khasis. New Delhi: Sterling Publishers Pvt. Ltd. Pachuau, Lalsangkima. 1998. Ethnic Identity and Christianity: A SocioHistorical and Missiological Study of Christianity in North East India with Special Reference to Mizoram. Frankfurt: Perterlang. Phillips, E.G. 1992. ‘History Sketch of the Garo Field’, in The Assam Mission of the American Baptist Missionary Union, Papers and discussion of the Jubilee conference held in Nowgong, 18-29 December 1886, Guwahati and Delhi: Spectrum Publications: 54-79. Piang, L. Lam Khan. 2000. ‘A Critical Analysis of Tribe-Identity Formation among the Zo People of Manipur’, M.Phil Dissertation submitted to the Centre for Study of Social Systems, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Robinson, Rowena. 2003. Christians of India. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Roy, Animesh. 1982. Mizoram: Dynamics of Change. Calcutta: Pearl Publishers. Sangma, Milton S. 1987. History of American Baptist Mission in North East India (1836-1950), vols. I & II. New Delhi: Mittal Publications. Sen Gupta, K.P. 1971. The Christian Missionaries in Bengal (1793-1833). Calcutta: K.L. Mukhopadhyay. Shakespear, J. 1975. The Lushei Kuki Clans. Aizawl: Tribal Research Institute.

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Singh, K.M. 1991. History of Christian Missions in Manipur and Other Neighbouring States. New Delhi: Mittal Publications. Sitlhou, Hoineilhing. 2006. ‘Deconstructing Colonial Ethnography: A Re-assessment of Christian Missionary Writings in North East India,’ M. Phil. Dissertation submitted to the Centre for the Study of Social Systems, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Snaithang, O.L. 1993. Christianity and Social Change in North East India. Shillong: Vendrame Institute. Solo, Rev. Jonah M., Rev. K. Mahangthei (compilation). 2006. Forty Years Mission in Manipur (Mission Reports of Rev. William Pettigrew). Manipur: Christian Literature Centre. Sykes, Maijorie (ed.). 1968. Mizo-Miracle: Diaries of E. Chapman and M. Clark. Madras: Christian Literature Society, Deocesan Press. Thanzauva, K. 1997. Reports of the Foreign Mission of the Presbyterian Church of Wales on Mizoram 1894-1957. Aizawl: Synod Literature and Publication Board. Vishvanathan, Susan. 2000. ‘The Homogeneity of Fundamentalism: Christianity, British Colonialism and India in the 19th Century’, Studies in History, vol. 16, no. 2: 221-40. . 1998. An Ethnography of Mysticism. Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Rashrapati Nivas. . 1993/1999. The Christians of Kerala. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Yonuo, Asoso. 1982. Nagas Struggle against British Rule under Jadonang

and Rani Gaindinliu 1925-1947. Kohima: Leno Printing Press.

Zairema, Rev. 1978. God’s Miracle in Mizoram: A Glimpse of Christian

Work among Head-hunters. Mizoram: Synod Press. Zeliang, Elungkiebe (compilation). 2005. History of Christianity in Manipur (Source materials) Imphal: Manipur Baptist Convention. Zou, David Vumlallian. 2002. ‘Colonial Discourse and Local knowledge: Representing North East India (1824-1947)’, M.Phil. dissertation submitted to the Centre for Historical Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

CHAPTER 10

Health, a Gift of God at Sanatorium and

Missionary Activities in Madras Presidency

B. ESWARA RAO

Medical missionaries, as part of their philanthropy, human­ itarianism and evangelism, played a crucial role in colonial Indian society. Among other activities, health care and establishment of various special medical institutions were a crucial element in their evangelical activities. Missionary activities have always been defined as ‘clinical Christianity’ and instruments of ‘double cure and care’1 to convert the economically and socially deprived sections of the society, particularly ‘lower castes’. Elsewhere, missionary medicine practised along with colonial medicine operated as a civilizing enterprise to usher the tribes into Christian modernity.2 However, the activities and motives of missionaries were not restricted or confined to only these sections of society but extended to different landscapes of the society at large. Particularly from the early twentieth century, they widened the scope of their activities by using various innovative strategies in their missionary organizations such as hospitals, sanatoria and dispensaries to overcome various challenges from other religions. This paper aims to explore how Christian medical missionaries encompassed not just evangelical activities in their missionary organizations alone but also created social and cultural spaces within which there were rules and norms of patient behaviours that structured and operated and gave shape to new ideas about the illness, body hygiene, health habits and, cleanliness by disseminating Western medical practices, medical technology and treatment methods for tuberculosis patients in the Union Mission Tuberculosis

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Sanatorium (UMTS), Madanapalle which was established in 1912 by the union of missionaries in the Madras Presidency. The medical institutions specific to tuberculosis treatment were established through both government agencies and non­ governmental agencies. Non-governmental agencies, particularly Christian medical missionaries, private philanthropic organiza­ tions and individuals, made possible the establishment of sanatoria and dispensaries in the Presidency. Union Mission Tuberculosis Sanatorium (UMTS), Madanapalle, was one such institute, jointly established with the cooperation and collaboration of various missions along with the Madras presidency government. Unlike general hospitals, in the sanatorium, treatment was given in an isolated place where patients stayed for a long time. Therefore, the sanatorium was not just an institution which provided medi­ cal treatment but it was also as a medico-social space in which a missionary medical institution operated and included all sections of society. It became a model institution for not only providing tuberculosis patients care but also gained a reputation for medical research and innovative tuberculosis care health programmes in India.

Early Initiatives for Establishment of the Sanatorium Faced with financial difficulty the government reduced medical expenditure year after year from 1910 onwards.3 It was much worse during the First World War. The Government of India grant was also meagre after the transfer of the subject of health to provincial governments. This provided the space for private agencies to play an active role in the establishment of tuberculosis institutions. Humanitarian and philanthropic motives drove many to take a leading role in establishment of sanatoria. Moreover, India’s rich showed their loyalty to the state by actively involving themselves in philanthropic activities with both intentions—to win favours with the government for getting higher bureaucratic positions and for trade benefits.4 The health problems were constructed in such a way that infection/infected persons were perceived to be a danger to the whole society. It was seen as a responsible enterprise to take

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part in various health and sanitary activities. Christian missionaries combined such activity with their evangalical mission (‘clinical Christianity’) and established sanatoria and dispensaries and took active part in control measures by contributing funds. Particularly in the case of tuberculosis, the involvement of non-governmental agencies played a prominent role both in the establishment of the medical institutions and in the adoption of preventive measures. Union Mission Tuberculosis Sanatorium, Madanapalle, was one such institute set up to provide medical care. On 25 May 1910, the annual conference of the south Indian section of Indian Medi­ cal Missionary Association was held in the American Mission Church at Kodaikanal. In this conference, Rev. T.V. Campbell, of the London Mission, Jammalamadugu, Cuddapah district, pre­ sented a paper on ‘Pulmonary Tuberculosis in Mission Schools and in the Christian Community in South India’. Dr Campbell empha­ sized more on tuberculosis as an important subject by referring to the previous year’s (February 1909) Indian Medical Missionary Association meeting held in Bombay in which he had discussed the prevalence of tuberculosis among children in the missionary schools of north India. This conference had also passed a resolu­ tion to explore diverse means of treatment for tuberculosis—for affected schoolchildren and patients. These proposals were sent to all secretaries of the medical missions. Against this background, Dr Campbell confirmed the wide prevalence of tuberculosis all over south India by comparing statistics from almost all mission hospitals in south India, including Mysore and Tranvancore. He proved that the disease was widely spread not only among the poor and the rich class but also among low and high castes. Out­ patient statistics alone showed that the average rate of prevalence was 11.8 per 1,000 in south India; in some districts it was as high as 44 while in other districts it was as low as three per 1,000. The overall rate though was much higher than Calcutta and Bombay. The death rate from tuberculosis in Calcutta and Bombay was only 3.5 per 1,000 and 3 per 1,000, respectively, much higher than in England and Wales. In the American Arcot Mission, out of the 500 boarding pupils 72 were affected by tuberculosis. The mission sent 24 cases for treatment to Punganur5 where the mission had

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taken the lead in establishing a tuberculosis sanatorium. The treat­ ment in this sanatorium proved more successful. Some preventive measures were also implemented in the mission schools such as providing extra food such as milk, eggs and ghee to schoolchil­ dren, making them sleep in the open air and regularly measuring weight. The conclusion was that fresh air, sunlight, good food and water, work and exercise in the open air, segregation of suspected cases and isolation of diseased patients would help in fighting this dreaded disease. Dr Campbell called for establishing sanatoria and for providing special accommodation for tuberculosis patients in mission hospitals. Finally, he emphasized that there was a need for cooperation among missions and ‘perhaps, the most pressing need was a Union Tuberculosis Sanatorium, in suitable climate, and in as central a town as possible, such as Madanapalle’. In the discussion all participants expressed their appreciation for addressing this important problem. The chairman of the session said, ‘The eyes of all had been opened to the alarming extent of tuberculosis in South India. The urgent need of doing something at an early date to provide a sanatorium and to take steps to prevent the spread of disease was the consensus of opinion.’6 The chairman further stated that ‘government would encourage any proposition that might be made, and would probably assist in establishing a sana­ torium’.7 Immediately after this meeting, the Government of India sent a memorandum to the government of Madras on 14 June 1910, drawing attention to the widespread prevalence of tubercu­ losis and for establishment of suitable institutions for treatment of tuberculosis patients in the presidency. In the memorandum the government invited cooperation of charitable public and directed P.H. Benson’s (surgeon-general of the Madras Presidency), atten­ tion to the report on the discussions that had taken place at the conference of the south Indian branch of All India Medical Mis­ sionary Association held in Kodaikanal. This was the beginning of the colonial government’s initiatives towards the establish­ ment of tuberculosis sanatoria and hospitals.8 The Tuberculosis Committee formed to enquire into and find various possibilities and ways for the establishment of tuberculosis sanatoria in the Madras Presidency fully supported the efforts being made by the various medical missionary societies of south India to start a

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sanatorium at Madanapalle. The government recognized Dr T.V. Campbell’s contribution and appointed him as a member of the tuberculosis committee. The committee recommended an annual grant towards maintenance of the Union Mission Tuberculosis Sanatorium, Madanaplle. The view was that it would be better for the government, from a financial point of view, to encourage the enterprise by liberal donations towards building the sanatorium. The committee indicated that this institution should be ‘open to all creeds and caste alike without distinction’. The government agreed to assist the sanatorium at Madanapalle from the provincial fund and not from the King Edward VII Memorial Fund based on the conditions specified by the committee. The surgeon-general was instructed to report on the total cost of the scheme, the amount of assistance sought by the mission union, and the actual steps which the missions contemplated towards the establishment of the sanatorium.9 A sanatorium was started by the Arcot Mission at Punganur in 1909 in a temporary building. After a union of seven missions was formed, this sanatorium was transferred to Madanapalle in 1911. The transferred sanatorium would run in temporary shelters and serve both male and female patients. In the same year, the govern­ ment promised to give a building grant which was non-recurrent, equal to half the capital cost of construction of the sanatorium’s maximum estimate of Rs. 30,000, and, in addition to this, a recur­ ring annual grant equal to half the cost of its maintenance, a maximum of up to Rs. 10,000 per annum.10 The government of Madras sanctioned an initial amount Rs. 2,100 from the provincial fund for the upkeep of the sanatorium.11 The Arcot Sanatorium at Madanapalle was taken over by the union of seven medical missions committee from 1 October 1912. Since then it was known as the Union Mission Tuberculosis Sana­ torium which accommodated 30 patients in temporary rooms. This sanatorium consisted of four new shelters for private patients, one caste kitchen, one cow and straw shed and one disinfect­ ing chamber, which were under the charge of Dr L.H. Hart and Miss MacDonnell, the female superintendent. They were asked to submit a report of expenditure of the sanatorium. They submit­ ted the report and selected a site for the permanent structure on

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the main road of Madanapalle which was nearer to the railway station and the town. Plan and estimate for the permanent build­ ings were prepared and sent for approval of the government. On 24 October 1912, a meeting of the Union of Mission Committee on Tuberculosis convened in Madras. All the 25 missions in south India were asked to join in support of this scheme. But only seven missions came forward to cooperate in the effort. They were (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)

The American Arcot Mission; The American Lutheran Mission, Guntur; The Basel German Evangelical Mission; The Church of England Zenana Mission; The Danish Lutheran Evangelical Mission; The London Mission; and The United Free Church of Scotland Mission.

In 1913 the Methodist Episcopal Mission also joined.12 From each mission, delegates were sent to organize the scheme. Rev. L.R. Scudder, Miss L.H. Hart and Rev. B. Rottschaefer from Arcot Mis­ sion, Rev. V. McCauley, Miss A.S. Kugler, from Lutheran Mission of Guntur, Dr W. Stokes from Basel Mission, Rev. J. Bittman from Danish Lutheran Mission, Rev. E.P. Rice, Rev. C.G. Marshall, Rev. W. Hinkely, and Dr T.T. Thomson from London Mission, Miss A.M. Macphail from United Free Mission were representatives of the United Mission Sanatorium Committee. There was no rep­ resentative from the Church of England Zenana Mission. In this meeting, Rev. L.V. Scudder was elected convener and treasurer of the Committee. The available union of the mission’ funds for the building and upkeep were Rs. 13,640 and Rs. 2,950 respectively. The Union Mission Tuberculosis Sanatorium Committee formu­ lated rules for the management: (1) the managing body shall consist of representatives elected by the cooperating missions together with the doctor and lady superintendent as ex-officio; (2) Each mission contributing Rs. 200 to the annual upkeep was entitled to one representative on the governing body and an additional representative for each additional con­ tribution of Rs. 200.

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The mission contributing Rs. 100 towards the upkeep of the sanatorium was entitled to get one bed and free treatment for patients sent by them but the cost of food alone was charged. The managing body appointed an executive committee of seven, of whom the doctor and the lady superintendent become ex-officio members. Though the Union Mission Sanatorium was started by missions it provided treatment to people from other religions and castes along with Christians. It was clearly stated by L.R. Scudder, convener of the committee: I hereby certify that the sanatorium at Madanapalle was and is open to all castes and creeds without distinction irrespective of their incomes. Those who are in a position to contribute were and are required to do so. I also certify that the attendance of patients at a course of religious instruction was and is entirely optional.13

After two years of the sanatorium’s establishment, the Union Mission Sanatorium Committee said that ‘in view of the urgency and magnitude of the campaign against tuberculosis … excellent results … have been obtained at the Union Mission Sanatorium at Madanapalle which is at present the only one in South India’.14 The patients were transferred from the temporary shed in Madanapalle town to the permanent buildings on 28 June 1915, but the building was officially inaugurated by Lord Pentland, the Governor of Madras on 19 July 1915.15 The sanatorium ran ‘on the same scientific lines’ that had proved successful in Western coun­ tries. However, there were some modifications as were ‘required by the special conditions of this land’.16 It was erected in a place known as Arogyavaram,17 after studying the climate and the avail­ ability of transport, both road and rail. The physical layout of the sanatorium made available various segregated spaces such as the doctor’s bunglow, the lady superintendent’s bunglow, the wards for Anglo-Indians, European wards, general wards, private wards, the quarters for Indian assistants and nurses and the menial staff. The architecture of the wards were designed with certain speficiations to facilitate open air treatment. The wards were simple in structure with a high basement and roof supported on series of pillars and open on all sides for getting the fresh air.18

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In 1922, the Telugu section of the Catholic Mission Society Church Council joined in the union in support of the sanatorium. It was considered a great encouragement for the committee to receive the first Indian church organization into the union. The Union Mission Sanatorium hoped that the other Indian selfgoverning church bodies would similarly come forward for this work.19 By 1922-3, 13 missions had joined and cooperated with the Union Mission Tuberculosis Sanatorium, Madanapalle. These included the American Presbyterian Mission, Church of Sweden Mission, Methodist Episcopal Mission (American), SPG Mission, Wesleyan Mission and CMS Church Council (Telugu section).20 Two more missions joined in 1925-6.21 Sanatorium treatment not only consists of ‘open air treatment’ but also special therapeutic measures. Besides living in open air, rest, prescribed daily graded exercises and diet, medical remedies were given according to individual needs.22 The diet was one of the important features of sanatorium treatment. Special diet was given to the weak patients to build vitality to fight against infec­ tion. The prescribed normal diet in the UMTS such as milk, eggs, meat, fruits, vegetables, pulses apart from wheat bread and rice were given to patients. Each patient got about 2,600-2,800 calories of food per day. A major portion of expenditure from annual total budget of the sanatorium was on food.23 In addition to these meth­ ods, open air treatment and good diet, the sanatorium also used various surgical and techniquies of treatment methods. The treat­ ment methods of collapse therapy which was very much comon in Western countries was used. The collapse therapy methods, such as artificial pneumothrax, thorcoplasty, brochoscopy, lung resection, lumber puncture, phrenic nerve operations, oleothorax (pumping of oil into pleural cavity), etc., were carried out in the sanatorium. From 1921, artificial pneumothorax became standard methods of treatment in the UMTS. On the whole, collapse therapies became common in the sanatorium and nearly 40 per cent of patients were treated with artificial pneumothorax.24 In the beginning there was an idea that in India sanatorium treatment would only help in the early stages of tuberculosis. But

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later it was realized that a sanatorium should expand to other cases because patients might be cured anywhere by giving rest, good food and fresh air. Given the steady increase in the number of patients in the advanced stage seeking admission into the sanatorium, the earlier notion appeared outdated. In 1929, an investigation had been done by the Union Mission Tuberculosis Sanatorium, Madanapalle, among patients nine years after their discharge from the sanatorium. This study revealed the fact that even in the most desperate cases the best results were obtained with the sanatorium treatment.25 From 1920 onwards in the Madras Presidency consid­ erably more advanced cases were admitted into the sanatorium. This is clearly evident in the table below: Table 10.1: Stages of the diseases in patients admitted during 1916-30 Year

Patients admitted

Stage I (%)

Stage II (%)

Stage III (%)

1916-20

807

29.5

46.5

24.0

1921-5

737

19.8

25.6

54.6

1926-30

1231

22.5

24.3

53.2

Source: Annual Report of UMTS-1929-30, p. 20.

During the period of 1921-30, more than half of patients who were treated were in the third or the most advanced stage of the disease. The total number of patients discharged after treat­ ment from the sanatorium was 1,544. Of this 580 were omitted as untraceable cases and of the remaining 964 patients discharged, including the most advanced cases 492 or 51.0 per cent were alive after five years and 448 or 46.5 per cent were doing full-time work. The sanatorium treatment showed that this was far better considering both the different stages and the immediate results. The same study showed that improved immediate results meant improved after-results. A further improvement in the immediate results in 1926-30 would mean a corresponding increase in the number of patients living and working five years after discharge. This improvement was brought about by the modern sanatorium

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treatment26 which, along with modern discoveries and experi­ ences, led to this sanatorium becoming a pioneering sanatorium in the presidency. The backbone of modern sanatorium treatment was not only fresh air, good food and other hygienic measures, but also special treatment based upon the experience gained from the observations of the clinical symptoms of the patients in relation to their rest and exercise. Sanatorium treatment was now also based upon guiding facts obtained by examination of blood, by using the sedimenta­ tion test of the red blood corpuscles and differential counts of the white blood cells.27 Modern research carried out on the immuno­ biological aspects of tuberculosis had not only explained why this change of rest and graded exercise constitutes the all important basis for the whole treatment but had also helped to improve treat­ ment in many ways.28 The laboratory research made ‘possible the treatment of complications on a real scientific basis especially in the tropics’. Especially noticeable results were obtained among the most advanced cases. The investigation of the after-histories revealed that patients in the first and second stages of disease had as a great chance of getting well later in life. Those who were dis­ charged were classified as ‘clinically well’.29 For treatment in the sanatorium only those in the early stage of the disease and with a fair general state of health were allowed. Patients paid a monthly fee. Patients who came recommended by representatives of their mission had to pay Rs. 7 per mensem. The non-members had to get a certificate from a gazetted government official and pay Rs. 18 per mensem.30 The number of beds available in the year 1916 was 90. By 1925 the number of wards available was 12 of which seven general wards contained 98 beds and five special wards contained 18 beds each. The number of available beds for patients was 150. Three of these wards formed a unit for men, two a unit for women. Each of these units had a small ward with four beds attached which were intended for Anglo-Indian men and women, respectively. There were two semi-general wards. Special wards, each containing one or two beds were also erected.31 UMTS became one of the successful sanatoriums in India by initiating several projects; particularly, the first preliminary trial of BCG

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vaccination that was done in 1948 before officially launching in India and the drug trail of streptomycin that was first given to the patients of this sanatorium before introducing it in the market. The first postgraduate diploma course on TB in India was started in this sanatorium.32

Profile of the Patient A very large majority of tuberculosis patients treated were from lower income groups. This is evident from the annual reports of the tuberculosis institute. During most years, women comprised a little over 40 per cent of the total patients, suggesting that women used the sanatorium almost as much as men did. One is not sure whether this was due to the fact that the Christian mission had a large number of girl schools and women serving in them or that the social stigma of the disease forced women to take refuge in the sanatorium. The average age of the patients rose steadily over the years. It was 22 for women in 1920, while for men it was 25 in 1920. Over the decades, the range of age of the in patients varied from less than one year to 70 years. Intially, patients who belonged to Christianity occupied a major proportion of those taking teatment. However, from 1917 onwards, nearly one half of the patients were Hindus. The sanatorium became one of the reputed institutes in India for providing theraputic treatment by using modern methods and patient care. Therefore, patients came not only from the districts of the Madras Presidency but also from other regions and neighbouring countries.33 To facilitate the acceptance of treatment in sanatorium and hospital, various facilities were provided to different social groups recognizing the social and cultural beliefs within the institu­ tional space even in the medical missionary institutions. In the year 1912-13 when the Union Mission Tuberculosis Sanatorium, Madanapalle, worked from temporary shelters, it accommodated a total of 32 patients—11 men and 15 women and children in the general wards. A private shelter accommodated six caste patients, both men and women. But the separate accommodation was given to patients after payment of a fee. In the private wards, patients

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were supplied with food cooked by the caste cook. There was a caste kitchen where caste people could also cook their own food or get it from their own relatives or friends. Only one European patient took treatment at the sanatorium, the main reason for this being the lack of proper accommodation.34 The average daily sick from among Europeans in the Union Mission Tuberculosis Sana­ torium in the year 1913-14 was 1.55 as against nil in the previous year and among Indians it aggregated to 28.12 as against 23.20 in the previous half-yearly report. The largest number of in-patients treated on any one day during the year was 40 against 26 in the previous year. The caste-wise distribution was as follows: the total Indian Christians mentioned as ‘other caste’ treated in the sana­ torium were 76 (including men, women, children), Hindus 20; Mohammedans four; Europeans and Eurasians only two.35 After transfer to its permanent buildings in July 1915 the number of beds was increased to 90, which included 19 beds in special wards. The number of patients treated during half the year (till Septem­ ber) was 105 as against 77 in the previous year (1914).36 In general special privileges were given and justified by the colonial government on grounds of securing additional resources for the institutions in the Madras Presidency. Beds were reserved for Europeans and Eurasians. The newspaper, Swarajya (English), from Madras reported that this amounted to racism. It made two points in its editorial (on 25 November 1929). The government was throwing away lakhs from public fund as salaries and allow­ ance to IMS officers, which was not necessary in this Presidency. It urged the government to spend a few paise more on the diet of the patients instead. The second point made was that there was no justification for giving a more generous diet to Europeans and Anglo-Indians as compared to Indians. The Government of Madras justified its acts.37 The maximum limit of cost of diet for patients in each hospital was fixed depending on various factors— the high contract rates accepted for the supply of diet articles and the comparatively large number of patients requiring special diet in some of the hospitals. On the recommendations of the diet committee the government abolished the maximum limits of cost of diet per patient and prescribed in its place a scale of diet. The

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cost of each diet and the average cost of ‘dieting’ a patient varied under the above arrangements in accordance with the accepted tender rates for the year. Several medical officers felt that the pres­ ent scale of diet was adequate. The medical officers would have the discretion to vary the nature and composition of the diet. The ‘substitute’ diet prescribed would not be below the calorific value fixed by the committee. It was necessary in some institutions, for example, in the government hospital for women and children, Madras, to give diet exceeding complaints. Some patients had to be given more and, as a consequence, others got less. The average cost of diet could not exceed the sanctioned amount. The subject of reservation of beds for Europeans and AngloIndians was also justified claiming that superintendents of hospitals unanimously agreed that the present practice of reserving beds is necessary as it is desired by the majority of Indian patients and Anglo-Indian patients … it will not be possible to run combined wards for Europeans and Anglo-Indians with different arrangements for each class of patients as regards food, bath, latrine and in fact everything in connection with mode of living.

The headquarters hospital from Madras also responded say­ ing that compared to the old diet the new scale of diet was richer and much improved. Diet was fixed according to patients’ ability and was maintained at a maximum calorific value. The patients liked the diet and there were no complaints. The medical officer prescribed it varying the nature or allowing extras according to individual circumstances as necessary.38 When Indian wards were overcrowded and if there was accommodation in the wards for Europeans and Anglo-Indians, Indians who had adopted Euro­ pean habits and styles of living would be admitted into these wards. However, statistics showed that in some hospitals in the districts, the accommodation reserved for Europeans in the general wards was considerably in excess of actual requirements. Therefore, the surgeon-general requested the reduction of such reserved accom­ modation in these hospitals.39 The working of these institutions was entirely different from nineteenth-century hospitals. During the nineteenth century, the

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concerns of health and control of epidemics as a ‘political objective’ operated within the framework of ‘medical policing’. Institutional reorganization, both in medicalization of the people and provid­ ing space within the institutes, took place particularly after 1896. The existence of the caste divide was very much evident in the process of functioning of UMTS. The caste Hindu practices were continued even in the sanatorium in spite of missionary activity and conversion of the lower castes. There is clear evidence that reli­ gious and social comforts were provided during the patients’ stay in the sanatorium. The Anglo-Indians enjoyed greater privileges than most others. Notions of ‘pollution’ and ‘purity’ among the high and low castes were involved while they were living at close quarters in the sanatorium. The food for patients in the general ward was prepared by a caste Hindu cook. Patients in special wards were provided a kitchen to cook their own food and were allowed food from outside. Attendants and visitors of special ward patients were also permitted in the sanatorium. These special wards were arranged for the patients after charging Rs. 50 per mensem. There were no extra charges made for medicine or medical attendance except surgery. One attendant in addition to the cook was allowed to accompany each patient but children were not allowed. They could bring their own bedding and utensils. The stay was not less than three months to ensure a lasting benefit. The length of stay differs for some patients according to the nature of cases. Patients were instructed to obey the directions of the doctor and follow the timetable of the sanatorium. These were strictly followed and played an important role in control and discipline mechanisms. If patients broke rules they were dismissed from the sanatorium. Functuality for various daily activities as part of the sanitorium life was enforced and the patient had to adhere to all, which included medication, daily meals and rest.40

Healing the Mind and Body In the Union Mission Tuberculosis Sanatorium, Madanapalle, religion was also important and time for prayers was marked into the daily schedule of patients. But attending prayers was voluntary

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for non-Christian patients. The sanatorium started functioning with a morning service in the hall with an exposition of a portion of the Bible by members of the medical staff. Sunday services were conducted by the medical staff and missionary visitors and by the Indian pastor of the South Indian United Church of Madanapalle. On Sunday afternoons a class and a prayer in the evenings were conducted by the patients in the wards. But the attendance at these meeting was entirely optional.41 Regular morning devotions and Sunday services were conducted, and occasionally the government chaplain visited the sanatorium. Grants were given by the government on condition that ‘the sanatorium shall be open to patients of all creeds’.42 The Union Mission Tuberculosis Sanatorium, Madanapalle, declared when it applied for annual grant that ‘the sanatorium at Madanapalle was and is open to all castes and creeds without distinction irrespective of their income’.43 The attendance at all religious meetings and devotions for non-Christian patients was entirely optional though religious work was an important programme in the sanatorium activities. Union Mission Tuberculosis Sanatorium claimed that: …We do not think it possible to proclaim the Kingdom of God in the right way, if any kind of pressure or unfair propaganda is made use of. To take the slightest advantage of people’s need of help for their suffer­ ing to enforce upon them any religious teaching with which they would otherwise not have cared to come into contact, would be a misuse of the ministry of healing.44

A Roman Catholic priest was a regular visitor for the patients belonging to his church. Every Sunday classes were conducted both in vernacular and English.45 Religious meetings in the eve­ nings were common along with service on Sundays and there was a strong bellief encouraged about the healing hand of God. However, the available evidence does not suggest that there was significant success made in converting patients to Christianity in the sanatorium. The sanatorium, for many patients, was as reli­ gious as a medical institution inspired by the love of the Lord to heal and serve. Some social life was considered as one of the methods of

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treatment in the sanatorium. The sanatorium created an atmo­ sphere to divert the attention of patient from the suffering. The sanatorium was peculiarly different in the treatment it provided as compared to general hospitals. Diverting the minds of patients from their suffering and the monotony of a long stay in the sana­ torium was part of the whole treatment. The sanatorium possessed a small library containing good books, both in the vernacular and English. Books which sought to psycologically empower the patients were made available on various subjects, including health. Patients freely availed this opportunity to read good books and magazines, both in the vernacular and in English. Books were donated by the publishers and the generous public. English dai­ lies, such as the Madras Mail, The Hindu, and The Justice, were distributed free of cost by these presses. The sanatorium also pro­ vided entertainment of various kinds from time to time. Various activities such as lantern lectures on geographical or educational subjects, musical evenings, small dramatic performances, games and sports, and cinema shows were conducted in the santorium. The Madras and Messers Company, Govardhan and Co., Madras, distributed general films free of charge to entertain the patients.46 There was also a school for the children of the employees.47 Another feature of the social life was an annual fancy fair through which money was collected for clothing the children of menial staff on the occasion of Christmas. Two or three sports meets were conducted and members of the staff competed in various ways to the amusement and enjoyment of the patients. On these occasions, light competitions, which were suitable for the strong patients, were also conducted.48

Ex-Patients Tuberculosis Colony A small number of discharged patients were put in a colony. The idea of forming an ex-tuberculosis patients colony came in 1920 from Union Mission Tuberculosis Sanatorium, Madanapalle. The patients, after completing their treatment, could not go to their homes and live because they were socially alienated and excluded from society with the fear of spreading the disease. Moreover,

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ex-patients would not be able to earn for their survival by doing hard work. For such patients the sanatorium could not provide accommodation for a long time primarily due to two reasons. One was the sanatorium was unable to bear the cost and another was that there was also a long waiting list of those wishing to seek treatment in the sanatorium. Therefore, the Union Mission Tuberculosis Sanatorium, Madanapalle, recognized the need to accommodate these patients by providing livelihood activities for their own sustenance.49 The ex-patients’ tuberculosis colony was established adjacent to the sanatorium at Panipuram. It was separated in terms of finance and management from the sanatorium but it was closely connected with it. The colony was registered under Act XXI of 1860 and had a governing body of seven, of whom four had to be members of the sanatorium staff, namely the medical superintendent, matron, nursing superintendent, and a senior Indian doctor. The main object of the establishment of a tuberculosis colony was to help the ex-patients, especially poor ex-patients of the sanatorium to find means of earning their living, by assisting them in different occupations suitable to their health, while under medical supervision and in a favourable environment, thereby restoring them to be once again useful members of the society. The colony established on nine and a half acres of land had some houses, wells and fruit trees. Initially, it carried out its work through donations without drawing on sanatorium funds. It began its activities such as silk spinning, weaving, etc., from 1922 to try and become self-supporting. In the latter half of 1929, their activities expanded.50 The colony depended financially on the earnings of the ex-patients and on private donations. The occupations carried out were weaving, tailoring, printing, gardening, poultry and cow-keeping. From time to time, expatients were engaged in other kinds of craft work such as palmleaf purse making and paper-making. It also established a general store in the sanatorium, which sold general merchandize to the staff and patients. By 1933-4, of the nine men who lived in the colony, two of them had their families with them. However, the colonists had to be responsible for their own food; the sanatorium did not support them but paid a wage, either fixed or by piece rate,

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according to the nature of their occupation. Some of the activities of the colony were self-supporting. Most of the ex-patients were able to do sufficient work to earn their livelihood and a few had to be helped either because they were not able to do full work or they fell sick. One of the objectives of the colony was that ex-patients living in it should be free from anxiety in case of sickness or a period of weakness. All the activities and its expansion were made based on capital expenditure and the expenses of new occupations were met by donations.51 Toy making and basket-making were also planned and introduced in 1940.52 Lady Hope visited the sanatorium on 2 December 1940, and laid the foundation stone of the Lazarus Memorial Block53 in the ex-patient colony. In 1940, three more patients joined the colony and of these, two returned to the sanatorium temporarily. Laza­ rus Block was erected with five work rooms, an office and a store room. During this year, the simple hand-press was replaced with a treadle press capable of doing all ordinary work including large cutting missions. Ex-patients had received training in composing, book binding, etc., which increased the amount of printing work in the colony. In the colony stores six ex-patients were employed and this also increased the business considerably during the year. For instance, the total sale in a year grew from Rs. 31,175 in 1939 to Rs. 47,516 in 1940. This business was carried out in competition with local traders. The profit from the business not only paid the staff of the shops but the money was used for expansion of capital. It was enough but more capital was required for further expansion of business. The cotton handloom woven clothes sold were about Rs. 1,840 in the year. This was considered a great achievement.54 The Government Tuberculosis Sanatorium, Tambaram, Madras, established an ex-patient colony in 1948, which was similar to that of the Union Mission Tuberculosis Sanatorium.55 To conclude, the functioning of the Union Mission Tuber­ culosis Sanatorium (UMTS), Madanapalle, was entirely different from earlier missionary medical organizations. This institution created a culturally inclusive public health message, which was transmitted in a more sensitive and acceptable way while adopting socioculturally suitable means and methods for various religious

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communities. The social and cultural comforts were provided during the patient’s prolonged stay in the sanatorium. These new strategies also helped to attract upper castes apart from lower caste people to receive treatment in the sanatorium. It became one of the successful sanatoria by transmitting new medical technology and treatment methods and gained repution in south India. Therefore, there was a huge demand from patients in the presidency as well as other regions. As a part of after-care, patients were accommodated in an ex-patients’ colony. The sanatorium operated in social worlds where it conducted both medical and non-medical activities in an isolated place. On the whole, the sanatorium emphasized, on the one hand, therapeutic measures and various treatment methods and, on the other, education of the patients. These measures and practices were also facilitated to form new forms of discipline and social behaviour of the patients in the sanatorium. More often, missionary activities were projected as having close association with Western medicine. The colonial government instructed the sanatorium to accommodate patients of all religions when it made provisions of providing financial aid. However, the dominant mode of religious practice remained Christianity in the sanatorium.

Notes 1. Rosemary Fitzgerald, ‘Clinical Christianity: The Emergence of Medical Works as a Missionary Strategy in Colonial India, 1800­ 1914’, in Biswomypati and Mark Harrison (eds.), Health, Medicine and Empire, Perspective on Colonial India, Orient Longman, Hyderabad, 2001, pp. 88-137; Rajasekhar Basu, ‘Medical Missionaries at Work: The Canadian Baptist Missionaries in the Telugu Country, 1870-1952’, in Deepak Kumar (ed.), Disease and Medicine in India: A Historical Overview, Tulika Books, New Delhi, 2001, pp. 180-97; Basu, ‘Healing the Sick and Destitute: Protestant Missionaries and Medical Missions in 19th and 20th Century’, in Deepak Kumar and Rajasekhar Basu (eds.), Medical Encounters in British India, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2013, pp. 187-207. 2. David Hardiman, Missionaries and Their Medicine: A Christian Modernity for Tribal India, Manchester and New York, Manchester University Press, 2008.

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3. V.R. Muraleedharan, ‘Development of Health Care System in the Madras Presidency, A.D. 1919-1939’, Unpublished PhD thesis, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Madras, November 1987, see chapter 2. 4. Mrudula Ramanna, ‘Indian Attitudes Towards Western Medicine: Bombay, A Case Study’, Indian Historical Review, vol. XXVII, no. 1, January 2001, pp. 44-55. 5. This sanatorium was started by the Arcot Mission at Punganur in 1909 in a temporary building. After the union of seven missions, this sanatorium was transferred to Madanapalle in 1911. G.O. 504 (Public), dated 17 May 1911, and G.O. 966 (Public), dated 2 August 1913 (TNA). 6. The Madras Mail (an English daily from Madras), dated 28 May 1910. 7. Ibid. 8. G.O. 713 (Public), dated 11 August 1910 (TNA). 9. G.O. 1017 (Public), dated November 1910 (TNA). 10. G.O.125 (Public), dated 6 February 1911 (TNA). 11. Initially, the sanatorium was managed by the American Arcot Mission. The government made its grant through district boards of Cuddapah. The district board was favourable and satisfied with the functioning of the sanatorium. G.O. 504 (Public), dated 17 May 1911 (TNA). 12. Annual Report of Union Mission Tuberculosis Sanatorium (hereafter UMTS), Madanapalle, 1913-14, p. 1. 13. G.O. 966 (Public), 2 August 1913 (TNA). 14. Annual Report of UMTS, 1913-14, p. 10. 15. G.O. 193 (Public), dated 4 February 1916 (TNA). 16. Annual Report of UMTS, 1925-6, p. 7. 17. In July 1918 a branch of the post office was opened in the sanatorium, but still a great part of the mail went to Madanapalle, and only on the following day was sent out to ‘The Fourth Mile’ as it was then often called. Patients frequently arrived before letters or telegrams were received and were often very tired before a way of getting them from the station was arranged for. Therefore, it became necessary for the sanatorium to have its own postal name. Out of several suggestions a small committee chose Arogyavaram, a name in line with other place names in south India, and composed of the roots of two Sanskrit words, arogya, means ‘health’ and varam means ‘a gift of God’. Golden Jubilee Souvenir (1915-1965), Union Mission TB Sanatorium, Madanapalle, 1965, p. 8.

Health, a Gift of God at Sanatorium 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55.

243

Ibid, p. 23. Annual Report of UMTS, 1921-2, p. 19. Annul Report of UMTS, 1922-3, p. 6. Annual Report of UMTS, 1925-6. Annual Report of UMTS, 1922-3, p. 11. Of the total annual expenditure of the sanatorium about 20-5 per cent was spent on food. See Annual Report of UMTS, 1921. Golden Jubilee Souvenir (1915-1965), op cit. Annual Report of UMTS 1929-30, p. 19. Ibid., p. 21. Ibid. Ibid, p. 22. Ibid. Annual Report of UMTS, 1922-3, p. 15. Annual report of UMTS-1925-6. Annual Report of UMTS, 1920-50. Annual Report of UMTS, 1912-34. G.O. 966 (Public), dated 2 August 1913 (TNA). G.O. 1213 (Public), dated 23 September 1914 (TNA). G.O. 193 (Public), dated 2 February 1916 (TNA). G.O. 989 (PH), dated 14 June 1926 G.O. 2047 LSG (PH), dated 22 August 1930 (TNA). Ibid. Annual Report of UMTS, 1922-3, p. 15. Annual Report of UMTS, 1919-20, p. 9. G.O. 504 (Public), 17 May 1911 (TNA). G.O. 24 Local and Municipal (Medical), 18 January 1917 (TNA). Annual Report of UMTS-1934-5, p. 35. Annual Report of UMTS, 1925-6, p. 19. Annual Report of UMTS-1934-5, p. 35. Annual Report of UMTS, 1921-2, p. 18. Annual Report of UMTS, 1925-6, p. 20 Annual Report of UMTS, 1921-2, p. 18. Annual Report of UMTS, 1933-4, p. 36. Annual Report of UMTS, 1933-4., pp. 36-7. Annual Report of UMTS, 1940-1, p. 32. This block was in the memory of T. Lazarus, Retired Inspector of Schools, who made a donation of Rs. 10,000 for Tuberculosis Colony. Annual Report of UMTS, 1939-40, p. 35. G.O. 2864 (Public Health), dated 20 August.

CHAPTER 11

Coloniser or Anthropologist?

Locating the Identity of the Christian Missionary

vis-à-vis the Tea Garden ‘Coolie’ in Colonial Assam

ANISHA BORDOLOI

Colonialism was made possible, and then sustained and strengthened, as much by cultural technologies of rule as it was by the more obvious and brutal modes of conquest that first established power on foreign shores. Nicholas B. Dirks1-2

Introduction A connection between the idea of civilisation and culture is an important factor in determining the identity of the coloniser and the colonised. Notions such as ‘cultured’, ‘civilised’, ‘cultural/ civilisational progress’ and ‘cultural/civilisational backwardness’ were very often used and referred to as part of an intellectual understanding of different human societies by those in authority of knowledge production. ‘Culture’ represented a context in which the phenomenon of power could be understood by setting the ‘powerless’ within the framework of their own virtues as the ‘powerless’ according to terms defined by the ‘powerful’. Interests of the tea industry compelled the colonial govern­ ment to unearth features that homogenised different populations from different regions leading to deeper political ramifications other than the economic ones. It contributed in creating a wider and stronger hold of the empire over land and people located at a distance from each other with Assam being connected with the empire more firmly and its easy access with a difficult geog­ raphy no longer difficult to achieve. Studies associated with race

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science such as anthropology provided a rational basis and eased the pursuit of such colonial interests. Through an exploration of the origins, customs, religious systems and language of the sub­ jects, the coloniser assumed the dual role of an anthropologist too. As the civilising mission formed an integral part of colonialism, it not just signified the transformation of a colony from a stage of primitivity and barbarism to one of modernity, progress and development in relation to economy and society. This transforma­ tion attained an unofficial character too in aiming to change the nature of economy and society, especially, if colonialism could find deeper roots in the lives of the people through a moral fabric pro­ vided by religion, in this case, Christianity. Although it is convenient to locate many works associated with Christian missionaries and the impact of their philanthropic activities on the society and culture of Assam and other states of the north-east, there are very few works that examine the relation between the missionaries and the tea plantation labour commu­ nity in Assam. Therefore, a parallel can be drawn between the peripheral location of the tea labour community in relation to the larger society in the region which is reflected even in the number of historical literature produced on the subject. The subject finds mention in passing as part of a larger literature produced on Chris­ tian missionaries in Assam and the north east in general.3 Most works have focused on various aspects of the impact of mission­ ary work on the culture and life of the natives, the way the latter were represented in missionary literature, the association of the Christian Mission with the greater colonialist project and linked with it the efforts to establish the superiority of Christianity over Hinduism, the way churches sprang up in different places and con­ versions took place, their contribution towards the development of English education, starting of schools and efforts in developing a vernacular language such as Assamese. What do these endeavours speak about the identity of the Christian missionaries themselves? Given that there are many lay­ ers and facets of their approach to native society, what does this kind of multiplicity of motives, narratives or the production of knowledge entail? The fact that the tea plantations of Assam pro­ vided a suitable ground for carrying out Mission work among the

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newly recruited labour population, what remains to be addressed is the way Christianity perpetuated the stereotype of the ‘coolie’4 in the literature of the Mission. The way a large section of a subject population was easily accessible to the Christian missionaries, the way missionaries worked amidst the tea garden labour population treating the tea garden as a potential field of work, preaching the gospel among workers, producing knowledge about them in their literature from a position of economic, political and psychological superiority, one is compelled to draw parallels between the posi­ tion of a Christian missionary and that of an anthropologist. More so because missionaries were central to the emergence and profes­ sionalisation of ethnology and anthropology in Britain and in the way Britain envisaged its role in the colonies. Missionary educa­ tion was a crucial factor in the emergence of secularising strategies in colonial India.5 Keeping this possibility in mind that men and women of faith who carried out religious and welfare activities among the native communities could very often function like an anthropologist, this article attempts to explore how politics of power can function through multiple identities apart from the one that seems more visible. It is to be seen how the state operates through multiple domains of power that function along inter-personal lines in an unofficial manner. The first section of the article throws light upon how the search for the ‘heathen’ or the ‘truly pagan’ turned the tea garden ‘coolie’ as a suitable subject to carry out the mission. The second part explores the anthropological treatment of the tea garden as a ‘field’ with a focus on the frequent ‘tours’, ‘explorations’ and ‘visits’ to the field. This is followed by an examination of how the Chris­ tian missionary’s role as an anthropologist gets camouflaged into that of a coloniser as well. The article ends with an examination of a primary text such as Tea Garden Coolies in Assam: A Letter by the Hon’ble J. Buckingham, C.I.E., replying to a communication on the subject which appeared in The Indian Churchman. With Introduction and an answer by the Rev. Charles Dowding set in the year 1894 that further entrenched the image of the Christian missionary-cum-anthropologist-cum-coloniser and the tea gar­ den ‘coolie’ through the medium of print culture.

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Mission Work and the ‘Heathen’ Coolie Missionaries like Nathan Brown saw a tremendous potential to nurture the growth of mission activities in Assam, thus, compelling him to consider Assam as ‘one of the most important and encouraging fields in all the east’6 with a promising supply of the ‘heathen’ – a requisite to create believers. The presence of the ‘heathen’ was identified by their qualities of ‘primitivity’, ‘barbarism’, ‘lack of civilisation and religion’ which created a challenging task for missionaries to realise the worth of the mission if they were successful in civilising the ‘wild’, familiarising themselves with the mysterious or knowing the unknown. The ‘heathen’ as primitive, barbaric and uncivilised was synonymous to the identity of the tribe in colonial European racial vocabulary. In missionary opinion, the solution to ‘heathenism’ or ‘primitivity’ lay in the idea of service to Christ which appeared synonymous to the idea of service to the colonisers. This kind of pre-occupation with the ‘primitive’ or the ‘heathen’ enabled the Christian missionary to cope with one’s sense of alienation from his/her own culture as well as advance oneself professionally. The very identity of a ‘primitive’ which is romanticised in several missionary writings, is an identity which was unacceptable in the missionary’s own culture, thus becoming precisely the target of spreading the missionary zeal.7 Therefore, what was admired in a state of primitivity was detested in a world of civilisation.8 With missionary efforts towards improvement of agriculture and industry, the planting of tea received a religious/moral sanction as a ‘noble’ venture started by Europeans as benefitting a colonised population given that it would contribute in improving their eco­ nomic conditions by providing employment to the colonised. As availability of a large number of the ‘heathens’ became an important factor for the success of mission work, the failure to influence the minds of Hindus and Muslims, turned the Christian missionaries to pay attention to races with the absence of caste or religion. Hence, when the Court of Directors in 1831 suggested the government to follow a policy of religious neutrality among natives,9 in so far as the tribes were believed to be ‘ungodly’ or

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‘without religion’, missionary interference among the tribal population of the land was not inconsistent with such a policy of ‘religious neutrality’. Part of the missionary interest in the tribals of north-east India also needs to be traced to Christianity’s own pagan origins. The tribal population and their ethos of egalitari­ anism provided sites for missionaries to romanticise the past of Christianity, all the more so, when Sebastian Karotemprel, a man of the faith was driven to call Christianity as a ‘truly tribal reli­ gion’.10 Populations which exuded tremendous potential for the devel­ opment of evangelism and among whom it was the most successful in the plain areas were the tribes working in tea gardens, especially, Oraons, Mundas, Kharias, Kols and Santhals. These included both the tribals that settled in the villages near the tea gardens as well as those who lived and laboured within the premises of the tea plantations. For Christianity to avoid being portrayed as being imposed upon natives but embraced by natives out of their own will, it was important to target those sections of the population who exuded a sense of vulnerability, who faced exploitation by colonial authorities and experienced a loss of dignity and dis­ crimination at the hands of upper caste local Hindu population of the region. Immense potential to spread the faith was thus found among the tribes in tea gardens of Assam giving the Christian mis­ sion a cause, a reason to prevail in the region. Some among these tribes were already converted Christians before embarking on their journey to Assam. In missionary parlance, calling the com­ munity of tribals working in tea gardens ‘ignorant but sincere’,11 implied the ignorance of the community as essential precisely for the creation of a sincere population. A population, given their ignorance of the inherent meaning of Christianity, served it with loyalty. The attribute of ignorance that determined the position of the community as subjects, readily accepting the filtration of European Christian ideals, ran as a parallel theme with a similar position of the community within the framework of a wage-labour regime in the colonial tea plantations. The English government commenced the cultivation of the indigenous tea in Jaipur in the year 1835 and in 1836, the year of the founding of the Mission, the

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first pound of Assam tea was sent to London.12 Nathan Brown was hopeful that growing wild in abundance in Sadiya and its vicin­ ity, there were great prospects if proper cultivation of tea could be ensued.13 The frequent visits of missionaries in the tribal villages and tea gardens indicate these spaces as strongholds of mission presence. In the year 1893, out of a total Church membership of 354 in the Sibsagar district, only 38 were Assamese while the rest comprised of tribals from tea gardens.14 The success of mission­ ary zeal among a large section of tribal population in a particular district implied success of the same for the entire district with tea planters too contributing towards its accomplishment by building churches such as those at Amguri and Teok.15Although it is dif­ ficult to trace the first tea garden where missionary work actually began, it is possible to state that the Kols were the first community of tea plantation workers to be baptised in 1871 by the American Baptist Missionary E.W. Clark in the Sibsagar ‘field’.16 The Kols were imported labourers from Chota Nagpur in central India to work in tea graden. The community of Kols from Mackeypur and Dolbo­ gan tea gardens of Sibsagar district could be said to have been the first to experience the impact of missionary work, for whom the main church branches consisted those located in Tiok, Bebejia and Mokrung. After Clark, A.K. Gurney took up the responsibility of conversion in the three places mentioned above. W.E. Witter was another significant Christian missionary who carried out mission work among the tea garden population in the Sibsagar district of Assam.17 In 1889, C.E. Petrick became a regularly appointed mis­ sionary to work in Sibsagar.18 Christianity can be linked to colonialism in so far as the veil of humanity was used to justify and conceal inhuman motives and treatment of the colonised such as the workers in tea plantations of Assam. It was the success among the tribals in these plantations that enforced the significance of Sibsagar as a possible place for the missionaries and preaching was expanded further from the tea gardens and villages to the bazaars. In the opinion of colonial officials like Col. Hopkinson, the Commissioner of Assam, con­ versions were necessary to turn Assam into a land of settlement and tea gardens.19

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Although efforts at affiliating the tribals in tea gardens with higher education by missionaries is highly questionable, education at the primary level was confined mostly to the teaching of the gospel and spreading Christian ideology. Spread of Christianity through education helped in building an intimate connection with the tribal worker who was otherwise placed at a distance in the lower rungs of the civilisational ladder. Begun in 1927, the Don Bosco school-cum-boarding set up by Catholic missionaries in the centres of Guwahati, Dibrugarh and Tezpur played an important role in spreading evangelisation among the Adivasis/the tea gar­ den labour community in Assam.20 The tribals in tea gardens provided a safe gamble among whom missionaries were able to establish a stronghold given the loss of native roots from their original homeland as a result of displacement. Establishing a stronghold among this group helped missionaries to spread their influence outside this group and preach among those who were placed at the lower rungs of the Hindu social ladder such as fishermen, farmers and traders. After carrying out work among the Mundari speakers in Sibsagar, Lakhimpur too attracted the attention of missionaries as a prospective field with numerous tea gardens in the vicinity. Lakhimpur not only provided opportunities among the tea gar­ den labour community but also for the mission to be carried out among the Garos, Daflas and Miris, inhabitants of the nearby hills. Though communication and access to the hills was a major hin­ drance, most tea gardens, were located conveniently in the plains near major towns and well-connected with roads, waterways and railways. Many from the tribals in tea gardens were already converted Christians before they arrived in the gardens. Being dis­ placed from their roots in their original homeland, weak links of identity with their native land exposed these people as easy targets for evangelism.

The Tea Garden as a ‘Field’ Tea gardens were constantly referred to as the ‘field’. The extensive ‘touring’ and ‘exploration’ of the districts by missionaries like

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Nathan Brown, Oliver Cutter, O.L. Swanson, C.E. Petrick, Joseph Paul and John Firth provides one with a glimpse of the anthropological role of the missionaries. The frequency of ‘tours’, ‘explorations’ and ‘visits’ was possible once the plantation could be created as a ‘field’. Tours and explorations formed an important aspect of the spread of Christianity and selecting converts. Their tours and explorations involved a process of selecting those persons who were easy and ‘suitable’ for baptism. In the bargain, the people who were a hindrance to the cause of Western religion and ideology were excluded from the religious propaganda of the missionaries, as in the case of high caste Hindus and Muslims. On most ‘tours’, missionaries visited villages, markets (bazaars), road-side gatherings, gardens and coolie lines to name few spaces of daily activity of the selected groups of colonised subjects. The penetration of missionaries into such spaces of daily activity turned these spaces into areas of Christian conquest as they preached, sold books, distributed tracts, answered enquiries and baptised a few.21 The missionary-cum-anthropologist hence, gained ‘unlimited right of access to data’.22 A subject-ruler dichot­ omy was realised in populated public spaces such as these through encounters, resistance and acceptance ultimately putting to test the success of the Christian ideology when natives reacted positively to it. Like an anthropologist, the ‘indigenous people were read­ ily accessible to’ the missionary too. ‘Preferential treatment’ was received by him/her ‘not only from other Europeans in position of political power, but also from the subject people themselves’ as he/ she ‘was a member of the group in power’.23 Peter Pels compares the study of Christian missionaries as a major area of innovation in the anthropology of colonialism. He calls them ‘colonialist indoctrinators’ with ‘harmless curiosity’.24 If preaching through tours, explorations and visits connected the different worlds of the missionary and the potential convert then a relation between the two contrasting worlds was built also through language. Urged by the necessity to communicate the gospel, missionaries probably did more substantial recording of unknown languages than all anthropologists taken together. As all colonial relationships required a language of command, very

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often, its dictionary and grammar were provided by missionaries.25 C.E. Petrick notes that the ‘aborigines’ from West Bengal, Chota Nagpur and central India form ‘the best object for mission work’ clearly indicating that for the best experience of mission work among the ‘aborigines’, it became very important to develop the language widely spoken by the ‘aborigines’.26 Given that a major­ ity of the tea garden immigrants were acquainted with the Hindi language, especially, a large number of Kols, Mundas and Oraons, provisions were made at the Assam Mission Conference for exam­ inations to be conducted in Hindi as well, apart from Assamese and dialects like Garo, Mikir, Ao Naga, Angami Naga, Tangkhul Naga and Rabha.27 Members of the Conference deemed it the duty of the missionaries to outline a course of language study in the prescribed vernacular and to conduct the language examina­ tions in accordance with the rules of the Examination Committee of the American Baptist Mission Union. The pastors of churches which had a large population of tea garden coolies such as Kols and Mundas, preached in Hindi.28Mundari too is said to have been the vernacular of most of the churchgoers and it was the language in which they conducted most of their meetings.29 In fact, the New Testament was being sold at five annas per copy in Hindi and Mundari too apart from the above-mentioned languages.30 Due to the tremendous success of American Baptist mission­ aries among the tea garden coolies, their mission was termed as the ‘Cooly Mission’.31 A.K. Gurney points out that from 1876 onwards, the Mission was extremely dependent on the Kols, who were imported tea garden labourers from Chota Nagpur as they were considered ‘a race without caste’.32 Gurney wrote several letters and reports to the Missionary Magazine detailing the particulars of his work among the Kols, the Assamese and station work in general.33 Kols and Santhals formed a large number of ‘races without caste’ (around 10,000) who were brought to the gardens. Sibsagar being a large tea district of Assam, the Mission received more of these converts than any other. The most important churches that consti­ tuted a large number of Kols were at Teok, Bebejia and Mokrung. In 1878, Henry Osborne proposed the sustenance of two native preachers in his tea gardens at Dibrugarh.34

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A sense of permanency to the field was attached under the religious fold through frequency of tours and visits. For example, out of twenty-five people who were baptised in the North Lakhim­ pur district during the year 1895-6, twenty were from the Joyhing tea garden.35 Preaching and baptism eventually carved the way for securing land and compound in the station and clearing trees in the forest for building posts for a bungalow. The ‘field visits’, thus, not only led to a transformation in the identity of the population but also to a transformation of the landscape. In the words of Firth, touring by missionaries revealed to them ‘a region of dark­ ness’ in fields such as North Lakhimpur which had a large number of tea garden coolies.36 The revelation of ‘darkness’ of a prospective field of work not only coolified the identity of a population with that of the field but also essentialised missionary work through a constructed image of ‘darkness’ both in physical/racial terms as well as metaphorically revealing ignorance and lack of knowledge. Firth further adds that benevolence to the ‘dark’, ‘heathen’ coolie lay in his/her conversion into a subject by proving ‘faithful’ to the way he/she would be shaped as a ‘coolie’ under the mission.37 The success of the mission was determined by the number of heathens they could baptise indicating the worthiness of a tour which could successfully bring the intended subject within the realm of an intended politico-religious experience. So much stress was laid on visits and tours to the heathen sta­ tions that if coolies did not turn up at the verandah of the mission bungalow, the visits and services were held in their villages, in one of their houses. Even though it can be cited as a matter of conve­ nience, it signifies the essence of the missionary ‘field’ as a space of deep intrusion even into the coolie homes to carry out ‘fieldwork’. The deep intrusion of the ‘field’ also gets reflected in the details produced in numbers about the ‘field’. The detailed number of coolies who spoke Hindi, the number that resided in each district, the number of tea gardens in each district, the number of different tribal groups that constituted the ‘tea coolies’, how many of them were already converted Christians and who were not – created a vastness of the ‘field’ reflecting the potential, a precision in which

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data was collected and the incredible access of the missionaries to organised information generated by the state through the instru­ ment of the census – an important combination of knowledge creation and domination. Association with stations such as Teok, Bebejia, Madhopur, Mackeypur, etc., were defined in terms of ‘trips’, ‘visits’ or ‘tours’ to the fields and comparisons were made among them in terms of any interesting observations during the visits, trips or tours.38 Trips, visits and tours to the mission field were not bereft of methodogy and planning as outlined in the chapter titled ‘Methods of Mission Work’ by M.C. Mason in a mission report.39 The anthropological way is laid bare by Mason through tests and experiments in the field. According to him: Mission methods are human adaptations … to special conditions. Any method, therefore, must be measured, first by its harmony with the divine principles and second by its adaptation to its special conditions, not for­ getting the characteristics and abilities of the man who is to execute the work. A method or man successful in one field might be quite the reverse in another. The question for us therefore, is what are our best methods?40

A systematic outline was laid under the terms ‘Guiding Prin­ ciples’ that combined religious preaching with a methodology beginning with preaching, persuasion, charities, creating signs for confirmation, teaching and building character.41 In the case of ‘Application of Principles’, a united effort was to be followed by division of labour and knowing one’s field, where emphasis was laid on acquainting oneself with the field, knowing the habits, cus­ toms, beliefs, prejudices and labours of the people.42 Travel was considered a beneficial change for the missionary from office and classroom work.43 Missionary work, according to Mason is best realized when ‘the roaming preacher does a good work clearing the way, surveying the field and in selecting sites’.44 Work that was carried out by missionaries among different populations, villages or tea gardens, was reported in detail in the form of articles that were published in journals and magazines such as Report on the Assam Mission, Orunodoi, Baptist Missionary Magazine and

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Missionary Conference Reports in the nineteenth and early twen­ tieth centuries. The data was organised and compartmentalised after a field visit, similarly, one of the final tasks for the missionar­ ies was to organise ‘the Assamese and Kols’ into churches.45

Interlinking the Missionary – Anthropologist and the Colonialist One of the main reasons for missionary interest among the tribals working in tea gardens of Assam was determined by their own interests in tea gardens. Either some like Reverend Charles Dowding were heavy investors in tea plantations or some like Reverend Henry Osborne were themselves owners of tea gardens. In many instances, where missionaries embarked on preaching, they ended up securing land for themselves and building bungalows to preach. Apart from preaching, the vast availability of the ‘primitive’/the ‘uncivilised’ in the form of the newly arrived numerous tribals working in tea gardens in Assam provided prospects of improving their career and personal mobility in the social ladder too. Working among ‘the wild’, ‘the primitive’ and ‘the uncivilised’ was meant to expose the masculine, paternal and courageous attributes of missionaries, thus placing missionaries in the same platform as the colonisers. Assam opened up opportunities for those for whom all avenues of self-improvement seemed bleak back home. Concern about their own future was very much reflected in the words of missionaries like O.L. Swanson, . . . I became more and more concerned about my future . . . Pastor Peter­ son and other friends encouraged me to consider the possibility of full time Christian service. . . . I was not educated, I had no talents, I was successful in business and must not leave it, and when all else failed the tempter, I was confronted with the compromise of doing what I could in the church, but leave the idea of the gospel ministry alone. But the Holy Spirit did not cease to remind me of the fact that I must do the will of God.46

Invoking ‘the will of God’ justified the evangelical work under­ taken by missionaries like Swanson as a natural phenomenon

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with those like Swanson being naturally the ‘chosen one’ to spread the message of the Lord. There was a new found glory, pride and dignity at being referred to as the ‘sahib’47 by the locals. Preach­ ing elevated their stature as a few individuals like them were now responsible for the life and future of a large number of subject population. Pride was derived at being treated like the ‘absolute monarch’.48 Personal convenience was one of the important factors while pursuing evangelism in the colony with a good communica­ tion system as mentioned earlier. Their preference for areas which were well administered by the British determined their choice of labourers in tea gardens as preferred subjects who could be found in and around ‘semi-civilised’49 territories of the tea garden. Mission work among the tea garden labour community received mixed reactions from planters. While some welcomed the spread of Christianity among the coolie population in the gardens, others expressed vehement opposition to the same. In plantations where Christian doctrines were allowed to be preached, mission­ aries believed that Christianity worked in favour of the planters as it contributed towards curbing labour unrest or any kind of opposition to the established hierarchy in the plantations. Chris­ tian coolies ‘took no active part in . . . demonstrations, but were loyal to their employers and reasonable in their demands.’50 The rigid time-work-discipline routine which workers were forced to follow, not just played to the advantage of the smooth workings of the plantation but also in the words of a Christian missionary, ‘. . . once accustomed to a strict discipline the worker (found) it easier to adapt himself to the demands of his Christian faith and conduct too.’51 Just like engagement of the anthropologists with fieldwork was derived ‘… from the subjugation by his own government of the people he was studying…’,52 a Christian missionary’s engagement with the natives was derived from a similar position of subjugation of the latter by the government in power that he was a part of. A validity was derived from a shared position of power that also enabled missionary activities. Preaching among the tribals in the tea gardens, to prevent their minds from plotting evil against those who oppressed them was considered worthwhile. Christianity

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provided a channel to vent their anger, frustration, dissatisfaction or the breeding of revolutionary thought against the planter-col­ oniser nexus. Although Christianity helped these people to build their lives around the cult of faith, regain a lost sense of self-respect and find solace in their service to Christ, it did not really prevent them from the evils of colonialism. An oppressive structure pro­ vided significance to ‘humanitarian’ projects and the survival of the latter was very much dependent on the former. No matter how great a Christian missionary’s aversion to the colonial system, just like an anthropologist, he too was unable to function outside its realm. It was not easy for him/her to remain in a colony without participating in the power and privileges of the dominant group.53 Religion, thus, acted as an important agent in the production of loyal subjects to colonial capitalist imperatives. ‘Peace’, there­ fore, was believed to prevail in the colony if all the ‘heathen’ were Christianised – peace as a necessity clearly from the colonial point of view. In some cases, missionaries contributed towards organising the tea garden labourers into communities of tribes, districts of origin and gathering general information regarding their life in Assam in order to prevent labourers from escaping the garden premises into the vast wild expanse of Assam under the veil of extending them ‘pastoral care’. Missionaries, thus, helped planters manage their labour force better, prevent them from intermin­ gling with locals outside the premises of the garden and maintain the essence of the colonially created plantation as a ‘garden’, as a civilised territory and a paradise. For such a purpose, Fr. Carbery in a compilation titled Missionary work among the Tea Garden Coolies and Settlers in Assam, detailed information concerning emigration, tea plantations, tribal colonies in tea gardens Assam, their living and working conditions.54 Others like Fr. Rudolf Fon­ taine, brought together scattered numbers of tea garden workers and arranged them in small settlements in the vicinity of the tea gardens.55 These settlements formed a prelude to villages inhab­ ited by tribals in tea gardens which also ensured a steady supply of labour to the planters. Whether it was the hill population who were prevented from intermingling with the plain population or

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the tribals in the gardens prevented from being ‘lost’ in the vast Assam plains, an important link in all this can be traced to the interests of the tea industry. The protection of the tea industry was a vital factor in determining colonial and evangelical policies in dealing with a varied population in the north-east for maintaining peace, law and order for a smooth functioning of the former.

Dowding’s Letters If Christianity in the north-east helped to cater to the interests of the fertile agricultural plain tracts and particularly, the sustenance of the tea industry, an examination of a primary text such as Tea Garden Coolies in Assam: A Letter by the Hon’ble J. Buckingham, C.I.E., replying to a communication on the Subject which appeared in ‘The Indian Churchman’. With Introduction and an answer by the Rev. Charles Dowding set in the year 1894, would help in a deeper understanding of the perception of the missionaries’ about the colonial functioning of tea plantations and treatment of the workers in Assam. The significance of the text lies in the fact that it is a lengthy tract containing back-and-forth correspondence between a num­ ber of men-of-opinion ranging from government officials like J. Buckingham, planters, civil surgeons and members of the clergy such as Rev. Charles Dowding. The newspaper that provided the refurbishment of their opinions was The Indian Churchman. This text has been chosen for review in order to get an insight into the views of individuals like Charles Dowding, a Christian mission­ ary, who was outside the confines of the territorial space of the tea ‘garden’ while regarding the idea of the tea garden and those who worked there. One can quote Satadru Sen, For an imperial state, a frontier – i.e., a politically empty or exempted space – has a certain ideological value: it facilitates various kinds of escape, experimentation, differentiation and fantasy [emphasis in italics are mine]…a realm beyond the nation and yet located within its claimed boundaries.56

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The tea garden within this ‘frontier’ had to be compatible with the notion of empire where the untamed are tamed for the benefits of empire and the territory of the tea garden turned into a museum for an exhibition of the ‘exotic’ and the ‘wild’ quite similar to M.V. Portman’s attempts at trying to reduce the Jarawas in the Anda­ mans to the status of animals in a forest reserve in the 1890s57 thus creating a group of people who represented the inverse ratio of the modern,58 making them attractive enough to populate a land­ scape (Assam) similar to their image – ‘jungly’ and ‘primitive’. The idea surrounding the ‘primitive’, the ‘jungly’, the ‘wild east’ in the north-eastern region of the sub-continent just got intensified in the confines of the colonial tea garden especially when the ‘primi­ tive’ was placed in the same territorial space as the ‘progressive’ and the ‘modern’.59 The well-being of the coolie as a crucial subject of back and forth correspondence between Charles Dowding, a Christian missionary and various other men of opinion seemed more like a means of establishing their own positions of reason and power by choosing an object of unreason – the tea garden coolie. He/she has been cited as an object of unreason/irrationality because the coolie as in this text, was known by the contractor who supplied him/ her, the planter who ruled over him/her, the Christian mission­ ary and the various correspondents who discussed over him/her, the garden that he/she lived in and the region that he/she hailed from but there is no information coming from the coolie himself/ herself. Thus, the identity of each of the above is entrenched upon a body provided by the coolie disallowing the coolie to exist on one’s own right. He/she was perhaps assumed not to possess the freedom and the reasoning/thinking potential to identify himself/ herself but was identified by others who recognized ‘the coolie’. This very capacity to think and be able to identify the ‘self ’ over the ‘other’ prepared the imperialists as distinctly different from indigenous society. While the torchbearers of empire were debating amongst them­ selves, there was no space left for the native/indigenous response with the entire series of correspondence compiled primarily for British readership. A crucial role was played by print culture, for

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example, newspapers like The Indian Churchman which gave voice to the opinions of those in authority and in making authority be heard. This equalled a written stamp on the non-malleability on the position of those who wished to be heard because to be heard also meant an acknowledgment and legitimisation of the existence of the dominant and the influential through writing about them. Without a dismissal, ‘experts’ like Dowding might have sought a privileged location among the natives from a perspective of the metropole, the civilised and the centre which makes it pertinent to think about the history of the coolie in the modern state where he/she is placed in a geographical location far from the metropole and the centre. The significance of state sponsored newspapers like The Indian Churchman can also be gauged from the fact that they enabled a colonial, ‘white’ journey into the realm of the ‘dark’, the unknown and the exotic. Prevalence of sheer anonymity of knowledge about themselves: I saw a court Babu recently trying to find out by question from some score or more of people, where their homes were, that they might know where they were to be sent. They were asked what was the name of the Railway Station nearest their home. ‘who knows!’ some replied. ‘How far is it from the Railway Station to your home?’ ‘Who knows – ten kos’. ‘How many days to do that Journey? – ‘eight days or six days.…’60

made memory look blurred and uncertain, often leading to an erasure of knowledge about oneself and therefore relegating such individuals to the thin margin between remembering and forgetting. Such blurring of memory as evidence from a text from the colonial era such as this can be seen as an attempt to deprive the migrant labouring community of a sense of history, to ‘know’ about themselves and what better way to show such fading of memory when it comes from the coolies themselves as if to legitimise a ‘truth’ by Dowding by adhering to his European Enlightenment roots of proving the ‘truth’ through evidence provided by the coolies themselves. The real motive could have possibly been to establish the fact that the superiority of the European body with knowledge in its

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possession can best understand a native body as though the very act of ‘thinking’ is completely a domain of the whites. Dowding himself says, ‘I am myself, a small shareholder in a very large tea concern. This greatly quickens […] my interest in the subject’.61 One is left to wonder whether Dowding would be really con­ cerned with the death rates of the coolies if he did not possess any shares in the industry. Being a shareholder meant that he partici­ pated equally in the entrenchment of the empire and his concern over the death rates was to probably open the eyes of the colonists to the fact that increase in death rates also meant a defeat in the logic of empire as it showed nothing but a reduction in the number of subjects. By throwing light on the motives of Christian missionaries like Dowding who took interest in native matters, one thing seems clear that Dowding does not speak against colonisation anywhere in the text. He seems concerned only over the death rates. Dowding’s references to the facts produced by the Sanitary Commisioner of Assam and the Chief Commissioner – both government officials, underlined the necessity to substantiate the arguments put forward by him.62 Similar examples can be cited from other regions such as Chota Nagpur where Christian missionaries like Father Constant Lievens, who, although he sided with the tribals in helping them fight court cases against their oppressors, was very careful not to alienate the British government.63 The discussion over the death rate of the migrant tea labour­ ing community makes it pertinent for one to talk about the tea ‘garden’ and its significance as part of the empire. This showed an urgency on the part of the collaborators of empire such as Dowd­ ing to keep the romantic aspect of the ‘garden’ alive, to keep a past alive which was not possible if the coolies kept dying. Hence, the need to do away with the perils of modern elements like capitalism to preserve a romantic past – a pre-modern nostalgic past of the colonisers themselves which they seemed to have lost in the pres­ ent. Romanticisation of this past involved in keeping the coolies in a romantic state of decay but not to the extent of their death. When one is discussing Charles Dowding, a Christian mission­ ary and his sympathetic stance towards the coolies, it is important to

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build a connection between religion and empire which attaches the notion of morality in the way capital is extracted, hence, emphasis­ ing the moral aspect of obtaining profit. Morality provides a kind of legitimisation to the goals of the empire, all the more so, if it can successfully bring the subjects too under the sphere of domination and exploitation, thus lending a moral legitimation to their exploi­ tation. However, the very lack of consideration for the migrant labourers’ well-being had the tendency of turning colonial rule to an inhuman, immoral and illogical one, ‘…nothing less than a blot on the Administration, and a discredit to Englishmen.’64 Colonial­ ism is marked as an era of violence that completely drained the humanitarian aspect out of such a venture. It also endangered the relationship between the colonisers and the colonised. In order to rectify the saturation of such a situation, colonialism had to penetrate the lives of the subjects in a more subtle, non-aggressive manner. Here, religion seemed a prospective criterion that could further the task of colonialism.65 Therefore, Dowding attempted at making the authorities as well as men of the Company realise the ‘illegitimacy’ of such a rule that did not follow the norms of religion and morality as he laments – ‘…we might also sin through becoming the tools of a system.’66 Or for another instance: … a great and honourable profession, such as that of the lawyer, and that of the clergy, has again and again, arrived at a point, where it stood convicted, by the outraged conscience of its fellows of the most inhuman injustice, harshness, cruelty, greed, ambition; so, a propertied class has before now come to build up its stability in the most monstrous oppres­ sion.67

Dowding’s sympathetic approach towards the coolies lent a personal and intimate edge to the understanding of his relation­ ship with them which would, otherwise, jeopardise the task of subjugation. Such sympathy had the tendency to camouflage a relationship of domination governed along the lines of the fam­ ily,68 with a personal and intimate side to it. S. Endle, another missionary from Assam attempted to bring the reader’s attention to the act of the recruiting agents who,

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send up sometimes the father of a family, with perhaps one grown-up son and daughter, the wife and other children remaining behind. Many obvi­ ous evils follow from this vicious system, the father perhaps forming new (i.e., criminal) ties in his new home, and the deserted mother perhaps doing the same.69

From the perspective of someone devoted to the Church, forming new ties were termed as criminal because it defied the notion of the family and its moral boundaries. New families were formed on immoral grounds in the new land. Therefore, whatever did not suit Christian and European notions of morality were viewed as ‘immoral’, ‘criminal’ and ‘illegal’: But if in future, recruiters of labourers can be prevailed upon to avoid sending up isolated members of families, and will, in particular, take care not to separate husband from wife, and parents from their children, then no small service will be done to a cause which we all have at heart, that of morality and righteousness.70

By calling the Church the ‘natural protector of the weak’,71 the Church’s position of authority and the position of the weak - are both assumed to be pre-given and thus, natural. To be called the ‘natural protector’ also meant the wiping out of contestation of the Church’s position of power. Therefore, it seemed important to categorise those who were being ruled as ‘weak’, ‘poor’ and ‘jungly’ in order to erase any potential threat to its seat of authority. Dis­ cussing issues related to the natives within a religious framework tended to impose a sanction of legality, morality and subjugation along with instilling a sense of authority and dominance upon the forbearers of religion when they talked about a group of people, thereby, appointing themselves in the seat of authority while the coolie became the site of contest for the harbingers of religion and those of capitalist enterprises for the conquest of a ‘pre-modern’ people. Even when Dowding referred to the migrant tea garden labouring community as ‘coolies’, through the usage of such pregiven categories, he was not really contributing in reducing the social difference between the subject and himself even when he talked in favour of the former and hence, as a consequence only

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further entrenching such pre-given categories and naturalising them. Dominance, in the words of Franck Poupeau, ‘…is an illegiti­ mate exercise of power by a fraction of the population which masks particular interests under the general interests, the critical project then linked to an emancipatory interest.’72 Poupeau is quoted here because the power of the speaker (Dowding) was established not just by what he/she said but because those to whom it was conveyed (the British colonial audience) recognised them as possessing the authority to say it or rather, recognise the institution through them which gave them the right to say it.73 This also brings one to an interesting observation by Satadru Sen in the context of the aborigines of Andamans, for whom ‘… to discipline the drinking habits and sexual habits of tribals meant mapping and patrolling the zone of exclusion’ of natives from the realm of authority74 with administrators and missionaries like Dowding imagining the ‘savages’ as normatively free and there­ fore, patrolling this freedom.

Conclusion The anthropological sway is very much reflected in the travel writings, reports or visits penned down and published by Christian missionaries as they encountered new cultures and ways of life in the colonies. The missionary-cum-anthropologist struck a balance and a negotiation between primitivity and civilisation. Missionaries clearly performed a political role through textual representation of native society. In order to avoid colonial struggle, anthropological knowledge and planning became a part of colonial strategy of rule which also suited missionary approach towards their dealings with a colonised population. Their writings and representations became sites of struggle which got produced in the form of texts, archives and reports as a result of encounters with a section of population who represented living specimens of the romanticised, utopian, uncivilised, and exotic past of the missionaries themselves. The exotic was turned into a ‘field’ of numbers to be observed, worked with or worked upon that also paved the way to visual bias. The

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practical visits to the field got translated into documentation evidence from the missionary anthropologist’s perspective in the form of autobiographies, travelogues or reports. Missionaries thus, engaged in a simultaneous process of religious preaching and information gathering and producing, which in turn contributed towards the construction of what the idea of a ‘tea garden coolie’ was like and what it ought to be like through religious preaching. Colonialism was much more than official administration. It can be said to be an outcome of complex practical interactions. Through the examination of a primary text such as Dowding’s letter not only has one been able to establish a history of gener­ als, i.e. the native ‘others’ through the perspective of a ‘particular’ (Dowding), but one is also able to gain an insight into the gen­ eral world of the ‘particular’ (his religion, race, nationality) from where these ‘particulars’ derive their authority to talk on behalf of the natives. Second, it has brought to focus the non-mono­ lithic identity of the coloniser vested not just in the authority of the governmental officials or the planters but also in the ‘moral’, ‘humanising’ endeavours of the disciples of religion such as Charles Dowding. The tea garden and the coolies within it became sites of realising the relative supremacy of those who spoke about them or discussed what ought to be done about them. The absence of voice of the subjects themselves who lived in the tea plantations of Assam as is revealed from a text such as this, makes one come to the conclusion that those situated outside the territorial confines of the tea garden played a major role in making deductions about its inhabitants and where they ought to be placed in the social lad­ der depriving any sort of agency to natives to define themselves. This was precisely what defined the logic of a colonial tea ‘garden’ in Assam – a product of modernity sheltering the ‘pre-modern’. As mentioned earlier, the politics of power could function through multiple identities apart from the one that seemed more visible. Anthropology itself emerged as a discipline to further colonial endeavours through gathering information and knowl­ edge dissemination. The identity of a Christian missionary as an anthropologist as well as a coloniser cannot be seen in disjunction

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from each other and it is this idea of multiplicity that this article attempts to convey.

Notes 1. Nicholas B. Dirks, 2001, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India, Princeton University Press, Princeton, p. 9. 2. Ibid. 3. Mention may be made of works such as Stephen Neill, 1966, Colonialism and Christian Missions, Lutterworth Press, London; Jacob S. Dharmaraj, 1993, Colonialism and Christian Mission: Postcolonial Reflections, Indian Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (ISPCK), Delhi; Milton S. Sangma, 1987, History of American Baptist Mission in North-East India (1836-1950), vol. I, Mittal Publications, New Delhi; F.S. Downs, 1992, ‘North East India in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries’, in History of Christianity in India, vol. V, pt. 5, The Church History Association of India, Bangalore; Milton S. Sangma & David R. Syiemlieh, eds., 1994, Essays on Christianity in North-East India by F.S. Downs, Indus Publishing Co., New Delhi; Lal, Dena, Christian Missions and Colonialism: A Study of Missionary Movement in North East India with Particular Reference to Manipur and Lushai Hills 1894-1947, Vendrame Institute, Shillong; Sebastian Karotemprel, ed., 1993, The Catholic Church in Northeast India 1890-1990, Vendrame Institute, Shillong; Elizabeth Kolsky, 2011, Colonial Justice in British India: White Violence and the Rule of Law, Cambridge University Press, New Delhi; Hasnahana Gogoi, 2016, ‘Missionary Travel Literature and the Representation of Assam’, The NEHU Journal, vol. XIV, no. 1, January-June, pp. 39­ 50; Anupama Ghosh, 2011, ‘Conversions, Education and Linguistic Identity in Assam: The American Baptist Missionary 1830s-1890’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, vol. 72, pt. I, pp. 863-74; Sheila Bora, 2009, ‘The American Baptist Missionaries amidst the Tea Garden Workers in the Brahmaputra Valley (1886-1936)’, in Sarthak Sengupta, ed., The Tea Labourers of North East India: An Anthropo-Historical Perspective, Mittal Publications, New Delhi. G. Stadler & S. Karotemprel, 1980, History of the Catholic Missions in Northeast India: 1890-1915, tr. and ed. Christopher Becker, Calcutta: Firma KLM, under the auspices of Vendrame Missiological Institute, Sacred Heart College, Shillong, 1980. 4. The term ‘coolie’ emerges in most colonial documents in a common

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5. 6. 7.

8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

Anisha Bordoloi way to refer to the tea garden population recruited to work in Assam. It is also used as a general terminology to refer to labour in the colonies who carried load or worked on construction sites for roads and railways during the colonial period. Hence, the word would be used at various points in the article in order to understand the colonial construction of the term. Peter Pels, 1997, ‘The Anthropology of Colonialism: Culture, History and the Emergence o Western Governmentality’, Annual Reviews Anthropology, p. 172. Milton S. Sangma, 1987, History of American Baptist Mission in North- East India (1836-1950), vol. I, New Delhi, Mittal Publications, p. 30. Ward uses the terms ‘unenlightened people’ and ‘rude race of savages’ while citing the significance of Orunodoi, a journal begun by the Christian Missionaries in spreading knowledge of the gospel among the natives in Ward, 1884, pp. 9-10; Nathan Brown’s reference to the native population as ‘heathen’ as cited in Milton S. Sangma, 1987, History of American Baptist Mission in North- East India (1836-1950), vol. I, Mittal Publications, New Delhi, p. 30; Reference to ‘savages skilled in barbarous warfare’ in The Whole World Kin, 1890, p. 111. The author further adds that ‘the more cruel, ignorant and dangerous they were, the greater the reason for the work just undertaken’ (p. 111) and refers to the ‘heathen who are given to lying, theft, opium smoking…to everything wicked, rude and unlovely’, 1987, p. 140. Diane Lewis, 1973, ‘Anthropology and Colonialism’, Current Anthropology, vol. 14, no. 5, December, p. 584. F.S. Downs, 1992, ‘North East India in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries’ in History of Christianity in India, vol. V, pt. 5, The Church History Association of India, Bangalore, p. 37. Sebastian Karotemprel, ed., 1993, The Catholic Church in Northeast India 1890-1990, Shillong, Vendrame Institute, p. 520. Milton S. Sangma, 1987, History of American Baptist Mission in North-East India (1836-1950), vol. I, New Delhi, Mittal Publications, p. 57. Nathan Brown, 1890, The Whole World Kin: A Pioneer Experience Among Remote Tribes and other Labors of Nathan Brown, Hubbard Brothers Publishers, Philadelphia, p. 124. Ibid. Milton S. Sangma, 1987, History of American Baptist Mission in

Coloniser or Anthropologist?

15. 16. 17. 18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

27. 28 29. 30.

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North- East India (1836-1950), vol. I, Mittal Publications, New Delhi, pp. 57, 59. Milton S. Sangma, 1987, History of American Baptist Mission in North- East India (1836-1950), vol. I, New Delhi, Mittal Publications, p. 57. The Assam Mission of the American Baptist Missionary Union. Papers and Discussions of the Jubilee Conference held in Nowgong, December 18-29, 1886, Baptist Mission Press, Calcutta, 1887, p. 26. Ibid., pp. 26, 27, 28. Sheila, Bora, 2009, ‘The American Baptist Missionaries amidst the Tea Garden Workers in the Brahmaputra Valley (1886-1936)’, in Sarthak Sengupta, ed., The Tea Labourers of North East India: An Anthropo-Historical Perspective, Mittal Publications, New Delhi, p. 19. Lal Dena, Christian Missions and Colonialism: A Study of Missionary Movement in North East India with Particular Reference to Manipur and Lushai Hills 1894-1947, Vendrame Institute, Shillong, p. 25. Sebastian Karotemprel, ed., 1993, The Catholic Church in Northeast India 1890-1990, Vendrame Institute, Shillong, p. 156. Milton S. Sangma, 1987, History of American Baptist Mission in NorthEast India (1836-1950), vol. I, Mittal Publications, New Delhi, p. 146. Diane Lewis, 1973, ‘Anthropology and Colonialism’, Current Anthropology, vol. 14, no. 5, December, p. 583. Ibid., pp. 582, 583. Peter Pels, 1997, ‘The Anthropology of Colonialism: Culture, History and the Emergence of Western Governmentality’, Annual Reviews Anthropology, p. 171. Ibid. C.E. Petrick, 1899, ‘ Tea Garden Coolies’, The Assam Mission of the American Baptist Missionary Union: Minutes, Resolutions and Historical Reports of the Fifth Triennial Conference held in Dibrugarh, 11-19 February 1899, Calcutta, Baptist Mission Press, p. 68. The Assam Mission of the American Baptist Missionary Union. Papers and Discussions of the Jubilee Conference held in Nowgong, December 18-29, 1886, Baptist Mission Press, Calcutta, 1887, pp. 5-6. Examples can be cited of Udmari and Balijuri churches in Nowgong district. See ibid., p. 26. Ibid., pp. 5-6. P.H. Moore, 1899, ‘Report from the Nowgong Field’, The Assam Mission of the American Baptist Missionary Union: Minutes,

270

31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51.

Anisha Bordoloi Resolutions and Historical Reports of the Fifth Triennial Conference held in Dibrugarh, 11-19 February, Calcutta, Baptist Mission Press, p. 22. Milton S. Sangma, 1987, History of American Baptist Mission in North- East India (1836-1950), vol. I, New Delhi, Mittal Publications, p. 163. A.K. Gurney, 1887, ‘History of the Sibsagar Field’, The Assam Mission of the American Baptist Missionary Union, 18-29 December 1886, Calcutta, Baptist Mission Press, p. 26. Ibid., p. 27. Ibid. John Firth, ‘Report from the North Lakhimpur Field’, The Assam Mission of the American Baptist Missionary Union: Minutes, Resolutions and Historical Reports of the Fourth Triennial Conference held in Sibsagar, 14-22 December 1895, Calcutta, Baptist Mission Press, 1896, p. 48. Ibid., pp. 48-9. Ibid. A.K. Gurney, 1887, ‘History of the Sibsagar Field’, The Assam Mission of the American Baptist Missionary Union, 18-29 December 1886, Calcutta, Baptist Mission Press, p. 28. M.C. Mason, 1887, ‘Methods of Mission Work’, The Assam Mission of the American BaptistMissionary Union, 18-29 December 1886, Calcutta, Baptist Mission Press, p. 96. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 96-102. Ibid., p. 102. Ibid., p. 104. Ibid. Ibid., p. 116. O.L. Swanson, 1944, In Villages and Tea Gardens: Forty Three Years of Missionary Work in Assam, Conference Press, Chicago, p. 24. Ibid., p. 48. Ibid., p. 52. Ibid., p. 64. Ibid., p. 149. G. Stadler & S. Karotemprel, 1980, History of the Catholic Missions in Northeast India: 1890-1915 tr. and ed. Christopher Becker, Calcutta: Firma KLM, under the auspices of Vendrame Missiological Institute, Sacred Heart College, Shillong, p. 69.

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52. Ibid., pp. 582, 583. 53. Ibid., p. 583. 54. Sebastian Karotemprel, ed., 1993, The Catholic Church in Northeast India 1890-1990, Shillong, Vendrame Institute, p. 155. 55. Karotemprel, , p. 399. 56. Charles Dowding, 1894, ‘Tea Garden Coolies in Assam’, A Letter by the Hon’ble J. Buckingham, C.I.E., replying to a communication on the subject which appeared in ‘The Indian Churchman’, p. 8. 57. Diane Lewis, 1973, ‘Anthropology and Colonialism’, Current Anthropology, vol. 14, no. 5, December, p. 7. 58. Here, the term ‘modern’ refers to a comparative positioning of a group of people who constructed their superiority by identifying the non-progressive and backward nature of the ‘other’ and the identified ‘other’ representing the past of a people who consider themselves progressive and technologically advanced compared to the ‘other’ in ‘a’ present. 59. The ‘progressive’ and the ‘modern’ implied the white planters. 60. Charles, Dowding, 1894, ‘Tea Garden Coolies in Assam’, A Letter by the Hon’ble J. Buckingham, C.I.E., replying to a communication on the Subject which appeared in ‘The Indian Churchman’, p. 61. 61. Ibid., p. iv. 62. Ibid., p. 2. 63. Shashank Shekhar Sinha, 2010, ‘Adivasis and Witchcraft in Chotanagpur (1850-1950)’, Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Delhi, p. 17. 64. Dowding Charles, 1894, ‘Tea Garden Coolies in Assam’, A Letter by the Hon’ble J. Buckingham, C.I.E., replying to a communication on the subject which appeared in ‘The Indian Churchman’, p. 25. 65. Diane Lewis, 1973, ‘Anthropology and Colonialism’, Current Anthropology, vol. 14, no. 5, December, pp. 581-3. 66. Dowding Charles, 1894, ‘Tea Garden Coolies in Assam’, A Letter by the Hon’ble J. Buckingham, C.I.E., replying to a communication on the subject which appeared in ‘The Indian Churchman’, p. v. 67. Ibid., p. v. 68. The family forming the basis of dominance, order and discipline through the establishment of personal, intimate relationship between members such as the father – the head of the family vested with authority and the rest of the family members vested with the duty of obedience and discipline. 69. Dowding Charles, 1894, ‘Tea Garden Coolies in Assam’, A Letter by

272

70. 71. 72. 73. 74.

Anisha Bordoloi the Hon’ble J. Buckingham, C.I.E., replying to a communication on the subject which appeared in ‘The Indian Churchman’, p. 37. Ibid., p. 38. Ibid., p. 38. Franck Poupeau, 2005, ‘Reasons For Domination, Bourdieu versus Habermas’, in Pierre Bourdieu 2: Sage Masters of Modern Social Thought, ed. Derek Robbins, Sage Publications, p. 95. In this context, the institution being the Church. Satadru Sen, Aboriginality and the Modern State, Paper for Nehru Conference at Jamia Milia Islamia, p. 4.

CHAPTER 12

Romance of the Wild, the Natural,

and the Savage

Glimpses of Evangelism in North-East India,

1836-1900 M. SATISH KUMAR

This paper contends that the practice and performance of the missionary project generated imperial hermeneutic situations (Livingstone, 2000) and focuses on the need for an appreciation of it in the colonial context of north-east India.

