Christian missionaries, another perspective
FREDERICK NORONHA
At a time when religion has become a tool for political mobilisation, and mainly a means of spreading hatred, former Navhind Times journalist Camil Parkhe has taken on an interesting project. Not an easy one at that.
His 184-page ‘Contribution of Christian Missionaries in India’ (Gujarat Sahitya Prakashan, 2007) does just that. It highlights the profiles of 19 individuals who played a role in this nation. They come from different backgrounds, time periods and denominations of Christianity.
For instance, Pandita Ramabai (Rama Dongre, 1858-1922), the Indian social reformer who converted to Christianity, was a Sanskrit scholar, and worked for child widows. She campaigned for female education, was an early member of the Indian National Congress, taught the blind, and translated the Bible.
Since these were in the Roman script, Parkhe explains, “therefore, Marathi scholars did not pay any attention to this great literary work” till much later, in the early
20th century.
There are chapters on the Italian Jesuit Robert de Nobili, 1577-1656, (the “father of inculturation in India”). He adopted a lifestyle acceptable to the local people, and tried to set up a Sanskrit-medium seminary of Christian philosophy in 1610.
Fr. Nehemiah Nilakanta Shastri Gore (1825-95), a prominent convert, was considered the “first Marathi missionary”. Satyavan Namdeo Survanshi was a journalist and ‘kirtankar’. He was a bridge builder between Protestants
and Catholics.
Belgian Jesuit Fr. Camille Bulcke, SJ (1909-82), earned a Padma Bhushan award in 1974 for enriching the Hindi language with his research as an indologist. He first published the Angreji-Hindi Koshi (English-Hindi Dictionary) in 1968, with multiple reprints.
Narayan Vaman Tilak (1861-1919) was a poet and missionary. A nationalist too, he was called Phula-Mulanche Kavi (poet of flowers and children). He evolved a new spiritual-cultural movement for the newly-converted Marathi-speaking Christians in Maharashtra.
Mother Teresa, who came to India as a 19-year-old Macedonian-Albanian, needs no elaboration.
Joseph Beschi SJ was a priest and Tamil poet, and also a Jesuit. He knew Tamil, Malayalam, Sanskrit, Telugu, English, French, Portuguese, Italian, Latin, Persian, and Hindi — at least five of these very well. He was an excellent diplomat, and got royal patronage from a local ruler.
Graham Stains is of very recent memory, having been burnt alive while in the service of lepers. Parkhe writes: “Until the brutal burning of the missionary and his two young sons, not many people outside Orissa had heard of Graham Staines or his wife, Gladys. After their killing under the cover of darkness, the whole world came to know about the Staines couple and the service they were rendering.”
Fr. Herman Bacher was a pioneer of rural development. He left his home in the Alps and became Maharashtra’s “pride of the agricultural sector”. He worked out schemes to help the poor — regardless of religion — after Independence. He helped get loans for farmers, dig or repair wells, and provided funds through a cooperative bank. Vocational training, groundwater recharge, and his work in drought-prone areas were what he became known for.
The Barcelona-born priest-historian Henry Heras, SJ, no stranger to Goa, was fascinated with Indian culture and history. For three decades, he researched the history of ancient India, culture, scripts, and sculptures. In 1926, he started the Indian Historical Institute in Bombay with a library of just eight books. Four guns belonging to the Maratha period became the foundation of a museum. His work on Indian Christian art and encouragement to talent like Angelo da Fonseca is well known. Many of his students became reputed historians and
archaeologists.
Baptist missionary Reverend William Carey is known as the father of printing technology in India (outside of the early Portuguese efforts). Valerian Cardinal Gracias was the first Indian Cardinal, and Parkhe credits him as being behind the building of the prestigious St. John’s Medical College in Bengaluru.
1831 Belgaum-born Baba Padmanjee is the first Marathi novelist and a missionary. Manorama Medhavi, the daughter of Pandita Ramabai, a social worker, is also featured. So is the German Jesuit and editor Archbishop Henry Doering, who started a magazine that lasted over a century. Justin Edward Abbot authored 11 books in English and Marathi on the lives and works of medieval Hindu sants of Maharashtra.
An interesting addition is Matthew Lederle SJ, who was conscripted in the Nazi war machine, escaped from a Brit PoW camp, and later became a Jesuit priest in his 20s. He was fascinated by the spiritual works of Sant Dnyandeo and Sant Namdeo. He co-founded Snehasadan Ashram, a centre for inter-religious dialogue in Pune. Fluent in Marathi, he was convinced that “local culture and Christian doctrines and beliefs can be compatible”. He encouraged Indian Christian art; one still hears names like Gemini Roy, Jyoti Sahi, Angelo de Fonseca, Sister Claire, or Sr. Genevieve. His dream was to have at least 100 ashrams run by the Catholic churches in India, which completely blend with the local religion and culture. Lederle became Provincial of the then Goa-Poona Jesuits, headquartered at the time in Panaji but died of a heart attack barely a year later in 1986, while swimming
off Baga.
This book isn’t a recent publication. But given the manner in which religious infighting within India keeps getting stoked, perhaps this point needs to be made. And noticed.
One question that could be raised though is how critical can such a book be. Even more serious a question could be on how does one decide whom to include? Seen one way, Parkhe’s view is from beyond the traditional places associated with Christianity in India. In this case, Maharashtra. Some points and perspectives could be debated though. The claim that Christianity was brought to India by St. Thomas could be just that — a claim. Likewise, accepting how “terrible” the Goa Inquisition was might be another aspect that needs a rethink, considering recent studies on the issue.
“The consistent demonising of Christians, especially the religious personnel commonly and freely referred to as missionaries, may seem to some as unwarranted. Christians in India are a tiny and scattered minority….,”
writes journalist Anosh Malekar in
the book. He argues that the book “is important” not because it talks about religious conflict, or salvation of metaphysics. “It is their disproportionate undertaking… Christians run 25% of India’s voluntary sector. The beneficiaries belong to all castes, creeds, and cults.”
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