Evangelism, Utilitarianism and the Charter of 1813 The identity of the indigenous tribal population of the north-east and its liminality emerged from the peripherality of their location in the colonial discourse and had little to do with the colour of their skin, race or religion. Here, Englishness as a cultural rather than a racial category informed the imperial hermeneutics in a colonial world. In other words, missionary endeavours in civilizing and humanizing the indigenous tribal population in the middle of the nineteenth century introduced moral meanings, both imagined and real, objective and prejudiced, in the understanding of the Noble Savages. This led to a fracturing of ideas of colonial modernity. Our goal is to unpack the imperatives of the colonial modernity project through the missionary and imperial discourses in the northeastern parts of India. North-east appeared as an uncharted territory, an empty space onto which imperial imagination projected its hopes, fears and

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desires. The question is whether these discourses valorized primi­ tivism. How did Englishness appear as a force of moral authority among the tribals and what were its consequences? For the ‘Raj’ to remain British, Englishness was a necessary vehicle. We would like to draw your attention to an interesting episode narrated by Mrs Grimwood in her 1891 work, My Three Years in Manipur about bathing drawers. This is an amusing incident associated with the Nagas. They never bur­ dened themselves with too many clothes, and these in particular wore little beside a necklace or two. I mentioned this fact to a spinster lady friend of mine on one occasion, and she was horrified because Nagas used to frequent the river for bathing at the back of the Residency grounds. She shortly sent me nine pairs of bathing drawers to be given to them. They were very beautiful garments; some had red and white stripes, and some blue, and they were all very clean. I presented them gravely one morning to my nine Naga ‘malis’ or gardeners. A few days later I went into the garden and found two men at work. One of them had made a hole in his bathing apparatus and had put his head through it, while his arms went into the places for the legs, and he was wearing it with great pride as a jacket. The other had arranged his with an eye for the artistic on his head as a turban. After this I gave up trying to inculcate decency into the mind of the untutored savage.1

The early part of the nineteenth century was infused with two very significant movements, of ‘Free Trade’ and ‘Evangelism’, what Eric Stokes called, ‘the rock upon which the character of the nineteenth century Englishman was founded, owed much of its impetus to the Indian connexion’.2 The call was made for the aboli­ tion of monopoly trade engaged by the East India Company and at the same time, a demand that evangelical missionaries should have a greater access in the empire. It was interesting to note that two of the Company’s servants, who worked as advisers to Lord Cornwal­ lis in India belonged to the aggressive Clapham sect, whose main intention was to enforce Christianity in the Raj. The result was that a generation of civil servants went to India, who were keen to sup­ port missionaries and promote free trade in the interiors of India. Based on such a foundation of free trade, the evangelical mission­ ary zeal gave impetus to the various social reform programmes

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initiated in the Raj. At the same time, the evangelical and Method­ ist ideas also influenced the political opinions in the colonies. The Clapham Sect under the leadership of William Wilberforce (1759-1833) wielded considerable influence with William Pitt the Younger (1759-1806) and Charles Grant (1746-1823), who controlled the activities of the East India Company. The Clapham Sect also supported the abolition of slave trade in the empire, (Stokes 1959, Hall 1995) and reinforced the importance of open­ ing India to missionary enterprise. In this respect the Charter Act of 1813 became an important landmark with regard to missionary endeavours in the Raj. It was Charles Grant, the director of the East India Company, who argued that colonized subjects should be assimilated into the empire and, therefore, by ‘anglicising the Indians, a community of interest would be established’.3 Thus in 1813, on the occasion of the renewal of the East India Company’s Charter, the Evangelicals mounted a major public campaign to achieve their objectives and to put Grant’s ideas into action. The Charter Act of 1813 resolved the decades of public controversy regarding missionary activities in the empire. This Charter led to the establishment of an Indian church with three archdeacons. The missionaries also ensured legal protection of Christian converts in India, and mounted pressure for the suppression of barbaric northern Indian, Hindu practices such as infanticide and suttee (self-immolation of widows on the funeral pyre of their dead husbands). They also demanded the East India Company disasso­ ciate itself from supporting Hindu temples and Muslim mosques during their respective religious festivals. Overall, the missionar­ ies acquired greater freedom for their work in India. Provision was made for an annual sum to support educational initiatives, which was recognized as a key vehicle for assimilation of the natives in India. However, the East India Company did not favour the evangelical view as it went against their traditional policies in India. Indeed, the transformation of the East India Company merchants into a ruling force was largely based on the assump­ tions of considered isolation from the natives, of the maintenance of racial superiority based on military conquest. Political expedi­ ency demanded that the East India Company maintain scrupulous

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regard for Indian customary laws and institutions. The idea was one of non-interference. Lord Cornwallis, in particular, had little sympathy for the ideas of assimilation put forward by the Evan­ gelicals. The fact that missionary ideals were being latched on to the powerful political agenda of free trade led to constant conflict between the Company policy and the missionary objectives of ‘civilising mission and commerce’.4 At this point in time, it is also useful to note the terms of discourse that was taking place between the Company and the missionaries in India. There was the emergence of a liberal colonial policy in the nineteenth century. Indeed, the point where the mis­ sionaries and the merchants were in agreement was on the issue that in dealing with the extension of commerce, human nature was intrinsically the same everywhere, ‘that in buying and selling, human nature is the same in Cawnpore as in Cheapside’.5 They also agreed in principle on the problems visible in India and their solu­ tions. From 1818 onwards, there was greater fusion of ideas among the missionaries and the merchants and was manifested in the establishment of progressive English institutions, such as schools, colleges, universities, banks, currency, laws and, indeed, religion. For once, the superiority of the British Empire and Englishness was established in India and informed polices in other colonies, too. As Stokes maintained, ‘to civilise India was the avowed aim of the British policy. This inevitably meant assimilation of India into everything that was English’.6 Thomas Babington Macaulay (1835) noted that there is a need to create, ‘a class of persons Indian in colour and blood, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect’.7 By the 1850s both the missionaries and the East India Com­ pany had rescinded their policy of tolerance, and respect for Indian civilization.8 At this time Evangelicalism and Utilitarian­ ism both converged in promoting the principle of individualism, thereby purporting to free the average Indian from the ravages of despotism, and tyranny of the ancient nobility, and, of course, the corrupt priestly order. They both agreed in evolving public opinion to confront and eradicate social evils. Where they con­ tradicted each other though was in the explanation regarding the

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importance of the law. The Utilitarians believed in the law as an instrument of human invention, thereby abolishing the role of God. The Evangelicals however, believed that law was divinely pre­ determined. So while the Utilitarians believed in punishment for those breaking the law, the missionaries believed in the power of persuasion, and admonition. It is now well established from studies conducted in vari­ ous parts of the British empire that evangelical endeavours were responsible for the anti-slavery movements, and for defining the course of the imperial project, be it in Jamaica, Assam or Bengal. This also helped solidify the archetypal tropes of colonial conquest of control, civilization and the removal of barbarism. The mis­ sionaries helped further their agenda of propagation and, at the same time, provided tacit support to the commercial ventures of the empire. The evangelical revival of the late eighteenth century was based on religious conviction, stemming from ‘a vocabulary of the right to know and to speak that knowledge, with moral power that was attached to the speaking of God’s word. One of the issues on which they spoke was what it meant to be English’.9

Englishness as a Discourse:

Its Link to Missionary Discourses

Englishness was a product of colonial culture, deeply rooted in the historical context of imperialism. The primary aim here is to interrogate the construction of English identities, which resulted in the formation of an ambivalent class in the colonies. Englishness relates to a set of values and identities, which became the very essence of imperial conquest. These relate to civi­ lization, progress, literacy and civility and helped to fashion the colonial subjects by enabling them to appropriate the civilizational authority of Englishness. This paper contends that identification with the culture of Englishness, while reshaping their identities, also led to displacement of their local cultural space. The colonial proj­ ect invariably created greater fractures in the spaces of modernity, particularly in the margins of the empire. In this sense, ‘English­ ness’ has tended to produce more conflict and contradictions

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than stable values, as espoused by the missionaries. In a way, this, too, produced a form of colonial culture on the margins of the empire. Following the imperial policy of assimilation of the tribals or the indigenous population of north-east India, Englishness was superimposed over an entire range of tribal diversities and differ­ ences. Attempts to iron out differences among the varied groups of tribes were rarely successful and sowed the seeds for major insta­ bility in the region after the Independence of India in 1947. We find evidence of how the tribals managed to reinvent their own local spaces and, thereby, reconstitute the constitutive core ele­ ments of Englishness. As Gikandi10 notes that colonialism was a project of power, at the same time, this project also helped retain the ambivalence of its intentions while providing an unsolicited marriage between colonialism and evangelism. Thus, the tribals or ‘noble savages’ were envied for their sense of freedom and were contrasted with the degenerate ‘plains’ persons. Yet the sympathy did not extend to the tribals’ heathen practices, of barbarism. What is interesting to observe is that both the missionaries and the colonial administrators retained their spaces of difference, of hierarchies, in the colonial cultural grid. In a sense, this was more of a paternalistic policy, to save the ‘souls’ from further degenera­ tion. Englishness demanded that the tribals acquire literacy, adopt Western values, symbolisms, vocations, accoutrements, and a European demeanour. Thus, adopting Christian names was very common among the tribes and this distinguished them from other ‘savages’. Cultural alterity superimposed itself over geographical space.

Englishness and Britishness in the Empire The debate between Englishness and Britishness had important implications in the empire. The invention of Englishness was a subversive category and helped to reduce racial and ethnic tension, which otherwise would have destroyed the fabric of the empire. The ingenuity of ascribing Britishness to the Celtic categories was balanced by promoting Englishness in the colonies. It is interesting

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to note that indigenous tribals assumed that ‘English’ was a generic category. At the same time, Scottish, Irish, and Welsh missionaries and administrators were all amalgamated into a category of British, in the service of the empire. The tribals, despite being civilized, and Christianized, could consolidate their own identity only by revoking and reinforcing the tales of their past valour and identity as a tribe. So, there was a contradiction, a conflict of representation. Their histories were ‘read and interpreted by the imperial agents from a vantage point of a greater imperial narrative’.11 The question that can be asked is, were they willing to renounce their old identities, and narratives in order to enter a colonial future, which still tended to marginalize their general representa­ tion within the colonial state? Indeed, past narratives and thereby their identities could not be erased, and at the same time, these narratives remained central to their world view. Evangelicalism, however, did drastically alter their socio-economic institutions, though as we note in the present post-colonial situation, their cul­ ture was rarely intruded into. It further tended to destabilize the general assumptions of binary categories of centre and margins. The remaining part of the paper will highlight the various aspects of this contention. The panoptical colonial tendency to ‘gaze’ to dominate was balanced by the gaze of appreciation for the noble savages, thereby decentring the binarism constituted by core and periphery narratives in the empire. The tribals are constantly aware of the difference between their identity and that of the imperialist. They realized that Englishness was the closest option to bridge this gap. They have effectively demonstrated that despite being classed as a colonial subject, they maintained their ‘distance from the imperial realm’.12 Thus, being English or ‘born again’ tribals did not divorce themselves from their cultural roots, much as the missionaries wanted them to do so. The question of their ancestry and its origins were fairly well entrenched in the tribal psyche. Their cultural translation to Englishness was a strategic deployment of their identity, thereby helping them deal with their internecine conflicts and territorial­ ity. The privileging of European cultural traditions faced resistance in space, thereby overturning the hegemonic discourse.

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The engagement of missionaries in diverse geographical spaces helped to establish and, at the same time, destabilize the imperial referents associated with the colonial subjects in north­ east India. The missionaries provided the scope for the emergence of a form of fractured modernity among the noble savages, thereby reflecting a distinct failure of the colonial project of modernity. While modernism was seen as a political triumph and a cultural triumph for the imperial administrators and the missionaries alike, the rise of subversive mimicry by the tribals only reinforced the failure of carrying the modernity project to its conclusion. These reversals back to ‘old heathen habits’, as we shall see, jeopardized the efficacy of the project. This raised constant fears and anxiety among the missionaries in the margins of the empire, i.e. north­ east India. This was a crisis in the ‘epistemology of empire under modernism’,13 thereby resulting in a fracturing of modernity ideals espoused by the Clapham Sect of Wilberforce and his supporters Grant, Shore and Macaulay. Englishness, therefore, threw up all kinds of alterity mediated by spaces, both local, marginal and core. Over time, race was abstracted from the earlier discourse on Englishness and ‘Sahib’ as a category became an alterity for the natives as much as Britishness became an alterity for other non-English colonizers in India. What we do find is that the mis­ sionaries were not exempt from the discourses on Englishness, being actual representatives of the imperial past and identity. As mentioned, imperial crises, such as the Indian Mutiny of 1857, the Vellore Mutiny of 1806 and the Morant Bay Mutiny of 1865, all reinforced the issue of Englishness as being a defender of freedom, virtue and order in the colonies. In the north-east, ‘aggressive bio­ logical racism’14 was not visible and the rhetoric of discourse was largely benign. At the same time the sins of being non-English was described as being idle, reckless, oversubscribing to freedom and, therefore, to anarchy. Englishness, subscribed by Thomas Carlyle, was distinctly different from that of John Stuart Mill. While Carlyle related attri­ butes of law and morality to Englishness, Mill, on the other hand, emphasised more on the humane character of English culture, of anti-slavery.15 Yet both of them concurred that there was an

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essential difference between the natives and the colonialist, which reaffirmed the civilizational authority of Englishness. Both deploy the natives as a hermeneutical other for extending the understand­ ing of Englishness in the colonies. Mill believed that moral and cultural change was imperative to ensure the progress of civiliza­ tion. Englishness thus implied domestication of the natives to its quintessential principles through the medium of education. As Gikandi, notes, ‘to civilise the barbarians is to enforce the essential qualities of Englishness’16 and this helped to reinforce the civiliza­ tional authority of Englishness. So Englishness influenced colonial culture and vice versa.

Englishness and the Tribals of North-east India Travelling to the extremities, to the margins of the empire, the north-east of India, helped us to see how the missionaries endeavoured to inculcate Englishness in specific geographic locale. What we now see is the construction of a new colonial subject, the hills people, and the tribes, who are far removed from the general ‘natives’ in the plains. These tribals are civilized to the nuances of Englishness and a defender of Christian faith. Indeed, the transformative power of Englishness is self-evident among the tribals of the north-east even to this day. Englishness was a spatial and territorial ideology17 among the tribals in India. Englishness acquired a more utilitarian form of meaning in the colonies. Englishness was presented as something, which can be acquired and even lost, ‘a second nature’, and a way of angli­ cizing the empire’s diverse identities. Missionaries helped to both localize and globalize this cultural vernacular discourse in the colonies and thereby helped to reinforce the imperial referents of the empire. To defend Englishness through such enterprises as education, religion, and architecture helped to prevent moral and cultural corruption of the empire. The missionaries, thereby, helped to enlarge the boundaries of Englishness from the metro­ politan core to the peripheries of the empire. These enterprises, therefore, aided the imperial translation of English identity among the colonial subjects. As Baucom notes, ‘there were constant

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attempts to secure Englishness of the colonies and to ensure the Anglicization of the colonised’.18 This was true for the missionar­ ies, too.

Modernity and Fractured Modernity Gayatri Spivak notes that the ‘empire messes with identity’.19 The principles of colonial modernity in effect succeeded in fracturing local tribal spaces and, indeed, their microgeographies of coexistence, as sanctioned by traditions, norms and conditioned by hermeneutical practices, experiences and consciousness. The north-east Indian tribals were visualized and identified within the racial alterity of ‘cultural primitivism’, which translated into forms of wildness, savagery, cannibalism, nomadism and their disdain for rule of law and of private property. Fractured modernity in this paper is about failures, of incom­ pleteness of the colonial project. It relates to an unstable colonial space, where modernism seeks aesthetic solutions to historical problems, resulting in fragmentation of subjectivities and imperial atrophy. The point is how to read the relationship between a ratio­ nalized European experience, colonized tribal space, and cultural forms of modernism. Missionary and indeed imperial anxieties were staged and managed in the projected tribal spaces of alterity. Their concerns were with the indigenous tribal or heathen cul­ ture, especially their forms of knowledge and belief systems, their social organization, and norms of animistic faith in their natural and wildly romantic world. The tribal world exhibited a normative cultural grid and norms of existence. In one sense, an admixture of fatal attraction and revulsion underwrote the missionary reaction to the ‘noble savages’ and their romantic idealism of the natural. At the same time, we do find the emergence of native voices chal­ lenging the forces of imperial adventure in their territory and this tends to vastly radicalize the imperial discourse of the tribals in the frontiers of the Raj. We see evidence of attempts made by the colonized subjects resisting the consolidated, hegemonic vision of colonialism by sub­ verting their gaze of the ‘Other’, i.e. missionaries, administrators

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and soldiers. There is now a flow of discourse from the margins to the core, openly challenging and at times defying the imperial and evangelical ideology. Such forms of disorder helped the mis­ sionaries and administrators to approach the tribal missions with a well-charted strategy of paternalism. Divisiveness of identity also related to fractured modernity. While modernity was introduced to wean the tribals away from the barbaric traditions, yet the past could not be erased, and this inter­ play between the past and the present resulted in manifestations of fractured modernity.20 Indeed, re-appropriation of traditional identity also led to fracturing of the modern identity. The tribals resorting to self-fashioning, along the lines of Englishness came about with the advent of missionaries, assisted by the introduction of Western education and indeed Christianity in north-east India. A good Christian tribal emerged as a role model for those seeking social and cultural mobility. This also redefined codes of respect­ ability and helped in the creation of a moral, political and cultural code of conduct, thereby taming their barbarism. This new sub­ ject identity helped them to stand apart from their non-Christian brethrens in the colonial space.

Fractured Modernity in North-east India Modernity was translated in a major respectability campaign, to recast the values and morals of tribal women and men and their notions of freedom, as exhibited in their respective dormitories, i.e. bachelor houses or morungs. Introducing the notion of private property also meant limiting the number of wives a man could possess. It is interesting to note that the rhetoric of difference, which came about due to missionary influence did not result in the social exclusion of the tribals themselves from the colonial project or their community themselves. On the contrary, attempts to civilize them and raise their level of English consciousness produced a notion of fractured difference, which resulted in their making constant forays back and forth within their established tribal traditions. Missionary encounter was very different from the colonial encounter, and the emphasis of the latter was more

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on commerce, whereas the missionaries were keen to enhance morality and humanity based on faith. We thus see the anti-slavery movements emerging as a focal point of dispute between the missionaries, on the one hand, and the colonial administrators, on the other. The missionaries advanced the attributes of Englishness to a far greater extent than the colonialist. At the same time, modernity here was a fractured one, which utilized traditional hierarchies of clans and tribal identities to push through their own sense of Englishness. This fractured modernity resulted in social and spatial displacement of the tribals, and initially were not mapped on to their traditions, thereby forming a hybrid sense of ambivalent identity. Aspirational identity, which geared towards respectability, became a focal point of the rhetoric and indeed, assimilation of the tribals into the Christian world.

North-eastern India and its Location in this Debate As mentioned earlier, the advent of a series of imperial crises in the colonies, such as the Vellore Mutiny (India) in 1806, the Indian Mutiny of 1857 and the Morant Bay Rebellion of 1865, resulted in what Hall termed as a ‘moral panic’.21 Race emerged as a main factor in this crisis, and its inability to handle cultural nuances associated with the natives. This was not a problem while dealing with the tribals of the north-east. The pursuance of Englishness was discreetly left to the ingenuity of the missionaries rather than to the imagination of the colonial administrators, particularly given their track record of administrative failures.

The Romance of North-east Tribals: Naturalness, Wildness and Savagery In 1874, the Province of Assam was created after the successful Anglo-Burmese campaign of 1825 and the Naga Hills district was included within it. The races here were described as ‘among the most picturesque in the world, and until their energies are sapped by contact with civilisation, they remain among the most light­ hearted and virile’.22 Paternalism, as a policy, dictated the terms of

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discourse. The general explanation of excluding the Naga Hills as a separate, administrative entity was because these backward people will only be victimised if we try and impose on them institutions which, while they may be suitable for the more advanced civilisations, will do nothing but lead to their exploitation. We realise the great danger of imposing upon them criminal and civil codes, and all that is connected with them, which while they may be admirable for civilised communities, are extremely dangerous and injurious to these backward races.23

This generated an intense debate about assimilation/isolation or integration of tribals. The earliest history of British relations with the Nagas is one of perpetual conflict. Between 1852 and 1875, 10 military expeditions were sent to punish Nagas (who comprised various tribal groups) for their raids on the plains. In 1866, a new district was formed and, in 1878, the headquarters was transferred from Samaguting to Kohima. The first British political officer was shot dead and this led to a series of campaigns to subdue the Nagas lasting until 1880. Major Butler, who was placed in charge of the hill tribe sub­ ject during the East India Company between 1844-65, was of the opinion that Government should abandon any attempt to administer the hills, con­ sidering that official intervention in internal disputes had been a failure. Butler, in the fashion of the day, describes Assam as ‘a wild, uncivilised, foreign land’, and he suggests that ‘to those accustomed only to the com­ forts of civilised life, or to the traveller who is indifferent to the beauties of scenery, the monotony, silence and loneliness of vast forests of Assam will present few features of attraction’. Major Butler wanted ‘to make Assam better known, to remove some prejudices against it, and preserve the memory of many remarkable scenes’.24

The tribals had a heightened sense of their identity and pride. They were largely territorial. The missionaries had acceded to the fact that these tribals had a form of civility, though more in a primitive state. It was their naturalness along with their primi­ tiveness, which attracted the attention of the missionaries and the colonialists alike. While the imperial space was viewed with

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suspicion, danger and contamination, the hills, inhabited by the diverse tribal groups, or noble savages, were a welcome change. These tribal spaces were seen to resonate the European sense of freedom, naturalness, of the primal nature. The colonialist search for the ‘natural’ introduced the oppor­ tunity for the discovery of many indigenous populations or ‘noble savages’, whose transformation into civilized dependable subjects was considered useful in the general schema of imperial project. Indeed, the missionaries and the administrators were surprised by their encounters with the tribals of the north-east of India, in the margins of the empire. Their naturalness was a rare commod­ ity in the empire and was distinct from the loathsome habits of the corrupted people in the plains of India. These tribals reflected courage, purity of intentions, self-sacrifice in lieu of treachery, cru­ elty, cowardice, dishonesty, idolatry and bestiality, as was visible in the plains of Assam and the rest of India. Missionary discourse was imbued with aesthetic justification and thereby felt the need to extend the words of the ‘Saviour’ among these benevolent heathens. This aesthetics largely informed the representations of Englishness and of the empire in the margins as well as in the core of the empire. These tribals were conceived of being continuous with that humanity, which was part of the European heritage. White notes that it was ‘this mode of relationship that underlay the policy of proselytisation and conversion’.25 In case of the tribals, they were not looked upon as an inferior breed of humanity. The colonial policies of aggression in the north-east of India was largely to temper the threat to the missionaries, the administrators and com­ mercial merchants, who were making inroads into the frontier, and thereby consolidating the empire. The Europeans, it was empha­ sized, had a ‘natural and strong sympathy for these people’ and the effort was how to ‘prevent them from being converted into bad Hindus’.26 This resulted in the enactment of an Inner Line Regula­ tion of 1873, in order to protect the tribals, or the ‘noble savages’ and primarily to bring the region under stringent control against commercial exploitation by British tea planters and other plains

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people. Incidentally, this regulation is still in operation today in the post-colonial world. Indeed, Johnstone, notes that: The question of education generally was one that greatly interested me. In combination with other suggests, I strongly urged the advisability of establishing a regular system of education, including religious instruc­ tion, under a competent clergyman of the Church of England. I pointed out that the Nagas had no religion; that they were highly intelligent and capable of receiving civilisation; that with it they would want a religion, and that we might just as well give them our own, and make them in that way a source of strength, by thus mutually attaching them to us.27

He goes further to note that, a fine interesting race like the Angamis, might, as a Christian tribe, occupy a most useful position on our Eastern Frontier, and I feel strongly that we are not justified in allowing them to be corrupted and gradually ‘converted’ by the miserable, bigoted, caste-observing Mussulman (or Muslims) of Bengal, men who have not one single good quality in com­ mon with the manly Afghans, and other real Mussulman tribes. I do not like to think it, but unless we give the Nagas a helping hand in time, such is sure to be their fate and we shall have ourselves to thank when they are utterly corrupted.28

Thus, we see that the fear of contamination of the noble savages by the plains population was real and the continued protection of their naturalness was a moral imperative for the missionaries and administrators alike in the north-east of India.

Geography of Missions: Company, Tea and Commerce There is little written on the geography of missionary discourses in north-east India. The next section presents a sample of writings on the region by colonial administrators, soldiers, missionaries, and explorers, whose interpretations generally reflected the biases of the period in which they were operating. However, what we get here is a discourse, which is inevitably a firsthand report and, at the same time, provides us with an insight of the context in which they

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were operating in colonial India. Anthropologists who worked on colonial India have suggested that ‘there were no illusions about the noble savage; in the main their opinion of the tribes was a low one and their attitude was all too often patronizing or scornful’.29 Lord Dalhousie pronounced the Assam frontier to be a ‘bore’, and even as late as 1911 we find the wife of an officer attached to the Abor Expedition of that year expressing herself in a series of puns: ‘It is such a bore that my husband has to go off on that silly Abor Expedition to fight those stupid aborigines with their queer arboreal habits.’30 In 1869, Lewin anticipates the attitude and policy of modern India, when he writes, This I say, let us not govern these hills for ourselves, but administer the country for the well-being and happiness of the people dwelling therein. What is wanted here is not measures, but a man. Place over them an officer gifted with the power of rule, not a mere cog in the great wheel of government, but one tolerant of the failings of his fellow-creatures and yet prompt to see and recognise in them the touch of nature that makes the whole world kin, apt to enter into new trains of thought and to modify and adopt ideas, but cautious in offending national prejudice. Under a guidance like this, let the people by slow degree civilise them­ selves. With education open to them and ye moving under their own laws and customs, they will turn out not debased and miniature epitomes of Englishmen, but a new and noble type of God’s creatures.31

Even serious writers took the same view. Butler declared that, the troops of his command wish for nothing better than an opportunity of contending with the Singphos, or indeed with any of their treacherous neighbours (whom they hold in the utmost contempt) in a fair battle in the open country.…32

He called the Khamptis ‘a discontented, restless, intriguing tribe’. The Singphos were ‘rude treach­ erous people’; the Abors were referred to ‘as void of delicacy as they are of cleanliness’ and the Nagas ‘as an uncivilised race, with dark complex­ ions, athletic sinewy frames, hideously wild and ugly visages, reckless of human life’.33

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Among such (‘noble savages’), says Butler in 1847; ‘we might reasonably expect missionary zeal would be most successful. For the last eight years, however, two or three American Baptist mis­ sionaries had in vain endeavoured to awake in them a sense of the saving virtue of Christianity’.34 Rowlatt, who explored the Mishmi hills in 1844, describes the Mishmis as ‘disgustingly dirty: with the exception of a few of the chiefs, they seldom washed from one year’s end to another.… They seem to have but a very faint idea of any religion’.35 M’Cosh who included a chapter on the hill tribes in his Topography of Assam (1837) says of the Miris that their manners and habits are ‘wild and barbarous and their persons filthy and squalid’.36 Robinson, though he speaks well of the Abors, describes the Daflas as having ugly countenance and a ‘somewhat ferocious appearance’. Beres­ ford speaks of the Abors as ‘truculent and aggressive … like all savages, the only law they know or recognise is that of force and in the ability of awarding prompt and speedy punishment’.37 Needham, spoke about the Mishmis as ‘treacherous and cow­ ardly curs’; they are ‘blustering and leniency is as little understood by this tribe as by any other similarly uncivilised and savage’.38 Likewise, Dalton notes that the Apa Tanis make war ‘both effectually and honourably, fighting only men and inflicting no injury whatever on non-combatants’. There was a general lack of sympathy for the tribals of the north-east. The records pertaining to religion was largely imperfect. As Elwin notes, ‘it was not easy, at that date, for the majority of European officers to take seriously any religion other than their own’.39 This belief that the tribal people of Assam had no religion, or alternatively that what religion they had was (as Butler said of the Singphos) ‘a mixture of all the various idolatries and superstitions’ ever invented, did not encourage unbiased and scientific inquiry’. Thus, even Dalton says that ‘the religion of the Mishmis is confined to the propitiation of demons’ and of the Chulikatas he observes, ‘I have met with no people so entirely devoid of religious feeling as are the Chulikatas. I had long conversations on the subject with several chiefs, and they utterly rejected all notions of a future state

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or of immortality of any kind’. Of the Nagas he says, ‘they have no temples and no priests, and I never heard of any form of worship amongst them, but I do not doubt that they sacrifice and observe omens like other tribes’.40 In 1865, a leading article in the Pioneer brought to focus the habitat of the tribals in the north-east of India. It stated ‘that the only idea which most men had, with the habitat of savage tribes, whose bloody raids and thieving forays threatened serious danger to the cause of tea’.41 J. M’Cosh notes that, ‘this beautiful tract of country, though thinly populated by straggling hordes of barba­ rism and allowed to lie profitless in impenetrable jungle, enjoys all the qualities requisite for rendering it as one of the finest in the world. Its climate is cold, healthy and congenial to European constitutions’.42 Mackenzie states that an American missionary, Mr Bronson, had resided for some years among these fierce tribes teaching them Christianity and the art of cultivating tea.43 The southeastern hills of Assam are the abode of many tribes of Nagas. They are a very uncivilised race, with dark complexions, athletic sinewy frames, hideously wild and ugly visages: their faces and bodies being tat­ tooed in a most frightful manner by pricking the juices of the ‘bela’ nut into the skin in a variety of fantastic figures. They are reckless of human life; treacherously murdering their neighbours often without provoca­ tion, or at best for a trivial cause of offence. The greater number of the Nagas is supposed to be in a destitute state, living almost without any clothing of any kind. Their poverty renders them remarkably free from any prejudices in respect of diet, they will eat cows, dogs, cats, vermin and even reptiles, and are very fond of intoxicating liquors. Amongst a people so thoroughly primitive and so independent of religious prepos­ sessions, we might reasonably expect missionary zeal would be most successful; for the last eight years however, two or three American Baptist missionaries have in vain endeavoured to awake in them a sense of the saving virtues of Christianity.44

The earliest missionaries who went into the Brahmaputra Valley were the Jesuit missionaries, Stephen Cacells and J. Gabral. They were keen to find a route to China and Tibet, through the landlocked northeast frontier.45 Downs, however, believes that the earliest missionaries may have appeared with the advancing

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Mughal army way back in 1696.46 The Serampore mission of the Baptist Missionary Society made the first significant contact with north-east India in the early part of the nineteenth century. The initiative for starting the missionary enterprise (as mentioned at the outset) was from the East India Company, at the insistence of Grant, and Wilberforce, in conjunction with the Clapham Sect. This initiative was also supported by the fact that the policy of mil­ itary expeditions was not proving to be fruitful, and was resulting in endless wars of retaliation, and revenge.47 The consensus was that what guns could not achieve the power of the gospel would. There was also a realization that these tribals in north-east India were untainted by either Islam or Hinduism. It was believed that Christianity was the basis for the stabilization of the empire. James Johnstone believed that a large number of Christian hill men between Assam and Burma would become a valuable prop to the British.48 General Dalton, CSI, as commissioner of Chota Nagpure, did his utmost to aid Christian mission and said that, it cannot be doubted that a large population of Christian hill-men between Assam and Burmah would be a valuable prop to the state. Prop­ erly taught and judiciously handled, the Angamis would have made a fine manly set of Christians, of a type superior to most Indian native converts, and probably devoted to our rule. As things stand at present, I fear they will be gradually corrupted and lose the good qualities, which have made them attractive in the past unless some powerful counter influence is brought to bear on them, they will adopt the vile, bigoted type of Mohammedanism prevalent in Assam and Cachar, and instead of becoming a tower of strength to us, be a perpetual weakness and source of annoyance. I earnestly hope that I may be wrong and that their future may be as bright a one as I could wish for them.49

From the very early days, there were two sharply divided points of view about the development of the hills. Some officials, especially those posted in Assam who knew the realities of the situation, felt that government should undertake a ‘mission of civilisation’ and that the only way to prevent raids both on the plains and other Naga villages with their inevitable and distasteful consequence was to establish administrative control of the whole of India up to the Burmese frontier. Yet they did not bring all areas

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under the Company control because it was too much trouble and too expensive. An order of the Government of India in 1866 puts the situation clearly: ‘Should the hillmen be gradually reclaimed to our rule and civilised, without much cost to the British treasury in the process, it will be a good work well accomplished.’50 William Carey responded to the request of the British magis­ trate of Sylhet (Bangladesh) to send a mission to the Khasi Hills in 1813. The mission sent its first Indian convert Krishna Chandra Pal to the Khasi Hills, with the Bible in Bengali script. David Scott, chief commissioner of Assam, took the next initiative. He wrote a letter to Bayley, secretary to the government of India on 27 April 1825, proposing that the Calcutta Council invite missionaries to start humanitarian activities among the hill tribes of Assam.51 Thus, started the mission of civilizing the unruly, barbaric ‘noble savages’ in the north-east. Further efforts were made to provide all assistance to the missionaries, in complete reversal to the earlier policy of the East India Company: ‘The government could give not only financial assistance but also salary to the people who might be employed in their capacities as missionaries.’52 The Baptist Missionary Society (BMS) opened its centre at Gauhati, in 1829, with Scott’s assistance. The Anglo-Indian mis­ sionary came up in Cherrapunji in 1833. In 1841, the American Baptist Mission was established in upper and lower Assam53 and the Welsh Presbyterian Mission went into the Khasi Hills in Shillong. The engagement of the American missions was by accident rather than by design. They, too, were keen to seek a route to China, to establish missions among the Chinese. Thus missionaries’ interest in the north-east of India was guided and aided by their evangeli­ cal, commercial and political interests. Nathan Browns and Oliver Cutters, a printer, who established a printing press for evangelizing the Shans and then the Chinese, aided the American Baptist mis­ sionaries. This was called the China and Shan Mission.54 Indeed, the Asian strategy was ill planned because the Sing­ phos and Khamtis, tribes for whom they started their missions, had no links with the Shans in Burma. At the same time, these tribes resisted the advent of the colonialists into their territory. Political instability frustrated the efforts of Brown in establishing a ‘gateway

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to the celestial empire’. This resulted in Revd Miles Bronson tak­ ing steps to cultivate the Nagas. This action was widely endorsed by the colonial administrators, believing that, ‘such work would contribute directly or indirectly to the British policy of pacifying the Naga tribes without having to assume direct administrative control over them’.55 There was a major controversy that appeared in the uncoordi­ nated approach and strategy between the missionaries on the field and the home board. The board was ambivalent about the nature and progress of the mission activities in the Brahmaputra Valley. They ignored geography and insisted that ‘whatever be the area or situation, evangelism should follow the New Testament pattern and the missionary had to work in a manner approved by the board in advance’.56 The board also questioned the validity of education as the basis for spreading the gospel of truth. It appeared that the entire controversy appeared during the shortage of funds due to the American Civil War. This reduced the pace of missionary progress in the north-east. The mission for evangelizing the Brahmaputra, like the Central Asian plan, was embarked upon with great hopes and optimism, but without much funds to back the plan. Lack of results prompted the idea of abandoning the Assam mission.57 It was an American missionary, Mr Bronson (1842-52), who had resided among the tribes, teaching them Christianity and the art of cultivating tea. He asked the government to contribute Rs. 100 a month towards his Naga schools.58 The government, however, at this time thought it improper to give direct aid to missions, even when working among savage tribes, forgetting that it had made grants in 1829 to the Garo missions with very fair results.59 However, the sincerity of the Garo tribes and other converts re-activated the enthusiasm, and the mission activities among the Nagas was revived in 1841. Mr Clark, a missionary, wanted the Company to support his ventures among the Ao Nagas in 1871 but did not get much response because of the establishment of the Inner Line Permit. Under the East India (Laws and Regula­ tions) Act, 1870, these areas were termed ‘un-administered’, but were regarded as part of the province of Assam for the protec­ tion of the indigenous tribes of Assam Valley and the Northeast

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Frontier Agency. Here the commercial interests of the Company came into conflict with the evangelical endeavours. The Company official turned a blind eye to merchants who transgressed the Line, whereas they strictly enforced the code to the detriment of the missionary endeavours among the ‘noble savages’.60

Company versus Evangelicals: Terms of Discourse Thus, while evangelism and free trade went hand in hand, yet there were ruptures to contend with in the operation of this twin strategy in the north-east of India. First, there were colonial administrators like David Scott, who clearly went against the Utilitarian policy of Cornwallis and established a paternalistic regime of accommodation of indigenous interest to promote commercial interests of the East India Company. At the same time, both the evangelists and the utilitarians evoked individualism as a means to break out of the tyranny and slavery associated with heathen customs. The Welsh Calvinist Methodist Foreign Mission Society (WCMFMS) operated through the London Missionary Society (established in 1795, as a conglomeration of Anglicans, Welsh Presbyterians, and Congregationalists/Independents). Conflict between church polity and the policy of recruiting the missionar­ ies resulted in the Welsh mission breaking away and establishing the WCMFMS in 1840, in order to provide a greater sense of responsibility and greater liberality among its workers.61 Thus, the Welsh mission established itself in Shillong, in the Khasi Hills in 1841, 1866 and in the Lushai Hills in 1891. The early missionary texts pertaining to the tribes are full of pejorative and uncharitable reference in the terms defined by the colonial texts in Western parameters. During her first encounter with the Ao tribes, whom she had come to evangelize Mary Mead Clark was full of contempt, ‘I was introduced to these stalwarts, robust warriors, dressed mostly in war medal, each man grasping his spear, shaft decorated with goats hair, dyed red and yellow and also fringed with the long black hair of a woman telling the story of bloody deeds.’62

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In his first letter, Thomas Jones described the people with whom he had come (Khasi Hills) into contact in the following words: A more pitiful lamentable and at the same time a more inviting field for the Christian cannot be found. Here are multitudes upon multitudes of untutored heathen, naturally lazy and sluggish, living in filth and rags, afraid to wash a rag lest it should wear out sooner, depriving themselves of proper clothing, niggardly hoarding up every pice (farthing) they can get and if asked the reason why they answer that they may have some­ thing to sacrifice when they or their friends are ill.63

About the Lushai Hill, they used the description, The inhabitants were regarded by the few Europeans then residing in Bengal as the fiercest and most barbarous of all the tribes within the province, notorious for their headhunting expeditions to the neighbour­ ing plains. The object of these raids was to obtain human skulls with the object to adorn the graves of their ancestors, the belief prevailing that the spirits of the slain would become the slaves of their ancestors in the spirit world.64

The missionaries described their life amidst the tribals as ‘liv­ ing in horrors of savage warfare’ which the tribals indulged in. In fact, they were constantly haunted by fear of headhunting which the tribals practised. When Dr Clark went up the Naga Hills, the magistrate of Sibsagar asked his wife, ‘Don’t you expect to see your husband with his head on his shouders?’ During their subsequent stay in the hills, Clark’s cook was repeatedly warned not to give much blaze to the fire lest the villages of the surrounding peaks take notice of the new settlers and adorn their skull stores with new heads.65 S.W. Rivenburg, another pioneer American mission­ ary among the Nagas, expressed his shock that a man was not admitted to his tribe formally ‘until he participated in the taking of human life’. In addition, ‘after a war between villages conquerors hang the skull of their enemies on their fence posts as Americans hang deer heads in their front walls’.66 Sword described the Garo tribe as a ‘fierce and untameable tribe’.67 Revd E.G. Phillips agreed that the Garos were ‘bloodthirsty

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savage[s]’ who were ‘most desperate and inconvincible’.68 Rev. P.H. Moore (1886) talked of the natives as Born in heathenism and brought up in poisonous atmosphere and in their earliest childhood were taught by their own parents—lip all forms of lying and deceit and filthy communication—slander, backbiting and reviling abuse.69

Of the tribal religion Moore (1886) said, ‘all these hill people were demon worshipers; but each tribe has its own demons and its own ceremonies, preserved in pristine purity or largely modified by their environment’.70 As far as the religious faith of the tribes were concerned, it was repeatedly emphasized that their religion ‘was a crude form of demonology. Its main principle consists in the endeavour to propitiate evil spirits by the offering of sacrifices. A vague belief exists in a supreme being’.71 The religion of Khasi was frequently described as animism or spirit worship in which the worship of demons or evil spirits was repeatedly emphasized. These reports also concluded that the Khasis did not have any defi­ nite idea about religion as such.72 Tribals were often associated with liquor and drunkenness, which the Missionaries detested. The Mizos were said to be ‘lazy, cruel, superstitious and very prone to drunkenness’.73 Thomas Oldham mentioned about the Khasis that of the bad quali­ ties ‘dissoluteness of manners and drunkenness were the most prominent’.74 Of the Tangkhul Naga, Pettigrew (1934) wrote disap­ provingly of their addiction to zu (rice beer). In his annual report, he stated that the Meithei was reckoned as ‘a liar’ but the Tangkhul Naga could easily beat the former in the art of lying.75 Another characteristic, which the missionaries associated with tribalism, was their marriage institution. They often frowned upon the sexual openness of the tribals but what they strongly disliked besides polygamy was the ease with which tribal men abandoned their married wives. In other words, the absence of divorce laws and the weak institution of the marriage itself were associated with tribal life. ‘The worst feature in the manner of the people and one likely to be a serious obstacle to the missionary is the laxity of

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their marriage, indeed divorce is so frequent that their unions can hardly be honoured with the name of marriage.…’76 Similarly, the missionary also detested the tribal culture of breaking out into community singing and dance practised with lavish feasts, where animals were sacrificed, and spirit worship practised accompanied by much drunkenness. The missionaries, in their evangelization effort, tried to discourage such performance perpetually. In fact, the missionaries reported that the opposition and hostility to Christianity and reversion back to ‘heathenism’ by the tribals was manifested by waves of elaborate dance and song performance by the community. This performance was done often deliberately in order to spite the missionaries. It may be mentioned here that eventually such community song and dance was adapted as a part of Christianity in these tribal areas. Adoption of local practices was something common to all religions, be it Buddhism or Islam. While tribalism was condemned as ‘savagery’, the mis­ sionaries rationalized their advance in the area as ordained to bring the words of the saviour to the tribals. Wherever we go and the more we hear of the customs, habits and lives of the people, the more we are convinced of their need of the Saviour. Deeper is the shadow of this country’s sin than the dark hue of surround­ ing mountains under an approaching storm, brighter are our expectations and hopes than the coming down of the eastern sky, for we want the com­ ing of the great light of the world who shall pour forth His eternal light upon these people who sit in darkness and in the valley of the shadow of death. We wait for the coming of Him who bringeth life to those who are perishing for want of truth.77

Tribal Gaze and Evangelical Discourse Unlike in the rest of the Indian subcontinent, where modernity introduced a sharp divide between public and private spheres, in case of north-east India, modernity had to counter the divide between communality and ideas of individuality as espoused by the project of Westernization. The clash was between values of the ‘noble savages’ and indulgence of their civilizing mentors. In

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a sense, ‘fractured’ modernity became far more rhetorical than the project of colonialism. Evangelism led to the subordination of communal identity to that of the individual identity. The posturing was full of contradictions resulting in tensions between the colonial state and the missionaries. The missionaries were not looked upon by favour by these tribals and invariably were suspicious of the outcome of their visit. Thus when Fr Krick, a Frenchman, visited the interiors of Abor country in Assam, despite his claims that he had no ter­ ritorial ambition of the Englishmen, the tribal opinion was ‘any white skin, any nose somewhat protruding, is of English make’.78 The tribals believed that once they allowed an Englishman to enter their country, they were sure to have an army at their heels. The Nagas, comprising diverse tribes, such as Konyaks, Aos, Angamis, Lhotas, Rengmas and others, had a general dislike of English colour, regarding it as ‘unripe’ or ‘undercooked’. Some of them were very democratic in their traditions, while others were highly authoritarian. However, brutality was said to be common to all. In the 1891 Census of India, Davis notes that, ‘the Angamis, who are in many respects the most advanced and independent of all the Naga tribes, showed no disposition towards being converted to Christianity.’79 On the whole, Rev. E.W. Clark and W.E. Witter had done much to inculcate education and civilization among the Ao and Lhota Naga tribes. The policy of complete non-interference proved a failure. Mackenzie (1869) informs us that, ‘It was too English to be appre­ ciated by ignorant Nagas.’80 There were constant appeals from Angamis to prevent head-hunting raids and this led to the with­ drawal of this policy. The civilization of the uncivilized races now began in earnest.

Institutional Transformations and Impact of the Missionaries With the coming of Christianity there were prominent institutional transformations initiated in the tribal landscape. Prominent in many villages is the morung or dormitory for the unmarried men—

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some have small houses for the unmarried girls, too. The morungs are guardhouses, recreation clubs, and centres of education, art and discipline, and have an important ceremonial purpose. Many house the great wooden drums, which are beaten to summon war or to announce a festival. Formerly skulls and other trophies of war were hung in the morungs and the pillars are still carved with striking representations of tigers, hornbills, human figures, monkeys, lizards and elephants. Morungs were soon discontinued. The practice of head-hunting was important in this region. It was believed that by taking a head, there would be an injection of vital and creative energy to the aggressor’s village. This was valued by the ‘noble savages’ for maintaining human and animal fertility.81 These head-hunting expeditions, too, disappeared. At the same time, wood carving as an art, too, suffered a decline. Conversion to Christianity has made other changes: the stress on personal salvation has introduced a new individualism in place of the former community spirit. Hymns have taken the place of the old songs; many dances which celebrated head hunting raids can­ not now be danced or simply linger on for exhibition to important visitors. Among the newly educated, there is a reluctance to work with one’s hand and a desire to join the white-collar jobs. In recent years, there is a revival of Naga culture, in terms of hand-woven dresses and shawls. Missionaries had a major influence on their lives. Nagas were encouraged to give up their traditional practices, thereby impacting on their social and cultural practices far more than any government could have done. They insisted on a convert becom­ ing a teetotaller; i.e. giving up zu or rice beer; he had to restrict himself to one wife; at one time he was not even allowed to eat the flesh of the mithun (wild bison), an animal associated with ‘sacrifices’ and ‘heathen’ festivals. The missionaries stopped the Great Feast of Merit. They forbade the boys to attend the morungs (men’s dormitories). They often stopped dancing, and even the art of weaving suffered since generally the convert adopted European mill-made dress, imbibing ‘Englishness’ as a mode of life. When the Nagas were asked whether they would like to become the subjects of the Company, they promptly replied, ‘No:

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we could not then cut off heads of men and attain renown as war­ riors, bearing the honourable marks of our valour on our bodies and faces’.82 Becoming Christians, therefore, meant a different way of life, which involved different morals and ethics, to a change in every­ day life. As Clark notes that: ‘Once civilised and Christianised, they will make a manly, worthy people’.83 Areas in which massive emphasis was given was in the disuse of intoxicants, hygienic living, advocacy of a more defined role for women modelled on Victorian women, halt to inter-tribal warfare and head hunting and abolition of certain tribal institutions, like the bachelor’s dormitory and slavery. Intoxicant or liquor con­ sumption was a major concern for the missionaries. Not only the tribes, even the converted Christians continued to observe tradi­ tional religious ceremonies in times of crisis and never ceased to use the country liquor. Nor did they totally stop practising their own culture and customs in what was a great disappointment to the missionaries. For example, the missionaries insisted on Chris­ tian marriage rituals for the tribal converts but the latter continued to break their vows and frequently took new wives leaving their existing spouses. The angry missionaries commented: It is difficult to win these people from their old heathen customs. Although the number of Christian marriages increased, the newly con­ verted Christians are slow to realise the meaning and sacredness of the marriage vow. We are exceedingly discouraged by the fact that several of the Christians who had been married according to British law and in religious service have separated again. The majority of them appear to think that there is no force in the marriage contact unless the bridegroom gives some dowry to the wife’s family.84

The Mission Report lamented: Immorality had accounted for many (backsliding) and many do not seem to have grasped the idea of binding sanctity of the marriage ties and one reason for the laxity of people in this matter is the ease with which divorce can be obtained according to old Lushai customs. The govern­ ment has persistently refused to introduce the Indian Christian Marriage Act into this country.85

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Most of the tribals in north-east India were habitual users of intoxicants like liquor or opium. A halt to this use became the symbol of a new lifestyle for the converts to which at least the Prot­ estant ones were committed. The missionary campaign to stop the widespread use of opium—a habit which enjoyed the patronage of the colonial state (deriving considerable income from the monop­ oly it had on the trade)—had social implications far beyond the Christian community. This led to conflict between colonial state policies and the evangelical endeavours of the missionaries. The issue of personal cleanliness and healthy living conditions was an issue, too. Most tribals had very few baths in their lifetime. Mizos, for example, bathed only once in their lifetime—on the day of their marriage. To persuade the hill peoples to bathe regularly, when all water available had to be carried in bamboo containers from great distances and up very steep hill paths, was no small task. To provide an example, Presbyterian missionary D.E. Jones set up a model village in Aizawl where the basic principles of hygiene were followed. The effort of the missionaries bore fruits and the following observations were made, We have been permitted to see them go farther than we felt it wise to advise them on matter of drink, use of opium and false worship. They are building better houses for themselves, with rooms, … some of the Chris­ tians keep their person, and homes and food comparatively clean.… They do not eat rotten fish and the money once they spent for drink, opium and false worship is making them prosperous. They have adopted a mode of burial and more decent dress than the heathen. They are becoming more conscientious in the relation of sexes.86

Another important contribution that Christianity made was providing a basis for a new relationship among villages and tribes. The British colonial administration’s effort to prohibit raids on the plains and on each other’s villages as well as head hunting would never have been a total success without the initiative of the mis­ sionaries. However, sometimes the missionaries were upset that the converts persisted with a few of their old cultural habits. For example, Jerman Jones, a Welsh missionary, was aghast that the Christian converts participating in a harvest feast maintained their older cultural habits. He noted that,

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The Christians continued to hold a kind of first fruits feasts, as they had been accustomed to do before their conversion, at the same time it is only fair to say that they do not run to the same excesses as the heathen villagers but their feasts were very much like the old heathen feats held in this and in other villages—so like them indeed the heathen declared there was no difference between the Christians and themselves.… I was quite convinced that such feasts were altogether unworthy of professed Christians and that an end must be put to them at once.87

The missionaries often opposed the songs and dances of the tribals on moral grounds as these songs contained material related to explicit sexuality and were suggestive in nature. They also opposed the use of drum and dance in Christian revival programmes. A missionary representation of tribal animism sketched by Moore mentioned that, ‘All these hill people are demon worshippers, but each tribe has its own demons, and its own ceremonies, preserved in pristine purity, or largely modified by their environment’.88 The tribals also did not agree with the missionary views on these as well as the missionary hostility towards drinking and betel nut chewing. They resisted attempts of reform, of civilizing, which forced them to forego their traditional cultural identity. Eventu­ ally, the missionaries accepted these tribal cultural practices as part of Christianity in the hills, thereby leading to indigenization of the Christianity in north-east India.

Conclusion Thus, the tribals of north-east India have a very heightened sense of their identity and pride. They imitated the norms defined by ‘Englishness’ and this accentuated their liminality within the colonial imperial space. They continued to filter in and out of these norms. They were close to civilization, but not close enough. The Manichaean division between the naturalness of the tribes and the corrupt practices of the ‘plains’ population provided the essential cusp to contextualize the liminality of Englishness in this peripheral region. Indeed, the deployment of this fiction of Eng­ lishness was an ideal sustenance for the project of colonialism in the Raj. The missionary discourses were interspersed by anxieties

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in an attempt to reclaim their moral project, which stood apart for the commercial interests of the administrators. As a result, even the savagery and naturalness of the tribes was valorized to suit the imperial claims of evangelism. The diversity of the region—its geography—threw open major contradictions of complicity and resistance among the tribals and between the imperial agents, i.e. colonial administrators, soldiers, travellers and indeed the mis­ sionaries. The only way the tribals could celebrate their Englishness was by highlighting their dominant codes of transformation into civilized subjects. Their attraction to the civilizational authority of ‘Englishness’ was a suspect as they eventually challenged the moral code—the Christian code of conduct. For once, there was a reversal of the gaze on to the colonizers and, by extension, to the missionaries. Dominant moral and social codes of Englishness, such as bravery, naturalness, freedom, etc., were associated with these tribal populations. At the same time all indigenous cultural ‘aberrations’ were sought to be transformed through persistent moral and religious persuasion. The tribals could never take their ‘Englishness’ for granted and were caught in a bind between constantly reaffirming their allegiance to the missionaries and at the same time to their tribal ethnic brethren. What we find is that the tribals did not uncon­ ditionally accept Englishness in this context. It led to further complexities in the interaction between the imperial state and the margins of the empire. However, the gradual emergence of ‘native’ converts among the tribes helped reduce the alterity images of bar­ barism and civilization to some extent. The savage space was, to a great extent, domesticated and civilized. At the same time, frac­ tured modernity introduced instability in the tribal colonial space. Their aesthetization led to the formation of a fragmented identity. At the same time, missionaries’ anxieties were constantly resur­ rected and staged in this unstable colonial tribal space of alterity. Their abiding concerns remained with their indigenous tribal cultures, namely that of head hunting, including the traditional social organizations, of morungs or dormitories for boys and girls, and the norms of animistic faith in the absoluteness of the natural world. Indeed, the missionary’s reaction to the ‘noble savages’ is

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underwritten by an admixture of revulsion and fatal attraction to the romantic idealism of the ‘natural, free and wild tribal space’. We also saw attempts by the tribals themselves to challenge the aesthetic vision of the colonialists and the missionaries by subvert­ ing their gaze of the ‘Other’, i.e. the missionaries and the colonial administrators. Initially valorizing ‘primitivism’ by the missionaries and administrators was crucial in gaining entry to this inhospitable region, but gradually this was replaced by a policy of ‘paternalism’, which managed to maintain the balance between mercantile and evangelical imperatives of the colonial project. The missionaries sought to valorize this primitiveness as a way to defy the crass materiality of the imperial project of the East India Company. Both the missionaries and the administrators believed that such forms of primitiveness mirrored the traditional values of ‘Englishness’. In this respect, the colonial administrators, the evangelicals and the tribals were all assimilated within this hermeneutical circle, which was established by the imperial policy. It was a policy of colonial paternalism in the north-east of India, which ultimately broke through this imperial hermeneutical delirium. ‘Englishness’, while at the same time maintaining utilitarianism in the colonies, was a form of residual authority to retain control over the tribals.

Notes 1. Ethel St. Clair Grimwood, My Three Years in Manipur; And Escape from the Recent Mutiny, Richard Bentley and Son, London, 3rd Edn, 1891, p. 8. 2. Stokes, Eric, The English Utilitarians and India, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1959, p. xii. 3. Ibid., p. 34. 4. Ibid., p. 36. 5. Ibid., p. 40. 6. Ibid., p. 46. 7. C.E. Trevelyan, O n the Education of the People of India, Orme, Brown, Green and Longmans, London, 1838, p. 410. 8. K. Chancey, ‘The Star in the East: The Controversy over Christian Missions to India, 1805-1813’, 1998, Historian, Spring, and Stokes,

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9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

305

Eric, The English Utilitarians and India, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1959. C. Hall, White, Male and Middle Class: Explorations in Feminism and History, Polity, Cambridge, 1995, p. 207. Simon Gikandi, Maps of Englishness: Writing Identity in the Culture of Colonialism, Columbia University Press, New York, 1993. Ibid., p. 34. Ibid., p. 39. Ibid., p. 48. Hall, op. cit., p. 59. Gikandi, op. cit., p. 66. Ibid., p. 68. I. Baucom, Englishness, Empire and the Locations of Identity, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1999, p. 12. Ibid., p. 77 G. Spivak, Outside in the Teaching Machine, Routledge, New York, 1993, p. 226. S. Joshi, Fractured Modernity: The Making of a Middle Class in Colonial North India, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2001. Hall, op. cit., p. 23. Simon Commission Report, 1935, as referred to in Verrier Elwin, Nagaland, Adviser’s Secretariat, Shillong, 1961, p. 35. Elwin, op. cit., p. 38. J.A. Butler, Nagas at War: A Sketch of Assam with Some Account of the Hill Tribes by an Officer, Smith, Elder & Co, cited in Elwin, op. cit., p. xxi. Hayden White, Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism,The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1992, Chapters 7&8, p. 193. Elwin, op. cit., p. 39. J. Johnstone, My Experiences in Manipur and the Naga Hills, 1896, reprinted 1971, New Delhi, pp. 43-4, cited in Elwin, The Nagas in the Nineteenth Century, Oxford University Press, Bombay, 1969, p. 518. Loc. cit. Elwin, The Nagas in the Nineteenth Century, op. cit., p. xv. P. Millington, On the Track of the Abor, London, 1912, p. v. T.H. Lewin, The Hill Tracts of Chittagong and the Dweller Therein with Comparative Vocabularies of the Hill Dialects, Bengal Printing Company, Calcutta, cited in Elwin, The Nagas in the Nineteenth Century, op. cit., pp. xviii-ix.

306 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49.

50. 51. 52. 53. 54.

M. Satish Kumar Butler, loc. cit. Ibid. Elwin, The Nagas in the Nineteenth Century, op. cit., pp. xvi. Ibid., p. xxi. J. M’Cosh, ‘Account of the Mountain Tribes on the Extreme North East Frontier of Bengal’, Journal of Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. V, 1836, pp. 193-208. Elwin, The Nagas in the Nineteenth Century, op. cit.,. p. xvi. Ibid., p. xvi. Ibid., p. xviii. Ibid. Ibid., pp. xv-xvi. M’Cosh, Topography of Assam, 1837, reprinted, Logos Press, New Delhi, 1986, p. 132. Mackenzie, A., History of the Relations of Government with the Hill Tribes of the North East Frontier of Bengal, 1884, reprinted Mittal Publishers, New Delhi, 2001, p. 17. Butler, op. cit. S.K. Bhuyan, Early British Relations with Assam, EBH Publishers Gauhati, 1948, p. 3. F.S. Downs, The Mighty Works of God: A Brief History of the Council of Baptist Churches in North East India: The Mission Period, 1836­ 1950, Christian Literature Centre, Guwahati, 1971, pp. 69-70. S.K. Barpujari, ‘Early Christian Missions in the Naga Hills: An Assessment of their Activities’, Journal of India History, vol. 48, 1970, p. 427. Elwin, The Nagas in the Nineteenth Century, op. cit., p. xviii. E.T. Dalton, Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal, Calcutta, 1872, Calcutta, Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, German edition, 1875, p. 599, cited in Elwin, The Nagas in the Nineteenth Century, Oxford University Press, Bombay, 1969, p. xviii. Elwin, Nagaland, op. cit., pp. 22-4. Mackenzie, op. cit., pp. 253-4. N.K. Barooah, David Scott in North East India, 1802-1831: A Study in British Paternalism, Munshiram Manoharlal, New Delhi, 1969, p. 177. J.H. Morris, History of the Western Calvinist Methodists: Foreign Mission, Liverpool, 1910, p. 75. W. Gammell, A History of American Baptist Missions in Asia, Africa, Europe and North America, Andesite Press, Boston, 1950, pp. 211­ 12.

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55. Downs, The Mighty Works of God: A Brief History of the Council of Baptist Churches in North East India: The Mission Period, 1836­ 1950, op. cit., p. 23; Dena, Lal, Christian Missions and Colonialism: A Study of Missionary Movement in North East India with Particular Reference to Manipur and Lushai Hills, 1894-1947, Vendrame Institute, Shillong, 1988, p. 24. 56. Downs, op. cit., pp. 40, 42; Dena, ibid. 57. E.M. Brown, and Rev. M. Brownson, W hole World Kin: Pioneer Experience Among Remote Tribes and Other Labours of Nathan Brown, Hubbard Brothers, Philadelphia, 1890, pp. 269-70. 58. Mackenzie, op. cit., pp. 92, 99. 59. Elwin, The Nagas in the Nineteenth Century, op. cit., p. 517. 60. S.K. Barpujari, ‘Early Christian Missions in the Naga Hills: An Assessment of their Activities’, Journal of India History, vol. 48, 1970, p. 430. 61. Morris, op. cit., pp. 25-6; Dena, Lal, Ch ristian Missions and Colonialism: A Study of Missionary Movement in North East India with Particular Reference to Manipur and Lushai Hills, 1894-1947, Vendrame Institute, Shillong, 1988, p. 26. 62. M.M. Clark, A Corner in India, ABPS, Philadelphia, 1907, p. 1. 63. J.F. Jyrwa, Wondrous Work of God: A Study on the Growth and Development of the Khasi-Jaintia Presbyterian Church in the 20th Century, M.B. Jyrwa, Shillong, 1980, p. 26. 64. J.M. Morris, The Story of Our Foreign Mission, Hugh Evans & Sons, Liverpool, 1930, reprinted Aizawl Synod Publication Board, 1990, p. 77. 65. Clark, op. cit., p. 14. 66. N. Rivernburg, The Star of the Naga Hills: Letters from Rev. Sidney and Hattie Rivenburg, Pioneer Missionaries in Assam, American Baptist Publication Society, Philadelphia, also referred to as Private Letters of the Rivenburgs, 1941, p. 4. 67. V.H. Sword, Baptist in Assam: A Century of Missionary Service, Conference Press. Spectrum Press, Gauhati, 1935, Reprinted 1992, p. 93. 68. Rev. E.G. Phillips, ‘Historical Sketch of the Garo Field’, in Papers and Discussions of Jubilee Conference of the American Baptist Missionary Union held in Nowgong, 18-29 December, Gauhati, 1887, reprinted in 1992, p. 54. 69. P.H. Moore, Need of a Native Ministry in Papers and Discussions of Jubilee Conference of the American Baptist Missionary Union held

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70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78.

79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88.

in Nowgong, 18-29 December, Gauhati, 1886, reprinted in 1992; Phillips, ibid. p. 159. Ibid. Morris, History of the Western Calvinist Methodists: Foreign Mission, op. cit., pp. 25-6; p. 54. Ibid., p. 54. J.M. Lloyd, On Every High Hill, Liverpool, Foreign Mission Office, 1930, p. 24. T. Oldham, Calcutta Review, vol. XXVII, 1856, p. 79. Dena, op. cit., p. 35. Lieut. H. Yule, ‘Notes on the Khasi Hills and People’, Journal of Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. XII, part II, July-December 1894, p. 612. Thanzauva (compiled), Report of the Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church of Wales on Mizos 1894-1957, Synod, Aizawl, 1997, p. 11. N.M. Krick, ‘An Account of an Expedition Among the Abors in 1853’, Journal of Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. IX, 1939, pp. 107-22; Elwin, The Nagas in the Nineteenth Century, Oxford University Press, Bombay, 1969, p. xxix. Elwin, ibid., p. 516. Mackenzie, op. cit., pp. 92, 99. Elwin, Nagaland, op. cit., p. 11. Butler, op. cit., op. cit., pp. 158-64. Clark, op. cit., p. 45. Thanzauva (compiled), Report of the Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church of Wales on Mizos 1894-1957, Synod, Aizawl, 1997, p. 47) Ibid., p. 56. S.A. Perrine, Report on the Nagas in the Assam Mission of the American Baptist Missionary Union Fifth Triennial Conference, Baptist Mission Press, Calcutta, 1899, pp. 42-4. Morris, History of the Western Calvinist Methodists: Foreign Mission, Liverpool, op. cit., pp. 156-7. Moore, op. cit., p. 13.

References Albaugh, D.M. (1935), Between Two Countries: A Study of Four Baptist Mission Fields-Assam, South India, Bengal-Orissa and South China. Philadelphia.

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Barooah, N.K. (1969), David Scott in North East India, 1802-1831: A Study in British Paternalism. Munshiram Manoharlal, New Delhi. Barpujari, S.K. (1970), ‘Early Christian Missions in the Naga Hills: An Assessment of their Activities’, Journal of India History, vol. 48, p. 427. (1986), The American Missionaries and Northeast India, 1836­ 1900. Spectrum Publishers: Guwahati. Baucom, I. (1999), Englishness, Empire and the Locations of Identity. Princeton University Press, Princeton. Bayly, C.A. (1999), ‘The British and Indigenous Peoples, 1760-1860: Power, Perception and Identity’, in M. Daunton and R. Halpern, eds., Empire and Others: British Encounters with Indigenous Peoples, 1600­ 1850. UCL Press: London, pp. 19-41. Bhuyan, S.K. (1948), Early British Relations with Assam. EBH Publishers, Guwahati, as quoted in Dena, 1988, p.18. Brown, E.M. and Revd M. Brownson (1890), Whole World Kin: Pioneer Experience Among Remote Tribes and Other Labours of Nathan Brown. Hubbard Brothers, Philadelphia, pp. 269-70. Butler, J. (1847), Missionaries for the Nagas: A Sketch of Assam with Some Account of the Hill Tribes. Smith, Elder & Co., London, pp. 149-52. Butler, J.A. (1847), Nagas at War: A Sketch of Assam with Some Account of the Hill Tribes by an Officer. Smith, Elder & Co., London (as referred to in Elwin, 1969). Chancey, K. (1998), ‘The Star in the East: The Controversy over Christian Missions to India, 1805-1813’. Historian, Spring. Clark, Mary M. (1907), A Corner of India. American Baptist Publication Society. Reprinted Mizoram, 1978. Crooke, W. (1973), Races of Northern India. Cosmo Publications, Delhi. Dalton, E.T. (1875), Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal. Calcutta, 1872, Calcutta, Office of the Superintendent of government printing, German edition, 1875. Dena, Lal (1988), Christian Missions and Colonialism: A Study of Missionary Movement in North East India with Particular Reference to Manipur and Lushai Hills, 1894-1947. Vendrame Institute, Shillong. Downs, F.S. (1971), The Mighty Works of God: A Brief History of the Council of Baptist Churches in North East India: The Mission Period, 1836-1950. Gauhati, Christian Literature Centre. Downs, F.S., M. Sangma and D. Syiemlieh (1994), Essays on Christianity in North-East India. Indus Publishing, New Delhi.

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Ellingson, T. (2001), The Myth of the Noble Savage. University of California Press, Berkeley. Elwin,V. (1961), Nagaland, Adviser’s Secretariat, Shillong. Elwin, Verrier (1969), The Nagas in the Nineteenth Century. Oxford University Press, Bombay. (1959), India’s North-East Frontier in the Nineteenth Century, Oxford University Press, Bombay. (1964), The Tribal World of Verrier Elwin: An Autobiography. Oxford University Press, Calcutta. Furer-Haimendorf, C. von (1967), Morals and Merit: A Study of Values and Social Controls in South Asian Societies. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, Letchworth. (1976), Return to The Naked Nagas: An Anthropologist’s View of Nagaland 1936-70. John Murray, London. (1982), Tribes of India: The Struggle for Survival. Oxford University Press, Delhi. Gammell, W. (1950), A History of American Baptist Missions in Asia, Africa, Europe and North America. Andesite Press, Boston. Gikandi, Simon (1993), Maps of Englishness: Writing Identity in the Culture of Colonialism. Columbia University Press, New York. Government of India (1960), The Naga Problem. Ministry of External Affairs, New Delhi, mimeo. Hall, C. (1995), White, Male and Middle Class: Explorations in Feminism and History. Polity, Cambridge. Johnstone, J. (1896), My Experiences in Manipur and the Naga Hills, (reprinted 1971, New Delhi), pp. 43-4. Joshi, S. (2001), Fractured Modernity: The Making of a Middle Class in Colonial North India. Oxford University Press, Delhi. Jyrwa, J.F. (1980), Wondrous Work of God: A Study on the Growth and Development of the Khasi-Jaintia Presbyterian Church in the 20th Century, M.B. Jyrwa, Shillong. Krick, N.M. (1913), ‘An Account of an Expedition Among the Abors in 1853’. Journal of Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. IX, pp. 107-22. Lewin, T.H. (1869), The Hill Tracts of Chittagong and the Dweller Therein with Comparative Vocabularies of the Hill Dialects. Calcutta: Bengal Printing Company. Lieut. Yule, H. (1894), ‘Notes on the Khasi Hills and People’, Journal of Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. XII, part II, July-December. Livingstone, D. (2000), ‘Tropical Hermeneutics: Fragments for a Historical Narrative’, Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 21: 92-8.

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Lloyd, J.M. (1930), On Every High Hill, Liverpool. Foreign Mission Office. M’Cosh, J (1836), ‘Account of the Mountain Tribes on the Extreme North East Frontier of Bengal’, Journal of Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. V, pp. 193-208. (1837), Topography of Assam, (reprinted 1986, Logos Press, New Delhi), p. 132. Macaulay, T.B. (1835), ‘Speech in the House of Commons’, in G.W. Young, ed. Speeches Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 153-4. Mackenzie, A (1869), Memorandum on the North East Frontier of Bengal. Secretariat Press, Calcutta. (1884), History of the Relations of Government with the Hill Tribes of the North East Frontier of Bengal. Reprinted Mittal Pub, New Delhi, 2001. Marshall, P.J. (1968), Problems of Empire: Britain and India, 1757-1813. London: Allen and Unwin. Memi, A. (1990), The Coloniser and the Colonised. Earthscan Publications, London. Millington, P. (1912), On the Track of the Abor. London. Moore, P.H. (1886), Need of a Native Ministry in Papers and Discussions of Jubilee Conference of the American Baptist Missionary Union held in Nowgong, 18-29 December, Gauhati, Reprinted in 1992. Morris, J.H. (1910), History of the Western Calvinist Methodists: Foreign Mission. Liverpool. (1910), The History of Welsh Calvinist Methodist Foreign Mission to the End of the Year, 1904. Carnarvon, C.M. Bookroom, p. 75. Morris, J.M. (1930), The Story of Our Foreign Mission. Liverpool: Hugh Evans & Sons, reprint, Aizawl, Synod Publication Board, 1990. Oldham, T. (1856), Calcutta Review, vol. XXVII, September. Pettigrew, W (1934), ‘Forty Years in Manipur, Assam: An Account of the Work of Revd and Mrs William Pettigrew’, in Forty Years Mission in Manipur: Mission Reports of Revd William Pettigrew, compiled by Solo and Mahangthei. Phillips, Revd E.G. (1887), ‘Historical Sketch of the Garo Field’, in Papers and Discussions of Jubilee Conference of the American Baptist Missionary Union held in Nowgong, 18-29 December, Gauhati, reprinted on 1992. Perrine, S.A. (1899), Report on the Nagas in the Assam Mission of the American Baptist Missionary Union Fifth Triennial Conference. Calcutta, Baptist Mission Press. Revd and Mrs William Pettigrew, Reprinted by J.M. Solo and K. Mahangthei, Christian Literature Centre, Imphal, 1986.

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Rivernburg, N. (1941), The Star of the Naga Hills: Letters from Rev. Sidney and Hattie Rivenburg, Pioneer Missionaries in Assam. American Baptist Publication Society, Philadelphia also referred as Private Letters of the Rivenburgs. Solo, J.M., and K. Mahangthei (2005), Forty Year Mission in Manipur: Mission Reports of Rev. William Pettigrew. Christian Literature Centre: Imphal [original edn 1986]. Spivak, G. (1993), Outside in the Teaching Machine. Routledge, New York, p. 226. Stokes, Eric (1959), The English Utilitarians and India. Clarendon Press, Oxford. Sword, V.H. (1935), Baptist in Assam: A Century of Missionary Service, Conference Press. Spectrum Press, Gauhati. Reprinted 1992. Thanzauva, K. (comp.), Report of the Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church of Wales on Mizos 1894-1957, Synod, Aizawl, 1997. Trevelyan, C.E. (1838), On the Education of the People of India. Longman, Orme, Brown, Green and Longmans, London. Viswanathan, G. (2000), Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India. Oxford University Press. Delhi. White, Hayden (1992), Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism. The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore. (Chapters 7&8). Woodward, L. (1962), The Age of Reform, 1815-1870. Oxford, Clarendon Press.

CHAPTER 13

Welsh Missionaries and the

Transformation of Mizo Women

LALHMINGLIANI RALTE

When the British government took control of the Lushai Hills (now Mizoram) after a series of expeditions and subjugating the chiefs, it divided the hills into two areas—the North Lushai Hills with Aijal (Aizawl) as its headquarters, and the South Lushai Hills with Lungleh (Lunglei) or Fort Lungleh as its headquarters. The two districts, which were about one hundred miles apart, had separate superintendents to look after the administration. However, this arrangement was soon discarded and on 1 April 1898, the South Lushai Hills became a part of Assam by a government proclamation.1 The two districts were merged into one and were called the Lushai Hills with a single superintendent to look after the administration. Major John Shakespear became the first superintendent of the Lushai Hills. The sub-divisional officers and, later, extra-assistant commissioners were left in Lungleh (Lunglei) to look after the smooth operation of administration in the South.2 Before the merger of the two areas, the policy of governing the hills through the chiefs was followed by the government and was continued even after combining the two regions. The policy followed by the British in the Lushai Hills could be clearly seen in the letter of W.J. Reid, ICS who was the chief secretary to the chief commissioner of Assam wherein it was stated that our policy throughout has been to uphold the authority of the chiefs in all legitimate directions, leaving petty disputes to be decided by them and the village council of elders, and to administer the district with their assistance, while at the same time restraining them from exercising their authority in improper or undesirable ways.3

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This policy was in keeping with the enactment laid down by the government for the administration of the Lushai Hills in April 1897.4 Since the governing agency was the same for the whole region, the policies of governance followed were also invariably the same. The Christian missionaries had come to the Hills with a prose­ lytizing spirit. It was they who assessed the need of educating the people in order to spread the gospel effectively. Hence their effort required that the tribal be transformed not only in his faith but also in his look and habit, which were un-Christian. Therefore, ‘the history of the first 40 years of contacts has been overshadowed by a full-scale assault upon the people by the missions, and a watch­ ing brief by government, operating chiefly without much positive policy…’5, although some officials of the government like A.G. McCall, superintendent of the Lushai Hills, criticized the works of the mission by writing that ‘the changes brought about by the missions had often been spectacular, necessarily involving attack after attack on tradition’.6 The missionaries and the colonialists were not always on the same page when it came to the implementation of the ideas brought in by the British for ‘reforming’ the lives of the Mizo women. Therefore, distinctions have been made between the two whereever applicable in the discussion below.

Introduction of Western Education ‘In the field of education, “a school for sepoys” children has been working at Fort Aijal since November 1893, the school master being a military police havildar who receives a staff allowance of Rs. 5 per month in addition to his pay. The average attendance of children is 15, and the language taught is Hindi’.7 However, this school was not made available for the Mizo children. Therefore, ‘provision was accordingly made in the current year’s political budget for the starting of a school for the benefit of the Lushais [Mizo], and sanction to the entertainment of the establishment proposed has been applied for’.8 Despite this statement made by the political officer of North Lushai Hills, the government was not keen

Welsh Missionaries & Transformation of Mizo Women 315 to take up educating the people as was clearly indicated from the political officer’s letter to the secretary to the Chief Commissioner of Assam dated 28 January 1897. In this letter, A. Porteous, the political officer, remarked thus, ‘I desire to point out that, although it is now seven years since Aijal was occupied, nothing whatever has yet been done by government in the ways of commencing to educate the Lushais.’9 As in the north, the administrators had started schools for children of the sepoys in the south. A school had been in existence in Lungleh since 1894, which was ‘…maintained on subscriptions given by the military police, assisted by an annual grant of Rs. 100 from the Chittagong Hills Tracts Primary Education Fund. The schoolmaster’s pay is Rs. 25 monthly, and Rs. 3-8 is paid by the school fund for his rations.’10 In this letter, Major Shakespear went on to say that education had done a great deal for the people living in Aijal (Aizawl) and, therefore, he wanted the same privileges to be extended to the people of Lungleh (Lunglei). The administra­ tion of the Lakher villages too was done from Lunglei.11 The reason why the government did not take up educating the people was its reluctance to use finances for no visible profitable returns, as had been revealed by the same letter of A. Porteous wherein he wrote: … I feel confident that expenditure on education would be well repaid in the case of Lushais. Government would certainly benefit in the admin­ istration of the hills by the springing up of a class of Lushais sufficiently educated to act as public works muharrirs, literate constables, peons, and the like posts, the duties of which have now to be performed either by imperfectly-educated foreigners on high pay, whose acquaintance with the Lushai language is of course not thorough, or by Lushais who, with the few exceptions above noted, cannot read and write and whose ser­ vices are therefore of very limited usefulness.12

Although the government did not pay much attention towards educating the masses in the hills, schools for the children of the sepoys continued and some Lushai youths also joined these institutions at their own expense. The administration saw that educating the sons of the chiefs was in keeping with their policy of

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governing the area through the chiefs. Therefore, chiefs’ sons were given importance in education to the exclusion of the rest. The first school examination in the hills—the lower primary examinations—were conducted on 25 June 1893. Altogether, there were 27 candidates sitting in this examination out of which two were girls, despite the fact that ‘…Government did not approve of the education of the girls in Lushai being pushed forward…’13 These two Lushai girls were Nu-i and Sai-i.14 In the examination held the next year, out of 29 candidates, 23 were successful and two were again Lushai girls—Pawngi and Thangi.15 The government ultimately handed over the schools and educa­ tion of the people in the hills to the missions. In February 1904, the Chief Commissioner of Assam, Sir Bamfylde Fuller, together with the Superintendent John Shakespear, ordered the amalgamation of the government schools with those of the missions. The commis­ sioner, apart from promising grants to the schools, appointed Rev. Edwin Rowlands, a Welsh missionary, as the inspector of schools in the North Lushai Hills16 and the Baptist missionaries took over the education in the south. This arrangement continued till 1952. The mission was given a free hand in the education of the people and in opening of new schools, while the government kept a loose hold through the inspector of schools and sometimes injected the odd funds for the development of the schools. Although some of the administrators portrayed interests in the curricula and educa­ tion of the girls, the actual work of educating the people rested in the hands of the missionaries. Consequently, they had little say in the matter apart from offering the few advices towards the policies followed by the missionaries. The desire of the government to maintain a status quo in the hills, its reluctance to expend on education and encroach upon the customs and tradition did little to alleviate the situation of the women. The main aim of the administrators was to govern the people, and changes for the betterment of the women were effected only when it fell along the lines of their general policies of governance. The hardships faced by the women had been acknowl­ edged by them when McCall wrote thus, ‘Without any ambiguity Lushai has been, and still is, a country for men before it is one for

Welsh Missionaries & Transformation of Mizo Women 317 women, or even children.’17 However, despite such statements, the government, though very keen on giving the maximum amount of grant to vocational and primary schools, ‘… will not touch either women’s education or Middle English’.18 Notwithstanding these policies however, some administrators had contributed towards educating the girls through their own personal funds.19 The absence of positive changes being enunciated by the gov­ ernment had been justified thus, ‘The government is of opinion that changes are only desirable with the co-operation of, and at the wish of, the peoples of the land’.20 It even went to criticize some of the changes which had been brought about by the other organiza­ tions working in the region by stating that, ‘It is the view of the government that much harm is done by over-enthusiastic workers desiring more speedy results than the magnitude of the task can possibly permit.’21 While the government blamed the missionar­ ies for their works in the hills, the missionaries, too, blamed the government for their inefficiency in bringing about changes that would make Christianity more binding in the community. Some of the missionaries remarked and criticized the policy of elitism, racism and exclusiveness, which were followed by the administra­ tors.22 Having said this, the missionaries, too, were not immune to the feeling of racism against the ‘natives’ as will be discussed later. The missionaries saw the government’s refusal to introduce the Indian Christian Marriage Act in the country as the reason for the ‘… laxity of people …’23 in matters of marriage as the Lushais could attain divorce easily according to the old custom.

Takeover by the Missionaries Unlike the administrators, the missionaries who came with a proselytizing mission and on reaching the land, began to think of ways and means of how to convert the people towards Christianity. While the government claimed reluctance to change the traditional mode of life, the missionaries, in their eagerness to spread the gospel, were not shy in changing what they believed was a heathen way of life. The most important impact that the two pioneer missionaries,

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J.H. Lorrain and F.W. Savidge (sent by the Arthington Aborigines Mission), had on the lives of the Lushais were mainly concerned with devising ‘… an alphabet using Roman lettering …’24 and a compilation of the grammar of the language ‘… with a vocabu­ lary of about five thousand words …’25 The proselytizing activities truly started when the Welsh Calvinistic Methodists’ Mission sent D.E. Jones as their first missionary to the Lushai Hills. When Rev. D.E. Jones reached Aizawl, he stayed with the two pioneers for a while, learned the language from them and became oriented in the different spheres of mission work. In February 1898, he reopened the school that had earlier been run by the pioneers. The learners in this school were mainly boys ‘… for Lushai boys then, as now, were freer than the girls to please themselves’.26 He was joined by another missionary, Rev. Edwin Rowlands, towards the end of the year. Rowlands was deputed to look after the education side of the mission in the North Lushai Hills. The missionaries as well as the administrators had reiterated the reluctance of parents to send their girls to school and according to the census report of 1901 there were 25 women literates against 736 men.27 The work towards changing the image of the Lushai women can be said to have begun since the coming of women missionaries. After her marriage to Rev. D.E. Jones, a school exclu­ sively for the girls was started by Mrs Katherine Jones in 1906. Though Lushai parents were initially reluctant to send their girls to schools, their reluctance seemed to have been overcome by 1909 when Mrs Jones wrote thus to the superintendent of the hills, Mr Hezlett: From 1909 to 1912 the Girls’ School was in a flourishing state; there were 50 or more day scholars, and in addition over 20 boarders, girls from dis­ tant villages who come here to learn for a period of two or three years.… I found that the school had been put on a sound footing and that the prejudice existing amongst the Lushais against girls being educated had to a great degree been overcome.28

In the report of 1920-1, it was said that two of our girls who passed the Middle English Examination were awarded Government scholarships tenable at the High School in Shillong.

Welsh Missionaries & Transformation of Mizo Women 319 These two, Chawngthuami and Rosiami, and another Kaithuami, were the first to pass this examination, and their departure to Shillong is a landmark in the educational history of Lushai.29

Mrs Jones carried on the women side of the work single­ handedly. She continued the work of looking after the motherless babies, a trend that was started in 1897 by the wife of John Shakespear, the superintendent.30 It was the custom amongst the Lushais that when a mother died giving birth to a baby, then it, too, would be buried alive along with its mother. Although it appeared inhu­ man, this custom ‘sprang from bitter necessity’31 and ignorance of the people. Using milk of goats and cows as a substitute for the mother’s milk was as yet unknown. There was a general belief among the people that suckling a baby whose mother had died would invariably bring misfortune to the person who suckled it. Therefore, this humanitarian work was continued, relentlessly, by the women missionaries. Since the time of Mrs D.E. Jones, the Lushai girls, apart from reading and writing, were taught sewing, both by hand and machine, and weaving. The weaving loom and the sewing machine were given to the Jones by the government.32 Prior to her marriage to Rev. D.E. Jones, Katherine Jones was a missionary, too, in Sylhet. While working in Sylhet, she ‘… ran a school about a mile from their bungalow and began lessons at 7:00 in the morning.… After three hours teaching, she would return home and there would be gathered a considerable throng of people who had come for medicine. In the afternoons, she visited the Zenanas’.33 She previously had medical experiences from her father who was a doctor. She married D.E. Jones in Calcutta and reached Aizawl with her husband early in 1904. She continued her mis­ sionary work in her new place and started ‘… to practice certain aspects of the mission work that had not been touched previously, especially among the women and children’.34 The image of the Lushai women can be said to have begun its transformation with the coming of Mrs D.E. Jones. As could be seen from the above statement made by D.E. Jones, the women and children were not touched upon in the mission work before her arrival. She was assisted in her initial endeavours by a Khasi

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Bible woman, named Siniboni. ‘Mrs Jones started a weekly women’s meeting which was held on Friday afternoons. Those who attended the meeting had a chance to practise speaking in public as well as to relate their spiritual experiences (as used to be the practice in Wales).’35 In the daily school for the girls, she taught general knowledge and the ‘scriptural truths’.36 These were indeed great changes in the life of a Lushai woman; being taught how to make public speeches and relate their spiritual experiences can be viewed as direct challenges to how she had been perceived in the traditional society and family. While the Lushais said, ‘As crab meat is no meat, so a woman’s word is not word’, here she was being taught how to make public speeches. Moreover, the Lushai saying, ‘crabs and women have no religion’, was also being challenged when the missionaries taught the people ‘… the essen­ tial dignity of human life according to Christ’s teaching …’37 and women could share or relate their spiritual experiences under the guidance of Mrs Jones. The Lushai woman began her process of transformation from these humble beginnings. Her perception of the traditional mode of life was being attacked in such a way and the ‘scriptural truths’ were being fed to her as a substitute. By 1919, the works of Mrs Jones and Mrs Sandy among the women began to show signs of progress when the Lushai women sang solos for the first time in public at the first Grand Eisteddfod held in Aizawl.38 Another important innovation in the Lushai Hills, introduced by Mrs D.E. Jones in bringing about the transformation of the women, was the Bible Women. They started the women’s meet­ ing which met every Friday and from these meetings developed the idea of a handful of rice or rice collection. It was borrowed from the Khasi women who had been practising it at this time. In 1911, it was decided to build a church in the area where the missionaries lived, Mission Veng. Mrs Jones thought of how the women, too, could become helpful in the building of the new church and decided to borrow the idea of rice collection from the Khasi women. The Lushais ate two or three rice meals in a day and ‘in a Christian household when the rice for the meal has been measured into the cooking pot, the mother takes out as large

Welsh Missionaries & Transformation of Mizo Women 321 a fistful she can and puts it aside into a special bin. The rice thus collected averaged about 2 kilos a month and is presented to the church to be sold. It brings in a substantial sum.’39 ‘In 1913, this provided funds to enable them to appoint the first Bible-woman.’40 Women thus became important factors in the church economy. It was, therefore, of no wonder that importance was given to the women side of the mission and in 1924 Miss Katie Hughes was ‘…appointed to take care of what was vaguely termed “Women’s Work”. ’41 Equipped with scriptural as well as elementary knowledge of hygiene, the Bible Women trudged through villages, bearing their own loads and sometimes carrying their babies on their backs, and started work among their fellow women in different parts of the hills. They were like bridges connecting the Mizo women and the women missionaries. An instance of how Christianity changed the image of the Lushai women is seen from the fact that they even preached in front of the male dormitory or zawlbuk. The significance of speaking in front of the zawlbuk may be highlighted here. It could be viewed as a challenge to tribal patri­ archy. In the pre-colonial Mizo society, education and knowledge was imparted through the oral form. Little children learned from their parents or elders in the family and the community. While lit­ tle girls acquired knowledge from the parents and the elders of the family and the community, zawlbuk was the ‘school’ or the place where the boys could obtain knowledge about life and all they required for their existence. Zawlbuk was truly a male exclusive in a sense that women were not allowed to go near it or partici­ pate even in its construction. Kawli, a Bible Woman, on one of her tours to villages, defied the existing custom and tradition and preached the gospel in front of the zawlbuk. The chief of the village chided her boldness and instigated the men to throw cowdung at her. However, this did not deter her from continuing with her preaching.42 Preaching in front of the dormitory could be seen as a gesture of defying customs and conventions and that even without the zawlbuk kind of ‘education’, women could acquire knowledge. As a testimony to this assumption, the institution of zawlbuk indeed soon faded out of the life of the Lushais with the spread

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of Western education. Education imparted to the people was not entirely secular education as it was left in the hands of the mis­ sions, both in the north and the south. All things connected with the life of the Lushais prior to the British incursion were viewed as heathen by the missionaries who wanted to do away with them. Therefore, a negative attitude towards their traditional institutions was instilled in the minds of the people and the need to change the existing system became paramount in the minds of both the converted educated people and the missionaries. It can be said that education, which came in the wake of Christianity, brought about the end of the zawlbuk in the Lushai life, although the missionaries did not attribute to Christianity the bringing about of its end.43 In its place, an organization, which was both Western and Christian, called the Young Lushai Association (YLA), later changed to the Young Mizo Association (YMA), was instituted for the youths. On 3 June 1935, some missionaries and educated Lushais assembled at the bungalow of Miss Katie Hughes and decided to form an organization of the Lushais. In following with the Young Wales Association, it was suggested that this organization be named the Young Lushai Association (YLA).44 The membership to this new organization was opened to all Lushai, male as well as female. Whereas the zawlbuk was exclu­ sively a male domain, the YLA, which replaced it, was open to all regardless of sex. However, the aims of the association as well as the rules for membership reflected the Christianness of the new association.45 Missionary wives had an important place in the whole evange­ lizing project. In keeping with the recommendations made by the missionary convention, they were prepared for their lives in mis­ sion fields. Though she was not paid for her labours, a missionary’s wife, who was usually a trained teacher or nurse, ‘… along with non-professional wives, were routinely absorbed into primary education, social work, midwifery, home economics or Sunday school work. They were also to become very active in the Mis­ sion’s war effort’.46 Mrs Jones’ pioneering work among the Lushai women was continued by the wives of missionaries like Mrs Gwen Mendus, Mrs Maggie Sandy, Mrs Muriel Edwards, Mrs Roberts,

Welsh Missionaries & Transformation of Mizo Women 323 Mrs Joan Lloyd and others, who were all instrumental in bring­ ing about changes in the daily life of the Lushai women they came in contact with. However, momentous changes in the lives of the women came when the women missionaries continued and built the Girls’ School started by Mrs Jones. In 1922, the first lady missionary to the North Lushai Hills was sent in the person of Miss Alice Catherine Mostyn Lewis. Miss Lewis, better known as Kitty Lewis, became the headmistress of the school for girls. She was a graduate and had a certificate in teach­ ing. She previously had varied experiences in France and Britain. She was sponsored not by the Welsh Calvinistic Methodists’ Mis­ sion but by her father, Sir Herbert Lewis who was a member of the British parliament.47 Soon after taking charge of the Girls’ School as headmistress, she structured the class and divided it into two sections—lower primary and middle section. During school holi­ days she toured the villages and went as far as the Burma and the Manipur borders.48 On such tours, she encouraged the people to send their girls to schools and informed them that she was will­ ing to look after them without burdening the parents for fees.49 Moreover, on such tours, she also taught the women basic sanitary and health issues. After working thus for a year, by May 1923, there were about 80 girls in the school ranging from ages 5 to 16.50 In 1925, a boarding house was constructed with a gift she received from a mission-minded man from home51 and it housed 20 girls. She stated that in her school, in addition to the ordinary lessons, the girls were also taught how to be better Christians, wives and mothers.52 ‘The lapse of the government in providing female edu­ cation to the people of the hills and prioritizing the education of chiefs’ sons was taken a step further when she opened the hostel of the girls’ school. Several of the boarders were chiefs’ daughters who will probably marry chiefs and have great influence in their villages.’53 That female education was one of the chief concerns of the mission was evident from the letters which the missionaries sent home urging the secretary of the foreign mission to take more actions in promoting the cause of women in the Lushai Hills by sending more lady missionaries to the area.54 In his letter to Mr

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Thomas, Rev. David Edwards further stated that ‘… since the prog­ ress of the present revival movement shows how much we need an enlightened womanhood to act as a steadying influence on Lushai life’.55 In response to the call made by the earlier missionaries for women to look after the women’s side of the mission in the field, the headquarters back home sent them to the area. Continuing the work of Kitty Lewis, the next woman missionary Miss Katie Hughes made tremendous contributions towards the cause of women in the North Lushai Hills. Miss Hughes arrived in Aizawl on 23 December 1924, and returned to Britain in 1962. Before coming to the hills, she underwent medical training at the Livingstone College in London. This training proved to be beneficial as it was four years before the arrival of the next mission doctor. The Women of Lushai Today56 written by Miss Hughes reflected the desire of the Lushai women and girls for learning. The crowd was always big at the girls’ school, therefore, specific dates were set aside for the women to come on Tuesdays and Thursdays. These meetings began with short services, which were led by the women themselves. The Lushai woman had begun to shed her passive role imposed by customs and tradition and had begun to speak out for herself. These gatherings and meetings organized by the women missionaries provided perfect opportunities for her. Miss Hughes remained the headmistress of the Girls Middle School for 20 years. She introduced innovative methods of teaching that were found to have brought about progress in the learners. On her furloughs, she visited several chapels back home and delivered speeches on the work in North Lushai Hills. ‘She could sell ideas. She sold the ideas of women’s education to the general public so that it became the custom rather than the exception for girls to go to school …’57 and ‘… through her work it came to be recognized not only that girls could learn but that they should be given the opportunity to study. During her lifetime, she saw the transition to a large number of matriculants (sic) and graduates and also most women in the villages being able to read and write.…’58 The Girls’ School was praised profusely by the then director of public instructions, Mr A.G. Small, who thought it to be the best Middle

Welsh Missionaries & Transformation of Mizo Women 325 School in the province.59 Miss Hughes also started the Girl Guide Movement in the Hills. Lushai girls now took part in adventures, picnics and games as guides. It could be said that for some Lushai women, the process of transformation began from their school days. Miss Gwen Rees Roberts arrived in 1944 to become the head­ mistress of the Welsh Mission Girls School. The missionaries encouraged academic excellence in their learners as they believed it to be a means for social mobility. Moreover, ‘… they also saw it as a means of freeing non-Christians from what were considered to be their backward traditional cultures’.60 Along this vein Miss Roberts had written that, ‘In the Aijal Girls’ School an attempt is being made to give the girls something a good deal wider than that through teaching the more cultural subjects as well as the purely academic ones. From time to time there are complaints from the general public because the girls are taught to weave or to do domestic science rather than geometry. We believe, however, that if we stick to our ideal, we shall be doing more for the future women and mothers of Lushai than we could in the other way.’61 Therefore, the curriculum of the Girls’ School included domestic works like weaving, sewing, cooking, cleanliness and looking after babies and invalids.62 ‘It was hoped that by educating females, Christian values would eventually pervade tribal … family life.’63 The Western education and the new form of worship changed the image of the women at a rapid pace. The missionaries, too, found out that the women had come out in all spheres of life that it became necessary to broaden the school curriculum in order to meet their growing needs.64 Initially, as instructed from the head­ quarters in Liverpool, the curriculum of the school was made as practical as possible ‘… with emphasis on Health Teaching, and such practical things as weaving, gardening, cooking, etc’.,65 so that after receiving such education, the girls ‘… will be able to return home and lift the village out of its deep need’.66 In Lunglei, the Baptist missionaries, J.H. Lorrain and F.W. Sav­ idge, set up the Mission Station in Serkawn and started a school where the majority of learners were boys. A boarding school for girls was started in 1904 by them but it was not a success as it

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failed to educate women. Although they tried to revive the school in 1907, it did not receive a favourable response. In 1913, Mr Lorrain lamented about this to Mr Hezlett, the superintendent of the Lushai Hills, thus, We have a very great difficulty in South Lushai in obtaining pupils for our Girls’ Boarding School. We have excellent buildings and accom­ modation for at least 14 or 15, but have only three in residence. Down here female education is regarded as being of very little worth compared with the work which the girls are able to do at home in helping their parents.67

The wives of these two missionaries helped their husbands in teaching the few girl-boarders. Apart from the book education, the girls were given practical lessons in the classroom as well as the hostel. The main job of teaching and looking after the girls in the hostel was undertaken by a Christian Lushai woman who had passed her Lower Primary Education in Aizawl and Mrs Lorrain also helped by teaching them to sew.68 ‘It was not until 1921 that organized education was possible amongst the girls at all.…’69 The difference between the North and South Lushai Hills in con­ nection with women’s work was that, in South Lushai Hills, the Women’s Missionary Association in London took up the cause of the women in this area and women missionaries were appointed and sent with the specific aim of taking up the women side of the mission’s work.70 Therefore, beginnings in the process of change in the life of a woman started with the arrival of Miss Edith Chap­ man in 1919 to look after the education of the girls. Miss Chapman studied in the University of London and possessed a remarkable energy, rare courage and was gifted with an excellent power of speech.71 Before coming to the Lushai Hills, she had studied the Montessori Method of Education and had taught in a school in Hampstead.72 Armed with such knowledge and with the desire to instill among the Lushai women the ‘… understanding of Christian standards of womanhood, wifehood, and motherhood’,73 a school was started exclusively for the girls in South Lushai. The school curriculum was framed in such a way that ‘… the education given shall not unfit the girls for their strenuous jungle lives…’74 but rather make ‘… the girls more useful wives and

Welsh Missionaries & Transformation of Mizo Women 327 mothers when they got back to their villages…’75 Therefore, importance was given ‘… to practical subjects such as gardening, handicrafts, cookery, weaving, washing, etc.’76 Miss Chapman also opened ‘…the school for seven or eight months in the year only, thus giving the children an opportunity of helping at home in the busiest seasons.…’77 Miss Burton helped by teaching the girls household duties, gardening and farming.78 In the Lushai family, basket weaving from bamboo was done by the men. However, this craft, which was exclusively male, was also encroached upon whence girls in the mission school began to learn basket making from bamboo and cane. The image of drudgery and servitude was being gradually transformed when two girl boarders from the mission school expressed their desire to follow specialized studies—one as a nurse and the other as a teacher.79 By 1923, five Lushai girls were in training to be nurses80 in the dispensary run by the mission. In 1920, two Lushai women trained to become Bible Women; they received training both in the scriptures and on medicines from the missionaries before setting out to villages in the outlying areas. The number of Bible Women, too, rose in 1923 from two to four. There is a saying among the Lushais which goes thus, ‘Wom­ an’s word is no word just as crab meat is no meat.’ Women did not have a voice in family and community matters. This bondage of silence was gradually broken with the introduction of educa­ tion exclusively for them and the incorporation of reading and composition classes. These were done with the aim of making the girls proficient enough to read aloud to the people in the villages and the churches. After attending schools, the image of the girls underwent a change: from being silent listeners, they were now becoming voices themselves, voices which read out to the people in the villages and the church. In Mizo Miracle, Chapman and Clark had written that making the girls read, conduct the school morning prayers, the Sunday worship and encouraging them to take Sunday School classes were all processes in moulding the images of the woman so that she could stand up for herself in get­ ting her rightful place in the society with no help from outsiders.81 The aim of the women missionaries to achieve successes, not only in examinations but in bringing out the best in a girl was pursued

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diligently by them. It was based on these aims and objectives that the Lushai woman began her process of transformation. The missionaries, both in the north and the south, borrowed their teaching techniques and school curriculum from each other. When Rev. David Edwards from the north visited the south, he was impressed with the way education was being carried out for the girls in the south by Miss Chapman and her colleagues. He wrote home to the secretary in Liverpool and commented that the missionaries in the South ‘…teach better womanhood as their first consideration. Cooking on better but Lushai lines is taught’. It is not a matter of everyday lessons in schools so much as the way they do their everyday cooking for their own needs in their hos­ tels that counts. They always have four or five orphans whom they tend and rear. They are fed from milk given by their own goats and cows. The girls learn to wash the babies, tend them in sickness, and to make clothes for them. They make clothes for every conceivable member of Lushai society. They weave every cloth that is known in Lushai and many that are new. They knit with cotton and wool. Their education is entirely on different lines from the boys.82 He urged the home office to seriously consider the question of female education in North Lushai along these lines. It was not surprising, therefore, to find the women of both the areas emerging as viable forces in the society at the same period of time. A Lushai baby adopted by the women missionaries in the South was Lalziki, called Ziki by everyone. She was brought and given to the missionaries by her father when she was four months old and her mother had died. The government had forbidden killing of babies upon the death of their mothers. Therefore, Ziki became a part of the missionary household. When they went home on furlough, little Ziki traveled with Miss Clark and Miss Chap­ man to Britain.83 She became an important connection between the missionaries and the indigenous women. The Lushai women became more open when they saw the two women missionaries with a Lushai child and they became more receptive towards their teachings. Ziki was educated in Calcutta and, after her matricula­ tion, attended the Women’s Christian College in Madras in south India. She obtained her master’s degree in education and was fired

Welsh Missionaries & Transformation of Mizo Women 329 with zeal to help her own people. ‘She was then appointed by the government of Assam as principal of the Basic Education Centre in Aizawl. She was there for over 10 years. After that she was sent as the first member of her tribe to be a professor in a postgradu­ ate training college in Assam. From there, she was promoted to be assistant inspectress of schools for girls in the hills of Assam, having her headquarters in Shillong.’84 The story of Ziki and other women reflected the changes brought into the life of a Lushai woman due to education. Like in the North Lushai Hills, the ‘handful of rice’ collec­ tion was also started by the women in South Lushai Hills. This collection was done to support the Bible Women as in North Lus­ hai Hills. It was started in 1920 when only one Bible woman was appointed.85 The number increased to two in the following year and these women received training from the women missionar­ ies before moving out to the neighbouring villages to spread the gospel, and teach the women folk on how to look after themselves, their household and the babies. In 1922, the number of women evangelists yet again increased to four. These women attended classes on the Bible and also undertook specialized training in nursing and teaching. Further south in Maraland, the land of the Mara people, the pioneer missionaries Rev. Reginald Lorrain and his wife worked towards converting the people to Christianity. ‘The Lakhers or Maras are a hill tribe closely related to the Lai tribe of the Chins.’86 Before they were taken over by the British government, they were continually raiding among themselves and the neighbouring tribes. Living side by side with them, learning their language and ‘by means of his medical knowledge, Mr Lorrain gained the confi­ dence of many of these wild and sturdy hill men and whilst helping them bodily was able to preach to them Christ Jesus’.87 Mr Lorrain was soon able to teach a few of the villagers how to read and write. However, that girls’ education was paid scant attention towards is evidenced by the letter written by Lt Col G.H. Loch to Mr Lorrain, wherein he stated, ‘I noticed the absence of girls in your classes. I suppose it is too soon yet in the history of your mission…’; in the

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same letter, this British administrator urged the mission to take up the issue of girls’ education when he wrote, … but I am confident that, with your wife, who knows the language so well, and who is so sympathetically inclined towards the people, it must be the wish of both of you that girl students will come in time. If we are to improve the home surroundings of these hill tribes, we must educate the women and work through them. Women may not have, in these hills, the same influence among the community or in family life that they possess in more civilized countries, but I am confident that the more we civilize and rise (sic) the status of women the better the condition of the people will be, both from the material and moral point of view.88

Having said this, the government did nothing in educating the people of this area. There were no government schools except those run by the Lakher Pioneer Mission. The area was totally neglected by the government even in the field of medicine. The Lakher Pioneer Mission, on arrival to the area, took up the onerous task of reducing the language to writing using the Roman script. Apart from this task, the missionaries also took up the medicinal side of the mission work. Therefore, in spite of the urgings of the administrator for a formal education for the girls, it was introduced only in 1929. However, before a separate school was started, the wife of Mr Lorrain, Mrs Maud Lorrain, gave an informal sewing class to the women of the mission compound in Saikao (Serkawr) once a week, every Thursday, since 1917 ‘… until material could no longer be obtained’.89 These sewing classes were always preceded by a short service when Mrs Lorrain imparted scriptural knowledge to the women present. Moreover, ‘at four p.m. each day medicine is distributed by Mrs Lorrain. Many have been the lives that have been saved and restored to health through… this part of the work. Just as a doctor is called up at all times of the night, so there are often occasions when someone is taken seri­ ously ill and the missionaries are knocked up in the middle of the night to give medicine or go down and try and give relief to the sick one’.90 The government of India awarded her the Kaiser-i-Hind medal in honour of her work among the Lakher people.

Welsh Missionaries & Transformation of Mizo Women 331 Compared to the neighbouring Lushai women, the Mara or Lakher women seemed to have been lesser of ‘… mere household drudges—a married woman has a clearly defined position, and inside the house she is supreme.’91 This was the view of the British administrators and the missionaries, too, seemed to have held the same view. The notion that the social relations between the men and the women were the same seemed to have played an impor­ tant role in the policy followed by the missionaries towards female education and this may have been the reason for the late introduc­ tion of a school exclusively for the girls of the area. Another reason might have been the dearth of funds.92 The Lakher Pioneer Mis­ sion was an independent inter-denominational mission funded by donations from like-minded people in the United Kingdom, while the Baptist Mission in Lunglei and the Welsh Mission in North Lushai Hills were funded from well-established and organized churches in Britain. A combined girls’ school and kindergarten was started in 1929 and was looked after by the daughter of the pioneer missionaries, Louise Tlosai Lorrain who in 1934 became Mrs. Lorrain-Foxall. She was assisted by another lady missionary, Miss Irene E. Hadley, who stayed till 1934. However, this side of the mission work was put to an end by the war. Although it was resumed afterwards, it ran only until the end of 1947 when the government took over the schools in Maraland and made them co-educational. The enrol­ ment in the Girls’ School rose steadily since its inception and, according to the report of 1935, the number of girl learners had risen to 60. Further work among the Mara girls was in the Sunday School. Miss Irene Hadley described a typical Sunday School in a newslet­ ter wherein she wrote, …[the girls were] sorted into two classes in the school-house. Miss Lorrain has all the older ones on one side, while I take the smaller ones on the other. Together we numbered about 40 girls and we both find the afternoons are never long enough to get all the work we would wish done. Miss Lorrain’s girls are all those who have been out at the jhum farm­ ing all the week, so she spends the first part of her time helping them

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to read and write, and ends by teaching scriptures and new hymns and explaining their meanings.… The smaller girls, however, are all able to come up to day school, and are learning to read and write quite nicely, so on Sunday afternoons these are able to give all the time to Scripture and hymns and they enjoy learning choruses with action, or new hymns. Then follows a short talk on a Bible lesson, and the learning by heart of a text round which the lesson centres.93

These classes on Sunday afternoons were the times when the missionaries were truly in touch with the lives of the girls by having heart-to-heart talks. ‘The work has, like all others, its disap­ pointments and occasionally we find that a girl merely comes to Sunday School so as to be able to enter the sewing class and get a coat.… Then we get others who attend for a short time and then are persuaded by their families not to come anymore.’94 N.E. Parry, a British administrator who was anxious to help the people in the Lushai Hills, had admitted that missions in dif­ ferent parts of the hills were more instrumental in bringing about changes in the lives of the people than the government. He was not against the development of the people per se, but believed that development should ‘… not in any way Europeanise them…’95 He had sung praises for the Lakher Pioneer Mission because he believed that this mission did not change the lives of the people they converted. He had written thus, ‘The Lakhers have not been affected by the mission in the same way as the Lusheis, for although a mission has been established at Saiko for nearly 20 years, it has made comparatively little headway. As yet the Lakher mission has done little or no harm, and has in certain directions done much good.’96 The observations made by Parry that the Lakher mission had done little in changing the lives of the people seemed to have been true in the case of their women, too. As mentioned earlier, the reasons for the neglect of work amongst the women might have been the financial situation of the mission or because the position enjoyed by the women in the family and the community was not as that of the Lushai women that it needed change. The first woman to have passed her lower primary did so only after Independence, in 1955.

Welsh Missionaries & Transformation of Mizo Women 333

Introduction of Western Health Care The Lushai understanding of diseases and illnesses were connected with the spirits and the spirit world. They believed that sickness or ill health befell a person due to the displeasure of a spirit or spirits or because of some anti-social crimes committed by them. For instance, tuberculosis was believed to be a consequence of crimes ‘such as theft, unusual cruelty or the fouling of a village spring’.97 When an illness befell a person, it was believed that the spirits had to be appeased in order to cure the person. Cures were therefore sought by propitiating the concerned spirits. The living and working conditions of the people were not con­ ducive to a healthy life and as such infant mortality was very high.98 In fact, it was the general belief that a first-born will not survive to become an adult.99 The people had an enormous amount of faith in sacrifices and indigenous medicines and when the government set up dispensaries and hospitals in several parts of the hills, they were viewed with distrust and the officials had a hard time in remov­ ing the prejudices the people had on modern medicines. The government tried to do away with these prejudices of the people especially towards vaccination. In order to do so, it appointed Lus­ hai vaccinators to vaccinate the people against smallpox. However, the Lushai apathy towards this disease too took a long time to be overcome by the medicines introduced by the rulers. The setting up of government outposts in several areas of the Lushai Hills necessitated the opening of dispensaries if not for the benefit of the indigenous people but for the government employees stationed in these areas. In the report given in 1899 by the civil surgeon in Aizawl, Captain Mac Leod, there were alto­ gether four government civil dispensaries, one station hospital and four military police outpost hospitals in the hills.100 Although the report lamented upon the weakness of the medical staff espe­ cially in the Aizawl dispensary, the civil surgeon Mac Leod worked towards gaining the confidence of the people. It was noted that soon after there was a fivefold increase in the number of Lushai patients treated in the Aizawl dispensary.101 The need for a change in the lifestyle of the people was also being reiterated in the official

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newsletter of the government called the Mizo leh Vai Chanchinbu.102 Through these newsletters, the government also spread awareness among the people about the status of the women in the commu­ nity and the need to change their status and image. The educated people, who hitherto had no knowledge that the condition of their women was low, began to think along these lines and made use of the newsletter to spread it to the masses. The chief medical officer of the government made inspec­ tion trips to the dispensaries lying in different areas. The reports, prepared and submitted to the superintendent of the Lushai Hills, reflected the works done by the chief medical officer towards the betterment of sanitation in the villages he visited. Apart from inspecting the beds in the dispensaries along with the medicines and operation tools, he made visits to the local markets or bazaars to look into the raw products being sold there. Water from the wells, which were being consumed by the whole village, was also inspected. Insufficiencies were noted and reported to the chief of the village or to the superintendent for further action. These actions taken by the government in the field of medicine began to break the faith of the people in sacrifices and indigenous medicines and the government records showed an increase in the number of Lus­ hai outdoor and indoor patients in the dispensaries and hospital.103 The government also encouraged the setting up of the Village Wel­ fare Committees under the aegis of the Red Cross Society which had begun to function in the area. The main objective of the gov­ ernment in setting up these committees was to ‘… help towards the improvement of fooding, hygiene, health, child welfare, anti-natal and post-natal care…’104 The government kept vigil on the work­ ings of these committees by making the civil surgeon ‘… as the final technical adviser to the district Red Cross committee’.105 The membership of the welfare committee in each village consisted of the village chief along with two men and women of ordinary standing; the inclusion of the women was justified by McCall as an ‘encouragement to the chief and to the people to accord a better status to their women, and to take a more intelligent interest in all matters affecting the common enemy, namely, disease’.106 It was also mentioned that that the government had hopes of alleviating

Welsh Missionaries & Transformation of Mizo Women 335 the condition of the ‘Lushai womanhood’.107 This action of the gov­ ernment may be viewed as an action to bring some relief towards the improvement of the status of women as well as of the health of the women in the community, who had no idea about ante- and post-natal care. However, the government on saying this did not make the establishment of welfare committees an obligatory duty for the chiefs and ‘if he does not wish to form a committee, there is no official pressure’.108 It may be appropriate to point out here the observation made by J. Shakespear in a letter where he wrote that the chiefs were rather willing to beg and ‘the people are quite ready to accept favours, but will take no trouble to improve themselves. If a dis­ pensary is put in their village, they will gladly attend, but they will not walk a few miles to do so; if a man is sick and his friends are told to carry him a day or two’s journey to hospital, where his cure is certain, they won’t do so unless forced to’.109 Apart from Shakespear, his successor as superintendent, Major H.W.G. Cole, too, had the same notion about the Lushais when he wrote, ‘But their intelligence is allied to extreme indifference—an indifference that prevents a man going a mile or two to a dispensary after he had been badly mauled by a wild beast…’110 These clearly showed the Lushai’s suspicion of Western medicines. The people had their own traditional medicines, which were locally available. The colonial ethnographers and the missionaries failed to mention the various cures available to a Lushai, which had been handed down by word of mouth. It may be pointed out here that in 1984, the Mizoram Upa Pawl (MUP) or the Association of the Elderly sent out requests to its 175 branches throughout Mizoram, urging them to send a list of the traditional Mizo medicine that they know of, and which has been handed down from generation. The request met with enthu­ siastic response and the headquarters of the association was able to bring out the Thurawn Bu or Advice to the Public by MUP. The booklet identified 228 diseases and ailments and their cures,111 and there was a whole section dedicated to cures for ailments in rela­ tion to childbirth and other gynaecological problems. Added to the suspicion of the people towards Western medi­ cine was the presence of the Lushai ethical code of conduct known

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as tlawmngaihna. It was a moral code of conduct or a code of ethics and was visible in every sphere of Lushai life. Every Lushai aspired to have a life filled with tlawmngaihna and was handed from gen­ eration through action and oral traditions. It pervaded the lives of the people right from the time when they were children and were carried on till the time of death. Tlawmngaihna entailed sacrific­ ing one’s comfort and pleasure for the well-being of others and the community as a whole. It also entailed a person’s refusal to trouble or bring trouble to his neighbours and the community. A person was said to be tlawmngai when he or she followed this moral code of ethics or conduct. Tlawmngaihna could be seen at different times in the lives of the people. When a person needed medical atten­ tion, and had to be carried to a place to get the needed assistance, he would be carried by the young men of the village on a stretcher made locally. At such times, the sick person would, because of tlawmngaihna, refuse to be carried by others because he disliked causing trouble to the neighbours while the young men will invari­ ably try to do so because of the moral code of conduct. In times of death, too, a person who had died in another village will be carried thus to his village for the burial. While passing some other villages on the way to the dead man’s village, the youths of the village will try to snatch the stretcher from the carriers and sometimes some minor troubles even ensued as to who would carry the dead body or the sick person to the final destination. Therefore, the refusal of the people to go to the dispensaries to get the medical assistance sprang out of tlawmngaihna and a distrust of allopathic medicines and not out of indifference or laziness as had been noted by the colonial rulers.112 Moreover, this ‘tlawmngaihna implies a context of indepen­ dence and self-sufficiency’;113 therefore, begging had always been viewed as a slur on the community and the family. When a per­ son or a family fell on hard times, the community would stick together to help them out. Tlawmngaihna made the people try to be self-sufficient and not be a burden on the society and this same tlawmngaihna made the community ready to help those in need. Widows and fatherless families had been helped by the community and their relatives even in constructing houses for their residence.

Welsh Missionaries & Transformation of Mizo Women 337 The whole community would set aside a day for the construction or repair of their houses. Therefore, while the moral code of con­ duct prevented people from accepting favours but would help a fellow human being to lighten his or her load, the colonial writers have misconstrued what they had seen in the lives of the Lushais. Tlawmngaihna was not an exclusive of the men alone. The Lushai women excelled in it, too. They were not allowed to think of themselves but contributed to the family and the community as much as they could. A woman would not show favours to any young man who came to court her because of tlawmngaihna. Even though tired after working in the jhum the whole day, she would not show her tiredness when young men came to court her at night. At the later phase of the colonial rule, the administrators, too, acknowledged the importance of this spirit of conduct and found it desirous to foster it within their midst.114

Mission and Health Care An important auxiliary to education was medicine. To the imperial mind the spread of Western medicines to other countries and cultures were considered to be blessings brought about by the imperial rule. ‘However, missionary medicine was not a simple humanitarian gesture promising to relieve sickness, suffering and disease; in missionary hands medical interventions were designed not only to care and cure but also to Christianise.’115 Mission boards had discovered that missionary medicine was the ‘most impressive and persuasive means of presenting the gospel message to the peoples of other cultures and other faiths’.116 Thus, missionaries going to mission fields were given training on the basics of diseases and medicines. Once its importance was acknowledged, the Protestant churches began to send large medical missionary forces to different parts of the world. At the turn of the twentieth century, the equation of male to female medical missionaries was equal but by 1912, of the 335 medical missionaries posted in India, 217 were women. This disparity reflected ‘the high priority given to women’s medical work as a means of reaching India’s female population’.117 On their tours of the villages, D.E. Jones and Edwin Rowlands

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found that the people suffered from various diseases and the call for a healing ministry was indeed great.118 Therefore, medicines were sold by the missionaries on such preaching tours.119 Great headway in medical mission was made with the setting up of a small dispensary in the mission compound and on the arrival of Dr Peter Fraser in 1908. He got down to work among the people and tried to remove their prejudices over Western medicines. At the beginning of the year 1909, his patients were treated in a small tent. In his report, Dr Fraser had written that in the twelve months, 23,919 patients had been treated by him. He claimed that the medical work had been an excellent opportunity for ‘sowing the seed’120 and ‘… that most of the patients, after a stay in the hospital, have willingly given their names as believers in Christ, and also tried to lead others to Him’.121 The beginnings made by Dr Fraser were continued by later missionaries. There was no missionary doctor in the area for quite a while after Dr Fraser, and the medical side of the mission was looked after by a nurse, Winifred M. Jones. The coming of Dr John Williams was an event of great rejoicing.122 Importance was given to the healing of the people, and though the dispensary continued in Aizawl, a new hospital was also constructed under his supervi­ sion in Durtlang. Lushai girls were trained here as nurses with the hope that they will be able to help people in faraway villages. This initial endeavour of the mission was carried further by Miss Gwladys Evans and Dr Gwyneth P. Roberts. They continued the nurses’ training schools at the hospital in Durtlang. In fact, the hospital was the only training school for nurses and midwives in the whole district. These two women missionaries were respon­ sible for laying the groundwork of the training school. Textbooks were prepared by them and translated into the Mizo language. Initially students who had passed their Class VI could train as a nurse but later, girls who have passed Class VIII were taken for the senior certificate. In order to apply to become a trainee nurse, an applicant needed to bring a note from their church confirming their membership along with their educational certificate and a reference letter.123 As May Bounds wrote, the number of applicants

Welsh Missionaries & Transformation of Mizo Women 339 to become trainee increased tremendously. It was the policy of the selection committee to select girls who had come from remote vil­ lages so they could be pioneers in their villages.124 Apart from their works in the hospital, Dr Gwyneth Roberts and Miss Evans undertook vaccination tours to several villages, and when they were not busy giving vaccinations, they gave talks on hygiene, first aid, home nursing, etc. These talks, especially on hygiene, were listened to attentively by the villagers. However, they pointed out to the missionaries that such things cannot be car­ ried out in a Mizo village.125 Therefore, Miss Evans strongly felt the need to show the possibility of raising the standard of living in the villages and decided to ‘… live there, under the same condi­ tions, in the same type of house.…’126 Therefore, in order to meet the needs of villagers unable to come to Durtlang, and to raise the living standards of the people, Miss Evans started out to villages to open health centres in four places—Sawleng, Pukzing, Chhawrtui and Sihfa. While on her tours to these villages, Miss Evans not only provided medical care to the women through these centres, but also delivered talks on various topics like ‘… the woman’s place in the church. They want to know all about the women of Wales and their position in the church, especially regarding ordination.…’127 These centres in the villages set up by the mission were womenoriented as was seen from the writings of Miss Evans who ‘… often visited the surrounding villages, and tried to examine all children, pregnant women and nursing mothers for signs of vitamin defi­ ciency and under nourishment’.128 The nursing staff to these centres, since they work in places where there were no doctors, were often in a position to test their skills, and they were met from those that received training from the hospital at Durtlang. ‘They diagnosed, gave treatment and care and supplied the medication. Midwifery cases were attended to day or night and public health teaching and preventive medicine was incorporated with the duties.’129 Miss Hughes started a child welfare clinic as a means to help the Lushai mothers. Babies were weighed in this place and Miss Hughes took this opportunity to explain to them

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… the principles of health and hygiene. The mothers from the village were invited to come on weekly visits, and it became a social centre for them.130 [Miss Hughes] would call the children and their mothers together, bathing and weighing the children and recording their weight and height on the chart. It was her custom to award prizes to the healthiest and the best-developed children. She even bathed the mothers who were not clean enough. In recognition of her welfare work the government awarded her the Kaisar-i-Hind.131

There is no denying the fact that the works of the mission­ aries, especially the women missionaries, and to some extent the government, had been instrumental in bringing about the gradual transformation of the Lushai women in North Lushai Hills. The missionaries came with a firm belief that ‘Christianity is going to uplift the people of this country in every way’.132 Therefore, they worked relentlessly towards bringing about the ‘uplift’ of the peo­ ple. This task of social transformation, which they placed upon themselves, was mainly carried out through education and medi­ cal works, and the Lushai women seemed to have been the most affected by these changes. In the South, too, the cause of the Lushai women was taken up by the missionaries, even in the field of medicine when Nurse Dicks arrived. The women missionaries set up a ‘ward’ in their bungalow where women and girls were treated before a proper women’s ward could be built in the mission hospital. It was in this ward that the nurses received training from the missionary nurse. The women missionaries also adopted motherless babies and these babies later became instrumental in effecting a change in the image of their fellow Lushai women. Soon after the arrival of the lady missionaries to Lungleh, they were helped by a Lushai girl, Thangchhumi, who was eager to learn. Thangchhumi, or Chhumi as she was called, lived with her mother and they had converted to Christianity upon the teachings of Rev. J.H. Lorrain. She stayed with the ladies and studied under them while at the same time she taught them the language, the culture and tradition of her people. She became the most important instrument in the running of the kindergarten, the nursery and home for the motherless babies. She

Welsh Missionaries & Transformation of Mizo Women 341 would visit the neighbouring villages and live there for some time, ‘… partly for school work but also to help the people in every­ way’.133 She lived near the mission station even after her marriage and continued to provide assistance to the lady missionaries. She started a motherless babies’ home in her house with the help of her husband, and helped the lot of her fellow womenfolk in every pos­ sible way she could think of. Chhumi extended her work and took in expectant mothers to try and save both them and their babies. Soon women were coming to her from all parts of the district. She examined them all and did what she could for them, usually keep­ ing them in her home till the birth of the child, and after, as long as she thought it advisable. She gave sound advice to the moth­ ers on their own health and habits and on how to bring up their children.134 The help rendered to the expectant mothers brought to light the fact that the lot of the Lushai women, as understood and portrayed by the colonial writers and the missionaries, were not justified. The argument which could come up in this connection is that, while these writers wrote that the women worked and did their normal duties right until the baby was born and immedi­ ately after delivery, if they could stay on in Chhumi’s house even before the delivery and after to be looked after by Chhumi and her husband, the whole picture painted by them may have to be reassessed. The first trained Lushai nurse, Lalsiami, went out in 1925 from the mission compound in the south to help her fellow women in a village, which was one of the largest in South Lushai Hills. She has been able to give real help in several midwifery cases, and has won her way into the hearts of the women by her care for the babies, especially during a serious outbreak of whooping cough. She has held ‘baby welfare’ classes for the mothers, and taught the big girls to make babies’ vests, and also taken classes in the school, includ­ ing hygiene.135 The ideas of health, hygiene and cleanliness were militarily enforced by the missionaries on the new converts. Mission Veng in Aizawl and some villages like Theiriat were made ‘models’ for every Mizo village for cleanliness and hygienic living so the people could lead a healthy life. The missionaries wanted to inculcate the

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idea of purity, both inner and outer, to the people as a contrast to their pagan past. For inner purity they were encouraged to attend church regularly and for outer purity the people living in Mission Veng had to keep their animals in separate buildings. Each house must have a separate latrine and drinking water must be boiled.136 In Theiriat village, it was made mandatory to have a small bath­ room in every house and the inhabitants needed to make use of this at least once a week. Cleaning the house once every month and sweeping the village streets regularly were all steps taken towards cleanliness, hygiene and health. The creation of the Bible Women in North Lushai Hills in 1913 by Mrs Jones with the help of the Khasi woman, Siniboni, was soon emulated by the South Lushai Hills where the first Bible Woman was employed in 1920. The main objective of creating this section of missionary work was to spread the gospel in different parts of the hills through the local women converts. They were also expected to teach the people in the villages the basics of hygiene. The missions and the government worked together in the project of training the women before they were being sent out to the vil­ lages. The Bible Women were taught ‘… the elements of midwifery and the laws of hygiene and cleanliness, and the civil surgeon has allowed two of them to study under Pawngi—the government midwife for a year.’137 The wives of the missionaries namely, Mrs D.E. Jones and Mrs Frederick Sandy, collaborated with the govern­ ment in working out a schedule for their training and it was their hope that through the Bible women ‘… in future years the country will be greatly helped, the infant death rate lowered, and the great suffering and pain among the poor Lushai women relieved’.138 The missionaries approached the government to provide additional funds to the Bible women in addition to what they were getting from the rice collection as was shown by Mrs Sandy’s letter to Mr Williams wherein she says that This scheme has been sent on by the civil surgeon to the inspector general of civil hospitals. It provides for the training of a number of Bible Women in batches of four at Aijal [Aizawl], under the sub-assistant surgeon and the government midwife. As they are available these women will be

Welsh Missionaries & Transformation of Mizo Women 343 stationed one each at Kolosib, Khawthlir, Champhai, North Vanlaiphai, Chhingchhip and Sialsuk.

It was suggested in the scheme that the government should assist these Bible Women by supplementing the salaries they receive from the mission (‘handful of rice’ collection) in order to do away with any temptation to exact fees from the people, and also as recognition of the additional work they will be doing. Of course their primary work will be religious and spiritual, and before being sent out to the villages, they will, as hitherto, receive religious instruction from me and in the evangelists’ classes. The medical relief that they will be able to afford the women will, no doubt, substantially help the message that they bring to them.139

However, it is not known whether the government complied with this request for the supplementation of the salaries of the women. Equipped with scriptural as well as elementary knowledge of hygiene, these women trudged through villages, bearing their own loads and sometimes carrying their babies on their backs, started work among their fellow women in different parts of the hills. Their numbers increased year after year and the missions in both areas benefited from their works. D.E. Jones had commented that they ‘could do with a hundred of them for their work is much appreciated’.140

Introducing the Concept of Domesticity Domesticity was a nineteenth-century concept was also an integral aspect of modernity as well. It denotes not just a pattern of residence or a web of obligations but a pro­ found attachment: a state of mind as well as a physical orientation. Its defining attributes are privacy and comfort, separation from the work­ place, and the merging of domestic space and family members into a single commanding concept (in English ‘home’).141

It had been discussed that women missionaries were sent to India and other places to work exclusively with the women of the

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colonized countries. In the spirit of the ‘mission of sisterhood’, the women missionaries had spoken of their works among the women as an effort to socially and spiritually free their heathen ‘sisters’ whereas the ‘contemporary feminist historians have coined the term “mission of domesticity” to describe the motivating ideol­ ogy in forming “women’s work” (as it was termed) in the mission field: to remake “native” women into “good wives and mothers” modeled on the norms of metropolitan and evangelical norms of feminity.’142 The curriculum of the mission run girls’ schools reflected the desire of the missionaries to change the ‘native’ women to ‘good wives and mothers’. They wanted to instill among the native women an ‘understanding of Christian standards of woman­ hood, wifehood and motherhood’,143 and importance was given ‘to practical subjects such as gardening, handicrafts, cookery, weaving, washing, etc.’144 Thus, the schools specially opened for the girls began to play an important role in the process of trans­ forming the ‘native’ into a better human being. The education they imparted in the schools was both secular as well as spiritual. Their first consideration was to ‘teach better womanhood … and their education was entirely different lines from the boys’.145 The mis­ sionaries encouraged academic excellence in their learners so that they could become exemplary living models and a ‘means of free­ ing non-Christians from their backward traditional cultures’.146 In addition to giving lessons on ‘domesticity’ to the girls in school, the missionaries also set aside specific dates in a week when the mothers, who could no longer attend schools, would come and interacted with them. These meetings, too, became important in imparting ideas of ‘better’ womanhood. These meetings opened with a short period of devotion where the women were encour­ aged to participate and speak out their minds. They were taught about health, hygiene, invalid cooking, baby and infant care. The motivating factor of all women’s work and domesticity therefore was the belief that ‘Christian homes will never be what they ought to be until we have in them God fearing, educated mothers who can train their children wisely and well’.147 Moreover, the girls edu­ cated and trained in the mission schools were expected to serve

Welsh Missionaries & Transformation of Mizo Women 345 their community through the knowledge they had acquired. They were shaped and expected by the missionaries to become instru­ ments of change in their community.

Missionary Intervention in Looks, Manners and Attire The missionary reformation of the ‘native’ women could be seen in the changed looks, manners and dress of the mission-educated girls and women. The image of drudgery and servitude was now replaced by one of self-confidence. The missionaries noted that education had made a difference even in the ‘facial expressions of the uneducated women and those of the schoolgirls’.148 The men, too, began to respect the educated women, so much so that some of them began to feel dissatisfied with their wives and began to think of them as ‘sluts’ when compared with the Western educated women. Some even implored wives of the missionaries to change these women and teach them to become better wives.149 Missionaries wanted to spread the idea of cleanliness to its converts and those educated in their schools. They insisted that cleanliness was a mark of godliness and Christianity. The mission educated girls and women who attended the women’s meetings held by the missionaries were taught cleanliness and sometimes were even bathed by the missionaries. Thus, the Christian con­ vert girls, women and family were cleaner in their looks than their pagan sisters and they became different from the rest of their peo­ ple. The discourse on cleanliness empowered the mission educated women because the focus was on spaces in Christian homes like cleaning the house once every month, having a separate room for bath, boiling drinking water, etc. The women and the girls were taught manners and etiquette along Western lines, and they were found to be better behaved than those who did not attend school or receive education.150 They were in the public eye and were considered to be an example.151 Although Western mannerisms were inculcated in the mission school edu­ cated girls, the spirit of independence was also encouraged in them. In her upper section of the school, Kitty Lewis noticed that the girls became naughtier as they grew older but she considered

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this as a good sign because it showed an independent spirit. She admitted that she liked the naughtiest the best.152 Though profess­ ing thus, some of her letters revealed the Victorian kind of rigidity she maintained in looking after the girls. She wanted to instill the Victorian ideas of demureness and impeccability in the manners of the girls and became angered when these laws were defied and when the girls mingled with men.153 She carefully watched over the girls in the hostel lest they became embroiled in sinful pleasures of the flesh until they were married. When the British first came into contact with the people of the hills, the dress worn by the men and women were rather similar. The garments are made from cotton, which was grown in the jhums and manufactured by the women. Locally grown indigo plants gave the blue and black dyes used to impart colour to the white cotton cloth while red and yellow dyes were obtained by the Mara women by digging various roots in the jungles. The gold colour which was woven in the cloth was silk procured from Burmese tradesmen who came to barter away their ware.154 The Mizo women’s dress consisted of a dark blue cotton cloth and was worn wrapped around the waist and reaching to the knees. It was held in place by a girdle which was made of brass string or wire.155 Sometimes the cloth was woven with red and black stripes.156 Traditionally, the bosom was left uncovered but soon a top garment, which was a short white cotton jacket, was worn in the same manner as men. Simple designs denoting walk of lov­ ers along the village path, cucumber seed, the tiger’s tooth or the notes of a musical xylophone were woven into the cloth. Designs used by the women of the South were ‘more exquisite and more meticulously executed than in the North’.157 The main apparatus used for making the cloth was the loom. A more elaborate wrap or puan was worn on ceremonious occasions and there were certain wraps which could be worn only by those who had performed the thangchhuah ceremony. The attire of the women underwent changes when the women missionaries came to the region. The first sewing machine brought into the Lushai Hills was by Mrs K.E. Jones and she taught two Mizo women, Darlianchhungi and Salthangpuii, how to sew cloth.

Welsh Missionaries & Transformation of Mizo Women 347 After her apprenticeship with Mrs Jones, Darlianchhungi was employed by the mission to continue giving sewing lessons to the girls in the school.158 This trend of teaching sewing and making dresses and skirts out of the woven cotton cloth was continued by all the other women missionaries after Mrs Jones. Kitty Lewis took up the idea of changing the native women and girls’ dress by teach­ ing the girls to cut the cotton, dye them and make them into frocks and dresses. The girls not only wore the frocks made in the school but also sold them to the public on the Annual Sale Day organized by the school.159 These frocks were made on the lines of the pat­ terns sent by the parents of Miss Lewis and the girls cut and sewed accordingly.160 Two women employed by the mission to teach the girls sewing and embroidery, Darlianchhungi and Darmani, were able to perfectly reproduce from pattern books. Apart from selling to the local people, the girls also made extra frocks. These were sent to Britain by post and were sold by Lady Lewis there.161 From the proceeds of these sales, Lady Lewis sent linens and cottons of different colours along with silks. She also sent several books on the latest patterns or fashion in Britain at that period of time. Added to the frocks, Kitty also experimented with Darmani and Darlianchhungi on jumpers162 and these were also introduced to the women of the Lushai Hills. These handcrafted wear by the girls fetched a good market even in Britain because, thanks to the pat­ tern books, they were made in line with the latest trends. Crochet and embroidery were also taught to the girls and these were also sold both at home and in Britain. By 1937-8, the custom of wearing the traditional puan (wrap­ around) in the schools was slowly being relegated to the background when the girls started having school uniforms. Initially, the school uniforms were worn only on special occasions when there were visitors to the school,163 but very soon they became the daily dress of the girls in the school. It cannot be denied that the female mis­ sionaries and the school girls were the ‘trendsetters’ in the Mizo community in women’s fashion because even the puan was impro­ vised upon by them and it disseminated from them to the public. Several patterns, which were not indigenous, were added to the puan.

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In time, the skirt and frock became more popular than the tra­ ditional puan, the jumper replaced the short cotton coat and, with the introduction of knitting classes, the sweater, too, made its way into the lives of the women. They were being modelled in Western fashion, not only in manners and outlook but also in dress. The idea of the missionaries that a Christian should look and act dif­ ferently from the heathen was being executed through the lives of the women. There was no distinction between the north and the south in these changes. This was because missionaries from both the denominations shared a good rapport, visiting each other and following similar curricula in their schools.

Missionaries and Transforming Marriage and Separation Sources had revealed that the missionaries and the colonialists corresponded on the question of extending the Indian Christian Marriage Act XV of 1872 along with the Divorce Act of 1869 in the Lushai Hills.164 However, the Lushai Hills was a part of the Backward Areas, later Excluded Areas, where the laws of the government could not be implemented in its totality. Therefore, the church, or rather the missionaries, had a free hand in framing the Mizo Christian Marriage Agreement. This agreement was enforced both in the North and the South Lushai Hills. The marriage register maintained by D.E. Jones165 read the marriage agreement between the Lushai Christians as follows: 1. To live together until death. There is no cause of separation except adultery. 2. Whatever we possess is not the property of either in particular, but of both equally. 3. Whoever casts the other off or leaves him or her, the same forfeits everything of the house, children, domestic animals and any possessions. 4. Price to be paid. The register of Rev. D.E. Jones recorded the first Lushai Christians to wed according to the Christian Lushai Marriage Agreement as Mr Liansawta of Sakawrtuichhun and Miss Dar­

Welsh Missionaries & Transformation of Mizo Women 349 tawii of Zobawk. Their friends, Mr Siama of Sakawrtuichhun and Miss Buki of Zobawk, were witnesses to this marriage which was solemnized by Rev. Edwin Rowlands on 27 May 1907. A significant feature of marriage in the Mizo church was the existence of marriage in places other than the chapel. The first record about such marriage was in the Presbytery Minute of Octo­ ber 1912 No. XI. The minute stated that if a non-Christian woman desired to marry a Christian man, they could not do it in a chapel and communicant church members were not to bestow their good wishes to the couple. The second part of the minute stated that they could secretly be married in a place other than a chapel.166 Apart from a Christian marrying a non-Christian, such kind of marriages was applied to when a girl became pregnant or eloped with someone disapproved of by her parents. Such offences were dealt with by the church by excommunicating their members for a specific period of time (six months) after which they could seek re-entry into the church by stating their repentance. Offenders could not get married in the chapel during their period of excom­ munication and thus had to resort to a marriage in a place other than the chapel. If they could wait out the period of punishment, they could get married in a chapel. The reason for creating such kind of provision in a marriage had been explained as a means of preserving the sanctity of the church and as a show of compas­ sion to the offenders so that they could still marry according to the Christian rites even if not in the chapel.167 It could also be read as a means devised by the missionaries of keeping the Christians within their fold and insure that they do not ‘backslide’ or return to their traditional way of life. The concern of the early church in the hills in relation with marriage was the ease in which the men divorced their wives.168 These divorces could not have legal penalties because the Indian Christian Marriage Act was not implemented in the area and the government did not have a say in such matters. The church there­ fore took up the matter of divorce among the Mizo Christians. In the north, such cases were brought before the ‘committee of the presbytery (later synod) to approve or disapprove.’169 The church in the north thought it ‘natural’170 that they should make regula­

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tions. In case of adultery, ‘the innocent party would be allowed to remarry and the guilty party would not be allowed to marry for some years’.171 The Church sought ‘reconciliation between separated couples … and repentance for sin was a condition of remarriage and re-entry into the church’.172 The south, too, was affected by the same dilemma of easy divorce and J.H. Lorrain had appealed to the government to impose a fine of Rs. 60 payable to the church.173 But government interference in the matter was not heard of. The same system of traditional divorce was followed in the Christian marriage and the system of paying the bride price, too, was continued by the Mizo Christians.

Conclusion Ideas which were brought in by the missionaries from their mother country were implemented in the hills in bringing about changes in the lives of the ‘native’ women. When these ideas were hammered home into the mind of the Mizo woman, she emerged transformed. However, the female missionaries who brought about this transformation were still subject to patriarchal society and Christianity. Therefore, the reformation and transformation wrought in the lives of the Mizo women were also partial.

Notes 1. Sir Robert Reid, The Lushai Hills, Tribal Research Institute, Aizawl, 1978 (reprinted), p. 59. 2. Ibid., p. 68. 3. Government of India, Foreign and Political Department Proceedings, March 1914, National Archives of India, New Delhi, p. 12. 4. Proceedings for the Year 1897, Lushai Hills, National Archives of India New Delhi. pp. 223-6. 5. A.G. McCall, L ushai Chrysalis, Tribal Research Institute, Aizawl, 2003 (reprinted), p. 198. 6. Ibid., p. 199. 7. Extract from letter no. 277, dated 17 July 1896, education department, Mizoram State Archives, Aizawl. Hereafter cited as MSA.

Welsh Missionaries & Transformation of Mizo Women 351 8. Ibid. 9. Letter No. 677, dated 28 January 1897, education department, MSA. 10. Letter from Maj. Shakespear to the secretary to the chief commissioner of Assam dated 15 April 1898, File: Education Department 5, MSA. 11. Letter of John Shakespear to R.A. Lorrain in: Lorain, A. Reginald, The Wonderful Story of the Pioneer Mission, Lakher Pioneer Mission, London, 6th edn., 2007, p. 16. 12. Ibid. 13. Letter from Mrs K.E. Jones to Mr Hezlett dated 4 May 1916, general department G-238, MSA, p. 3. 14. Lalhmuaka and T. Chawma, Zoram Skirl Zirna Chanchin, Lalhmuaka, Aizawl, 2000, p. 9. 15. Lalhmuaka, Zoram Zirna Lam Chhinchhiahna (The Records of Zoram Education), Tribal Research Institute, Aizawl, 1981, p. 19. 16. V. Lalzawnga (comp.), The Annual Report of BMS on Mizoram 1901­ 1938, The Baptist Church of Mizoram, Serkawn, 1993, p. 4. 17. McCall, op. cit., p. 26. 18. David Edwards’ letter to Mr Thomas dated 17 September 1936. 19. Mrs K.E. Jones’ letter to Mr Hezlett dated 4 May 1916, General Department G-238, MSA, wherein she wrote that six Lushai girls, chiefs’ daughters and their friends, were supported by Col. Cole in their studies in the Girls’ School. 20. McCall, op. cit., p. 284. 21. Ibid. 22. Kitty Lewis’ letter to her parents dated 5 May 1923. File: Letters of Kitty Lewis to her family 1922-1923, ATC Archives, p. 6. 23. K. Thanzauva (comp.), Reports of the Foreign Mission of the Presbyterian Church of Wales on Mizoram, 1894-1957, SLPB, Aizawl, 1997, p. 56. 24. J.M. Lloyd, History of the Church in Mizoram (Harvest in the Hills), Synod Publication Board, Aizawl, 1991, p. 29. 25. Thanzauva, op. cit., p. 1. 26. Lloyd, On Every High Hill, SLPB, Aizawl, 1984, p. 30. 27. Mizo Women Today, Tribal Research Institute, Aizawl, 1991, p. 20. 28. Mrs Jones’ letter to Mr. Hezlett, dated 4 May 1916, General Department, MSA. 29. Thanzauva, op. cit., p. 64. 30. Mrs J. Shakespear, ‘Home For Motherless Babies’, as quoted by Vanlalchhuanawma: op. cit., p. 144.

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31. Lloyd, On Every High Hill, op. cit., p. 70. 32. CMA 27,132-27,134, Abstract of Letters, vol. IV, 1916 no. 85, NLW, p. 2. 33. Rev. D.E. Jones, A Missionary’s Autobiography 1897–1927, translated from Welsh by Lloyd, H Liansailova, Aizawl, p. 46. 34. Ibid., p. 47. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid. 37. Thanzauva, op. cit., p. 61. 38. Maggie Sandy’s letter to Mr Williams dated 23 August 1919. CMA 27,335, NLW, p. 1. 39. Lloyd, History, op. cit., p. 145. 40. Ibid., p. 163. 41. Ibid., p. 240. 42. Interview with Upa Hmawnga h/o Kawli Bible Woman as cited in P.C. Laltlani, Kohhran Hmeichhhe Chanchin, LT Hmangaihthanga, Aizawl, 2003, pp. 95, 96. 43. Lloyd, History, op. cit., p. 278. 44. Official website of the Young Mizo Association, retrieved on 17 August 2010, http://centralyma.org.in YMA History Bung 2. 45. According to the Constitution of Young Mizo Association, Central Young Mizo Association, Aizawl, 1984, p. 1. Aims of the YLA: 1. To make best use of leisure time. 2. To strive for all round development of Mizoram. 3. To promote good Christian life. Rules of Membership: 1. Any Christian youth who desire to promote good Christian life could be a member of the YLA. 2. No membership to those who drank Zu or rice beer. 3. No membership to people with loose tongue. 4. Entry fee of eight anna and a monthly fee of one anna to be paid by the members. 46. Nerys Wendon Williams, op. cit., p. 215. 47. Lloyd, History, I, p. 221. 48. Kitty Lewis’ letter to her family dated 18 November 1924, File: Letters of Kitty Lewis, ATC Archives. 49. Rev. Lalrinawma, Pi Zomawii Leh Pu Niara Chanchin (Khawvel Sunday School Ni), SLPB, Aizawl, 2005, p. 4. 50. Letter of Kitty Lewis to Flintshire Branches dated 23 May, 1923, File: Letters of Kitty Lewis, ATC Archives. 51. Letter of Kitty Lewis to Mr W. Buthen dated 8 February 1924. File: Letters of Kitty Lewis, ATC Archives, p. 1. 52. Ibid., p. 1.

Welsh Missionaries & Transformation of Mizo Women 353 53. Ibid., p. 3. 54. See David Edwards’ letter to Mr Thomas dated 17 September 1936, CMA 27,397, NLW. 55. Ibid. 56. ‘The Women of Lushai Today’, a loose leaflet by Katie Hughes, found in CMA 27,366, NLW, p. 2. 57. Article in Glad Tidings, August 1963, by Dr Gwyneth P. Roberts found in CMA 27,366, NLW, p. 2. 58. Ibid., p. 1. 59. Miss Hughes’ reference to the DPI’s Report dated 8 February 1939, found in CMA 27,366, NLW. 60. Williams, op. cit., p. 259. 61. From a booklet called A Memorandum on the Welsh Mission Girls’ School Aijal, North Lushai Hills Assam 1949, CMA 27,423, NLW, p. 4. 62. Catherine Hughes’ letter to Mr Thomas dated 8 August 1935, and also in Letters 1924-1937, File 1, CMA 27,366, NLW. 63. Williams, op. cit., p. 265. 64. Gwen’s letters to David dated 1 August 1948, and 31 December 1948, CMA 27,423, NLW. 65. Mr Thomas’ letter to Gwen dated 16 June 1938, CMA 27,423, NLW, p. 1. 66. Ibid. 67. Letter of Mr Lorrain to Mr Hezlett dated 13 September 1913, File: General Department, G204, MSA, p. 1. 68. Lalzawnga (comp.), op. cit., p. 42. 69. David Kyles, op. cit,. pp. 31-2. 70. Questions made by the Women’s Missionary Association (WMA) to be answered by lady missionary candidates, File: Edith Chapman CP/1919; IN/65, Angus Library, Oxford. 71. Letter of Geo Beaumont to the Secretary of the Baptist Missionary Society dated 22 February 1916, File: Edith Chapman CP/1919; IN/65, Angus Library, Oxford. 72. Miss Chapman’s answers to the Questions for Missionary candidates no. 9 dated 15 March 1916, File: Edith Chapman, Angus Library, Oxford, p. 10. 73. E. Chapman, and M. Clark, Mizo Miracle, The Christian Literature Society, Madras, 1968, op. cit., p. 47. 74. Miss Chapman’s letter to Miss Lockhart dated 1 March 1920, p. 3, File: Edith Chapman CP/1919; IN/65, Angus Library, Oxford. 75. Chapman and Clark, op. cit., p. 56.

354 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82.

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Ibid., p. 3. Ibid. Ibid., p. 2. Lalzawnga (compiled), op. cit., p. 176. Ibid., p. 194. Chapman and Clark, op. cit., p. 105. David Edwards’ letter to Mr Thomas dated 17 September 1936, CMA 27,397, Letters 1932-1952, NLW. 83. Mr W.C. Eadie’s letter to Miss Bowser dated 18 October 1930, File: Miss M Clark, IN/66 M Clark 1930-1932, Angus Library, Oxford. 84. Chapman and Clark, op. cit., p. 37. 85. Lalzawnga (comp.), op. cit., p. 160. 86. N.E. Parry, The Lakhers, typed manuscript, File: G-1288, General, MSA. 87. Lorrain, The Wonderful , p. 11. 88. Letter of G.H. Loch to Lorrain dated 18 April 1911, cited in Lorrain, Ibid., pp. 13-14. 89. The Lakher Pioneer Newsletter, 44th Year. February 1949. 90. ‘Forty-One Years for God and the Gospel’, The Lakher Pioneer Newsletter, 44th Year, February 1949. 91. Parry, op. cit., p. 276. 92. The Honorary Treasurer of The Lakher Pioneer Newsletter had written in the 25th Year, Fourth Quarter 1930 that while it took about 1,000 Pound Sterling a year for the mission to run smoothly, only 400 or 500 Pound Sterling was being sent out to the missionaries. 93. The Lakher Pioneer Newsletter, 25th Year Fourth Quarter, 1930, p. 3. 94. Ibid., pp. 3-4. 95. Letter with no addressee or date, File: Edith Chapman CP/1919; IN/65, Angus Library, Oxford. 96. Parry, op. cit., p. 19. 97. McCall, op. cit., p. 179. 98. Reports of Births and Deaths 1929-1930, General Department, Sl. No. 413, MSA. 99. V.L. Siama, Mizo History, Lengchhawn Press, Aizawl, 1991, p. 136. 100. From district administration 1899, Political Department, MSA, p. 12. 101. Ibid., p. 12. 102. These articles on women and woman-related issues were written in the Mizo Leh Vai Chanchinbu Lehkha VI, June 1906, May 1909, December 1909, November 1924 and June 1938.

Welsh Missionaries & Transformation of Mizo Women 355 103. Statements showing the number of patients treated, Annual Reports 1921-22, 1929-30, General Department, MSA. 104. McCall, The Lushai Hills District Cover, Tribal Research Institute, Aizawl, 1980, p. 292. 105. Ibid. 106. McCall, Lushai Chrysalis, op. cit., p. 256. 107. Ibid., p. 258. 108. Ibid., p. 256. 109. J. Shakepear’s letter dated 22 March 1905, Political Department, MSA, pp. 14,15. 110. Cole, Short Note on Education in the Lushai Hills, Education Department, MSA. 111. Zoram Upa Pawl, Thurawn Bu (Advice to the Public by ZUP), ZUP Headquarters, Aizawl, 1984, Thuhma (Preface). 112. James Dokhuma, Hmanlai Mizo Kalphung, Mizoram Publication Board, Aizawl, 2008, pp. 256-65. 113. Vanlalchhuanawma, op. cit., p. 56 114. McCall, The Lushai Hills, op. cit., p. 31 115. Biswamoy Pati and Mark Harrison (eds), Health, Medicine and Empire: Perspectives on Colonial India, New Delhi, 2006. p. 89. 116. Rutter, Williamson Healing of the Nations: Report of the Ecumenical Conference on Foreign Missions, 21 April-1 May 1900, Religious Tract Society, London, 1900, p. 221. 117. Pati and Harrison (eds), op. cit., p. 127. 118. Ibid., p. 4. 119. Ibid., p. 13. 120. Ibid., p. 41. 121. Ibid., p. 52. 122. Thanzauva (comp.), op. cit., p. 86. 123. May Bounds and Gwladys M. Evans, M edical Mission-Personal Experiences, The Synod Publication Board, Aizawl, 1987, pp. 69, 71. 124. Ibid., p. 72. 125. Ibid., p. 123. 126. Ibid. 127. Evans (Typed Ms), Memorandum of Village Work in Lushai, CMA 27,405, NLW, p. 5. 128. Bounds and Evans, op. cit., p. 176. 129. Ibid., p. 178. 130. Lloyd (ed), Nine Missionary Pioneers, The Mission Board, Caernarfon, September 1989, p. 26. Hereafter cited as Lloyd, Nine Missionary.

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131. CMA 27,366 Catherine Hughes, Letters 1924-1937, NLW. 132. Eirlys Williams’ letter to Mrs Jones dated 20 August 1937, CMA 27,399 Eirlys Williams, NLW, p. 2. 133. Chapman and Clark, op. cit., p. 24. 134. Ibid., p. 26. 135. Lalzawnga (comp.), op. cit., p. 218. 136. Jones, op. cit., p. 11. 137. Maggie Sandy’s letter to Mr Williams dated 9 April 1919, CMA 27,335, NLW, p. 1. 138. Ibid., p. 1. 139. Ibid., pp. 1-2. 140. Lloyd, History, op. cit., p. 216. 141. John Tosh, A Man’s Place: Masculinity and the Middle Class Home in Victorian England, Yale University Press, 2007, p. 4. 142. Jane Haggis, Ironies of Emancipation: Changing Configuration of ‘Women’s Work’ in the ‘Mission of Sisterhood’ to Indian Women, Feminist Review No. 65, Summer 2000, pp. 109, 110. 143. Chapman and Clark, op. cit., p. 47. 144. Ibid., p. 3. 145. David Edwards’ letter to Mr Thomas dated 17 September 1936, CMA 27,397, Letters 1932-1952, NLW. 146. Williams, op. cit., p. 259. 147. Report of Council for World Mission 1884 as quoted in Haggis, op. cit., p. 113. 148. Chapman and Clark, op. cit., p. 51. 149. Maggie Sandy’s letter to Mr Williams, 22 July 1917, CMA27, 335, NLW, p. 2. 150. Letter of Kitty Lewis to parents, n/d. File: Letters of Kitty Lewis, ATC Archives, p. 3. 151. Ibid. 152. Letter of Kitty Lewis to a friend dated 2 March 1925, File: Letters of Kitty Lewis, ATC Archives, p. 3. 153. See letters of Kitty Lewis to her mother dated 16 July 1924, p. 3, and a letter with no addressee and n/d p. 2, File: Letters of Kitty Lewis, ATC Archives. 154. Lorrain, 5 Years in Unknown Jungles, Spectrum Publications, Guwahati, 1988, p. 136. 155. Shakespear, op. cit., p. 11. 156. Letter of Kitty Lewis to Mrs Owen dated 2 December 1922, File: Letters of Kitty Lewis, ATC Archives. p. 2.

Welsh Missionaries & Transformation of Mizo Women 357 157. McCall, Lushai, op. cit., p. 183. 158. Hmeichhe Sikul, a Centenary Souvenir of the Presbyterian Church Girls’ School, 1903-2003. p. 15. 159. Letter of Kitty Lewis to her family dated 6 July 1924, File: Letters of Kitty Lewis, ATC Archives, pp. 2, 3. 160. Letter of Kitty Lewis to her family dated 10 September 1924, File: Letters of Kitty Lewis, ATC Archives. p. 4. 161. Letter of Kitty Lewis to parents dated 15 September 1924, File: Letters of Kitty Lewis, ATC Archives. p. 1. 162. Letter of Kitty Lewis to her family dated 28 September 1924, File: Letters of Kitty Lewis, ATC Archives. p. 6. 163. Ibid., p. 16. 164. Letter to the Superintendent, Lushai Hills from the office of the secretary to the chief commissioner of Assam dated 10 January 1903, File: general department, no. 722/21P, dated 10 January 1903, MSA 165. D.E. Jones, Marriage Register, Synod Office Archives, Presbyterian Church of Mizoram, Aizawl. 166. H. Remthanga, Synod Thurel Lak Khawm Volume I (1910-1950), Synod Literature and Publication Board, Aizawl, 1996, p. 186. The literal translation of the Mizo sentences used here could be read as someone who could administer marriage ceremony (a pastor perhaps) may preside over such kind of marriage, too. 167. Interview of Rev. H. Remthanga at Mission Veng, Aizawl, Mizoram, on 18 August 2010. 168. Lloyd, History, op. cit., p. 158. 169. Ibid., p. 187. 170. Ibid. 171. Ibid. 172. Ibid. 173. Translation into English of the Christian Lushai Marriage Agreement by J.H. Lorrain dated 19 February 1910. File: general department 177/G8, 1910, MSA.

CHAPTER 14

Society, Culture and Conversion

The Jesuit Madurai Mission in Tamil Nadu,

1650-1700 ce1

JANGKHOMANG GUITE

Introduction There can be no single cause for conversion, of course. When the caste system is usually pointed out as the main factor for the conversion of oppressed lower caste people in caste society, the same theory cannot be applied to the egalitarian and semi-nomadic tribal society of India. Similarly, the case for the mass movement cannot be generalized with the case of individual or family base conversion. Every conversion is to be situated in the context of the local socio-economic, politico-cultural circumstances. This paper makes the dynamic socio-religious culture of Tamil Nadu as an essential entry point in examining the domain of Christian conversion movements. It is not only about how Christianity was presented to the local people but how more of the local people saw or perceived Christianity. This paper will examine the changing circumstances in the region in the light of letters written by the missionaries and show how far these situations created the way for the conversion of large number of the local people to Christianity. It will be pertinent to begin with the political circumstances of the period.

Politics, Wars, Famines and Epidemics, 1650-1690 The unsettled political situation during the later half of the seventeenth century in Coromandel led to continuous wars, famines and epidemics. This region had been integrated within

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the Vijayanagar empire since the fourteenth century. But after the civil war of 1614-17, the Nayaks began to show open opposition to the raja of Vijayanagar. This was followed by constant political disturbances down to the end of the century. By the 1650s, the Coromandel region witnessed constant wars among the local rulers on a large scale. The ruler of Mysore invaded the Madurai territory and seized the fortress of Tiruchirappalli in 1659.2 In the meantime, constant warfare took place between the Nayaks of Madurai and Thanjavur. This had brought about the invasion of Bijapuri armies to the territory of Thanjavur who captured the entire kingdom. Following these wars was a terrible famine for two years, 1660-2. This was particularly severe in the region of Tiruchirappalli and Thanjavur. A large number of people migrated to the province of Madurai, Satyamangalam and other port towns.3 Baldaeus (1660) said that the king of Bijapur, before he laid siege to Nagapattinam, ‘made an inroad into the country, and by destroying all the fruits of the earth, and whatever else he met with, occasioned such a famine, that the poor country wretches were being forced to fly to the city for want of rice and other eatables’. He also saw the streets of Nagapattinam covered with ‘emaciated and half starv’d persons, who offered themselves to slavery for a small quantity of bread … at the rate of 10 shillings a head’, and ‘above 5,000 of them were bought and carried to Jafnapatnam … Colombo … Batavia’.4 What Baldaeus had noted in Nagapattinam was also the case in the provinces of Tiruchirappalli and Thanjavur, where there was intense warfare. Moreover, here famine consumed thousands of lives and dispersed the population to all directions. It is said that about 10,000 Christians died of starvation in these areas.5 Wars and disorders continued during the 1660s and 1670s. After protracted wars, the Nayak of Madurai finally captured Thanjavur in 1673.6 In response Ekoji, the army general of Bija­ pur captured Thanjavur from Madurai’s control in 1675 and later declared himself as independent ruler.7 The victorious Ekoji was said to have advanced till the gates of the Tiruchirappalli fortress, the capital of the Madurai Nayak.8 In the meantime, the Maratha armies under Shivaji intruded into the region and first took possession of the Gingee Kingdom in 1677 and then penetrated

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into the Madurai territory till the bank of Kollidam.9 His cavalry troops were said to have ransacked the countryside for provisions and forages. Even the thatches of houses, including that of the church were not spared. Besides, they cut down the entire paddy in the field.10 Shivaji left behind a large portion of his army to defend Ginjee.11 War broke out between Ekoji on the one hand and Shivaji’s general and Madurai Nayaks on the other.12 In the meantime, the king of Mysore waged a war against Madurai in the province of Omalur.13 The wars among these rulers and the move­ ment of armies in the region were almost permanent throughout 1670s. This brought about another terrible famine, which broke out in 1675 and lasted for four years. The Jesuit annual letters of 1677 reported that ‘the war going on in several parts of the king­ dom, produced a famine which lasted four years, destroying and consuming all the resources of the country … entire population destroyed and villages completely abandoned … very many people died and others fled to the Coast where famine was not so acutely felt’.14 They observed that the ‘vicissitudes of war have scattered them [Christians] a little everywhere, and I believe there is not at present a province in Asia where Christian from Thanjavur can­ not be found’ and ‘if we go among the Dutch in Ceylon, and the Chinese in Melaka, we find them there, for they sold themselves to escape famine and misery’.15 To crown it all, a disastrous flood hit the provinces of Satya­ mangalam, Tiruchirappalli, Thanjavur and Gingee during the last month of 1677. Many villages were washed down causing several deaths.16 It was followed by famine and pestilence. For instance, in the residence of Mulliparai people ‘died in such large numbers that the lord of the country being furious because he had to cre­ mate them, ordered the corpses to be carried away and thrown into a crevice or natural cavity in a neighbouring mountain’.17 In Satyamangalam, it was reported that flood was followed by ‘such violent epidemics, that whole villages fell victim to them, and lost a number of people who died without receiving any help, for the epidemics came so suddenly, that it was impossible to attend to all and give them necessary help’.18 In the province of Madurai it was

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reported that ‘everything is falling to ruins, desolation and solitude reigns everywhere … once populous city [Madurai] looks like a wretched village … this kingdom is in a state of anarchy, and every disorder and confusion prevails on all side’.19 The combined forces of war, famine, flood, epidemics and other disorders ruined the whole region. In the 1680s, the continuing wars were now concentrated in the kingdom of Madurai, in and around the region of Tiruchirap­ palli, the capital. The armies of Mysore, the Maravas, Sambhaji the ruler of Gingee and finally Ekoji the king of Thanjavur, all pen­ etrated into Madurai territory.20 Fr John de Britto said that, … the kingdom of Madurai is partly under its Telegu Nayak, partly under the king of Mysore, partly under the prince of Marava, partly under Sam­ baji, the son of Shivaji, and partly under Ekoji, the king of Thanjavur, and … this kingdom of Madurai is utterly ruined, for rapine, tyranny and treason are rampant everywhere.21

The kingdom of Madurai was later divided amongst the rulers of Gingee, Thanjavur and the Marava Setupati leaving the greater part with the Madurai Nayak. Under such unsettled political situation governance was at the lowest ebb and crime and violence seemed to have been the order of the day. Fr Freye wrote in 1682 that ‘murders and brigandage were seen multiplying everywhere, without anybody daring to ask an explanation, for it is said, the thieves were sharing the booty with the government’.22 From Thanjavur, Fr Britto wrote that Ekoji exacted four-fifth of the produce in cash ‘so that the peasant must not only sell all his harvest, but also borrow money to pay the other contributions to the state’.23 Fr De Mello wrote about the oppressive rule under their tyrant king, Sambhaji in the kingdom of Gingee. He also mentioned that the governor in the region of Kandalur ‘made the imprisonment of all the farmers and village headmen … openly and freely take possession of the people’s property, cutting down their harvest, rounding up their flocks, lifting their cattle, stealing their furniture, and torturing them most cruelly to extort from them whatever money was left with them’.24 As a result of all these tyrannies the region suffered another

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terrible famine, which broke out in 1686 and lasted till 1689.25 In Madras and its neighbourhood no less than 35,000 out of an esti­ mated population of 300,000 died.26 Fr De Mello reported that this famine had affected the ‘whole of Madurai country’ for some years and missionaries were in constant danger of death on account of persecution, ‘the confusion created by war, and the long famine… high price of foodstuffs, the incursions of raiders, and the riots among the people’.27 At the Koranapatti Residence or Mission Sta­ tion, it was reported that all the villages in the north districts were almost deserted as ‘countless number of the inhabitants had been carried away by famine, which for some years had been afflicting these parts’.28 At Thanjavur and Varugapatti Residences ‘Christians and Pagans died of starvation, and they were so reduced that they looked more like skeletons than living beings’.29 Thus the unsettled political situation caused continuous wars, famines, epidemics, floods, deaths and constant movement of armies and people.

Mission Residences and the Converts The Madurai Mission encompassed the region of the greater part of present-day Tamil Nadu. It extended from Tirunelveli district in the south to South Arcot in the north and from the coast in the east to Coimbatore district in the west. The number of resi­ dences or mission stations kept changing, but there were about 10 to 15 during the seventeenth century. However, these mis­ sionary stations were located in three regions: the Tiruchirappalli region, the Satyamangalam region in the west and the Madurai region in the south. The Tiruchirappalli region was the centre of missionary activities since the middle of the seventeenth cen­ tury. The residences were located in Tiruchirappalli, Thanjavur, Kandalur, Thottiam, Kongupatti (both together then called Pachur), Varugapatti, Kollai, Koranapatu, Nandavanam, Kottur and Mulliparai. Excepting the residences of Tiruchirappalli and Thanjavur all the other residences were in the forest of the Kallar country where most of the Christians came from rural backward villages. Similarly, the residences in the Satyamangalam Province such as Satyamangalam, Kavanakarai, Vaniputhur, Ellamangalam,

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Anekareipalayam were in the dry zone where the Christians remained scattered among 130 villages. The letters of the mission­ aries mentioned that ‘the rocky nature of the soil almost throughout the Province, which spread on one side along a chain of moun­ tains and the insalubrities of the climate during certain seasons of the year render the usual administration of the Christians very difficult’.30 The Madurai region had residences at Madurai, Utta­ mapalayam, Kamanakenpati, Kayattar and in the Marava country. As far as conversions were concerned, the largest number of conversion was in the Tiruchirappalli region. The progress of con­ version can be seen from the report of the missionaries. The total number of Christians in the Madurai mission increased to 4,183 in 164431; 50,000 in 167732; 80,000 in 168233 and 1,20,000 at the turn of seventeenth century.34 The number of conversion in each resi­ dence of the Madurai mission can be broadly shown in Table 14.1. It is seen from the table that the many conversions took place mainly during the later half of the seventeenth century. We can also see that Tiruchirappalli region accounted for more than 70 per cent of conversions. Besides, we also have a significant number of conversions in the region of Satyamangalam, where there were more than 6,000 Shudras and Brahmins, besides many ‘low’ caste people who were ‘scattered among one hundred and thirty villages, with twenty three churches’ in 1667.35 Altogether it accounted for about 9,699 persons by the turn of the eighteenth century. In the Madurai region, except for the large number of conversions among the Maravars at the turn of the century, there was very less conversion, ‘very little indeed when compared to the fruits gath­ ered in other residences, too little indeed if we consider that the work is harder than elsewhere’.36 Therefore, Tiruchirappalli region accounted for the largest number of conversions. Wars, famines, epidemics, floods and conversions met at Tiruchirappalli region much more dramatically than in the other two regions. How shall we explain this startling fact? Can one draw any parallel correlation between them, and if so how and why, and if not why? In other words, what were the factors that led to the dramatic rise of conversions? These are some questions that we shall try to address below.

Table 14.1: Numbers of Conversions in Madurai Mission during the Seventeenth Century Residences

1648 1651- 1654- 1656- 1664- 1665- 1674- 1677 1678 1679- 1682 2 6 9 5 6 6 81 Tiuchirapalli 300 2.000 1.240 2.347 – – – – – – – & Kandalur – – – 1.192 2.784 549 1228 222 185 764 405 Vadugarpatti – – – – – – – 401 540 2.122 1.051 & Anaikaraipalayam – – – – – – 1647 240 51 92 70 Pachur – – – 1.400 – – – – – – – Tottiyam – – – – – 196 – – – – – Kongupatti – – – – – 272 – – – – – Madurai – – – – – 185 184 49 67 – – Mullipadi – – – – – 140 207 247 297 371 265 Satyamangalam – 1.500 – – – 514 – 129 – – – & Vaniputhur – – – – – – 390 – – – – Kavankarai – – – – – – 300 – – – 300 & Ellamangalam – – – – – – – – – 1.047 360 Nandavanam – – 600 – – – 1.198 339 504 1.238 520 & Nandavanampatti – – – – – – – – – – – Thanjavur – – – 2.268 – 401 – – – – – Koranapattu – – – – – – – 59 335 443 100 & Agaram – – – – – – – – – – – Kollai – – – – – – 1.159 390 – – –

1683 1684-6 1688 1689- 1701 1700 – – – 20.000 – – 13.419 200 – – 1.040 – 4.782 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 95 – – – – 75 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 130 – – – – – – – – 630 – – – – – – – – – – – 150 – – 500 – – – – – – – – –

Total 25.887 20.948 9.936 2.100 1.400 196 272 580 1.602 2.143 390 600 1.537 4.399 630 2.669 1.087 500 1.549

contd.

Table 14.1 (contd.) Residences & Kottur Kalpalayam Kallupatti Kanannykapatti Marava Country Kuvathur Total

1648 1651- 1654- 1656- 1664- 1665- 1674- 1677 1678 1679- 1682 2 6 9 5 6 6 81 – – – – – – – – 1.280 2.280 810 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 252 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 300 3.500 1.840 7.207 2.784 2.509 6.313 2.076 3.259 8.357 3.881

1683 1684-6 1688 1689- 1701 1700 1.003 – – – – – – 180 – – 450 – – – – – – 354 – – 1.136 2070 – 8.000 9.000 – – – 404 – 4.889 15.489 5.836 28.404 9.000

Total 5.373 180 450 354 20.458 404 105.644

Sources: The figures given in the table are tabulated on the basis of number of baptism given in the missionary letters. See Jesuit Letters, pp. 62, 100, 147, 180, 188, 276, 327, 346, 371; A. Lopez, The Annual Letters of 1644, pp. 30-2; Thekkedath, History of Christianity, pp. 225-6, 228, 246, 248-9

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While the dauntless efforts of the Jesuits with their catechists and some zealous Christians are undoubtedly seen to be the primary agent, we intend to look for some other factors that facili­ tated this remarkable number of conversions. In the following pages an attempt is made to explain the various possible factors responsible for the dramatic events. However, before doing that we shall discuss the changing situation in the village society under the impact of the new circumstances. This is seen to be most necessary because the success or failure of missionary movement depends on the kind of village sociocultural system in which the mission­ ary worked.

Revitalizing the Village Cosmology During our period of study, on the one hand, the village society was in the state of revitalizing its old form of belief and ritual systems and, on the other, it was seeking towards the range of the high-ranking universal gods. This change was caused mainly by recurring wars, new armies, new types of weapons and war machinery, famines, new kind of diseases, commercial integration of the region with the far other worlds, etc. It should be noted that the bounded or more nucleated village communities of south India were thought of as a domain of order and civilization. The village contained many dangers and beyond the locality was thought to be the world of the supernatural beings. Beyond the village, in the solitary bushes and forests, were the abodes of spirits, real life predators, robbers, unsettled warriors and marauders, invading armies, alien tribute gatherers, conquerors, etc., the source of powerful and often actively malevolent outfit of ‘demonic’ deities.37 In the village and in the streets were the lurking spirits that could possess anyone. The village people were in constant fear and any misfortune that occured was attributed to the ‘demon’ or the village deities.38 Since these deities controlled the specific reality of everyday life such as diseases, health, crops, etc., it was through their agency that these phenomena could be explained, predicted and controlled. Since they were also generally malevolent and destructive, constant appeasement was needed to keep them away

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from wreaking havoc in the locality, and if it did occur at all, they needed to be pacified by all means. Thus, they were more clearly defined by the village worshippers than the high universal gods and most offerings and sacrifices were made to them. For concerns that affected the entire village war, famine, epi­ demics and diseases these local deities, such as fierce ammans (goddesses), peys, pattavans and male divinities that embodied divine force at its most active were generally invoked by the village ritual specialists.39 Each village had their own ritual specialist what the missionaries, called variously as yogis, andis, Brahmins, etc. Thus, the region tended to give the village a miniature ordered cos­ mos with its own gods, shrines and procession routes and a set of recognized boundaries, which were preserved by the fierce super­ natural guardians, such as Aiyanar and Karuppan.40 Besides, there were also shrines, which housed divinities who received worship from entire localities. Each unit was territorially defined co­ terminus with the kin group boundary. Each of these household, patrilineage and clan had its own kulateivam, usually a Goddess who protected the ancestral domain and whose shrine would be a place of power and pilgrimage for the group even if its members had migrated far outside its original home. But the new changing circumstances during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries greatly altered the religious landscape of the village society. The multi-dimensional integration of the village societies with the larger social milieu must have had impact on the cognitive realms of the village people as the confines of their world became so enlarged that it could not have failed to have had reli­ gious implications. Just as the advent of firepower had undermined the power of the age-old traditional weapons in the battlefield, the disasters that were caused by the newcomers and the new mode of governance and usages undermined the command and control by those local deities and spirits. Two important changes can be seen under the impact of the new circumstances. First, was the revital­ ization of the village Goddess tutelary called ammans. Stein’s study on the temples of Tamil Nadu shows the rising prominence in the popular worship of the ammans (goddesses) from 1300-1750.41

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This explains the rising attention given towards this tutelary by the village people as their protector. These goddesses were gradu­ ally integrated in the high Hindu temples due to the integration processes of the wet zone society with the upland dry zone areas on the one hand and because of the patronage given to them by the newly settled local warrior kings (poligars) and local elites known as the ‘little kings’ of the realms.42 Second, now more and more attention was also given to the higher gods of universal order. The changing situation demanded a larger and more powerful divinity that could explain, predict and control many new events. The gaining attention of higher orders of gods can be seen from the observation of some European visitors. Manucci said that ‘there is not an individual among them denies that there is a God; still, they have so many different views in what they say of God that they are incompetent to find the truth.… In addition to this … they say, three hundred and thirty millions of gods.’43 Again in 1684, from the residence of Kottur, Fr John de Britto wrote that, … almost all the gentiles in this Empire of Vijayanagar admit the existence of one God, but being ignorant of the divine essence and its attributes, they speak of a good deal of nonsense and contradict themselves in their statement.… In addition to this Trinity, they say that there are 3,30,000 million gods, and the soul of man and the stars are also gods, and they adore them as such.44

From what Manucci and John de Britto noted we may sketch out the main features of the village cosmology into two-tier struc­ ture.45 The upper tier was the world of universal gods and their consorts, who underpinned the universe and who, though benev­ olent, were vaguely understood and seldom approached because of their remoteness from the everyday concern of the village com­ munities. These supreme gods constituted what Manucci called the ‘Trinity’ of Brahma, Vishnu and Tutrin (Rudra) or Shiva (by Britto). Their abodes were in the celestial world of five heavens.46 The lower tier cosmos constituted a host of the village deities and spirits who were more sharply perceived and given greater atten­ tion precisely because they underpinned the immediate reality

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of the people. These deities probably constituted, what Manucci says, of the ‘three hundred and thirty millions of gods’ such as the ammans, pattavams, pey-picacus and other male divinities. Then how did Christianity present itself amidst such a cosmol­ ogy? Or how did the local people perceive it? Understanding this is crucial in explaining conversion to Christianity. It is seen that in the perception of the local people the missionaries presented Christianity to the local society in such a way that it was similar to that of the Hindu world. In other words, the ability of Chris­ tianity to adapt itself with the local practices, on the one hand, and the powers of delivering the local people from several old and new problems were considered to be the main reason behind such large number of conversions. This argument is given credence by the fact that there were apparent similarities in the concept of one supreme God, Trinity, hell and heaven, (higher cosmos) and cult, saint and Goddess worship (lower cosmos), and the caste system. No wonder for many of the local people Christianity is considered to be sort of new sect of Hinduism. Before we look into the percep­ tions of the villagers it would be pertinent to see briefly the views of local rulers on Christianity.

Kings, Rulers and Christianity For the kings and rulers, Christianity was seen to be no less spiritual and truthful than Hinduism. If we examine the incidents of persecutions more deeply, they did not emanate generally from the king’s court but rather from the rival religious temple priests. And in most cases it was prosecuted locally. Some interesting cases can be cited here. For instance, in 1667, when Thottiam Guru made an accusation against Fr Emmanuel de Britto and asked for order to persecute the Christians, the palayakkarar or poligar dismissed the accusation and allowed the latter the liberty to preach his religion. However, the said Guru continued to conspire against de Britto and later led the people to persecute the Christians without the orders of the rulers.47 Further, when Fr. John de Britto and his five catechists were arrested by the soldiers of Maravas in 1686, after several rounds of tortures and imprisonment, he was finally

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released when the king did not find any fault in his doctrine. The king also withdrew his previous order to kill him.48 Again, in 1684, when the rebellion of the local peasants broke out against the king of Mysore, many of them took advantage by persecuting the Christians, burning their churches, plunder­ ing their houses, etc. When they seized the church in which Fr Nogueira was residing, the captain of the area rescued the lat­ ter. When the rebels later again seized Karumathampatti village where the Father and the captain were residing, the governor sent Fr Perreira at the head of 200 Christian soldiers to crush the rebels.49 From Nandavanam it was reported that the kallars gave high regards to Christianity that ‘many of them have become so domesticated that they do not differ from the Christians’, although they did not convert for fear of leaving their professions of rob­ bing. They protected the Christians from the attacks of other tribes and indeed ‘took up arms and gave battle’ several times to protect Christians.50 But what was most curious of all was the demolition of one village temple and in its place erection of a church in Uraiyur, near Tiruchirappalli, in 1689. It was the spot where Fr De Costa had once constructed his house and church but later a small temple had been built upon it which ‘was held in great veneration’ by the people. This was granted by the local captain, cousin of the rul­ ing Nayak, when Fr. De Mello sought his permission for the same. After some resistance the temple priest was forced to vacate the place.51 Besides, some missionary stations, like Kandalur, were initially granted for the mission’s residence by the local rulers. In fact, for the local rulers, mutual co-existence and respect amongst all religions, appeared to be the stated policy. The above few cases show the general perception of the local rulers about Christianity.

Christianity in the Perception of the Village People God, Trinity, Hell and Heaven The concept of one God and the Trinity in Christianity, if we believe the account of Manucci and John de Britto, is similar to Hinduism. Manucci called the ‘Trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Rudra (or

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Shiva for de Britto)’.52 It can be said that Christian missionaries brought closer to the village community this remotely or vaguely known supreme gods of the Hindus in the form of the Christian Biblical God. The missionary, wherever they went, preached Christian beliefs and tenets very strongly such as the existence of one supreme God, transcendental and all benevolent. For instance, Xavier was said to have proclaimed the existence of one Supreme God and that this God was the God to the poor and ‘simple people’ until he was ‘exhausted’.53 Apart from disseminating the presence of Universal God among the innocent people by way of preaching, dramas, pamphlets and discussion, these missionaries never failed to say this wherever they went. In 1667, Fr Freye was also said to have scolded one rich gentleman when the latter presented him a lingam by saying that he ‘only worshipped the Lord of the Universe, Creator of all things, and not stones or such other things’. He also reported that his ‘way of speaking convinced him, and all those who were with him’.54 In the same way, the presentation of the Bible as the ‘lost’ Veda of the Hindu by Nobili also presented Christianity in a manner which was acceptable and relevant to the Hindu masses. Nobili told the learned men of Madurai that the true and original Veda, which was lost, as was believed at that time, still existed in the form of the Bible, which he called Sattia Veda (True Veda). He told them that it had been completed and perfected by another Veda and he had come all the way from Rome to preach the Sattia Veda and all who accepted it will be saved.55 Similarly, in matters concerning the ‘afterlife’, we also learn from the accounts of Manucci, which closely proximate the Biblical Judgement Day.56 Xavier also told his companions in Rome that the Tiruchendur Brahmins have agreed with him when he talked about the Christian concept of hell and paradise.57 For the missionaries all these became an easy entry point to explain the mysteries of the Christian Trinity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit by drawing parallels from the Hindu cosmology. This proclamation of Christian mysteries coincide with the existing process of giving increasing attention to the upper half of

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the two-tier cosmology and the gradual breakdown of the lower tier cosmos. Then how did this become accepted? The diffusion of one supreme God of Christianity was associated with his ability to deliver people from fears of the malevolent deities, his identifica­ tion with new solutions to the old and new problems in the area of physical afflictions, and his infinite power of indestructibility inscribed in the Christian written text: the Bible. Such instances are visible from the accounts of the missionaries. For instance, in 1544, Xavier wrote to his companions that when he revealed the presence of one supreme God to ‘the poor, simple people, who are devoted to them [deities] only through fear … many lose their respect for the demon and become Christians because of what I tell them’.58 This means that the revelation of the presence of the powerful God among them released the people from the fears of the local deities and spirits. In the same way when expected revenge had not come against Xavier after he smashed the local idols the fear of such images was released from their mind.59 Fur­ ther, when the woman of Kombuture gave safe delivery to a child after he intervened which the local mantra could not cure, all the people of the village converted to Christianity.60 On another occasion, at a place in Pannaikulam, a catechist Mayappan had, by his intercession to the Christian God, released a man from the control of the ‘demon’ so that ‘all the pagan Mara­ vars of that village are very much moved and inclined to become Christians, for they have noticed the helplessness of the devil who so easily deceives them’.61 Such instances are crucial in seeing how the local deities or the lower tier cosmos were discredited one after another by the invocation of the Christian universal God. By virtue of its ability to a new solution Christianity was popularly known in the locality as a religion that delivers people from fears of many malevolent forces that had pervaded the village society. It should be noted that as in the case of Europe in late antiquity deliverance from the fearsome spirits and ‘demons’ came to be an important factor for the spread of Christianity in Coromandel region. We will see more on this in the course of our discussion.

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Ammans, Virgin, Holy Ashes and Civil Customs Another peculiar familiarity between the two religions was in the worship of goddesses. We have seen that goddess ammans got prominence during this period. However, the importance of this evidence for our investigation lies in the fact that the legends and worship of Virgin Mary also became very popular among Catholics of the region. This can be seen in two aspects: one, that the popularity of Goddess worship among the local Hindus must have also increased the popularity of Blessed Virgin worship in the local church. On the other hand, the very practice of giving great esteem to the Virgin in the Christian practice must have greatly facilitated towards the progress of conversion. Many of the local churches were dedicated to Mary, as the patron saint. Devotion to Virgin Mary was practised especially in the region of Thanjavur and Satyamangalam. In the Satyamangalam region, it was said that ‘not only the Christians persevere in their devotion and favour, but even the pagans endeavour, on certain occasions to imitate them’.62 In 1667, one interesting case came from the missionary report of Thanjavur Residence. It was reported that conversion in that residence amounted to 401 persons which ‘is ascribed by every­ body to the new church erected this year in honour of the most Holy Virgin’. It appears that almost the whole village got converted to Christianity. In that year there was a long drought and the rainy season was almost over. People were in a state of confusion for fear of the impending famine. But one fine day when the Christians of that area, flanked by many others, took colourful procession towards the new church that was to be consecrated to Virgin on that day ‘suddenly the sky was covered with thick clouds, and before the Holy Mass was over, rain fell in torrents’. The report continued to state that ‘everybody witnessed this as a sign of divine protection, and the hope of a plentiful harvest was revived in their hearts.… This great blessing was looked upon as a new sign of pro­ tection of the Heavenly Queen’.63 Once the place of Virgin Mary was consolidated in this way as a powerful divinity figure in the locality, she would always be

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called upon whenever such calamities occurred. In this case the Virgin Mary became the god of rain for the local people, a similar place usually assigned to the local tutelary. Although the two events occurred accidentally in modern scientific sense, for the local people who were deeply religious such a coincidence was taken to be due to the intervention of ‘Blessed Virgin’. This is especially expected of them because of the high adoration given to Goddess worship in the area. Manucci had sarcastically put that the Hindu looked on the Blessed Virgin as their Bhagavati and infant Jesus as Ram. To him this was the reason why both the Christians and Hindu attended ‘without distinction and without scruple, both the feast of the Assumption of the Holy Virgin and that of Bhadraka, which correspond during the same period’.64 He also said that the ‘nocturnal procession’ usually undertaken during this feast was similar to the local practices of Goddess Bhagavati festival such as the cross in the front covered with flowers, followed by the Statue of Virgin surrounded by parasols, the fire-fighters and then several Christians and Hindus.65 Besides, he said that contrary to the Catholic practices the altars in the Jesuit churches were ‘quite low, without crucifix or candlesticks, merely with a statue of the Virgin’.66 What is important in such similar practices, as also noted by Manucci, is the acceptability of Virgin Mary in the local soci­ ety. These similar facets became an easy entry point for the local people towards Christianity. Her power of delivering people from state of fears had given her a position of advantage over the local goddesses. Then, for the local people conversion to Christianity apparently meant a mere shifting of allegiance from Hindu God­ dess worship to the Blessed Virgin. Manucci also talked about the use of ‘holy ashes’ by both Hin­ dus and Christians, which he called ‘anti-Christ’. It was actually the mark of the sects in Hinduism. This ash was applied in the body part in such a manner that different followers of the prevail­ ing sects could be identified readily by it. The practice was also recognized in the Roman Catholic Church under the Jesuits. Such ashes were bought from the market but had to be blessed by the padre before being used, which was an ‘express precaution of for­ bidding the invocation’ of Hindu gods.67 The ‘holy ashes’ were used

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not only on their body but also during several occasions such as to prevent the crops from pests. Besides, most of the local burial and marriage customs were incorporated into Christian practice with the usual pomp of night procession, fireworks, dead man on the throne, betel for the dead, sect marks, marriage under peepal tree planted in middle of the lawn, circumambulation of the altars three times, etc.68 For our analysis, such incorporation of local customs, no matter how strongly it was condemned by its opponents, were rather credited for the large number of conversions to Christianity.

Saints, Missionaries and Gurus Another aspect of similarity between Hindu and Christianity was the importance of cult and saint worship. Such a tradition was already deeply entrenched since the coming of the Bhakti saints in the eleventh century. By virtue of their extraordinary powers they had attained cult status in the local religious pantheons. This was also the case about many of the Christian missionaries in the region. They were venerated not only by the local people but such practices were also well entrenched in Christian traditions of the time. In every church built by the Catholic missionary one patron saint was venerated, and the image of that particular saint, made of wood or stone, was usually placed in that church. It is true that the missionaries did not see these things in the light of local Hindu worship of images, but for the local people these statues were actually perceived to be another kind of powerful image imbued with divinity. Around the first three Jesuit missionaries in south India St Francis Xavier, Roberto de Nobili and St John de Britto a host of legends and miraculous stories were created. Such stories and legends were more closely related with the local folk heroes and warrior saints and other cultic assemblages.69 St Xavier and St Ignatius were worshipped in the local community as the saints of fertility, health for the child, and other favours. The missionaries also encouraged the invocation of their names in certain cases. For instance, when a pariah couple took recourse to Fr Bathasar de

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Costa for not having any child, the latter encouraged them to pray to Saint Francis Xavier and assured them that he would console them and grant them a child.70 Surprisingly, the woman gave birth to a child soon after that. The name of Xavier was especially popu­ lar in the region of Tiruchirapalli and Kandalur. Fr Freye reported that the people of this region showed such respect and honour to St Xavier that one could not see what more they could do to please him and ‘if in their afflictions and troubles they turn to none but that saint, who hears their prayers and grant them signal favours’. He continued to write that Xavier was ‘particularly propitious to those who are childless. Several couples obtained children through his intersession to the great astonishment of all, either because both father and mother were advanced in age or because they were looked upon as barren’.71 No wonder, by 1678, Fr Ignatius da Costa reported that ‘devotion to St. Francis Xavier is general, and the favours he obtains for this mission are continuous, especially in this residence (Kandalur) where the church (is dedicated) to his name’.72 A church dedicated to his name became a centre of pilgrim­ age not only for Christians but also for local Hindus. In 1678, Fr Freye reported that Kandalur had the finest church in the Mission, attended by large crowds of worshippers. He also wrote that to this church came all the Christians of all places.73 Likewise, Kavana­ karai, in the province of Satyamangalam grew into a big village by 1678 ‘because of large number of Christians who crowded there, and the convenience of the place for the exercise of all our ministries’. Thousands of devotees from various parts of the mis­ sion used to throng to the place especially during festive sessions. Here festivals were celebrated with ‘great display among a large concourse of Christians and even of pagans who were anxious to witness those tragicomic plays which the Fathers composed on the lives of saints, in order to rouse the devotion of all’.74 When they assemble for festivals, it was reported, ‘you would take them for an army’.75 The church here was dedicated to Our Blessed Virgin to which both the Christians and the Hindus came with great devo­ tion. Similarly, Roberto de Nobili became a local guru and was

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venerated after his death as a man of learning and sanctity.76 Like­ wise, John de Britto, who was killed in 1693, was perceived as one of the local hero martyr saints who possess both political and mili­ tary powers as those of the local poligars. During his lifetime, he was associated with the mission amongst the martial warrior clans of Ramnad and his legend was associated with elaborate sufferings and powers of healing and the mystic tradition of blood and sacri­ fice.77 Although it was not the intention of the missionaries to have the people identify the Christian saints with the image of local dei­ ties, the encouragement to invoke the saints for certain favours did actually deify them. Bayly called this the ‘cult worship tradition’ of the local people that had entered the Christian pantheon.78 But it should be added here that such practices did not enter the Chris­ tian way just only because of the dynamic local tradition but also because such a practice was also already in vogue in Christianity, albeit in different forms. As argued, this very familiarity provided an easy entry point for the local people to accept Christianity. Besides, the missionaries were associated with various heal­ ing powers during their lifetime. Many people, both Christian converts and the local Hindus, were said to have thronged their residences with their various problems. For instance, at a place called Satyamangalam, when Fr Arcolini could heal a ‘Brahmin’ from his infirmities, ‘the news of such a wonderful change spread immediately through out Sathiyamangalam’ so that ‘crowds of people rich and poor, high and low, came to the Father’s house with tales of their infirmities’.79 In another case, when Fr Freye was forbidden to enter Vettavalam in Gingee kingdom he fixed his abode in the neighbouring rocky mountain. He reported that ‘as soon as the pagans of Vettavalam and the whole district heard’ of his arrival, ‘they came on so steadily, and in such large num­ bers, that during the last 15 days I stayed there, I was surrounded from dawn to dusk by a large number of gentiles except for a few hours’. He continued to write that ‘the affability shown to me by the common people, the respect with which they would kiss my feet, as those of a man who professed to lead a penitential life, and ask my blessing as from a spiritual guru was something incred­ ible’. This account is interesting due to the fact that the Christian

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missionaries were not only highly esteemed by the Christians but also by others. It was exactly how the local people used to show themselves to anyone who led a ‘penitential life’. In fact, such a moment inaugurated the integration of the missionaries among the pantheons of local saints and cults. Seeing all this, the Father taught them Christian religion as much as he could tell them ‘leav­ ing the hearts of several inflamed with the desire of becoming Christians’. He even converted seven of them during his stay.80 This shows that the association of missionaries with powerful healing powers provided the way to associate with the people to whom he could preach the gospel. The association of power divinities to the missionaries was so deeply entrenched in the locality that anything associated with them became suffused with divine powers. One interesting aspect of such belief came at the death of Fr Francis Perez at Nagapat­ tinam in 1583, that as soon he died the owner of the house, … saw 30 scissors busy cropping his head to secure his hairs by way of relics, and that when they had all been plucked out he had been carried to the grave with a head perfectly bald. Some even pulled out the hairs of his beard; others cut his nails; others again plundered him of his clothes with such eagerness that whoever returned from that funeral after having secured something deemed himself most fortunate.81

This account is not a rare event in the life of the missionaries. Similar instances also came at the death of Fr Antonio de Proenza on 14 December 1666 in which it was reported that the Christians ‘set about cutting bits of his clothes, and even his hair, which in their devotion they meant to preserve as precious relics’.82 At his death ‘everyone bewailed him with tears, sobs and groans, as if he had been his own father, and indeed so he was by his love, his conversation, his kind deeds’ and ‘many not satisfied with shed­ ding abundant tears added more precious token of their gratitude such as fasting, alms and various other meritorious works’.83 Even their graveyards and other physical symbols, associated with their lifetime were considered holy and having some divine powers. Not only that, Christianity represented itself to the village communities in such a way that signs or symbols of Christianity

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the cross, relics of pious Christians, the statue were seen to be possessed of divine powers. Such practices were also in close conformity with the local village traditions. Some instances need elaboration here. In one of the letters dated 14 July 1667, Fr Freye wrote to his superior that in one village when a woman was ‘pos­ sessed by the devil’ she was cured by a mere sign of the cross which her husband made on her mouth.84 Similarly, catechist Rayappan, in the Residence of Korangapattu, had also cured a girl possessed by the ‘devil’ after she drank the water in which he dipped the relic of the apostle, St Thomas.85 Many such instances were reported in the missionary letters where the Christian relics were used to solve problems. Indeed, the belief explained the phenomenon and the ritual confirmed the belief. It was in the later half of sixteenth century that such a belief had attained maturity on the Fishery Coast. For instance, accord­ ing to the annual report of 1582, ‘The churches and crosses are held in great esteem, not only by the Christians, but also by the pagans, who came from the interior to worship them, and bring great presents. Some compose in their own language various kinds of verses in praise of the most Holy Cross.’86 Whatever may be the case, it still holds that the apparent similarities between the beliefs on such relics and cult traditions, as noted above, were one of the important factors at work for the hasty acceptance of Christianity in the Coromandel region.

Caste, Pariahs and Conversions ‘Caste’, as a discursive theme in explaining conversion, is seen here as contributing towards conversions rather than hindering it. In fact, most of the converts in the Madurai Mission were mainly composed of the ‘low caste’ and Dalits. But to interpret the caste system or for that matter liberation from it or the kind of social uplift as the main cause of conversion is likely to be misleading here. This is because the church itself practised the caste system to a great extent as a strategy generally known as ‘top-down’ approach. It did not want to interrupt the caste system as it considered it as a ‘social’ and ‘not religious’ practice. Nor was the kind of economic

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impetus or ‘rice Christians’ tenable as the Jesuits had neither the resources nor the kind of avenues to uplift the economic status of the ‘low caste’ people. Since the time of Robert de Nobili, a category of missionar­ ies the sannyasis, garbed as ‘Roman Brahmins’ worked among the dominant caste Hindus. By 1640, another group of missionaries called the Pandaraswamis worked among the ‘low caste’ and dalits. Likewise, separate churches were built for the ‘low’ and ‘high’ caste besides incorporating the various religious practices of the local people. In 1684, Fr Jerome Tellez reported that he built a church in the woods of Kooraipatti ‘with a door opening towards the dens­ est part of the forest, so that the pariahs who are there can hear mass, and myself attend to them’ as there was not a single church throughout his area for the pariahs and other ‘low castes’ and they were never admitted into the village and churches where the old padres were residing. This was done ‘to satisfy everybody without giving the pagans occasion to blaspheme.’87 Thus pariahs remained pariahs even after conversion. A few more instances of strict observance of the caste sys­ tem by Christians can also be cited. For instance, the Residence of Kandalur was mainly created for the use of the ‘low caste’ Christians in 1648 ‘to allow the Father residing at Tiruchirappalli to administer more easily to the Christian pariahs who could not be admitted into the town of Tiruchirappalli on account of their caste’. In Tiruchirappalli, the missionary worked amongst the ‘low caste’ people only at night and only when they were ill and while others were ‘fast asleep’ stayed the whole night at their houses ‘hearing their confessions in the most remote and secret places’. As for the other ‘low caste’ they had to go to Kandalur.88 By 1667, it was reported that ‘the low caste Christians who attend the church of Kandalur is very great, for this place being isolated is very convenient to administer the Christians of that class’.89 In 1677, it became ‘the best and most convenient’ station, and was ‘used for all castes’.90 Similarly, in the Residence of Satyamangalam it was reported that the ‘high caste’ ‘have no interaction with the low caste Christians, whom in their needs, and when they have to receive the sacraments, are attended by the Pandaram Fathers

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who are the nearest of them’.91 In 1678, Fr John de Britto also built ‘a madam (platform) in the woods of Sirukandambanur which is about twelve leagues south-east of Thattuvancherri’ for the ‘low caste’ and later provided sacraments to ‘numerous and excellent Christians’.92 It is clear from the above accounts that the caste system was strictly practised among the Christians. For the missionaries, there was no high or low caste but they had to adhere to such practices strictly in order not to alienate the local people. Every effort was made not to mix themselves up among all castes, on the one hand, and not to mix the people of the ‘low’ and ‘high’ castes. This was especially because all Europeans were generally known as parangis and were considered to be outcaste by the local people due to their association with the pariahs. Thus, separate churches, mostly in an isolated place, were built for the pariahs and other outcastes. Therefore, it is enough to state here that the caste liberation and social upliftment theory in relation to conversions is untenable. Then how can one explain the role of caste in the process of con­ version to Christianity? It is argued here that the practice of caste system in Christianity itself is seen to be the cause of conversion for people from both the dominant and oppressed castes. For the dominant caste Hindus, becoming Christian did not affect their caste standing in the society. For instance, during the weaver caste conference of 1667 in Satyamangalam, it was dis­ cussed in great detail whether conversion to Christianity led to the loss of one’s caste privileges. When all the caste notables who were present in the conference were told that there were many Christians belonging to honourable castes, and even to the caste of Brahmins, ‘it was solemnly decided that to profess the Christian faith was no disgrace of any caste, and, therefore, weavers could freely embrace it without fear of any interference’.93 Fr Freye wrote that ‘in consequence of this, some weavers asked for baptism, and today the members of this caste, both Christians and Hindus live in perfect harmony; which is one efficacious means of promoting the spread of our holy religion’.94 This is exactly how de Nobili had visualized it when he first came to Madurai Mission. There were several advantages to becoming a Christian for

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‘low caste’ Hindus, although the caste system in Christianity was not that friendly. First, the erstwhile outcastes could get the com­ munion of his fellow groups which gave them more social security as they helped each other in times of need. Kandalur grew into a big village of the ‘low castes’ as well as a pilgrimage centre to which several of these caste groups came from different places. In 1667, Fr Freye wrote that there were numerous ‘low caste’ Christians in this place who were so fervent and whose piety ‘manifests itself in their great charity for their neighbour’ and ‘they love each other like brothers and help one another in all their needs’.95 Again, in 1677, when there was continuous war in the Thanjavur kingdom many Christians emigrated to the West, in the region of Satya­ mangalam, and founded a new village for themselves and built a church in it ‘without allowing any pagan to help them, or even to live in that village’.96 Interestingly, the name of that village was called Saveriyarpalayam, meaning the village of St Francis Xavier. Another interesting case also came up in 1682, at Mayilagam vil­ lage near the bank of Kollidam. It was a Christian village of castes of ‘hunters’ and ‘river watchmen’ who took up arms to defend themselves against Kallar attacks for not paying tribute to them. They made a ‘fortress made of earth’ around their villages and the guard posts were named after Christian saints. As many as 50 to 60 ‘Christian soldiers’ guarded the village day and night until the attackers went away.97 Likewise, they helped each other in times of famine, epidemic, etc. Besides, Christianity offered to the people of ‘low caste’ and Dalits the privileges of eternal life after death whereas they deserved only hell in local Hindu belief of the time.98 This was especially true for the pariahs, Pillars, Achivarathars and Sakki­ lyars who were alleged to be ‘infamous and cannot reside within villages or touch those of other castes, not even their garments or their vessels, or bring them water, or serve in their houses, or enter into the temples of their gods’.99 Christianity presented to these people the company of the missionaries, the gospel and the church to attend the divine services, the privileges to recite the Holy Scrip­ ture, and, most importantly, it assured them of eternal life after death, ‘a thing very glorious to them, no doubt, and which has

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never been seen till now in these kingdoms’.100 What the Hindus deprived them were now offered generously by Christianity. Such things became a new ‘additional distinction’ for them that would give them self-esteem and moral thrust. Therefore, the forms of Christian brotherhood, as well as the presentation of Christianity as a religion that could provide some sort of self-confidence and moral thrust in the world and eternal life after death, were regarded to be the main factors for the conversion of the oppressed caste people to Christianity. Hence, Christianity found wide acceptance among these underprivileged people.

Health, Diseases and Medicines Christianity was also associated with new powerful techniques of healing physical pain or diseases. This was the use of medicines in the process of conversions. Hospitals were established at Punnaikayal, Tuticorin, Manappad, Vaippar, Virapandianpatnam, Mylapore and Madurai.101 They were flooded with many local sick people besides the Portuguese themselves. Generally, the Jesuits were in charge of these hospitals ‘to which the sick come from all parts of the country’ and received ‘alms’ from them ‘for their support’.102 Hospitals became a pivotal point of social interaction from all communities. Not only did the effective use of medicines in these places work wonders for the people, but the very new inventions in the region also brought about some psychological effects in them so that it became a healing place for their various illnesses. The admiration for such new things greatly worked in favour of the missionaries. Hospitals were the places where the seven spiritual works of mercy were undertaken converting sinners, instructing the ignorant, counselling the distressed, comforting the sorrowing, bearing the ills patiently, forgiving wrongs, and praying for the sick and the dead. These wonders were manifested in their generous donation towards the upkeep of the hospitals in which they ‘use every means to provide for the support and comfort’.103 The wonder works of medicine did not end in the hospital alone. The Jesuits carried with them certain medicines for the

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sick and needy. For instance, in 1667 it was known that when Fr Emmanuel Rodriguez was captured by the palayakkarar or poligar’s soldier they found a certain kind of medicines in his bag.104 These consisted of certain dried roots and various other antidotes.105 Again in 1682, we see Fr John de Britto awarding antidotes to two people who gave him and his companion fire and food and ‘a few medicines’ to one gentleman who helped them cross the canal.106 This shows that the missionaries always carried with them some medicine wherever they went. In such an inhospitable climate and when modern scientific medicines were still rare, the occa­ sional use of such medicines, which were generally imbued with divine powers, became another wonder for the local people. The existence of a good number of hospitals, a few passing references to medicines carried by the missionaries and the few instances of their use are enough evidence to show that medicine was one part of the charisma of missionaries. As much as the hospitals became the place of healing for phys­ ical pains, the churches and the residences of the mission became also the home of both physical and mental healing for the local people. People generally resorted to temples or churches whenever they were afflicted with diseases. As such illness was believed to be caused by the ‘devils’. Fr Freye had also noticed this when he wrote: As these people are usually convinced that all incurable diseases, and others which they do not yield at once to remedies are caused by the devil, they come in large numbers to this church with the conviction that by hearing catechism and receiving baptism, they will be cured of their illnesses … [which] sometimes works in them great wonders, by giving them the health they so earnestly desire.107

Whenever such people came to the church, it seems likely that they were first given some remedies, probably some medicines, which the missionaries always kept with them. This can be seen from the fact that a ‘seriously ill’ child was once brought to Fr Freye by their parents who insisted that if their son was cured they and their relatives would embrace Christianity. He was immediately given ‘some remedies’ and was later ‘completely cured’ after baptism.108 Fr Freye continued to write that ‘it is by such means that God

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brings a large number of pagans belonging to this residence within the fold of His church’.109 No wonder, by 1684 Fr Luiz de Mello also reported that ‘those marvellous cures from the devil’s obsession, by hearing catechism or receiving baptism are so common in this mission, that to record all the incidents of that kind would be a tiresome repetition of facts’. He mentioned that ‘it is a commonly received opinion among the pagans of this Vijayanagar empire that whosoever wishes to be free from the devil has but to become a Christian’.110 Therefore, once the association of Christianity and healing became sufficiently complete in the minds of the people, conversion in the context of healing could and did take place without the use of medicine at all. Thus, the healing touch of medicine, which was usually associated with divine intervention, had, in the long run, greatly facilitated the process of conversion.

Prints, Pamphlets and the Holy Texts Another important aspect of the Jesuit mission in the Coromandel region was the spread of Christianity by the printed word. The beginning of such was, of course, made by Francis Xavier, during his stay on the Fishery Coast in the form of catechism written on palm leaves in local language, Tamil.111 This is also true of all the succeeding Jesuits working in the region. During his three months stay on the Fishery Coast, Xavier was able to translate the most necessary section of the small catechism the sign of the Cross, the Creed, the Commandments, the Our Father, Hail Mary, Salve Regina and the Confiteor.112 In addition to these, various sermons and prayers were also translated into the local language. He left behind in each village a copy of his catechism written on palm leaves and told those who knew to copy it, to learn them by heart and to recite them each day.113 He further appointed catechists in each village to continue these teachings. An attempt was also made by de Nobili to bridge the gaps between the Hindu and Christian religious terminology, and to find the Tamil expressions of the Bhakti traditions that could be used in Christian worship. But it was Father C.J. Beschi (1680­ 1747), himself an eminent linguist, who initiated the tradition of

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Tamil devotional literature.114 The Jesuit missionaries took great pains to learn the local language and translated the Holy Scriptures into them.115 Countless pamphlets and booklets, containing leg­ ends, historiographies and devotional songs and booklets in Tamil were issued by the Madurai mission in the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. These printed works were consciously presented in a form, which resembled the local tradition of epics, myths and legends.116 The introduction of religious text to all the worshippers, espe­ cially to ‘low caste’ people, was something new in the region. It is to be noted that the local people in the Coromandel region highly valued any written text. But the Hindu texts and canons, which were written in Sanskrit, were not accessible to the common man. It was the privileged right of the Temple brahmins. Besides, per­ sons belonging to the oppressed caste were completely deprived of reading and reciting the holy texts of the Hindu canon. This facili­ tated the progress of Christianity in that the deprived groups were now allowed access to the holy texts of the Christian religion. The effects were especially forceful when the scriptures were translated into the local languages and script. The fact that the ‘low caste’ people got the privilege to learn and recite the religious canons in their own language is enough to explain the intellectual and psychological effects it could bring on them. The tenets of Christian doctrine and the other Chris­ tian literature of Tamil characters were available in printed form. Fr De Souza had informed us that Fr De Faria not only engraved but cast the Tamil type ‘with which were printed this year (1578) the Flos Sanctorum (lives of the saints), the Christian doctrine, a copious confessionary (or prayer book), and other books in which the missionaries learned how to read and write’.117 He goes on to write that ‘these countries marvelled at the new invention, and pagans as well as Christians tried to obtain these printing books and prized them highly’.118 Not only the Christians but people of other religious traditions also purchased the printed Christian doctrines. This explains how the local people of the Coromandel valued written texts in any form. The ‘marvel’ for those books does not necessarily signify their curiosity over the Christian doctrine

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but rather manifests their changing state of mind. However, once they read those texts on the Christian doctrine, those books acted as a medium of disseminating the Christian faith to the people. It thus happened that once those books were made available in the locality ‘God’ walked among the local people even without the missionaries. This is especially true to the oppressed caste people who could now read and recite the ‘power filled doctrine’ which would be ‘a thing glorious to them and which has never been seen till now in these kingdoms’. Thus it is held that the culture of dis­ semination of literature among the people had greatly facilitated the progress of Christianity in the region.

Interlinking Famines, Epidemics and Conversions As we have seen in the previous section, the later half of seventeenth century witnessed three major famines in 1660-2, 1675-9, and 1686-9 and a dreaded flood and epidemics in 1677. The following pages sketch some correlations between the events of conversions and such calamities and seek to answer how they contributed towards conversions. Such correlations can be most visible during the devastating wars, famine, flood and epidemics of 1675-8. We have regular accounts of annual conversions from 1674-83.119 It was seen that there was a continuous growth of conversions in the kingdom of Madurai where famine hit the hardest. The number of conversions during three years (1674-6) reached 6,303.120 This was especially significant in the Residences of Vadugapatti and Kandalur (or Tiruchirappalli) which touched the figure of around 3,730.121 Even in Mullipadi Residence, we have around 207 conversions that rose to 247 in 1677 and 297 in 1678. Again the outbreak of flood followed by epidemics during the month of December in 1677 and early 1678 were followed by the rise in conversions in many places. In the Residence of Nandavanam, there were 504 conversions. The accounts of the Residences of Kavanakarai and Ellamangalam were not reported due to the death of the two missionaries working there. We also find a similar rise in the number of conversions in the Residences of Koranapattu and Kattur, which had recorded 335 and 1280

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converts respectively. The whole of Madurai Mission recorded 11,648 converts from 1674-8, the period of large-scale devastation caused by wars, famines and epidemics. The report of 1679-81 of the Jesuit missionaries recorded as many as 8,357 converts during the three years, mostly from the affected areas. Similar accounts of a spectacular rise in the number of conversions can also be seen during the famine of 1686-9.122 Therefore, in the foregoing accounts, one can make a corre­ lation between conversions and the incidence of famines, flood and epidemics. Then, how can we explain this? As we said earlier, the new changing circumstances brought about a crisis of confi­ dence in the village society. The people resorted to a more reliable category of divine powers for help to resolve their anxieties. This was especially hastened during natural calamities, such as famine and epidemic, that created a kind of mental rush hour for victims. People took hasty decisions under such sudden calamities in order to overcome their miseries. This usually took place in two forms by seeking a new form of solution in preference to the old one especially when the old orders are found to be helpless, which is the reason why Christianity was resorted as the new solution, and by seeking to return, on the part of Christian converts, to their old order, when Christianity could not help. The crisis of confidence in human beings caused a kind of to-and-fro movement of people from one religion to the other. Therefore, it is seen that famine and epidemics made for the hasty movement of the local people towards Christianity. The tendency to move over to another dispensation was fur­ ther reinforced by the successful display of the new solution by the missionaries. For instance, after the great flood of 1677, crops were destroyed by an infestation of caterpillars in the regions of Thattuvacharri and Kodangipatti. Some went to Fr Joao de Britto for the remedy, who ‘gave them some blessed ashes in order that in the name of the Almighty and with great faith they might sprinkle them on the crops’. Surprisingly, after they sprinkled them, ‘all the caterpillars died and the crops were very abundant’.123 In another case, Fr de Britto also wrote that ‘the same thing happened to the pagan Reddi, to whom your Reverence gave holy water and blessed

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ashes for the same purpose’. He also said that ‘all the caterpillars were destroyed in that field which yielded an abundant crop while the contrary was the case in the other fields which were utterly rav­ aged by the caterpillars’.124 Once the applications of such remedies worked successfully it inaugurated the presence of the Christian god among the locality as the new ‘protector’. The missionaries also made several physical arrangements to solve the problems of the local people, such as hygienic food, water and healthy settlement and use of some medicines. For instance, when the great flood of 1677 brought violent epidemics in the region of Kavanakarai, Fr Manuel Correa went there and besides attending to the many sick, he immediately undertook to get a well dug up for clean water and cleaned up the villages, even most probably the dirty houses of the local people.125 It seems that he also stopped any public meetings in the village as he went to Ellamangalam to celebrate the feast there for he did not see ‘any possibility of having it’ in Kavarakarai.126 Such physical measures, no doubt, served immensely towards the control of contagious diseases so that Fr Correa later found Kavanakarai as being safe from the diseases while there were several deaths in the neigh­ bouring villages who ‘were all pagans’.127 Jesuits by their European experiences must have been quite aware of such measures. Not only that, the protection of Christians from diseases due to such physical measures also appeared before the local people due to the protection given by the Christian god. For instance, in 1677, we learned that during the plague epidemic in Uthamapalayam and its neighbourhood so many people died in the Madurai region that the lord of the land threw the cadavers in the neighbouring mountains. But to the surprise of all ‘not one of the Christians of this locality fell a prey to any sickness, their flourishing state of health being a cause of endless wonder to the pagan’.128 Whatever may be the cause of their preservation, the local people, especially the poor and helpless, were now convinced that the god of those Christians was the only god who could save his devotees from such plague. This belief was reinforced by the proclamation of the missionaries who said that such preservation was due to the pro­ tection of their ‘all powerful God’.

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Besides, the care given by the missionaries towards His devo­ tees also worked towards conversions of many helpless. Unlike the Christian communities in the region the other poor were com­ pletely deprived of any assistance from either the rulers of the land or their neighbours ‘for, if in the days of plenty people show them­ selves generous, in time of famine they close their doors on the hungry who have no other alternative but to die of starvation and misery’.129 It was obvious then that the poor would be the greatest hit by any calamity. Seeing the Christians being taken care of by the missionaries in times of difficulty the poor, hapless persons thought conversion was the best way to overcome their anxiety. There were many circumstances when those acts of mercy or the works of charity among the needy greatly worked in favour of the missionaries. Many people converted to Christianity from the expectation of such favours from the Christians. But such accounts came mainly in the coastal areas. For instance, in 1583 it was reported ‘six hundred pagans, who, owing to want and famine, had retired to the Island of Manar, have been baptized’. A great number for the same motive sold themselves to the Portuguese and to their Christian neighbours in the town of St Thomas and ‘3,000 of them became Christians’.130 We are also told that during the famine of 1626 about 4,000 people who came from the hinterland turned towards Christianity in the Fishery Coast.131 Way back in 1542 we also learn that due to famine that had infested the whole country­ side many migrated to the city of Mylapore and 1,800 of them were then converted to Christianity.132 In fact, the mass conversions of the Paravars, Karaiyars and Mukkuvars in the coastal areas were caused by such circumstances. The details of the circumstances leading to their conversions fairly indicate the urgency of preserv­ ing their very life-giving occupation, pearl fishing, that was under serious threat from their neighbouring Kayalar Muslims.133 For the sake of a livelihood, the Paravars accepted Christianity in order to avail the protection of the Portuguese naval forces. But when the Paravars actually solved their jati crisis by becoming Christians and availed Portuguese protection the trend was already set for the other groups like the Karaiyars134 and the Mukkuvars135 who were also inflicted with crises under the changed environment.

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However, many Christians returned to Hinduism, especially when they felt that the Christian god could not help them. We also have several individual cases of relapse. Besides, group retrench­ ment also occurred on account of the persecution of Christians in Thanjavur kingdom around 1701. Manucci wrote that to gain exemption from persecution many Christians, ‘at one stroke … returned all of a sudden to their former vomit, and asserted they are Hindus, denying they had ever been anything else’. He said that there were ‘as many as five thousand’ among the pariahs who returned to their former religion, Hinduism. He also expressed his fear that all the Christian community might return to Hindu­ ism if the persecution did not stop.136 Thus, we can see that people tended to move from one religion to another whenever there was crisis in their present religion. There was an apparent correlation between large-scale con­ version movements and a crisis of confidence in life. While wars, famine, flood and epidemics facilitated the process of conversions, it was basically the work of charity and care taken by the mission­ aries and the apparent protection of Christians by their god during such calamities that led many poor people towards Christianity. In the same way when Christianity could not protect them from persecution these people did not hesitate in going back to their former religion. The calamities and other forms of physical afflic­ tions created what Dick Kooiman called ‘rush hour’ in already existing religious boundary traffic between the two religions as we have seen two-way movements during such times.137 Changing of one’s religion became a social therapy for the grievance-ridden mass. The suddenness of calamities, which made things quite hasty and created the loss of confidence in what one had, became the hallmark of conversion movements in the religious landscape of Tamil Nadu.

Conclusion To conclude this paper, it can be said that conversions in the Coromandel region during the later half of the seventeenth century

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can be located mainly within the dynamic socio-religious culture of the Tamils, in the context of the changing political, economic and social circumstances. The apparent similarities and the familiarities of certain ideas and practices between Hinduism and Christianity were seen to be most important cause of conversion. Besides, the physical and mental hardships of the people under continuous crises caused by wars, famines, flood and epidemics also greatly hastened the process of conversion, as people usually resorted to another religion as social therapy. This brought about two-way movement between the existing religious boundaries. This paper also took into account other factors, such as the social liberation theory, the economic motive theory and the political patronage or force conversion theory. However, it is found that these theories are not tenable in the case of the Madurai mission during the period of our study. The question of liberation from the rigid caste system did not arise in the common sense of the local people as it was also practised in the Christian church. Rather, ‘low caste’ people came towards Christianity as it could provide them other privileges and positions such as Christian brotherhood, church to attend religious services, to be able to hear, read and recite the Holy Scriptures and, above all, eternal life after death. Ultimately, it can be said that the dynamic socio-religious culture of Tamil Nadu provided for the dramatic rise of conversions due to the fast changing circumstances. The Jesuits and, for that matter, the Portuguese Estado had neither the power to use forces nor the resources to control the socio-religious and political situation on the Coromandel coast, which is rightly termed as the ‘Shadow Empire’ of Goa in the Bay of Bengal by Winius.138

Notes 1. This paper first appeared in Indian Church History Review, vol. XLII, no. 2, December 2008, pp. 135-67. 2. K.A. Shastri, ed., A dvanced History of India, Bombay, Allied Publishers, 1971, p. 428; J. Thekkedath, History of Christianity in India, vol. 2, Church History Association of India, Bangalore, 1988, p. 227.

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3. Ibid., p. 152. 4. Phillips Baldaeus, A Description of the East India Coast of Malabar and Coromandel and also the Isle of Ceylon with their Adjacent Kingdom and Provinces, AES, New Delhi, 2000, p. 651. 5. Thekkedath, op. cit., p. 227. 6. S.J. S tephen, trans., Letters of the Portuguese Jesuits from Tamil Countryside, 1666-1688, IIES Pondicherry, 2001, p. 65, Fr Freye to Fr Oliva, 8 May 1677. 7. Ibid., pp. 65-6, Fr Freye to Fr Oliva, 8 May 1677. 8. Ibid., p. 65, Fr Freye to Fr Oliva, 8 May 1677. 9. Ibid., p. 104, Fr Freye to Fr Oliva, 10 July 1678. 10. Ibid., p. 125, Fr Freye to Fr Oliva, 10 July 1678. 11. Ibid., p. 104, Fr Freye to Fr Oliva, 10 July 1678. 12. Ibid., p. 105, Fr Freye to Fr Oliva, 10 July 1678. 13. Ibid., Fr Freye to Fr Oliva, 10 July 1678, p. 106. 14. Ibid., p. 66, Fr Freye to Fr Oliva, 8 May 1677. 15. Ibid., p. 79, Fr Freye to Fr Oliva, 8 May 1677. 16. Ibid., pp. 106-7, Fr Freye to Fr Oliva, 10 July 1678. 17. Ibid., pp. 130-1, Fr Freye to Fr Oliva, 10 July 1678. 18. Ibid., p. 137, Fr Freye to Fr Oliva, 10 July 1678. 19. Ibid., p. 152, Fr Freye to Fr Oliva, 12 July 1679. 20. Ibid., p. 237, Fr Freye to Fr Noyelle, 14 May 1683. 21. Ibid., p. 284, Fr Britto to Fr Noyelle, 9 May 1684. 22. Ibid., p. 186, Fr Freye to Fr Oliva, 25 January 1682. 23. Ibid., p. 284, Fr Britto to Fr Noyelle, 9 May 1684. 24. Ibid., p. 361, Fr Luiz de Mello to Fr Thyrsus Gonsalves, 30 May 1689. 25. Thekkedath, op. cit., p. 152. 26. Ibid., p. 152. 27. Stephen, op. cit., p. 353, Fr Mello to Fr Gonsalves, 30 May 1689. 28. Ibid., p. 357, Fr Mello to Fr Gonsalves, 30 May 1689. 29. Ibid., p. 357, Fr Mello to Fr Gonsalves, 30 May 1689. 30. Ibid., pp. 134-5. 31. A. Lopez, The Annual Letters of 1644, the Jesuit Malabar Province (tr. L. Besse, 1907), in Madura Varia, Vidyayoti Library, Delhi, pp. 29-32. 32. Stephen, op. cit., p. 100. The total number of baptisms by this time had already crossed 60,000. 33. Stephen, op. cit., p. 188. 34. Thekkedath, op. cit., p. 236. 35. The figures given in the table are tabulated on the basis of the number

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36. 37. 38.

39.

40. 41. 42.

43. 44. 45. 46.

47.

395

of baptisms given in the missionary letters. See Stephen, op. cit., pp. 62, 100, 147, 180, 188, 276, 327, 346, 371; Lopez, op. cit., pp. 30-2; Thekkedath, op. cit., pp. 225-6, 228, 246, 248-9. Stephen, op. cit., p. 37 Ibid., p. 98, Fr Freye to Fr Oliva, 8 May 1677. J.C. Heesterman, The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essay in Indian Ritual, Kingship and Society, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1985, pp. 6, 118-27; Brenda E.F. Beck, ‘Symbolic Merger of Body, Space and Cosmos in Hindu Tamil Nadu’, Comparative Indian Sociology, 1976, pp. 213-43. Such a situation can be clearly seen from the account of the missionaries. For example, if somebody got ill, the devil’s hand was blamed or if some diseases occur in the village it was usually ascribed to the curse of an angry deity. Susan Bayly, Saints, Goddesses and Kings: The Muslims and Christians in South Indian Society, 1700-1900, Cambridge University Press, New Delhi, 1992, 1st edn. 1989. Bayly, op. cit., pp. 34-5. Burton Stein, Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1985, pp. 456-65. Stein has a fine table showing the various temples of Tamil Nadu by deity, mandalam and district from the period between 1300 and 1750. This table was based on the authentic 1961 Census of India conducted in the state of Madras, viz., Census of India 1961, vol. 9, Madras State, pt. XI-D: Temples of Madras State, 7 volumes. See also his article, ‘Temples in Tamil Country, 1300-1750 AD’, IESHR, 14.1 (1977), pp. 11-45. H. Bugge, Mission and Tamil Society, Curzon Press, Richmond, 1994, p. 20; Shulman, David, ‘South Indian Bandits and Kings’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, IESHR, 1980, pp. 283-306. Niccolao Manucci, Storia do Mogor or Mugul India, Low Price Publication, New Delhi, 1996, 1st edn. 1907-8, pp. 3-4. Stephen, op. cit., pp. 278-9, Fr Britto to Fr Noyalle, 9 May 1684. Tribal cosmology of two-tiered structure was employed to explain the process of conversions by Eaton, Richard M., ‘Conversion to Christianity Among the Nagas, 1876–1971’, IESHR, 21.1 (1984), pp. 1-52; Horton, Robert, ‘On Rationality of Conversion’, Africa, 1971 and Oommen, George, ‘Re-reading tribal Conversion Movement: The Case of the Malayarayans of Kerala, 1848-1900’, Religion and Society, 44 (1997), pp. 66-82. Manucci, op. cit., pp. 21-3.

396 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81.

Jangkhomang Guite Stephen, op. cit., pp. 30-3. Ibid., pp. 341-5. Ibid., pp. 330-3. Ibid., p. 77. Ibid., p. 362. Manucci, op. cit., pp. 6-21. J. Costelloe, The Letters and Instructions of Francis Xavier, Anand: Gujarat Sahitya Prakash, 1993, p. 70, Xavier to his companions in Rome, 15 January 1544. Stephen, op. cit., p. 53. Thekkedath, op. cit., p. 215 where he has cited J. Castete, L’Ancienne du Madure, p. 138. Manucci, op. cit., p. 24. Costelloe, op. cit., p. 67, Xavier to his companions in Rome, 15 January 1544. Ibid., p. 70, Xavier to his companions in Rome, 15 January 1544. Ibid., p. 66. Ibid., pp. 61-2, 28 October 1542; see also D Schurhammer, Francis Xavier: His Life and His Time, vol. 2, India (1541-45), Jesuit Historical Institute, Rome, 1977, p. 298. Schurhammer, op. cit., p. 57. Stephen, op. cit., p. 38. Ibid., pp. 6-7, Fr. Freye to Fr. Oliva, 14 July 1667. Manucci, op. cit., pp. 326-39. Ibid., pp. 326-7. Ibid., p. 335. Ibid., p. 328. Ibid., pp. 333-5. Bayly, op. cit., pp. 329-30. Stephen, op. cit., p. 23. Ibid., pp. 22-3. Ibid., p. 122. Ibid., p. 120. Ibid., pp. 136-7. Ibid., p. 92. Bugge, op. cit., p. 46 Bayly, op. cit., pp. 398-400; Bugge, op. cit., p. 46 For details of Bayly argument see Ibid., pp. 379-419. Ibid., p. 39. Ibid., pp. 69-70.

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82. H. Hosten, The Works of Rev. H. Hosten, vol. 21, p. 127, Jesuit Letters of 1583. 83. Stephen, op. cit., pp. 26-7; Fr Freye to Fr Oliva, 14 July 1667 84. Stephen, op. cit., p. 26. 85. Ibid., p. 28, Fr Freye to Fr Oliva, 14 July 1667. 86. Ibid., p. 157, Fr Freye to Fr Oliva, 12 July 1679. 87. Hosten, op. cit., p. 122, Jesuit Annual Letters of 1582. 88. Stephen, op. cit., p. 288. 89. Ibid., pp. 18-21. 90. Ibid., p. 18. 91. Ibid., pp. 81-2. 92. Ibid., p. 37. 93. Ibid., p. 160. 94. Ibid., pp. 42-3, Fr Freye to Fr Oliva, 14 July 1667. 95. Ibid., p. 43. 96. Ibid., p. 20. 97. Ibid., p. 94. 98. Ibid., p. 220. 99. Manucci, op. cit., pp. 24-5. 100. Stephen, op. cit., p. 281, Fr Britto to Fr Noyelle, 9 May 1684. 101. Lopez, Andrew, The Annual Letters of 1644, p. 30. 102. Thekkedath, op. cit., pp. 263-4; Stephen, op. cit., p. 312. 103. Hosten, op. cit., p. 123, Jesuit annual letter of 1582. 104. Ibid., p. 133, the annual letters of 1586-7. 105. Stephen, op. cit., p. 47, Fr. Freye to Fr. Oliva, 14 July 1667. 106. Ibid. 107. Ibid., pp. 202-3. 108. Ibid., pp. 324-5. 109. Ibid. 110. Ibid., p. 325. 111. Ibid., p. 348. 112. Costelloe, op. cit., pp. 64-5. 113. Schurhammer, op. cit., p. 308; Costelloe, op. cit., p. 65, Xavier to his companions in Rome, 15 January, 1544. 114. Costelloe, op. cit., p. 336. 115. Bugge, op. cit., p. 45. 116. Those Jesuits involved in such tasks were Frs. Henriques, Faria, Nobili, Freye, Beschi, etc. 117. Bugge, op. cit., p. 46. 118. Rev. C.G. Rodeles, ‘Earliest Jesuit Printing in India’ (tr. L.Cardon &

398

119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124. 125. 126. 127. 128. 129. 130. 131. 132. 133. 134.

135. 136. 137. 138.

Jangkhomang Guite H. Hosten), Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, n.s. 23 (1927), p. 164. Thekeddeth, op. cit., pp. 164-5. Stephen, op. cit., pp. 64-328, Jesuit’s Madurai Missions Letters of 1677, 1678, 1679, 1682, 1683 and 1684. Ibid., p. 100: Fr. Andres Freyre, 1667, 1677. Ibid., pp. 81-9, 120-33. These figures from different mission centres are computed from the letters of the Jesuit missionaries in the areas as was adapted in Stephens, op. cit. Ibid., p. 110, Fr Freye to Fr Oliva, 10 July 1678. Ibid., p. 110. Ibid., p. 138, 3 March 1678. Ibid. Ibid., p. 138, Fr Correa to Fr Amadio, 3 March 1678. Ibid., pp. 130-1, Fr Freye to Fr Oliva, 10 July 1678. Ibid., p. 151, Fr Freye to Fr Oliva, 12 July 1679. Hosten, op. cit., vol. 21, p. 127. Thekkedath, op. cit., II, p. 179; where he cited L. Besse, La Mission, pp. 440-1. A.M. Mundadan, History of Christianity in India, vol. 1, Bangalore: Church History Association of India, 1989, p. 427, where he cited Correa, Lindas Da India, iv, p. 131. For the details of Paravars’ conversions, See Schurhammer, ‘Letters of Joao da Cruz’, pp. 58-9; See also from the same author, Francis Xavier, op. cit., pp. 258-67; and Costelloe, op. cit., pp. 60-3, Xavier Letters to Ignatius, 28 October, 1542; Baldaeus, A Description, p. 645. On the Conversions of Karaiyars see Schurhammer, op. cit., pp. 294, 347-54; Costelloe, op. cit. On Mukkuvars see Costelloe, op. cit., pp. 104-5 and to Mansilhas, 18 December 1544, p. 117 and to his companions, 27 January 1545 Manucci, op. cit., p. 314. Dick Kooiman, ‘Mass Movements, Famine and Epidemics: A Study in Interrelationship’, Modern Asian Studies, 25.2 (1991), pp. 281­ 301.

CHAPTER 15

Introduction of New Literature under the Aegis of Christian Missions in Mizoram J.V. HLUNA

The focus of this paper will be on the contributions of the Welsh mission with special attention to its impact on the emergence and development of Mizo literature. Certain omissions will, no doubt, be made, as we shall be dealing with a broad field of interest. At the same time, other relevant matters in conjunction with our main subject shall also be touched upon. In this context, one cannot avoid introducing the discourse, right from developments prior to the emergence of the missionaries, and the contributions of our pioneer missionaries. Of these, we shall look briefly at the works of T.H. Lewin and missionaries like the Revd. William Williams, F.W. Savidge and J.H. Lorrain.

Works before the Arrival of the Missionaries In 1869, a renowned book relating to the history and dialect of the Mizo people was published. This book, The Hill Tracts of Chittangong and the Dwellers Therein, With Comparative Vocabularies of the Hill Dialects, was written by Thangliana (Lt Col Thomas Herbert Lewin/Tom Lewin), who had been appointed as the hill tribes superintendent (later deputy commissioner) in 1866 by the Crown. Others books by Lewin, which were subsequently published, were Wild Races of South Eastern India (1870) and Hill Proverbs of the Inhabitants of the Chillagong Hill Tracts (1873). In 1872, Lewin moved his residential bungalow, market and hospital from Rangamati to Tlabung, and in 1873, Rothangpuia’s subjects

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built a cottage for him at a pleasant site on the Sirte Hills. This cottage was apparently nicknamed Uncle Tom’s Cabin by his close friends. Hence, at his leisure, he spent much time studying and preparing a dictionary of the Mizo language and grammar.1 His great interest in the language resulted in the publication of Progressive Colloquial Exercises in the Lushai Dialect of the Dzo of Kuki Language with Vocabularies and Popular Tales in 1874. This 120-page volume contained a Mizo-English Dictionary with 1,256 words and an English-Mizo Dictionary with 1,105 words. He also included three popular folktales—Chemtatrawta, Lalruanga and Kungawrhi—all written in Mizo language. Besides these, he also authored in English A Fly on the Wheel or How I Help to Govern India, published in 1912. The works of Thangliana thus herald the foundation of Mizo literature. It is noteworthy that a quarter of a century, before the Mizo alphabet was created, he had already used the Hunterian system in his writings. Apart from the works of Lewin, other books of note on similar subjects published during the time were—A Grammar of Lushai Language (1884), by Brojo Nath Saha and Rangkol-Kuki-Lushai Grammar (1885) by C.A. Soppit. These books served well as a guide to the Mizo language and as part of the pioneering literature in the language. Other books on Mizo history, with no particu­ lar focus on the language, include The Lushais 1878-1889 by H.R. Browne, Handbook of the Lushai Country (1889) by A.O. Cham­ bers, and Chin-Lushai Land (1893) by A.S. Reid. These volumes, written both in English and Mizo, laid the foundation for the birth of Mizo literature and these government officials deserved credit for their invaluable contributions.2

First Visitors The first visitor to Mizoram with the mission of Gospel Outreach was a Welsh missionary in Khasi Hills—Rev. William Williams. In February 1891, he left Shella for Shillong, from where he and his three companions made their way to Mizoram on 15 February 1891. They first encountered a group of young Mizo lads at Changsil at the coast of the Tlawng river on 15 March 1891 and followed them to their village. The Mizo people had never seen

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a matchbox, so whenever Williams and his companions struck a match, they would gather round the light in complete amazement. Seeing their wonder, Williams found this an ideal opportunity to share Bible pictures with them. These pictures made the people so happy they would all laugh aloud with abandon. Some even tried talking to the pictures! Williams also tried to teach the children to sing but found that no one dared to open their mouths. However, as they were about to go on their way to Aizawl, he heard voices attempting to sing the very songs he had taught. Williams and his companions reached the Mizos and distributed pictures of Jesus among them. He earnestly hunted for Mizo youths he could take with him to Khasi Hills where they would be educated, but found none willing. They were fearful of being taken away for good, as they had never seen the return of their chiefs who were taken away as political prisoners. At the time of Williams’ visit, tensions were high over British invasions, so certain restrictions were imposed upon their stay in Mizoram and they left Mizoram on 17 April 1891. After reaching the Khasi Hills, he sent a report on Mizoram to the missions’ secretary in Wales, after which the general assembly decided upon founding a mission in Mizoram.3

Arthington Mission Three years after the first visit of Revd. William Willams, Rev. F.W. Savidge (who came to be known as Sap Upa) and Rev. J.H. Lorrain (known to the Mizos as Pu Buanga) arrived at Aizawl, on 11 January 1894. They first pitched their tents on the hill that now houses the Mizo High School, and they camped there for three years. During these years, they were mainly engaged in the study of the Mizo language and the compilation of books. Pu Buanga was quite skilled in such matters and in these three years, the body of his work included—Mizo A Aw B (Mizo Alphabet), Thu-Inchhang Bu (Responsive Reading Book), Hymn Book and a Dictionary. He also had the Gospels of Luke and John and the Book of Acts translated into Mizo. In his work, he had the help of three natives, namely—Pu Suaka (chief of Durtlang), Pu Thangphunga (chief of Chaltlang) and Pu Khamliana (chief of Lungleng). At this time, Pu Khamliana

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could read and write, thus making him the first literate Mizo. An interesting incident of the time is that during the translations Pu Suaka and Pu Thangphunga could not agree over the question of who was greater between Pathian and Khuavang. Such was their disagreement that Pu Buanga finally decided to use Jehovah for God in the Mizo translations. The original Mizo alphabet as compiled by Pu Buanga ran like this—AW A B C D E F G (ek) NG (eng) H I J (chei) K L M N O P R S T T(thaw) U V Z CH. The alphabet the Mizos now have is the revised version developed from this. Successfully creating an alphabet for a language they had just learnt was a commendable achievement indeed. The two missionaries gave the Mizos their first hymn, ‘Jisu­ vana a om a …’, which was fittingly put down at number one in the earlier Mizo Christian Hymnal. At the eastern end of the Mizo High School field (near the present chief minister secretariat), they erected a place of worship where they would gather singing songs to the accompaniment of a mouth organ. This was a new phenom­ enon for the Mizos and an incident is reported of the time when a man looked in and asked, ‘where is the beer cask?’ because singing in fellowship was unheard of without beer being served. Near their campsite and this church building was a bawlhmun, a site for the practice of animistic rites. People often came here with their sacrificial offerings and the missionaries would tell them that there was a way of healing besides these offerings. Though the people did not pay much heed to them, they did find that it was an impressing new thoughts on the minds of the people. The first church building in Mizoram was thus erected at a bawlhmun.4 Since the pioneer missionaries devoted much of their time in lay­ ing foundations in the forms of producing worthwhile books, they had no time to travel around and evangelize. We, therefore, have no records of converts in their time.

Welsh Mission The general assembly of the Welsh Church in 1892 decided upon sending missionaries to Mizoram. Hearing this, the two

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missionaries urged them to act upon this decision and send missionaries while they were still in Mizoram. Rev. David Evan Jones then landed in Aizawl on 31 August 1897 and he shared four months (September-December) with his predecessors. During this time, Rev. D.E. Jones learnt 90 words of Mizo every day and was much profited by the knowledge gathered by the pioneers. The church at Khasi Hills also did a commendable job in sending Raibajur to aid Rev. D.E. Jones in his work. While Rev. D.E. Jones and his Khasi brethren were busy evangelizing over the length and breadth of Mizoram, another missionary, Rev. Edwin Rowlands, also arrived at Aizawl on 31 December 1898. Soon they were both given Mizo names— Revd. D.E. Jones became Zosaphluia, and Revd. Edwin Rowlands was named Zosapthara.

Welsh Missionaries A total of 35 missionaries were sent to Mizoram, out of which 14 were medical missionaries, while 21 were church-based, being pastors and teachers. Zosaphuia and Zosapthara were truly the pillars of the church in Mizoram, and their contributions were immense, both physically and spiritually. Zosaphluia was in Mizoram for 30 years, between 1897 and 1926, while Zosapthara stayed only for 10 years between 1898 and 1908. However, there is no doubt that his efforts had a great impact on the development, which covered the Mizo people in varied ways. The pair of them covered the northern and southern hills of Mizoram with great zeal. To them goes the credit for laying the foundations of the gospel in Mizoram, introduction and development of formal education, music and literature to a large extent. The two pastors immediately set upon continuing the work of translating the Bible, which Pu Buanga and Sap Upa had begun. They translated the books of Matthew, Mark, Ephesiand, Colossian, Philippians, The Acts, Philemon, Galatians, Hebrews, Corinthians and Revelations and had them published in succession. They also reworked on some of the earlier translations. They also prepared institutional textbooks for general education—arithmetical texts,

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graded readers (Zirtan Bu, Zirtirh Bu thar, Thu-Ro Bu, Bu Lai I & II, Hma Bu, Elementary Studies in English, On Health Education, etc.). When they learnt that all the Mizo tribes could understand the Lusei dialect, they forewent the trouble of learning minor dia­ lects and produced all their books in the Lusei tongue. Zosapthara, after using the Mizo alphabet by Sap Upa and Pu Buanga, felt the need to revise it and did so. The alphabet so revised is the one that is in use to this day. When Sap Upa and Pu Buanga came back to Lunglei in 1903, he explained the revisions he had made and they found it to be completely satisfactory. As was the case with prose, their contribution towards the development of poetry and songs was equally laudable. Zosapthara produced more than 100 songs in Mizo, amongst which were a few non-gospel songs—‘Ka Nu’, ‘Mizo-Lawm the u’, ‘Thil Nawitete’,‘Bei Nawnrawh’, ‘Bawih Chhuah Hla’. These poems and songs remained a part of the education curriculum for a long time; though they appear simple and straightforward, they are real gems when one looks at them in context of the life and times in which they were composed. Let us take some time to look closely at some of the lyrics here: ‘Ka Nu’ (Mother) was inspired by what he saw of the status of women in Mizo society. Zosapthara wrote the following lines to educate the people of the value of a mother and thereby remedy their low perception of women: Ka nausenin tunge mi kawl? Ka nu, ka nu duh tak chu. Tawng thei lovin tunge mi pawl? Ka nu, ka nu duh tak chu. Ka dam lo va, a tlaivar a, Ka tap a, min chawi-mu thin. Hah takin, chak lo chung pawhin, Ka nu, ka nu duh tak chu. (Who cared for me, a tender babe? Mother, my precious mother. Who spoke to me in my silence? Mother, my precious mother. When I was sick, she stayed up nights,

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When I cried, she’d cuddle me to sleep. With tired arms, weak though she was, Mother, my precious mother.)

Such a song could not but speak to the hearts of the people. Also, Zosapthara was deeply troubled by the apparent lack of interest in education. Especially among the sons of Mizo chiefs who were given special education, he found many who dropped out, unwilling to put in the required effort. For such, he wrote the following words of encouragement in ‘Bei Nawnrawh’: I pual har hle mah langin, Bei la, bei nawn rawh. Hun hian a hlawhtlintir thin, Bei la, bei nawn rawh. mi tih ngai kha engah nge Nang I tih ve theih loh le? Hei hi pawm tlat zel ang che. Bei la bei nawn rawh. (If you should find your path so tough Try, try again; Time will bring with it success, Try, try again. If others have and others can, Why should you not be able to? Hold on strongly only to this, Try. Try again.)

Of the hymns he composed in Mizo, 83 were previously included in the Mizo Christian hymnal, now 78 of them are there. This still accounts for the highest number from a single person’s work. Zosaphluia’s work ranks second in number, 40 of his hymns were previously included; now it has been reduced to 35. These songs by the missionaries obviously have discrepancies in language; however, they are invaluable to Mizo literature. They introduced rhyme schemes, paved the way for the use of tonic sol-fa, and cre­ ated accepted patterns of composition and poetic diction. Mizo was a language they learnt late in life over a short period, but they were adept at its use, and our elders did write in imitation of their

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style. So impressed was Pu Buanga with Zosapthara’s skills that he remarked, ‘Sapthara was highly skilled in translating songs, so we usually left better ones for him to translate. At times, his transla­ tions exceeded the originals in their aesthetic quality.…’5 The oldest among Mizo periodicals, and still with the larg­ est circulation, Kristian Tlangau, was launched in October 1911. From its inception, Zosapthara served as the editor and continued to do so to the end of his stay in Mizoram. This periodical broad­ ened the view of the people and greatly aided the general progress of the society. In all this time, the two missionaries continued traveling all over Mizoram spreading the gospel. They also taught the people the hazard of liquor, smoke and tobacco and educated them on matters of hygiene, manners and etiquette. They always restricted the free intermingling of the sexes. To bring his point home, Zosaphluia often remarked, ‘If a man continues to hold burning embers, will he not be burnt?’6 In 1899, Zosaphluia visited Lunglei, Punglei, Pukpui and Sethlun and heard about Darphawka. On this visit, Thankunga (son-in-law of Darphawka) and his son were converted and they became the first converts in the southern region of Mizoram.7 On the second Lunglei visit in 1902, Thankunga, Tlawmi, Lengkaia and Parima were baptized at Sethlun and they became the first to be baptized in the southern region.8 The Mizo had never had a burial ground for the dead. From the time the missionaries set up a cemetery for Christians, the idea of burying the dead in a cemetery took ground among all the Mizos. The Mizos never had names for days of the week either. Zosaphluia created the names that is continued to be practised even now on 5 August 1904.9 The foundations they laid spiritually and physically, and in literature, are too many and too varied to be able to capture them in detail. Pi Zawni (Mrs Katherine Jones), wife of Zosaphluia, also made creditable contributions of her own. She introduced the special service for children and composed the popular children’s hymn, Jerusalem nute’n an fate Isuahnena an hruailaiin. She also sent two Mizo ladies—Pawngi and Nu-i—for training in nursing­

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midwifery. They became the first nurses among the Mizos and rendered an invaluable service to the people. She began the Pres­ byterian Church Girls’ School and served the women by teaching them about hygiene, childcare, health, etc. She skilfully cared for many and counselled them on matters they could not share with others. Also, she personally sponsored and cared for 12 orphans. Many of the missionaries in Mizoram made worthwhile con­ tributions to literature but we cannot hope to study them all in great detail. The following is only a highlight of the contributions made by a handful of them. Rev. Robert Evans (Pu Dangawka, 1907-8): During his year’s sojourn in Mizoram from the Khasi Hills, he produced the Sol-fa Zirna Bu (Guide to Sol-fa), with the able help of a Khasi bachelor, U Omia Mohan Roy, who was adept in the Mizo dialect. He is specially remembered for the part he played in the coming of the first great wave of revival. He was the chairman at the 1906 Mai­ rang assembly where 10 delegates would be sent from Mizoram. Fearing that these delegates would not partake of the revival spirit because of the language gap, he suggested the congregation to hold a mass prayer for these Mizo delegates. It was only from that moment that those Mizo delegates felt a change and were touched by the wave of revival. Dr Peter Fraser (1908-12): is credited with abolishing the animistic practice of offering sacrifices to spirits as a cure from illnesses. It was due to his tireless efforts that the 50 per cent infant mortality rate among the Mizos was greatly reduced. He established five foster homes for the destitute where 70 people—old men and women and the disabled—were housed. This number increased to more than a 100 after the great famine of 1911. He also set up a boarding house for orphans where many received their education. It was Dr Fraser who introduced printing technology in Mizoram when he brought a hand press, which was christened the Aijil Kristian Press. Here, he printed a brochure called ‘Kross Thu’ (The Message of the Cross), and freely distributed them to all the patients he attended. Many used these brochures to teach them­ selves to read and write. The first issues of Kristian Tlangau were also produced from this press.

408

J.V. Hluna Dr Fraser practiced in his life the message of Luke 4:18-19:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he hath anointed me to preach gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.

He was troubled by the continued existence of bawis (slaves) in Mizoram after slavery had been abolished in the rest of the Brit­ ish Empire. The price of buying freedom for a bawi was Rs. 40 and he made the ransom for 40 bawis from his personal account. He could not agree with the superintendent H.W.G. Cole over the issue of the bawis and there was constant tension between them, leading to the departure of both from Mizoram. Later, the doctor moved the British Privy Council on the issue where his cause was adjudged justified, spelling the end of the bawi system in Mizoram. Inspired by this liberation, Pu Thanga emotionally penned the fol­ lowing lines for a Mizo Christian hymn: Aw Lalpa, Chungnungber – kanfakhle a che, PathianNunglehEngkimtithei I ni e, Hnehchhahte, bawih, riangvaite, misualteThian, Faharhte, retheite Lal, Pa lehPathian… (We praise thee our Lord in the highest, Thou all-powerful and Living God, Friend to the helpless, slaves and sinners, Lord of orphans, the downtrodden and poor…)

Rev. Frederick Joseph Sandy (Pu Di-a, 1914-26) will always be remembered as a pioneer who set up the first library in Mizoram, and the first to send Mizo girls for further education in high schools. He set up a library at the Boys’ Middle School and obtained stipends for girls to pursue their education at the high school level. He made a concentrated effort to learn the Mizo language, even­ tually producing the Mizo Tawng Grammar Bu (Book on Mizo Grammar). He also authored the HlaLawrkhawm Bu (compilation of Mizo songs) in 1917-18. With the aid of Pasena and Rozika, he published Aesop’s Fables in Mizo (1817), and authored The Lushai Verb and Lushai Double Adverbs. He also published Legends of Old

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Lushai in English. At the 1920 Serkawn Convention, Pu Dia pro­ posed the writing of Mizo names as a single word, and the use of ‘s’ instead of ‘sh’ which was agreed upon. These factors alone speak for the immense contributions made by Rev. Sandy in the field of Mizo Literature. Rev. Enoch Lews Mendus (Pu Mena—a transliterated naming, 1922-44) impressed upon his students the need for and respect­ ability of manual labour. He and his students worked heartily at the school gardens (now Kawltheihuan, Mission Veng) and at Chite, where they practiced terrace farming. To him goes the credit of giving Mizoram her first playground, when the hill that now houses the Contact Sport Centre at Mission Vengthlang was levelled under his supervision. He applied for, and was granted the Dawrpui Veng Church site at Aizawl, which at the time was used as a winery. The building was constructed under his supervision, and he gathered the raw materials for the building from all avail­ able sources. The most impressive church building of the time was thus opened and dedicated in 1931. He supervised the translation of the Book of Old Testament Prophets from the Bible in Mizo and the Commentary on Amos he produced was the first ever Bible commentary in Mizo. He established the Teachers’ Training School in 1927, where many from the Cachar Hill Tribes and the Zoram Baptist church also came for training. This school produced many teachers who later proved to be invaluable pillars for the Church. Interestingly, it was also Pu Mena who introduced basketball and volleyball to the Mizo people. The Diary of a Jungle Missionary, a book he pub­ lished at Liverpool in 1956, and the comments he made therein deserve special mention here. In this volume, he recounts the deep jungles of Mizoram and his own experience there, how he travelled through these forests, sometimes even spending nights in them. On zu, the local rice beer, he says: … the indigenous leaders of the Church on our Field insist even more strongly than the missionaries on the necessity for all Church members being strict total abstainers. One reason for this is that … this drinking custom is so closely linked with other customs which belong to the old pagan life … the idea of drinking in moderation is as impracticable as it

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is dangerous in a community which has been so accustomed excessive drinking.

On revival movement in Mizoram, he writes: When I was asked to take one of the services (at the Presbytery) myself I took the opportunity of pointing out the dangers of the extreme form of revivalism and of discouraging the uncontrolled zeal connected with it. This did not prevent an old lady, however, from coming right up to the pulpit during the service, panting and shaking my hands over the edge of the pulpit, with an explosive ‘Halleluiah’ retort!

On grace, he holds the attitude that ‘if a boy has failed to pass an examination … the parent may actually come to interview the particular missionary who is inspector of schools.… Would the Inspector kindly “forgive” and pass him? …The parent is probably aware of the emphasis which we missionaries placed on “grace” in our preaching of the gospel.’ On the attitude of the Mizos, he believes that ‘The spirit of friendliness however is by no means confined to the Christian sec­ tion of the community. it is shown many non-Christians as well … I have not seen here any sign of Anti-British feeling … suggested factor is the natural kindness of the hillman.…’ Alice Catherine Mostyn Lewis (Pi Zomawii 1922-5) only spent a few years in Mizoram but made notable contributions within this short time. Being the daughter of a British Member of Parliament and Cabinet Minister, she could finance the levelling of the site for the P.C. Girls’ School. She also constructed a school at Kulikawn where she invited girls to join. She added a boarding and sponsored her students as well. Nuteii, the first female matriculate and Dr. C.L. Kimi were both products of Pi Zomawii. She also sponsored a Mizo young lad, Ch. Pasena’s education at Goldsmith College, London University. Katie Hughes (Pi Zaii, 1924-66) was a qualified musician with a degree as examiner of Tonic Sol-fa. With Muka, she co­ authored the helpful Sol-fa Zirna Bu (Guide to Sol-fa). Under her able guidance, many appeared and cleared the junior, elementary, intermediate and matriculation exams in Sol-fa. Of her skills in teaching, it was remarked, ‘Under her tutelage, a complete fresher

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could learn to read the Holy Bible in six months.’ She set up a good Mizo choir, which ministered at the 1922 Sylhet Assembly. In 1933, she also took the choir on a 16—city tour, as far as Lahore in Pakistan. These visits greatly enhanced the knowledge of the choir members and also gave an identity to the Mizo in other places of the country. Katie Hughes was a graduate from Westhill College, Birming­ ham, a reputed Sunday School Training College. The Graded Sunday School system she began and the 3-years syllabus for Sun­ day School she authored around 1935 have been the foundations for the well-established Sunday system that is in practice to this day. She also wrote a book titled Naupangleh Sakhuna (Children and Religion). Rev. Lewis Evans (Pu Niara, 1929-36) was christened Pu Niara by the Mizos by virtue of his being a qualified engineer. He is cred­ ited with the building of the Presbyterian Hospital, the main Synod Bungalow and the engineering of the Dawrpui Church. He is spe­ cially remembered for the historical role as the Founder President of the Young Mizo Association. With the abolition of zawlbuk (young men’s dormitory), he perceived the need for an alternative forum to work along the same line. He, along with David Edwards (Zorema Pa) and a few Mizo friends seriously discussed the for­ mation of such a forum early in 1935. They decided upon the setting up of an organization along the lines of the YoungWelsh Association, for which ZoremaPa suggested the name, Young Lushai Association. The establishment of the association took place at a special gathering at the Nepali School, Sikulpuikawn on 15 June 1935. A formal lighting of candles (Bishop’s Candlestick) by a few educated Mizo lads signified the birth of this new associa­ tion, which continued to be significant in the life of Mizos. Rev. Basil Edward Jones (Pu Zawna, 1941-53) was a scholar with a BA (Hons), BD, PhD degree and a Teachers’ Training Cer­ tificate from Birmingham University. He specialized in Hebrew and Greek and therefore, fittingly led the team of Bible transla­ tors. Taking the translation of the Old Testament Prophets further, he and his team consisting of Rev. E.L. Mendus and some local educated and pastors like Pastor Chhuahkhama, Pastor Liangkhai,

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Pastor Zairema and Muka completed the translation of the entire Old Testament in Mizo. Rev. Basil Jones is believed to have been the most adept in the Mizo language among our missionaries. This Bible translation also continues to be a guiding post for the correct use of the language. Pu Zawna is remembered for the creation of the first high school in Mizoram. By the time he came to Mizoram, several middle schools were already running and he perceived a great need for the establishment of an institution for further educa­ tion. In his capacity as senior missionary, he opened a high school in 1944 where Rev. J.M Llyod served as the first headmaster. Rev. John Meirion Lloyd (Pu Lloyd-a, 1944-64) was also a scholar with BA (Hons.), BD, Dip. Ed., M.Th degree. He reached Mizoram the year the high school was opened and immediately served as the first headmaster, continuing in the post for five years. So, it is safe to say that the new high school building at Thingpui Huan Tlang (MacDonald Hill) opened in 1948 was constructed under him. In the same year, the first batch of matriculates faced examination. These were a total of 17 candidates—16 boys and 11 girls, and a pass percentage of 68. One of the candidates, one girl, Zokhumi (wife of J. Lalsangzuala), even achieved a first division. The pupils who studied under Rev. Lloyd all became persons of repute, pioneers and leaders in their varied fields. When the Aijal College was established in 1958, missionaries from the different Missions working in Aizawl served as lecturers. Revd. J.M. Lloyd was one of them, and he became the principal after Brother Godfrey. He also headed the academic affairs of the Church, and often participated in meetings in different parts of India. At these meetings and conferences, he befriended many British and American citizens who generously donated books for the Aijal College Library. In 1951, the church assembly resolved to re-open the Theo­ logical School that had been closed in 1937. Pu Lloyd-a became the first principal after the opening and he served in this capac­ ity till his return to Wales in 1964. It was during his tenure that the school was upgraded to a college. The translation of the Bible, which had been completed under Rev. Basil Jones, was revised in collaboration with the leaders of the Baptist Church. After this

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revision, the Holy Bible in Mizo was published and released by the synod moderator, Rev. J.M. Lloyd on 9 September 1959. Rev. J.M. Lloyd showed his enterprise in obtaining the copy­ rights for hymns that had been in translation in Mizo. Some among them were even bought. With the help of Muka, Upa Chawnzika and Upa Rokunga, the first topic Sol-fa edition of the Mizo Chris­ tian Hymnal was published in 1955. Rev. Llyod was the editor of Kristian Tlangau for a number of years. He also has several books in Mizo to his credit. The body of his entire work, including books in English, number 12. These books have proved extremely useful to scholars and general readers: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

A tisa put lai Ni A Chatuan Remruat Asia ram Kohhran Pasarihte On Every High Hills (English) Kristian Chhungkua Matthaia Hrilhfiahna Kolossa Hrilhfiahna Kolosa Hrilhfiahna Jeremia Hrilhfiahna Philippi Hrilhfiahna Philemona Hrilhfiahna History of the Church in Mizoram (English and Welsh) Nine Missionaries (English and Welsh)

Mrs Llyod was a Briton, exceedingly good at typing. She opened a typing school for the youth and many who studied under her easily found jobs because of their skill. Her typing skills and speed at the art was remarked upon with amazement, ‘Even a woodpecker would feel inferior!’ She aided her husband in his work and typed all his manuscripts. Miss Gwen Rees Roberts (Pi Teii, 1944-68) is known for her work at P.C. Girls’ School. Her contribution to literature is also praiseworthy. She was particular about books for the school cur­ riculum and as such, many of the books she wrote were used in schools all over Mizoram. These books include Hriselna Bu I, II & III (Health Education) for primary schools, Science Bu fore Class III to VI. Mizo Naupang, a periodical for children she published

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and circulated for many years, was greatly loved. Her book in Mizo, Lalpa Zawnchhuah Ramis appreciated for its aesthetic and educational values. Pi Teii (Miss Gwen Rees Roberts) served as a voluntary teacher at Mizo High School between January and December 1947, teach­ ing geography and biology. As was done by other missionaries, she also served as a lecturer with no remuneration at Aijal College in its initial stage teaching geography. Rev. Alwyn Roberts (Pu Robert-a, 1960-7) was a highly educated scholar with an M.A. L.L.B. degree from Cambridge University. He was the first principal of Aijal College and the col­ lege’s renowned library was his handiwork. During his tenure, the library grew to the strength of 23,000 books and several volumes of valuable periodicals, geographical and historical maps and charts. He came to Aizawl as the speaker for the 35th Aizawl Theological College Day in 2000. Visiting his former College, now Pachhunga University College, on 15 November 2000, he addressed the fac­ ulty and students of the college. Speaking about the great fire that had destroyed the college Library in November 1981, he said, ‘It is no doubt a great loss. But as long as man, the writer of books is alive, better and more useful books will continue to be produced. I am greatly thrilled to find that the library has been rebuilt and well-stocked.’ Under him, many students gained excellence in edu­ cation. When insurgency broke out on 1 March 1966, Rev. Roberts proved to be a saviour to the masses upon whom the armed forces indiscriminately practised great atrocities. The love and courage he showed at such times of tribulations will never be forgotten. Dr Gwyneth Parul Roberts (Pi Puii, 1938-61) is reputed for her invaluable service at the Presbyterian Hospital, Durtlang. She was the first trained doctor to serve there after Rev. Dr John Wil­ liams (Pu Daka, 1928-36). The Nursing School at Durtlang was recognized as soon as the Assam government opened nursing school registrations. Pi Puii, having a BSc and an MMCH degrees, prepared texts covering the school syllabus. As a result of Pi Puii’s efforts, the first x-ray machine and power generator in Mizoram were installed at the Durtlang Hospital. She left the hospital quite well-established by the time she left Mizoram in 1961. At this time,

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the hospital had 120 beds, a well-run dispensary and laboratory, 50 nurse trainees and eight nurses.

Conclusion We have had a brief look at the contributions made by our mission­ aries in Mizo sociocultural education. They created the alphabet, opened schools and wrote texts for study; they wrote and trans­ lated songs, and gave the Bible in Mizo language. To them goes the credit for establishing the foundations of Mizo literature. Learning the language from scratch, they obviously had their shortcom­ ings. However, language and literature are far from static. They are dynamic, growing and changing over the years in every culture, and it is always up to later scholars to determine the yardsticks for standardization no matter how humble the beginnings may have been. It is in the light of the facilities, manpower and resources available to the missionaries that we learn to better appreciate their contributions to the birth and emergence of a distinct Mizo litera­ ture.

Notes 1. C. Vanlallawma, Mizo Hnam Puipate, Lengchhawn Press, 1994, p. 7. 2. Laltluangliana Khiangte, Thuhlaril, 1997, pp. 95-6. 3. J.V. Hluna, Mizoram Hmar Bial Missionary te Chanchin, 2003, pp. 6-11. 4. Rev. Saiaithanga, Mizo KohhranChanchin, 1976, pp. 8-10 5. Vanlallawma, Zosaptharaleh a Hlate: Mizo Hlaleh a Phuahtute, Hrangbana College, 1999, p. 11. 6. Hluna, op. cit., p. 44. 7. Ibid., p. 38. 8. Ibid., p. 39. 9. Loc. cit.

CHAPTER 16

Evangelization among the Bodos LUKE DAIMARY

According to Christian theology, Jesus commanded his disciples ‘Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit.’1 The disciples in obedience to His command went and preached the message of Jesus wherever they could. The Christian missionaries who have committed themselves to His service, in obedience to the same command of Jesus, go to every nook and corner of the world and preach to all nations and tribes. India received the message of Jesus as early as the fourth century ad when St Thomas arrived in south India and preached among the inhabitants there. The tomb of St Thomas bears testimony to this fact. In Assam, the Christian missionaries are said to have visited the province early in ad 1626 when Stephen Carcella and John Cabral, the two Jesuit missionaries, halted at Gauhati on their way to Tibet and China. After more than a century, again in 1790, we come across some Roman Catholic Christians of Portuguese origin who settled at Bondashil in Cachar district.2 But there were no missionary activities from that settlement. Concrete missionary activities in Assam did not take place before the passing of the Charter Act of 1813, which among many provisions included one to permit the Christian missionaries to come to India. It was for the first time in Assam that in 1829 the English Baptist Mission under James Rei established an English Mission Centre at Gauhati.3 But no success was heard of that mission. After a decade in 1943. the American Baptist Mission founded its headquarters at Gauhati and the mission ordained

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Cyrus Barker as a Pastor in 1845. He had a vision to evangelize the natives. With this objective in mind, he opened a boarding school at Gauhati wherein he admitted a number of students from differ­ ent ethnic communities including the Bodos. In 1846 a 12-year-old Bodo boy, named Aphinta Kachari, from the village, Jhargaon, of Kamrup district, was admitted to the boarding school. Three years later, i.e. in 1849, Aphinta Kachari was baptized at Gauhati Baptist Church4 and he became the first Bodo Christian. Thus it was under Rev. Cyrus Barker that early attempts were made to evangelize the Bodos. It is learnt that Cyrus Barker stayed at Tezpur for two months touring the Bodo villages. In 1844, Rev. Nathan Brown and Nithilevi Farwell, together with Miles Bronson, a missionary stationed at Nowgaon, toured the northern part of Darrang dis­ trict, making Udalguri their temporary centre. In the writings of Bronson, it is mentioned about the Christian missionaries’ preach­ ing at the Bhutia fete organized at Udalguri,5 the present district headquarters of the Udalguri district. Like elsewhere in Assam, the missionaries, with much labour and sacrifice, succeeded to win over some Bodos to Christianity. But the activities of the mis­ sionaries in the Darrang district came to a halt for some years, for reasons best known to them. This situation compelled the Assam Baptist Conference held on 13 October 1851, to adopt a resolution, which noted, ‘The mission was unanimous in the opinion that no time should be lost in the occupying of these two missions.…’6 The two missions referred to were the two sub-divisions of Mangaldai in Darrang district and Golaghat sub-division in Sibsagar district. But the resolutions they adopted could not be implemented. In 1840 James Gordon, together with Charles Bruss, estab­ lished a mission centre at Tezpur, but around 1850 the work of evangelization among the Bodos was handed over to the Anglican Church.7 The Anglican Church from 1862 onwards launched a vigorous missionary work under the banner of Society of Propaga­ tion of Gospel (SPG). The SPG took over the charge of the Tezpur Mission Centre, which was later commissioned for evangelization among the Bodos. In 1864, C.H. Hesselmeyer worked as the tea garden chaplain. And to assist him Rev. Sydney Endle was sent to Tezpur. In 1869, Rev. Hesselmeyer passed away.

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After the death of Rev. Hesselmeyer, Rev. Sydney Endle was entrusted with the mission work among the Bodos, in addition to being the chaplain of the British officials in the tea gardens. In Darrang district, it was due to Rev. Sydney Endle that much suc­ cess could be had among the Bodos. He established the first Bodo church at Bengbari in 1885.8 He visited different Bodo villages, walking for days together. He realized that if he wanted to win over the Bodo souls he required to preach sermons in the Bodo language. Therefore, he mastered the Bodo language in speech and writing. Wherever he came across Bodos in groups, he preached with the Bible in his hand. The fruit of such untiring labour was the gradual acceptance of Christian faith in the villages such as Sengahali, Sengkhar, Kuberali, Panimudi, Lising, Niz-Ghagra, Dimarugaon and some villages around Udalguri. Even near Man­ galdai, a few villages like Chapai, Kalaigaon, Garubandha, etc., had the impact of Christian preaching.9 Rev. Endle was so good natured, humorous, kind hearted, humble and understanding that all young and old liked him and called him ‘Gamini Bwrai’, mean­ ing the old man of the village. Rev. Sydney Endle passed away in 1907. After his death the mission activities among the Bodos were entrusted with a native missionary named Rev. Binod Kumar Sarwan. But Rev. Sarwan failed to maintain the momentum left behind by Rev. Endle. He lacked commitment to the Bodo evangelization. There were hardly any visits of the missionary to the Bodo villages. Gradually, the Christians of Dimarugaon and other villages lost connection with the SPG mission. In the absence of guidance and directions from the SPG mission, new converts faced problems in church activities and found it difficult to hold on to the faith. Under this situation, Sisuram Saikia, who was a teacher in the school established by the SPG mission, together with Alfred, a Christian from Chapai village near Mangaldai, contacted the American Baptist mission­ aries based at Gauhati in 1913. The American Baptist missionaries accepted the proposal and agreed to nurture the new converts of Dimarugaon after obtaining the necessary permission from the SPG mission authority. With this agreement, the SPG missionary activities in the Dimarugaon (Later Doamokha) came to an end

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on 25 December 1913, and saw the beginning of the mission of the American Baptist Mission with the celebration of the first Christ­ mas on the same day and in the same place.10 Rev. George Richard Kampher, complying with the invita­ tion of Sisuram Saikia and Alfred, came down to Dimarugaon on 27 January 1914, and baptized 21 people. It may be mentioned that all the SPG Christians were rebaptized by Rev. Kampher. As there was no church building, the church services were held in the house of Simion Bhut Pandit till the December of 1914. Later a church building was constructed at Borigaon, an immediate neighbouring village, in which the Christians of the Dimarugaon were amalgam­ ated. In the same year a church was also established at Kolbari. The name of this village was changed from Kolbari to Edenbari after conversion. After Edenbari it was at Belguri where a church was built. Thus the American Baptist Mission established itself permanently among the Bodos of Darrang district. The progress of the church was reported in the conference of the Assam Baptist Mission held in 1917. It reported that in Darrang district, in the beginning of 1914, the Christian community consisted of only two churches, an evangelist and 296 baptized members. But the church expanded gradually and it called for the formation of Mangaldai Baptist Conference. Accordingly, it was formed in 1915. Its first ever annual conference was held at Borigaon in Mangaldai sub­ division of the district. Sisuram Saikia and Serelouis Bhobora were elected the president and secretary, respectively. The early converts were very zealous and they preached gospel messages wherever they went even at the pain of persecution. The more persecution they underwent, the greater was the expansion of the church. This necessitated a local pastor as the American missionaries stationed at Gauhati met with difficulties visiting the villages frequently and as and when required. On 20 April 1924, Rothai Daimary was ordained a pastor. After the ordination the new pastor was rechristened Romanus Daimary. The village of Dimarugaon (Doamokha) witnessed another development after the ordination of Rothai Daimary. Being denied pastorship, Sisuram Saikia felt humiliated and distanced himself from all church activities. He kept a low profile for some

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time. While in this state one day, he came in contact with an adivasi Catholic Christian called Daud, and expressed his will­ ingness to meet the Catholic missionaries at Gauhati. Sisuram Saikia, together with Daud, went and met the Catholic priests at Gauhati. The response was positive and fast. In 1928, a Catholic priest, Fr Piasekki, visited Sisuram Saikia’s village, Dimarugaon, and baptized him and his followers, according to Roman Catho­ lic rites. The occasion became the first-ever Catholic function in Darrang district and led to the establishment of the first Catholic church in the district. Sisuram Saikia built a small church in his own courtyard and kept alive his Catholic faith. In 1932, another priest, Fr Anthony Alessey, visited Dimarugaon and baptized Sisuram Saikia’s children, Samual Saikia and Nishi Saikia, together with several others. The Catholic missionaries in the later period lost touch with the new converts who became guideless and this situation led the Catholics back to the Baptist fold. Some who did not join the Baptist church returned to their traditional religion. Sisuram Saikia passed away in 1965.11 In western Assam, particularly in the district of erstwhile Goalpara, evangelical work among the Bodos started under the Santal Mission of Northern Churches (Lutheran). The mission estab­ lished a centre at Grahampur in 1881, some 40 km away from the then Goalpara district headquarters, Dhubri. The mission centre was within the Santal Colony where Santal emigrants from Bihar were settled. The mission also established centres at Haripata and Joema. The neighbouring Bodos who came to settle inside the San­ tal Colony gave an opportunity to the missionaries to extend their activities to the Bodos as well. Rev. H.P. Boerson from England and Lars O. Skrepshrud from Norway were the pioneers of evan­ gelization among the Bodos in this region. Tekhlo Basumatary was the first to be converted to Christianity. He was baptized on 7 January 1887. After Tekhlo Basumatary, Dorkanto, Sitaram and Dabaru were also baptized. The first Bodo church in this region was established at Rajadabri, north of Gosaigaon Hat Railway Station by Rev. Skrefshrud. Ratia Basumatary, son of Tekhlo Basumatary, became the first Bodo pastor after he was ordained on 5 January 1911. Dabaru Boro was also ordained a pastor on

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6 December 1914. Johannes Gausdal and Anderson Winding, both from Norway, arrived in India in November 1915 and Decem­ ber 1916, respectively. They looked after the Bodo congregation besides working among the Santals. The mission among the Bodos expanded and by 1922 the Christian faith spread to villages such as Rajadabri, Nangdarbari, Gaurang, Dumbajhar, Kolabari, etc. The fast expansion of their mission among the Bodos convinced the Mission Home Board of the need for a separate mission cen­ tre, exclusively for the Bodos. Accordingly, the Mission Home Board directed Rev. and Mrs Aksel Kristiansen from Denmark to set up a separate mission station for the Bodos. Thus, in 1917, it established the Gaurang mission station at Gaurang, a place 10 km away from Kokrajhar town.12 By 1930, two more Bodo pastors were consecrated. They were Bahadur Boro and Alicharan Boro. They helped Rev. Kristiansen in establishing Lutheran churches at far off places like Udalguri and its adjacent villages such as No. 2 Shantipur, Goraimari, etc. The Santal mission also opened centres at Bongaigaon in 1938. Rev. and Mrs Malme were entrusted with the administration. In 1951, a third mission centre was established at Patkijuli. From this centre, missionary activities were extended to Darrang district. The Santal mission later changed its name to the Northern Evangelical Lutheran Church. But to suit the Bodo congregation the prefix, ‘Bodo’, was added and it came to be called as Bodo Northern Evangelical Lutheran Church.13 It may be noted here that the Santal mission confined its activities to the northern part of the North Eastern Frontier Railway Lines. The adjoining areas of the southern part of the North Eastern Frontier Railway Lines were the mission fields of the American Baptist Mission with its headquarters at Goalpara town. It concentrated its activities among the Garos of the Garo Hills while extending its work also among the Bodos in the plains. In 1877-8, the American Baptist Mission shifted its headquarters to Tura, the headquarters of Garo Hills district. The mission among the Bodos did not yield much fruit. As per the records, only two Bodo families were converted during the tenureship of Rev. M.E. Stephenson (1894-1909). The first Bodo convert of this area could not be documented. However, the names of Buha Basumatary and Dangkhao Basumatary of

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Fundibari figure as early converts. The American Baptist Mission no longer confined itself to the southern area of the NFR Lines. It expanded its activities to the northern part of NFR Lines as well. By 1940 there were converts in and around Sidli, a place north of Bongaigaon town. In 1965, the American Baptist Mission handed over the Bodo mission to the Australian Baptist Missionary Soci­ ety. This society established its first centre at Tukrajhar. By this time the government policies were against the foreign missionar­ ies. The situation came to such a pass that this Australian society, too, had to hand over the mission to the local management. After its takeover, the local management changed the name of the soci­ ety to the Goalpara Baptist Church Union with its headquarters at Tukrajhar.14 The Bodos of North Bengal witnessed the light of Christianity under the Anglican Church, which is also known as the Scottish Presbyterian Church. This church later rechristened itself as the Church of North India, or CNI. This church worked under the Darjeeling Diocese of the Anglican Church among the Nepalese of Darjeeling and Kalimpong areas and it gradually extended its mission in the plain areas among the Bodos of Jalpaiguri district with a mission centre at Mahakalguri near Alipurduar. The influ­ ence of this church spread among the Bodos through the efforts of two brothers, viz., Ronglar Narzinari and Rev. Jitnal Narzinari.15 There were mission centres of the Lutheran and Catholic churches, too, which worked among the tea garden labourers in the district. These denominations also expanded their works among the Bodos and formed congregations at different Bodo areas in north Bengal. The Catholic church came to the Bodos relatively late in the day. It was not before 1928 that Fr Piaseski, known as the ‘Lion of the Brahmaputra Valley’, visited Dimarugaon village in Dar­ rang district and baptized a few Bodos, including Sisuram Saikia. Sisuram Saikia invited him to the village. After this, nothing was heard of the Catholic mission in Darrang district. But in Goalpara district in the 1930s, a certain Philip Phulsing of Nangdorbari vil­ lage, with a few followers, parted ways from the Lutheran Church and invited the Catholic missionaries to visit them. Accordingly, Fr Scuderi visited the village and accepted four families into the

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Catholic fold. This happened to be the first entry of Catholic faith among the Bodos in Goalpara district. In 1934, with the initiative of Phulsingh, a young man, named Gendra Champramari from Bengal, was taken to Gauhati and bap­ tized. Later, he was sent to Tezpur for evangelical training. Gendra Champramary became a trained catechist and with his assistance Fr Orestes Marengo took to intense evangelization among the Bodos in Goalpara district. Their efforts bore fruit and many Bodos of Kagrabari, Digoldong, Ranisundri, etc., who were Baptists by denomination, made overtures to the Catholic fold. They won over new converts in the villages of Bilaspur, Dandupur, Bogriguti, etc. Fr Orestes Marengo was the key person behind Catholic success among the Bodos. He mastered the Bodo language, and composed and printed the Catholic prayer and catechism books. Such works strengthened the foundation of the Catholic practice of its fold. In 1936, Fr Orestes Marengo was replaced by Fr Bonomi. In the same year, a new mission station was started at Barpeta and placed under the charge of Fr Zazon. Fr Zazon also learned the Bodo lan­ guage and became proficient in a short span of time. He revised the prayer and catechism books published by Fr Marengo. In 1953, Fr Remus Morra was appointed rector of Barpeta mission. He gave importance to education for evangelization. He started a school in the Barpeta mission where he admitted several Bodo boys and girls and prepared them for future leadership. In 1956, Fr Joseph Zubizarret joined the Barpeta mission. He intended to open a mission centre, exclusively for the Bodos. As planned, he opened a parish at Bengtol in 1967, exclusively for the Bodos. In 1972, the Bengtol parish was bifurcated and another mission centre was established at Soraibil, a place 25 km north of Gosaigaon town. The Catholic missionary activities expanded and many Bodos of the area embraced the faith. Around this time, the Bodo Catholic Christians in Darrang district were looked after from Gauhati and then from Barpeta. In 1951, Fr Guido Colussi opened a new mission station at Tangla but it was not for the Bodos separately. Keeping the Bodo evan­ gelization in view, in 1956, Fr George Venturoli started another mission centre at Udalguri for the Bodos.16 With these new cen­

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tres, the Bodo Catholics in Darrang district were looked after locally and sufficient attention was given to their spiritual needs. The years that followed saw many more Bodos coming over to the Catholic church either from the Protestant churches or from other religions. Today, Bodo Catholic congregations are found in every Bodo-dominated area of Assam. With the advent of the British, and more particularly after the passing of the Charter Act of 1813, missionary activities in Assam took on greater momentum. Different Christian denominations found Assam to be virgin land for evangelization. But so far as the Bodos were concerned nothing spectacular was done and achieved. Though the missionaries came in contact with the Bodos in the early nineteenth century there were no desired results. A number of factors can be attributed to such a dismal result. To begin with, there was no mission directly commissioned for the Bodos. The American Baptist Mission, which established its headquarters at Gauhati in 1943, worked among the Assamese people. It also worked among the Garo Hills with its headquar­ ters at Tura. It was only in 1956 that an independent Bodo Baptist mission was established at Tukrajhar by the Australian Baptist mission. The Anglican Church, too, had its initial objective to work among the Bhutanese in Bhutan and the tea garden com­ munities working in the gardens located at the Bhutan foothills. When they completely failed among the Bhutanese they found the Bodos as an alternative. But even after the initial success in their mission they did not establish any mission exclusively for the Bodos until the arrival of Rev. Sydney Endle in 1864. In north Bengal, too, the Scottish mission initially had their vision among the Nepalese of Darjeeling and Kalimpong of present Jalpaiguri district. The mission among the Bodos of Bengal came up only as extension evangelization. The Santal Mission of the Northern Churches worked among the Santal emigrants from Bihar. Though there were some Bodo converts from the neighbouring villages of the Santal Colony no separate mission was established until 1927. That year, a mission was established at Gaurang, some 10 km away from Kokrajhar town. The fund and resources allotted for the Bodo mission was meagre in amount. Similarly, the Catholic

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Church established its headquarters at Gauhati and Barpeta but up until 1967 no separate mission, exclusively for the Bodos, was set up. It is obvious from the above that evangelization among the Bodos had never been the first strategy of any Christian mission society in Assam.17 Second, the intense missionary activities in Assam coincided with the Swaraj movement in India. The movement infused among the natives a sense of hatred towards Christianity. It projected Christianity as a foreign religion. Besides, the non-Christian religious leaders had also injected in the minds of the Bodos that Christianity destroyed their culture. There were also opposition from the Saranias and the Brahma cult of the Bodos. The Brahma cult started a parallel religious movement. These developments stood as obstacles in the growth and expansion of Christianity among the Bodos. And, in the end, lack of quality literature also slowed down the expansion of Christianity among the Bodos. Literature is one of the most effective means of evangelization. But the Bodo language suffered from poor resources. It was further handicapped by the absence of a script. The missionaries adopted the Roman script for the Bodo language. But this made for unsatisfactory representa­ tion of ideas and concepts. It ultimately retarded the growth of Christianity among the Bodos.

Contribution Christian evangelization among the Bodos was nothing extraordinary. It failed to produce expected results. However, its contribution to the Bodo society cannot be underestimated. The Christian missionaries realized that education was the key to progress and to develop the Bodo society the missionaries opened schools wherever they established centres. The SPG mission opened schools at several places. It constructed a hostel at Tezpur for the Bodo students for pursuing further studies. One of the products of this hostel was James Suni (Musahary) from Lising Panimudi, who became the first medical doctor from the Bodo community in Darrang district. Similarly, other denominations, such as the Santal Mission of Northern Churches, the Baptists and

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the Catholics also opened schools and produced good results. This added to the progress of education among the Bodos. In the field of literature, too, the Christian missionaries con­ tributed immensely. They laid the foundations of Christian Bodo literature. The centre produced several literary works. The mis­ sionaries also translated and wrote Bodo primers to teach Bodo children in their mother tongue. Rev. Sydney Endle, while work­ ing among the Bodos of Darrang district, translated the New Testament and other prayer books into Bodo language. He also wrote several papers on Bodo folklore. His well-known manual, An Outline of Grammar of the Kachari Language, in which he presented the Bodo words of the Sanjari (Darrangia) dialect, and his monograph, The Kachari, published in 1911 from London, are outstanding. Lars Skrefsrud’s A Short Grammer of the Bodo Language with an attached Bodo vocabulary of about 2,000 words of Goalparia dialect, the translation of Martin Luther’s Small Catechism, Sunday Gospel Periscope, Bible Story and four primers used for classes A, B, I and II and Johannes Gausdal’s publication of the Bodo Devotional Hymn Book containing 56 hymns in Bodo language are no less a contribution to the body of Bodo literature. Aksel Kristiansen’s translation of the New Testament, a reading book, Bible Story and Church Rituals enriched Bodo literature. Assisted by Maguram Musahary and later by his son, Saisingra Musahary, Haakon Halvorsrud translated the voluminous Old Testament of 1,190 pages into Bodo language. It was published in 1981, by the Bible Society of India. He also enlarged the Church Hymnal, which contained 353 Bodo hymns. The Bodo Christian Literature Board published it in 1954. He also brought out the Boro Gram­ mar and Boro Dictionary, which were published in 1959 and 1968, respectively. All these works speak volumes of the contributions of the Christian missionaries to the development of Bodo literature.

Conclusion In conclusion, it may be noted that the advent of Christianity and its growth among the Bodos was nothing spectacular in scale but it ushered in the path to progress not only in Bodo society but also in

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all other societies with which it came in contact. The establishment of mission centres and the opening of schools in the urban and rural areas hastened the pace of development. The church insists that development should not start with goods but with people who recognize their responsibility towards society. Therefore, mission schools were the centres of nurture for children where the values of punctuality, discipline, work culture, etc., were inculcated by them. They are taught to consciously search for truth, to examine things critically and not to accept ideas blindly. The products of Christian educational institutions have proved themselves to be good human beings in society, if not better. This falls in line with the need of society. Thus Christian evangelization among the Bodos may not have achieved its desired results but contributed tremendously to the society at large. Therefore, the coming of Christianity to India, to Assam and to the Bodo society was a boon and not a bane.

Notes 1. Kottupallil, ‘A Historical Survey of Catholic in the North-East India’, Centenary of Catholic Church in North East India, a Souvenir, Shillong Archbishop’s House, 1990, p. 7. 2. Pratul Kumar Bhobora, ‘Darrang Zillar Boro Kachari Sokolar Majot Christio Dharmar Agaman’, Hathorkhi IPIL, Souvenir Jesu Krist Jayanti, Sacred Heart Church, Udalguri, 2000, p. 55. 3. F.S. Down, Mighty Works of God: A Brief History of the Council of Baptist Churches in North East India (1836-1950), 1st edn, Christian Literature Centre, Panbazar, Gauhati, Assam, 1911, pp. 84-90. 4. Bhobora, loc. cit. 5. Ibid., p. 56. 6. Ibid. 7. Down, Christianity in North East India, ISPCK, Panbazar, Gauhati, Assam, 1983, pp. 113. 8. Bhobora, op. cit., p. 57. 9. Ibid., pp. 58-60. 10. Ibid., pp. 61-2. 11. Robinson Musahary, ‘Origin and Growth of Christianity among the Bodos of Assam’, in Proceedings of North East India History Association, Seventh Session, Pasighat, 1986, pp. 274-5.

Evangelization among the Bodos 12. 13. 14. 15.

429

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 275-6. Fr Pallamtattel, unpublished papers, Sacred Heart Theological College, Shillong. 16. Musahary, loc. cit. 17. Bhobora, op. cit., p. 56.

CHAPTER 17

Cultural Hegemony, First World War and the German Salvatorians in North-East India (1890-1915 ce) MEETA DEKA

First World War, which came in the wake of a growing Indian nationalism, proved to be a threat to British cultural hegemony in India with disastrous consequences for the German Salvatorians in Assam, who were by then practically monopolizing the process of proselytization in the north-eastern region of India. The history of international relations between 1890 ce and 1914 ce was dominated by the spectacular emergence of a powerful German Empire as the strongest military, industrial and technological power on the European continent. This, among other factors, was bound to affect the position of Great Britain, and tilt the new balance of power in favour of Germany. The technological and economic progress of Europe in general made rapid strides which led to new international problems and developments, such as movements for national expansion or for colonial development. The opening up of new areas of the world for development by Europeans, particularly by the British and Germans, led to an increase of international rivalry, even in the field of religion, and this was partly the outcome of domestic politics, ‘seeking in foreign adventures a release from their tensions within their own society’.1 Thus it were such desires as national greatness or national selfdetermination as well as overseas expansion that contributed to the outbreak of the war of 1914 ce, which, while bringing in large transformation in Europe and the world at large, also manifested German-British rivalry in the sphere of religion in India.

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In general, First World War had a varied and tremendous impact on most foreign missions of the world for, to quote James L. Barton: … nearly every country in which foreign missionaries and their institu­ tions are located is under the flag of one of the belligerent powers, and much mission territory is actually within the zone of war or of active military preparations. Within the war zone are the mission fields of the Balkan Peninsula, … the Turkish Empire, Syria, Arabia, Egypt, Persia, … the … German colonies in Africa, and the islands of the Pacific held by Germany at the outbreak of the war, while North Africa, Ceylon, India, Burmah, Siam, British South Africa, and Portuguese East and West Africa are upon the borderland of war or of direct preparation for war.2

Some such impact, as Barton states, was incidental only to be revived when the war ceased, while others were of a more seri­ ous and fundamental nature. Barton believes that compared to all other foreign missions, the German missions probably suffered the most in terms of a loss of manpower as young Germans had to join the army and those past military age could not join the mission from a territory that was at war with Germany. The effect, therefore, of the war upon the manpower and support of German missions had been adverse.3 The German Salvatorians engaged in the Assam mission from 1889 ce to 1915 ce met with an even more precarious fate as they had no links with the German state, and were interned as prisoners of war in India. Interestingly, in the history of Christian missions in north-east India, the focus had always been inter alia on the American Baptist missionaries, the Welsh Presbyterian missionaries and the Sale­ sians of Don Bosco; the contribution of the German Salvatorians has often been sidelined or mentioned only in passing. Lalsang­ kima Pachuauto discussed the Christian churches in the region with emphasis on the contributions of the indigenous Christians. His reference to the Salvatorians was contained in a sentence only: ‘In 1889 … [the mission work] was reassigned to the German Soci­ ety of Catholic Education, popularly known as Salvatorians, who began “Catholic missionary work proper” in the region.’4 David Syiemlieh made only a brief reference in his presidential address at

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the Indian History Congress.5 Elsewhere, this author had written on the contributions of the Salvatorians to the establishment of Christianity and education in the region.6 This paper briefly traces their achievements and analyses the impact of politics on religion, which is clearly represented in the case of the German Salvatorians in north-east India, who were ousted from the field of proselytiza­ tion, as a natural corollary to British imperialist policy during the First World War. The British as, what Antonio Gramsci calls, ‘the capital entre­ preneur’ or the ‘dominant fundamental group’ which represents ‘a higher level of social elaboration’, ‘creates together with itself, organically, one or more strata of intellectuals which give it homogeneity and an awareness of its own function not only in the economic but also in the social and political fields’7; and the emergence of the Christian missionaries in general and the Ger­ man Salvatorians, in particular, as ‘the organisers of a new culture’, within a complex superstructure aiming at cultural hegemony, is a case in point. In fact he states: The most typical of these categories of intellectuals is that of the ecclesiat­ ics, who for a long time … held a monopoly of a number of important services: religious ideology, that is the philosophy and science of the age, together with schools, education, morality, justice, charity, goodworks, etc. … and [who shared ]the use of state privileges connected with property.8

The German Salvatorian missionaries form one such cat­ egory of intellectuals who came to the north-east in 1889 ce but were forced to leave in the wake of the war in 1915 ce. They originally belonged to a young religious society known as ‘The Catholic Teaching Society’, founded in Rome, with the aim to spread Catholic doctrine at home and abroad. However, this was often misinterpreted as a society of teachers and scholars who were interested in Catholic learning only, and so in 1904 ce, the name was changed to ‘Society of the Divine Saviour’. Its Latin form is Societas Divini Salvatories (SDS) and its members are popularly known as ‘Salvatorians’. 9 Christophorus, later Christopher, Becker reiterated thus: ‘Whenever the Apostolic or Catholic Teaching

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Society is mentioned, it speaks of the Salvatorians, describing the same religious order.’10 It were these missionaries, from the dio­ cese of Freiburg, who offered to undertake what was known as the Assam Mission for Evangelization in the region as ‘deputies’ or ‘functionaries’ of the dominant fundamental group, when others refrained, through major hurdles, such as topography, distance, isolation, lack of funds and personnel, natural calamities, climate, wild animals, diseases and even death. In 1892 ce, the apostolic delegate of India, Ladislaus Zalecki, wrote: ‘The Assam mission is the most difficult one in India, not only regarding the mission work itself, but also the conditions of life for the missionaries which require from them no small spirit of sacrifice and self-denial.’11 It is important to understand that the relationship between this group of ecclesiatical intellectuals and the world of production is not as direct as it is with the British as the dominant group , but is, as Gramsci states, ‘in varying degress, “mediated” by the whole fabric of society and by the complex of superstructures, of which the intellectuals are, precisely, the “functionaries”’.12 The degree of ‘organic quality’ and connection of these intellectuals with the dominant group, the British, and a gradation of their functions will have to be understood within two superstructural levels, namely, civil society and the political society, the state.13 Cultural hegemony was subtle but by the mid-nineteenth century ce, ‘Christianity was for most Englishmen increasingly a mark of their own difference from, and superiority to, their Indian subjects’, and the government displayed lavish expenses on ecclesiatical estab­ lishments like station churches, etc., which really had little to do with conversion,14 as conversion was not an easy process in India though the hills of the northeast offered a fertile ground. To quote K.N. Panikkar: … the changes in the cultural domain, although linked to the political and economic interests of colonialism, were molecular in nature and hence relatively less apparent.… These changes had multiple souces of inspiration, ranging from direct intervention by the colonial state to the activities of voluntary agencies. Their modes of intervention were also varied, appropriation and hegemonization being the most important of them.15

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Within a short span of 25 years, the Salvatorians made important changes in the field of religion, education and mis­ sionary activities by carrying out the work of conversion in the Brahmaputra and Surma Valley and extensively among the ethnic communities of the region, and thereby provided the foundations to the establishment of the Salesians of Don Bosco. Much of this contribution is retrieved from the narrative of Christophorus (Christopher) Edmund Becker, the first prefect apostolic of Assam (1906-21 ce), of his experiences in Im Strom­ tal des Brahmaputra in 600 pages, translated by George Stadler and Sebastian Karotemprel in 1978 ce in the volume History of the Catholic Missions in Northeast India, though a literal transla­ tion would have been: ‘In the Brahmaputra Delta’. The Prefecture Apostolic of Assam was to be carved out of the dioceses of Dacca and Krishnangar. In 1874 ce, Assam was taken away from Bengal and made a chief commissioner’s province under direct control of the Governor-General in Council.16 It is probable that, as a corollary to this political development, the decision to create the Prefecture Apostolic of Assam was made in 1887-9 ce by merging the two dioceses. Becker writes: ‘… the ecclesiastical boundaries of the newly created Prefecture Apostolic coincided, therefore, with the political boundaries and facilitated the commencement of the mission work’, with Otto Hopfenmueller as the first Mission Superior.17 Hopfenmüller joined the Catholic Teaching Society in Rome on 13 September 1887 ce.18 His early years were a resistance against Otto Von Bismarck, the Kulturkampf, the policy of the Liberals in Germany, in support of the Catholic Church as pub­ lisher and editor of Bamberger Volksblatt, for which he had to face imprisonment in Nuremberg, Bamberg and other places. When he was released finally in 1877 ce, he returned to his post as chaplain of St Martin.19 A society for sisters in Rome was founded by John Baptist Jor­ dan with Hopfenmüller’s niece, Scholastica, as one of its members. She accompanied her uncle to India and was among the first sisters of the young society sent for the Assam mission. As Mother Supe­ rior, she experienced the difficult beginnings and harsh years of ordeal and encouraged the other sisters, who left their imprint on

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the missionary work. She was successful in converting the Khasi people for on her arrival no Catholics existed in the Khasi, Jain­ tia and Garo Hills. In 1915 ce, Becker writes, ‘the British tore her away from her children, poor and ill, because she was a German, and she was forcibly returned to her Fatherland. Never again was she able to return to the place where her uncle’s mortal remains were buried.’20 In 1890 ce, two priests and two brothers embarked on their voyage and the time of transit was utilized for learning English from an Irish Officer on board. From Bombay (Mumbai) they con­ tinued their journey to Calcutta (Kolkata) by train and reached Gauhati (Guwahati) by steamer via Dhubri.21 What is interesting is that the journey to Shillong was by means of a two-wheeled three-seater bullock cart which entails that each of the four mem­ bers, in turn, would have to walk and follow the cart two hours on foot to cut down expenses! Shillong was chosen as the centre of the Assam mission being the capital of Assam, which at that time was an extensive area, covering practically the whole of the north-eastern region except for Tripura and Manipur, based on a preliminary survey that the indigenous hill people were more eager to accept Christianity than those in the plains.22 Hopfenm­ ueller lost no time in learning the Khasi language as the key to the process of evangelism and in this they were benefitted by the translated works of the Welsh methodists, who were there half a century earlier.23 He directed all efforts towards establishing the mission station and translated prayers, the catechism, Bible his­ tory, Old Testament, Life of Jesus and of the Blessed Virgin Mary. However, he succumbed to meningitis, followed by a sunstroke, and died the same year at the age of 47, while Marianus Schumm fell victim to dysentery and died soon after. Angelus Münzloher took over charge of the mission.24 In spite of this and other such major hurdles, the Salvatorians were able to establish a network of religious organizations with mission centres, outposts reaching out to very distant villages.25 When the Salvatorians took over charge from the Italian Milan priests the only two establishments were a chapel at Gauhati built by Broy and a ramshackle mission house at Shillong with no

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conversion done at the local level; the 350 Catholics in Assam were either foreigners or immigrants.26 In 1891 ce, when Angelus Mün­ zloher managed to purchase land adjacent to the Khasi village of Laitumkhrah, a long low hill, covered with pine trees, for Rs. 5,000 from the English general, Hopkinson, who left for England. In this way, the issue of finding property for the Catholic mission in Shil­ long was effectively solved. It was here that the Catholic Church was founded, later to become the Shillong Cathedral.27 Becker stated: ‘By this timely acquisition of land, the administrator of the Assam mission laid the necessary function for later developments and expansion of its principal mission station, Shillong, with all its manifold activities.’28 The strongest obstacle that the Salvatorian faced was the oppo­ sition from the Welsh Methodists who had come in 1841 ce, and established regular schools and were determined to dessiminate propaganda against the Salvatorians through their daily newspa­ per. Thus in 1907 ce, the small printing press was transferred from Laitkynsew to Shillong, new printing machines were acquired and the press enlarged for the benefit of the whole mission, for the mission publications were directly meant to counter Method­ ist propaganda and for religious instruction. When the Society had to leave its mission in 1915 ce, there were 5,176 baptized and 1,700 catechumen29 Khasis.30 So they were quite successful in evangelization of the region. The Salvatorians set about to stop the superstitious ‘pagan’ practices in the villages as also other customs. They, however, strongly believed that school and works of char­ ity were other means of introducing Christianity in the Khasi and Jaintia Hills.31 The British government had not opened any schools in the Khasi Hills; it established the Pine Mount School, a primary school for European children, at Shillong run by the Protestant Mission. Establishment of schools was a monopoly of the Meth­ odists who were given grants by the government and hence they regarded the Salvatorians as the new rivals. The Mission Superior finally succeeded to obtain a monthly grant-in-aid towards the maintenance of eight Catholic schools. In 1908 ce, St Anthony’s School was established as a Catholic Middle English School in

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Shillong to meet the need for better teachers and catechists for the mission and an orphange was attached to it. In 1910 ce, the Sisters of Divine Saviour opened a school for domestic science and the first primary school for girls was established in 1913 ce. They also introduced the idea of middle schools as intermediate between the primary and high schools. This category of ecclesiatical intellectu­ als, exercising cultural hegemony at a lower level, states thus on the introduction of middle schools: Not only was the instruction here on a higher level than in the primary school, but the children were also taught English. This was very useful to many Khasis. They could be employed as an ayah or a tailor in an English family. A boy could get employment in government service even if it was only as an office peon or as composer in the government press or in the land survey department [Emphasis mine].32

And what is of interest, to quote Becker, is: The Catholic mission did not want to increase the number of the edu­ cated unemployed in India and thus create more dissatisfied people with little chance of employment. The economic underdevelopment called for another type of education. Side by side with primary education, training in agriculture and instruction in various handicrafts had to be given.

In 1901 ce, a trade school was envisaged and it was established in 1907 when a Catholic tea planter donated Rs. 5,000 towards its end, in memory of his deceased wife. They also took over the seri­ culture farm from the government and used the help of the orphan boys.33 The contradictory and very strategized functioning of this group of intellectuals echoes the British imperialist ideology, albeit at a lower level. In the very first year of the Catholic Mission, Hopfenmueller repeatedly made proposals, as ‘the Europeans in Shillong desired’, for an educational institution with a boarding school for girls. Interestingly, archival records show the sanction of an expenditure of Rs. 1,300 for the purchase of furniture and apparatus for the Shillong European and Eurasian school and a payment in advance, from the allotment of Rs. 35,000, to the suppliers had been ordered as early as 1903-05 ce.34 Another record shows an expenditure of Rs. 232 sanctioned for the European Girls’ School in Shillong for

Cultural Hegemony, First World War

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the construction of ‘a four-seated latrine’, and Rs. 3,500 for a hostel, kitchen and resident masters’ quarters.35 Thus the establishment of such a school was much underway before the Prefect Apostolic, Becker, contacted the ‘Loreto Sisters’, who already had seven large schools in India, in 1908 ce. Borgia Irwin and Annunziata came to Shillong and found the place very favourable and also remarked: ‘We were treated with exquisite hospitality by the German salvato­ rian sisters.…We felt as if we were in a corner of Germany, hearing German spoken everywhere around us.’ The prefect apostolic donated six acres of land and a sum of Rs. 20,000 for the establish­ ment of the same. Following the visit of Charles Bayly, governor of the province of East Bengal and Assam, Loreto Convent, was officially recognized as an English Higher Secondary School, and henceforth regularly received grants-in-aid. It started with 23 day scholars and three boarders on 8 May 1909. Besides European and Anglo-Indian girls, boys upto 10 years of age were also admitted. The University of Cambridge in England recognized it as a centre for its examina­ tions in Assam, which started from 1913 onwards. Next the prefect apostolic convinced the Irish Christian Brothers at Calcutta to start a similar school for boys and in May 1913 Fabian Kennealy came to Shillong to take stock of the situation. Becker offered very generous financial assistance and let the Christian Brothers also take the services of Placidus Meier, who had a degree in Natural Science from Liverpool, as teacher of physics and mathematics. The institute was named St Edmund’s College, after Edmund Igna­ tius Rice, the founder of the Congregation of Christian Brothers and also the baptismal name of the prefect apostolic. The school was formally inaugurated in 1916.36 Besides, the Salvatorians in all, established 12 elementary schools under the government including a higher elementary school with a boarding house at Haflong, a Middle English School and 37 primary schools for the local people in Shillong with 356 boys and 312 girls. These schools, in general, followed the syllabi laid down by the government and complemented by regular reli­ gious instruction.37 What is remarkable in the given statistics is the male-female ratio being almost equal compared to other parts

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of India.38 The gendered division of trade skills are apparent with the Salvatorian Sisters establishing two home science schools to impart practical instruction, where various household skills such as cooking, washing, ironing, stitiching, knitting and crochet were taught to girls. For the training of the boys, there was an agricultural school, a handicrafts school with various trades, like carpentry, making of silk thread and gardening. As regards charity work they conducted five orphanages, two dispensaries, schemes for the construction of a big hospital, a leper asylum were under­ way.39 The Salvatorians thus made extensive efforts to promote ‘cultural hegemony’ embedded with strict patriarchal values at the local level within the larger colonial scheme. To quote Antonio Gramsci: Thus there are historically formed specialised categories for the exercise of the intellectual function … they undergo more extensive and complex elaboration in connection with the dominant group.… Parallel with the attempt to deepen and broaden the ‘intellectuality’ of each individual, there has also been an attempt to multiply and narrow the various spe­ cialisations. This can be seen from educational institutions at all levels, up to and including the organisms that exist to promote so-called ‘high­ culture’ in all fields of science and technology.40

First World War changed the scene almost abruptly for the German Salvatorians. A political war that had cultural implica­ tions manifested in the ‘War Speeches of the Prime Minister of Great Britain’. In the speech delivered in Edinburgh on 18 Septem­ ber 1914 ce, the prime minister stated: … we and our allies are withstanding a power whose aim is nothing less than the domination of Europe. It is indeed the avowed belief of the lead­ ers of German thought, I will not say of the German people …, that such a domination, carrying with it the supremacy of what they call German culture and the German spirit, is the best thing that could happen to the world.

Again, he acknowledged the contributions of German culture: Mankind owes much to Germany, a very great debt for the contributions she has made to philosophy, to science, and to the arts, but that which

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is specifically German in the movement of the world in the last 30 years has been, on the intellectual side.… We were believed by these cultivated observers to be the decadent descendants of a people who, by a combina­ tion of luck and fraud had managed to obtain dominion over a vast … surface … of the globe. This fortuitous aggregation which goes by the name of the British Empire was supposed to be so insecurely founded, and so loosely knit together, that, at the touch of serious menace from without, it would fall to pieces and tumble to the ground.41

This illustrates the fear of a counter-cultural hegemony as in the same speech, he also states, ‘… it is from that power that the claim proceeds to impose its culture, its spirit—which means its domination—upon the rest of Europe’.42 Thus in Assam the war created chaos and confusion among the German Salvatorians who were now being harassed in more ways than one. They had to reg­ ister at the office of the deputy commissioner and sign documents that they would do nothing to damage the interests of the British government. All arms had to be surrendered, while no missionary was allowed to leave his/her residence without permission of mili­ tary and civil authorities.The mission headquarters were under strict police vigilance and employees and servants were offered rewards for report of any conversation among the missionaries related to war. Initially the missionaries of Assam were not interned in the prison camps at Ahmednagar but with the sinking of the Lusitania, the British government promulgated an order by which all German nationals including all missionaries below 45 years of age were to be interned. This was unexpected as it was contrary to the assurances of the government. Only Protus Reichman who was above 45 years was retained, sent to a civilian camp at Jowai in the Khasi Hills, later taken to Ahmednagar and from there to Yercaud in south India. The Salvatorian Sisters were allowed to stay back but after afew months they, too, met the same fate. No substitutes were sent except for the temporary appointment of Paul Lefebvre to take charge of the Assam Mission, and very soon the mission press, various workshops and dentist dispensaries were closed down.43 During the war years, rumours of widespread ‘German espio­ nage and phantom Zeppelin airships hovering above the English

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coastline’ as also those of the ‘Angels of Mon’, etc., were circulated by newspapers44 and by word of mouth all over Europe. Rumours, particularly during war crisis play ‘the role of the trigger and mobi­ lizer’ and hence ‘a powerful instrument for … transmission’.45 The British became suspicious of every German move, and rumoured that the German missionaries, ‘had wireless sets in the belfry of the church with which they communicated with the “Emden” and other German ships in the Indian Ocean … that they had a large arms depot’ in order to instigate the local people against the Brit­ ish on the Germans reaching India. The only arms the mission had was a broken hunting gun and two revolvers which were handed over to the authorities in the early stages of the war. Another rumour that was floated was that Germany required the services of the Prefect Apostolic and so an airship had been sent to take him away. This rumour alarmed even the British superintendent of Police who denied belief in the rumour, and yet wanted an assur­ ance that the prefect apostolic was still in Shillong and would not leave the country without the consent of the government.46 Several strict notifications and orders were enforced which directed ‘every person of German, Austrian or Bulgarian nationality … shall on arrival in Bengal from any port or place not in British India’, report himself to the Commissioner of Police in Calcutta and to the Mag­ istrate of the district one may visit.47 Curiously enough, religious associations were termed as a ‘Company’ within the definition contained in the Enemy Trading Act. An excerpt from the legisla­ tion: Whereas certain hostile foreigners were on the 3rd of August, 1914, mem­ bers of the religious association in Assan named Sisters of the Divine Saviour … the Governor General in Council is pleased to declare that the powers conferred by section 7 of the said Act shall extend to the prop­ erty, movable and immovable, of the said religious association [emphasis mine].48

The missionaries departed on 9 July 1915 ce, with police, and later military escort with loaded guns and bayonets. They reached Ahmednagar and were interned in Camp A,49 often described as a ‘criminal colony’, which had the largest number of prisoners,

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800 in all, and was in a deplorable condition. Becker states that it was ‘intolerable for people used to intellectual pursuits and work’.50 Camp B was for the well-to-do persons. Camp A was guarded by a double row of barbed wire; the outer fence was 3 m high and the inner one was lower and inbetween the two, British guards with bayonets paroled the area.51 Becker wrote on 28 July 1915 ce, requesting a transfer to the civil camp that ‘according to German law Catholic priests are free from military servive … we have worked for years in close cooperation with the Government of Assam and our services have been gratefully and repeatedly acknowledged … the kind of treatment given to us at Ahmednagar in no way corresponds to the assurances given by the Government of Assam’.52 After several pleas the missionaries were allowed to leave in March 1916 ce for Germany and Austria in a small mer­ chant ship Golconda as ‘unwanted foreigners’. Interestingly, the name, Golconda, was obliterated with paint in Bombay so as to conceal its identity as carrying German prisoners, to avoid attack by German submarines. They reached London on 16 May 1916 ce, where a British delegation took away the passports of the prisoners and they were once again imprisoned in the Exhibition buildings of Woodgreen. The prefect apostolic of Assam wrote to the Cardi­ nal Bourne of Westminster that they were interned in a camp, to make efforts to send them back to Germany but instead they were transferred to the prison camp of Stratford, to the east of London. From there, they were put on a dutch steamer in groups of 40 at a time and sent back to Germany.53 Most of the missionaries suffered from mental depression, termed as ‘barbed wire sickness’, and Becker, Pro-Prefect Rudolf Fontaine, Marcellinus Molz, Placidus Meier, Herbertz Winkler and Gratian Klimke, who were very active missionaries, were expelled while others volunteered as military chaplains for Germany. Five mission brothers, Symphorian Haas, Juniper Zehradnik and Crispinian, Protus Reichman, Rufinus Mageira, were interned at Ahmednagar and reached Germany only in January 1920 ce. Con­ sequent to an order on August, and subsequently, in November 1915 ce, the Salvatorian sisters were asked to leave for Germany inboard the Golconda and on reaching Germany dedicated

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themselves to the care of the sick and the wounded in hospitals during the remaining war years. The Mission Superior Scholastica Hopfenmüller, Ursula Meier, Ignatia Greiner, Gabriela Bohnheim, Eustachia Bauer, Gebharda Dietmann, Innocentia Stahl, Priscilla Stadler, Bethilda Fotschki and Theobalda Schroder were expelled from Assam. On the question of the return of the German mis­ sionaries after the war, F.C. Kelly, the founder president of the Catholic Church Extension Society, took up their cause but British officials were no longer willing to return to the earlier status quo although no German missionary committed any offence against the interests of the British government, based in particular on ‘the fear of all that was German, a kind of phobia…’ .54 The war thus ushered new equations in the domain of cultural hegemony in India where the rivalry among the various strata of ecclesiastical intellectuals became apparent. Cardinal Bourne, in a speech at the Catholic Congress at Liverpool in August 1920 ce defended British policy towards the German missionaries. This was counter-attacked at the Catholic Congress held at Wurzburg in September the same year where the German Salvatorians expressed distrust in the Catholic Congress and stated that this ultimately led to ‘a complete “Anglicization” of the German missions’. In July 1921 ce, the then Secretary of the Propaganda, Laurenti entrusted the Assam mission to the Salesians of Don Bosco and the German Salvatorians had finally to renounce their claim to rejoin the mis­ sion work in Assam.55 In 1922 ce, a German publication stated that the Vatican paper, L’Osservatore Romano, published a detailed account of the Assam mission and was silent on the contributions of the Salvatorian missionaries. To quote: ‘Everything is praised: the zeal of the Christians, their perseverance, their loyalty, their knowledge of the faith, their schools, etc., but not a single word about those to whose sweat and toils they are all due!’.56 It made no mention of the Salvatorians and this clearly reveals the rivalry even among the categories in the category of ecclesiatics. It took a hun­ dred and twenty five years for the generalate to acknowledge their contributions by declaring 2015 ce as the ‘Salvatorian Missionary Year’. On this occasion and in support of the initiative, the historic dates of the mission were put on record. The year 2000 ce records

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the return of the mission to Shillong, while 2001 ce marked the reburial of Otto Hopfenmüller next to Shillong Cathedral.57 The various categories of intellectuals that emerged alongside the historical process of colonialism, represents, as Gramsci states, ‘an historical continuity uninterrupted even by the most compli­ cated and radical changes in political and social forms’.58 This is true in so far as the Christian missions in general are concerned but the narratives of the German Salvatorians were somewhat submerged and even effaced from the history of the Catholic mis­ sions in India. These historically formed specialized categories of intellectuals as ‘functionaries’ or ‘deputies’ play into the colonial scheme of cultural hegemony, a byproduct of the expanding and volatile British-German international rivalry, and while Christian missions in general represent that ‘historical continuity’ despite the war crisis, the German Salvatorians may appear to have lost the race even as their imprint on the history of the north-east remains indelible as ever.

Notes 1. James Joll, Europe Since 1870: An International History, Penguin, 1990, p. 25. 2. James L. Barton, ‘The Effect of the War on Protestant Missions’, in The Harvard Theological Review, vol. 12, no. 1 (January 1919), Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Harvard Divinity School, pp. 1-35. 3. Ibid., p. 5. 4. David R. Syiemlieh, ‘Colonial Encounter and Christian Missions in North East India’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, vol. 73 (2012), pp. 509-27, Indian History Congress, pp. 514-15. 5. Lalsangkima P achuau, ‘Church-Mission Dynamics in Northeast India’, International Bulletin of Missionary Research, vol. 27, no. 4, October 2003., https://journals.sagepub.com › doi › abs, accessed on 28 August 2019, p. 158. 6. David R. Syiemlieh, ‘Colonial Encounter and Christian Missions in North East India’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, vol. 73 (2012), pp. 509-27, Indian History Congress, pp. 514-15. 7. Meeta Deka, ‘The German Salvatorian Missionaries in the Northeast

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8. 9. 10. 11.

12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

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(1890-1915)’, The Journal of The Assam Research Society, Dr Pramod Chandra Bhattacharya Felicitation Volume, vol. XXXIX, nos. 1 & 2, 2004-6, Kamarupa Anusandhana Samiti (Assam Research Society), Guwahati, Assam, 2007, pp. 64-8. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, ed. and tr. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith, 1996, reprinted 2014, Orient Blackswan, New Delhi, p. 5. Ibid., p. 7. Christophorus Becker, History of the Catholic Missions in Northeast India, tr. and ed. G. Stadler and S. Karotemprel, Vendrame Missiological Insitute, Shillong, 1980, p. 3. Becker, ‘Farewell to the Parish at Seußling’, in Father Otto Hopfenmüller of the Society of the Divine Saviour: A German Pioneer in an Indian Mission, originally titled P. Otto Hopfenmüller Aus der Gesellschaft des Göttlichen Heilandes: Ein Deutscher Pionier einer Indischen Mission, first published in the series, Pioniere der Weltmission, no. 4, by P.J. Louis, Xaverius Publishing House A.G., Aachen, Germany, and Immensee Publishing House, Switzerland, 1923, translated and published by Society of the Divine Saviour Salvatorians, Bangalore, India, Matha Prints, 2008, p. 157. Deka, op. cit., p. 64; also Translator’s Preface in ibid., p. x. Gramsci, op. cit., p. 12. Loc. cit. Thomas R. Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj, Cambridge University Press, 1998, reprinted 2013, p. 48. K.N. Panikkar, Colonialism, Culture and Resistance, Oxford University Press, 2007, reprinted 2011, p. 19. H.K. Barpujari, S.K. Barpujari, and A.C. Bhuyan (eds), P olitical History of Assam, vol. I, Publication Board, Government of Assam, 1999, p. 176. Becker, op. cit., p. 5. Becker, op. cit., p. 98. Ibid., pp. 98-9, 118. Ibid., p. 156. Becker, ‘Off to India’, Father Otto Hopfenmüller, op. cit., 2008, pp. 184-94. Becker, Ibid., pp. 7-13; also Becker, ‘In the Desired Land’, Father Otto Hopfenmüller, op. cit., pp. 195-202. Becker, ‘Missionary to the Pagans’, in Father Otto Hopfenmüller, op. cit., p. 214.

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25. Becker, History of the Catholic Missions in Northeast India, op. cit., pp. 26-7. 26. Annual Report of the Assam Mission, Becker, History of the Catholic Missions in Northeast India, op. cit., p. 338. 27. Ibid. 28. Becker, ‘First Construction Worries’, in Father Otto Hopfenmüller, op. cit., p. 227. 29. Becker, History of the Catholic Missions in Northeast India, op. cit., 1980, p. 158. 30. Persons undergoing instruction in preparation for Christian baptism or confirmation. 31. Cuijpers, Piet, Important Topics on the Salvatorian Missionary Year 2015, https://sds.org › files › Important-Topics › Important-TopicsEN, accessed on 27 August 2019. 32. Paul B. Steffen, Dimensions of Indian Civilization – Outsiders part in It, Christopher Becker SDS and John B. Hoffmann SJ and their Contribution to Promote Tribal Communities in India, 2016, pp. 49­ 71, Becker, History of the Catholic Missions in Northeast India, op. cit., pp. 255-65. 33. Ibid., p. 268. 34. Home Department of the Government of India, Assam Secretariat Proceedings, Home A for March 1905, Shillong, The Assam Secretariat Printing Office; Serial No. of Proceedings, pp. 243-5, dated 25 February 1905, and October 1903. 35. Proceedings of the Chief Commissioner of Assam in the Departments Under the Control of the Home Department of the Government of India for the month of August 1905, Shillong, The Eastern Bengal and Assam Secretariat Printing Office; Serial nos. 527-32; Nos. 880­ 9. 36. Becker, History of the Catholic Missions in Northeast India, op. cit., pp. 272-90. 37. Ibid., p. 340. 38. Deka, op. cit., p. 67. 39. Ibid., p. 341. 40. Gramsci, op. cit., p. 10. 41. ‘A Speech in Edinburgh’, 18 September 1914, The War: Its Causes and Its Message; Speeches Delivered by the Prime Minister, AugustOctober 1914, Methuen & Co., London, 1914, pp. 22-3. 42. Ibid., p. 24.

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43. Becker, History of the Catholic Missions in Northeast India, op. cit., pp. 342-5. 44. David Clarke, ‘Rumours of Angels: A Legend of the First World War’, in Folklore, vol. 113, no. 2, Taylor & Francis, 2002, pp. 151-73; https://www.jstor.org/stable/1260673; accessed on 21 August 2019, 07:09 UTC. 45. Ranajit Guha, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1983, p. 256. 46. Becker, History of the Catholic Missions in Northeast India, op. cit., pp. 343-4. 47. Notifications and Orders, Relating to the War, in Force in Bengal, Government of Bengal, Legislative Department, Calcutta, Bengal Secretariat Book Depot, 1916. 48. Legislation and Orders relating to the War, Legislative Department, Government of India, Department of Commerce and Industry, No. 9222, dated 7 September 1918, Calcutta, Superintendent Government Printing India, 1919. 49. Christina Lubinski, Valeria Giacomin and Klara Schnitzer, Countering Political Risk in Colonial India: German Multinationals and the Challenge of Internment (1914-1947), Harvard Business School General Management Unit Working Paper No. 18-090, 2018, pp. 7-11; https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_ id=3133242, accessed on 27 August 2019. 50. Becker, History of the Catholic Missions in Northeast India, op. cit., p. 353. 51. Ibid., p. 349. 52. Ibid., pp. 361-2. 53. Ibid., pp. 367-75. 54. Ibid., pp. 376-82. 55. Ibid., pp. 384-91. 56. Allegemeine Rundschau: Wochenschriftfuer Politik and Kultur (German), 25 March 1922; cited in Becker, Father Otto Hopfenmüller, op. cit., p. 398. 57. Cuijpers, op. cit. 58. Gramsci, op. cit., p. 12.

CHAPTER 18

Christianity vs Indigeneity

Colonial State, Mission and Laipianism in Chin Hills

PUM KHAN PAU

Colonialism and the Christian missions are two distinct institutionalized entities that often move alongside to any new venture but are opposed to each other fundamentally.1 While the primary objective of the former was predominantly economic and its practice was conditioned by economic laws,2 the latter mainly aimed at transforming the sociocultural and religious lives of the people through and by means of Christianity. Generally, the relations between Christian missions and colonialism had not always been ‘cordial’ in all cases; it apparently depends more often on the local situation. For instance, missionaries were at first prohibited to start evangelical activities in India owing to Indian religious sensibilities. But in the latter part of the nineteenth century doors were opened for the missionaries who began to interact, if not collaborate, with colonial rulers in different forms and at many levels. Such mutual connection was believed to be dependent on the particular mission and issues involved as well as the nature of the colonial situation.3 Recent studies thus aptly state that ‘missionaries followed hard on the heels of soldiers and administrators’,4 and in most cases ‘if the missions did not precede the colonial movement, they did follow in the heels of colonial powers’.5 Although the two entities differ in their objective and methods they have one thing in common: they are unwelcomed in a strange land and they encountered opposition from the indigenous people and traditions. Following the routes taken by colonial soldiers, Christian

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missionaries ventured into the Chin Hills, along the Indo-Myanmar border, in the late nineteenth century. As colonial soldiers faced strong resistance from the local people, so also did the Christian missions encounter an indigenous movement, called Laipianism, and were stiffly contested by local traditions. To critically assess the problems and prospects of Christian missions and Laipianism, which brought significant changes in the socio-religious life of the Zo people, is the main objective of this investigation. The main focus of this work is on the Chin Hills with particular reference to the colonial period. Falling in line with other Zo scholars6 this paper employs the term Zo as synonymous to the so-called Chin, Kuki and Lushai (Mizo) of the India-Burma borderlands.

Introducing the Locale: Expansion of Colonialism In the late nineteenth century, there was a marked shift in British mercantile opinion, which had far-reaching impact, especially in Asia and Africa. During this period, there was a ‘feeling of uncertainty, even of insecurity’ among the British mercantile group because of the increasing problems faced by British merchants in and out of Europe.7 Interestingly, it shook the entire commercial policy of Europe thereby raising the question of the ‘hitherto neglected’ areas, that is, Asia and Africa, to be considered for new markets.8 This development strongly encouraged the British mercantile community in Rangoon who strongly urged the British administration to protect their trade from any aggression and also to annex Upper Burma during this period.9 It was followed by a proposal to open up a ‘highway to China’ that would pass through Upper Burma. W.G. Hynes thus rightly noticed that there was ‘a kind of direct influence of the mercantile mind on official policy’ and, as far as Anglo-Burmese relations is concerned, that policy culminated into the Third Anglo-Burmese War (1885-6). The war finally completed annexation of Burma. The strategic importance of Upper Burma to serve the pur­ pose of British colonial interest could not be fully realized so long as there remained unadministered hill tracts, commonly known as the Chin-Lushai Hills, which often became the sources of

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disturbances along the Indo-Myanmar border. The British India government thus proposed a policy to cut through these hill tracts: In the open season of 1887-8, a project for opening up the Chin country from the Bengal boundary in the west to the frontier of Burma proper on the east was started in India, prematurely so far as we were concerned. It was proposed that roads should be made through the hills, communication established, and the hill people subjugated. The phrase ‘from the Salween to the sea’ was invented and had some effect.10 Though it took some years to fulfil this proposition it was pri­ marily this idea, albeit there being other factors that contributed to it, which impelled the British to send series of military expeditions to the Chin-Lushai hills in the late 1880s and annexed it to their possession.11 The Chin-Lushai hills, which stretches from 92° and 95ʹ lon­ gitude (east) to 20° and 25ʹ latitude north of Equator,12 was, after annexation, divided into three administrative units: Chin Hills, South Lushai Hills and North Lushai Hills. The management of these divisions fell, partly to Burma, partly to Bengal and partly to Assam. In 1892, the earliest attempt was made to amalgamate these divided hill tracts to form a single administrative unit under the aegis of the lieutenant governor of Bengal at Calcutta, which ended abruptly without any substantial results because of what has been considered ‘the rivalries amongst the colonial administra­ tors’.13 Another attempt, in 1898, succeeded to combine the two Lushai Hills districts into one under the chief commissioner of Assam; the Chin Hills, however, remained with Burma. On the basis of this arrangement a formal demarcation was carried out dividing the Chin-Lushai Hills in the middle according to the Government of India Act, 1935. The post-colonial repercussion of colonial legacy was immeasurably far-reaching and the prospects of re-unification of these hill tracts were thus acutely bleak. The Chin Hills, now Chin State of Myanmar, was predomi­ nantly inhabited by a congeries of tribes who were generally referred to as Chin by colonial writers but locally called themselves otherwise. The term, ‘Chin’, is an appellation generally used today to denote the various tribes and sub-tribes inhabiting these hills. A

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variation of it is said to be used in a thirteenth-century inscription of the old Pagan Kingdom, that the people living on the mountains in the west are ascribed as ‘Khyan’.14 It was Father Sangermano, however, who is believed to be the earliest, in 1873, to refer to these tribes: ‘To the east of Chien mountains between 20o 30ʹ and 21o 30ʹ north latitude, is a petty nation called Jo. They are supposed to have been Chien, who in progress of time have become Burmese, speaking their language, although very corruptly, and adopting all their customs.’15 The venerable missionary was in all probability referring to those living in the plain adjoining the Chin hills, called later by colonial writers as ‘tame’ Chins. By the 1880s the term, spelt as ‘Chin’, was in official use. Attempts then began to trace the root of the term. Bertram Carey and Henry Tuck who played a significant role in the subju­ gation and pacification of these tribes say that Chin is a Burmese corruption of the Chinese ‘Jin’ or ‘Yen’, meaning man.16 To Profes­ sor Gordon Luce who had done considerable work on the history of Burma, it is derived from the old Burmese word ‘Khyan’ mean­ ing ‘ally or comrade’.17 A Burmese scholar, on the other hand, suggests that Chin is a corruption of the old Burmese word ‘Khin’ or ‘Khyen’ meaning brother.18 Taw Sein Ko, a Burmese lecturer at Cambridge University is of the view that in common with many tribal designations in Asia both Chin and Kachin (earlier spelt as Kakhyen) signify ‘man par excellence’.19 It should be noted that ‘Hky’ or ‘Kh’ is pronounced as ‘Ch’ in Burmese.20 The people call themselves not by the ‘Chin’ appellation but use the term ‘Zo’. This too is said to be in use from early times.21 Captain Thomas Herbert Lewin, who was superintendent in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, was in 1874 one of the first to refer to the Chin-Lushai people as such: The ‘Dzo’ tribes inhabit the hilly country to the east of the Chittagong district in lower Bengal; their habitat may be roughly stated as comprised within the parallels of latitude 22o 45ʹN and 25o 20ʹN, and between the meridians of longitude 92o 30ʹ and 93o 45ʹ. Under the term ‘Dzo’ are included all the hill tribes of this region, who wear their hair in a knot resting on the nape of the

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neck. The tribes further south and east, of whom little is as yet known, are distinguished under the generic title of ‘Poi’; these wear the hair knotted upon the temple. The ‘Dzo’ state that the poi language is entirely distinct from theirs, and that they have no common medium of intercommuni­ cation. I am myself disposed to think that the two languages must have some affinity, but I have as yet no certain information on this point.22 Robert Blair McCabe, who was political officer of the North Lushai Hills in the early 1890s, also uses the term to describe the Lushai.23 On the basis of linguistic affinity G.A. Grierson placed the Zo people in the Kuki-Chin group of the Tibeto-Burman fam­ ily. He, however, correctly states that the people do not themselves recognize the name Chin, but call themselves Yo or Zo in the north, Lai in the centre, and Sho in the south, besides many other tribal names.24 The Chin or Zo has thus many variations, such as Zo, Zhou, Sho, Asho, Hiou, Cho, Dzo, Yo, Jo, Yaw and the like.

Zo Traditions: Beliefs and Practices Historically, the Zo people had been isolated from a more advanced civilization until the British conquered their land. Being in isolation for quite a long period of time they had cultivated a unique and uncorrupted society and culture of their own. Their social, economic and religious life was closely intertwined. Therefore, the study of one, perhaps the religious beliefs and practices, would suffice to reflect all the other aspects. Traditionally, Zo people were what earlier anthropologists termed animists. They believed in numerous deities, which they thought were capable of helping or harming man’s interest. This they divided into two, viz., inn dawi (household spirit) and gam dawi (country spirit). They offered sacrifices to the spirits that are capable of helping man, whereas those that are harming them are propitiated and appeased. Each and every ill fortune was, there­ fore, attributed to evil spirits who had been angered in some way known or unknown and for that sacrifice was offered. ‘These spir­ its’, wrote Cin Do Kham, ‘were believed to inhabit different parts

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of human dwellings, springs, treks, rocks, rivers, mountains and so on.’ He further says: If any misfortune such as illness, ominous dreams, etc. occurred, the affected person offered to the appropriate spirits sacrifices of animals ranging from a chicken to a mithun or a buffalo.… If sacrifice made to a particular spirit proved to be ineffective then one spirit after another was tried until the whole series of 68 spirits had been offered sacrifice to. In this way a sick person often became impoverished for life.25

Summing up the essence of Zo religious practices, a recent Zo scholar observed: ‘The Zo religion has its ultimate objectives the physical well being of the spirit of man, the material happiness and prosperity of man on earth and the longevity of the span of life here and now.’26 However, while believing in numerous deities, some also believed in one Supreme Being. According to Vumson: ‘Zo believe in a supreme God or pathian. God is good. He gives health, rich­ ness, children and other human wishes. God is never cruel and hurts people. Therefore, Zo people never sacrifice or offer anything to appease God.’27 The Zo cosmology may thus be characterized as a ‘two-tiered scheme’28—microcosmic and macrocosmic. Thomas Herbert Lewin’s record of a Khyeng’s belief as related to him thus makes interesting reading: We have two-gods: Patyen; he is the greatest; it was he made the world. He lives in the west, and takes charge of the sun at night. Our other god is named Khozing; he is the patron of our tribe, and we are specially loved by him. The tiger is Khozing’s house-dog, and he will not hurt us, because we are the children of his master.29

Lewin was, of course, writing of the Zo tribes in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. In reality there were divergent beliefs among the dif­ ferent Zo tribes. The Sihzang believed that there was no Supreme Being and the world is but filled with evil spirits. These spirits must be propitiated or bribed to refrain from doing the particular harm of which each is capable. The Hakas or Laimi and other southern­ ers, however, strongly believed that there was a God, called by them as the Khozing. Though Khozing, they believed, was not capable of showering blessings on them, he was able to trouble them in

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various ways; hence sacrifices were made to propitiate him. They also believed in the existence of the spirit of the village, the spirit of the family, or clan all of which were prone to do damage and inflict suffering.30 Sing Khaw Khai, however, contested this: The Chin traditional term Khuazing exists as against Khuavak (the light). The word zing is literally ‘dark’ in English. So Khuazing will mean the Khua filled with darkness in the sense of the matter. Darkness means the absence of light or the state of being invisible. In that case ‘darkness’ appears the ‘invisible’ image. Hence Khuazing symbolises the ‘Invisible’. In Tedim, this idea is represented by their term Muh mawhte, that means divine beings. So it may mean divine beings. (The Tedim believe that if the ‘Invisible’ is seen, the one who sees it would die. So it may be said that the Khuazing is the divine which controls the Khua, the innate world.31

About the ‘Khyen’ tribe, Lieutenant T.A. Trant, one of the ear­ liest writers on these tribes, noted, ‘Only one trace still exists of supreme authority, and is in the person of the Passine (Pasian in Tedim), or head of their rude religion. They have no idea of the Supreme Being, nor have they any tradition respecting the cre­ ation: they are the children of the mountains, and nature alone has any claim on their feelings.’32 Though it appears that there were divergent views on the representation of Zo cosmology, it is to be generally accepted that Pasian represents God and Khuazing may be identified with demons or evil spirits. While the Pasian or Supreme Being need not be appeased with sacrifices, the Khuazing or Evil Spirit, which could cause trouble, required to be propitiated with a lot of sacrifices. The sacrificial and propitiatory rites of the Zos may be gen­ erally divided into three categories: personal rite, household rite and communal rite. While the first two rites were sponsored by the individual household and managed by the head of the house, the last category resources were funded by the village, as a whole, and management was conducted by the village priest.33 One of the most important household rites was that of ancestor worship or Pu-sha biakna among the Tedim Zo people. Pu-sha was the chief god of all the household gods. When the clan priest conducted the worship, the names of the pedigrees of successive generations were recounted.34 Ancestor sacrifice was another rite of the household.

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It involved animal offerings, like pigs or mithuns, and often times cereal and intoxicating drinks were offered. The priests concern performed all the types of rites. There were the clan priests, house­ hold priests and village priests. The greatest household ceremonial rites was the Ton feast or Feast of Merit. It is known as Bawi-lam and Khuangcawi in the Haka area. In the Feast of Merit, which took several days to perform, a large number from one’s own village as well as from neighbouring ones were fed and entertained. Sacrifices were made to all sorts of beings. The major sacrifice, however, consist of the ritual slaying of one or more mithuns. The sacrificials were sup­ posed to go to misikhua (the abode of dead). It was believed that when the individual who performed the sacrifice died he would have those mithuns with him in the misikhua. The sacrifices were at the same time the validation of status in the eyes of the liv­ ing public.35 In terms of the economic liabilities, the communal rite was most heavy and imposed quite a serious burden on the household budget, because unlike the other two, every household, which contributed to the expense of this rite, received no recip­ rocal distribution of meat. Zo religious life was, therefore, closely intertwined with the social and economic activities.

Indigenous Movement: The Life, Teaching and Ministry of Pau Cin Hau Against the backdrop of such a socially obligatory and economically expensive religious beliefs and practices, emerged an indigenous socio-religious reform movement pioneered by Pau Cin Hau. He was the fourth son of Khan Lian, the eleventh generation of the Sukte family.36 Born in 1859 at Tedim, in Northern Chin hills, Pau Cin Hau was brought up as an ordinary normal child according to the traditional patterns of life. He spent his early days attending his father’s mithuns and goats. When he became mature enough, his parents sent him to Mualbem (the capital of Sukte dynasty) to learn the art of warfare and language of Teizang, for it was said in those days enemies did not dare to kill a captive who spoke the royal language of Teizang.37 It was, therefore, imperative for every

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emerging leader such as Pau Cin Hau to learn and speak Teizang. After completing his early traditional education at Mualbem, Pau Cin Hau returned to Tedim and practised cultivation. At that time Tedim, the capital of Kamhau Chief Khaw Cin, was at the zenith of its power. Since his boyhood Pau Cin Hau had been involved in prophesying about the future. While in Tedim he pre­ dicted the destruction of the capital to which no one paid heed seriously. His vision was composed into a song38: Thangvan-a zal Sian zamang aw Tongdam khak hemin za’ng e Pupa’ pat loh khua van nuai ah Sian tongdam sinthu hi e. (Thou God of gods, reigning on high I heard a hint—Thy word Unheard, unknown in days of yore God’s word prevails through all the land)

It is, however, interesting to note that in the early 1960s an American anthropologist E. Pendleton Banks conducted field study in the Chin hills and discovered that ‘Pau Cin Hau had earlier acted as disciple to a prophetess named Pi (an honorific) Nuam Dim, daughter of Hau Zui’. The study further reveals: Tiddim, the chief village of the Northern Chin Hills, was ruled in the later 1880s by Khua Cin, a powerful and cruel chief, who held sway over two hundred villages and oppressed the poor. Nuam Dim had vision in which Pa Sian (God—‘Pa’ is the usual male honorific) told her that he was angry with Khua Cin and that his vengeance would take the form of kill­ ing Khua Cin’s son, wiping out his family line and destroying his inn ka.39

Banks further argues that ‘it is highly improbable that Nuam Dim could have been influenced by Christianity in the 1880s’. It thus seemed to appear that Nuam Dim’s prophesy had been reiter­ ated by Pau Cin Hau, who, according to Banks, was aged sixteen or seventeen then and ‘was chosen by Pa Sian to prophesy the date when the inn ka would be destroyed’. The destruction of Tedim by British forces, which finally happened under Major Raikes in 1889, was, therefore, believed to be the fulfillment of what had been prophesied before.40

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Consequent upon the British expedition Khan Lian and his family fled and took refuge to Lailui, a nearby village. It was here that Pau Cin Hau suffered serious illness for about fifteen years (1888-1902) and of course a turning point in his life. During his prolonged illness he continued to receive series of revelations from God, which he later described: ‘From the year 1900 onward in dreams and visions I received a series of communications which I hold to be divine and are the foundations both of my alphabet and my religious teaching’.41 In his successive visions he saw heaven, symbols of Western Civilization such as railways, steamships, struggle between nations and races, vision of an Englishman who taught him letters, vision of the Almighty God who came on riding a horse to the gathering of many races of people, vision of God’s command to abolish dawi (evil spirit) sacrifices and many more. Pau Cin Hau and his family resorted to all possible means to invoke the healing touch of the demons or nats for the restoration of his health which all went in vain. Finally, he claimed that he received a divine healing from God. In his vision he saw God, who called him by his name and asked if he would worship Him. This Pau Cin Hau responded: ‘I had faith in him in a moment was cured from my illness of 15 years. During those years for the cure of that illness I had paid the sum of Rs. 400 in making sacrifices or vari­ ous kinds of animals to the nats or demons. The cure of God was complete and cost nothing.’42 In fact, Pau Cin Hau had no special training or preparation for the role he had played. However, it is believed that God prepared him by giving visions during the long years of his illness. In the light of these developments, Lailui, being the place where Pau Cin Hau received visions, may, therefore, be rightly con­ sidered his Isle of Patmos.43 Pau Cin Hau’s life was totally changed since then. Soon he started propagating what he had received from his visions moving from one village to another. The visions thus became the central theme of his teaching in his public ministry. Pau Cin Hau also devised a script in accordance with, what he believed, a revelation from God. Though there was no mention of the new script in the 1911 and 1921 Census of India reports, the original characters, which were 1,050, were reduced into 21

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consonants and 7 vowels plus tonal signs in 1931. The script was employed in the translation of The Sermon on the Mount by Pau Cin Hau, with the help of Thang Cin Kham of Tonzang.44 The invention of script earned him the name Laipianpa (the scriptcreator) and hence his religion Laipianism. Some people knew this movement as Beeltung Muut Pawl simply because the leaders blow inside an empty zu45 pot and pray. The Pau Cin Hau movement appeared at the time when the Zo people had been overburdened with costly sacrifices and ancestral worship. His teaching assumed importance and very appealing to the need of the hour as he strongly condemned the futility of such self-indulgent practices. A clear indication of this was when Pau Cin Hau, according to the command of God, could dispensed with the fear and sacrifices to spirits, people flocked to him and invited to their homes and villages to come and drive away the evil spirits and abolish sacrifice to them. According to the prophet: Our Chin (Zo) ancestors worship various kinds of nats, such as house nat, forest nat, water nat etc., altogether 54 in number. Those who have believed and wish to enter my religion came from far distant villages and invited them to visit them. Together with a little band of disciples I made it my custom to accept their invitation and on entering a house or village after praying to God would destroy completely the articles used for mak­ ing sacrifices to the nats and whereas sufferers had previously, like myself, had to pay large sums of such sacrifices our only charge was a nominal sum to cover traveling expenses. Sometimes it seemed as though some of my more hasty or unintelligent followers were themselves possessed by demons after such visit but after praying to God they speedily became normal again.46

Laipianism was, therefore, said to have considerably removed the predominance of the fear of dawi (spirit). The followers no longer have faith in sacrifices offered to demons or nats for their healing but entirely depend on the prayer of their laisang (pastor). Interestingly, most of the followers in its early stage were those who had been healed from such prayers. This greatly affected the Zo’s concept of the cosmic world. The removal of the fear of dawi (spirit) not only brought freedom from social obligations but most importantly it broke the boundary of the microcosm (lesser spirit)

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and eventually enhanced the importance of macrocosm (supreme being).47 Pau Cin Hau based his teachings entirely on his visions. He stressed on three main areas, viz., healing ministry, exorcism and teaching the people to worship God and teaching the invented writing, which worked quite effectively among the people. Of the seven rituals mentioned by Banks, the curing ritual or healing ministry was the most significant one often performed by a palik or Pa-leik-thas,48 an elite group of the movement.49 One of the most important factors responsible for the popu­ larity of Pau Cin Hau’s teaching was due to its strong emphasis on social liberation and economic benefits. The abolition of holding extravagant feasts and wealth-consuming sacrifices to propitiate evil spirits were well received by the socially restricted and eco­ nomically overburdened people. It, therefore, visibly improved the condition of the people as Pau Cin Hau himself claimed: ‘One wholesome effect of my teaching is that where formerly many who had nothing went into debt to obtain sacrificial offerings and so could neither afford to buy food nor pay their taxes, my followers being free from such expenses are in much better circumstances.’50 An official report of 1912 further commented: ‘The mate­ rial prosperity of the Chins in the Northern Hills is being much increased owing to the teaching of a Sokte prophet, Pow Chin How, who preaches against the sacrifices of animals.’51 One nega­ tive impact of this growth, albeit less significant, according to Stevenson was on agriculture. According to his observation: ‘The villagers having lost their fear of the ti huai, or evil spirits of the springs, proceeded to cut down for firewood the large shady trees which animism had preserved over all their village springs.’52 The freedom to drink zu (rice beer), and continued practices of traditional singing and dancing became another contributing reasons for the widespread popular acceptance of the indigenous movement. Drinking, singing and dancing being a part of Zo traditional lifestyle, they were felt difficult to part with. Paradoxi­ cally, while Laipianism strongly attacked animism and some of the Zo social practices it also tried to work in conformity with some of the traditional practices and adapted to it. A recent study

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thus contended: ‘This cultural adaptability and conversion with­ out destroying the cultural barriers proved to be effective in the spreading of Laipianism.’53 Interestingly, in due course, with the growing threat of evangelism, Laipianism ‘became a truly nativis­ tic movement, a rallying point for the conservative and antiforeign elements in Chin society’.54 All these favourable factors helped popularize Laipianism. Thus, within a short span of time the movement spread from Tedim, its origin, to Falam, Haka and beyond the western and northern borders, overcoming language and cultural boundaries. An official record in 1931 stated the number of adherents to Laipi­ anism in Chin Hills district estimated at 35,700 including 26,000 in Tedim subdivision and 9,700 in Falam subdivision.55 In 1936, Henry Noel Cochrane Stevenson recorded that almost the entire Zanniat tribe had been converted to this cult and a total of about 27 per cent of the whole population of the Falam subdivision pro­ fessed allegiance to it.56

Christian Missions: Education and Medical Health Christian missions had, in fact, preceded Laipianism, though the latter spread widely much faster. The earliest Christian missionaries, Revd Arthur E. Carson and his wife, Laura Hardin Carson, from the American Baptist Mission, reached the Chin Hills on 15 March 1899. They first laid the foundation of Christianity among the Zo people in Chin Hills. Though it took quite some time to gain substantial results, ultimately it was this missionary couple and their followers who apparently brought spiritual as well as physical enlightenment by sowing the seed of the gospel. Even after the last foreign missionaries had left the Chin Hills in the middle of the twentieth century, their legacy remains; the Zo Christian converts continued to shoulder the task of evangelization. As it was in the case of other parts of the world so also was true in Chin Hills that evangelical work was closely associated with educational and medical activities. One of the foremost tasks of the missionaries was to heal the soul as well as the body. ‘Building a house and a schoolhouse were the first concerns of the Carsons’,57

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wrote Robert G. Johnson, which clearly revealed the importance of education to evangelical work. He further says that Carson was very much concerned about extending medical services to the people who were badly in need of them in order to bring them to Christianity. In his letter to the Mission Board, Carson addressed: ‘Every disease, and they are heir to them all, is assigned to pos­ session or influence of evil spirits, and sacrifice and feasting is the remedy.… We are sure that a medical missionary, beside the immense amount of suffering he could relieve, could unlock the hearts of this simple people as no other could.’58 Dr Erik Hjalmar East, a Swedish-born American, was the first medical missionary, who reached the Chin Hills on 22 March 1902. Barely after staying for two months, Dr East soon left the Chin Hills because of illness. His first impression during his brief stay, however, intelligibly stressed the need for medical work: My first impression was that the Chins certainly were in need of help, as the blind lame, wounded, fever stricken, lepers and skin diseases came. Secondly, I was convinced that these people were in need of a thorough cleansing from top to toe as I had never seen human beings so completely encrusted with a covering of dirt. In the third place, I was convinced that the soap I brought would come in handy and, more so, as I was told that they never wash themselves or their children.59

On 28 December 1903, Dr East, this time with his new bride Emily Johnson, returned to Haka with a strong conviction ‘to break down the influence of the priests and the witch doctor’.60 He started giving treatments to sick persons, distributing drugs to villages and at the same time preaching the gospel. In 1904 alone, treatments were given to 4,000 patients. Dispensaries were opened up in important villages. Medicines were stored in schools where teachers, who had been trained to give treatment on certain common diseases, also performed basic treatment to patients. The most common diseases were malaria, rheumatism, toothache, goi­ tre, fever, eye trouble, etc. Since it became quite expensive and difficult for the medical doctors to make a tour of the villages it was proposed that the sick persons should also be brought to the Haka Hospital for treatment.

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The Emily Tyzzer Memorial Hospital at Haka was established in 1907. The hospital, however, did not really serve the purpose as was believed. The report of 1909 revealed that only 21 inpatients had been registered at the hospital that year whereas there were more than 5,000 new patients on record. ‘The reason for so few have availed themselves of the hospital accommodation,’ wrote Dr East, ‘is due to the fact that it is looked upon as a calamity to be away from the hearthstone in case that death should come while away. To be happy after death a Chin must die in his home and by his fireside.’61 Besides, the people were ‘prejudiced against a man who claims to be a medicine chief and cannot cure all his chronic troubles with a pill or by rubbing something on two or three times’. But a time came when they lost all hopes in their traditional meth­ ods. ‘They come to us as a last resort,’ lamented East, ‘when hope, means and strength are absolutely gone.’62 Education also played significant role in evangelism. The first school was introduced by Carson at Haka in June 1900, which was later closed down because of strong opposition from a Burman sergeant of the military police.63 It was, however, reopened on 21 March 1902 after the arrival of Dr Erik Hjalmar East, a medical doctor, and Saya Shwe Zan, another Karen preacher and teacher. That same year, a second school was opened at Tedim, with one Po Ku as the teacher, followed by the third school at Khuasak in the Tedim Subdivision on 31 March 1904. It was at Khuasak vil­ lage, which Dr East described as ‘one of the most godless places on the earth’,64 that wonderfully the first converts—Thuam Hang and his wife Dim Khaw Cing, and Pau Suan and his wife Kham Ciang—were gained. On hearing this wonderful news, Dr E.H. East, who later baptized them,65 jubilantly exclaimed: ‘Truly, when this letter came from Schwe Zan, Mrs East and I laughed and cried and shouted: “the King of Glory had surely made His entrance into the Chin Hills. The bells of heaven were ringing as the Shepherd brought home the lost sheep.” It was too wonderful!’66 Strongly boosted by the permission given by the Kamhau chief, Hau Cin Khup of Tonzang, a school was started there in 1904. The chief also gave permission to build a schoolhouse and a teacher’s house. Po Ku, the Karen teacher, started the school with

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two students, namely, Son Vung and Hen Za Kam from Tuitum village. These two students later became the first Christians from Tonzang area. They were baptized by Dr East on 27 February 1906, in the presence of chief Hau Cin Khup and all the villagers.67 The same year, another school was started at Zokhua with Saya Ma Kya as teacher. Thus, by 1905, there were altogether four schools with an attendance of 132 pupils.68 The small number of attendance also shows that there was an economic disadvantage in sending chil­ dren to schools, because the parents then lost their service in aid of their family. In the early stages of its growth there were no girls enrolled in the school. In fact, Zo people saw no value in the education of women. According to them, girls had to work in the fields and in the home and so could not be spared. Educating a girl was non­ productive, for they thought girls would only get married, have a family, and be occupied in agricultural and domestic chores. Besides, they believed educated girls would not be properly sub­ missive to their husbands. Knowing this, Laura Carson devoted her considerable energies to getting hold of the girls: My plan (she wrote) is to attract them at first by starting a sewing class and telling the girls that as soon as one is able to cut out and make a jacket neatly she shall have it. While teaching them to sew I hope to be able to teach them a good many other things and to get them interested in learn­ ing to read and so to open up a new world to them.69

Laura Carson succeeded in getting the girls in her sewing classes. Mah Seh, a woman teacher, was brought up at Haka. There was, however, only one girl student in 1906. When the Baptist Mission Burma in Boston reorganized the Chin Mission into the northern and southern regions on 1 Octo­ ber 1909, a second station was established at Tedim and John Herbert Cope, who had arrived at Haka a year earlier, was placed in charge of it. Unlike in Haka70 there was considerable opposition by the chiefs to schools in Falam. What the chief of Seipi village told the superintendent and Dr East at a conference in June 1909 explains why: ‘Chong In Kadu Vantsung Jesu Kan dulo. Ar le vock Kan tshoi lo a stshun Kan thi lai, she ranga Jesu thorng Kan duh

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la (School I want, the Heavenly Jesus I don’t want. If we do not sacrifice chickens and pigs we die, therefore, I don’t want the Jesus custom).’71 Evidently, the chief wanted education without Christi­ anity to which the missionaries could not agree. Dr East thus told the superintendent that ‘we would not for a moment consider any school without religious teaching, and that our prime object was and is to spread the gospel, and while doing so, we are willing to educate the people also’. The superintendent remained unmoved.72 The school at Laizo and Lumbang were accordingly closed. Disap­ pointed with the government attitude, Dr East wrote: The whole thing goes to show that even here, among wild tribes, the pow­ ers that be representing a (sic) Christian missionaries are not always as they should be; but on the contrary try to block their work wherever pos­ sible by veiled diplomatic tricks, for such I am sure this was. But we have no right to blame the British government, as in the far-flung provinces it usually depends upon some unfriendly sub-officials who must elevate himself by hindering such as are willing to rescue the perishing and care for the dying.73

When Dr East left the Chin Hills on 17 October 1910 for failure of his health, there were five primary schools with 231 stu­ dents, including 20 girls.74 The medium of instruction at that time was Burmese. In 1911, there were six primary schools of which two were registered with the government, namely, the Khuasak (1 January 1911) and Haka schools. However, there was a sharp decline in their numbers. In 1912, only two schools remained functioning. The number of students dropped from 180 in 1911 to a mere 60 in 1912. It is possible that the four unregistered night schools ceased to function; one of the causes of the decline was certainly the opposition of Chief Hau Cin Khup who gave permission for the school but became nervous with the growth of Christianity in his tract. He was uncompromising towards Christians and even ordered Po Ku, the teacher, out of the village. He also dismantled the Tonzang school, which eventually ceased to exist.75 The functioning of the schools was again interrupted by the Haka uprising of 191776 that resulted in the closure of a few

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schools. But these reopened again after its suppression and in 1920 there were six primary schools with 175 students and 11 teach­ ers.77 In 1922 the Haka school was upgraded to middle school (seventh standard) and the following year the Khuasak school was also raised to secondary standard.78 In 1935 the statistics of the educational schools show that there remained only three primary schools with the missions having 75 pupils.79 The fall in the num­ ber this time was due mainly to the government’s absorption of the schools. It was nearly after a decade of the first mission school that the British government took some interest in education. The first gov­ ernment primary school was established at Falam in 1908. In the month of January in the following year the government sanctioned an allowance of Rs. 2 per month for each student. The government, too, started providing pupils with meals, which had long been the demand of the Zos. This remarkably improved the attendance.80 On 25 June 1909, a government vernacular school was opened at Tedim.81 In 1913, a boarding school was introduced in Tedim. The opening of government schools adversely affected the mis­ sion schools and Dr East lamented that this totally wiped out the ‘golden opportunity’ for the missionaries.82 There was much rivalry and little cooperation between the government and the missions in the early years of Dr East’s period. While the missions employed Christian Karen83 teachers who strictly followed their policy to inculcate Christian faith through teaching and preach­ ing, Buddhist Burmans and Hindu or Muslim Indians who were in the service of the government also became a stumbling block to the progress of education. Even, as Dr East remarked: ‘A certain Roman Catholic government official did all he could secretly to undercut the mission program, while feigning friendship on the surface.’84 Matters improved under Revd John Herbert Cope who began to work in collaboration with the government. He estab­ lished personal friendship with the officials at all levels including Burmese and Indian. After 1921 the government began to take a keener interest in the education provided by the mission. The atti­ tude of the chiefs and headmen too gradually changed and they became, after many of them were converted, helpful to the mission.

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In June 1921, Colonel L.E.L. Burne, the superintendent and the Battalion Commander, held a meeting at Falam to discuss the merits of change of the medium of instruction in the schools. It was attended by Herbert Cope, and the assistant superintendents. Burne reported the view of the conference: The opinion of the majority was that the present system of education was not the best suited to the needs of the people of these hills, and that Chins should replace Burmese as the medium of instruction. Burmese would not be abolished altogether, except in the village schools, but would be taken as a second language. The technical school at Falam continues to impart instruction in carpentry and masonry, and the question of extending the subjects to be taught is receiving attention.85

Writing to his friends Cope also said: I am very glad that the present officers are advocating the education of the Chins in their own language. Now we are educating the Chins through Burmese. This month we all held a conference on the question. Most of the political officers are in favour of the change. The new idea is to produce textbooks in Chin, erect a school house in every village of considerable size, place a teacher there who will teach the boys and girls to read in their own language and, through that, other subjects to the fourth year. In the meantime, Burmese will still be taught at the stations (that is, in Tiddim, Falam, and Haka). In the mission schools all the chil­ dren are now taught to read little Chin, enough so that they can sing and read the few portions of the Bible which have been translated.86

The meeting resulted in the change of the medium from Bur­ mese to the Zo language at the primary level. The use of Burmese was, however, continued in the higher grades in the schools at Tedim, Falam, and Haka. The following year, another conference, held at Maymyo, recommended the use of Laizo or the Falam dia­ lect, and English and Burmese to be the second language. As there was no consensus on orthography, a sub-committee, one of the members being Cope, was formed, which also could produce no agreement.87 The Maymyo recommendation did not prove satis­ factory as the Laizo dialect was not popular in the Tedim area. Accordingly, Colonel Burne asked Cope in 1924 to prepare text

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books in two languages—one in Kamhau-Sukte for Tedim and the other in Laizo for Falam and Haka. Cope was elated for reasons he had enumerated to the field secretary of the Baptist Mission in Rangoon: We have the opportunity of a lifetime here in the Hills and want to take advantage of it. It means also an advance in our work even if there were no more missionaries or helpers. At first the large majority of teachers in the Haka and Falam subdivisions will be Christians and everyone will be an evangelist. It means also that one language will slowly come to domi­ nate the lower two-thirds of the Hills and one in the Tiddim subdivision, thus doing away with the most exasperating obstacle to the progress of work here in this field. It will mean more so solidarity in the work and in the people.88

The relationship between the government and the missions had now become healthier and a new policy of streamlining education was set in place. In May 1924, Cope was offered and accepted the post of honorary inspector of schools by which all schools came under his control. This meant that the mission schools also came under the government. The Burmese script and language was dropped altogether and replaced by the Roman alphabet and vernacular language. Cope was commissioned to write textbooks from primary to the fourth standard in local dia­ lects on all subjects taught in the schools for three subdivisions of Falam, Haka and Tedim. He ultimately wrote 35 textbooks and readers in six different Zo dialects, on different subjects such as geography, hygiene, nature study, history and arithmetic. What Cope achieved in practical terms was the reduction of over forty dialects into three lingua franca namely: Tedim, Falam and Haka.89 Government subsidies to mission schools ceased in 1925.90 Till the year 1924 mission schools all over the Chin Hills received Rs. 833 from the government and Rs. 455 from local contributions.91 The changeover from Burmese to Zo language as the medium of instruction transformed the schools into Anglo-Vernacular Middle Schools up to the seventh standard, which appeared more attractive to the boys and girls. Meanwhile, for Gurkhas, Chinese, Burmese and Indian children who could not understand the vernacular, a non-Zo school was established in the cantonment

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area of Falam. Subsequently, in 1935, the first high school with eighth standard was started in Falam. It was a result of the persis­ tent efforts made by three students from Tedim, viz., Song Pau of Tedim, Neng Za Gin of Phunom, and S.T. Hau Go of Lailui. The Falam high school became the basis, as Hau Go noted, for forging the unity of the Zo people of Haka, Falam and Tedim in spirit, language and other nation-building activities.92 Since the American missionaries were not able to visit every village, their work was extended by the Karen Christian teachers. Gradually, educated Zo people completed the work of evangeliza­ tion. Those who became Christian and were trained and educated were employed in the ministries. Statistics show that numbers of organized Churches soared up from 12 in 1924 to 60 in 1937 in the Haka, Falam and Tedim areas.93 After the incorporation of Pakokku Hill Tracts into Chin Hills in 1930, villages in the south including Matu, Khrum and Kanpetlet had been visited by north­ ern missionaries. In the Kanpetlet subdivision there were three government schools, all teaching in Burmese. Curiously there was one Christian in the whole Kanpetlet area.94

Digging Deeper: Problems and Prospects of Laipianism and Christianity In spite of missionaries’ undaunted efforts to propagate Christianity among the Zo people by employing education and medical activities, a survey of the development of both Laipianism and Christianity during the first half of the twentieth century points to the former having secured better success than the latter. Statistic shows that there were only 1900 Christian converts in 1931,95 which was a mere 5.3 per cent of Laipianism (35,700 followers). The reasons for such wide imbalance may be varied. One of the most important reasons was the cultural adapt­ ability of Laipianism in which evangelical work has no advantage. Robert Johnson, who was the last American Baptist missionary to have served in the Chin Hills (1946-66), admitted that Pau Cin Hau’s reforms were an improvement over the old animistic cus­ toms.96 Similarly, a Zo scholar, who categorized Pau Cin Hau, as a

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traditional intellectual, holds that Laipianism was steeped into the rural social milieu and defends the core Zo traditional values by providing an alternative to Christianity.97 Though it is not clearly known that Laipianism was intended to defend Zo culture from the assimilation of Christianity, one thing is certain that the people seemed more inclined to accept a religion which could go along with their culture and tradition at that stage. At any rate the Zo people greatly value and respect their traditional practices; but they were strongly against any cultural intrusion. One the other hand, the Zo people considered Christianity as a foreign religion since the Whites first brought to them. It was suspiciously looked upon as the White’s religion. In addition, mis­ sionary teachings—that discouraged the customs of drinking of zu (beer), making animal sacrifices and the like—undermined Zo tradition. And, more importantly, the failure to induce the chiefs and headmen to accepting Christianity, on whom the entire Zo society greatly depended, remained a stumbling block to evangeli­ cal activities. At first, the chiefs and headmen felt that education and Christianity unloosed the people from the burden of slavery and other compulsory traditional dues. Christianity, they believed, acts as a liberating force, which severely curtailed their author­ ity both morally and materially. It was due these reasons that the chiefs and headmen had been obstinately opposed to evangelism in the early stage. Educational and medical activities, in spite of early implemen­ tation, did not effectively draw the attention of the people toward Christianity, during the first few decades. Early respondents through these were quite negligible. One reason behind the slow growth was that only small numbers of male students attended the mission schools while girls were discouraged by the parents. In fact, parents saw no value in the education of women.98 Another hurdle came from the chiefs and headmen. Max Vai Pum thus observed: Unfortunately things did not turn up so, for formal education at the onset did not seize the fancy of the people and the state schools were abomina­ tions to the arrogant Chin chieftains. To them this education business was

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nothing less than a form of coercion, a virtual seduction towards change of religion, culture and tribal customs. The chiefs especially feared the prospect of losing their customary tributes.99

The pace of growth of education was thus decelerated by all these reasons. After two decades of work there were only 295 stu­ dents in 1924.100 Medical work neither fared better. Dr Woodin, who was a mission doctor in the Chin Hills from 1911 to 1915, was greatly disappointed by the sullen attitude of the people and their response, as he reported in his letter to the Board in 1914, was: The medical work continues the same as before… the few cases in the hos­ pital has been unsatisfactory, most of them have been forcibly removed at critical time to be taken to their villages for sacrifice. I consider the eleven hundred rupees expended for medical work worse than wasted.101

The trend did not remain unchanged. The second half of the twentieth century ushered in a great upsurge in evangelical activities. The reasons are many. Like the Pau Cin Hau movement, Christian teachings also managed to penetrate into the hardcore section of the society. This was mainly because of the persistent efforts of the missionaries; Karen teachers and Zo converts, on the one hand, and conversion of the chiefs and headmen, who had earlier strongly opposed education and modern medical treat­ ments, on the other. Unlike before, medical activities worked effectively here. Even the chiefs and headmen were compelled to approach the mission doctors, as mentioned above, when they lost all hope in their witch doctors and traditional sacrifices, although often as a last resort. Gradually, people who had been cured from their physical illness by the treatment of mission doctors naturally discarded their traditional practices and turned to Christianity. Christianity was thus no longer seen as a destructive force but rather as an alternative source of health and power. The conver­ sion of those higher strata of the society was largely responsible for the easy access of Christian faith among the commoners, who too, indeed, responded positively though steadily. Language and literature did play a pro-active role in the spread

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of Christianity. Better education gave better knowledge of the Almighty God. The Romanized local alphabet introduced by John Herbert Cope in the early part of the nineteenth century gave a new impetus to the development of Christianity. The Zo people were devoid of any existing script except the one invented by Pau Cin Hau, which was still at a preliminary stage. So the introduction of a Romanized script by the early missionaries seemed to have overshadowed the indigenously invented one. The new alphabet, in Kamhau dialect, was so easy that it took only seven days to learn. It became popularly known as Ni Sagih Lai (Seven Days Script). The introduction of vernacular language in government schools in 1925 and emergence of vernacular textbooks not only gave a big boost to the growth of education but also remarkably contributed to the work of evangelism. This was strongly supported by the fact that early Zo converts were being gained mainly from the school. Similarly, the formation of the Chin Hills Baptist Association, an apex church organization, in 1907, was no less significant. This parent body was soon followed by the establishment of regional associations such as Tedim Association, Falam Association, Haka Association and Matu-Kanpetlet Association and eventually the Zomi Baptist Convention in 1954. These associations not only firmly cemented Christianity in Chin Hills on a solid basis but also effectively carried forward the gospel even after the foreign mis­ sionaries had left. A well-established foundation laid by the early Christians, therefore, greatly enhanced the work of evangelism. The colonial and Christian missions’ combined efforts to spread education, besides many other factors, reversed the trend of religious conversion—for most of Pau Cin Hau followers and those who had earlier taken a strong hold of the traditional belief now turned to Christianity. The pawlpi (collective followers) of Pau Cin Hau being the main foundation of the indigenous move­ ment lost its firm footing as it had been shaken by whirlwind change brought about by evangelical activities. Consequently, many of the followers of Pau Cin Hau began to accept Christianity in the middle of the twentieth century. Laipianism dwindled while Christianity grew. Today, only a very small number of adherents to Laipianism are found among the Zo people.

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Conclusion The foregoing discussion unravels three important things that brought significant changes in Chin Hills: Colonialism, the Pau Cin Hau movement and Christianity. In Africa there is a common saying—‘One white man gets you on your knees in prayer, while the other steals your land.’102 The same is true in the context of the Zo people. Chin Hills was first brought under colonial rule, which was soon to be followed by religious movements, alien or indigenous. The former subjugated the people whom the latter two seemed to have, perhaps, ‘pacified’ with their new socio-religious reforms. Colonialism heavily checked and forcibly put under control all sorts of inhuman practices—raiding, head hunting, slavery and the like. It remodelled chieftainship, the traditional mode of administration, to suit the law of the colonizer, though with the least intervention in tribal polity. The land and the people had been, to a great extent, tranquilized—roads and communications established, trade and markets encouraged and money economy replacing the barter system. However, one thing that colonialism was incapable of doing was to change the beliefs and practices of the people in toto. To crack the hard shell of animism-based society remained the most challenging task confronting the Pau Cin Hau movement and Christian missions in the early twentieth century. To secure religious conversions amid such hostile traditional beliefs and practices, proponents of these new movements sought, as they did, a suitable area where they would cast their net. In the light of the above discussion, though it is not the inten­ tion here to draw a conclusive assessment, Christian missions and the Pau Cin Hau movement appeared to have successfully man­ aged to bring changes in Zo society and culture. Never had there been a slightest hint of any mutual cooperation between the two; nevertheless, the success of one largely depend on the other and vice versa. However, in spite of such mutual dependence, there was no sign of contest: Laipianism never appeared as a serious contender against evangelical activities with regard to the whole process of religious conversions in Chin Hills, though it did cause some

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trouble to missionary activities in the initial years. Yet, it is difficult to merely subscribe to the views forwarded by Robert G. Johnson, who strongly argued that Laipianism has not had a lasting impact on the Baptist churches.103 Pau Cin Hau’s dominance itself became a boon to evangelical activities in the long run. It helped to crumble first the hardest portion of the Zo society through its conformist approach, which was strongly in contrast with Christian faith, and prepared a congenial soil on which Christianity sowed its seed and grew. Early missionaries such as Dr East and John Herbert Cope also believed that ‘Pau Cin Hau’s emphasis on one God and its rejection of belief in and sacrifice to the evil spirits would help break down barriers to the Chin’s acceptance of Christianity’. Pau Cin Hau had also employed such practices as prayer for the sick, construction of Sangbuk (church), celebration of drinking tuisiang, praying and casting out demons in the name of god, maintaining membership record and so on. It was believed that some of these inputs might have been an outcome of his meeting with Christians at Champhai and Kawlkulh in neighbouring Lushai Hills where he attended annual conferences of the Salvation Army in 1905 and 1906, respectively.104 Pau Cin Hau’s strong emphasis on the macrocosm, a belief already prevalent among the Zo people, was also very rewarding. Laipianism should, therefore, be seen as having existed rather in symbiosis with Christianity and not as a contender. A recent study contended: ‘Pau Cin Hau was used by the Almighty God to prepare for minds and the hearts of Zomi for the coming of the gospel.’105 The pioneering role of Laipianism was, however, strongly contested by Johnson: If Pau Cin Hau religion was indeed a stepping stone to Chris­ tianity, one would expect that the Tiddim area would have proven the most responsive of all the areas to Christianity. But, not so. It is Haka and Thantlang in the centre of the Chin Hills, then Falam, and lastly the Tiddim area (excluding for the moment the recently evangelized areas farther south) which have now the most Chris­ tian believers. At any rate Zo people’s conversion to Christianity was not of a sudden happening. Unlike Pau Cin Hau and his followers,

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missionaries were strangers rather, who tried to introduce beliefs and practices alien to the local one. Thus, wrote Erik Cohen: ‘Con­ version of the natives was expected to involve a total religious and cosmological reorientation related to Westernisation.’106 This does not imply that Christianity was ‘part of a White man’s package of civilisation’.107 It does mean reorienting or rather conforming Zo cosmology in accordance with Christian cosmology. This would have not been achieved had not colonialism and Laipianism done the pioneering work, though inadvertently. As a result, Christian­ ity became deeply rooted among the Zo people by the time colonial rulers had left the country in 1948. To sum up the discussion, it is apt to mention what Khup Za Go has rightly said: ‘While the people lived such a hard and hazardous life filled with fear of war and of evil spirits, there appear in Chinland during the last decade of the nineteenth century three important movements namely, Pau Cin Hau, British and Christian, of which the first two became the forerunners of the last’.108 The net results of dual religious con­ versions—from animism to Laipianism, and from Laipianism to Christianity—was thus the transformation of Zo social, economic, cultural and religious lives, and the emergence of a common iden­ tity under the banner of Christianity.

Notes 1. Lal Dena, Christian Missions and Colonialism: A Study of Missionary Movement in North East India with Particular Reference to Manipur and Lushai Hills 1894-1947, Verdrame Institute, Shillong, 1988, p. 12. 2. J.S. Furnivall, Colonial Policy and Practice: A Comparative Study of Burma and Netherlands India, New York University Press, New York, 1956, p. 8. 3. Robert W. Strayer, The Making of Mission Communities in East Africa: Anglicans and Africans in Colonial Kenya, 1875-1935, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1978, p. 2. 4. Mark R. Woodward, ‘Gift for the Sky People: Animal Sacrifice, Head-hunting and Power among the Naga of Burma and Assam’, in Harvey, Graham (ed.), Indigenous Religions: A Companion, London: Continuum, 2000, quoted in Ranger, Terence, ‘Christianity

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5. 6.

7.

8.

9. 10. 11. 12.

Pum Khan Pau and Indigenous Peoples: A Personal Overview’, Journal of Religious History, vol. 27, no. 3, October 2003, p. 264. Dena, p. 13. Vumson, Z o History, Aizawl (n.d.), Sing Khaw Khai, Zo People and Their Culture, Churachandpur, 1995; Khup Za Go, A Critical Historical Study of Bible Ttranslations among the Zo People in North East India, Churachandpur, Manipur, 1996, and Zo Minam Tawh Kisai Thu (Issues facing Zo community today), Zo Research and Communication Centre, New Delhi, 2001. W.G. H ynes, ‘Communications: British Mercantile Attitudes Towards Imperial Expansion’, in: Historical Journal, vol. 19, no. 4, 1976, p. 972. Hynes further said: ‘There were several reasons for this changed outlook. Although it is difficult to fix changes in opinion precisely in time, it was clear by the mid-1880s that not even the most enthusiastic free traders believed Europe was about to enter an era of unlimited free trade. For the principal British Chambers of Commerce, the failure of the Anglo-French commercial treaty negotiations in 1881 was probably decisive in casting doubts on the future of free trade on the Continent. At the same time as British exporters began to encounter increasing difficulties in penetrating European markets, they faced greater European competition abroad, in some areas of the world for the first time.’ Hynes, p. 973. ‘Parallel with this growing interest in discovering new markets in the mid-1880s,’ argued Hynes, ‘there went an increased demand for government assistance to foreign trade. The prevailing economic depression and the assistance given by foreign governments to their merchants and industrialists made it seem less likely that individual enterprise in Britain would receive its just reward without the help of governments…thus the overseas trade was almost the only sphere where a state directed anti-cyclical policy could operate.’ D.P. Singhal, British Diplomacy and the Annexation of Upper Burma, South Asian Publishers, New Delhi, 1981, pp. 89-93. Sir Charles Crosthwaite, The Pacification of Burma, London 1912, pp. 288-9. For a fuller discussion, see Pum Khan Pau, ‘The Chins and the British, 1835-1935’, PhD thesis, Department of History, NorthEastern Hill University, Shillong, 2007. Memorandum submitted to President Bill Clinton of America by leaders of the Zo Re-unification Organization (ZORO), General Headquarters, Aizawl, 1993.

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13. For a detailed analysis of the Chin-Lushai Conference, 1892, see Pum Khan Pau, ‘Administrative Rivalries on a Frontier: Problem of the Chin-Lushai Hills’, Indian Historical Review, vol. XXXIV, no. 1 (January 2007), pp. 187-209. 14. Quoted in Encyclopaedia Britannica (Macropaedia), 15: 629. 15. Rev. Sangermano, A Description of the Burmese Empire, translated by William Tandy, DD, Reprint Rangoon 1893, p. 35. 16. B.S. Carey and H.N. Tuck, The Chin Hills: A History of the People, Our Dealings with Them, Their Customs and Manners, and a Gazetteer of their Country, Rangoon Government Printing Press 1896, Reprint Aizawl 1932, vol. 1, p. 3. 17. G.H. Luce, ‘Chin Hills Linguistic Tour (Dec.1954) University Project’, Journal of Burma Research Society, vol. XLII, no. 1 June 1959, p. 26. A recent scholar F.K. Lehman’s The Structure of Chin Society suggests that the word actually means a ‘basket’ in Burmese. 18. Cited in Vum Ko Hau, Profile of A Burma Frontier Man, Bandung 1963, p. 312. 19. Taw Sein Ko, ‘The Chin and the Kachin tribes on the borderland of Burma’, Asian Review, Serie 2, vol. V (January-April, 1893), The Oriental University Institute, Leichtenstein, 1968, p. 289. 20. Grant Brown, Burma Gazetteer, Upper Burma, cited in Sing Khaw Khai’s Zo People and their Culture, Churachandpur, 1995, p. 67, wrote that ‘The sound formerly written Hky or Kh, but now, pronounces as Ch retains something of its old pronunciation’. Today, Burmese currency ‘Kyat’ is ‘Chyat’, and the leader of the National League for Democracy Aung San Syu Kyi as Aung San Syu Chi. 21. One of the earliest mentions is said to be found in Fan Ch’o’s book the Man-shu in 835 ad, who wrote about the Mino-chiang people who called their princes and chiefs shou. The Mino-chiang are identified with the people of Chindwin. Gordon Luce, in this regard, suggests that before the coming of the Mranma (Burman) in the ninth century, the three chief powers in Burma were the Chins (and Sak) in upper Burma, the Tircul (or Pyu) in central Burma, and Mi­ ch’en (perhaps old Pegu) in lower Burma. He further says that when the Mranma descended to the plains of central Burma in the ninth century, there had already settled the Mon, Palaung, Wa, Karen, Thet, Kadu Chin etc. G.H. Luce, Phases of Pre-Pagan Burma, vol. II, London 1985, pp. 78-80; For a concise account of early Burma based on recent studies, see Tarling, Nicholas, The Cambridge History of South East Asia, vol. I, From Early Times to c. 1800, Cambridge 1992, pp. 164-8, 240, and passim.

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22. Thomas Herbert Lewin, Progressive Colloquial Exercises in the Lushai Dialect of the ‘Dzo’ or Kuki Language, with Vocabularies and Popular Tales (Notated), Calcutta 1874, p. 1; Lewin further added: ‘The term Kuki is a generic name applied by the inhabitants of the plains, Bengallees and others, to all hill-dwellers who cultivate by jhum. The word Kuki is foreign to the different dialects of the hill tribes, the nearest approach to it being the “Dzo” term for the Tipra tribes which is called by them Tui-Kuk.’ See also his A Fly on the Wheel, or How I Helped to Govern India, Calcutta, 1885, reprinted Aizawl, 2005. 23. National Archive of India, Foreign Political – A Proceeding, December 1892, nos. 42-6; Our Relations with the Eastern Lushais prior to the Rising on 1 March 1892, in which he says, ‘The Lushais call themselves Mizo or Mizau’, and lists seventeen ‘castes’, which include ‘Ralte Molbem, Khuangli, Paithe, Taute, Jahau (Yahow), Dulien, Lakher, Fanai (Molienpui) Poi, Dalang, Tangur, Sukte, Mar, Falam (Tashons), Paukhup, Liellul’. 24. G.A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, vol. III, pt. III, Calcutta 1904, p. 1. 25. Cin Do Kham, ‘The Untold Story: The Impact of Revival Among the Chin People in Myanmar (Burma)’, Journal of Asian Mission, vol. 1, no. 2, Philippines, 1999, p. 207. 26. Sing Khaw Khai, op. cit., p. 159. 27. Vumson, op. cit., p. 16. 28. Similar discussion on Nagas’ cosmology may be referred to as Eaton, Richard M., ‘Conversion to Christianity among the Nagas, 1876­ 1971’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. XXI, no. 1 (January-March 1984), Sage, New Delhi. 29. T.H. Lewin, Wild Races of South-Eastern India, London 1870, reprint Aizawl, 1978, pp. 126-7. 30. Carey and Tuck, op. cit., pp. 195-6. 31. Quoted in J.M. Ngul Khan Pau, ‘When the World of Zomis Changed,’ D.Miss dissertation, Western Conservative Baptist Seminary, Portland, Oregon, 1995, p. 57. 32. Lieutenant T.A. Trant, ‘Notice of the Khyen Tribe Inhabiting the Yuma Mountains between Ava And Aracan’, Journal of the Asiatic Society, vol. XVI, 1828, in Asiatic Researches, vol. 16, reprint, New Delhi, 1980, p. 264. 33. H.N.C. Stevenson, The Economics of the Central Chin Tribes, Tribal Research Institute, Aizawl, 1986, p. 157.

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34. Sing Khaw Khai, op. cit., p. 162 35. F.K. Lehman, The Structure of Chin Society, University of Illinois, USA, 1963, Reprinted Aizawl, 1980, pp. 178-9. 36. S. Ngin Suanh, ‘A Brief History of Pau Cin Hau and his Religion’, Tedim BEHS No.1 Diamond Jubilee Commemorative Magazine (1948-1998), p. 581. 37. Robert G. Johnson, History of the American Baptist Chin Mission, vol. 1, Valley Forge, USA, 1998, p. 393. 38. Suanh, loc. cit. 39. E. Pendleton Banks, ‘Pau Cin Hau: A Case of Religious Innovations among the Northern Chins’, in C.L. Riley, and W.W. Taylor (ed.), American Historical Anthropology: Essays in Honour of Leslie Spier, London/Amsterdam: Feffer & Simons, 1967, p. 39. Banks further said: ‘The inn ka is a sort of verandah that all Chin houses have. Made of planks and jutting out over a hillside, it is the centre of family activity and the location of the status feasts which play an important part in Chin life. A man’s status is symbolized by the size of his inn ka and by the location of his seat when visiting another inn ka. Khua Cin’s inn ka was very large, made with extra wide planks— “the width of a za bo,” or extended hand breath—and located where the modern football field is.’ 40. Carey and Tuck, op. cit., p. 126. Also see Dorothy Woodman, The Making of Burma, London, 1962 and Pum Khan Pau, ‘The Chins and the British, 1835-1935’, PhD thesis, Department of History, NorthEastern Hill University, Shillong, 2006. 41. J.J. Bennison, ‘Pau Cin Hau Movement’, in Census of India 1931, vol. XI, Burma Part I Report, p. 217. 42. Ibid. 43. In the New Testament of the Bible St John received revelation from God in the Isles of Patmos (Revelation 1:9). Similarly, Pau Cin Hau’s teachings were based on what he had received in his vision at Lailui village. 44. Bennison, op. cit., p. 194. 45. Zu is a fermented rice beer commonly drunk by the Zo people. It was a very important part of their life, especially during festivals and on any special occasion. 46. Bennison, loc. cit.. 47. Dena, op. cit., p. 87 48. The Palik or ‘Pa-leik-thas’ (policemen) were also known as Khutdompa (men who feel the pulse). The Palik wore red head dress,

480

49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62.

63.

64. 65. 66.

Pum Khan Pau because it is believed that as all bad characters are said to shun the police, so also all evil spirits will shun the sick person as long as the Palik is present in his red head dress. They were numbered from three to six per village. The Paliks were offered Zu as a form of fee. Bennison, op. cit., p. 218. Also see Banks, op. cit., p. 44. Ibid., p. 218. Report on the Administration of the Chin Hills for the year ended 30 June 1912. Stevenson, op. cit., p. 45. J.M. Ngul Khan Pau, op. cit., p. 117. Banks, op. cit., p. 55. Bennison, op. cit., p. 218. Stevenson, op. cit., p. 162. Johnson, op. cit., p. 54. Ibid., p. 58 E.H. East, Burma Manuscript, ed. C. Thang Za Tuan, Yangon, Myanmar 1996, p. 49. Ibid., p. 309. Johnson, op. cit., p. 274. Ibid., p. 273; Dr East thus wrote: ‘They often tell us, we have now done all our customs teach us, and all that our witch doctors know. We have sacrificed mythun, cows, pigs, goats, chickens, and dogs, and still we are no better; now we are as fools, we know no more. Now we come to you. You are like god. What can you do for us? We will give you a rupee if you cure us.’ Ibid., pp. 64-5. The first school had one pupil. Saya San Win, a preacher of the Karen tribe who accompanied Carson to Haka, served as the first mission teacher. The school at its initial stage was opposed by a Burman sergeant of the Military Police who was an ardent Buddhist. In the Buddhist school he started, the sergeant told the parents ‘if the boys would go to a Buddhist school or a government school they would be given food and clothing free’. Consequently, many pulled out their boys from the mission school when they did not get food and clothes, forcing Carson to declare in June 1901: ‘We have no school.’ East, op. cit., p. 601. Laura Hardin Carson, Pioneer Trails, Trials and Triumphs, Calcutta 1927, Reprinted Aizawl, 1997, pp. 180-1. It was at Khuasak that the first hill Chin Christian converts had been baptized. East, op. cit., p. 601. The British Superintendent of Chin Hills

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67. 68. 69. 70.

71. 72. 73.

74. 75.

481

L.E.L. Burne in 1908 reported that when Rev. A.E. Carson died on 1 April 1908 there were already 55 Chin Christians, Report on the Administration of the Chin Hills for the year 1907-08. Johnson, op. cit., pp. 288-9. Ibid., p. 66. Ibid., p. 140. See Shwe Zan’s letter date 25 July 1904 from Khuasak village to Dr East quoted in Hardin, op. cit., pp. 180-1, in which he inter alia says of the converts: ‘One man name’s Tum Harm (Thuam Hang); he is chief among the three chiefs. Now he begin to believe Jesus. This night he come up to me for praying God. Dear master, please remember for Tum Harm in your prayer. O my dear master if you arrive here this time, how you will be very glad for Christ. As to school the people begin to build the school now. They got some post to the school place; in a few days I think school will finish. Some time I wrote about to stop school until the school (house) finish, and you tell I must stop; but I think in my heart it is better to learn every day so that I have school in my house.’ East, op. cit., p. 193. East, loc. cit.; There was in fact, an agreement between Arthur Carson and the government as to the opening of a school at Lumbang village. Ibid., p. 194; A Chin leader Rev. Max Vai Pum in his work ‘The Beginning of Formal Education in the Chin Hills’, Falam High School Diamond Jubilee Magazine (1906-1981) also writes the attitude of the Chins and chief thus: ‘Unfortunately things did not turn up so, for formal education at the onset did not seize the fancy of the people and the state schools were abominations to the arrogant Chin chieftains. To them this education business was nothing less than a form of coercion, a virtual seduction towards change of religion, culture and tribal customs. The chiefs especially feared the prospect of losing their customary tributes.’ Ibid., p. 279. Johnson, op. cit., pp. 434-5; Herbert Cope thus wrote: ‘The Christian does not sacrifice nor does he hold drunken feasts, whereupon, according to the law of the land, they are excused from paying the dues. This has stirred the chiefs to a high pitch of excitement. They are demanding to know where all this will lead. Unless the government comes to their rescue and makes new rules they will soon be receiving little shilla. At the same time the heathen see what the Christians are doing and they want to do likewise. Therefore,

482

76.

77. 78. 79. 80. 81.

82. 83.

84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91.

Pum Khan Pau wherever I go someone wants to know if they can stop this shilla payment. The chiefs are contemplating raising a defence fund and carrying the matter up to the Crown if necessary. It is a hindrance to our work. With the chiefs feeling this way they try in every way to keep people out of the Kingdom (of God).’ The uprising was a culmination of anti-colonial feeling which had been developing unabated following annexation. For more discussion, see Pum Khan Pau, ‘The “Haka Uprising” in the Chin Hills, 1917-18’, Jangkhomang Guite and Thongkholal Haokip (ed.), The Anglo-Kuki War, 1917-1919: A Frontier Uprising Against Imperialism During World War I, London: Routledge, 2019. Johnson, op. cit., p. 441. Ibid., p. 459. Ibid., p. 499. L.E.L. Burne, Report on the Administration of the Chin Hills for the Year 1908-09. Ibid., ‘The buildings, which include a large class-room, quarters for the teacher and a dormitory for the boys were erected entirely at the expense of the Zos, who not only supplied all the necessary materials, but employed Zo labour for the actual construction work. There are now 50 pupils attending the school and about another 30 seeking admission which it is impossible to grant. The services of an additional teacher are required.’ Johnson, op. cit., p. 287 Max Vai Pum, op. cit., Most prominent Karen teachers were San Win in Haka, Po Ku in Tedim and Tonzang, Shwe Zan in Khuasak, Ma Kya in Zokhua. These teachers were paid a monthly salary of 20 rupees by the British government and the American Baptist Mission gave them a supplementary sum of 5 rupees per teacher per month. Johnson, op. cit., p. 283. Burne, Report on the Administration of the Chin Hills for the Year 1920-21. Johnson, op. cit., p. 458. Ibid., p. 459. Ibid., p. 461; Cope’s letter to Wiatt, the Field Secretary to Rangoon, 24 April 1924. Sukte T. Hau Go, ‘How Falam Got Her High School’, Falam High School Diamond Jubilee Magazine (1906-1981), p. 66. Johnson, op. cit., p. 496. Ibid., p. 481.

Christianity vs Indigeneity 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98.

99. 100. 101. 102. 103.

104. 105. 106.

107. 108.

483

Hau Go, op. cit., p. 67. Johnson, pp. 479, 576-7. Ibid., pp. 540-1. Ibid., p. 536. Ibid., p. 397. David Vumlallian Zou, ‘Role of Intellectuals in Tribal Social Formation’, in Zomi Christian International vol. 8, no. 1, Delhi, p. 11. According to them, girls had to work in the fields and in the home and so could not be spared. Educating a girl was non-productive, for they thought girls would only get married, have a family, and be occupied in agricultural and domestic chores. Besides, they considered educated girls would not be properly submissive to their husbands. Rev. Max Vai Pum, ‘The Beginning of Formal Education in the Chin Hills’, Falam High School Diamond Jubilee Magazine (1906-1981). Johnson, p. 481. Ibid., p. 327. F.B. Welbourn, ‘Missionary Stimulus and African Responses’, in Victor Turner (ed.), Colonialism in Africa, 1870-1960, vol. 3, Cambridge University Press, 1971, p. 310. Johnson, op. cit., p. 401. Johnson argued: ‘Pau Cin Hau prophet movement has not had a lasting impact on the Baptist churches of the Chin Hills. Had it never existed, in all probability the history of the expansion of Christianity in the Chin Hills would not have been much different.’ J.M. Ngul Khan Pau, op. cit., p. 111. Ibid., p. 117. Erik Cohen, ‘The Missionary as Stranger: A Phenomenological Analysis of Christian Missionaries’ Encounter with the Folk Religions of Thailand’, Review of the Religious Research, vol. 31, no. 4, 1990, p. 340. Richard Gray, ‘Christianity, Colonialism, and Communications in Sub-Saharan Africa’, in: Journal of Black Studies, vol. 13, no. 1, 1982, p. 71. Khup Za Go, Christianity in Chinland, Christian Literature Centre, Guwahati, 1985, p. 15.

CHAPTER 19

American Baptists in Colonial Assam

The Tale of Oscar Levi Swanson*

NABANIPA BHATTACHARJEE

Introduction India is home to diverse religious groups, and among these, the Christians constitute a small but significant demographic. The roots of Christianity in India can be traced back to the year 52 ce when St Thomas arrived on its western coast to preach the gospel. Following the initiatives of the various Syrian churches and the European (Portuguese, Danish, British, Welsh, Irish, and so forth) missions, Christianity—Roman Catholic, Protestant and other denominational forms—began to spread across India. This essay offers the history of Christianity in the north-eastern frontier of India. It maps the trajectory of the Christian initiatives and subsequent dissemination of the faith in the region, particularly Assam. Given that the American Baptists had an important presence in Assam, the essay, by drawing mainly upon secondary sources, describes, first, their history, and second, locates/ contextualizes the same with the aid of the writings—mainly the * Parts of this essay were presented as papers in the international seminar on Missionary Interventions in British North-East India, organized by Assam University, Silchar, India and Queen’s University, Belfast, Northern Ireland, on 18-19 March 2008, and in the international symposium on Religious Pluralism in Global Perspective, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA on 14-15 July 2011. I thank Sajal Nag and also those who commented on the papers in Silchar and Santa Barbara.

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memoir—of a missionary called Oscar Levi Swanson (1867-1949) who spent more than four decades in the province, running the Golaghat mission, working in the tea gardens, and doing much more. The north-eastern frontier witnessed very little, or rather, no (recorded) missionary activity up until 1600. According to Milton Sangma: [t]he earliest recorded visit by the Christian missionaries to North-East India was made in 1626 by two Jesuit missionaries, namely, Frs Stephen Cacella and John Cabral, who were probably looking for a passage to Tibet and China. They travelled as far as Pandu, a few miles west of G[au] hati…. In his letter written from Bhutan dated the 4th October, 1627, Casella [gave] an account of their visit to Goalpara and Kamrup in Assam … [but] [did] not … mention any local Christian at that time.1

No evidence of Christian presence in the region was found for the next 50 years. In 1682, the Chronicle of the Augustinian Friars of Bandel noted that a 7,000 strong Christian community was settled in Rangamati, a town in the Goalpara district of lower Assam.2 By the end of the eighteenth century, around 1790, Roman Catholic missionary activity had begun in a village called Bondashill in the Cachar kingdom. Nothing much came to be reported until the second decade of the next century. However, with the passing of the Charter Act in 1813, which officially ‘allowed foreign missionaries into Brit­ ish India’,3 missionary activity in general gathered momentum. Though missionary interventions aided the imperial project of expansion, yet the government’s ‘attitude[s] toward missionaries [was] cautious and pragmatic’4; the missionaries, in their turn, developed an ambivalent and complex relationship with the empire and its agents.5 Anyhow, the activities of the famous Prot­ estant mission of Serampore, founded by William Carey in 1800, continued, 1813 onwards, under the ‘patronage’ and heavy super­ vision of the imperial government.6 Krishna Chandra Pal, the first Serampore convert, arrived in Sylhet—then a district of the Ben­ gal Presidency—in 1813 to preach among the local Khasi tribe. In 1826, following the Treaty of Yandaboo, Assam came under imperial rule. The provisions of the Charter Act applied to the

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region too, and therefore, paved the way for Christianity to enter it and, in course of time, the larger northeastern frontier. In 1829, the Serampore mission, following the request of David Scott, agent to the Governor-General and Commissioner of Assam, started a mission and a school in Gauhati. But the missionaries were unable to make their presence felt there, for ‘up to 1836 only six individu­ als were baptized’.7 In 1834 the same mission was approached by Francis Jenkins, the new agent to the governor-general, to begin work among the Khamti and the Singpho tribes of Assam. In fact, among others, it was believed that the ‘pacification of the Kham­ tis and the Singphos, who continued to disturb the tranquility of the frontier, could be effectively done by the spread of the gospel’.8 The Serampore mission’s response, given its poor Gauhati perfor­ mance, was lukewarm, and that turned out to be an opportunity for the American Baptists to set up their base in Assam in 1836. In 1837 the Serampore mission merged with the larger Baptist Mis­ sionary Society, and the agreement to hand over the Assam and the Arakan (Myanmar) fields to the American Baptists, for the continuation of missionary work, was reached. As one of the major forms of Protestant Christianity, the Baptist Church Movement grew in the course of the sixteenth and seven­ teenth centuries in Europe, and subsequently, spread to the United States of America and other parts of the world. The movement, in short, viewed the religious community as a ‘community of sincere believers and the elect—and only [those] persons … adults [,] who have innerly [sic] acquired and then overtly declared sincere belief [were] to [be] baptized’.9 For the members of the baptizing move­ ment, the spiritual conversion to belief in Christ’s sacrifice, and gift of salvation was essential. Not only that, the ‘conversion occurred through an individual revelation, that is [,] through the effect of the Holy Spirit inside the believer—and only in this manner’.10 Central to the Baptist movement was, as Max Weber writes: [t]he principle of ‘baptism of adult believers (even if they had been bap­ tized as children), namely, when the ‘age of reason’ had been attained. This maturity, it was argued, enabled believers to reach a conscious decision regarding their beliefs. Baptism (by full immersion) then constituted the external sign of an inner experience of adulthood: the spirit’s rebirth.11

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Following the initiatives of the Baptist missionaries in Ger­ many, Switzerland, Sweden and other countries of Europe, the first Baptist church was established in the United States of America by Roger Williams in 1638. The activities of the Baptist churches, however, did not remain confined to local or even national boundaries. The evangelistic12 zeal of the Baptist missionaries was expressed, among others, through the establishment of a series of associations and societies dedicated to the task of preaching the message of God, and prefer­ ably in the language of the believer; not surprisingly, the Baptist missionaries often took to learning to read and write (and translate) the (vernacular) language of the people to whom they preached in foreign lands. Influenced by their English counterparts, the American Baptist missionaries too embarked on the process of setting up Christian Foreign Missions in the early nineteenth cen­ tury. The American missionary associations showed tremendous interest and extended financial help towards the activities of the English Baptist Mission Society, and particularly its missionary William Carey, at Serampore in India. ‘When the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was established in 1812 by the Congregationalists, the Baptists collected 3000 dollars to assist in sending Luther Rice and Adoniram Judson and Ann Judson to India’.13

American Baptists in Assam Beginning around 1812, the pioneering work of the Judsons paved the way for the future growth of missionary activities of the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society (hereafter ABFMS)14 in various parts of India, and particularly its northeastern frontier. The proposition that the American Baptists should venture into a new frontier in northeast India had been initially mooted by East India Com­ pany officials who, ever since its annexation in 1826, had been attempting to bring order to this region that had a huge diversity of ethnic groups at different stages of technology and culture. The administrators’ invitation to missionaries, initially addressed to the Serampore Baptists and passed on by them to their American counterparts, was testimony to their hope

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that they would buttress the efforts of the handful of colonial administra­ tors in ‘elevating the character of the people’ of this new territory.15

In the early years the missionaries of the ABFMS primarily considered the Assam field as a point of entry to the territories of Southeastern and Central Asia. In fact, the Khamti and Singpho Hill tribes of upper Assam were believed to be linguistically and culturally similar to the Shan tribe of northern Burma (Myanmar). Among the latter, the ABFMS had already established missions since 1814. With Sadiya in Assam as the first base. the Burma trained missionaries of the ABFMS planned to initiate a Shan (Assam) mission which, they believed, would eventually extend up to China and Central Asia.16 Accordingly, Rev. Nathan Brown and Oliver Cutter were directed to start a mission in Sadiya in 1836. While Brown had the knowledge of the Burmese language, Cutter had experience in printing technology. Indeed, the duo was found to be most suitable for the much desirable mission. The ABFMS, however, had to alter its plan and programme as serious difficulties arose. The similarities between the hill tribes of upper Assam and the Shans of Burma proved to be much less than it had been thought. Inside Sadiya too ‘the Baptists were faced with the necessity of learning a variety of dialects … and transporting them from oral into written forms before any scrip­ tural dissemination could be undertaken’.17 Such difficulties made the work of its missionaries extremely hard and tiring. The more they acquired knowledge about Sadiya and its neighbouring areas, the less motivated they became to continue mission work there. Moreover, the expenditure of running the mission far exceeded the financial resources at hand. As a result, the Assam mission was told that ‘unless contribution to the treasury [was] increased [to] a much greater ratio … the mission [could not] be supported even in [its] present state’.18 By the early 1840s the ABFMS missionaries were almost certain that missionary activity was not only impos­ sible but also futile among the ‘imperfectly “pacified”, preliterate “tribal” people of the hills’.19 Instead, the prospect of evangelical work in the Assam plains (valley), inhabited as it was by a ‘civilized’, settled (agriculturalist),

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caste-Hindu Assamese population with a single language and written tradition, appealed to them. ‘Nathan Brown reported to the Home Board, justifying the abandonment of their ongo­ ing projects near Sadiya, such as Miles Bronson’s work among the Namsang Nagas’.20 Bronson also noted that ‘the “Assamese [were] a most encouraging and inviting field’,21 and hence, con­ firmed Brown’s view of the people of the plains. Thus, the Shan mission was folded up. Towards the close of 1843 Brown and Cutter, equipped with a printing press, set themselves up at Sib­ sagar. Their colleagues Cyrus Barkar and Miles Bronson—both had worked among the Nagas—moved to work in Gauhati and Nowgong, respectively. In early 1945, with Sibsagar, Gauhati and Nowgong as potential fields, the Baptist church was formed in Assam. Between 1845 and 1851 the missionaries, supported by the women (both missionary wives and women missionaries)22 of the mission, opened orphanages and established schools for both boys and girls. In order to coordinate the activities of the three mis­ sions, which in turn would contribute more fruitfully to the larger cause of spreading the gospel, the Baptist Association of Assam was formed in 1851.23 As the volume of work increased, more mis­ sionaries were sent out to Assam. Meanwhile, Barkar had passed away and Cutter was ‘dismissed on charges of immoral conduct’.24 Brown, following policy differences regarding fiscal matters with the Home Board, also left in 1855. It was almost a bleak phase in the history of Assam chapter of the ABFMS. However, the ‘energetic measures adopted by the local author­ ities [since 1858] restored to some extent the confidence of the missionaries’.25 As mentioned, the ‘civilized’ caste-Hindu population of the Assam plains was considered highly suitable for missionary work, and, therefore, it served as the prime target field. Alongside, similar projects were planned for other tribes such as the Garos, the Nagas, the Kukis, and so forth, as also the central Indian immi­ grant tribes, which constituted the bulk of the tea garden labour force. The financial patronage for the missionary operations came from numerous sources including civil and military European offi­ cials who contributed quite generously to missionary operations. ‘Jenkins not only provided, as promised, a printing press but made

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regular contributions and offered constructive suggestions for the spread of the gospel. It was through his recommendations again a monthly grant of rupees one hundred was made to the Namsang mission despite religious neutrality of the government.’26 While it is true that the missionaries faced immense hardships given their location in a foreign and inhospitable territory, yet the unofficial help extended to them by the colonial administration from time to time made their task considerably easy if not entirely smooth. As Frederick S. Downs notes: [t]he missions were primarily concerned with the propagation of the Gospel … [but] they did find the government useful. It lent prestige to their religion … provided financial support for their institutions and gave them [sic] government granted monopoly on education in many areas, an invaluable instrument of influence far beyond anything that such a small group of people could ordinarily have on an alien society.27

But despite their enthusiasm, courage and fortitude—com­ bined with the cooperation of colonial officials—the ABFMS missionaries only partially succeeded in spreading the gospel amongst the caste-Hindu Assamese (and Bengali) population of the Assam plains. The missionary Oscar L. Swanson says that ‘the Bengalis … were proud and hard to win for the Lord. The planta­ tion population and the hill tribes were the most fruitful fields, but I felt that we must reach the Assamese, who wielded an influence far in excess of their numbers’.28 After decades of public service and tireless work in the domains of education, health, print and publi­ cation, population (ethnological) survey, and so on, the number of Christians in the Assam Valley remained remarkably low. Clearly, the fruits of fervent evangelical activity did not reflect in the num­ ber of caste-Hindu Assamese converts to Christianity. Victor H. Sword notes that the ‘Assamese for whom the mission had yielded Sadiya and Jaipur had failed to accept Christianity’29; interest­ ingly, the tribes which lived in the plains, including the Garos and Mikirs, showed a high rate of conversion. Therefore, from the 1870s the ABFMS gradually ‘abandon[ed] [its] earlier partiality for a filtration policy of winning over the influential, “civilized” Hindu gentry of the plains’,30 and redirected its attention to tribal terrains.

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It was evident by the final decades of the nineteenth century that the ABFMS project, while profoundly influencing the lan­ guage, literature and culture of the Assamese people, for instance, through the publications of the Assamese-English dictionary, the Assamese periodical Arunodoi, and much else, had failed to con­ vert them to Christianity. Swanson, for example, remarks: I mentioned my failures in reaching the Indian gentlemen, or babus, as we usually call[ed] them. The shrewd lawyers, the unscrupulous trad­ ers, the proud Brahmins, the worldly-minded Indians who serve[d] the British government, the young and impatient students [were] eager to bring in reform but … [refused] to taste the power of Christ; to these and many others I … often [spoke], but my words had not achieved any visible results.31

For the Assamese, and more so the gentry, the ‘missionary project served … as a harbinger of broad cultural change, with­ out necessarily succeeding in its own objective of bringing about religious conversions’.32 The Assamese upper-caste Hindu gentry welcomed and, in fact, encouraged the missionary initiatives but only to the extent that those did not interfere with its religious and caste beliefs. The Assamese upper castes ‘would regard Christian­ ity as true, but they would not accept it; for they would consider Hinduism as equally true’.33 One reason for the near failure of the missionaries to win over, unlike the tribes, the caste-Hindu Assamese populace for conver­ sion was due to its obvious strong and strict adherence to caste values and norms; and it was the ‘literate, “influential”, “higher class” of the Assamese people whom the missionaries were anxious to convert’.34 Records show the extent to which the missionar­ ies were ignored, challenged, and sometimes even humiliated by the Assamese (and Bengali) Hindu upper castes, particularly the Brahmins, for their proselytizing efforts.35 As mentioned, while the Brahmins and other upper castes were ready to be engaged and involved in Christian learning and enterprise (knowledge), they firmly stood against the idea of formal conversion to Christi­ anity. ‘The plains’ intelligentsia engaged itself in “regenerating” its own culture so as to successfully respond to the challenges posed

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by colonial modernity. Christianity did not appear as an essential clearing house in this project for them.’36 During the closing years of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, after serious introspection and suggestions by the missionaries working in the field, the Home Board had yet another ‘rethink[ing] [on] missionary methodology’.37 Accordingly, it revised its policies. The policy revision saw a serious and final acceptance of ‘the potential for success among low-caste and “tribal” people in different parts of India’,38 particularly the northeastern frontier. Meanwhile, the imperial state, albeit not without certain reservations, formulated, quite interestingly, a policy that ‘accepted missions as intermediar­ ies for “indirect rule ‘in the hill territories of northeast India’.39 The altered policies of the Home Board as well as the imperial adminis­ tration facilitated the start of full-fledged ABFMS work among the poor, lower-caste Hindus and tribes of the frontier. The missionar­ ies, in the circumstances, aimed to expand their work in the arenas of literacy and health. In return they expected only the securing of Christian ‘souls’.40 The ABFMS, of course, had suffered a setback due to the complex caste-conversion issue among the upper-caste Hindus. But that failed, as indicated (due to the revised policies), to thwart the missionary spirit of the workers of the ABFMS. Mis­ sionaries continued to arrive in large numbers, and one such was Oscar Levi Swanson who went on to pursue evangelical activity for forty-three years in the hills and plains of Assam.

The Swanson Tale I Born in Vastergotland, Sweden, Swanson moved to the United States of America (at the age of thirteen) where he attended the Morgan Park Theological Seminary at IIlinois.41 In 1893 Swanson and his wife arrived as missionaries of the ABFMS to Assam. Their first stop happened to be Sibsagar from where they eventually moved to North Lakhimpur, and finally to Golaghat in 1898 to establish the mission station there. As a well known and respected missionary, he was awarded the Kaiser-i-Hind medal for outstanding public service by the British government in India in 1936. The same year he retired from active service in Assam,

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and returned to settle down in the United States of America. Around 1945—the exact year being unavailable—Swanson published his memoirs In Villages and Tea Gardens: Forty Three Years of Missionary Work in Assam.42 In this slim volume of 210 pages Swanson offers a description of his personal experiences as a missionary in a foreign field. In addition to an informative text, the book also contains maps, illustrations and photographs. In fact, it contains almost all the ingredients that go into the making of a fairly satisfactory historical embedded ethnographic account.43 As a text belonging to the colonial missionary (ethnography) writing genre, it provides a socio-cultural narrative—with religious activity as the central concern—of the life and times of the people of Assam. Colonial missionary texts have been put through scholarly scrutiny for quite some time now.44 Given that the colonizercolonized relationship happened to be enmeshed in systems of power, questions have been raised about the ‘right’ and ‘capacity’ of such texts to ‘understand’, and provide ‘authentic representa­ tion’ of the colonized subject. One line of argument suggests that it is difficult, if not impossible, to treat such texts, devoid of any sign of indigenous agency, and hence univocal as they are, as ‘truly representative’. The other, pointing towards the complexity of the aforementioned relationship, calls for their critically (contextually) layered reading. Subscribing to the latter, Jean and John Comaroff note that: the evangelical encounter took place on an ever expanding subcontinental stage; that it was to have profound, unanticipated effects on both colo­ nizer and the colonized; and that, just as colonialism was not a coherent monolith, so colonial evangelism was not a simple matter of raw mastery, of … churchmen instilling in passive … [brown Indians] the culture of European modernity or the forms of industrial capitalism.45

Undoubtedly, the merit of the above argument lies in its non­ reductionist stance, and is certainly very important and crucial. The Comaroffs argue that the colonial missionary texts contain ‘subtexts of disruption’,46 and these—the ‘irrational behavior … mockery or … resistance’47 of the colonized—point towards the

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‘presence’ of ‘other’ voices in them. Swanson’s book, too, allows the possibility of being read along this line of argument. Needless to say, it touches upon nearly all the themes and aspects that inform the contemporary discourse on missionary activity in colonial India in general and the northeastern frontier in particular. The trajectory of missionary initiatives in the north-eastern frontier, given the local social and political conditions, has been somewhat different. But, as mentioned, it shares certain common elements with the other regional missionary trajectories. The three important issues, namely, colonialism, conversion and caste, which are central to the contemporary historiography of mission­ ary activity in India, also run through Swanson’s text. The issue of conversion is of prime concern to Swanson. And that is invari­ ably discussed and located within the larger context of colonialism and the caste system. The text, in addition, provides interesting observations about the relationship between immigration experi­ ence and the growth of missionary zeal. The book begins with the description of the journey of the Swanson family from Sweden to the United States of America, the ‘wonderland of the West’48 as Swanson says. Some influential members of the Swedish Baptist church facilitated the immigration of the impoverished Swedish family to Moline, Illinois. As an immigrant Swanson spent his early years doing odd jobs and, most importantly, learning the English language. However, being unaccustomed to the ways of the Americans and their language, he often became the object of their laughter and ridicule—they called him a ‘green Swede.49 At that point, he notes, ‘besides learning English I also learned some­ thing of greater value. I learned the way of salvation’.50 His active involvement with the local Swedish Baptist church began then, and continued for the rest of his life. He writes: The pastor of the church was eager to win the newcomers for Christ, and the church provided a most suitable social and spiritual training field for those who later were to become the leaders, as well as for those rank and file of that mighty army of God that moved westward, in search of religious and civil liberty … and in the case of many young idealistic immigrants the prospects of full-time Christian service made a strong appeal.51

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In due course, Swanson, who up until then was a member of the Lutheran church by virtue of infant baptism, was baptized again. But now it was the Swedish Baptist church which baptized him. For him, church membership always meant more than mere attendance at service. As a result, he became active in its pedagogic as well as organizational activities. He joined in as a Sunday school teacher and in the evening attended classes on theology and other subjects held for the immigrants. It was around that time that a senior member of the church, one Mrs Bodelson, suggested that he ought to look beyond the confines of the local church. She told him: ‘Oscar, you must go out and preach the gospel to the heathen’.52 Swanson, bearing her advice in mind, eventually enrolled at the Morgan Park Theologi­ cal Seminary. He initially found the place unimpressive in terms of the structure and design. However, he later, after having rational­ ized, realized that ‘the immigrant boys had not come to admire the creations of the minds of men; they had come with the clear conviction that the mind of man was incurably evil and needed the renewing power of the blood of Christ to be lifted above the realms of sin and selfish strife’.53 As one of the European immigrant students—or the ‘adopted problem children’54—of the class of 1889 he continued to study religion and philosophy, and simultaneously grapple with the problems of learning the English language. He writes that the English-speaking students were ‘looked up to … as our superiors in every way, and when sharing rooms with them or taking part in their activities we always felt overawed, and tried to be at our best…. When they honored us with a place on impor­ tant programs we felt very much elated’.55 Having completed his training, Swanson formally joined the ranks of those who were interested to be engaged in the service of Christianity in their homeland as well as outside it. The proposal of Swanson and his wife—he married Emily Wenberg in 1892—to the ABFMS regard­ ing a possible foreign mission to Assam, India was welcomed by the Swedish Baptist church of which both were full members. Swanson was told that his ‘special gifts and … background’56 would suit the work profile in Assam. So, in 1893 he set sail for the distant province of Assam. He

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says: ‘And then again, at the railway station where I had landed as an immigrant lad fourteen years before, not knowing what the new land would offer me, I stood, once again, this time the chosen mes­ senger of the Savior to go out into far distant parts of the world to seek the lost’.57 Swanson made much of the linkage between immi­ gration and missionary service (in a foreign field), and it is not surprising that the trope appears frequently in his account. Dur­ ing his long period of stay in Assam there was no moment when Swanson did not recall his experience of being an immigrant. He then (indirectly) notes that he could withstand the trials and tribu­ lations of being an alien, immigrant man in the United States of America only due to his unmoving faith in God, and service to the propagation of God’s message. Indeed, God turned out to be the singular saviour of such impoverished and helpless immigrants, and the church selected new recruits from such immigrant groups. In fact, it would be worthwhile to examine at some point whether Swanson would have decided to become a missionary (in a for­ eign field) had he not been an immigrant. This, of course, is not to claim that non-immigrants did not choose missionary work. What is argued instead is that Swanson’s immigrant experience perhaps contributed in more than a significant way to his decision of devoting his entire life to missionary activity. The journey of the Swansons’ aboard S.S. Pavonia to Calcutta, India took 32 days. It was during the trip that the family slowly came to realize the difficulties that lay ahead, the most serious of these being the task of spreading the message of Christian­ ity amongst the ‘heathen’ who were neck deep in ‘old ideas’ and ‘superstitions’, and therefore not ‘civilized’. Swanson notes: ‘It dawned on me that on the mission field we were to have many idols and bigoted heathen priests to fight, and to my sorrow … my suspicions were correct.’58 However, the faith in God (and on the British colonial rule in India) provided him with the much-needed mental comfort to continue with the journey. He observes: ‘We dis­ covered that … [the ship] was heavily loaded with whiskey, guns, Bibles and missionaries, a real combination for the conquest of the world.… As we travelled, we saw more and more of the misery of the world where the Christian message had not been proclaimed’.59

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While passing Egypt, Swanson sympathized with the fate of the adherents of Islam who had a ‘poor religion … [with] only a black stone for its adherents to kiss, and the grave of [a] dead prophet’.60 The city of Calcutta, for the Swanson family, did not prove to be very exciting, for it was crowded, poverty-ridden and dotted with Hindu temples, and other holy sites of the ‘heathens’. Swanson’s pity for the Hindus, whose ‘religion had nothing better to offer’,61 only grew with the passage of time, and consequently strength­ ened his commitment to the mission. The family soon left the city and embarked on the trip to Sib­ sagar, Assam, where, upon arrival, no conventional welcome took place. In fact, the multitudes thronging the church to embrace the message of God was what Swanson had visualized. Instead, near empty churches greeted him. In a tone of utter dismay, he writes: ‘But where were the noisy drums, and the gaudy elephants and the fragrant garlands and the addresses of welcome in which the multitudes expressed their eagerness to embrace the Christian religion? About the only ones who paid any attention to me were the pariah dogs … [they] barked at me and snarled in fear.’62 But gradually, overcoming reversals and disappointments, Swanson and his colleagues of the ABFMS set to work using new methods and techniques of evangelization. Apart from obstacles faced by the missionaries in matters of Christian propagation and conver­ sion, the fear of tropical diseases loomed large in their minds. Following the death of a native worker of kala azar, Swanson was shocked not because the worker had died but that he (and his colleagues) ‘had been exposed to the same disease’.63 Taking the hardships in his stride, Swanson continued to work. His primary fields were the tribes including those who were employed in the tea gardens. The tea tribes, he comments, were ‘more easily won for Christ, as they had been in contact with Christianity back in their own country, and having gone out from the old land to a new home, they were susceptible to change and willing to throw away their charms and demon worship for the religion of the white man who gave them labor and provided for all their material needs’.64 Swanson began preaching, in a disarming but disciplined manner, the gospel in public places (mainly the marketplace) where he felt

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it would be most effective; he came to be known as the pioneer of ‘bazaar preaching’.65 At a point he realized, as admitted in the memoir, that his adopted method of preaching called for revision. In fact, he approved of the autocratic method (and its rationale) of one Mr Petrick. He remarks: Mr Petrick was inclined to be a bit autocratic, I soon learned, and perhaps it was the right approach. These men [the native Christians] were accus­ tomed to having a white man do their thinking and give orders. In some ways they were much like the slaves on our southern plantations, except they were not sold or mistreated.66

In 1896 the Swanson family moved to North Lakhimpur to carry on their missionary work. Around the same time Swanson visited the Naga Hills, which was considered a difficult field by most of the missionaries. He found the ‘practically naked savages’, the ‘wild hill-men’ a ‘most interesting people and certainly in need of salvation … but they were not a pleasant lot’.67 He, therefore, returned to North Lakhimpur. The tours in and around the place made him hopeful because of the rising number of converts there. Surely, the success of the Christian faith lay, among other things, in the conversion, as Robert E. Frykenberg opines, of the uniniti­ ated (‘heathen’).68 The missionaries were rarely satisfied with their engagement with the social and educational interventions alone. Such projects, in most cases, were undertaken to ensure conver­ sion through concomitant and effective social transformation and change. For example, at the Fourth World Christian Endeavour Convention held in Agra in 1909, remarks Swanson, the ‘converts with us, men from headhunting tribes, garden laborers, proud Assamese, and intelligent Khasia attracted much attention … and we missionaries did our best to present them as the fruit of gospel preaching’.69 In no case, however, the missionaries claimed to have forcibly converted the people. They suggested that conversion happened due to the interplay of divine as well as human agency and free will. Proselytization or forced conversion was considered immoral, unethical, and hence invalid. A true Christian was one whose ‘external change’ matched the ‘inner transformation’ of the ‘heart, mind and will’.70 Following the ‘historic Christian thinking

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and ecclesiastical declarations’71 on conversion, the missionaries of the ABFMS saw to it that undesirable (bad) habits like smok­ ing and consumption of alcohol were condemned and prohibited among the Christian Baptist converts. Put differently, they strove to make the society fit and conducive prior to undertaking the task of disseminating the message of Christianity; a morally unclean society could never be in a position to receive the divine message. In fact, among others, an issue over which differences devel­ oped between the ABFMS and the Church of England missionaries in Assam was the sale and consumption of alcohol (and the use of tobacco).72 Apart from that, differences between the two groups often manifested in their contending claims over potential conver­ sion fields. As Swanson states: When we were accused by the Church of England missionaries of pros­ elytizing that district [Mongoldai], we were able to convince that their members had come of their own accord and asked for the kind of gospel we preached. But we were asked also to sign a comity agreement for the future, and this was based on the principle that all those who came to us should not be given mission [ABFMS] funds for the support of the work, but should be compelled to rely on their own resources financially.73

Swanson’s observations on the issue resonate with those of Frykenberg’s. The latter writes: [m]ass movements of conversion [forced or otherwise], with whole villages becoming Christian, such as had occurred at the end of the eighteenth century and again in the late nineteenth century among both Evangelicals and Catholics, became a focal point of nationalist concern and opposition in the twentieth century. Such movements were severely criticized by higher-caste Hindus, including Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Gandhi went so far as to openly chastise India’s first Indo-Angli­ can Bishop, Vedanayakam Azariah, accusing him of betraying the nation for his leadership of mass conversions in Danakil.74

Swanson too faced opposition from devout (right-wing inclined) Hindus and Gandhian activists. About the latter he says: ‘It often happened in the market places where I preached that Gan­ dhi’s followers would come in a body and interrupt my services.’75

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The Swanson Tale II By the Christmas of 1898 Swanson had built a house in Golaghat, a place close to Jorhat in upper Assam, and moved there to establish a mission station. His evangelical zeal, he proudly claims, was stronger than ever.76 He writes: ‘With a great deal of pride and many words of explanation I escorted my family around the new “homestead”, and then we bent our knees before God and re­ dedicated ourselves to the task of winning the town, the tea gardens, and as much of the province as we could reach for Jesus Christ.’ 77 A number of new projects were planned and taken up to facilitate the preaching of the gospel. The advantages of an improved printing, publishing, and transport and communication system added to that. The New Testament was revised, and both text as well as story books were written and compiled to meet the rising demand of education. Collaboration with the ABFMS missionaries of other stations was initiated to undertake joint evangelical ventures. The establishment of the Upper Assam Baptist Association (1900) was one of the fruits of the collaboration. The highlight of the entire Golaghat period of Swanson, the memoir suggests, was his attempt to transform, primarily, the tribal societies of Assam in order to ensure the maximum success of the conversion project.78 The Nagas, the Garos, the Mikirs, the Kacharis, and other tribes emerged as the potential target fields.79 About the Mikirs, Swanson writes: The Mikirs were, on the whole, a poverty-stricken and neglected group. The men were almost completely under the curse of opium-eating, and their women had very little interest in anything except an animal exis­ tence. But the preaching of the gospel to barbarians was not prohibited … and so I took it upon myself to give it a trial.80

As a result of individual as well as collective effort of the ABFMS missionaries, the Assam mission, by the end of the third decade of the twentieth century, stood at the ‘top of the ten Baptist mission fields in the number of converts’.81 But the ‘highest-num­ ber-of-convert’ claim was simultaneously accompanied by the lamentation, as Swanson’s report to the ABFMS conference held in

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Jorhat in 1926 shows, that there was ‘no sign of a mass movement towards Christianity’.82 As noted, the missionaries had to regularly face and deal with the resistance of the upper caste Hindu Assa­ mese population to evangelical endeavours. In fact, in the history of Christianity in India caste emerged as the focus of controversy for both the Christian community as well as the potential converts. While the Indian Christian community members grappled with their dual identities of caste and religion, the missionaries found the caste identities of the potential converts the most difficult to negotiate with.83 Caste not only erected barriers within the Chris­ tians but also held back the potential converts from accepting the faith. While lower caste and tribal converts were considerably large in number, upper caste converts, much to the disappointment of the missionaries, were few and far between. Swanson, for instance, was delighted when a caste-Hindu Assamese by the name of Mina­ ram was baptized. He recalls: ‘What a joy in our Bible class that night, and what an encouragement to our Mundari and low caste people to see a member of one of the prominent Assamese families come out and join them in worshipping the Son of God.’84 Since caste, as the missionaries realized, invariably came in the way of social progress and change, and consequently conversion, the institution was systematically criticized and denounced by them. It seems clear that missionaries, as change agents, fully understood and taught practical procedures and provided tools, which they thought nec­ essary for [their own as well their faith’s] survival within difficult social environments of modern India…. In doing so, Western missionaries sometimes clashed with colonial authorities while, at other times, they also utilized or exploited those same authorities.85

The relationship of missionary activity and the colonial proj­ ect has been the subject of both commonplace speculation and serious academic research in India and elsewhere. In relation to Christianity, Christian mission, or even to all things Chris­ tian, the term [colonialism] has been useful for categorically demonizing or epitomizing evil and exploitation, for assigning guilt, or for catego­ rizing anything deemed to be “anti-national”. Christian “colonialism”, in other words, is a manifest form of oppression of the weak (East and South) by the strong (West and North).86

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Modern historiography has more often than not conflated Christianity with colonialism in India and elsewhere. It is true that ‘there is evidence enough to support some instances of such a conflation and to show that, in specific or occasional instances, the conflation has been fully justified’.87 But it is equally true that ‘all too casual conflation of Christianity and colonialism, sometimes crudely blunt or simplistic and sometimes bereft of empirical evidence, seems to have inhibited efforts to find more balanced understandings. Significant elements in the history of Christians in India, and much in Indian history itself, have to be ignored in order to cherish this perspective’.88 As far as Swanson was con­ cerned, the White colonial power played the role of a catalyst (facilitator) in the project of Christian evangelization across the world. Societies and states ungoverned by (White) colonial powers rarely provided much opportunity and hope for missionary work. He avers: I had lived under the British rule in India and studied the colonial power of the Empire at close hand and found in its security one favorable condi­ tion for the evangelization of the heathen. In China and Africa many missionaries had suffered martyrdom for their faith and mission prop­ erty had suffered great losses.89

As a missionary with self-confessed indifference to the politics and the ‘political problems of India’,90 he, however, was aware of the administrative, and other ‘difficulties involved in ruling the colonies’.91 Indeed, he appreciated the British for being able to overcome the difficulties and do a ‘good job of ruling India’.92 In his entire career Swanson (and his wife) availed of the furlough to visit the United States of America only three to four times, and after every trip back to the deeply loved Golaghat plunged deeper into missionary work. Such was the case after the first furlough in 1902, and the second in 1911. By 1917, when the energized and driven Swanson would avail of another furlough, the activities and spread of the ABFMS had reached substantial proportions; for example, his report to the ABFMS in 1916 records that the ‘past year [1915] was the busiest year in his life … [He] travelled not only in the Golaghat field but also in the Sibsagar,

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Dibrugarh, and Sadiya fields. One trip was made to Kohima and also a tour in the Nowgong district’.93 The work done by the mis­ sionaries of the ABFMS amongst the ‘coolies’/tea tribes of the tea gardens was enormous, and the mission came to be locally referred as the ‘Cooly Mission’. The missionaries initially did face resistance from the tea garden authorities. But by the early twentieth-century evangelical activity in the tea gardens had not only begun but was also in full swing. The Golaghat mission was instrumental in organizing Bap­ tist Bible conferences for Christian workers. The conferences facilitated the meeting and exchange of notes between workers of different ABFMS missions in Assam. And certainly, such measures consolidated and strengthened the American Baptist missionary influence in Assam and beyond. In 1936 the centennial celebra­ tion of the Assam mission of the ABFMS was held in Jorhat, and Swanson was one of its most important organizers. It was also the last Christian public ceremony he attended in Assam, for it was the year of his retirement from active service and return to the United States of America. O.L. Swanson … five years after his golden wedding anniversary, and after being widowed, returned to Assam in 1947 at age 80 with his second wife; and as the new wave of missionaries began to arrive, Swanson for two years again preached the gospel in the marketplace, and shared the love of Christ in private conversations, until his death in 1949.94

Swanson was neither a trained scholar nor an accomplished writer. Not surprisingly, his account lacks finesse of expression, not to mention the simplistic and insensitive, if not downright offensive, views he offers on the racial and sociocultural character of India. For instance, his colour preferences and ideas associated with the ‘superiority’ of the White European race are evident in the book. He writes: When the [White, European] children are small they are placed in the charge of an Indian woman, or ayah, who looks after them and sees that no cobras come in striking distance of their little legs. Angry and sick dogs pay no attention to race distinction when attacking a child, and the ayah has strict instructions to keep such animals at a proper distance.95

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Having shared with most of the fellow missionaries and the colonial rulers the ‘White Man’s Burden’ of ‘civilizing’ India, Swanson, in a tone bordering on condescension, acknowledges (by the end of his tenure) that the Indians were finally ‘qualified’ and fit to propagate Christianity in the country. He remarks: The multitudes of India, bound in old customs and religious practices are not won for Christ by a few ambitious white men, but will be won, someday, by the faithful labour and lives of millions of its humble outcastes and others, witnessing for Christ in their own way and to their own people.96

Be that as it may, Swanson’s memoir is an interesting piece of colonial missionary writing. ‘The American Baptists were the pioneers in the ethnological [ethnographic] studies in Assam. Besides a series of articles in the Arunodoi they published interest­ ing accounts of their own of the Garos, Mikirs, Miris and Nagas with whom they lived and worked.’97 The quality of the ethno­ graphic98 content of Swanson’s account may not exactly be on par with that which is found in the writings—magazines, journals, mission proceedings and books—of others ABFMS missionaries. None the less, some of his observations on say, for example, the tea garden labour99 force, the state of (tribal) women, and so forth are considerably insightful. Therefore, his account may be taken as an important addition to the existing oeuvre of missionary (eth­ nographic as well as church history) writing on colonial Assam. Finally, Swanson’s memoir, by shedding light on the complexi­ ties of the preacher-preached relationship in a colonial setting, points towards the necessity and value of adopting a theoretically nuanced frame for locating missionary writings.

Notes 1. Milton Sangma, History of American Baptist Mission in NorthEast India (1836-1950), Mittal Publications, 1987, p. 14; see also, Frederick S. Downs, The Mighty Works of God, Christian Literature Centre, Gauhati, 1971. 2. Ibid., p. 15.

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3. Robert E. Frykenberg, ‘Christians in India: An Historical Overview of Their Complex Origins’, in Christians and Missionaries in India: Cross-Cultural Communication since 1500, ed. Robert E. Frykenberg, London, Routledge Curzon, 2003, p. 58; see also, T.K. Oommen, and Hunter P. Marby (eds), The Christian Clergy in India: Social Structure and Social Roles, vol. I, Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2000. 4. Ibid., p. 58. 5. See, for example, Andrew Porter, R eligion versus Empire: British Protestant Missionaries and Overseas Expansion, 1700-1914, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2004. 6. See, for example, Timothy George, Faithful Witness: The Life and Mission of William Carey, Birmingham: New Hope, 1991; Stephen Neill, History of Christianity in India: 1707-1858, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1985. 7. Heramba K. Barpujari, The American Missionaries and North-East India (1836-1900 A.D.), Spectrum Publications, Guwahati, 1986, p. xii. 8. Ibid., p. xiv. 9. Max Weber, Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,Roxbury Publishing Company, LA, California, 2002 [1904-05], pp. 93-4; see also, Leonard Farnando and G. Gispert Sauch, Christianity in India: Two Thousand Years of Faith, Penguin/Viking, New Delhi, 2004. 10. Weber, op. cit., pp. 93-4. 11. Ibid., p. 219. 12. The term evangelical is often used instead of the term Protestant. The former, essentially a post-Second World War term, generally refers to Anglo-American Protestantism; see also, Frykenberg, op. cit., p. 47. 13. Sangma, op. cit., p. 5. 14. The primary sources for the history and activities of the ABFMS are the annual field reports, missionary conference proceedings and magazines. 15. Jayeeta S harma, ‘Missionaries and Print Culture in NineteenthCentury Assam: The Orunodoi Periodical of the American Baptist Mission’ (256-273), Christians and Missionaries in India: CrossCultural Communication since 1500, ed. Robert E. Frykenberg, Routledge Curzon, 2003, p. 257; see also, Barpujari, op. cit., p. 93. 16. Ibid.; see also, Sangma, op. cit., p. 23; see also, Downs, op. cit., p. 17. 17. Sharma, op. cit., p. 257. 18. Victor H. Sword, Baptists in Assam: A Century of Missionary

American Baptists in Colonial Assam

19. 20. 21. 22.

23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

35. 36. 37. 38.

507

Service, 1836-1936, Conference Press, Chicago, 1936 [1935], p. 59 in Barpujari, op. cit., pp. xv-xvi. Sharma, op. cit., p. 257. Ibid., Letter from Bronson to Peck, 1841, in Barpujari, op. cit., pp. 251-2; see also, Sharma, op. cit., p. 258. See, for example, Mary M. Clark, A Corner in India, Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1907; Geraldine H. Forbes, ‘In Search of the Pure Heathen: Missionary Women in NineteenthCentury India’ (ws2-ws8), Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 21, no. 17, April 1986; Subba, Tanka B. et al. (eds), Christianity and Change in North East India, Concept Publishing House, 2009; Suryasikha Pathak, Missionary Wives in the Evangelical Project in Colonial Assam: Life and Times of Mrs. P.H. Moore, Lecture Series Publication, Lecture XXIV, ICHR-NERC, Guwahati, 2008; Nabanipa Bhattacharjee, ‘Jane Helen Rowlands: Portrait of a Welsh-Bengali Life’, Northeast Review, 11, October-December 2014. Barpujari, op. cit. Ibid., p. xviii. Ibid., p. xix. Ibid., p. xiv. Downs, Christianity in North East India: Historical Perspectives, Christian Literature Centre, 1983, p. 279; Barpujari, The American Missionaries and North-East India (1836-1900 A.D.), p. xxiv. Oscar L. Swanson, In Villages and Tea Gardens: Forty-Three Years of Missionary Work in Assam, Spectrum Publications, Guwahati, 1997, pp. 73. Sword, op. cit., p. 119 in Barpujari, op. cit., p. xxv. Sharma, op. cit., p. 271. Swanson, op. cit., p. 175. Sharma, op. cit., p. 268. Barpujari, op. cit., pp. xxv-xxvi. Sharma, op. cit., p. 264; see also, Copley, Anthony, Religions in Conflict: Cultural Contact and Conversion in Late-Colonial India, Oxford University Press, 1997; Robinson, Rowena, Christians of India, Sage Publications, 2003. Swanson, op. cit., passim. Sharma, op. cit., p. 271. Ibid., p. 272. Ibid.

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39. Ibid. 40. Ibid. 41. Jonathan Larson, ‘A History of BGC Missions in Assam’ (3-4), The Baptist Pietist Clarion, vol. 13, no. 1, October 2014. 42. The book does not mention the exact year of publication. It says that the second edition of the book was ‘first published in the USA by Conference Press around 1945’. In 1997 the first Indian reprint, including a new index, was published by Spectrum Publications, Guwahati. 43. Barpujari, op. cit., pp. xliv-xlix. 44. See, for example, Joseph Mullens, The Results of Missionary Labour in India, London Missionary Society, 1852; Gauri Viswanathan, Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India, Colombia University Press, 1989; Thomas Richards, The Imperial Archive: Knowledge and the Fantasy of Empire, London & New York: Verso, 1993; Simon Gikandi, Maps of Englishness: Writing Identity in the Culture of Colonialism, New York: Columbia University Press, 1996; Kate Teltscher, India Inscribed: European and British Writing on India 1600-1800, Oxford University Press, 1995; Anna Johnston, Missionary Writing and Empire, 1800-1860, Cambridge University Press, 2003. 45. Jean and John Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa, vol. I, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1991, pp. 12-13. 46. Johnston, op. cit., 1800-1860, p. 25. 47. Comaroff, op. cit., p. 37. 48. Swanson, op. cit., p. 15. 49. Ibid., p. 18. 50. Ibid., p. 19. 51. Ibid. 52. Ibid., p. 22. 53. Ibid., p. 26. 54. Ibid., p. 29. 55. Ibid. 56. Ibid., p. 34. 57. Ibid., p. 37. 58. Ibid., p. 40. 59. Ibid. 60. Ibid., p. 41. 61. Ibid., p. 46.

American Baptists in Colonial Assam 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68.

69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82.

83. 84. 85.

509

Ibid., p. 48. Ibid., p. 52, passim. Ibid., p. 54. Larson, op. cit., p. 3. Swanson, op. cit., p. 56. Ibid., p. 62. Robert E. Frykenberg, ‘Introduction: Dealing with Contested Definitions and Controversial Perspectives’, in Christians and Missionaries in India: Cross-Cultural Communication since 1500, edited by Robert E. Frykenberg, Routledge Curzon, London, 2003, p. 17. Swanson, op. cit., p. 94. Frykenberg, ‘Introduction’, op. cit., p. 19; see also, Swanson, op. cit., p. 176. Frykenberg, ‘Introduction’, op. cit., p. 19. Swanson, op. cit., p. 105, passim; see also, Barpujari, op. cit.. Swanson, op. cit., pp. 153-4. Frykenberg, ‘Introduction’, op. cit., p. 23. Swanson, op. cit., p. 149. Sangma, op. cit. Swanson, op. cit., p. 71. Sangma, op. cit., pp. 159-60. Swanson, op. cit., p. 137, passim. Ibid., pp. 77-8. Ibid., p. 146. Oscar L. Swanson, ‘Golaghat: The Golaghat Field 1926’ (17-19), in Report of American Baptist Work in Assam, 2-10 December, Jorhat, Assam, 1926, p. 18, digitally (images.library.yale.edu) accessed on 5 May 2015. Frykenberg, ‘Introduction’, ‘Christians in India’, op. cit.; Swanson, op. cit. Swanson, op. cit., p. 91. Frykenberg, ‘Introduction’, op. cit., p. 16; see also, Comaroff, op. cit.; Bernard H. Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India, Princeton University Press, 1996; Neill, A History of Christian Missions, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1964; Brian Stanley, The Bible and the Flag: Protestant Missions and British Imperialism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Apollos, Trowbridge, 1990; Nicholas Thomas, Colonialism’s Culture: Anthropology, Travel and Government, Carlton, Melbourne University Press, Victoria, 1994.

510 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98.

99.

Nabanipa Bhattacharjee Frykenberg, ‘Introduction’, op. cit., p. 7. Ibid., p. 8. Ibid., p. 9. Swanson, op. cit., p. 80, passim; see also, Robert Bickers, Britain in China: Community, Culture and Colonialism, 1900-1949, Manchester University Press, 1999. Swanson, op. cit., p. 147. Ibid., p. 175. Ibid., p. 147. Sangma, op. cit., p. 162. Larson, op. cit., p. 4. Swanson, op. cit., p. 109. Ibid., p. 182; see also, Oommen and Marby (eds), The Christian Clergy in India. Barpujari, op. cit., p. xlix See, for example, Talal Asad (ed.), Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter, Ithaca Press, London, 1973; Sjaak V. Der Geest, ‘Anthropologists and Missionaries: Brothers under the Skin’ (588­ 601), Man, vol. 25, 1990. See, for example, Sheila Bora, ‘The American Baptist Missionaries Amidst the Tea Garden Workers in the Brahmapautra Valley (1886­ 1936)’, in: The Tea Labourers of North East India: An Anthropological Perspective, ed. Sarthak Sengupta, Mittal Publications, New Delhi, 2009.

CHAPTER 20

Early Response to Christianity in Mizoram ROHMINGMAWII

Introduction The Mizos, who were then known as the Lushais or Chins, or sometimes mentioned as Kukis, were the people living in the hills of the north-eastern part of India, on the southern border of the plains of Cachar. Though they had been fighting constantly among themselves, the Mizos remained outside the domination of any sovereign states for centuries; they lived a politically independent life, even from each other in their own village sites. However, when the British rule extended to the north-eastern part of India, and especially after Cachar was annexed, the Lushais were disturbed because they perceived that the British intruded upon their territorial claim and thus, constant raids were carried out to the plains of Cachar. The earliest tribal raid was in 1826 when a party of woodcutters from Sylhet was massacred by some Kukis. The first ever British expedition to the Lushai Hills was sent in 1844 led by Captain Blackwood. From this time onwards, punitive expeditions had been sent time and again to the Lushai Hills against the tribal raids to the British territory to intimidate the Lushais. But there was no measure to occupy the area permanently until the end of the nineteenth century. A strong expedition was sent to the Lushai Hills in 1889-90, known as the Chin-Lushai Expedition, and permanent posts were established, two in South Lushai Hills (Fort Lunglei and Fort Tregear) and two in North Lushai Hills (Fort Aizawl and Changsil). Capt. H.R. Browne, who was personal assistant to the Chief Commissioner of Assam, was

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appointed as the political officer in the North Lushai Hills which became a district of Assam. In April 1891, the South Lushai Hills was made a district under the Bengal government and Mr G.S. Murray was appointed as the first superintendent of the district.1 Thus, by 1891, the whole of Mizoram was officially under the British rule and a new era began. The chiefs, who were supreme and independent in their own villages, were subdued and were given nominal authority under the British government.2 Close on the heels of the Lushai expedition to Mizoram were the Christian missionaries who arrived in January 1894.3 The Arthington missionaries, Rev. F.W. Savidge and Rev. J.H. Lorrain, were the pioneer missionaries and they were succeeded by the Welsh Presbyterian missionaries. Rev. D.E. Jones was the first Welsh missionary to work in Mizoram. He arrived in August 1897 and he was joined by more missionaries later. The Welsh Presbyte­ rian Mission continued to hold their ground in the northern part of Mizoram with Aizawl as their headquarters when the Baptist Missionary Society started their mission in the southern part of Mizoram with their headquarters at Lunglei. These two missions were the main foreign missions that worked in Mizoram.4 Thus, to this day, it is the Presbyterian and the Baptist denominations that are predominant in Mizoram.

Mission Work The work of the missionaries took place in the areas of education, evangelization and health care. When they came to Mizoram, the pioneer missionaries, Rev. F.W. Savidge and J.H. Lorrain, found the absence of any form of script and, therefore, made it their first task to reduce the language into a written form. This they did by adopting the Roman script. They created an alphabet for the Duhlian dialect, which was widely spoken and understood throughout the Lushai Hills, and it continues to be in use till date. One of the key aspects of the mission work was school educa­ tion. The first school in Mizoram, after the Western model, was started by Rev. Savidge, most probably in 1895, on the site allot­ ted to the mission by the colonial government.5 Their work was

Early Response to Christianity in Mizoram

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continued by their successors and it became one of the most important and lasting marks of the mission in Mizoram. The accomplishment of the Christian missions in education was highly commendable, and the colonial government also recognized their contribution. Thus, the management of schools in the whole Mizoram was eventually placed in the hands of the Welsh mission­ aries from 1904.6 At the same time, the government also played their part in encouraging school attendance among the masses by offering certain concessions. Zairema, a Mizo pastor and scholar, notes, Early in the history, the government also tried to encourage education by exempting those who graduated Class IV Standard of today from forced labour which was a hated imposition by the British administration.… To escape this degrading and laborious task a number of young people joined schools opened by the missionaries.7

The chiefs were shown favour by being given free rations if they took to education, and it was mandatory for them to stay in a hostel.8 The number of schools also increased substantially in the whole district when the government permitted the district authority to open five schools every year up to a maximum of 20 schools. As a result, new village schools were opened, and by 1903, there were 15 schools in the northern part of Mizoram alone. Of these schools, six were in Aizawl and the remaining schools were in other villages. Throughout the British period, the subsidized mission schools were almost entirely of Middle English standard, the primary objective of the missions being to train and employ good preachers. The early students were not all Christians though religious study formed an important part of the syllabus. The general standard of knowledge remained quite low.9 Zairema says that the British gov­ ernment emphasized mass education rather than higher education for the few, the reason for which was to reduce educated unem­ ployment. To start a high school was completely forbidden.10 It was conspicuous that the driving force of the missionaries to educate the masses was to enable them to read the Bible on their own,11 and the early educated Mizos were sent out as teachers with a meagre remuneration of about Rs. 5 (about 61 cents). Yet, often times,

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these village schoolmasters were the respected persons in their vil­ lages as they were the only salaried persons and they enjoyed the privilege of literacy. They acted not only as day teacher[s] but as evangelists and pastors,12 and many of them were church elders. Education was an important agency through which new converts, who later became the most important leaders of the church and staunch supporters of the colonial rule, were acquired. Evangelism and health care are other areas where the mission spent their effort. It was in evangelism, according to Vanlalch­ huanawma, a Mizo scholar, that the pioneer missionaries faced the greatest challenge,13 and for the first few years, there were no converts. The pre-Christian Mizos addressed physical sickness through spiritual means and they performed sacrifices to appease the spirits that were believed to cause them sickness.14 The content of the early sermons in Mizoram seems to be that they could get salvation from all ills through belief in Jesus or Pathian who has power over the evil spirits, which also meant freedom from the costly and numerous sacrifices that had to be offered to the evil spirits. It also preached free entrance to Pialral15 for those who believe and obey God’s word, and those who refused to believe and obey God’s word were to be cast into hremhmun or hell. A Mizo scholar and pastor, C.L. Hminga, believes that hearing they could have a healthy and prosperous life without the costly sacrifices they used to make to the evil spirits, only by putting their trust in Pathian or God, and the possibility of going to Pialral after death which was their highest desired goal not by attaining the cov­ eted Thangchhuah title which was beyond the reach of most people but simply by believing in the Lord Jesus must have sounded like real good news.16 In his book, The Life and Witness of the Churches in Mizoram, he mentions about asking the first generation Chris­ tians why they became Christians. Many of them replied that they became Christians because they feared hremhmun.17 Others said they became Christian because they want to go to Pialral or Vanram. Vanram is the Mizo term for ‘heaven’ or ‘Kingdom of Heaven’. Others said they became Christians to get healed from sickness without sacrificing to the demons.18 It is clear, in any case, that the helpless situation of the natives compelled them to believe the

Early Response to Christianity in Mizoram

515

preachers while the new gospel was forceful enough to give opti­ mism and hope to them on their very own terms. Apart from offering healing from spiritual realm, medical help was also rendered by the missionaries. Even before the first medi­ cal missionary, Dr Peter Fraser, arrived, the missionaries made good use of their tablets of medicine to fight the ‘superstitious belief ’ of the people who connect their physical ailment with the evil spirits and shook the foundation of their belief system. Thus, with all these advantages and supplemented by other factors,19 within a few years since the first conversions, Christianity became popular throughout Mizoram.

New Religion and New Way of Life The first Mizo converts were two young men, Khuma and Khara, who were baptized in 1899, and the number of conversions increased at a rapid rate since then. These new converts started to make evangelist tours of villages20 and in the first census in 1901, there were 736 male literates and 25 female literates in Mizoram, with the number of Christians being 45 (including two missionaries and 13 Khasis).21 In the first decade of the twentieth century, the growth was from 57 converts to 6,134 in the north and from 19 communicant members to 1,931; south Mizoram had a larger number of Christians than north Mizoram at the beginning of the decade.22 The Mizo religion was a primal one with simple religious dogma and practices before Christianity was preached to them,23 and a chance of doctrinal contradiction with the new religion was more or less absent. Besides, the missionaries were tactful enough to make use of the existing terminologies to define the new reli­ gion, which helped the Mizos understand their teachings without difficulty; for instance, they continued to use Pathian of the Mizo religion for the supreme God of the Christians, and Pialral for heaven or a destination after death (though in a different sense). Since the Mizos were already familiar with the existence of a supreme being, when the Christian God was identified with the one they were always worshipping (Pathian), they easily understood

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it and readily accepted it. In traditional Mizo belief, there was a scope for changing one’s sakhua (generally translated as religion) by the practice of saphun, i.e. in Mizo traditional society, different tribes had different sakhua and if a person wanted to change his sakhua, he can saphun by performing the required ceremonies and he then adopted the sakhua of the tribe he wanted to be incor­ porated into. Therefore, notionally at the least, it was acceptable, even, on occasion, reasonable, to convert to a new religion. Nevertheless, the real problem lay in the fact that believing in the new religion or becoming a Christian required them to desist from their old lifestyle and submit to a new one. Zairema mentions that being new creations, the new converts felt that they should cut themselves off completely from old religious practices. For example, every Mizo family kept a castrated pig for family worship and only the very nearest relatives shared in the feast that followed. Christians could not take part in this and thus cut themselves off from blood family ties and adopted their fellow Christians as their new family. The annual festivals were usually associated with the old religious worship and, as the Christians refused to take part, they were regarded as anti-social elements.24 The newly converted were expected to observe Sundays, and could not participate in any village ceremonies which involved religious functions related to their old religion like kawngpuisiam, Fanodawi, etc. Becom­ ing good Christians made them bad citizens. Thus, it is clear that conversion to Christianity involved many things other than simply believing in Jesus. The adoption of a new religion brought a radical change to the whole existence of the Mizos in which the Mizo Christians were expected to adapt themselves. In the beginning, conversion basically meant giving up the kelmei charm (a tuft of the tail of a goat the Mizo would wear around the neck to ward off evil spirits) and drinking zu (local rice beer).25 It was a very common prac­ tice for the Mizos to smoke tobacco and drink rice beer; it was part of their socializing activities. However, the people hardly got drunk save the elderly members on special occasions like festivals, ceremonial functions, etc. Though the missionaries did not allow smoking a pipe inside the place of worship, they did not prohibit

Early Response to Christianity in Mizoram

517

its use among the Mizo Christians. However, total prohibition was enforced against taking liquor, and this became the biggest obsta­ cle for the Mizos to become Christians, because in Mizo society, zu drinking was as common as drinking tea today. Zu was offered to visitors as a sign of hospitality, and was, of course, an essential part of all Mizo rituals. The Lakher and Mizo Christians, however, were not allowed to drink wine, beer or spirits, and no one who ever touched alcohol could become a Christian; they would be ex-communicated from the church if they were found drinking rice beer.26 Besides, the early church prohibited the use of drums in worship, and the traditional Mizo songs and dances were all banned. While many cultural practices of the Mizos were forbidden in the light of the new religion, many others came to be intro­ duced. Observation and rest on Sunday was a new practice and was initially frowned upon as they were anticipated not to be hav­ ing enough harvest. In their style of dressing and other practices, the converts were more inclined to adopt the new culture, and the guideline of the church also showed favour to the tide of changed. Since social and religious practices of traditional society were too closely intertwined, denouncing one meant disowning the whole system. Thus, the new convert must have felt and appeared as a complete stranger in his own home.

Response to the Mission Work Like all other tribal societies, the introduction of colonial rule and a new religion brought profound changes in the Mizo world. In fact, drastic change is one of the most dreadful things to happen in the tribal societies because, as Frederick S. Down says, their society is like a ‘fragile eco-system’ that functions well unless disturbed by ‘alien intrusion’27 but breaks down easily if one area fails. Downs says thus, [the] imposition and extension of British administration during the nine­ teenth and twentieth century in the hill areas of the North-East created an unprecedented social trauma. Tribal societies are highly integrated. Distinctions cannot easily be made between religious, social, cultural and

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political elements in those societies. Anything that affects one aspect of the society will affect the whole.28

With regards to the Mizo society, the superintendent of the Lushai Hills, A.G. McCall, observes that ‘[the] advent of the Brit­ ish form of government and control for a time certainly paralyzed the people; and the British occupation of Lushai [Mizo] marked the presence of a power hitherto unforeseen and unimagined. The world of Lushai [Mizo] was staggered and bewildered.’29 The establishment and development of the church in Mizoram went simultaneously with the colonial dominance and not only political but also social and cultural changes that swept the area gave way to a completely new way of life. Therefore, though some people were receptive to changes, there were non-conformists who refused to give in to change, and the chiefs, who were mostly traditionalists and whose interest was at stake, were the most noticeable strik­ ers in the initial years, though contempt from the masses was also detectable. When the western model of school was introduced by the missionaries, many parents had antagonistic feelings. Apart from want of conviction about any special value or prospect of the schools, the Western system of education seemed unsuitable to the activity-prone Mizo boys and girls who are used to practical training for basic survival skills through the traditional learning system. It was also found to weaken zawlbuk (young men’s dormi­ tory), the traditional structure of learning and the discipline that it stood for. Thus, many parents perceive that schooling was an only excuse of their children to escape their chores and they did not see the need of attending schools, especially for girls, when they were busy trying to make ends meet. Thus, even in 1905, there was a small number of students in proportion to the number of schools in the Welsh Mission area. The average distribution of pupils in each school was less than 10. It is interesting to note that while the ratio of the literate Mizo by 1903 was already twelve to every one thousand people, the ratio of the students in mission schools by 1905 was far below one to a thousand.30 It implies that while the Mizos had great skill for learning, they did not bother to attend

Early Response to Christianity in Mizoram

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the mission schools, according to Vanlalchhuanawma, because of ‘it’s close association with the alien administration, an association which meant not simply a superficial cooperation but a deeper level of relationship with a vested interest’.31 Rev. D.E. Jones, in his private correspondence, mentioned that the boys who attended the school regularly cast off the charms that the Lushais (Mizos) wear around their necks, and several were enthusiastic in their efforts to tell non-believers. The burning of charms and amulets by some of the pupils caused hostile reactions in parents and the public as a whole. They threatened and inflicted punishment, and villagers tried to persuade them not to attend school. Some of the older boys were called upon to act as coolies as an excuse to send them away from the influence of the missionaries.32 It is thus obvi­ ous that the Mizos related mission schools with the new religion and, therefore, adopted a hostile attitude towards them. As people began to be receptive to the gospel, persecution soon followed, mainly from the chiefs. There could be many reasons for the growing antipathy towards the new converts. One of the foremost reasons was the apprehension by the chiefs as they saw in Christianity a possible threat to their already limited author­ ity, recognizing as they did the close connection between the Saps (Whites) and the Christians33 Mr Thankunga, a Christian leader, was actually alleged by the chief as attempting to deprive him of his chieftainship, and a case of an ignominy was filed against him. As the case was tried in the presence of the plaintiff and defendant, the court was on the rampage, condemning Thankunga guilty, and sentencing him to 10 years imprisonment. It imposed upon him the gruesome task to dig the ground as a punishment.34 In the meantime, most chiefs were hostile to the Christian move­ ment, perhaps because they thought Christianity was becoming a disruptive element in the normal village life.35 The Christians were found to have developed a stronger obligation to their faith than to their chiefs, and this produced growing enmity between the Christians and the chiefs. The first Christians in the south at Pukpui village were accused by their chief of disobeying orders as they were unwilling to work as coolies on Sundays. Therefore, a case was filed against them at the court of the sub-divisonal

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officer (civil), Lunglei.36 Some Christians were beaten and expelled by their chiefs from their villages at midnight or during a heavy downpour of rain, because they were Christians. Christians were denied their privilege of cultivation by the chiefs, who also forbade giving food to them. In some villages, non-Christians refused to bury Christians, which was a real trial when there were only two or three Christians.37 It is interesting to note the promptness with which the Brit­ ish government came to the rescue of the new Christians in the early years. For the expelled Christians in the south, a site was given by the government at Sethlun as early as 1902, in which the first Christian village, which they called Pathian Khua (‘God’s vil­ lage’), was set up.38 There are a few other such Christian villages, like Durtlang,39 which was set up with the help of the government. Here, the government exercised their power to raise anyone they liked as a chief or eliminate a chief if they so desired. This was one trend followed by the government, which clearly and deeply undermined the authority of the chiefs in the minds of the people, and, at the same time, proved the superior power of the govern­ ment. As such, the Mizos, for a very long time, perceived all the Whites, irrespective of their trade or nationality, to be a ‘man of power’. One of the most intense persecutions was seen in Khan­ daih village where the first permanent Mission school was set up. One spectacular thing recorded about the Christians in Khandaih village is that the newly converted Christian ladies began to wear a sacred cloth called thangchhuahpuan which could be worn by only those who earned a coveted name thangchhuah.40 The local people, particularly the elders of the village, did not like this trend as it was an obvious challenge to their traditional belief. Besides, the number of Christians increased considerably, especially after the 1906 revival that created a feeling of apprehension. It was a general feeling that the Christians disturbed the normal life of the village and mistreating of the Christians in this village began from May 1906.41 Those village elders whose children were Christians were not allowed to drink with the chief unless their children revert to their previous belief. Christians were beaten and looted of their possessions and expelled from the village in the middle of the

Early Response to Christianity in Mizoram

521

night in the midst of heavy rain and mosquitoes.42 When the per­ secution did not die down even after a year in the new village site, Rev. D.E. Jones visited the village to see the situation for himself. Vanphunga, the chief of Khandaih village, and his brothers, who were also chiefs in the neighbouring villages, not only refused to listen to the missionary but also mocked him by pouring rice beer on his head. Christians who gathered at the zawlbuk were beaten by Thangkama, brother of Vanphunga in the presence of Rev. D.E. Jones at which the missionary told him that he refused to recog­ nize any authority other than that of King Edward VII.43 When the chief ’s representatives later came to meet the superintendent in Aizawl, they were told that if the chief do not stop persecuting the Christians, his chieftainship would be put to an end. Henceforth, Vanphunga did not dare to carry on his persecution and stopped hounding the Christians.44 It was made clear that unless they were ready to fight the Brit­ ish government, the chiefs could do nothing against the Christians even if the Christians refused to follow customary rules. Rev. D.E. Jones also wrote, ‘The chiefs soon found out that they dare not injure the Christians without bringing down upon their heads the punishment of government.’45 Therefore, persecution gradually died down. In 1903, when the missionaries, Rev. J.H. Lorraine and Rev. F.W. Savidge returned to Mizoram under the Baptist Mission­ ary Society, they wrote in their report that the opposition to the gospel which at one time was strong had almost disappeared and the people were willing to know more about their message.46 The number of Christians increased considerably. Though the extreme opposition was undemonstrative, opposi­ tion to the new wave of faith took the form of cultural upsurge, which was termed by many as the ‘revival of heathen song’. In the year 1908, an unprecedented movement began in north Mizoram, called Puma Zai’ which was to sweep the whole Mizoram. The Puma Zai was a zai (song) composed of a double-lined refrain of any number of verses with an ambiguous appellation puma at the end of the first line of every refrain47 and it was sung in a tradi­ tional tune. Group singing had always been an important aspect in Mizo

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culture of festive singing and dancing. The Mizos have special songs for every occasion, and public singing was usually accom­ panied by dancing which became livelier with a cup of rice beer, which was always served. As mentioned earlier, due to its close association with heathen practice, traditional songs and tunes, along with drums, was forbidden by the missionaries for the Mizo Christians, and so was drinking rice beer. The upsurge of Puma Zai was thus a strong challenge to the new faith. It was ‘spreading like wild fire’ under the auspices of the chiefs who declared public holidays and prepared feasts for the whole village in honour of the music. Rev. J.M. Lloyd described it quite clearly: One of the severest tests came in 1908, when there was a sudden resur­ gence of heathenism. An old Lushai [Mizo] tune was set new words and became immediately popular. The words were generally in praise of a great chief [a chief who persecuted Christians]. It was reputed and by many, to have been sung by a jungle spirit. It spread like wildfire to all parts of the hills. Amazing manifestations of feeling accompanied the singing almost as though the revival was parodied. Great feasts were held during which the young men and girls danced in ecstasy. These demon­ strations were made in every village. The cause of Christ seemed doomed in Lushai [Mizo]. The traveling preachers complained that preaching was a burden. The Gospel was losing ground and no one wanted to listen to it. It is significant to note that this ribald sprit and the popularity of this song remained till the time of famine.48

The lamentation of Lloyd is understandable, as no one wanted to listen to the gospel. The Puma Zai was greatly endorsed by those chiefs who earned reputation as persecutors of Christians in particular. This is one reason why the Zai was perceived by many as anti-Christian. Though the Puma Zai was not primarily anti-Christian in its content, it was a challenge to Christianity as it represented something of a cultural revival that was denounced by the new religion. The leaders of Puma Zai movement regarded their movement as purely indigenous while Christianity was origi­ nally foreign.49 Thus, to some, it represented a reaction against the new religion. Some even went to the extent of mocking the evange­ lists preaching in the streets in Puma Zai by dancing and singing:

Early Response to Christianity in Mizoram

523

Lehkhabukengvailemchang Chanchinsawirengrenga puma. (Carrying book, imitating foreigners Always proclaiming something, puma)50

Some spread rumours that all who acclaimed Puma Zai would be ‘exempted from offering sacrifices to demons, and that the dread spirits would in the future be appeased if such votaries merely offered, when ill, a few hairs or feathers instead of the usual sacrifices of animals and birds’; it was confidently affirmed that the movement would silence the Christian hymns forever and stamp out the new religion, as an easy means to attain healing and a lighter form of sacrifices was offered to the people to be freed from their spiritual bondage.51 C.L. Hminga felt that it was ‘definitely launched as a measure to stop people from becoming Christian’. He also maintains that the chiefs who were aware of the efficacy of the Christian hymns tried to silence them by popularizing the Puma Zai52 but it is probable that to the general masses, it represented their yearning for their old system and practices which seems to be increasingly out of date with the launching of the new religion. The movement also showed that they were aware of the fact that Christian message of healing without necessary costly sacrifices had attracted the people and thus offered the promise of cheaper token sacrifices of ‘a few hairs or feathers’ to counter-balance it. Many Christians found it difficult to keep aloof from their friends who were having a good time in the Puma Zai movement. The church was, however, strict, and would discipline any mem­ ber who even hummed the Zai even unconsciously. A number of Christians withdrew and returned to their old life because of this movement.53 Puma Zai ended with the bamboo famine in 1912. Short lived as it was, it provided occasion for the people to express their feel­ ings without having to fear reprisal from the government, unlike in persecution. The pent-up feeling of the people was released through songs in tune that was familiar to them but that was beginning to wane because of the new faith. That is why it received a loud applause from the people in all the villages.

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Conclusion During the colonial period, the whole of Mizoram was swept over by Christianity and a huge majority of the Mizos became Christians. It is often said that the Mizos were easily persuaded to embrace Christianity and they did so without much resistance. In reality, the seed of Christianity was sown in the midst of physical and mental persecution and adversity, and was not readily accepted by the people. The nature of opposition to the invading new religion was both active and passive in Mizoram. The opposition was conspicuous in the first decade of the twentieth century but all forms of resistance ended in utter failure. The mission work was closely supported by the government, and there is no doubt that the initial success of the missionary work in the hills was indebted to help from the govern­ ment officials. The government showed favour to the mission work since the first missionaries landed in Mizoram, by providing them a secure place to establish themselves, and supporting their mis­ sion work, either directly or indirectly. It was made known to the native people that though the missionaries were not as powerful as the officials, they belonged to the conquering nation, and their interest would be safeguarded. Thereafter, it became quite clear to the native rulers that raising hand against the mission brought them unpopularity in the sight of the rulers and that could be det­ rimental to their own interests. Gradually, the extreme opposition died down and mission work began gaining ground. The growth of the number of Christians in Mizoram was very remarkable espe­ cially after the revival of 1906, which continued till Christianity pervaded the whole area. However, it was through the resurgence of their traditional features in Puma Zai that the Mizos tried to reclaim their space in the battle for cultural supremacy, and they were able to wedge some chunks; yet political supremacy and the tide of modernity favoured the stake of Christianity. Eventually, the Mizos lost the battle. They became powerless as ‘the pillars of their strength had tumbled down with shame and humiliation before these new and irresistible British invaders’.54

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Notes 1. Animesh Ray, Mizoram, National Book Trust, New Delhi, 1993, p. 42. 2. R.B. McCabe to the Secretary to C.C., Assam,19 January 1891. H/ Poll, CB. 1, F. No. 5, MSA, Aizawl. 3. Though in 1891, Rev. William Williams, a missionary among the Khasis visited the Lushai Hills and preached the Gospel, it was in 1894 that the missionaries began to station in Mizoram. 4. Other mission works are relatively smaller and their influences were also limited to certain areas or groups of people. For instance, the Laker Pioneer Mission confined their work among one of the Mizo clans, the Maras in the southernmost part of Mizoram. 5. Vanlalchhuanawma, Christianity and Subaltern Culture, ISPCK, Delhi, 2006, p. 106. 6. The Annual Report of Baptist Missionary Society (BMS) on Mizoram, 1901-1938, published by Mizoram Gospel Centenary Committee, Baptist Church of Mizoram Serkawn, 1993, p. 12. 7. Rev. Zairema, God’s Miracle in Mizoram A glimpse of Christian Work among Head Hunters, A Synod Press and Bookroom, Mizoram, 1978, p. 22. 8. Lalhmuaka, Z oram History (written in Mizo), published by the author, 1992, p. 156. 9. S.K. Chaube, Hill Politics in North East India, Orient Longman, Patna, 1973 (revised 1999), pp. 47-8. 10. Rev. Zairema, op. cit., p. 23. 11. Since the teachers and church workers were one and the same, in the curriculum, a prominent place was given to Biblical teaching. Other subjects of elementary education were given secondary importance, This is pointed out by J.V. Hluna in Church and Education in Mizoram, Spectrum Publications, Guwahati, 1992 and Lalhmuaka, Zoram Zirna Lam Chhinchhiahna (The Records of Zoram Education) Tribal Research institute, Aizawl, 1981. 12. Rev. Zairema, op. cit., p. 22. 13. Vanlalchhuanawma, op. cit., p. 109. 14. The Annual Report of Baptist Missionary Society (BMS) on Mizoram, op. cit., p. 110. 15. The Mizo concept of heaven; but this place is reserved only for those who fulfilled the necessary requirement, that is thangchhuah, and it is not for everyone.

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16. C.L. Hminga, The Life and Witness of the Churches in Mizoram, The Literature Committee, Baptist Church of Mizoram, Serkawn, 1987, p. 63. 17. ‘Hremhmun’ is a Mizo term coined to translate the English term ‘hell’, and it literally means ‘place of punishment’. 18. Ibid., p. 62. 19. Other factors like colonial backup, situation of the Mizos who were under pressure, etc., are also responsible but since it is beyond the scope of our topic, it may not be discussed here. 20. This is one peculiar feature of Mizo Christians. As soon as they became a Christian, they were eager to preach to non-believers, so they travelled about preaching the gospel. This is probably one reason for the rapid conversion of the whole tribe into Christianity. 21. Lalhmuaka, op. cit., p. 156. 22. Ibid., p. 81. 23. It is difficult to determine what sakhua meant to the Mizos in pre­ colonial times. Some writers like Pastor Saiaithanga in his Mizo, Sakhua, maintained that the Mizo sakhua is simply the worship of ramhuai, jungle spirit. European writers prefer to call them ‘animists’. However, after careful analysis, Vanlalchhuanawma proposed that the Mizos developed a definite idea of God called Pathian and of the supernatural world (see Vanlalchhuanawma, op. cit., pp. 61-4). 24. Rev. Zairema, op. cit., p. 10. 25. Animesh Ray, op. cit., p. 133. 26. N.E. Parry, The Lakhers, Tribal Research Institute, Mizoram, 1932 (reprinted 1976), p. 21. 27. Frederick S. Downs, Essays on Christianity in North East India, Indus Publishing Company, New Delhi, 1994, p. 28. 28. Ibid. 29. A.G. McCall, The Lushai Chrysalis, Tribal Research Institute, Dept. of Art and Culture, Govt. of Mizoram, 1949 (reprinted 2003), p. 196. 30. Vanlalchhuanawma, op. cit., pp. 131-2. 31. Ibid., p. 131. 32. From D.E. Jones to Thomas dated Aijal, North Lushai Hills, 26 June 1899, as quoted in Hminga, op. cit., p. 59. 33. One example is that the chief ’s spouse in Khandaih had opposed the Christians from the beginning and used to tell her husband that since the Christians had close connection with the Saps, they are a threat to his chiefdom. See J.V. Hluna, ‘Khandaih Harhna’, in

Early Response to Christianity in Mizoram

34.

35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

41. 42. 43. 44.

45. 46.

527

Harhna, Mizoram Revival Centenary Souvenir (1906-2006), Synod Revival Committee, 2006, p. 322. S.L. Saihnuna, Reflections on the Centenial Church and the Mission Paradigm in Mizoram, published by Mrs Nikungi, Lunglei, 2001, p. 55. However, C.L. Hminga mentions that Thankunga could have become the chief of the new Christian village if he was willing, but he preferred to be an evangelist and he later became one of the first pastors. Whatever has happened to the judgment is left to obscurity so far. Hminga, op. cit., p. 61. Saihnuna, op. cit., p. 55. Hminga, op. cit., p. 73. Ibid., p. 62. M. Suaka, on the recommendation of the District Superintendent, Lt Col H.W.C. Cole, purchased Durtlang for making it a Christian colony. See Saihnuna, op. cit., p. 93. Hluna, Khandaih Harhna, op. cit., p. 323. ‘Thangchhuah is the top­ most position in the social ladder of the Mizos and very few could attain it as the cost involved was extremely heavy. It demanded foresight, sincere dedication, hard labour, selfless sacrifice, magna­ nimity and in summary, genuine tlawmngaihna on the thangchhuahpa who became liberated from different kinds of restrictions in life and from misery in the next world. It involved the whole society in all the ceremonies and provided a spirit of joy, freedom, prosperity and celebrity and all that religion or sakhua meant to the community. In addition to earthly fame and honour, the thangchhuahpa was supposed to be accompanied by the spirits of all the animals he had killed on his way to pialral, Paradise, where he would receive a warm welcome and enjoy all the comforts of life.’ (Vanlalchhuanawma, op. cit., pp. 646-7.) Hluna, Khandaih Harhna, op. cit., p. 323. Ibid., pp. 322-31. Ibid., p. 330. Ibid., p. 331. ‘Vanchhunga, one of the first evangelists in the North has a list of five chiefs who persecuted Christians most. They were Vanphunga of Zawngin; Thangkama of Sihfa; Lalzika of Buhban; Dorawta of Saitual; Lalruaia of Lailak. Welsh Foreign Mission Report, 1906-7, p. xxxviii. Annual Report of Baptist Mission Society, op. cit., p. 9.

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47. Vanlalchhuanawma, op. cit., pp. 180-1. 48. J.M. Lloyd, On Every High Hill, Welsh Mission, Liverpool, 1957, pp. 54-5; Hminga, op. cit., p. 74. 49. Kipgen Mangkhosat, Christianity and Mizo Culture, Mizo Theological Conference, Mizoram, 1996, p. 230. 50. Hminga, op. cit., p. 87. 51. J.M. Lorrain, South Lushai Mission Report, 1912; Kipgen, op. cit., p. 231. 52. Hminga, op. cit., pp. 86-7. 53. Rev. Zairema, op. cit., p. 18. 54. McCall, op. cit., p. 197.

CHAPTER 21

Tribulations of the Catholic Mission in Mizoram 1925-1946 SANGKIMA

Christianity was ushered by Rev. James Herbert Lorrain and Rev. Frederick W. Savidge, the missionaries sponsored by the Robert Arthington Pioneer Mission of London, in Mizoram, then the Lushai Hills, in 1894. However, before the coming of these two missionaries, Rev. William Williams of Welsh Presbyterian Mission, then the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Foreign Mission, had paid a flying visit to Mizoram in 1891 from Shillong with an eye on a new mission field. But all hopes of making Mizoram a new mission field went in vain when he died suddenly. Meanwhile, the two missionaries had to leave Mizoram for their own reasons and Rev. D.E. Jones of the Welsh Presbyterian Mission took over the charge at their own request in 1897.1 Although the two missionaries did not see much of the fruits of their four years of labour, they really had prepared the groundwork for missionary activities in Mizoram. The history of the Catholic Mission in Mizoram provides a long and interesting story. Though the mission had its first contact with the Mizo in 1922, a few people founded the church on 1 Feb­ ruary 1925.2 Since then, the local faithful, together with the higher authorities of the church from outside Mizoram, put strong pres­ sure on the provincial as well as the district authorities to allow the Catholic mission to set up stations in Mizoram. But that permis­ sion was granted only after 31 long years of vigorous struggle. The restriction was lifted only on 18 December 1946.3 The long delay thus, did great harm to the mission, and the growth and progress of the faith among the native people was severely hampered.

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Meanwhile, it may be noted that in matters of religion, Indians are a very sensitive lot and as a result, the country was a religiously divided one. For this reason, the British government, after coming to India, followed a strict policy of neutrality in religious matters.4 However, the government modified its policy towards the religions in north-east India by utilizing the services of the missionaries. The modification was possible only when the government was fully convinced that there were no religious prejudices among the hill tribes.5 Thus, the missionaries were granted help to open schools for the native peoples. In this way, the government pro­ moted secular education with the aid of missionaries. The first two commissioners of Assam, David Scott (1826-31) and Francis Jenkins (1834-61), who were Evangelical Christians, made valu­ able contributions for this changed policy. ‘The fact that most of the Hill Tribes in the North-East India were not under the influ­ ence of the traditional Hindu and Islam religions was the reason for this change in British religious policy’.6 Now, with this background in view, an attempt has been made in this paper to find out and explain the reasons why the Catholic mission faced difficulties in its efforts to enter Mizoram and set up a permanent footing. It is suspected that some agents played a clandestine role. This is what we have to find out. As noted earlier, the Catholic mission was a late starter in Mizoram. Hence, the mission had to tackle the problems created by the government and the Protestant denominations already working in Mizoram. To destabilize the proposed coming and working of Catholic mission in Mizoram, the colonial powers introduced a biased and one-sided religious policy. Their policy was ‘one mission in one area’. The same policy had been applied among the Khasis for the same reason.7 The policy was considered as an exceptional measure to deal with the intractable tribes of the Mizo. Taking this policy as a guiding principle, the govern­ ment adopted a religious policy not allowing two missions to work in one area on the plea that there would be religious quar­ rels. This proposition has, however, no relevance because a close review of the British policy statements on religion hardly reveals

Tribulations of the Catholic Mission in Mizoram

531

that the British government adopted a particular measure against the Catholic mission in Mizoram. Yet, the provincial as well as the district authorities adopted an anti-Catholic policy in Mizoram. Therefore, refusal to admit the Catholic mission in Mizoram was not ‘God’s providence’8 but the creation of the British authorities concerned with clandestine influences of the Protestant denomi­ nations. The British religious policy was vividly and unequivocally revealed by her Majesty Queen Victoria in her Proclamation of 1858.9 Firmly relying ourselves on the truth of Christianity and acknowledging with gratitude the solace of religion, we disclaim alike the Right and the Desire to impose our Convictions on any of our subjects. We declare it to be our Royal Will and Pleasure that none be in anyway favoured, none molested, or distrusted, by reason of their Religious Faith of Observances, but that all shall alike enjoy the equal and impartial protection of the law; and We do strictly charge and enjoin all those who may be in authority under us, that they abstain from all interference with the Religious Beliefs or Worship of any of our subjects, on pain of our highest displeasure.

From this Proclamation, it appears that the British admin­ istration imposing restrictions on Catholic mission in Mizoram obviously violated the spirit of the Proclamation itself. Meanwhile, the other two policy statements namely ‘Religion in the Lushai Hills’ and ‘Relationship between Missions, Lushai Churches and the Administration’ are also completely silent about the discrimi­ nation of one particular denomination. These policy statements were formulated by the commissioner, Surma Valley and Hill Divi­ sion.10 However, the Hill Officers’ Conference held at Shillong on 21 July 1937 on the subject, ‘Relations with Mission’, passed 10 res­ olutions. The Resolution No. 4 reads: ‘Resolved that since there are missions in any hill district it is undesirable that any other should be allowed.’11 The commissioner, communicating the proceedings to the superintendent, Lushai Hills, made a specific remark on the resolution as: ‘His Excellency is not prepared to issue orders on this and will consider each specific case on its merits.’12 The term itself as expressed is neither conditional nor imposing. Whatever

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might be the case, the indifferent attitudes of the provincial gov­ ernment as well as the district administration towards the Catholic church were arbitrary in nature. Thus, from the preceding discussion, we can now envisage the position of the government on the Catholic mission. The govern­ ment’s partialities against the Catholic Mission were obviously witnessed when the priest visited Mizoram on 22 August 1925. Thangphunga, the leader of the newly founded Catholic Church and a circle interpreter in the office of the superintendent, was sent away from Aizawl town and repeatedly warned not to propagate the teachings of the Catholic church in and outside the office. Besides, Thangphunga alleged that the superintendent strictly watched over him and always asked whether he got remuneration from the Catholic mission.13 One day, just a day after his return from a tour, Thangphunga was summoned by N.E. Perry, the superintendent, at his office and warned him not to preach the Catholic faith while touring. The superintendent did this on the basis of the informa­ tion he received from the pastor of Reiek. Thangphunga was also directed to meet Rev. E.L. Mendus, a Presbyterian missionary, at his bungalow the next morning (16.12.1925). Thangphunga fur­ ther remarks: ‘So the Superintendent ordered me not to preach the gospel and the rules of the Catholic Church in my Circle even if anyone ask me the same.’14 For this act of hostility, Thangphunga requested Fr Boulay to make room for him so that he could resign from service at any convenient moment. About this time, Fr Boulay was visiting Akyab. Soon after his return from the visit, some disgruntled elements circulated a rumour that Fr Boulay had baptized some 20,000 men. Naturally, this created ill feeling and problems among the Protestants in Mizoram.15 The news was published in the paper called Universe, dated Friday, 13 November 1925. The Protestants accused Fr Bou­ lay as having a hand in the publication. Informing about it to Fr Boulay, Lalhuta writes: ‘If you had not seen the newspaper you may ask from Rev. D.E. Jones, Aijal’.16 In another letter, Lalhuta writes, ‘Suppose you might come again, the Welsh mission will request again the superintendent to hinder you to go out of the

Tribulations of the Catholic Mission in Mizoram

533

station. Therefore, you must also take permission for going out to some other villages.’17 After Fr Boulay’s visit, the Welsh mission attacked the Catho­ lics more than ever. The attacks were chiefly channeled through their monthly Christian newspaper called Kristian Tlangau. In one of the issues in 1926, for instance, out of the total pages of twelve, seven were devoted to the Catholic Church and its teach­ ings. The same words were also printed in pamphlet form and distributed free of cost.18 The efforts appear to be working because the progress of the Catholic Church was sluggishly slowed and as a result, some of them left the church.19 The uncompromising attitudes of both the groups also sometimes led to hot discussions over the teachings of the Catholic church. Lalhuta writes: ‘One day, Chhuahkhama Pastor and Liangkhaia Pastor, Hranga Pastor and some other deacons came to me to compare Roman Catholic and the Protestants. I was very pleased because I can have a chance to meet them face to face. But the conversation could not be sweet because they talked too much lies.’20 The Welsh mission was accused of adopting a measure to hinder the growth of the Catholic Church. According to this accu­ sation, the missionaries supported the dependents of the chiefs by giving them free education at schools. In this way, the Welsh mis­ sionaries reportedly induced the chiefs to hate the Catholics.21 This policy, too, appears to have been working. The threat to the Catholic mission in Mizoram was also noted by Rev. D.E. Jones when he wrote: ‘We have another shock lately. Several men from a village eight miles away, from among the Salvation Army people near here, have been down to Chittagong asking the Roman Catholic fathers to come and begin work in the country.…’22 Wenger reported that the leaders of the Mizo church were aware of the danger of the Catholic mission and made the people well-informed enough to be able to stand against all threats and persecutions.23 Also, when the priest visited Mizoram in 1925, the Welsh missionaries panicked and took necessary measures to check possible inroads of the Catholic church by presenting Catholism

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‘as if it were un-gospel-like and un-Christian’.24 They also made efforts by way of countering the Catholic menace to occupy as many villages as possible with schools, for villages without schools would give the Catholic mission the necessary openings to start their work. Convinced that it alone would not be able to combat the Catholic mission who had enormous resources, the Welsh mission joined hands with the Assam Baptist Mission in opposing the Catholic movement in the Northeast.25 That the government would give the Catholic mission permission to work in Mizoram was the fear that prevailed among the Welsh missionaries.26 A decade is a long period of time for those who are waiting anxiously. Ten years was long enough for the Catholics to see the priest for the second time in Mizoram. The successive priests knew what they should do to their flocks in Mizoram. They had to sac­ rifice even their own life and liberty for them. This is the point which no priest with any conscience can evade and this is the point where the priests must stand. But due to opposition they could not do much. During this intervening period, the priests kept writing letters to the government entreating for permissions. Fr Boulay knew well that the commissioner was the key point in securing permission. Therefore, he was determined in his attempt to obtain what he called ‘justice’. This led to the subsequent rise of tension between them when Fr Boulay was accused of asking ‘official rec­ ognition and encouragement’27 from the government. In reply, he said that he did not need such encouragement because the same was already provided in the Queen’s Proclamation of 1858. He told the Commissioner in clear terms and said, ‘We shall surely move heaven and earth to obtain justice.’28 He also asked for a personal interview with him at Silchar. His prayer was granted and in his interview on 19 January 1927, Fr Boulay told the commissioner clearly of his aims with the Mizo Catholic Christians and the latter appeared to have been convinced when he writes: After our conversation a day or two ago I have suggested to the Assam Government that it might be well to revise the whole situation with regard to Missions and the standing orders of Government about them. This will of course, apply to the whole Province and not to the Lushai Hills only. Whether anything will come to this I am, of course, unable to

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say but the consideration is likely to take some time. I was very grateful for the opportunity you gave me of discussing with you personally your aims with regard to the Lushai Hills.29

The interviews, however, produced no tangible result. The government remained stringent as ever before. When the Bishop asked for permission from the Government of Assam in 1931, the chief secretary reminded him of the earlier decision of the central government not allowing the Catholic mission to work in Mizoram and said that if one mission was allowed at the present time, even Hindu Mahasabha and Muslims would also certainly follow suit.30 Despite the avowed assertion of the government, the local leaders did not give up hope. They persisted in their relentless efforts to secure the permission from the Government of Assam. Therefore, as a step for the fulfilment of their cherished goal, in 1939, a memorandum31 was submitted to the Governor of Assam through the Superintendent, Lushai Hills. To the exultation of the leaders, the memorandum31 was forwarded and the leaders thus deputed Siamliana and Zalawma to pursue the matter and meet the governor himself at Shillong. They were given Rs. 45 to meet their travel expenses. They were sent as advised by the assistant superintendent of the Lushai Hills who also promised to do the needful even at the risk of standing before the governor. The inspector general of police, Assam whom Siamliana knew per­ sonally was also visited. He, too, promised them to help in any possible way he could. Even the help of Leo Herrick Singh was sought to provide them with food and other resources.32 They treated the matter as urgent because they should have apprised the governor of the situation before he finalized the case. Unfortu­ nately, however, they were detained at Badarpur. The petition was also withheld by the commissioner.33 This was communicated to the leaders officially.34 Meanwhile, the Welsh mission, taking stock of the situation, opened more schools in the villages where they had no schools before. This strategy was spelled out to destabilize the inroads of the Catholic mission, which was likely to come out at any time. In 1934, Thangphunga and Chawnga again submitted a peti­

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tion to the governor imploring him for the permission to visit Mizoram by the Catholic mission. The petition was considered and to this effect, the superintendent, in accordance with the instruc­ tions he received from the commissioner issued order, thereby requesting the head of the Catholic Church in whose jurisdiction the petitioner resided to submit a formal application giving par­ ticulars of the visiting priest.35 In response, the bishop, sparing no time, submitted a formal application by telegram on 24 August 1935, and the same was granted without any further delay. Ever since the 1935 visit, the government was expected to relax the restrictions imposed upon the Catholic missionaries to Mizoram. On the contrary, the government maintained status quo thus upsetting the whole plan formulated for Mizoram including the tour programme in which 20 villages were listed out for a visit.36 Also, the Second World War deeply hampered the programme of the Catholic church in Mizoram. During the War, the priests had to confine themselves at their respective stations in case of unprec­ edented happenings. When the war was over, a new ray of hope dawned again for the church. This time, the leaders, with a renewed will, rolled up their sleeves with a view to removing the restriction. Hence, in the beginning of 1946, a short petition was submitted to the superintendent praying him to allow the Catholic priests to have a permanent station in Mizoram. The petition was signed by eight persons.37 In his reply, Macdonald, the superintendent, writes: ‘Foreign missionaries cannot enter the Lushai Hills without the permission of His Excellency the Governor. Though this petition is not altogether clear to me, I think, this is probably a sufficient answer to it—Returned.’38 Reading the content of the Superintendent’s letter, the lead­ ers thus felt the need to submit a fresh petition to the governor of Assam in a more meaningful and effective way. Thus, in 1946 they had a census of the Catholics and catechumens in Mizoram and they were 1,172 in number. With the signatures of these members, a fresh memorandum was submitted to the governor of Assam on 13 September 1946, thereby stressing the hardships they had been

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suffering for the last twenty years due to non-availability of priests to administer their spiritual needs.39 The copy of which was sent to Fr Bianchi, secretary to the bishop of Shillong for information. The memorandum was forwarded by MacDonald, the superin­ tendent, with strong objections: ‘Forwarded—I strongly opposed any admission of Foreign Roman Catholic Missionaries into the Lushai Hills.’40 Fortunately, however, the governor of Assam, Sir Andrew Gourlay Clow, was succeeded by Sir Henry Knight for a short period. His secretary R.W. Godfrey, a Catholic, was very helpful. Rev. Fr Bianchi, the bishop’s secretary was a good friend of Godfrey’s. The combination of these two persons was found to be very effective in getting the permission. To the surprise and intense joy of the people, the governor thus removed the restric­ tion with immediate effect in 1946. The order was passed on 15 December 1946, but officially it was issued on 18 December 1946. The secretary thus informed Fr Bianchi with the following letter: ‘I am directed to inform you that His Excellency the Governor has passed orders to the effect that there is no bar to the Catholic mis­ sionaries residing in the Lushai Hills and ministering to the people of their faith.’41 As soon as the prohibition was lifted, the bishop of Chittagong appointed Fr A. de Montigny and Fr Roberts Lavoie to go to Aizawl and survey the place. R.W. Godfrey also instructed the superinten­ dent, Lushai Hills, to issue an Inner Line Pass for the two visiting priests. The priests, accompanied by one servant proceeded on 13 January 1947. From the comment of Fr de Montigny it appears that the journey was terribly fraught. ‘Only the real love for souls keeps our courage up.’42 They reached Aizawl on 14 January. On 13 January, the superintendent informed Thangphunga through Sainghinga to collect all his followers and come to his residence, now Raj Bhavan, the next day. When a good number of the faithful turned up on 14 January, the superintendent deliv­ ered a very long lecture on the possible impact of the visit. He also discouraged them not to embrace Catholicism. It is reported that one of them, named Sweeti (Sui), stood up and questioned the superintendent. The session was a long one. It was started about

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11 in the morning and it was dark when it ended.43 By the time the meeting was over, the two priests entered the town, and they were directed to proceed straight to the superintendent’s residence where they saw the two Welsh missionaries waiting for them. It is also reported that they were at the table till late night discuss­ ing the manner in which the priests visited Mizoram. Though the details of the discussions were not revealed, the session was long and acrimonious. After their return, Fr Montigny, reported to Fr Bianchi: I better not mention what we said, but I could surely assure you that our coming was most undesirable in their opinion, but we did try our best to convince them as politely as possible that owing to that great principle of freedom of conscience, no one could stop us from staying among our flock and moreover, owing to the kind permission of His Excellency, the Governor, we had been allowed not only to come but even to reside in the Lushai Hills.44

The thaw seemed to be short-lived for the Catholics, for some sections of the people continued the fight to dislodge the per­ mission. To boost up their expectations, the governor, who had previously withheld permission to the Catholic priests, returned to Shillong. The Welsh mission did not sit idle either. They sent two men to Shillong to pursue the matter and brought with them two important documents. One was the superintendent’s letter of objection towards allowing the Catholic missionaries to settle in Mizoram. The second document was the Mizo Union Party’s reso­ lution refusing admission of missionaries other than the Welsh and Baptist missions.45 Due to this pressure, the governor was about to alter the order. But owing to the interventions of the bishop and other high profile personalities, the order remained intact. With this, the threat was over for good. Finally, the bishop of Chittagong appointed Rev. Fr George Breen, in-charge of Mizoram, to be assisted by Rev. Brother Gilbert Boucher. The two missionaries took up the assignment and came to Aizawl on 15 April 1947. Temporary shacks were constructed for them at the site of the present church—Christ The King Cathedral, Kulikawn. Col Warman, the commandant, supplied

Tribulations of the Catholic Mission in Mizoram

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them with two tarpaulins for the roof. In 1948, construction of the church began and it was completed in the same year. So, the faith came to stay in Mizoram.

Conclusion To establish the Catholic mission in Mizoram was not easy. There was strong opposition from the government, particularly from the district administration. The main reason put forth by the government was that there would be overlapping areas of operation. The Protestant denominations also covertly joined hands with the government in obstructing entry to the Catholic mission in Mizoram. The attack was more from the Welsh mission than the Baptist of South Mizoram. There is no evidence to prove that there was serious opposition to the Catholic mission from the Baptist. The proven fact is that one of the aspirants for the catechist was strongly recommended by J.H. Lorrain, the Baptist missionary at Serkawn, Lunglei. The government policy towards the Catholic mission in Mizoram was a clear violation of the 1858 Proclamation, which says that no religious denomination was favoured within the Brit­ ish Empire. Still, the resolution no. 4 of the Officers’ Conference in 1937 was a further breach of the religious freedom granted by the proclamation. The restriction imposed upon the Catholic mis­ sion in Mizoram before the Officers’ Conference is by no means understandable on the ground that the government had made no particular statement on religion before other than the resolution of the conference. The permission granted to the Catholic mission for a permanent residence in Mizoram by the governor of Assam is yet another indication that there was no religious policy prohibit­ ing one particular religion anywhere in India. Thus, whatever might have been the policy of the government, the fact is that had it not imposed curbs on the Catholic church, and had the priests been allowed to settle in Mizoram in the begin­ ning of 1925, the history of Christianity, in general, and that of the Catholic church, in particular, would have been quite differ­ ent from the present. Sharing this view, C.L. Hminga noted, ‘Had

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they [the British administration] allowed them [Roman Catholic Mission] the story would have been very different from what I am telling [the reader] now.’46

Notes 1. Welsh Foreign Mission Report of 1897. 2. Peter Thangphunga, ‘Mizorama Katholik Lo Chhuah Dan Leh A Awm Zel Dante Tlem Tlema Lawrkhawm (A Brief Account of the beginning and growth of Catholic Church in Mizoram)’ (Unpublished Typed Manuscript) 1952, p. 1. 3. Letter No. EXZL/34.45/10-GS of 18 December 1946. 4. George Maliekel, History of the Catholic Church Among the Khasis, Sacred Heart Theological College, 2005, Shillong, p. 70. 5. Ibid., p. 71. 6. Ibid., p. 72. 7. Nalini Natarajan, The Missionary Among the Khasis, Sterling Publishers, New Delhi, 1977, p. 73. 8. C.L. Hminga, The Life And Witness of the Churches In Mizoram, GLS Press, Bombay, 1987, p. 159. 9. The Calcutta Gazette. Extraordinary, dated Monday, 1 November 1858. 10. G.D. Walker, commissioner, Surma Valley & Hill Division to the Suptd., Lushai Hills, Memo No. 2680-82-GD/6 August 1938. 11. Proceedings of the Hill Officers’ Conference. Memo No. 3348-50-G.S. dated Shillong, 26 July 1935. From J.P. Mills Secretary to Governor of Assam to the Commissioner, Surma Valley & Hill Division. 12. From G.D. Walker, Commissioner Surma Valley & Hill Division, to the Superintendent, Lushai Hills, Memo No. 2680-82-GD/August 1925. 13. A Letter of Thangphunga to Fr. Boulay, Aijal, 15 December 1925. 14. Ibid. 15. Mathew Laldailova, publication details?, p. 54. 16. A Letter of Lalhuta Sailo to Fr Boulay, Aijal, 21 December 1925. 17. Ibid., Aijal, 16 June 1926. 18. Kristian Tlangau (Christian Herald) kum XV, Bu No. 175, April 1926. 19. A Letter of Lalhuta Sailo Fr Boulay, Aijal, 16 June 1926. 20. Ibid.

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21. Ibid. 22. A Letter of D.E. Jones to Mr. Morris, 10 November 1925 (Quoted from The Life and Witness of the Churches In Mizoram by Rev. Dr C.L. Hminga, p. 155). 23. Baptist Mission Society, Printed Report for 1926 (Quoted from The Life and Witnesses of the Churches In Mizoram, by Rev. Dr. C.L. Hminga, 1987, pp. 158-9). 24. Dena, Lal, Christian Missions and Colonialism, Vendrame Institute, Shillong, 1988, p. 6. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid. 27. A Letter of Fr Boulay to A.H.W. Bentick, Commissioner Surma Valley & Hill Division Chittagong, 8 January 1927. 28. A Letter of A.H.W. Bentick, Commissioner Surma Valley & Hill Division, Silchar No. 35G of 5 January 1927. 29. A Letter of A. Bentick, Commissioner of Surma Valley & Hill Division to Fr Boulay, Chittagong, Silchar, 21 January 1927. 30. A Letter of W.A. Cosgrave, Chief Secretary to the Government of Assam to Right Rev. Mrgn. Le Pailleur, Bishop of Chittagong, No. Pol. 864/2337 A.P. Shillong, 11 April 1931. 31. Memorial submitted to His Excellency, Michael Keane, Governor of Assam, 9 June 1933. 32. A Letter of Thangphunga and John Chawnga to Fr. L. Goggin, Aijal, 13 November 1933. 33. From W.L. Scott, Offg. Commissioner, Surma Valley & Hill Division to Superintendent Lushai Hills, No. 2732G of 2 October 1934. 34. Letter of Suptd., Lushai Hills No.1724 G/16 of 10 October 1934. 35. Superintendent, Lushai Hills Order Memo. No.1359-G111-16, Aijal, 2 August 1935. 36. A copy of Draft Tour Programme of Rev. Fr L. Goggin, Chaplain for Syhlet, Cachar and Lushai Hills for the month of October and November, 1936. 37. A copy of Petition of the Catholic leaders submitted to the Superintendent, 12 August 1946. 38. Superintendent Lushai Hills, No.3505 G/Orgl. 7 September 1946. 39. A copy for petition submitted to His Excellency the Governor of Assam, 3 September 1946. 40. Superintendent Lushai Hills, No. 3505 G/Orgl. 7 September 1946. 41. Letter No. EXZL/34.45/10-G.S. of 18 December 1946.

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42. Telegram Copy sent by R.W. Godfrey, Secretary to the Governor of Assam, to Superintendent, Lushai Hills No. 1470G of 12 January 1947. 43. Thangphunga; unpublished mss, p. 14. 44. A Letter of Fr Montigny to Fr Bianchi, Badarpur, 27 January 1947. 45. Thangphunga, unpublished mss., p. 16. 46. Hminga, op. cit.

CHAPTER 22

Colonial State, Christian Missionaries and the

Politics of Persuasion in Early Nineteenth-

Century Bengal

SANTANU SARKAR*

This is now well-accepted that in hegemony power is not exercised by the ruler upon the subordinate through the means of coercion only; rather it is persuasion which is mainly used to create hegemony over the subject. It is also known to us that the history of colonial India is replete with instances of the use of the coercive mode of power exercised by the British ruler. The objective of this paper is not to discuss the coercion, but highlight the instrument of persuasion utilized by the British to legitimize and consolidate their rule over India in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and the role of Christian missionaries in it with special reference to the province of Bengal. It is now a commonplace proposition that the capitalist state is not always coercive; it can persuade its people to collaborate in its rule. In short, the capitalist state has its hegemony. But as far as the colonial domination is concerned, many literatures rule out the possibility of such a hegemony. They viewed the colonial state always as a coercive state. Collaboration by the colonized people is viewed either as an aberration (betrayals by the lackeys of colonial power) or as a myth produced by the colonizer. This underesti­ mates the strength of colonial power and misses out on how the *I am thankful to Sibashish Bandyopadhyay for providing me the preliminary idea of this paper through one of his papers published in Bangla Academy Journal, West Bengal.

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colonial power reaches into the minds of the colonized people and tries to reform (or rather deform) them into the end product, the ‘colonial mind’. The theoretical discourses on the concept of power and hege­ mony have tried to demonstrate that the mode of persuasion appropriated the ideology of the subaltern and hegemonized it as a policy of rule. The ruler has always tried to construct the ideol­ ogy of the subaltern. If we look at the history of colonial India we can also see that the British also tried the same modus operendi on the Indian people and it was the Christian missionaries who helped them in this project. This paper shows how the missionar­ ies had contributed in this project of consolidation of power of the colonizers through the means of persuasion. In his writings, Antonio Gramsci tried to show that the state should not be reduced to the repressive state apparatus but it includes a certain number of institutions from ‘civil society’ like the church, and the schools. After Gramsci, Louis Althusser had shown that other than the repressive state apparatuses (like mili­ tary, police, jurisprudence) there are other ideological apparatuses (like the religious institution, educational institution, etc.) which are used by the ruler to legitimize their rule over their subjects. Althusser wrote, In order to advance the theory of the State it is indispensable to take into account not only the distinction between State power and State appara­ tus, but also another reality which is clearly on the side of the (repressive) State apparatus, but must not be confused with it. I shall call this reality by its concept: the ideological State apparatuses.1 … I shall call ideological state apparatuses a certain number of reali­ ties which present themselves to the immediate observer in the form of distinct and specialized institution … we can for the moment regard the following institutions as ideological state apparatuses… • the religious ISA (the system of the different churches), • the educational ISA (the system of the different public and private ‘schools’) • the family ISA, • the legal ISA, • the political ISA (the political system, including the different political parties).…2

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These are the means of persuasion. To legitimize the rule of colonizers the British Christian missionaries also used some of these ideological apparatuses, mainly the church and the school. Here we shall show how the missionaries supported the coloniz­ ers structurally as well as ideologically to expand and consolidate their power over their subjects through the means of persuasion. The East India Company had been carrying on trade with India from the beginning of the seventeenth century. Settlements were established and territories acquired. There was a regular stream of soldiers, sailors, civilians, merchants and adventurers from Britain coming to India for nearly 200 years, but few missionaries had been sent out by Britain. The East India company was cautious in its attitude towards mission­ ary work until 1813, lest it should antagonize Indians, either Hindus or Muslims. It scrupulously followed a policy of non-interference in the religious affairs of the people and deliberately discouraged the work of missionaries in the territories of company.3

One of the Directors of Company from London once remarked that ‘he would rather see a band of devils in India than a band of missionaries’.4 The policymakers of the Company thought that if they did not interfere in the religious beliefs of the Indians, they could readily gain the confidence of the natives. To facilitate this they not only restricted themselves from interfering with the religious belief of the natives, they had established the Calcutta Madrasa in 1780 and the Benares Sanskrit College in 1792. To prove themselves pro-native sometime they also used to join local religious festivals. William Ward, a missionary from Serampore mission, had written in his journal that after the defeat of Tipu Sultan, ‘a deputation from the government went in procession to Kalee Ghaut, the most opulent and popular shrine of metropolis and presented 5,000 rupees to the idol in the name of the Com­ pany, for the success which had alluded the British arms’.5 In a letter to Lord Cornwallis, Jonathan Duncan, the then Resident of Benares, wrote that the establishment of Sanskrit College would be helpful to the British, because when the Hindus would see that the government had more interest in the philosophy and religious

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texts of the Indians than the local monarch or ruler, then respect for the British ruler of Hindus would be increased.6 The Company was worried that the missionaries would spoil their colonial project by interfering in the cultural life of the Indi­ ans, and thereby inciting rebellion. Therefore, they introduced the licence system and passed a law to prohibit the missionaries from coming within the company territory in India. The law provided that be it further enacted, that if any subject or subjects of his majesty, etc., not being lawfully licensed or authorized, shall at any time or times, etc., directly or indirectly, go sail or repair to or be found in the east India, or any of the parts foresaid, all and every such person and persons, are hereby declared to be guilty of a high crime and misdemeanour; and being convicted thereof, shall be liable to such fine or imprisonment, or both fine and imprisonment, as the count in which such person or per­ sons shall be convicted, shall think fit.7

It is a matter of curiosity that at this point of time the mis­ sionary was co-opted in the imperial project of the British in India. When Halhed wrote his Bengali grammar to learn Bengali language for the Company civilians during the time of Warren Hastings, he emphasized in the introduction of the book that, ‘we may reasonably presume, that one of its most important desiderata is the cultivation of a right understanding and a general medium of intercourse between the natives of Europe who are to rule, and the inhabitants of India who are to obey’. To make this project of ‘who are to rule’ and ‘who are to obey’ successful through the ‘right understanding’, ‘between govern­ ment and its subjects’, Lord Wellesley had established Fort William College in 1800, where the civilians from Britain used to learn the vernacular and the culture of India. This college became the insti­ tution, which brought missionaries and administrators together. A missionary from Serampore Mission, William Carey was appointed as a teacher of Bengali and Sanskrit at this college. Wil­ liam Carey and the Serampore Mission as a whole had contributed a lot to the persuasion policy of company. The renewal of the Charter of East India Company was due

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in the year 1793. When the discussion was on about the Charter, William Wilberforce, member of the British parliament, one of the directors of the Company, and, more important, a representative of the evangelists, proposed the withdrawal of the prohibition of missionary activities in the territories of the Company. But the majority of the directors were against it, so it was rejected. But after 20 years, when the discussion about the Charter started again, Wilberforce was successful and the prohibition was with­ drawn. The person who was instrumental in pursuing his proposal through was Charles Grant. Charles Grant was an evangelist priest of the Clapham Sect and first came to India in 1767 to serve in the military. He returned to England in 1770 but came back to India in 1773 as an officer of the Company. He finally returned to England in 1790 with enor­ mous wealth from India. He and John Shore played a major role in the implementation of the Permanent Settlement of Lord Corn­ wallis. Grant joined British parliament in 1802 and had become the Chairman of East India Company by 1805. In 1786, when he was in India, he took initiative for the promotion of Christianity in India. He brought out a booklet entitled A Proposal for Establishing a Protestant Mission in Bengal and Bihar for the purpose, which was distributed among the natives. But Lord Cornwallis did not approve of the project. After returning from India, Grant wrote a monograph named, Observations on the State of Society Among the Asiatic Subjects of great Britain, Particularly with Respect to Morals and On the Means of Approving It. This monograph played a major role in changing the policy of the directors of Company about the missionary activities within company’s territory. The representa­ tive of the evangelists, Wilberforce placed his arguments before the directors, citing from Grant’s monograph only. To understand the nature of his argumentation, the philosophy of evangelism has to be understood. After the industrial revolution in England, with the change of economic structure, the ethical and ideological spheres also changed a lot. In the first phase, the education of Wesley brothers and Whitfield and the campaign of the Methodist Church helped to construct a new ethical value amongst the society. In the second

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phase of the late eighteenth century, the Methodist theology was summed up in ‘evangelical revivalism’. It became a very powerful ‘pure’ theology of Christianity at that time which was introduced by the Clapham sect. John Shore and Charles Grant both belonged to this sect. One of the main propositions, on which the evangelicals con­ structed their theory, is the idea of ‘conversion’. They believed that an unexpected and radical ‘enlightening’ moment might come to a man’s life, which could change the person completely. This divine experience would help him to overcome the ‘ignorance’ of life. If a man felt that he was not liberated in the true sense, it implied that he was still under the sway of his heathen instincts and supersti­ tions. He would be awakened from his long ignorance and start a new life that may lead him to God only after this divine experience. And after that the man would lose his/her earlier identity totally. If a man has to be free from his past sins, then he has to engage with God individually. After repentance the sinful human conscious can awaken. Only then can he achieve self-empowerment. Even after that, if a human being does not keep his soul pure by the means of prayer and practice (work), then gradually he will lose his new, enlightened experience and relapse into superstition. Therefore, if one needed the grace of God, he had to share and spread his divine/ enlightened experience to other ignorant/heathen people of the world. So other than the practice of religious belief, propaganda and preaching had a major role in evangelist theory. That is why ‘to evangelise the poor dark, idolatrous heathen, by sending mission­ aries in different parts of the world not blessed with the glorious light of the Gospel’,8 in 1792, ‘The Particular Baptist Society for propagating the gospel amongst the heathens’ was established at Kettering on the outskirts of London. William Carey belonged to this organization. In its first meeting on 2 October 1792, its objec­ tive was unanimously decided that it will ‘Humbly desirous of making an effort for the propagation of the Gospel amongst the Heathens, according to the recommendation of Carey’s Enquiry, we unanimously resolve to act in society together for the purpose; and as in the state Christiandom each denomination, by exerting itself separately, seems likeliest to accomplish the great end, we

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name this the Particular Baptist Society for propagating the Gos­ pel amongst the heathens’.9 The evangelists believed that the ‘ignorant’ people needed some education. The Evangelists and Methodists both thought that conversion needed at least some working knowledge about the Bible. They thought that God’s silent wish/scheme was reflected through the history of mankind and civilization, and the British rule over India was nothing but a wish of God coming true. The divine intention was that, delivering power must be exercised with responsibility. It was the responsibility of the British to free the millions of ignorant natives from the heathen superstitions. This is what was said by Charles Grant in his monograph. Grant summed up the laws, art and rituals of Hindus as full of superstition. The lifestyle/civilization/culture of the Hindus was underdeveloped due to their moral degradation. The hegemony of the Brahmins was the main obstruction in the awakening of the indigenous population. Introducing some reforms in Hindu laws would not be able to alter the situation, only radical change of the Hindu mind and character would transform their lives. Only education could free them from their superstitions. If education freed them from their ignorance and illusion, that will pave the way to their conversion to Christianity. The Evangelist strategy was designed so as not to incite any political or social unrest in India; rather it would free the Indians from their ‘heathen practices’. He stated that first it was necessary to lessen all kinds of differences—linguistic, religious, and ritualistic—between the Indians and British. It was the responsibility of the British to ‘make’ the Indians like Englishmen. Grant’s perception of Mission Education within the Evangeli­ cal system was part of his belief in political reform along Christian lines and partly an awareness that the expansion of Company rule in India required a system of ‘interpellation’—a reform of man­ ners, as grant put it that would provide the colonial with ‘a sense of personal identity as we know it’. Caught between the desire for religious reform and the fear that the Indians might become rebel­ lious, Grant implied that it was, in fact the ‘partial’ diffusion of Christianity, and ‘partial’ influence of moral improvements that

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would construct a particularly appropriate form of colonial sub­ jectivity. Grant produced knowledge of Christianity as a form of social control. He was sanguine that ‘partial reform’ will produce an empty form of ‘the imitation of English manners which will induce them (the colonial subjects) to remain under our protec­ tion’. In the year 1813, when Wilberforce argued in the parliament of Britain, he only reiterated Charles Grant’s position. The main thrust of argument of the Evangelists was that, if company wanted to consolidate its power over its colonial subjects then it was not enough to keep control over resources and labour only. In the second phase of colonial expansion it was necessary to target the ideology and mind of Indians and take control of it. It was the continuous effort of the Evangelists like Wilberforce and Grant, which compelled the British parliament to take the responsibility of ‘Indian education’. To implement this civilizing responsibility, the British parliament had withdrawn its restriction on missionary activities in the territories of East India Company. A new clause was introduced in the Regulation of East India Company (clause no. 43) where it was stated that from there on the Company would spend 1,00,000 (one lakh) rupees annually for the development and revival of literature and introduce and expand the scientific knowledge among the natives.10 This study attempts to show that the East India Company had changed its policy towards the natives of India in the year 1813 as a result of continuous rhetorical as well as political pressure by the Evangelists. The old as well as the new policy were both adopted for the sake of colonial expansion and consolidation of colonial power. The new policy, which was adopted by the British parlia­ ment under the influence of the Evangelists, was very effective for imperial power, and that was proved especially after the revolt of 1857. A majority of the English-educated elite natives were against the mutiny of 1857. That is why the then Vice-Chancellor of the University of Calcutta had stated in a speech in 1860, if education was provided to the Indian people from Cape Camorine to Hima­ laya (south to north) then a revolt like 1857 would never recur.11 This goes on to show that the missionaries had shown foresight

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in supporting the expansion and consolidation of British Empire. They not only pursued the members of the British parliament by writing pamphlets and propaganda material, but at the same time were instrumental in implementing this new policy which con­ sisted of spreading English education (knowledge) amongst the Indians. Immediately after the Charter Act, British missionaries who were working in India had taken the responsibility of imple­ menting this policy. This presentation reflects on some instances of that transition. William Carey, the missionary from Serampore, made some suggestion as to how the lakhs of rupees provided for education in the new Charter Act of 1813 might best be spent. He suggested that primary education could ideally be promoted by dividing the whole country into circles of 150 miles in diameter. Each of the circles would be headed by one superintendent for all the schools of the area, who will reside in the centre of the circle.12 It may not be irrelevant here to use the Foucouldian idea of changing notion of crime and punishment. In his work Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault had shown that in the transition from feudalism to capitalism, Europe had changed even the concept of crime and punishment. To cope up with the new social system, they intro­ duced new type of punishment, which gave importance to the inner domain of the human mind.13 Jeremy Bentham proved to be a touchstone in this journey. He dreamt of a new type of prison. He named it the ‘panopticon’. Bentham stated that the perfect prison/surveillance system would be one in which the cells for the convicted would be constructed in a circle, in the centre of which there would be a watchtower from where the guard could watch the jailed inmates. The prisoners thus would never know for certain whether they were being watched, so they would effectively police themselves, and be as actors on a stage, giving the appearance of submission, although they were probably not being watched.The role of the superintendent, Carey thought, would be somewhat similar. Carey’s ideas were carried forward at length by another missionary named Joshua Marshman from Serampore, in his pam­ phlet entitled Hints Relative to Native Schools. The view expressed

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by him in the pamphlet was nothing but the position taken by Charles Grant earlier. The basic idea of these pamphleteers was that Hinduism was in part responsible for the prevailing ignorance of the Hindus and its inherent problems were exacerbated by such ignorance. The Bengalis were ignorant of almost everything relat­ ing to morality, intellectual and spiritual fulfilment, the nature of God, or ethics, history, geography, and science. To implement the new policy, Serampore missionaries estab­ lished an ‘Institute for the Support and Encouragement of Native Schools’ in 1816. Marshman’s plans contained in his ‘Hints Rela­ tive to Native Schools’ were put into effect with the help of this institute, resulting in a mushroom growth of schools. The primary schools of the Baptist Mission very soon proved their worth. By 1818, the mission had 126 vernacular schools with 10,000 pupils. In this context, we may say that the Christian missionaries of Serampore were more foresightful; they had a difference with the Company people on the language policy which was adopted. There was a major controversy over the medium of instruction. There were three schools of thought; the ‘Orientalist’, who wanted continued study of Sanskrit classics through the Sanskrit medium; the ‘Anglicist’, who wanted Western education in English; and the vernacularist’, who wanted the same in the appropriate vernacular. The Serampore missionaries were among the leaders of the latter party. Marshman sets forth their reasons in the Hints Relative to Native Schools—the vernacular medium would make it easier for the native people to acquire education, and be conductive to social stability. Marshman recalled the experience of Europe, how the renais­ sance had leavened whole nation because it had come through the vernaculars rather than some language known only to be learned, and he believed that the same process could take place in India; the product of the vernacular schools would spread abroad this ‘new learning’ in their normal social intercourse. Thus even the poor­ est peasant would realize the ‘marvels’ of modern science (English knowledge) were at his own disposal for the improvement of his surroundings. That is why they not only established educational institutes,

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but also established printing press, authored and published a num­ ber books in vernacular. If we go through the printed and written Bengali books by the missionary in early nineteenth century, we can only see that they followed scrupulously the policy formulated by the British parliament for the interest of colonial expansion. In 1800, the Serampore Mission Press was established by the Serampore missionaries which was functional till 1834. If we go through the titles, which were printed there before 1813, we can see that, other than the books of Christianity, books of Hindu epics like Mahabharata and Ramayana, too, were printed in 1802. They had printed such books in pursuance of the Company’s policy of non-interference in the religious affairs of natives. Grant stated in his monograph that the natives had no ‘proper’ understanding what history was; natives considered myth as his­ tory. So Indians had no ‘history’ at all. But in the printing press of Serampore mission the missionaries printed a book titled Iti­ haasmala (Historical Stories) in 1812 written and edited by Carey, which was nothing but some mythical tales. The same can be said of all those books printed there before 1813, which were written by the natives. The evangelicals had severely criticized the moral sense of the natives, but at the same time in Serampore Mission Press, the highest number of books which were printed were based on the morals of the natives, like Hitopodesh (Goloknath Sharma in 1802), Botrish Sinhasan (Mrityunjoy Bidyalankar in 1802) and The Orientalist Fabulist (Tarini Charan Mitra in 1803). All these things were done in accordance with the imperial policy of non­ interference. The scenario, however, totally changed after 1813. In 1818, the School Book Society was established. Its purpose was to print and publish textbooks for the consumption of the native students. Its declared policy was that it would not publish any reli­ gious book. It is interesting to note that the secretary of this society was a missionary, William Yeats. This schoolbook society had a major role to spread the English ‘knowledge’ by which the coloniz­ ers tried to construct the ‘colonial mind’. When science was introduced as a subject in native schools after 1813, it was the missionaries who took the responsibility first to write and then to print all the science textbooks, because their

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logic was English ‘knowledge’ can spread amongst the natives through science only. One thing we have to keep in mind that before Darwin had done his work, there was not any contradiction between religion (Christianity) and science. Rather, the study of nature gave an insight into the ways of its creator, while the Book of Genesis was seen as an accurate textbook of the early history of the world. As God manifested Himself openly in all branches of learning, the study of them would be an effective preparation for the gospel; and just as theology was vindicated by science, so was ethics by experience. All this then was to be taught to Hindu children; a smattering of modern scientific knowledge, Christian theology and ethics—though not yet the Bible itself.… Christian­ ity would be seen to be essentially reasonable, and in agreement with scientific truth as objectively verified; conversely, the incon­ sistence of Hinduism would be clearly revealed. How could people continue to worship rivers and trees after they had been taught to regard them with the eye of a scientist? A brief account of the science books which were written and printed in Bengali by the missionaries first are as follows: • •

• • • •

John Mack had written the first chemistry book in Bengali in 1834 entitled Kimia Bidyar Sar (Principles of Chemistry). William Yeats wrote the first book of natural science in Bengali, entitled Padartha Bidyar Sar (Elements of Natural Philosophy and Natural History) in 1825, and the first book of astronomy in Bengali, entitled Jyotirbidya (Easy Introduction to Astronomy) in 1833. J.D. Pearson wrote Bhugol o Jyotish (Dialogues on Geography, Astronomy, etc.) in 1824. J.C. Marshman wrote the first book of agriculture in Bengali entitled Kshetrabagan Bibaran. Felix Carey wrote the book of Western medical science, entitled Bidyaharabali. It was the first book of anatomy written in the Bengali language. The missionaries took the imperial responsibility to teach the natives what ‘history’ was. The first history book in Bengali was written by Felix Carey, entitled Briton Desio Bibaran Sanchay (The History of Britain) in 1819.

Colonial State, Christian Missionaries • • •

555

James stuart wrote Itihaskatha in 1820. J.C. Marshman wrote Purabritter Sankshep Bibaran in 1830 and Bharatbarsher Itihaas (History of India) in 1831. John Robinson wrote Itihaas Sar Sangraha in 1832.

Grant had stated in his pamphlet that the natives had no sense of geography so the missionaries took the initiative to write a geog­ raphy book in Bengali. The first geography book in Bengali was written by Pears, entitled Bhugol Britanta in 1818. J.C. Marshman wrote Jyotish Goladhyay in 1819. Pearson wrote Bhugol o Jyotish (Dialogues On Geography, Astronomy, etc.) in 1824. Sadarland wrote Bharoter Bhugol in 1834.14 It would not be irrelevant to mention here that north-east India had a close connection with the Serampore mission in the early nineteenth century. And in north-east India, we find a unique col­ laboration between the missionaries and the British government. The Serampore mission started its missionary work in the north­ east at the invitation of the British officers. There was a mutual cooperation between the British authorities and the missionaries in the evangelization of the people and in the establishment of schools. One of the reasons for such a relationship in the north-east was that the British officers like David Scott and W.N. Garret who were posted in this region were Christians with tremendous evan­ gelical zeal. As indicated earlier, the colonizers made their policy clear that the government should not interfere in any religious affairs of the natives. But it was not followed in the north-east. David Scott, who was a student of William Carey in Fort William College, was greatly influenced by the evangelical missionary spirit of Carey and the Serampore mission. He was appointed first agent to the governor-general, north-east frontier and special civil com­ missioner of north-east Rangpur. Later he was the commissioner of the former composite Assam. He was assigned the responsi­ bility for the administration of the entire north-east, including Sikkim and Sylhet, in present-day Bangladesh, with special power to the Garo Hills and Goalpara district. This person did not follow religious neutrality in the north-east. He had realized that evange­ lization and mission educational effort as necessary and effective means of helping the government’s operation among the ‘warlike’

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Santanu Sarkar

hill people. He opened a school at Singimari in 1827. It was not a direct mission school, but Bishop Heber of Calcutta had strongly recommended it. Scott’s main intention of establishing this school was to convert the Garos to Christianity. In this respect, he had demonstrated himself more a Serampore Baptist missionary than the commissioner of the British authorities. Though it was closed in 1829, it showed the way in which a government officer who represented the government that strictly maintained a policy of non-interference in religious affairs not only encouraged mis­ sionary work but actively involved himself for the mission, too. W.N. Garrett was a judge of the British government in Sylhet. He had sent invitation to Carey in Serampore to send missionaries for evangelization of the Khasis and other peoples in the plains of Sylhet. In response to this invitation, Carey deputed K.C. Paul, the first Serampore convert. The beginnings of missionary operations among the Khasis took place in the early part of 1813 at Pandua. There were seven converts, both tribals and non-tribals. It is inter­ esting that before the sacrament of baptism was conducted, the government officials, Garrett and Matthew Smith (one of Carey’s good friends) intervened and cross-examined the converts them­ selves. They have acted as ‘superintending missionaries’. The whole process was taken as activities of the government.15 Other than these activities, the Serampore mission had trans­ lated the Bible in many north-east Indian languages. The translation of the Bible into Assamese language started in early 1811. The New Testament, which was translated first, was published in 1819. The translation of the New Testament into Khasi began in 1813 and the book was published in 1824. Serampore Mission had published the New Testament in Manipuri language in 1827. Thus it can be seen that the colonizers, with the help of their ‘knowledge’, had tried to construct a cultural space in which the communication between the master and the subject was possible. Unless the colonized understood the language, which included the knowledge, they would not collaborate in their colonialist enter­ prise. Therefore the principle of persuasion becomes an effective tool to co-opt them in their project. They visualized a group of collaborators out of the colonial subjects who would work as inter­

Colonial State, Christian Missionaries

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preters between colonizers and colonized, who were ‘Indians’ in blood and colour but were like Englishmen in mind, as dreamt by Macaulay. In spite of many contradictions between the mission­ aries and the British government, the missionaries facilitated this transformation of the colonized through the device of ‘deform’ to harness the colonized people into the end product—the ‘colonial mind’.

Notes 1. L. Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy and other Essays, NLB London, 1971, pp. 136. 2. Ibid., pp. 136-7. 3. Ramsay Muir, The Making of British India, Manchester, 1923, pp. 251-2. 4. A. Bandyopadhyay, Bangla Sahitter Itibritto, vol. 5, Modern Book Agency, Kolkata (originally quoted from Memoirs of the Revd John Thomas, the First Baptist Missionary to Bengal, pp. 83-4), 2000. 5. Ibid., p. 317. 6. H. Sharp (ed.), Selections from Education Records, vol. 1: 1781-1839, 1920, p. 10. 7. C.B. Lewis, Memoirs of the Rev John Thomas, the First Baptist Missionary to Bengal, p. 74. 8. Bandyopadhyay, op. cit., p. 313 (originally quoted from Marshman, J.C., ‘The Story of Carey, Marshman and Ward’, p. 21). 9. Ibid., pp. 312-13. 10. Sharp, op. cit., p. 22. 11. N. Roy, and P.C. Gupta (eds), Hundred Years of the University of Calcutta., 1957, p. 34. 12. T.A. Jeyasekaran, ‘William Carey’s Educational Contribution’, in Carey’s Obligation and India’s Renaissance, J.T.K. Daniel and R.E. Hedlund (ed.), Serampore, 1993. 13. M. Foucoult, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Harmondsworth, 1982, pp. 104-31. 14. A. Khastageer, ‘Unish Sataker Bangle Boi’, in: Unish Sataker Bangalijiban o Sanskriti, ed. Swapan Basu and Indrajit Choudhury, Pustakbipani, Kolkata. 15. O.L. Snaitang, ‘William Carey and the Church in North East India’, Daniel, J.T.K., and Hedlund, R.E. op. cit.

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References Bagchi, J., ‘The English Utilitarians and India’, in Nineteenth Century Studies, ed. Aloke Roy, 1975. Bandyopadhyay, A., Bangla Sahitter Iitibritto, vol. 5, Modern Book Agency, Kolkata, 2000. Basu, S., and I. Choudhury (eds.), Unish Sataker Bangalijiban o Sanskriti, Pustakbipani, Kolkata, 2003. Daniel, J.T.K. and R.E. Hedlund, Carey’s Obligation and India’s Renais­ sance, Serampore, 1993. Downs, Fredrick, Christianity in North East India: Historical Perspectives, ISPCK/CLC, Delhi/Guwahati, 1983. Duff, A., ‘The Early or Exclusively Orient Period of Government Education in Bengal’, Calcutta Review, vol. 3, no. 4, 1845. Foucoult, M., Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1982. Huizinga, H. Missionary Education in India, Michigan, 1909. Kopf, D., British Orientalism and Bengal Renaissance, Calcutta, 1969. Laird, M.A., Missionaries and Education in Bengal, 1793-1837, Oxford, 1972. Neill, Stephen, A History of Christianity in India, 1707-1858, Cambridge, 1985. Potts, Daniel, British Baptist Missionaries in India 1793-1837: The History of Serampore Missions, Cambridge, 1967. Roy, N. and P.C. Gupta (eds.), Hundred Years of the University of Calcutta, Calcutta, 1957, Sharp, H. (ed.), Selections from Education Records, vol. 1: 1781-1839, Calcutta, 1920. Stokes, E., The English Utilitarians and India, Delhi, 1989. Trevelion, C.E., On the Education of the People of India, London, 1838.

CHAPTER 23

Sociocultural Re-Invention

A Study of Christianity in Arunachal Pradesh

SARAH HILALY

Prelude Christianity reached the shores of the Indian subcontinent in the early Christian era in 52 ad when St. Thomas as apostle of Jesus touched the shores of Kerala. In any case, the Christian faith reached India at a very early time, facilitated by the maritime trade, which existed between India and the Mediterranean region. Much later, Roman Catholic missionaries began to work in India in the context of the Portuguese colonial enterprise. They were followed by the entry of various Protestant denominations in the context of the British domination of India. The general assumption is that imperialism was a means by which the European nation state spread its civilization to the nonEuropean nations. The extraction of surplus revenue was presumed to be an incentive towards spreading its civilization. Understand­ ing the early history of British India, therefore, requires a different narrative. The early years of colonial rule under the East India Company was marked by prohibition of missionary activities.1 Evangelism entered British India at a stage later than one would expect as the civilizing mission and the politics of Empire were mutually exclusive.2 A movement first surfaced when William Wilberforce attempted to introduce a clause in sanctioning the establishment of evangelical missions in British India in the 1793 renewal of the Charter of the East India Company. In 1805, Claudius Buchanan,

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a chaplain of the East India Company, who wrote Memoir of the Expediency of an Ecclesiastical Establishment for British India, called for the civilizing of the natives.3 Far from signalling a shift in the Company’s attitude toward Anglicization, Buchanan’s Memoir sparked a public debate in 1807 among the Company’s sharehold­ ers and in the London periodical press that highlighted the tense relationship between the civilizing mission and imperial politics. The 1813 charter, with which the parliament finally ended both the Company’s monopoly on Indian trade and the Company’s prohibition on missionary activity in India, marked a watershed in the history of British imperialism. The parliament in effect transformed the public rationale behind British imperialism in India fundamentally. The year 1813, in effect, finally inaugurated the civilizing mission in British India. The civilizing mission was born only after a controversial half-century of colonial rule dur­ ing which, in works like Buchanan’s Memoir, metropolitan print culture repeatedly emphasized the discrepancy between the civil principles of the nation and the practices of its empire.

Christianity in North-East India It took over 1,600 years for the faith to reach north-east India. E.A. Gait mentions of two Portuguese Jesuit Fathers who reached Hajo and Guwahati on 26 September 1626, on their way to Tibet from Hooghly.4 In 1640, a body of Augustine fathers from Dhaka established a church at Rangamati at Dhubri.5 In the region of Cachar, the Mughals during the conflict with the British had secured the services of Portuguese. Many of them later sought refuge in 1765 under the Raja of Cachar and were granted rights for settlement at Bondashill.6 This was the first Roman Catholic settlement in this region. It is imperative to look into the background of the nine­ teenth-century evangelism in India to understand missionary activities in north-east India in a better perspective. In the early nineteenth century, several newly formed mission societies estab­ lished themselves in the country. In 1800, the Baptist Missionary Society initiated work in Serampore. The Baptists were active in many fields—translation of the Bible in several Indian languages,

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printing Bibles, books, and newspapers, protesting against infant sacrifices and the burning alive of Hindu widows. They were the first to introduce theological education; the theology department of Serampore College was opened in 1820. The Khasis of Meghalaya were the first in north-east India to accept the gospel of Jesus Christ. In 1813, Rev. K.C. Pal of the Brit­ ish Baptists from the Serampore mission stayed for a few months in Pandua (a marketing centre of the Cherrapunji Syiemship). After this first contact, William Carey initiated the translation of the Bible into Khasi (Shella dialect). Bengali script was also chosen by the Serampore mission, to spread the message in the Shella Region. Though imperfect in some respect, the 500 copies that were printed in 1824 marked a momentous beginning and historic watershed. The Garos of Meghalaya came to accept Chris­ tianity in 1863 with the advent of British rule in north-east India. The Mizo encounter with Christianity could be dated to 1891 with the visit of a Welsh missionary. D.E. Jones of the Calvinistic Methodist Church who came to Mizoram, and was soon joined by Edwin Rowland who started the Presbyterian Synod of Mizoram which continues to be one of the largest Baptist denominations of Mizoram. The gospel reached Nagaland through Godhula, an Assamese convert and evangelist, and Rev. E.W. Clarke. With Clarke’s encouragement, Godhula visited Ao hills for his evange­ listic mission in October 1871. The Roman Catholic Mission had begun its work in India since the fifteenth century. Till the nineteenth century, their pres­ ence in north-east India was very limited. The region was under the diocese of Mylapore whose sphere of activity stretched from Tamil Nadu to the border of Burma. In 1834, with the splitting of the Diocese, north-east India came under the Vicariate Apos­ tolic of Lhasa. In 1865, the Vicariate of East Bengal controlled the activities for north-east India. Active proselytizing of this church began as late as 1890. The American Baptist Mission organization was keen on using the route through the easternmost portion on north-east India to enter China for evangelization. In 1835, Captain Jenkins invited the American Baptist Mission to work in Burma. While accepting the invitation two missionary families were sent to open a mission

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at Sadiya. In the early years of colonial rule in India, the politics of keeping the Burma frontier secure found its reflection in various spheres. They sought to evangelize amongst the tribal populations of Upper Burma in order to sustain the communities as buffer. The same vision worked for the setting up of a Shan mission. This was the core of missionary activities for the region then known as the northern frontier of Assam or present-day Arunachal Pradesh. With little success of the Shan mission due to the strong tradi­ tion of Buddhism amongst the communities, in 1841, the activities of the American Baptist Mission was shifted to Lower Assam. A small mission continued to operate from Jaipore in Sibsagar dis­ trict in Assam.7

Christianity in Arunachal Pradesh Missionary activity in Arunachal Pradesh can be roughly divided into the colonial and post-colonial periods. Initial influences of Christianity in Arunachal Pradesh were from the missionary activities in Sadiya and Lakhimpur. The Roman Catholics made brief contact with the Adis (Abors) and the Mishmis in 1840 and 1854, respectively. This was in their attempt to proceed to Tibet. The Mishmis were complicit during this period in the murder of two French Catholic missionaries Fr Krick and Fr Bourry. Early contacts were therefore limited to the foothill areas. The reopening of the Sadiya Mission in 1905 brought in new vigour to proselytize amongst the Adis (Abors) and the Miris. As the British did not practise aggressive colonialism within the northern frontiers of Assam, colonial state missionary activities within the hills did not make much headway. It was the establish­ ment of missionary schools in the foothill regions in the district of Lakhimpur that helped in the spread of Christianity among the Adis (Abors), Nyishis (Daflas) and the Miris. The spread of the Roman Catholic Church in Arunachal Pradesh began with the founding of centres along the borders. This was speeded up with the setting up of the Tezpur Mission in 1934. The Sadiya Mission Station School began to baptize its students. Of the three students baptized in 1937, Dugyon, a Padam-Adi, was

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the first convert.8 Having studied at Jorhat he helped the mission­ aries in translation of the gospels to Adi. According to Milton Sangma, the first Nyishi was converted in 1900 by a Garo preacher, though his name is not available. When Christopher von Haimendorf visited the Subansiri region of Arunachal Pradesh in 1944, he noted that since entry into NEFA was restricted, ‘strict scrutiny was maintained on both converts and outside missionaries’. Among the Nyishis (Daflas) in 1959, the Lakhimpur Baptist Mission ordained the first Deacon. The church closest to a Nyishi settlement in the early days was at Rangajan. The first proselytizers were the students of missionary schools who came from outside the state. It is significant to note that in the 1960s the Nyishi students of John Firth School at Lakhimpur were involved in the mission. The first church was at Talo in the Subansiri region. The most momentous event was the setting up of Don Bosco School at Harmutty in 1977. Many tribal children who were educated free of cost were trained to spread the message of Christianity among the villages. New areas in Arunachal have come under the influence of Christianity in the post-Independence period. Among the Wan­ chos who live in south-eastern Arunachal Pradesh, presently about 70 per cent of the population have accepted Christianity. The phenomenon is traceable to 1975 when Mansai Wanchu of Chopsa village was baptized by an Ao missionary. The Baptist Mission of Nagaland has been extremely active in the region with the first church at Baregoan village in 1977. Catholic Mission was a late entrant into the region in 1989-90. In 2003 the Revivalist also entered the fray.9 Their neighbouring tribes of the Noctes who were earlier followers of Vaishnavism have come under the influ­ ence of Christianity. The only region where missionary activities have been less significant is among the tribes following Buddhism and among the Mishmis in northwestern Arunachal Pradesh.

Responses to Christianity In the immediate aftermath of Independence, the North-East Frontier Tracts (NEFT) were in the throes of the integrationist

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policy of the nation in the making as well as sub-nationalism in Assam which was integrating the region. As the constitution was being drafted, a separate sub-committee was set up under the leadership of Gopinath Bordoloi to recommend appropriate measures for administering the tribal areas. The services of anthropologist Dr B.S. Guha were solicited in order to have an understanding of the social dynamics of all the tribes. It was decided that the colonial administrative machinery should be allowed to perpetuate till the people gain maturity in understanding the new political institutions. Finally, when the administrative network was extended to the interiors, it was to be merged with Assam. A constitutional anomaly was that NEFT was administered by the governor of Assam, rather than the Government of Assam. The state legislature was not entitled to pass any laws. In 1950, NEFT was put under the ministry of external affairs as the area was strategically located. The final break from merging with Assam was in the birth of NEFA in 1954. It is pertinent to mention here that Nehru had to contend with the militant nationalism of the Nagas in this region. Despite Nehru’s secular credentials, during his visit to the region in 1952, he noted that Christianity has been a driving force in the Naga perception of a separate nationality. Verrier Elwin who formulated policies for NEFA, too, had been influenced by debate on the mis­ sionaries in central India. He launched a vigorous diatribe against the Dutch Roman Catholics. He accused them of converting the tribes by force and allurement, thus destroying their culture and political unity.10 Nandini Sundar calls this alignment of Elwin with the Hindu Mahasabha as a case of ‘opportunism’. She also argues that this stance has made the tribes a battleground for contestation between the Hindus and Christians. In his Philosophy for NEFA he argued that the ‘missionaries project a narrow vision of intolerant Christianity’.11 Hence the official response to conversion was marked by dis­ tinct hostility. This was outlined in the last line of the Panchsheel for Tribal Policy. The tribes were to develop along the lines of their own tradition and genius. The administrators were issued guide­ lines to oversee that Christianity is unable to make substantial

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inroads into the territory.12 With the official line of action very categorical in the 1960s, local leaders too expressed apprehension at the loss of their culture in the wake of missionary activities. In 1971 people from the Adi area submitted a petition to the prime minister expressing anguish at conversions. This period was also witnessed the galvanizing of ethnic identity around traditional religious practices. The emergence of Donyi-Polo religion stands as a case in point. Early in 1969, the responses began to assume violent mani­ festations. Churches in the Nyishi area of Deed, Dem and Neelam were burnt down with the help of S.S.B. Guards. In Subansiri alone, 47 churches were razed to the ground. Converts, too, were severely persecuted. The climatic period was in 1974 when in the Sagalee division, 40 churches were burnt down. This phenomenon replicated itself in other parts of Arunachal Pradesh. A persistent demand had been to legislate on prohibition of conversions to Christianity from 1969 for ‘certain positive mea­ sures for preservation and promotion of their traditional culture and particularly their indigenous faith’.13 The emerging Adi lead­ ership initiated the move through a resolution adopted at the Arunachal Pradesh Development-cum-Cultural Convention on 21 May 1976, and the newly-formed Agency Council in 1971 took it up as a crucial agenda. In 1978, the chief minister, P.K. Thungon, introduced the Arunachal Pradesh Freedom of Indigenous Faith Bill. Parallel to this was the government initiative of allowing the right wing supported educational institutions like the Vivekananda Kendriya Vidyalayas. They are also attempting at the societal level to project indigenous beliefs into institutionalized religious orders. The concept of Donyi-Poloism and the emergence of prayer houses like Myedar Nelo and Nyader Namlo is a part of their move to keep people away from Christianity. The forms of prayers, too, reflect their ideological leanings. The various socio-cultural orga­ nizations, too, reflect the ideological moorings of the right wing organization. Several regional and national Christian associations protested and sent a memorandum to the President of India. In parliament,

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too, leaders from other Christian states in the north-east raised a voice. The bill finally received presidential assent on 25 October 1978. As Arunachal Pradesh was a Union Territory, the govern­ ment machinery was able to initiate measures against coercive conversions. With the granting of statehood and the emergence of grassroots political organizations with its compulsions, there was a relaxing of stranglehold on conversions. The 1980s witnessed renewed vigour in missionary activities. The missionaries, too, have adopted stance ‘integration the Christian ethos with local customs’.14 Yet in spite of all restrictions Christianity continues to make significant inroads. The Christians continue to make inroads by targeting the poor and illiterate. The right wing organizations, on the other hand, target the elites of the society. If one looks at Arunachal Pradesh’s integration to the nation state, it had been very smooth. The new converts have begun to question as to how beneficial the Indian state has been to them.

Impact of Christianity The religious affiliations of the people of Arunachal Pradesh have created major rift lines within society. There is a contestation for space in the post-colonial period, both among the Hindus and Christians. New solidarities have been created on religious lines, rupturing social organization. Village level ruptures have also occurred. Segregation of residential complexes in village level settlements has occurred. Participation in community and life cycle rituals has diminished. Collective clan level responsibilities like house building are no longer very cohesive. Among certain tribes the skill of tattooing for religious purposes is fast disappearing. The positive effects have been witnessed in the reduction of child marriage and polygamy. In stratified societies, dresses and distinctive hairdos had hitherto been social markers for women. It has helped reduce these rigidities. To some extent, it has provided an alternate space to women away from the monotony and drudg­ ery of life. In this paper, I have attempted to provide an overview of the dilemmas that the people of Arunachal Pradesh are experienc­ ing in the realm of religious contestation.

Sociocultural Re-Invention

567

Notes 1. The evangelical movement called for the establishment of missions in India as part of a broad project of Anglicization that purported to insure that colonial rule served not to exploit the native population but rather to secure their prosperity, East India Company officials, in general, vehemently opposed evangelism, in particular, and Anglicization, in general, because they believed that such projects would provoke insurrection and destabilize their authority. 2. Siraj Ahmed, ‘An Unlimited Intercourse: Historical Contradictions and Imperial Romance in the Early Nineteenth Century’, in The Containment and Re-deployment of English India, Romantic Circles Praxis Series, http://romantic-circles.org/praxis/containment/ahmed /ahmed.html, p.5. 3. Ibid., p. 3. 4. E.A. Gait, 1906, A History of Assam, Thacker, Spink and Company, Calcutta, pp. 115-16. 5. N.T. Rikam, 2005, Emerging Religious Identities of Arunachal Pradesh, Mittal Publication, New Delhi, p. 80. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid., p. 82. 8. J.L. Dawar, 2003, Cultural Identity of the Tribes of North East India, Commonwealth Publishers, New Delhi, p. 55. 9. Sarit Chaudhuri, ‘Christianity and Culture Change Among the Wanchos’ presented at a National Seminar on Cultural Change Among the Tribes of Northeast India, Shillong, 25-28 October 2006. 10. Nandini Sundar, 2005, ‘Verrier Elwin and the 1940s Missionary Debate in Central India’, in T.B. Subba and Sujit Som (eds.), Between Ethnography and Fiction: Verrier Elwin and the Tribal Question in India, Orient Longman, New Delhi, p. 86. 11. Dawar, op. cit., p. 58. 12. Mention may be made of the role of K.A.A. Raja. The first stipends were issued to children to study outside the state. They were prohibited from enrolling in missionary schools. 13. Dawar, op. cit., p. 67. 14. Ibid., p. 74.

CHAPTER 24

An Analysis of the American Baptist Missionary Sources for the Construction of Gender History in North-East India SHIELA BORA

The missionaries’ considerable influence amongst other peoples and in America, while hard to quantify, has usually been acknowl­ edged … the missionaries were the chief interpreters of remote cultures for the people at home, and as such played a central role in the shaping of American public attitudes. —from the introduction of William R. Hutchinson’s, Errand to the World

North-east India with a rich historical legacy has been overlooked in general historical studies of the country and the oft-repeated explanation for this imbalance is the dearth of source materials on the region, having an all-India bearing. Since a large section of the population in these areas was not literate, we are largely dependent only on British writers and anthropologists for first hand information on them. It was only after the gradual extension of British rule in north-east and their contact with the hill tribes that an era of historical writing by the British civil and military officers was inaugurated. Though this gave a solid beginning to the historians of the north-east, it must be borne in mind that many of the administrator anthropologists who served and wrote in the north-eastern hills in the early modern period belonged to the nineteenth and early twentieth-century school of anthropology which romanticized primal societies. Very often their accounts were based on the information gathered from local informers on whom they were heavily dependent and who may not always have been representative of the entire community.

570

Shiela Bora

It is in this context that the American Baptist missionaries provide an important source for the historical study of the north­ east in the modern period. Focusing on the history of contact between indigenous peoples and the white colonial communities who settled in India’s north-east, this paper attempts to analyse how the writings of the American Baptist missionaries narrating their activities in the region in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, can help or otherwise, a historian to construct a gender history of the region in proper perspective. The American Baptist Mission which in time also included its women’s branch, made significant expansion of its activities in Upper Assam, followed in the second half of the century with the beginnings of mission work in Gauhati and Goalpara. Their work among the hill tribes benefitted not only the Nagas, the Lushais, the Garos and the Mikirs, but also some hill tribes of what was known as the frontier tracts and the hill tribes of Manipur state. The American Baptist missionaries who began their evangeli­ cal work in Assam in 1836, had evinced great interest in the women folk of the region and women occupied a very important place in their evangelical activities. In their effort to ameliorate the position of the ‘heathen’ women a number of foreign missionary women workers were sent out to distant lands to assist the missionary men. Hence the writings of the missionaries illustrate better than any other source, the lives and surroundings of the people with whom they came into contact in the process of propagating their faith. We do not have in the accounts of these missionaries the chronicles of kings and warriors, their wars or conquests, or their successes and failures. On the contrary they provide an account of the customs and prejudices and the hopes and aspirations of the people. The evangelical ethnology which was produced, was indeed significant not for any substantive contribution to scientific or professional anthropology, but for its distinctive focus on wom­ en’s status and roles. Herein lies the importance of these accounts in our attempt to write gender history. The sources available from the American Baptist missionaries’ writings may be grouped under five broad categories:

An Analysis of the American Baptist Missionary Sources 571 a. Manuscripts preserved and found in the possession of the missionaries. (Approximately 40). b. Coins preserved and found in the possession of missionaries.

Coins preserved by the missionaries and printed in the Arunodoi with explanations

Quarter rupee coin of Sarbeswari

Fig. 24.1

c. Ethnological Works Volumes of ethnological works published by the missionaries both for the women of the hills and the plains. Some of the important works are listed below: 1. Women of Assam Elizabeth Vickland 2. With Christ in Assam Do 3. Twenty Years in Assam or Leaves from My Journal (1901) Mrs P.H. Moore 4. Further Leaves from Assam (1907) Do 5. Autumn Leaves from Assam (1910)Do 6. Stray Leaves from Assam(1916) Do 7. A Comer in India M.M. Clarke 8. The Naga Tribes of Manipur T.C. Hodson 9. Among the Lushais Herbert Anderson 10. A Garo Jungle Book Revd William Carey 11. The Star of the Naga Hills Norola Rivenburg 12. The Garos Major A. Playfair 13. The Whole World Kin Eliza Whitney Brown

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Elisabeth Vickland’s book, Women of Assam, as well as her other writings was intended to introduce the women of this region to her American friends and therefore contains elaborate details of their religious faith, its role in their lives and the significance of various customs for women. She writes, ‘… both Hindu and Muslim women have been ter­ ribly handicapped, brazenly maligned, shamefully betrayed, sadly cheated.’1 In order to prove her statements she has printed several pictures depicting the status of women in Assam in almost all her writings. Describing a Garo girl, William Carey in his A Garo Jungle Book, says that the thick solid brass-wire rings, some weighing

ORDINARY ASSAMESE WOMAN Costume Worn When Working About in the House

OUR FIRST “LADY DOCTORS” Christian Girls

VILLAGE WOMEN OF

THE COOLIE CLASS,

ASSAM

They Belong to the

Immigrant Class from

Central India

ASSAMESE VILLAGE PEOPLE Who Are Reached Through Their Daughters in Attendance at the Christian School – With Christ in Assam

Fig. 24.2

An Analysis of the American Baptist Missionary Sources 573 Elizabeth Vickland The Jubilee Year at Nowgong, Assam

The Four Generations

The Nowgong School Orchestra,

Four of the Members are Absent

Fig. 24.3

nearly five pounds, were the Garo women’s pride, which they would not part with under any circumstances. Yet the educated Christian women amongst this tribe began to discard these rings and in most cases where the use of these rings had deformed the ear, the women had their earlobes cut or

Fig. 24.4: Revd. William Carey – A Garo Jungle Book

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reshaped. Dr. Eulius Sheldon Downs, the first medical missionary to the Garo Hills, has referred in his autobiography of having per­ formed the first ‘beauty parlour’ surgery on a weekly market day at Tura in the Garo Hills.2 Similarly, Herbert Anderson, describing the life of a Lushai woman, writes, The very first [Lushai] village you enter teaches you that the woman is the burden-bearer of Lushai life.…The home life of the Lushai woman is as busy as her outdoor activities.… Every housewife and growing-up daughter learns to be extremely industrious … the lady in the log cabin is out on the platform clearing the cotton from the pod, ginning it to remove the seed, winding it by the help of her big toes into big white bundles, or busily at work in her indigenous loom.3

Similarly, other missionaries have also reproduced photo­ graphs, which enable us to imagine the lives of the women amongst whom they lived and preached.

Fig. 24.5: Herbert Anderson—Among the Lushais

An Analysis of the American Baptist Missionary Sources 575

Assamese Children with Christmas dolls

Orphan babies of Assam with their ‘Big Sisters’

Fig. 24.6

d. Official Reports and correspondence of the missionaries, including reports of women missionary organizations and associations. It was obligatory for mission heads to send regular reports to their Home Board in America on the successes and failures of their missionary activities. Hence the reports sent by the Baptist missionaries in Assam contained both, details about their proposed operational programmes, as well as critical analyses of their successes and failures in this region. Many such reports are incorporated in the volumes of the Baptist Missionary magazines available for the years 1834 to 1886 (volumes XIV-LXVI). These reports, together with the minutes, resolutions and reports of the annual Baptist missionary conferences, form an invaluable source for the study of gender history in north-east India. While reporting various obstacles at work, missionary reports described the existing society of the time. The position of women is an oft-repeated subject in such reports. Talking about the Miris, Mr Whiting reported that it was customary among all Miris to get another woman in exchange for the one given in marriage. Thus a Gam, while taking a wife for himself or for his son, pledges his sister or daughter in return for the woman received, and if he has none to pledge, the first daughter born is promised as a compensa­ tion for her mother.4 Whiting’s observation on the system was that, ‘… the Miris are polygamists. The more wives, the more slaves. And this, explains the origin of the custom of exchanging a women for a women’.5

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Bronson, on the other hand, compares the status of a Naga woman to that of an Assamese woman and notes that: Considerable respect appears to be paid to the female sex. In this particu­ lar case there is a striking contrast between the Nagas and the Assamese. The Assamese women are the most idle, worthless set of beings 1 ever saw. On the contrary, the Naga women are proverbial for their indus­ trious and laborious habits. This remarkable difference in favour of the Naga women, is doubtless to be imputed to the anarchical state of the country, or rather to the number of independent chiefs, who formerly, for the slightest offence, were disposed to wage war, and the most of all wars, that which is covert and unsuspected. This made it necessary for the men to be always ready for an assault, and hence the custom that the women should cultivate the fields—the men prepare for the fight in battle.6

Women Missionary Organizations The Women’s Foreign Mission Crusade was a powerful sisterhood of agencies that had taken shape at the close of the Civil War in America. In 1910 Helen Barrett Montgomery, later the first president of the Northern Baptist Convention, attributed the inauguration of an autonomous women’s foreign-mission organization to an essentially socio-economic transition that was recasting the works of both men and women and consequently the nature of the family itself, in America.7 The Congregationalist women explicitly stated that, ‘The Society is to engage the earnest, systematic congregation of … women … in … sending out and supporting unmarried female missionaries and teachers to heathen women’.8 The ‘effort to lift womanhood to a higher social level among the people and the belief that women needed to be brought into the fold to make conversions permanent, appealed to the Christian constituency in America, who supported the missionary enterprise’.9 The women’s foreign mission organizations, besides publishing their own periodicals, also sent regular reports to their Home Boards. In the 13th annual report of the Woman’s Baptist Foreign Missionary Society, Ms M. Russell reported from Tura that: ‘I have not been able to work among the women as much as I had hoped. They are in the rice fields all day’.10

Fig. 24.7

578

Shiela Bora

In the sixteenth annual report Mrs Burdette provides a back­ ground of the girls who attended the boarding school at Gauhati in the following manner: I began my school February 1, with eight girls, three of whom came with me from Tura, three from their homes in the Garo Hills district, and two from this district. In March another Garo girl was brought in. In June an Assamese girl joined my school, but as she did not like to be corrected at all, she became dissatisfied and left late in July. She has since wished to return, but I have made it a rule not to allow girls that leave without a good cause to return, so have not taken her.…11

Talking about the betrayal of a native helper Mrs Ella C. Bond reports, … Near the close of the school last week in October, I had learned that she [Jessie] had been teaching the girls how to break some of the rules of my school, and hide it from me. I concluded it best not to retain her services, and dismissed her at the close of the school.12

e. Journals and Periodicals The American Baptist missionaries were pioneers in publishing the first periodical in Assamese language in 1846. The Arunodoi as it was called, contained articles of varied nature and provided important source materials for writing history. It contained descriptive articles on numerous tribes like the Singphos and the Garos. The issue of August 1848 contains a vivid description of the Singpho tribe with pictures of a Singpho woman. Through, the Arunudoi the missionaries called for social reforms, such as promotion of widow remarriage, prevention of child marriage and the abolition of Sati. Though Assam boasts of the absence of the degrading practice of Sati, the Arunudoi makes one of the first references to an attempted case of Sati. The paper refers to a case from Kalugaon in the South of Sibsagar district where the widow of the elder brother of Lambodar Mauzadar, was willing to prove her purity by offering to perform Sati after death of her husband. However, when the matter was brought to the notice of the Daroga, Mr Dowerah, she was prevented from performing the act.13

An Analysis of the American Baptist Missionary Sources 579

Fig. 24.8: Attempted Sati, Orunudoi, May 1846, vol. 1, no. 5, p. 36

It must be noted that missionary reports on the gruesome practice of Sati were admirably balanced statements. Though the ritual had already been declared illegal in British India, the mis­ sionaries did not fail to take note of the exceptions permitted by the scriptures to this practice. It may therefore be assumed that their criticisms were often made in terms of the higher intentions of the native scriptures.

Women’s Periodicals In addition to nonfiction reports and letters from the field, the Women’s Foreign Mission Crusade promoted the publication of missionary journals for women featuring stories, poems and graphic visual materials. These journals reflect the essentially middle-class spirit of the women’s foreign mission crusade. As women’s groups increasingly moved into the business of publishing materials designed for an audience of middle-class readers; magazines such as The Helping Hand, Now and Then and the Heathen Women’s Friend were published and disseminated with funds drawn out of their own revenues. The articles published in these journals revealed a kind of impatience with the traditional notion of women’s singular commitment to domesticity. This was clearly evident in the objectives of the journal and thus the women’s foreign missionary societies came to be regarded as the

580

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great agency of female self-culture at least two decades before the formation of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs in America.

Fig. 24.9

At the time when the Woman’s Union Missionary Society pro­ posed to start their monthly paper called The Heathen Woman’s Friend, they issued the following prospectus: The paper will be devoted more especially to the interests of the work among heathen women, and will be filled with interesting facts and inci­ dents illustrating that work, furnished by those laboring in heathen lands. Information will be given concerning the customs and social life of the people, the various obstacles to be overcome in their Christianization, and the success which attends the various departments of missionary labor among them. The design is to furnish just a paper as will be read with interest by all friends of the cause, and one which will assist in enlist­ ing the sympathies of the children also, and educate them more about the folly in the missionary work. The price of the paper will be only 3 cents per annum, so that it will be within the reach of all.

The objectives of the monthly paper were stated to be that: 1. The paper will be … filled with interesting facts and incidents illustrating that work, furnished by those laboring in heathen lands.

An Analysis of the American Baptist Missionary Sources 581 2. Information will be given concerning the customs and social life of the people, 3. the various obstacles to be overcome in their Christianization, 4. and the success which attends the various departments of missionary labor among them. 5. The design is to furnish just a paper as will be read with interest by all friends of the cause, and one which will assist in enlisting the sympathies of the children also, and educate them more about the folly in the missionary work. 6. The price of the paper will be only 3 cents per annum, so that it will be within the reach of all.

Similarly, prior to the publication of the magazine, The Wom­ an’s Friend, the General Executive Committee which met in Des Maines in 1883, expressed its opinion that India may be a land of voluminous and varied books, but it has no literature fit for a woman to read, providing the people a just defense for the illit­ eracy of the women. Hence a proposition was made by the retired missionaries that a Christian paper be established in the vernacu­ lar of the women in India.

Fig. 24.10

Shiela Bora

582

The committee decided to undertake the enterprise, and instructed Dr Craven, of the Mission Press in India, to take charge of it. During the meeting Dr Craven received a telegram from D.C. Cook, of Chicago, donating to him, for this general presswork in Lucknow, a steam press worth $2,250, and on this the Zenana paper would be printed. In referring to the action of the Commit­ tee, the late Miss Hart said: Probably the widest and most significant, as certainly the bravest, work undertaken at this fourteenth session of the General Executive Commit­ tee, was the plan to create an endowment of $25,000 for the establishment of a. Zenana paper. It is called the Woman’s Friend, and is issued twice a month in four dialects-the Urdu, Hindi, Bengali, and Tamil.

It contains editorials on the leading topics of the day, espe­ cially pertaining to the • • • • • • • •

condition and needs of women; discussions on issues of interest such as widowhood, infant marriage, and topics of national importance; pictures of some noted buildings, place, or person, with detailed descriptions; pictures of birds and animals; a continued story of the life of Christ, with an illustration for each number; columns for correspondence, for children, for medical notes; news notes; Christian hymns.

The first copy of the paper in Urdu called Rafiq-i-Niswan, appeared early in 1884. The Hindi version was called Abla Hit­ karak, while the Bengali edition published in Calcutta, was called Mohila Bandhub. The first editor of this journal was Mrs. Neil who was followed by Miss Kate Blair in 1889. The Tamil edition, pub­ lished in Madras, called the Mathar Mithiri, was edited by Mrs Rudsill for two years, until her death in 1889. In 1893, if the funds warranted the expense, a Marathi edi­ tion was also planned. The execution of this plan was finally made

An Analysis of the American Baptist Missionary Sources 583

Fig. 24.11

possible because of an annual donation of $250 from the Erie Con­ ference. Miss Sarah De Line was appointed editor for this edition to be published from Bombay. f. Private Correspondence In addition to the official reports and letters mentioned above the personal correspondences of the missionaries, especially those of the missionary wives, are useful documents for either confirming or contradicting the official reports. Most of the correspondence in this category is in the form of personal letters to friends and relatives at home, narrating one’s experiences in a new and distant country. Hence these letters depict the true opinions and personal observations of the writers. To cite a case in example, the claims made by official missionary report of having ‘successfully married off girls’ in their boarding schools, have been referred to in private correspondence as cases of ‘elopement’.14 While some such letters are published, others are unpublished. Ella Marie Holmes, a missionary woman writing to her friend in the states, narrated a conversation which she had with Mr

584

Shiela Bora

Gopinath Bordoloi, the then Chief Minister of Assam. Gopinath Bordoloi, while delivering a public speech at Gauhati, had com­ pared Japan’s progress with that of India during the latter half of the nineteenth century and had attributed all of India’s failure to the British government’s policies. In response, Marie Holmes who had visited Japan four times and who had also spent nearly 20 years in India and was well acquainted with the situation in both the countries in reference, felt impelled to call Mr Bordoloi’s atten­ tion to the baby in her arms and remark: I found this baby in a Zenana yesterday. It had been slowly starving for four months right here in Gauhati, where there are scores of Indian gentlemen very well able to supply milk for hungry children, but none of you are doing anything so mercifully humanitarian. You gentlemen of means are generally Brahmins and high caste co-religionists. Your only charity in this city of 20,000 people is hospital, not for the sick of humanity, but for sick cattle; a refuge, not for widows and orphans and the homeless sons and daughters of men, but for hungry and wandering cows. You spend 20,000 rupees annually caring for these cows many of which should be mercifully put out of their misery. You give them an annual feast of five or six pounds of candy, but you do not give a half pint of milk a day for starving babies.15

Letters (published): In addition to the unpublished private cor­ respondence of the missionaries a few published collections are also available. Notable among such a collection is The Star of the Naga Hills—Letters from Rev. Sidney and Hattie Rivenburg.

Conclusion The Women’s Rights Convention at Seneca Falls, New York, in July 1848, an important event in the history of feminism, had marked the beginning of an organized Women’s Movement and had succeeded in bringing about significant changes in the status of women in the West, not merely in their legal rights, but also in the realm of their status in society. Hence, the Christian missionary women who followed Revs Brown and Cutter to Assam, brought with them a certain perspective from newly Independent America, which advocated a prominent and dignified role for women and

An Analysis of the American Baptist Missionary Sources 585 had much to do with their crusade against the degradation of women. However, during the missionary phase of the spread of Chris­ tianity in the nineteenth century it would do well to remember that being the official religion of the West from Constantine’s time, the church had been too closely identified with Western culture. The church held great power and Western culture built around Christian principles and values became Christendom. This leads us to a second point co-related to the first, the church did not have a constructively critical position from which to interact with the Assamese society since it was too closely tied with Western culture. Having no vantage point from which to view Indian society it believed: Women in all heathen lands are supposed to be incapable of receiving such instruction as men, they are not permitted to join in the public assemblies; besides this, where Brahminism and Muhammedism prevail, there are zenanas and harems, which are life-long prison houses for the women, within whose valid portals no man, save the master of the estab­ lishment or some favoured friend is allowed to enter. Women must bear the gospel to those secluded inmates or they will never hear its words of promise and hope.16

The evangelicals never considered the Zenana as a collective workforce but as a place of enforced female isolation, with serious consequences for the intellectual development of women. In another instance, pervasive and elaborate accounts of the joint family living arrangements sought to prove that there was a competitive rather than a cooperative spirit among the ‘heathen’ women, particu­ larly between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law, described as intrinsically hostile to one another. For the middle-class American women, among whom marriage usually meant a separate house­ hold of one’s own, joint families raised enormous problems of home management. The use of women as beasts of burden in agricultural areas was another element of focus in the missionary ethnology. The absence of girlhood among the ‘heathens’ was used to high­ light their intellectual deprivation as compared to the American middle-class experience.17 In a songbook inspired by mission­ ary tales, ‘Songs for Little Ones at Home’, British and American

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children learnt that Hindu mothers were capable of killing their own children. One song described the scene: See that heathen mother stand

Where the sacred current flows

With her own maternal hands.

Mid the waves her babe she throws.

Send, Oh send, the Bible there,

Let its precept reach the heart;

She may then her children spare

—Act the tender mother’s part.18

Since the missionaries had no vantage point from which to view Indian culture in its totality, their approach did not permit them to go beyond certain limits. Their writings, therefore, appear to have been dominated by the reforms they had attempted. Their ethnological descriptions of women in Assam, which were often used to revive cultural stereotypes that were sometimes even dor­ mant, must be used by scholars of gender history with an awareness of the limited objectivity inherent in the missionary sources.

Notes 1. E. Elizabeth Vickland, Women of Assam, Philadelphia, 1928, Preface. 2. Eulius Sheldon Downs, unpublished autobiography, Hyannis, 1989, p. 35. 3. Herbert Anderson, Among the Lushais, p. 37. 4. Baptist Missionary Magazine, (BMM), vol. XV, 1861, W. Ward to Bronson, 31 October 1861, Franklin Trask Library. 5. Ibid., Journal of Mr Whiting, vol. XXXVI, July 1866, p. 395. 6. Ibid., December 1839, Journal of Mr Bronson, p. 286. 7. Helen Barrett Montgomery, W estern Women in Eastern Lands: An Outline of Women’s Work in Foreign Missions, New York, 1910, pp. 45-6. 8. Ibid., p. 10. 9. Ella Marie Holmes, Sowing the Seed in Assam, p. 136. 10. Woman’s Baptist Foreign Missionary Society, XIIIth Annual Report, Mission to the Garos on Assam, Ms. M Russell, 1884, p. 80. 11. Ibid., XVIth Annual Report, Ms C. Ella Bond, Gauhati, p. 98. 12. Ibid., XVIIIth Annual session, Ms C. Ella Bond, Gauhati, p. 86.

An Analysis of the American Baptist Missionary Sources 587 13. Orunudoi, May 1846, vol. 1, no. 5, p. 36. 14. Daniells, The Helping Hand, Nowgong, Assam, October 1900, p. 15. 15. Letter from Ella Marie Holmes to a friend, Gauhati, 1948, Missions Collections, Yale Divinity School Library. 16. A.M. Bacon, ‘Twenty Years History of the Women’s Baptist Foreign Missionary Society of the West’, Women’s Baptist Foreign Mission Society, 1871-1913, p. 3. 17. Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Zenanas and Girlless Villages: The Ethnology of American Evangelical Women, 1870-1910, pp. 355-63. 18. Sushil Madhave Pathak, American Missionaries and Hinduism, New Delhi, 1967, p. 81.

CHAPTER 25

Naga Conversions to Christianity in Manipur in the Twentieth Century TH. R. TIBA

The coming of the Christian missionaries, particularly the American Baptist Mission, to the Naga Hills in the late nineteenth century and the subsequent spread of the new religion did produce many changes. However, unlike many of the Naga tribes among whom the conversion started much earlier, the Maram Nagas embraced Christianity only in the second half of the twentieth century. The Maram Nagas are one of the various Naga tribes mostly inhabiting the Senapati district of Manipur. Their total population is about 59,633*. It was in the year 1949 that seven Maram Naga village youths took baptism at Ngu River near the present site of the village, Tumuyon Khullen.6 Then conversion to Christianity started at a slow pace in the 1950s. However, it was in the 1960s that conversion began in earnest and at a rapid pace. At this time, there were already two Christian missions—the American Baptist Mission and the Roman Catholic Mission in Manipur. Thus, in this article, an attempt is being made to ascertain as to why conversion to Christianity, especially by the American Baptist Mission, had been difficult, with certain tribes, like the Marams, and analyse the reasons for later, large-scale, conversion to Roman Catholicism. A mission centre was established near the Inspection Bungalow, Kangpokpi,1 as early as 1919,2 which was a stone’s throw from Tumuyon Khullen, a Maram Naga village.

* Maram Naga Hoho Statistic Book, 2005.

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Th. R. Tiba

Clashes between Old Practices and Christian Doctrine The Naga tribes, in general, are known to the outside world as headhunters, wild, savage and so on. They maintained strict adherence to their beliefs and practices, holding their customs dear, yet their resistance melted when they encountered the Christian missionaries. There are many factors that led the Nagas to convert to Christianity. The Nagas have not adopted any of the traits of the neighbouring cultures, though they are contiguous to the Hindus—Assamese and Meitei; and the Buddhist Burmese. The Nagas had never known social stratification other than the clan system, sadung, communal life other than that of the village, economy other than the barter system, traditions of central political authority other than village kinship, intensive wet paddy cultivation other than terraced or jhumming, stable priesthood other than village priesthood, literary traditions other than folk songs and dances or any other attributes of the surrounding civilizations. The people had remained remarkably isolated from the surrounding civilizations. Thus, the two cultures, that of the plain Burmese, Meitei and Ahom and that of the Nagas, remained apart. The Naga villages, which were their only economic unit, were self-sufficient, economically, as they did not have many needs or wants then, and hence, they never developed trading relationships with neighbouring Hindu and Buddhist societies of the plains. Even within the hills, the various Naga languages were so mutually unintelligible that communication between villages or communities of villages had to be carried out by sign language. Walls and pits on the hilltop or edge of the mountain range defended the villages from sudden raids and ambushes, and moreover fortified the villages. No formal communication between villages existed, whether they belonged to the same tribe or other Naga tribes. Thus these villages were somehow comparable to the Greek city-states or polis. The inter-village warfare or the so-called head-hunting was fundamental to Naga culture—as one of its most distinctive attributes. The distinction lay in the pattern of this institutionalized violence, which was one of the most important factors for localization or isolation of the villages. To others, the

Naga Conversions to Christianity in Manipur

591

Nagas’ world was very narrow and limited as it consisted of only his co-villagers and clansmen, including his potential enemies.3 Thus, the Nagas lived a very secluded life, brave and intrepid as they were. On top of these, hemmed in on all the sides by the massive mountain ranges and by the very wall on the typical village hilltop, most Naga groups developed religious systems that were very locality-specific. The Maram Nagas were no exception. However, the Marams were one of the Naga tribes to accept Christianity, the last, after the mission period. The Marams who observed strict adherence to their old beliefs and practices came in sharp contrast to the Christian missionaries’ views, especially those of the Baptist.4 One of the dreadful things in the Maram Naga country prior to the spread of the gospel was the continual warfare.5 Most of the American Baptist missionaries who worked in north-eastern India were British nationals affiliated to the denom­ ination of the ‘Southern Baptist’ of American Baptist Mission. The Protestants in the United States of America formed themselves into the ‘Southern Baptist Convention’ in 1845.6 These Southern Baptists were those who broke away from the North, primarily on the question of slavery. The South had a large number of slaves and they considered it a necessary evil and justified it on the ground that the Negroes came into contact with the gospel because of the white masters.7 The coming of the missionaries to the Naga Hills and subse­ quently to the hills in Manipur was not a planned programme. The missionaries in Burma, Bengal and Assam did not give much importance to the Nagas nor were they aware of the Naga country. The American Baptist Mission actually waited for a chance to go to China via Burma through Shan, but they shifted their mission to Sadiya and later to Sibsagar.8 For nearly 23 years, the missionaries had been preaching to the people of the Assam plains with the notion and the flattering belief that a vast number of people would be accessible to mission work, which would also be a connecting link between India, northern Burma and China.9 But they had little hope of a prosperous harvest in the plains of Assam among Assamese who were deeply rooted in Hinduism, and amongst the tribes in the plains. Thus, they turned elsewhere—to the mountain

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tribes. This move proved to be one of their greatest successes. The Christian conversion movement of the Nagas became one of the largest mass movements of Christianity in Asia. The Christian population among the Nagas by 1980 was approximately 80.2 per cent and by 1990 it was around 90 per cent. The Ao Nagas, who were heavily proselytized between the 1880s and the 1950s, led all other Naga groups in converting to Christianity in the early stages when the gospel reached the Naga Hills. The Tangkhul Nagas, who were equally proselytized between 1894 and the 1950s, were also converted to Christianity in large numbers, and led other Naga tribes in Manipur into converting. On the other hand, the Angami Nagas, who were also heavily proselytized in the same period, responded at a far slower pace, as did the Lotha Nagas. But the Sema Nagas, who were virtually ignored by missionaries in this period, readily took on a Christianity identity. The Maram Nagas who were just near the mission centre, Kangpokpi, did not con­ vert to Christianity during this period in spite of the efforts by American Baptist missionaries. The study here, then, is to account for these very different outcomes. Nagas, as a whole, converted most dramatically only after the dismantling of the colonial state and the expulsion of foreign missionaries by the newly indepen­ dent Government of India. Thus except perhaps the Zeliangrong Nagas, the rest of the Nagas had converted to Christianity by the last quarter of the twentieth century. The early Baptist missionaries in Manipur, like William Pet­ tigrew, Dr Crozier, Rev. Anderson and others, were men who matched their counterparts in Naga Hills like E.W. Clark, C.D. King, and S.W. Rivenburg, among others, in zeal and enthusiasm. They studied local languages, established schools and boarding houses and made use of medicines to approach the local populace. The long and arduous years spent by the missionaries in Manipur left behind a saga of dedication and sacrifice. When the Maram Nagas decided to accept Christianity, a lot of human factors came into play. Rev. John S. Anderson, the last foreign missionary, used to visit Tumuyon Khullen, the Maram Naga village, from the Kang­ pokpi mission centre.10 But the elders, who spread rumours that

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Pringchi, which means white men or British, were soul-killers, it thwarted all his attempts at conversion.11 Their fear heightened when the missionaries took snapshots and showed these to them. People believed that the Pringchi had captured their souls. Another popular rumour was that, if anyone looked at the white men’s face, they would die. At this time, one of the students from the village, who was studying at Kangpokpi Mission School, Akeng, died due to illness and this strengthened the villagers’ belief that the white men were soul-killers.12 Thereafter, all the students from the village were withdrawn from the school by the elders. Thus, due to this obstinate and suspicious nature of the Marams, no breakthrough could be achieved during his period. But Anderson encouraged Mao Naga preachers to contact the Marams, especially those at Tumuyon Khullen village. He, too, visited the village time and again, and whenever he visited, he would come riding a horse and preach the gospel, holding a cat. Anderson thus made contact with a local youth, called Kaping, for conversion and eventually con­ tacted about 30 youths in the village. However, when the elders came to know about their interpersonal relationship, they threat­ ened and persuaded other youths to adhere to the old practices. Thus they managed to prevent many young people from being converted to Christianity. In spite of all these hurdles, seven youths stood firm and decided not to change their decision to convert, come what may. Kangngouning was then sügong, the village chief, and R. Ngouning was the gongpai, gaonbura or deputy. They, along with their council of elders, decided to impose a fine of Rs. 50.13 on whoever embraced Christianity. Despite all this intimidation, the seven youths refused to turn back and finally the village coun­ cil of elders or the authority was compelled to expel them. They were asked to leave the village within 15 days.14 These seven youths became the ‘Pioneers of Christianity’ amongst the Marams. On that fateful day, under a heavy downpour, the seven converts, with all their belongings, passed through the village gate amid jeers, taunts, scoffs, tears and threats of the villagers and made a threehour journey northward to settle at a place called Duilongpou where they established a new, all-Christian village at the foot of the hill which is now called Tumuyon Khullen. Although the new

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village struggled to survive in the beginning, its residents somehow managed to beat the odds with the support and help of residents of the neighbouring village, Takaimei.15 Slowly but steadily, isolated families from the old village trickled into the new one, as it became apparent that the new village would be permanent, not to mention its better location. The seven youths were baptized by Lorho Mao, an evangelist from Punanamei, at Ngu, a river, on 19 September 1949. Thereafter, the first Maram Naga church was established at Tumuyon Khullen with K. Adani of Punanamei as the first pastor (1950-3) with a salary of Rs. 20, sponsored by Rev. J.S. Anderson. From this village, Christianity spread to other Maram Naga villages. Apart from the theological dimensions manifest in the conver­ sions, the main social dimensions of Christian conversion among the Maram Nagas are already evident from the discussion so far. First, it is clear that conversion to Christianity generally occurred at the expense of village cohesiveness; and second, one notes the pattern of village elders initially opposing the movement but even­ tually joining or even leading it. One could notice in the preaching of the American Baptist missionaries the strict Christian doctrinal teachings, perhaps con­ ditioned by the environment that brought them up in their native place. The Baptist missionaries were not willing to allow certain traditional customs to remain.16 For instance, in the Naga Hills, Rev. Clark insisted his tiny band of 15 followers observe Sunday as a day of rest, which directly interfered with the rhythm and rou­ tine of Naga village life. The missionaries in the hills of Manipur also came into conflict with the local practices because almost all the works of the Naga villages were done on community basis; and any interference with that rhythm naturally undermined a village’s economic functioning, not to mention its ritual solidarity. Thus, when the Baptist missionaries came face to face with the Maram Nagas, the two, already conditioned by their own cultural backgrounds, could not compromise on many grounds. One of the important things the Marams could not compromise on was the drinking of rice beer.17 Drinking bouts were part and parcel of the Maram Naga’s life. Although the government and the mission

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agreed concerning education and respecting most areas of Nagas’ culture, they clashed over how much of the local culture should be preserved, altered or abolished outright. Interested primarily in maintaining peace and security, the government aimed to interfere with native customs as little as possible. However, the missionaries felt differently. To them, the people were very interesting, but that was not the main purpose of the missionaries being there, simply to study these interesting people, but to strive and help them to reach the gospel to every nook and corner of the world. The gov­ ernment, though, was keen to study the people per se, leading to many anthropological works on the Nagas by British government officials and other Europeans, including T.C. Hudson, W.C. Smith, C.V. Haimendorf, J.H. Hutton and J.P Mills, among others. For receiving baptism, the candidates were required to pass a stiff examination on knowledge of Christian doctrine and furnish evidence that they had not participated in any ‘heathen ritual’ or drinking of ‘rice beer’ over the last three months. One of the prob­ lems encountered here was that the missionaries infused into their understanding of Christian values acquired from their upbringing in the Southern Baptists of America, which clashed very strikingly with Maram Naga values. A more fundamental problem was that in Maram religion, ‘heathen rituals’ could not simply be isolated and excised out of the matrix of Maram culture in which they were embedded.18 Some missionaries seem to have recognized this, but most seem not to have cared.19 It was the core factor on which the comparative attractiveness of the Roman Catholic and American Baptist denominations would hinge. One basic Naga institution discouraged by the Baptist mis­ sionaries, presumably because of its association with their old beliefs, was the ‘Feast of Merit’. The Marams, known for their megalithic culture, quite often pull huge stones from nearby riv­ ers and streams. On such occasions, there would be a carefully ranked sequence of feasts given by individuals for their village or for their clan within a larger village, the giving of which raised the sponsor’s position in the eyes of his peers, thereby constituting a major channel of social mobility. Great quantities of food supplies were expended during the ‘Feast of Merit’ and it occasioned much

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drinking and merrymaking. Economically, too, they were impor­ tant since they permitted an equitable distribution of perishable food supplies, which, without adequate means of preservation, would otherwise have spoiled. And finally, there was this Baptist’s rigid stand against the drinking of rice beer, a drink that was cen­ tral to the ‘Feast of Merit’ and most other ceremonies. In fact, the neophytes developed such an obsession with this that the word, joukashakmei, literally ‘drinkers’, came to be popularly associated with non-Christians.

Geographical Factor Various parts of Naga inhabited areas in the Naga Hills that lay in the south-eastern part of the Himalayan mountain range are not the same in strictly geographical terms—soil, topography, climatic conditions, weather, humidity, etc. Thus the staple crops of various tribes differ from one another. It is to be noted that the various Naga tribes speaking the same language or dialect live in contiguous areas. The areas where certain Naga tribes (Tinyimi, Angami, Chakesang, Rengma, Zeliangrong, Mao, Maram, Poumei, Mao, Pochury, Thangal) reside are blessed with alluvial soil suited for rice cultivation. Many areas in these parts practise terraced cultivation. Thus the people have a more or less stable crop or rich harvest in comparison with other Naga tribes where jhuming was the dominant agricultural practice. In drier areas, millets, maize, etc., are cultivated. It is in these areas where terraced farming was predominant. People could afford to brew rice beer due to surplus till the next harvest. Drinking bouts were, thus, a tradition. Maram Nagas lived in such a location. One could notice in the preaching of the American Baptist missionaries strict Christian doctrinal teachings, perhaps conditioned by the environment that brought them up in their native place. The Baptist missionaries were not willing to allow certain traditional customs to remain. Thus when Baptist missionaries tried to convert the people, it failed. Drinking bouts and merrymaking had become part and parcel of the Maram Naga life. In many of the Maram Naga villages, there were hangshüki

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and lhüsoiki—dormitories for boys and girls. Besides many other things, it was the focal point for major village celebrations and feasts that marked its ritual years. The missionaries were against the converts sleeping in the village dormitory. In a Christian vil­ lage, one might notice the non-existence of a dormitory, e.g. in Tumuyon Khullen Baptist village there is none, but there were dormitories for both the sexes at Maramei Namdi (Maram Khul­ len) and Willong (Roman Catholic villages) till recently. On this issue, the Baptist missionaries clashed with the traditional culture. However, the Catholic missionaries did not object to this custom.20 Because of these conflicts between Maram culture and the behaviour upheld by the Baptist missionaries, many converts appeared to do a good deal of wavering and wobbling in terms of religious allegiance. It was in the wake of hectic missionary activity by the Baptists, that the European Catholic missionaries came to Maram areas. When the missionaries came, they did not try to change the customs of the people but to keep intact their exist­ ing culture rather than removing the local practices and replacing these by the Western mode of behaviour.21 The Marams, who were very fond of the ‘Feast of Merit’ and drinking bouts and averse to the rules of strict discipline as laid down by Baptist missionar­ ies such as the observance of Sundays as rest days or Sabbath or very formal and strict adherence to Christian doctrine, chose the Catholic faith in significant numbers. Unlike many of the Naga tribes, the Marams had turned to a religion that did not interfere with their traditional practices. In many of the Catholic villages, the dormitory system lasted for a longer period and the Roman Catholic priests do not object to or discourage the brewing of rice beer till today. The number of Roman Catholics in percentage is higher in the case of Maram Nagas as compared to any other Naga tribe. And thus it was due to such stringent criteria of conver­ sion that the number of baptized Christians were always smaller then the total number of those who follow Christianity. Given the exclusive attitude of the Baptist missionaries, on the one hand, and the integrity of Maram religion with village life, on the other, it is obvious that severe social tensions were generated wherever the missionaries or village teachers trained in their schools preached.

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Missionaries’ records are replete with stories of such conflict.22 But, the causes for the village elders’ consternation are not hard to find. After converting to Christianity, Marams often refused to contrib­ ute their share towards celebration of village festivals. In spite of all these, the Christian community continues to grow. In 1949, there was only one church—which was Baptist. By 1952, that number rose to three and by 1962, there were six churches. By 2006, there were 21 churches belonging to Baptist denomination. There were about eight Roman Catholic churches by 2006.

The Conversion The growth of the churches and conversion in the 1950s and 1960s to Christianity—of the Protestant (American Baptist Mission) and Roman Catholic denominations—cannot be explained strictly in non-religious terms. Conversion to Christianity among the Naga tribes is to be found in certain particular forms of interaction between Naga religious cosmology and their social relations, each of which influences the other.23 Maram Nagas were no exception. The extension of the British administration in the late nine­ teenth and early twentieth centuries to the Naga Hills and the extension of indirect rule in the hills of Manipur after the 1891 Pal­ ace Revolution brought dramatic changes in the material culture of the Nagas. Their age-old method of bamboo friction devices for making fire, the reed torch, etc., was rendered obsolete with the introduction of safety matches, lantern and the like. The advent of British eroded some of the most fundamental institutions of the village, particularly the institutionalized inter-village warfare. Traditionally, such warfare demanded rigid discipline and training—the youth dormitory in the village had its utility as a sort of barrack then. Christianity not only brought about the removal of village defences and curbs against carrying arms, including spears, but also a quartering of troops among more turbulent villages, and an occasional demonstration of military might in others. How­ ever, the price of this peace was the gradual erosion of traditional village authority and the martial values on which that authority

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rested. The traditional chiefs who were the leaders of the com­ munity started losing their grip over the younger warriors. And it was the youngsters who responded more readily to the new reli­ gion, Christianity. To codify the customary law, British employed educated Naga interpreters, and, as it happened, many of these interpreters were educated under the tutelage of missionaries, or they were either Christian, or willing to become Christian.24 But, it would be a grave mistake to see the conversion of the Maram Nagas as merely a function of social change. Although Maram Nagas have been subjected to intense exposure to both the mission and government [the mission compound at Kangpokpi established in 1920 (1919) was located in the heart of Maram Nagas inhabited areas], there was hardly any conversion during mission period. But the Mao Nagas, who were quite far away from the mission centre and the administrative headquarters of govern­ ment at Imphal, had a far greater number of converts. When one examines how the various Naga cosmologies were related to the particular social situations in which they operated, and then explores the manner in which the Christian cosmology was made to fit into these various religious systems, a coherent explanation begins to emerge. There is an important cognitive realm that feeds back into the society of its believers, providing that society with conceptual categories by which its immediate phenomenal world might be explained, predicted and controlled. One can understand the capacity of their conceptual categories to explain, predict and control the phenomenal social order they experienced, and the ways in which they responded to Christian religious categories by knowing the nature of the Nagas’ cognitive realm. In using this approach, there are two variables that one finds— that Christianity was not presented uniformly among Naga groups, and that the Christian cosmology was fitted well into certain Naga religious systems or beliefs better than that of other different tribes. It is also found that various Naga communities experienced differ­ ent dimensions of social change before and during their exposure to Christian influence, which ultimately affected their different

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responses to that influence. And, by examining the Maram Nagas’ cosmological structure, one can understand the way in which Christianity penetrated that cosmology rather at a very slow pace. Pümpü Pramha is the supreme God of the Marams. The supreme deity was believed to live high in the sky and to be con­ cerned with the ultimate destiny of all men. All living creatures go to get the blessings. The precise nature of the deity, however, was apparently vague in the minds of the people. The supreme deity appears to be so remote and exercised only theoretical power and seems not to possess effective control over man’s ultimate des­ tiny. There were other deities who did. Aki-rükot, a house god, is another deity that protects the house. Every family had its own deity. Marams generally built their house facing east, in order to gratify this deity. If Aki-rükot is happy and good, the descendants of the particular household will prosper and live a good life. There were several less significant deities as well, among the Maram Nagas. One of the most significant cognitive dimensions to the introduction of Christianity among the Nagas is that it was accom­ panied by literacy and that the first literature presented to them was Christian literature. Literary work in the languages of the Tangkhuls and the Kukis (one of the Kuki-Chin tribes) in Mani­ pur Hills and Aos, Semas, Angamis and Rengmas in Naga Hills was taken up before conversion. And the impact of literacy on the religious outlook of pre-literate societies was immense. The works were mostly translations of Bible scriptures. Most of the missionar­ ies carried out their agenda of conversion among the Aos, Semas, Angamis and Tangkhuls by using the mission school educated students. There were only a handful of foreign missionaries. The missionaries selectively sent these mission educated Naga students to their respective areas for propagation of the gospel. The mis­ sionaries, witnessing this revolution of literacy, seem to have been vaguely prescient of its enormous impact. In 1944, for example, the first literature ever printed in the Rengma Naga language was the Book of Mathew and the first Christian scripture to appear in Angami was the Book of Mathew translated by Stanley Rivenburg and published in 1890. The Christian Almighty God was identified

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with the Nagas’ most revered and highest god, Lungkijinba in Ao, Ukepenopfu in Angami. However, this was not so in the case of the Maram Nagas. There was hardly any literate person till the mission period. And the gospel songbooks were some of the earliest lit­ eratures in Maram Naga. And the pace of conversion was awfully slow. There must be some reasons behind this. For all their condemnation of the social dimension of Naga religion, the American Baptist Missionaries leaned very heavily on its cosmological dimension. The Marams had the notion of sin and need for salvation and they had an apocalyptic vision that closely approximated the Day of Judgement. The Marams had terms for hell, heaven, salvation, end of the world, etc., closely approximat­ ing Christian beliefs or doctrines. However, these teachings could never reach Maram areas during the mission period. One aspect for which the people turn to the new teachings was the Christian deity’s perceived ability to deliver men from the fear of malevolent spirits. In 1947, at Tumuyon Khullen when some 30-40 people decided to convert to Christianity, the village elders threatened those who were ready to convert, that malevolent spirits struck them down, like the young boy from the village who expired at the mission compound in Kangpokpi, while studying.25 It was on 7 June that the seven Christians were asked to leave the village amidst a heavy downpour. They were all drenched when they started their journey. But when they reached one mountain range, the rain stopped completely and there was bright sunshine. There they dried their clothes and proceeded to Duilong Pou to set up a new village. Their belief in the new religion was strengthened by the good weather after they offered prayer. And the villagers were taken aback that nothing unusual happened. One more Maram Nagas belief in their deity had thereby been discredited. Another reason for the slow progress or acceptability of Chris­ tianity was that, unlike other Naga tribes, for whom the political system of village councils was composed of elders representing various clans, Maram villages were generally ruled by an auto­ cratic chief who belonged to a single ruling lineage that extended throughout these villages. This powerful chief directed the vil­ lages in war, decided all matters of relations with other villages

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and determined which land the village could cultivate. Thus, it was very difficult to bring in a new religion to the village. Till now, the sagong, the king of Maramei Namdi, is a hereditary post and a convert cannot sit on the throne. Some try to articulate the salient features of Naga cosmology for identification with the Christian God26 in explaining conver­ sions. But with regard to the Marams, the conversion has to do with the culture much more than the cosmology or the pantheon. Despite its administrative integration with the rest of British India, the hills in Manipur had been comparatively more cut-off from the rest of the world than the Naga Hills in the north. Then suddenly Maram areas were engulfed by the chaos of modern mechanized warfare when the entire Naga Hills became a major theatre of the conflict. It culminated in March 1944, when Japanese slammed through Southeast Asia and the rugged Burma-India frontier and launched massive attacks on Kohima and Imphal resulting in the famous pitched battle fought at Maram on 18 June 1944. However, in July, the Japanese were driven off though not without having caused grievous hardship to the Nagas whose villages had been pillaged, destroyed or occupied and who, them­ selves, were often tortured or executed by the Japanese. Tumuyon Khullen village was under siege for almost six months. Two per­ sons were killed by Japanese troops and the village was bombarded many times by British aircraft, as it was used by the Japanese as a launching pad to attack the British stationed at Kangpokpi, their inspection bungalow and the mission centre. Dramatic changes like the Second World War took place but the people’s religious behaviour remained unchanged. In fact, Tumuyon Khullen was under siege by the Japanese troops from the early part of 1944 till autumn. Thus, to say that religious change was exclusively a function of social change would be fatuous. Cer­ tainly, various factors combined to result in mass conversions. The most important was the attitude of the missionaries towards the Maram culture. The Baptist missionaries were completely against the habit of drinking especially in the dormitory and non-obser­ vance of Sabbath. But in the case of the Catholic missionaries, they were not against practice of age old-traditions like drinking bouts,

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the dormitory system and the like. Thus, one may notice the exis­ tence of bachelor’s dormitory in predominantly Catholic villages like Maramei Namdi (Maram Khullen) and Willong villages but not at Tumuyon Khullen, Tapumei and Tamei. This very approach made the Maram Nagas turn to the new teachings of Catholicism. When looking at the Maram community, a good number of Chris­ tians here belong to the Roman Catholic denomination. Indeed, the Marams are the only Naga tribe wherein the percentage of the population belonging to the Roman Catholic denomination is higher as indicated due to non-interference in the local custom of drinking, restricting work on Sundays, etc. The Baptist strictly prohibited converts from drinking rice beer, which was central to traditional feasts. In fact, the missionaries developed such an obsession with the issue of non-drinking that it is often regarded as the outstanding mark of a Christian. And, the newly converts regard the non-Baptist Marams, be they Catholic or non-Christian as jou-kashak-mei which literally means ‘drinker’, as mentioned earlier. In conclusion, we can say that many factors were account­ able for the conversions.

Maram Scenario To be sure, some local missionaries seem to have realized that Maram religion could not simply be isolated and excised out of the matrix of Maram culture in which it was embedded.27 And without doubt, colonial rule destabilized venerable Maram Naga cultural institutions. The result of imperial criminalization of head-hunting and inter-village warfare was that the people’s ethos of a rigid discipline weakened and the village chiefs who were the leaders of the community started losing their hold over their younger warriors. Indeed, it was the same younger warriors who were responding most readily to the teachings of the Christian doctrine. The price of this peace though gradual was the erosion of traditional village authority and the martial values on which that authority rested. The process of opening up the hills also eroded some of the most fundamental institutions of the villages, such as the

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institutionalized warfare and the dormitory system. Inter-village warfare demanded rigid discipline and training and the dormitory had functioned in part as a sort of barrack. But, the advent of the Baptist missionaries with strict doctrinal teachings of not allowing the new converts to sleep in the dormitory curbed the drinking bouts and the feasts of merit. The price of this discipline was the disappearance of dormitories in Baptist Christianized villages and complete stoppage of fighting or warfare.28 However, in villages, which are predominantly Roman Catholic, for example Maram Namdi and Willong, the dormitory system, brewing of rice beer, drinking bouts and other age-old practices continue to exist. The advent of missionaries and the subsequent spread of Chris­ tianity disrupted the smooth traditional functioning of the village council. There were no incidents of disunity and quarrelling in the village assembly among the villagers. This, however, might be partly due to inter-village warfare. But the advent of Christianity brought about disunity within the village. This ultimately resulted in the formation of many new villages out of the old parent village. Villages like Kavainam, Pang Maram, New Maram, Sügongbam, Katomei and a few others are all Christian breakaway villages from Maramei Namdi, Willong, etc. Of all these villages, only Tumuyon Khullen was fully Christianized. In most of the Maram villages, Christians were persecuted and threatened with expulsion from the village and clan inheritance, as well as restricted from culti­ vating their common land. Thereafter, the newer villages were not built on the hilltops but near paddy fields. It was now more out of economic consideration than as a defence strategy. Lastly, it’s essential to mention that Maram religion was quite simple although it contained elaborate rituals associated with agricultural life. A review of their religious life leads to a sum­ mary outline of the mystery surrounding the suspicious rigidity and strong detestation for interference in the daily routine of the Maram Nagas which resulted in their non-acceptance of Christi­ anity for so long till that resistance was overcome by other local missionaries.

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Notes 1. Elungkiebe Zeliang, History of the Christianity in Manipur: Source Material, p. 61. 2. Ibid., pp. 79, 82. 3. Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf, ‘Morality and Prestige among the Nagas’, in Pradhan (ed.), Anthropology and Archaeology: Essays in Commomeration of Verrier Elwin, 1957-64, Oxford University Press; 1969, p. 156. 4. Th. R. Tiba, American Baptist Mission, pp. 45-6. Roman Catholic missionaries had by then, i.e. in 1950s reached Maram Nagas areas. 5. Tiba, ‘History and Culture of the Maram Nagas’, PhD thesis submitted to the Department of History, Assam University, Silchar, 2006, chapter on ‘Polity’. 6. Tiba, American Baptist Mission, op. cit., p. 46. 7. Thomas Menamparampil, Church History, p. 54. 8. Philip, Baptist Churches, p. 51. 9. American Baptist Mission Union, 44th Annual Report, May 1858, p. 16. 10. Ibid., 50. 11. Interview of Akeng (one of the seven Christian pioneers) of Tumuyon Khullen village on 6 April 2006. 12. Interview o f Abung (one of the seven Christian pioneers) of Tumuyon Khullen village on 7 January 2006. 13. This fine was imposed when 30 youths decided to convert to Christianity. A hefty amount during those days. 14. Tiba, American Baptist Mission, op. cit., p. 71. 15. Interview of Pou Tuitalong (93-years old) of Tamuilong village on 6 April 2006. 16. Mary M. Clark, A Corner in India, p. 17. 17. Tiba, American Baptist Mission, op. cit., p. 72. 18. Ibid., pp. 75-6. 19. Ibid., p. 76. 20. Joseph Athichal, Maram Nagas: A Socio-Cultural Study, p. 159. For details see his interview with Fr Bianchi SDB and Fr John Med. Fr Bianchi is Italian and Father John Med is Czech. 21. Ibid., p. 159. 22. In the village Tumuyon Khullen, the seven youths were expelled as their new faith came into serious conflict with the traditional

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23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

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customs and practices, when they stood firm in their decision to convert to Christianity. Richard M. Eaton, Conversion to Christianity Among the Nagas, 1876-1971, p. 21. He studied the conversion with regard to the Angami, Ao and Sema Nagas, 1984, pp. 23-44. Some of the people who acted as interpreters were barred by the village elders to convert. A. Kaping who acted as interpreter was warned with dire consequences by the village authority of Tamuilong. Interview of Pou Tuitalong (93 years old) of Tamuilong village on 7 April 2006. Eaton, op. cit., p. 25. Tiba, op. cit., pp. 76-7. Ibid.

References Anand, V.K., Nagaland in Transition, New Delhi, Associated Publishing House, 1967. Clark, Mary M., A Corner in India, Philadelphia, American Baptist Publications Society, 1907. Fürer-Haimendorf, Christoph von, Return to the Naked Nagas, Delhi Vikas, 1976. Fürer-Haimendorf, Christoph von (2nd revised Indian edn), The Naked Nagas, Thacker, Spink and Co., 1962. H. Leon McBeth, The Baptist Heritage: Four Centuries of Baptist Witness, Broadman Press, Nashville, Tennessee, 1987. Hutton, John H. (reprinted 1921), The Angami Nagas, London, Oxford University Press, 1969. . (reprinted 1921), The Sema Nagas, London, Oxford University Press, 1968. Imchen, Panger, Ancient Ao Naga Religion and Culture, New Delhi, HarAnand Publications, 1993. Johnstone, Sir James (reprinted 1896), Manipur and the Naga Hills, Delhi, Vivek, 1971. Jacobs, Julian, The Naga Hill Peoples of Northeast India: Society, Culture, and the Colonial Encounter, London, Thames and Hudson, 1990. Mills, J.P., The Ao Nagas, London, Macmillan, 1926. , (1922), The Lotha Nagas, Kohima, Directorate of Art and Culture, Government of Nagaland, 1980.

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Pannikkar, Raimundo, An interview, Illustrated Weekly of India, 30 October 1988, p. 39. As quoted in Joseph Athickal, Maram Nagas: A Socio-Cultural Study, New Delhi, Mittal Publications, 1992. Phillip, Puthavail Thomas (2nd edn.), The Growth of Baptist Churches in Nagaland, Guwahati, Christian Literature Centre, 1983. Puthenpurakal, Joseph, Baptist Missions in Nagaland: A Study in Historical and Ecumenical Perspective, Calcutta, Firma KLM, 1984. Smith, William C., The Ao Naga Tribe of Assam, London, Oxford University Press, 1925. Statistical Handbook of Manipur, Directorate of Economics & Statistics, Imphal, 2002. Statistical Atlas of Nagaland, Directorate of Economics & Statistics, Kohima, 1995. Tanquist, Joseph E. (ed.), A New Selection of Hymns in Angami Naga, Kohima, Baptist Mission Press, 1918. Tiba, Th. R., ‘American Baptist Mission in Manipur: 1896-1950’, unpublished MPhil thesis submitted to the Department of History, NEHU, 1993. , ‘History and Culture of the Maram Nagas,’ PhD thesis submitted to the Department of History, Assam University, Silchar, 2006. Zeliang, Elungkiebe, History of Christianity in Manipur: Source Materials, Guwahati, Christian Literature Centre, 2005. , A History of The Manipur Baptist Convention, Imphal, Manipur Baptist Convention, 2005. Richard M. Eaton, 1984, ‘Conversion to Christianity among the Nagas, 1876-1971’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review. , Essays on Islam, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2007. Rowena Robinson and Sathianathan Clarke (ed.), Religious Conversion in India, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2007.

CHAPTER 26

Gendered Mission

The Zenana Work of the American Baptist Mission

in Assam (1836-1950)*

TEJIMALA GURUNG

Interest in the phenomenon of missionary enterprise has led to the examination of critical aspects of Christian missions defined by area and theme. One such area has been the focus on studying missions as highly gendered in its activities and in a wider context even functioning as agents of cultural imperialism.1 Conventionally, writings on missionary enterprise had tended to overlook the gendered nature of Christian missions while at the same time ignoring the important role played by women’s agency.2 The Zenana3 mission or the ‘Woman’s Work for Woman’ has been one such sphere which encompassed women’s missionary endeavour from the later period of the nineteenth century. In contrast to other imperial enterprise where few white women played a minor role, women were omnipresent in Christian missions.4 In north­ east India, with few exceptions,5 the historiography of Christianity has tended to focus, in general on mission and denominational church histories and its growth. A critical study of the gendered nature of Christian missions and the role of its women agents in *This paper is a revised version of an earlier paper published as ‘The Zenana Work of the American Baptist Mission in Assam during the Nineteenth Century’, in Quest, The Journal of Vivekananda Cultural Centre, Guwahati, vol. V, no. 2 (January 2012), pp. 54-76. The writer is thankful to the UGC-SAP-DSA II of Department of History, NEHU, Shillong for financial assistance received for archival work.

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the evangelical project has not received scholarly attention. The present paper seeks to examine the Zenana work of one such foreign mission—the American Baptist Mission in colonial Assam locating it in the wider context of modern missionary endeavour and changes in mission strategy. The concept of Zenana mission to India developed during the nineteenth century as an evangelical strategy by Christian mis­ sions, owing to the practice of seclusion of women followed in both Hindu and Muslim societies in which women of respectable fami­ lies were not allowed to come out openly in the public. Confronted with the above social phenomena, the need for an outfit in this area of missionary work wherein men were physically or socially prohibited but where women could be admitted was keenly felt. Hence the practice of a gendered sphere of activity designed ‘for woman by woman’ was rationalized by the mission to gain access to the women. Within the domestic space women were visualized as the guide and mentor of their children, and as shaping men’s morals and manners. As such ‘uneducated’ Indian women were seen as barriers to religious conversion and all progress. In a nut­ shell, the women were seen as the main support of paganism and obstacle to the progress of the gospel in India. In the words of Ger­ aldine Forbes, ‘Clearly the Christian faith and Christian attitudes and habits could never be firmly established in India until the women had been touched.’6 In missionary ethnology, which was essentially didactic in purpose, zenana came to be portrayed as a symbol of ‘enforced female isolation’ of ‘mental torpor’ and female debasement, which needed to be penetrated to undermine the social foundations of ‘heathen’ nations.7 Post-1860s the zenana as a site came to be rationalized for the creation of a separate women’s foreign mission society to work among ‘heathen women’.8 Missionary texts relating to Zenana work often provide a hybrid genre which incorporate geographical descriptions, eco­ nomic activities, diseases, etc., besides ethnographic details of native culture, religious customs, beliefs and practices including graphic accounts of the missionary encounter with the indig­ enous women in the field. As a type of micro-history, such a study provides insights into the shaping of colonial modernity and its

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implications on gender roles, relations and status of women. The women missionaries not only interpreted foreign cultures for those back home, in turn they also had an influence in reformulating the gender roles of women they set out to convert. In India, the social context for the entry of Zenana missions was provided with the establishment of British colonial rule and the growth of various acculturative socio-religious reform movements during the nineteenth century. The period saw the articulation by Indian intellectuals of the need for upliftment of the position of women who were victims of age-old socio-religious customs and practices. From a utilitarian point of view it was considered to be useful to prepare the high caste women for their roles to be suit­ able housewives and companions of the western educated Indians.

Contextualizing the Zenana Mission The pioneers of the modern missionary movement had very early on stressed the importance of evangelizing the women and had grasped the fact that in India at least the native women could be reached primarily by women.9 But organized missionary activity, specifically by women and for women, did not take place until 1867 when The Baptist Zenana Mission of the Baptist Missionary Society was set up in London to ‘support ladies for Zenana visiting and teaching’. Similar was the case with the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) set up in 1810, though during the first 50 years of the nineteenth century, about a dozen women’s societies for foreign missionary work were established in America. The Boston Female Society for Missionary Purposes (the pioneer organization for foreign missionary work among women), established in 1800,10 was involved with collecting of funds to help in mission work generally. It was only in the 1860s that a veritable women’s foreign mission crusade took shape during the close of the American Civil War (1861-5). In November 1860, the Woman’s Union Missionary Society of America, a non­ denominational organization, was organized and incorporated in New York, 11 April 1861, with the object of sending out ‘unmarried females’ in the foreign field. It took India as its main field of work.

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Subsequently, missionary services for single women who were ready to serve outside came to be opened to them increasingly. The number of women in missionary force increased from 49 per cent in 1830 to more than 60 per cent in 1893.11 The ‘feminization of foreign missions’ and success of foreign missionary fund raising have been linked to the women’s rights movements in the West and growth of the middle class in America that was recasting the roles of both men and women.12 Since the early nineteenth century, the Anglo-American intellectual climate had begun to put a new emphasis on the contributions of women to society. From the eighteenth century, philosophical thinkers had begun to challenge the notion of women’s intellectual inferi­ ority, and the ‘incapacity’ of the female mind if there be any, it was argued, was ‘acquired, it was not natural’. As part of the enlighten­ ment ideas, women were seen as representing the highest ideals of society, and their treatment and status a reflection of the state of its civilization. Women were seen as shaping man’s morals and man­ ners, as man’s friend and companion, as social equals, and society benefited if women were well educated. The nineteenth century expansion of women’s educational opportunities in America con­ sequently led to increase in female literacy enhancing women’s status and transforming their relationship specifically to print culture.13 In the promotional literature which American churchwomen published beginning from the 1860s, Zenana work figured promi­ nently so much so that the Woman’s Union Missionary Society was referred to as the Zenana Mission Society?14 This literature announced that ‘woman’s work for woman’ in the mission field was intended to ‘ennoble and uplift’ the degraded lives of women in the east. Christianity was characterized as the liberator of women; only in Christian lands were women accorded respect and dignity. The Woman’s Union (1861) served as a model for the establishment in the year 1871 of the Women’s American Baptist Foreign Mis­ sionary Society (WABFMS) for special work for women among ‘their ignorant and oppressed sisters in heathen.’15 It published a magazine, the Missionary Link, which exhorted the faithful to con­ tribute money and to consider joining as missionaries. From this

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time woman’s work for the welfare of woman was to be in woman’s hand. The WABFMS,16 appointed single women missionaries who were (i) to teach in established institutions, female seminaries, orphan homes and high schools, (ii) act as nurses in hospitals, (iii) visit houses to houses for religious conversion, and (iv) hold spe­ cial women’s meetings of the female church members from week to week in the homes of the different families. The ‘Woman’s Work for Woman’ was thus part of the philosophy of social transforma­ tion which occurred in the last three decades of the nineteenth century.17 As pointed out by Ann White, from the 1820s through the 1860s, missionaries of the ABCFM had seen themselves simply as communicators of the gospel who had to found native churches among the ‘heathen’ and not as transformers of culture or enno­ blers of womanhood.18 Missionary literature now came to abound with the duty of breaking the seclusion of women to enable the task of Christianizing and civilizing the ‘heathen sisters’. The Zenana became the arena for the ‘construction’ of the degraded status of Indian women, which needed to be entered and reformed. The degrading and cruel customs such as sati, female infanticide, early marriage, etc., were rationalized as reflection of the low esteem in which women were held. They were the outward expression of the inward conviction as to the inferiority and unimportance of women. The epitome of the Hindu woman’s life as perceived was ‘unwelcomed at birth, untaught in childhood, enslaved in mar­ riage, degraded in widowhood and unlamented at death’. It was propagated that ‘… indeed, the condition of women generally in all non-Christian lands is a pitiable one. She is the slave, the drudge or the plaything of man, rarely his helpmate or companion’.19 And yet these ‘pagan’ women wielded great power, and these women, because of custom were not accessible to the male mis­ sionaries. To women even more emphatically than to men it is given to build up the character of the nation.… Man rows but woman steers.… Whether as mothers, sisters, teachers or guardians, the training of childhood and early youth lies chiefly in woman’s hands. It is the women of a country who mainly form its standard of right.… It is from woman that man

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receives his first and most lasting impressions, and the true happiness and prosperity of any country depends greatly on the condition of its women.20

Missionary writings exhorted the Christian women of the west how they with all their ‘glorious wealth’ of freedom, culture and opportunity, could meet the need of their sisters in the East. Unless women workers penetrate the homes of the people, the citadel of superstition and idolatry is left uncaptured. It is in the home that the fierce and final battle will have to be fought. Let no one underestimate the tremendous, unobtrusive influence of the heathen mother.21

Hence the need in the mission field for a greater emphasis and specific focus on woman’s work came to be underlined. Unless women were reached the prospects of Christianizing was bleak. Ultimately, the pace and progress of Zenana activity was depen­ dent on the historical development and social context of the region where the mission was undertaken.

The Historical Context of Zenana Mission in Colonial Assam The American Baptist Mission was one of the earliest Christian missions to come to northeast India (Sadiya, 1836). In 1841, the Shan mission, as it was called earlier, was relocated to the Brahmaputra Valley, whence it came to be known as the Assam mission, which continued till 1950. During the British colonial period, the mission established a network of mission stations in the Brahmaputra Valley (Sibsagar, Nowgong and Gauhati were the earliest), in the Garo and Naga Hills and in Manipur. The coming of the Mission into the Brahmaputra Valley and Hills was made possible by the establishment of the British Rule (since 1826). In fact, early officials of the East India Company like Francis Jenkins, the Commissioner of Assam and Robert Bruce, superintendent of the Experimental Tea Garden in Upper Assam, were responsible for directing the attention of the American Baptists to Assam by highlighting the prospect of evangelizing the Shans in Upper Burma through Sadiya. (Its Burma Mission had a base at Rangoon.)

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The Brahmaputra Valley, one of the largest riverine plains in India, had for centuries been the cradle of several ruling dynasties and exposed to Buddhist, Brahminical and Islamic culture from neighbouring Bengal and Burma. Hindus and Muslims were the two dominant religious communities during the period. The Ahoms, who were a Tai-speaking group, had been the last ruling monarchy in the Brahmaputra Valley. Beginning from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a large number of Assamese populations residing in the valley had come under the influence of Sankaradeva’s teachings with its message of social egalitarianism and liberation in the region.22 The Mughal scribe Shihabuddin Talish, writing during the mid-seventeenth century, had observed that, in general, women in Assam moved about freely in the market places with heads uncovered and even the wives of the Rajas never veiled their faces before anybody.23 Owing to the nature of its historical develop­ ment, Assamese society in the valley was comparatively less rigid in its caste beliefs and practices. During the first half of the nine­ teenth century, John M’Cosh a British official had observed that ‘the Hindus and Muslims were not very rigidly observant of high caste principles; and greater latitude and toleration exists among them, than is observed in other parts of India’.24 Among the Assamese Hindus the practice of female infanti­ cide and sati was not prevalent. The social norms against widow remarriage were only prevalent amongst the high castes. However, early marriages were common and polygamy prevailed widely. Contact with neighbouring Bengali culture brought in certain practices like the purdah in the form of oroni or veil. Remarried widows came to be called with derogatory names like dhemani, batalu, etc.25 The position of women may have been less circum­ scribed by caste rigidity in Assam, yet patriarchal norms alongside socio-religious beliefs and practices had led in general to women’s social subservience and subordination. One of the areas specially designated for Zenana work by women missionaries related to female education. As noted, by William Robinson, the inspector of schools during the first half of the nineteenth century,

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Females are not included within the pale of education; every ray of mental improvement is carefully kept from the sex. As they are always confined to domestic duties, and excluded from the society of the other sex, the people see no necessity for their education.… To this there are a few exceptions. In the higher ranks of life, and among families of some importance the females are frequently taught to read and write.26

Assam, in general, was backward in education, which was confined to the male sex. A few Assamese intellectuals, like Anan­ daram Dhekial Phukan, Gunabhiram Barua and Hemchandra Barua, influenced by the development in Bengal, had sought to bring about a change in social outlook towards female eman­ cipation. Gunabhiram Barua attempted to popularize widow remarriage and to promote female education. He also wrote a series of articles in the Arunodoi, the American Baptist Mission magazine. But their influence was of a very limited nature.

Zenana Work in the Assam Field With the start of Zenana mission, single female missionaries began to arrive in Assam.27 In the Assam mission field, there was now a separate Woman’s Department with single female missionaries in charge with the General Department under male missionaries. The Zenana work was, however, not confined only to women kept in seclusion but among all classes and castes. The rationale behind Woman’s Work, as stated by Miss Orrell Keeler (1885-7) the female missionary based at Nowgong, was: In all of these false systems of religion, although there may be some good precepts with the false, there is nothing which can elevate woman from the depths of sin and ignorance. Christianity alone has the vital power and so we go about preaching Christ and him crucified, to imprisoned inmates of the zenana, and to those whose liberty is not restricted by rigid laws of the ‘purdah system’.28

In the beginning, the female missionaries, as Keeler mentions, could gain access to many of the higher caste women only by teach­ ing some needlework. Although by the late 1880s such instructions were not given, they were usually made welcome and could get a

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hearing. The most opposition to their religious preaching gener­ ally came from the high caste Hindus, Brahmos, (followers of the Brahmo Samaj) and the Mohammedans.29 During Zenana visits, the missionaries also rendered medical help. As Keeler noted ‘the little knowledge of medicine I have has been of great value in gain­ ing access to their homes and hearts’.30 The missionaries took the help of native Christians called Bible Women to visit the homes of both high and low castes. Regular home visits were made by the Bible Women and women missionaries, whose numbers were small at the beginning, accompanied them ‘when weather and time permit’.31 However, the ‘mental and spiritual qualifications’ of the Bible Women, as noted by the women missionaries, left much to be desired and were seen to limit their efficiency. Efforts were made by missionaries to impart learning and improve their skills especially through regular Bible classes. But the need for a large number of trained Christian workers for Zenana and school work remained and was keenly felt by women missionaries. Reporting on the woman’s work during this period, Rev. P.H. Moore, the missionary stationed at Nowgong, had stated: The policy of the lady missionaries has been to devote the bulk of time and strength to direct evangelistic work among the women and children to whom they have access—to go with Bible Women, or alone, and tell the ‘Old, old Story from house to house’. But considerations of health together with newness of the language and people have largely hindered in the carrying out of this line of work. Study of the language together with the care of the Girls’ School, has actually been the chief item of work in the Woman’s Department.32

Till the closing decade of the nineteenth century there were only a limited number of female missionaries in the Assam field. In 1900 out of a total of 51 American Baptist missionaries working in Assam, the single women missionaries numbered only seven, with missionary wives numbering 22.33 These seven female mis­ sionaries were stationed at only three mission stations—Nowgong (Miss Lolie Daniels and Miss Anna Long), Gauhati (Miss Henri­ etta Morgan, Isabella Wilson, and Gertrude L. Wherett) and Tura (Miss Ella C. Bond and Stella H. Bond). In 1924, out of a total

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of 88 missionaries (which included missionaries’ wives), the total number of single women missionaries listed was 22. By the third decade of the century the number of female missionaries including missionaries’ wives outnumbered male missionaries. In 1944, out of a total of 52 missionaries (including missionaries’ wives) single female missionaries numbered 20 with 16 male missionaries.34 All together, as pointed out by Frederick Downs, 187 American Bap­ tist women served as missionaries in north-east India, of whom 111 were married and 76 unmarried.35 Missionaries’ wives, who were not part of the ordained minis­ try, but considered as ‘assistant missionaries’, were also associated in the Zenana work. Their unpaid labour and contribution to the evangelical project has remained invisible in written histories. As missionary sources indicate, from the very beginning, wives of missionaries, too, had taken every opportunity to meet and talk to the native women. One such figure was Jessie T. Moore, wife of missionary Pitt Holland Moore. Jessie Moore kept a record of her long stay in Assam (1879-1916), which was intended to inter­ est home friends in missions, and to provide some idea of their life and work in Assam.36 Her accounts provide important details of the early Zenana endeavour in the Assam field and the native responses to it. In her journal, dated 4 March 1880, Jessie Moore informs: I went with Miss Keeler today in her Zenana work. As the houses we wanted to visit were some distance off, we drove. I could join in the sing­ ing with Miss Keeler and Bogi the Bible Reader. Bogi goes into the yard first, and finds out whether it will be convenient for the women of the house to see us. We took with us some large Bible pictures to explain to the women. Bogi read a portion of the scriptures. We were allowed to sit in a front room where the Babu (native gentlemen) usually receives his guests. When the mother-in-law came in, the younger women all stood until she was seated. This mother-in-law is a strong Hindu and she told Miss Keeler that our religion is best for us, and their religion is best for them.37

She noted that very often the men were strongly opposed to Christianity. The gossains or priests also objected to the missionary preaching. She mentions that the low caste women were not shut up in the Zenana, and they moved about freely.

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In her journal entry dated 1 November 1884, Jessie Moore writes: I went with Aina (a Bible woman) to visit a Hindu widow. She showed some interest as we told her of the only way of Salvation, and that we must all give an account before God. She said her parents and grandpar­ ents were Hindus, and therefore she was a Hindu, and if she were sincere in that religion it would be all right with her. When we gave her some of the proofs that the Christian Scriptures are true and that they contain only that which is good, she replied, ‘our scriptures are also good’. Oh! if she could only believe there is Salvation in Jesus only.38

Female missionaries also went out to the suburbs and neighbouring villages for Zenana work. Jessie Moore often accompanied the female missionaries. In her journal, dated 16 January 1882, she mentions about the visit with Keeler to Batiram a Mikir village, for opening a girls’ school.39 In November, she went out with Anna K. Brandt for a month to adjoining villages along with two native preachers—Hendura and Punaram and a Bible woman Tora, wife of Punaram. They visited the mission school at Salabor, a Mikir village where there were 15 pupils of whom five were girls. She noted that Habi, the wife of the native preacher, had learned to read and sew from the girls’ school at Nowgong. This she remarked was an almost unheard of accomplishment among Mikir women.40 Further, in another entry dated 8 December 1885, Jessie Moore mentions, Miss Keeler, Miss Purssell and I are out in camp for one week. We have with us Tuni as preacher, and Bogi and Boghuli as Bible women. We go out every morning and afternoon to talk to the people of Jesus and his love. Some of the women say “we are cows, what do we know”. Others say, “By thinking of God and repeating his name we shall be saved”.41 (This statement has a reference to Sankaradeva’s preaching’s which emphasized on namakirtan or singing the praise of God to attain salva­ tion.)

Such visits continued to be a feature of the Zenana work. Another entry in her journal dated 8 November 1895, reads: Mrs Carvell (Laura M. Amy) and I have just spent a week at Puroni Gudam (which was seven miles from the Mission station).… We lived in the Government rest-house. We took with us stretchers, bedding, dishes,

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food and cooking utensils. Mrs Carvell’s cook and his wife (Ahini) went with us. Ahini went about with us to visit native houses, to tell the women and children of our Savior’s love and power to save. We carried with us the large Bible pictures which always interest them. The picture of the Crucifixion makes Christ suffering more real to them. It is hard for them to understand that Christ suffered for them, and on account of their sins.42

During this visit, a woman stated her desire to be a Christian, but she wanted to leave her husband as she did not get on well with him. Jessie Moore noted: ‘Of course we could not advise her to leave her husband. We told her to win her husband by good conduct.’43 Jessie Moore also looked after the girls’ boarding school whenever the female missionary was away. During Keeler’s long furlough (1883-5) she took charge of the Woman’s Department teaching daily in the girl’s school and going out with the Bible Women for Zenana visits as often as she could. Most of the girls in the school were orphans from poor families.44 As noted by Rev. P.H. Moore in 1900, the main features of the Woman’s Department continued to be (1) the superintendence of the station school, including the Girls’ Boarding Department; (2) the supervision of the Bible Woman’s Work; and (3) personal visits and teaching the women and children of the station and vicinity in their homes, or as they were met in the streets.45 In 1915 at the thirteenth session held at Golaghat, the Women’s Council of the Assam Baptist Mission was constituted for advi­ sory supervision of the Woman’s Department and to enlarge and strengthen the work in the stations, which had increased to 12. Relating about the Zenana visits in Gauhati town, Mrs E. Lindeman, associate of Miss Isabella Wilson in the mission work noted that in nearly every house the women understood Bengali. Bengali Gospels, hymn books and other publications, such as Daughters of Light, Pandita Ramabai, was readily bought and so she always carried a good supply of literature for sale and variety of tracts for distribution.46 She wrote: Hearts are often touched as they listen to the story of our Saviour’s life.… As we leave them they invite us to return soon, saying, “We like to hear

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those beautiful words and hymns.” All are fond of our singing, and some­ times we wonder why they do not accept Jesus as their Savior; yet to some of these women the religion of their forefathers is very dear to them.… An intelligent woman who had listened attentively to the gospel several times said one day, “Yes, it is beautiful and good, but I cannot forsake my own, and the religion of all my people”.47

To the missionaries going on Zenana visits, the Hindu and Muslim women were all sinners needing salvation through belief in a personal saviour. For the missionaries, ‘Jesus had died to redeem them, and until they all hear that message, we cannot withhold the Light of Life from them.’48 In 1910, Isabella Wilson in charge of the Gauhati Girls’ School noted the growing interest in the education of girls amongst the people. Despite the fear of their children becoming Christians, parents brought their little ones to the school. But as she also observed, they often withdrew the older ones from the school to send them to the Girls’ Bengali School in Gauhati.49 The earliest justification used by the American Baptist mis­ sionaries for educating girls was that the native men who were being trained for leadership in the church might have Christian wives to be a spiritual companion. As the missionary (Rev. Thomas J. Keith) working in the Garo Hills in his argument for the estab­ lishment of a school for girls among the Garos, pointed out: The missionary’s wife wants a school in which she may do something for the women and girls. It is much needed. For we have now 25 young men in the Normal School learning the sciences, of the books, and of soap and water also. Where shall these go for their future companions in life? To their heathen country women? How can they? We must think of these things.50

Such a state of things it was stated would be disastrous to the progress of ‘the kingdom of Christ’. The newly established churches would not be strong unless the women were also literate.

Early Beginnings The earliest statistical Report of Assam for the year 1872-3 gives the number of girls’ school for the Brahmaputra Valley at seven and

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the number of girl students at 115.51 Progress of female education during the nineteenth century, both through governmental and non-governmental agencies, continued to be very slow.52 As evident from the 1901 census data,53 even by the beginning of the twentieth century, the general state of education in Assam continued to be very backward. A majority of the pupils under instruction were only in primary classes. In Assam as a whole female literacy was 0.4 per cent.54 Of the female population in schoolgoing age, less than one per cent was in the primary stage of instruction. In Garo Hills district, 1.5 per cent (males) and 0.2 per cent (females) were returned as literate. In Naga Hills district 1.3 per cent of the population was literate of which female literacy was only 0.5 per cent. On the progress of female education, W.A. Booth, director of public instruction, had stated that the largest number of girls who received instructions attended primary schools only, a few were reading in upper primary schools, a smaller number in middle schools and none in high schools.55 The American Baptist Mission had, from the beginning of its mission work, emphasized on primary schooling as essential tools for teaching the Bible and basics of the Christian faith. Wives of the pioneer missionaries, i.e. Eliza W. Brown and Harriet Low Cutter in Sibsagar, Jane W. Barker in Gauhati and Ruth Montaque Bron­ son in Nowgong, would go to the bazaar to persuade the girls of the lower caste and class to come to the mission bungalows where they were taught to read and write. As early as 1850, a good brick building for a girls’ school had been constructed at Gauhati this time almost entirely by the contribution of European residents in Gauhati.56 The two missionaries’ wives, Frances Studley Danforth and Cordelia Ward, had given personal attention to this work. But the school here never advanced beyond promising beginnings.57 With the emphasis on Zenana mission, schools were meant not only to strengthen the church but also to serve as an instrument of progress—mental and moral—for effecting change within the domestic arena. In 1885, Mrs Burdette took the initiative to start a new school at Gauhati for girls with some few Garo girls brought by her from Tura, reinforced by some Garo girls of Kamrup district and few Assamese girls from the town. As per the 1901 Census, the

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female literacy rate in Kamrup district was 0.2 per cent (males 6.8 per cent). The number of girls studying in the district was 431 and most of those studying were in primary classes.58 Work among girls in Nowgong was started in 1870 when Maria Bronson, daughter of Miles Bronson, ‘collected’ a num­ ber of girls from the bazaar into a day school. After her death in 1874, Mrs Neighbor, the missionary wife of R.E. Neighbor, with the help of native assistants kept up the Girls’ School till 1875. In 1875, Anna K. Sweet, a single female missionary, was sent by the Woman’s Society of the West to take up Zenana work and the Girls’ School in Nowgong. When she left, due to her marriage, Miss Orrell Keeler was sent from Gauhati and put up in sole charge of the Woman’s Department consisting of the Zenana work and the Girls’ School. In 1880, there were only 20 girls in the school. Annual examinations were held for the schoolgirls along with those from the Bengali Girls’ School. The girls were examined in reading, writing dictation and arithmetic. In November 1881, Anna K. Brandt arrived at Nowgong to assist Keeler in the Zenana work but soon left in January 1883 for marriage.59 In 1883 only two girls from Nowgong district (in contrast to 250 boys) sat for the Lower Primary Government Examination and one of these girls, Horu, was from the mission school. In 1885, Nettie Pursell came to assist Keeler in the Woman’s Work. It was a big achieve­ ment for the women missionaries when in 1886 one girl named Sophie passed the Upper Primary Government Examination. In April 1887, Orrell Keeler left the Nowgong field for Tura to marry Rev. M.C. Mason (where she died shortly afterwards). In her place, Charlotte E. Pursell arrived at Nowgong to join her sister mission­ ary (6 December 1887). Her work involved assisting eight hours daily in the school as well as overseeing the girls in the boarding school and the Bible women in their work. After Nettie Pursell married Rev. M.C. Mason in February 1889, Laura A. Amy arrived in December 1890 as the new female missionary to assist Charlotte Pursell in the woman’s work at Nowgong. In 1898 and 1899 the Nowgong Station School was reported to have 32 girls on the roll. A total of two girls passed the Upper Primary and three girls the Lower Primary Government Examination in these two years.60

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In 1903-4, the number of female scholars was 110 in Nowgong district and no girls had advanced beyond the primary classes.61 The literacy rate for the district as per 1901 census was 2.8 per cent (males 5.4; females 0.1 per cent). By 1910, there were 80 girls in the Nowgong Girl’s school, which included 50 boarders. A total of 10 female missionaries had worked since 1880 and the school now had a kindergarten, and lower primary, upper primary and middle vernacular depart­ ments.62 In December 1912, Miss Edith E. Crisenberg arrived at Nowgong for kindergarten work in the school. In 1912 the Assam government gave a grant of Rs. 15,000 for a good school building for the girls’ school and with contribution of Rs. 7,500 from the Woman’s Baptist Foreign Mission Society of the West; by 1913 a steel framed structure, containing nine rooms was in the process of construction.63 The new school building was opened in January 1914. In 1915 a normal training department was also introduced at the girls’ school at Nowgong. As borne out from missionary reports, the early girls’ school attracted only the poorest, low caste children. Jessie Moore had noted in 1880 the parents did not think it necessary for girls to know how to read and write. Like the wives of the early pioneer missionaries, the female missionaries would go to the bazaar and persuade the girls from the lower class and castes to come for study. In the Nowgong station school, classes at the beginning were held in the morning for two hours from 7-9 a.m. In addition to reading, writing, arithmetic, grammar and geography, the girls were taught plain sewing, weaving, spinning and native house­ keeping.64 But owing to the practice of early marriage in the plains the girls were very often taken out of the school between the ages of nine to twelve. Two of the problems faced by schools in Assam were thus the irregular attendance of the girls and the early age in which they were withdrawn from the school. The missionaries felt that whatever they had achieved was largely lost. Subsequently, the boarding school system was adopted as being most suitable to provide consistent ‘Christian influence’ and native leadership in the future.

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In 1876, the idea of a boarding school for girls was conceived by Anna Sweet, when she was given an orphan girl from a tea garden. With the increase in the number of such orphan girls, a dormitory was built by 1886 near the mission bungalow and a native Christian widow served as matron. The Girls’ Boarding School was estab­ lished on the lines of the original Nowgong Orphan Institution, set up in 1843 by Miles Bronson for both sexes of any caste. Through it Bronson had sought, as he wrote to ‘introduce the education of the female sex, which is wholly neglected in this country’.65 Mrs Bron­ son taught in the girls department of the school till 1848, followed by Mrs Drusilla Stoddard and Miss Shaw. In 1850 Eliza Brown had also started a boarding school for girls in Sibsagar and before her by Mrs Barker at Gauhati.66 The main justification for these board­ ing schools was evangelistic. However, in 1856, the experiment in Boarding school had been closed down due to financial constraint and discouragement by the home board, which emphasized itiner­ ant preaching.67 From 1875 to 1885, 17 girls were inmates of the Nowgong Boarding School. Two of these girls were reported by Keeler to have passed the Government Lower Primary Education; and one girl, after passing the Upper Primary Examination, had been sent to Calcutta to the Bethune School to study English with a view to take a medical course of study under the Lady Dufferin Fund.68 Sustained Zenana work amongst women in Assam thus began with girls’ schools and boarding schools.69 Girls’ schools were run by the Women’s Society at Tura, Nowgong and Golaghat. There were smaller station schools at other centres and village schools in the interior run by the Baptist Mission. The Nowgong Middle School, Golaghat High School, Gauhati Middle School and Tura Middle English School (in Garo Hills) emerged to be the premier mission schools for female education during the period. In the Naga Hills district, the station school at Impur upgraded to the Middle English level, was the only highest level mission run insti­ tution. In 1914, there were eight girls in the school at Impur, by 1921 there were 25 and by 1936 there were 76 girls in the Girls school (1917). They included Aos, Semas and Konyak.70 Miss Ethel

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May Stevenson, appointed by the WABFMS, was sent to Impur for female education. In 1921, the Golaghat school was recognized by the government as a middle English school and in 1938 it was given recognition as a fully accredited high school by Calcutta Uni­ versity. The statistical data, as gleaned from the mission reports, provide a fair idea of the number of girls studying in the various mission schools, including their religious affiliation. In 1943, the Golaghat Girls High School had 225 students. Miss Marion J. Tait and Miss Evans were then the two female missionaries serving in the school. Out of 228 girls enrolled in 1945, 130 were Christian, 87 were Hindu and 11 Muslim.71 In 1949, the largest number of enrolments in the history of the school was recorded at 302, of whom 120 girls were from the rural areas and 58 from ex-tea gar­ den labour classes.72 From the 1870s onwards, the emphasis of the American Baptist Mission shifted to the hills and by the beginning of the twentieth century, four-fifth of its resources were being spent in the hills.73 This was due to the success of conversion amongst the Garo hill tribes. Not surprising, from 1879 onwards, the Women’s American Baptist Foreign Mission Society (WABFMS) began to support missionary activity to the Garo Hills mainly for educa­ tional and medical work. In Garo Hills primary education was left largely in the hands of the Baptist Mission by the government. In 1879, the society sent Miriam Russell to Tura, designated specially for female education in the Garo Hills.74 She started a girls’ board­ ing school in February 1882 with around 10 orphan girls.75 After her marriage to Rev. Burdette in October 1885, she was transferred to Gauhati to help her husband. The school was closed but she took with her five Garo girls to continue their studies in Gauhati. In 1886, Miss Ella Cecilia Bond and Miss Stella Mason brought 15 girls from Nishangram village to Tura and re-opened the boarding school. In 1920, the station school (co-ed) at Tura became a Girls Middle English School. The table given below gives the names of missionaries’ wives and women missionaries sent by the Home Board and WABFMS to work for the Garo women during the period.76

Gendered Mission Name of Missionary Mrs Pollie Keith Miss Miriam Russell later Mrs Burdette Miss Ella Cecilia Bond Miss Stella H. Mason Mrs Ella Phillips Mrs Neattie Mason Miss Alice J. Rood Miss Henrietta Morgan Miss Isabelle Wilson Mrs Walter Mason Miss Linnie Holbrook Mrs. Nellie Harding Miss Charlotte A. Wright Miss Hazel L. Wetherbee Mrs. Ida Merrill Miss Fern Marie Rold Miss Ruth Teasdale Mrs. Edna Randall Miss S. Maxville, Miss Mary Parrish & Miss Helen Tufts Miss Florence Elsie Wormser

627 Period 1874-5 1874-5 1886-1923 1886-1901 1877-1914 1889-1934 1894-9 1898-9 1898-9 1902-16 1906-39 1907-44 1919-34 1926-9 1929-56 1930-62 1939-40 1945-50 1943 1949-68

In 1915, a Girls Middle English School was set up in the Satri­ bari Compound, Gauhati. Female missionaries such as Isabella Wilson, Carolyn A. Gleich; Holmes E. Smith; Ethel E. Nichols, M.G. Burnham, served in the school which also included a board­ ing department. In 1941, there were about 257 girls in the school including 86 girls in the boarding.77 In 1945, out of 256 students there were 143 Hindus, 36 Muslims and 76 Christians.78 In 1949, the day school enrolment was 289 with 145 being Hindus, 89 Christians and 52 Muslims and three others.79 The Sarah E. White Memorial Hostel, Gauhati, provided boarding for college girls. The girls came from several hill areas and from the plains. In 1941 there were 33 girls—20 Assamese; two Khasis; three Garos; one Kachari; one Angami Naga; one Ahom; one Nepali; two Mani­

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puris and two others.80 In 1949, there were a total of 61 girls in the hostel; eight were postgraduate university students, 39 girls were attending Cotton College and 14 the R.H. Girls’ College.81 The Normal Training School located at Nowgong trained girls for teacher training. In 1940, three Muslim girls were noted to have come for teacher training for the first time.82 In the Girls’ Hostel at Impur, (Naga Hills) there were 83 girls of whom 75 were Ao, five Lothas and two Sema girls, with three lady teachers and a matron (nurse) living with the girls.83 The Gale Memorial Bible Training School (Jorhat) funded by the WABFMS provided instruction in Bible studies to women. The three-year course included church history, history of the Bible, Biblical geography, S.S. teacher training, and missions. In addi­ tion the students were also given practical work lessons in home economics such as first-aid, care of the sick, children, food and clothing, sewing and weaving. The students mainly belonged to the Ao-Naga, Angami Naga, Lotha Naga, Garo, Mundari and Assamese tribal groups.84 Till the end of mission period (1950), Zenana visits to homes and nearby villages or during weekly market days continued to be part of the Woman’s Work for Woman. The Bible Women were tasked with regularly visiting nearby villages which included Hin­ dus, Muslims, high castes, low castes and the poor. Zenana visits, however, remained largely limited to the urban towns and nearby villages where mission stations were located.

Maternity and Child Care With the establishment of Medical Mission as an integral component of missionary work, female missionaries were sent for Woman’s work specially related to maternity and child care in areas neglected under the colonial government in Assam. The demand for medical missionaries had been a constant feature made by the missionaries working in the field. From the outset of mission activity, the missionaries had often helped to treat small bodily ailments though they were not trained. It did not take them long to realize that through medicine, heart and soul

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could be won. In 1908, to help in the Tura Mission Hospital, Nettie Agnes Robb (1908-13) was sent as a missionary nurse by the Home Board and, after her, Miss Omie Eleanor Carter (1914-17) was appointed by the American Women’s Baptist Foreign Mission Society. Subsequently, Garo girls were sent for midwifery training at the Eden Hospital, Calcutta and the Berry White Hospital at Dibrugarh (Upper Assam).85 In 1921, Miss A. Verna Blakely (1921-41) came as a missionary nurse to Tura. Miss Blakely (who later served as superintendent of the School of Nursing, Gauhati) was the first woman missionary to impart to the Garo women the importance of pre-natal care and care of children. During her tour of Garo villages, as in Rangsakona and Ronjeng, she held special classes for women. During one such visit at Ronjeng, Verna Blakely had picked out the 10 oldest women and asked each one to tell how many children they had; how many had died, and how many were living. Out of a total of 76 births, 44 had died in infancy, 32 had lived. One Garo woman was noted to remark that if they had been exposed to the new teachings from before, the blackboard would have told a different story.86 The Garo women, as noted by Blakely, were interested in learning about their bodies and health care for themselves and their families. More women were reported to be coming for maternity/obstetrical cases at Tura Mission Hospital. The women’s ward at Tura Hospital provided further scope for evangelistic preaching, and health visiting in the town homes was also started by the women missionaries. The table below lists the women medical missionaries sent to the Mission Hospital, Tura87 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Miss Nettie Agnes Robb (Nurse) Miss Omie Eeanor Carter (Nurse) Miss Anne Verna Blakely (Nurse) Miss Millie Marvin (Nurse) Mrs. Eulius Sheldown Downs (Nurse)

1908-13 1914-17 1921-41 1921-41 1927-67

Starting from 1920, a major medical programme for women and children was begun in Lower Assam at Satribari compound in Gauhati. Owing to the practice of purdah (veil) which was

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observed more strictly in Lower Assam than in Upper, the need for a female hospital catering to women and run by female missionar­ ies had been keenly felt.88 In 1922 the construction for a 45-bed hospital was begun and completed by 1925. Dr Miss M.J. Gifford of the Burma Mission was loaned to work (left in May 1941) in the hospital, which catered to women of all classes, caste and creed. The Satribari Hospital was the only hospital in colonial Assam meant for the care of women and children. The hospital undertook obstetrical cases, operations, X-rays and laboratory examinations, which is indicated below to provide some idea of the work done.89 Years 1940 1941 1945 1946 1948 1949

InOutPatients Patients 686 2,600 654 5,000 1,959 5,969 1,314 6,630 1,652 6,908 1,562 N.A.

Delivery Opera­ Cases tions 96 157 95 121 86 319 138 327 158 461 182 507

X-Rays 115 N.A. 222 220 492 N.A

Laboratory Examinations 4,000 N.A. 5,558 7,348 13,805 N.A

Dr Alice L. Randall; Dr Grace Seagrave (left in May 1945 for Burma), Dr Mary E. Kirby and nurses Millie M. Marvin, (left in May 1941) and Edna M. Stever were the female missionaries who served in the hospital. Stever was noted to be also doing public health nursing—everyday two or three groups visited the homes of patients who had recently left the hospital.90 The American Baptist Zenana mission can also be credited for developing nursing as a service and profession in Assam. To train nurses and midwives, a nursing school had been started at the Satribari Hospital, Gauhati. Initially, those who were trained were mainly Naga and Garo girls. From 1930 to 1943 the school gradu­ ated 40 nurses. Of these 10 were serving at the Mission Hospital in Gauhati, four were with the Assam Oil Company at Digboi, 12 were employed at the tea estates, one in a mission school, three were in government service, one in the army, one at the Jorhat Mission Hospital, two at Tura Mission Hospital, two had died, one was nursing in her village and nine were without nursing positions

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having got married.91 In 1932, Ms Elna Gustilie Forssel, a trained missionary nurse, was sent by the American Baptist Women’s Soci­ ety for work at the Jorhat Christian Hospital. In 1945, the Nurses Training School, Jorhat, had 24 nurses in training and eight on the graduate staff. Out of the trainees, 15 were Nagas, from the plains, there were 12, aside from one Nepali, one Mikir, one Garo and one Kachari person.92 The following year, four nurses graduated, while five students were admitted for a total of 25.93 The girls’ schools, boarding schools, hostels, hospitals, nursing schools, orphanages (Reeder Memorial Home, Satribari) and the Gale Memorial Bible Training School (for Bible studies at Jorhat) were thus the agencies and institutions through which the Zenana work of the American Baptist Mission supported by the WABFMS was undertaken in Assam.

Epilogue Woman’s Work for Woman was intended primarily for evangelical purposes and to build a strong church among the native people. The Christian church could not be strong unless founded upon an ‘enlightened’ womanhood. School life was not only to train the girls in matters of the mind but also in spirit. It was to provide an opportunity to practise Christian living and to build up a Christian character. As Eastern ideas of propriety did not allow men the freedom to have access to the women the ‘teaching, training and shepherding of the female portion of the flock’ (had to be done by the women missionary) else ‘the work is either left undone, or is very imperfectly accomplished, and the whole church suffers.’94 Education provided through the primary village schools and early station schools were intended to enable the converts to read the scriptures and serve as an evangelical agency. Though the purpose of mission schools—the earliest non­ governmental agency in Assam which sought to provide learning to native girls—was evangelical, it was mainly through the persis­ tent intervention of the women missionaries that girls were sent to school and education of native girls could make progress. In fact, the Baptist missionaries were the pioneers of female education in

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colonial Assam. From a very early period during which missionar­ ies went to villages urging the parents to send their girls to school; there was afterwards no room for all who wanted to be admitted in mission schools.95 By the 1930s it was being observed that conser­ vatism, tradition and prejudice relating to female education were losing ground.96 The missionaries in great measure did contribute to breaking down societal resistance to girls’ education. Through its village and mission schools, an increasing number of girls got the opportunity to learn, with some completing their graduation, earning Bachelor of Arts and even Master of Arts degrees. Many of those graduating became teachers in the mission schools. To mention a few of them, Dobaka W. Momin, neice of Ramkhe, the first Garo convert, served as a teacher in the girls’ school at Tura, in 1902 became matron of the Girls Boarding Department, and rose to become the principal of the Mission Girls School at Tura. Miss Henadini D. Shira, the first Garo woman graduate (BA) taught at Satribari School.97 Rosalind Sokhrienuo, the first Naga graduate, was appointed as a high school teacher at Kohima by the govern­ ment with a monthly starting pay of Rs. 75.98 Miss Anandi Kenowar (MA, BT) and Miss Puspa Bhuyan taught in the Nowgong Girls’ Training School.99 The Normal Training School (government aided) located at Nowgong, which imparted teacher training to girls, was the only one in the Brahmaputra Valley. In 1940, three Muslim girls were noted to have come for teacher training for the first time.100 Reboti, a Garo nurse, served at Tura Mission Hospi­ tal, Leah Momin in the Satribari Mission Hospital and Nodil M. Marak, another Garo, served as assistant to Miss Blakely in the Nurses Training School at Gauhati. In 1945, there were 35 students enrolled in the training school. About Nodil Marak, Blakely had to say, ‘without her help I could not have kept up class works as well as we have done, to say nothing of many other things which would have gone undone but for her faithfulness’.101 The Sarah E. White Memorial Hostel, Gauhati, provided boarding facility for college girls who came from several hill areas and from the plains. In 1941, there were 33 girls—20 Assamese; two Khasis; three Garos; one Kachari; one Angami Naga; one Ahom; one Nepali; two Manipuris and two others.102 In 1949, there were

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a total of 61 girls in the hostel out of whom eight were pursuing post-graduation, 39 were attending Cotton College (co-ed) and 14 at the R. Handique Girls’ College (set up in 1939).103 In its educational work, the mission received financial help from the colonial government by way of grants-in-aid given to schools. The Woman’s Society Funds of the Assam mission sup­ ported the higher education of girls in the Assam schools, and outside as in the Lucknow Medical Training School, Ludhiana Medical College, Calcutta High School and Silchar Training School.104 Some of them, like Daisy Andrew who completed her teacher training at Isabelle Thoburn College, Lucknow (in May 1925), and Anondi Kenowar (BA) assisted as teachers at Nowgong Training School. After completing their sub-assistant surgeon’s course, Lahori Bhuyan and Alice Marak (from Ludhiana Medical College) helped out, respectively, at Gauhati Hospital and in the medical line at Nowgong Training School. With funds dwindling in the later years, in 1928 the educational committee of the mission in Assam voted to recommend the establishment of a scholarship fund of Rs. 2,500 for girls studying in the various mission schools and in some non-mission schools.105 As modern Christian missions coincided with the extension of western European economic and political hegemony, a moot ques­ tion often debated is whether the women’s missionary movement was actually ‘cultural imperialism’. Questions of gendered division of labour, appropriate gender roles, sexuality and marriage, of parenthood, childrearing, hygiene, etc., were major components of the Zenana work. While missionaries in general have often been portrayed in the dominant role as an agency exercising power and the natives as passive recipients, it is also evident that cultural messages are often mediated and transformed by the needs and intentions of the recipients. It is argued that hence ‘cultural trans­ fer’ (a less pejorative term) is rarely a unilateral relationship in which all power rests with the transmitting culture—in this case the missionaries.106 However, by virtue of being the ‘white race’ and associated with colonial power, this relationship was one of unequal power and dominance between the missionaries and the native convert. Missionaries were an inseparable element of new

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colonialism and spread of empire that was carried out through various means including the religious. As part of their mission­ ary project, which involved a dual process of ‘Christianization and civilization’, the missionaries did impose their religious ideas and social values that went with it on the natives. What then were the social and cultural roles the women mis­ sionaries believed were appropriate for women? Their writings and actions reveal ambivalence about gender roles. On the one hand they accepted the mid nineteenth century ideals of virtuous womanhood and domesticity where the converted and mission school educated women would provide a clean and loving Chris­ tian home as wives and mothers, exerting a moral influence. At the same time, they also visualized a new woman with education and skills that made her capable of playing newer roles in the society. However, the patriarchal mission certainly did not want the native women (even its women missionaries) to step beyond the bounded gender roles and relations as envisaged by it. Hence, in addition to learning, knowledge of home science, sewing and knitting for women and girls were given. Even for the elite and middle-class Assamese society, while the support for female edu­ cation existed, for many the purpose was not to empower women to take up public roles. The end purpose was to make them good mothers, suitable wives for the newly educated men and not to be man’s rivals in the public sphere. Being an integral part of the modern missionary movement, the American Baptists believed in their God-given mission to Christianize and its emancipatory power to ‘civilize’ the rest of the world. With the Zenana mission, Christianity in particular was characterized as the ‘liberator’ of women and mission fields were intended to ‘ennoble’ and ‘uplift’ the ‘degraded’ lives of women in the East. The missionaries believed that with the adoption of Christianity the converts would acquire the proper cultural attri­ butes, which would strengthen the Church and in the process also contribute to the civilizing mission of the native woman. For the missionaries, their mission was God-given and a righteous one. They therefore, had no hesitation in trying to impose their

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religious beliefs and values on their converts and students to achieve their evangelical end. For the converts, being a Baptist Christian meant effecting changes with regard to sexuality and marriage (monogamy), par­ enthood, domestic spaces, household and personal cleanliness, clothing habits, etc.; and disassociating from a whole gamut of their sociocultural traditions and practices. Indigenous social fes­ tivals, dances, songs, musical instruments, brewing, drinking, free intermixing (in case of hill tribes), etc., were severely proscribed and prohibited.107 It thus involved a total lifestyle change. The mission, thereby, acted as agents of cultural imperialism in their role to Christianize and thereby to ‘civilize’ the native people by bestowing the benefits of a more advanced society and culture. The model on which the missionaries wanted to pattern the lives of the women were shaped by the late nineteenth-century Ameri­ can values associated with being evangelical Protestants, Baptists, and middle class. The schools and hospitals served as the agen­ cies through which the Zenana mission sought to bring to the ‘prospective’ converts the benefits of new learning and skills, a Christian education to develop Christian moral virtues, character. In the process they formulated new gender roles as ‘good’ Chris­ tian wives, mothers within the personal domain and in the public sphere as Bible women, teachers, nurses, doctors, administrators of schools, etc., during the period. The role of missionary women, as wives and single women in the missionary enterprise of the period, were circumscribed by the gendered notion of male and female sphere of activities. While not critiquing patriarchy or espousing gender equality, women mis­ sionaries did challenge native social norms in seeking to achieve their goal of female emancipation. While a comparatively smaller number of women missionaries were engaged in medical work, the greater number of them was involved in female educational work. It was in the area of female education, in which women missionar­ ies were able to establish a relatively autonomous sphere of work. Despite the stated importance of Zenana mission, the number of female missionaries appointed for Zenana work was small and

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based only in a few mission stations till the early decades of the twentieth century. In the Zenana work the female missionaries had to be supported by the missionaries’ wives whose ‘unpaid labour’ and contribution to the Woman’s Work has been immense. When single women missionaries were not present or on furlough, the Woman’s Work was carried out by the missionaries’ wives. Mention must also be made of the role played by the native women whose contribution as teachers, doctors; nurses, etc., in the Zenana work remain invisible in the evangelical project. In terms of religious conversion the Zenana mission did not witness massive success as envisaged by its proponents. It was only in the hills that Christian­ ity found acceptance amongst the Garos and Nagas. Conversion in the Brahmaputra Valley was limited to the plain tribes and immi­ grant tea labour. The majority of the Assamese Hindu and Muslim, including the Bengali speakers, remained immune to Christianity. Hence, we notice the tendency to look upon the Assam mission of the American Baptist Mission in the Brahmaputra Valley as a failure in mission history and by mainstream church historians. Despite the ‘apparent failure’ of the mission to convert, the fruits of Zenana activity in terms of female empowerment were subse­ quently reaped by the native society both in the plains and the hills of Assam. The network of institutions the Woman’s Work for Woman created provided new opportunity, support and paved the way for women to take up skilled employment in the fields that were emerging in the new colonial set-up and period.

Notes 1. See F. Bowie, D. Kirkwood, and S. Ardener (eds.), Women and Missions: Past and Present: Anthropology and Historical Perception, Berg Publications, Oxford, 1993; Phillipa Levine, Gender and Empire, Oxford, 2004; Dana Robert, American Women in Mission: A Social History of their Thought and Practice, Mercer University Press, Macon, G.A, 1996; R. Pierce Beaver, American Protestant Women in World Missions: History of the First Feminist Movement in North America, second edition, W.B. Eerdsmans, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1986; Anna Johnston, Missionary Writing and Empire, 1800-1860, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003; Jane Hunter, Gospel

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2.

3.

4. 5.

637

of Gentility: American Women Missionaries in Turn-of-the-Century China, Yale University Press, 1984; Ruth Tucker, Guardians of the Great Commission: The Story of Women in Modern Missions, Academia Books, 1988; Leslie A. Flemming (ed.), Women’s Work for Women: Missionaries and Social Change in Asia, Westview, Colorado, 1989; Eliza F. Kent, Converting Women: Gender and Protestant Christianity in Colonial South India, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2004; William R. Hutchison, Errand to the World: American Protestant Thought and Foreign Mission, Chicago University Press, Chicago, 1987; Arthur Schlesinger, ‘The Missionary Enterprise and the Theories of Imperialism’ in: John K. Fairbank (ed.), The Missionary Enterprise in China and America, Harvard University Press, 1988; Kenneth M. Mackenzie, The Robe and the Sword: The Methodist Church and the Rise of American Imperialism, Washington D.C., 1961; Jean and John Comaroff, Of Revelation and Resolution Vols. One & Two, Chicago University Press, Chicago, 1991 and 1997. Stephen Neill, A History of Christianity in India, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1984; Jeffrey Cox, The British Missionary Enterprise since 1700, New York: Routledge, 2008; Amanda Barry, Joanna Cruickshank, Andrew Brown-May, and Patricia Grimshaw, (eds.), Evangelists of Empire? Missionaries in Colonial History, Custom Book Centre, University of Melbourne, 2010; Georgina Anne Gollock, Missionaries at Work, Church Missionary Society, London, 1898; L.A. Flemming (ed.), Women Missionaries and Social Change in Asia, West View Press, Colorado, 1989. Zenana, a Persian term from ‘Zan’ or women, referred to a segregated living area for the exclusive use of women and women visitors and to which men were denied entry during the working hours of the day. Within it the women were engaged in domestic work and household activities. The zenana was basically a Muslim social institution, and influenced by the Muslims, high caste Hindu families had also adopted the practice of keeping women in seclusion. Norman Etherington (ed.), Missions and Empire, Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 9. Frederick S. Downs, The Christian Impact on the Status of Women In North East India, NEHU, Shillong 1996; Tejimala Gurung, ‘The Invisible Inscription: Women Missionary and Education of Women, 1886-1905, T.B. Subba, et al. (eds.), Christianity and Change in Northeast India, Concept Publishing Company, New Delhi, 2009, pp. 307-20; Suryasikha Pathak, ‘Home Away from Home, Missionary

638

6.

7. 8.

9. 10. 11.

12.

13. 14. 15. 16.

Tejimala Gurung Wives in the Evangelical Project in Colonial Assam: Life and Times of Mrs. P.H. Moore’, in T.B. Subba, et al. (eds.), Christianity and Change in Northeast India, Concept Publishing Company, New Delhi, 2009, pp. 347-57; Sengchi Diamai, Mission and Gender: The American Baptist Mission in Garo Hills (1867-1950), PhD Thesis, Department of History, NEHU, Shillong, 2020. Geraldine Forbes, ‘In Search of the Pure Heathen: Missionary Women in Nineteenth Century India,’ Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 21, no. 17, Special Issue on Women Studies, 26 April 1986, W.S.-2. Joan Jacobs Brumberg, ‘Zenanas and Girlless Villages: The Ethnology of American Evangelical Women, 1870-1910’, The Journal of American History, vol. 69, no. 2 (September 1982), pp. 347-71. Antoinette Burton had shown how symbolic and material a site the Zenana was for the institutionalization of medical education for women in Victorian Britain in ‘Contesting the Zenana: The Mission to make Lady Doctors for India, 1874-85’, in Neelam Kumar (ed.), Women and Science in India, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2009, pp. 21-54. Jubilee 1867-1917 Fifty Years Work among Women in the Far East, Women’s Missionary Association of the Baptist Missionary Society, The Carey Press, London, p. 7. Ibid., p. 10. Barbara Welter, ‘She Hath Done What She Could: Protestant Women’s Missionary Careers in Nineteenth Century America’, American Quarterly, vol. 30. no. 5, Special Issue: Women and Religion (Winter, 1978), p. 631. Patricia R. Hill, The World Their Household: The American Woman’s Foreign Mission Movement and Cultural Transformation, 1870-1920, Women and Culture Series, The University of Michigan Press, 1985; Brumberg, op. cit., pp. 347-71; Rosemarie Zagarri, ‘The Postcolonial Culture of Eearly American Women’s Writing’, Cambridge Companions Online, Cambridge University Press, 2006. Zagarri, ibid. Ann White, ‘Counting the Cost of Faith: America’s Early Female Missionaries’, Church History, vol. 57, no.1, March 1988, p. 25. Rev. Edmund F. Merriam, The American Baptist Missionary Union and its Missions, Boston, 1987. The WABFMS was not an autonomous organization, but worked

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17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

28.

29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

639

under the umbrella and was subservient to the general society, the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society (ABFMS). White, op. cit., p. 28. Ibid., pp. 28-9. Jubilee 1867-1917, op. cit., p. 3. Ibid., pp. 2-3. Ibid., p. 32. The neo-Vaishnavite faith of Sankaradev (1449-1568), also known as eka-sarana nama dharma, had been firmly established and institutionalized in the valley through a network of satras or monasteries which linked its believers and almost all Assamese villages to one satra or the other. Shihabuddin Talish, cited in E.A. Gait, A History of Assam, L.B.S. Publications, Guwahati, 1905, reprinted 2004, p. 138. John M’Cosh, Topography of Assam, Logos Press, New Delhi, 1837, p. 21. Census Report of India, Assam 1891. William Robinson, A Descriptive Account of Assam, Calcutta, 1841, Sanskaran Prakashak, Delhi, 1975, p. 277. The early female missionaries were Mary Rankin (1873-4), Anna K. Sweet (1875-86), Orrell Keeler (1875-87), Miriam Russell (1879­ 84), Anna K. Brandt (1881-3), Nettie Purssell (1885-9) Ella C. Bond (1886), Charlotte Purssell (1887-91), Laura A. Amy (1891-5), Nora M. Yates (1891-4), Stella H. Mason (1886-1901), Henrietta F. Morgan (1895), Isabella Wilson (1895), Lolie Daniels (1897) and Alberta Sumner (1897-8). Except for a few, most of them married the male missionaries to become missionaries’ wives. Orrell Keeler, ‘Woman’s Work among the Assamese’, Papers and Discussions of the Jubilee Conference of the Assam Mission held in Nowgong, 18-29 December 1886, in The Assam Mission of the American Baptist Missionary Union, Spectrum Publications, Guwahati, 1992, p. 184. Ibid., p. 188. Ibid. Ibid., p. 189. Minutes, Resolutions and Historical Papers of the Second Triennial Conference, Assam Mission, Gauhati, 21-30 December 1889, p. 10. Minutes, Resolutions and Historical Reports of Assam Baptist Mis­ sionary Conference, Sixth Session, Gauhati, 22-31 December 1900.

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Tejimala Gurung

34. Assam Baptist Missionary Conference Report, Twenty-Second Session, Gauhati, - 5-12 December, 1924; Assam Baptist Missionary Conference Report, Forty-First Session, Nowgong, 9-13 November 1944. 35. Downs, op. cit., p. 42. 36. Mrs P.H. Moore (ed.), Twenty Years in Assam, 1901, Western Book Depot, Panbazar, Gauhati, reprinted 1982, pp. 1-222; Further Leaves From Assam, first published from Nowgong, Assam, by author in 1907, Spectrum Publications, Guwahati, 2014, pp. 1-191; Autumn Leaves From Assam, first published from Nowgong, Assam, by author in 1910, Spectrum Publications, Guwahati, 1997, pp. 1-97; Stray Leaves From Assam, first published from Rochester, New York, by author in 1916, Spectrum Publications, Guwahati, 1997, pp. 1-117. 37. Moore, Twenty Years in Assam, op. cit., pp. 21-2. 38. Ibid., p. 51. 39. Ibid., p. 37. 40. Ibid., p. 45. 41. Ibid., p. 61. 42. Ibid., p. 133. 43. Ibid. 44. Moore, Further Leaves From Assam, op. cit., pp. 9, 11. 45. Assam Baptist Missionary Conference, Sixth Session, Gauhati, 22-31 December 1900, p. 20. 46. Assam Baptist Missionary Conference , Tenth Session, Gauhati, 8-17 January 1910, p. 39. 47. Ibid. 48. Ibid., p. 40. 49. Ibid., p. 41. 50. Letter Dated Gowalpara, 27 January, 1873, published in the Baptist Missionary Magazine, LIII, 5 May 1873, p. 143. Cited in Downs, op. cit., p. 57. 51. William Hunter, A Statistical Account of Assam, vol. II, Trubner and Co, London, 1879. 52. Bina Lahkar, Development in Women’s Education: Study of Assam, Omson’s Publication, New Delhi, 1987. 53. B.C. Allen, E.A. Gait, C.G.H. Allen and H.F. Howard, Gazetteer of Bengal and North-East India, Mittal Publications, New Delhi, 2008, pp. 479, 510, 540, 570. As per the Census, the total population of Assam including Cachar and Surma Valley was 6,123,053 of which

Gendered Mission

54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74.

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56 per cent were Hindus, 26 per cent were Muslims, 17 per cent animists. Christians in all numbered 33,595, pp. 52-6. Ibid., pp. 479, 493. General Report of Public Instruction in Assam, 1900-1901, Shillong 1903, p. 14. Rev. C.E. Burdette, ‘History of the Gauhati Field’, The Assam Mission of the American Baptist Missionary Union, Spectrum Publications, Guwahati, 1992, p. 49. Ibid. Allen, Gait, Allen and Howard, op. cit., p. 540. Moore, Twenty Years in Assam, op. cit., pp. 35, 46. Assam Baptist Missionary Conference, Sixth Session, op. cit., p. 20. Allen, Gait, Allen and Howard, op. cit., p. 570. Moore, Autumn Leaves From Assam, op. cit., p. 87. Moore, Stray Leaves From Assam, op. cit., p. 34. Moore, Twenty Years in Assam, op. cit., p. 24. Victor Hugo, Baptists in Assam: A Century of Missionary Service 1836-1936, Conference Press, USA, 1935, reprinted Spectrum Publication, Guwahati, 1992, p. 73. H.K. Barpujari, The American Missionaries and North-East India (1836-1900): A Documentary Study, Spectrum Publications, 1986, pp. 109, 112. Downs, The Mighty Works of God: A Brief History of The Council of Baptist Churches in North East India: The Mission Period 1836-1950, Christian Literature Centre, Guwahati, revised edn, 2014, pp. 35-6. Keeler, op. cit., pp. 186-7. Assam Baptist Missionary Conference Report, Twenty-Ninth Session, Jorhat, 2-8 December 1931, p. 12. Downs, op. cit., p. 48. Assam Baptist Missionary Conference Report, Forty-Second Session, Jorhat, 8-12 November 1945, p. 31. Assam Baptist Missionary Conference Report, Forty-Sixth Session, Golaghat, 3-9 January 1950, p. 81. By 1901 out of a total of 52 missionaries, 30 were sent to work amongst just 7,50,000 hill people; 15 to work in the valley (1,500,000) and seven amongst the immigrant tea labour in the plains (5,50,000). Lindrid D. Shira, ‘Origin and the Growth of Christian Girls’ School’, The School With a Mission, A Souvenir to Commemorate the Platinum Jubilee of the Christian Girls’ High School, Tura (1920­ 95), 1995, p. 2.

642

Tejimala Gurung

75. Miriam R. Burdette, ‘Work for Garo Women’, Jubilee Issue, 1886, pp. 192-200, pp. 194-5. 76. Diamai, op. cit., pp. 115-16. 77. Assam Baptist Missionary Conference Report, Thirty-Ninth Session, Golaghat, 4-9 December, 1941, p. 37. 78. Assam Baptist Missionary Conference Report, Forty-Second Session, op. cit., p. 29. 79. Assam Baptist Missionary Conference Report, Forty-Sixth Session, op. cit., p. 80. 80. Assam Baptist Missionary Conference Report, Thirty-Ninth Session, op. cit., p. 38. 81. Assam Baptist Missionary Conference Report, Forty-Sixth Session, op. cit., p. 78. 82. Assam Baptist Missionary Conference Report, Thirty-Eight Session, Kohima, Assam, 1941, p. 46. 83. Assam Baptist Missionary Conference Report, Thirty- Ninth Session, op. cit., p. 40. 84. Assam Baptist Missionary Conference Report, Thirty-Seventh Session, Jorhat, 4-9 January 1940, p. 35. 85. L.M. Holbrook, Assam Baptist Missionary Conference, 1917, pp. 42­ 3; Montgomery, Helen Barrett, Following the Sunrise: A Century of Baptist Missions, 1813-1913, American Baptist Publication Society, 1913, p. 87. 86. Sixty-Eight Annual Report of the Woman’s American Baptist Foreign Mission Society, 1938-9, p. 26. 87. Diamai, op. cit., p. 138. 88. Downs, The Mighty Works of God, op. cit., p. 83. 89. Assam Baptist Missionary Conference Reports of Thirty-Seventh, Thirty-Ninth, Forty-Second, Forty-Third, Forty-Fifth and FortySixth Sessions held at Jorhat, 4-9 January 1940; Golaghat, 4-9 December 1941, p. 39; Jorhat, 8-12 November 1945, p. 29; Gauhati, Assam, 6-10 December 1946, p. 27; Jorhat, 11-16 January 1949, p. 31 and Golaghat, 3-9 January 1950, p. 77, respectively. 90. Assam Baptist Missionary Conference Report, Thirty-Ninth Session, op. cit., p. 39. 91. Assam Baptist Missionary Conference Report, Fortieth Session, Nowgong, 5-9 November 1943, p. 34. 92. Assam Baptist Missionary Conference Report, Forty-Second Session, op. cit., p. 31.

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93. Assam Baptist Missionary Conference Report, Forty-Third Session, Gauhati, Assam, 6-10 December 1946, p. 30. 94. Jubilee 1867-1917, op. cit., p. 33. 95. Assam Baptist Missionary Conference Report, Thirty-Eighth Session, Kohima, Assam, 1941, p. 41. 96. General Report on Public Instruction in Assam, 1932-33, Shillong, 1934, Chapter VII, Assam State Archives, p. 27. 97. Assam Baptist Missionary Conference Report, Thirty-Ninth Session, op. cit., p. 37. 98. Ibid., p. 41. 99. Assam Baptist Missionary Conference Report, Forty-Second Session, op. cit., p. 31. 100. Assam Baptist Missionary Conference Report, Thirty-Eighth Session, op. cit., p. 46. 101. Assam Baptist Missionary Conference Report, Forty-Second Session, op. cit., p. 30. 102. Assam Baptist Missionary Conference Report, Thirty-Ninth Session, op. cit., p. 38. 103. Assam Baptist Missionary Conference Report, Forty-Sixth Session, op. cit., p. 78. 104. The Assam Baptist Missionary Conference Report, Twenty-Fifth Session, Golaghat, 23 November-1 December 1927, p. 8. 105. Assam Baptist Missionary Conference Report, Twenty-Ninth Session, Jorhat, 2-8 December 1931, p. 12. 106. Carol C. Chin, ‘Beneficient Imperialist: American Women Mission­ aries in China at the Turn of the Twentieth Century’, Diplomatic History, vol. 27, no. 3 (June 2003), The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR), Blackwell Publishing, Malden, Massachusetts, USA, pp. 328-30. 107. As far as conversion was concerned the mission could achieve ‘successes’ only in the Hills amongst the Garo and Naga tribes. In the Brahmaputra Valley, Christianity failed to make much headway, its converts coming mainly from some of the Mikir, Kachari and tea garden labourers.

Contributors

Adani Ngulie, Assistant Professor Department of History, Unity College, Dimapur, Nagaland. Amol Sinha, Associate Professor in History, Janata College, Kabuganj, Assam. Anisha Bordoloi, Researcher, Political History of Assam (Project), 1947-2012, Home & Political Department, Govt. of Assam. Binayak Datta, Assistant Professor, Deparment of History, North Eastern Hill University, Shillong. Bipul Chaudhari, Assistant Professor, Deparment of History, Dibrugarh University, Assam. David Reid Syiemlieh, Retired Professor, Deparment of History, North Eastern Hill University, Shillong. David Vumlallian Zou, Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of Delhi, Delhi. Donald Teron, Assistant Professor (retd) in History, Pailapool College, Assam. Jagdish Lal Dawar, Professor, Department of History and Ethnography (retd), Mizoram University, Mizoram. Hoineilhing Sitlhou, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad. B. Eswara Rao, Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Hyderabad, Hyderbad. M. Satish Kumar, Associate Professor, School of Natural and Built Environment (Historical Geography), Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland.

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Contributors

Lalhmingliani Ralte, Associate Professor, Department of History, Government of Aizawl North College, Aizawl. Jangkhomang Guite, Associate Professor, Department of History, Manipur University, Imphal. J.V. Hluna, Professor in History (retd), Pachunga University College, Mizoram University, Mizoram. Luke Daimary, Assistant Professor in History, Pailapool College, Assam. Meeta Deka, Professor, Department of History, Gauhati University, Gauhati. Pum Khan Pau, Associate Professor, Department of History, Manipur University, Imphal. Nabanipa Bhattacharjee, Professor, Department of Sociology, Sri Venkatshwara College, University of Delhi, Delhi. Rohmingmawii, Assistant Professor in History, Pachunga University College, Mizoram University, Mizoram. Sangkima, Professor and Principal (retd), Aizawl Government College, Aizawl, Mizoram. Sajal Nag, Professor, Department of History, Assam University, Silchar, Assam. Santanu Sarkar, Associate Professor, Department of Bengali, Assam University, Silchar, Assam. Sarah Hilaly, Professor, Department of History, Rajiv Gandhi University, Arunachal Pradesh. Shiela Bora, Professor (retd) , Department of History, Dibrugarh University, Assam. Th.R.Tiba, Professor, Department of History, Assam University, Diphu Campus, Assam. Tejimala Gurung Nag, Professor, Department of History, North Eastern Hill University, Shillong.