5. Jewels Stripped Off: (1899, India)
“Precious jewels which they stripped off.”
2 Chronicles 20:25
“The East bowed down before the blast
In patient, deep disdain;
She let the legions thunder past
And plunged in thought again.”
Matthew Arnold
5
Jewels Stripped Off
1899, India
When Arulai was still living in her father’s house, her uncle had a servant of lower caste who swallowed a sharp piece of chicken bone that wedged itself halfway down his throat. He could not swallow it. He could not cough it up. He could not eat nor drink. He could only suck in a little breath at a time. He starved to death after great suffering.
Arulai was surprised that anyone should concern themselves about the man. “He was of low caste,” was all she said.
Caste—millions condemned to be faceless. Caste—ironbound, cold, cruel with endless ramifications. Caste—destructive, spawning meaningless gestures and acts that were only symbols.
Caste prevented any notion of brotherhood, crushed personal aspirations, and prevented even hopes or dreams. Caste closed the door on opportunity, squelching talent and ability from reaching higher. Caste permitted no moving upward into a better life. Caste was reinforced by arranged marriages. Caste had no concept of equal opportunity.
From caste sprang many other evils. Caste affected even Christians in India, keeping them apart from their fellow Christians. Even Christians considered it a crime to marry out of caste or even to break the minute subdivisions. Caste made even Christians observe lucky and unlucky days.
“Death or imbecility seems better than that shameful thing, the breaking of caste,” Amy mourned.
Caste could be recognized by the cut and color of dress, the angle at which a garment was worn, a mark on the forehead, certain styles of jewels and ornaments. The boundaries of caste were fixed and immovable, a rigid system over mind and body. Not only were the intelligent and skillful held down, but no high caste men, however degraded or vicious, ever sank into a lower caste.
In the experience of Amy’s co-workers, the break with custom began with jewels. All over South India, women—even Christian women—were loaded with jewelry. True, they were walking safe-deposit boxes, the idea being that there was no safe place at home for the jewels. But Indians loved jewelry. Jewelry declared to the world the wealth and status of the husband; it was the family fortune on parade.
Valuable old coins, weighty nose rings, arms covered from wrist to elbow with bracelets. Silver anklets weighing two and three pounds. Pearls—real ones—around the neck. Rubies, emeralds, coral. A peasant’s wife may not have food for her family, but she would have, at the very least, rings on fingers and toes, in ears and nose, gold chains—real gold—and bracelets, all set with precious gems.
Amy was always careful not to interfere with Indian customs, but the matter was brought to a head by an Indian, a young convert, who asked Amy to take his wife and instruct her how to win souls.
Amy, Ponnammal, and the young wife were riding in a bandy with the husband walking alongside. Suddenly he said, “Take off your jewels. What does a soul-winner want with jewels?”
The startled girl handed over her jewels. Ponnammal, too, looked surprised. A few days before, as she was teaching in an outdoor meeting, a little girl had pointed to her and said, “When I grow up I will join the Starry Cluster and wear jewels like that teacher.”
But a woman of India—stripped of jewels—an eyesore, a reproach—could she bear it? Ponnammal stripped off her jewels.
“It set my spirit free,” she said in later years. “I had a new feeling of spiritual liberty.” She had made a break with custom and the fear of what people would say.
And people did talk! Just at that time the Bible teacher, F. B. Meyer from England, who saw the jewel-laden Christian women and was disturbed, arrived for a visit. In one of his sermons he pleaded that “the whole burnt offering might be laid on the altar,” and he named such things as caste, going into debt, and the wearing of mountains of jewels.
Sellamutthu, a member of the Starry Cluster, had always slept at night with one hand on the beloved necklaces. “If I had loved my Savior more, I would have loved the jewels less,” she said. And she removed them.
The question was not: May a Christian wear jewelry? The question was one of incurring debt, of laying aside weights, and deliverance from fear of public opinion, since the women were all members of the traveling evangelistic group.
Night traveling by bandy became safe. Thieves and robbers would not lay in wait for unjeweled women. In fact, members of the robber caste agreed to protect them. “Only because your women are not jewelled,” they said. “Otherwise, we would not do it, not for any amount of money.”
The Christian church was scandalized as other women gave their jewels to be sold and the money sent to a mission in China. Some returned the jewels to their families. Ponnammal’s relatives on both sides were very angry, but Ponnammal saw it as preparation to do the strange, new work of rescuing babies.
Ponnammal’s in-laws waited and watched. Finally they sent for her and said triumphantly, “Do you see what your foolishness has done? You have closed the heart of the Hindus.”
They could not have been more mistaken, for the devout Hindu considered piety to be a renunciation of the world and its treasures. Had not Ponnammal shown that piety? Indeed. Besides, she was a widow, so what did it matter? “There are no boundaries set to her devotion!” they exclaimed and actually respected her for her decision.
Arulai, also a member of the itinerating band, removed her jewels. For her, the decision could mean her father would reclaim her and marry her to a Hindu, for so he had threatened. “If I hear you have taken off your jewels—!”
He sent word that he would meet the bandy that evening. Arulai wrapped the jewels in a piece of cloth. The bandy stopped, and Arulai’s grandfather stepped out of the darkness by the road. “Your father could not come.”
“Please give him my jewels.” Arulai laid the package in his hand.
They never found out what must have happened in the spiritual world, but Arulai’s father never mentioned the jewels again.
As for Amy, she was accused of “dividing the church,” “sowing discord,” and “teaching heresy.” Many were the sermons preached against her in South Indian churches. The secular press pounced upon the subject, enlarged it, exaggerated, until all of Tinnevelly District was in an uproar. Amy continued calmly with her work, only wondering what would happen to nominal Christianity and the unconverted if more pilgrims lived like pilgrims.
Caste, custom, jewels, superstition, abysmal ignorance—all come roped together. The stripping off of jewels was only the beginning. The very brave went on to defy other customs.
Amy’s Indian co-workers had discovered their individuality. They were not carbon copies. They grew in character and strength.
“In India, no woman can live without marrying. It is not their custom,” said a lawyer to Arulai, trying to convince her to marry an unbeliever. W. S. Grand, who lived in India, told of a Brahmin girl who died unmarried. The family felt so disgraced they paid an Untouchable to marry the dead body.
Custom allowed the money lender to charge 40 to 50 percent interest, and a man could die leaving his unborn grandchildren in debt.
“Conform to the custom of the world, lest thou be hindered in thy service,” well-meaning Christians urged. In India in those years, the tiniest detail of a woman’s life was dictated by custom.
Occasionally secret belief in Christ was tolerated if only there was no open breach of custom. A widow might be allowed to live at peace at home after baptism; after all, a widow was of no value.
After Amy was settled at Dohnavur with the children, two men arrived one day asking to look around. They had been told Amy was selling the little boys to slave traders in Ceylon. Such a tour of the nursery was unwise, but something prompted Amy to let them see the children.
“I didn’t believe the stories we heard of their happiness,” said one of the men grudgingly. Amy held up a necklace of crystal jewels, a bright stream of sunlit gems, sent by a woman who had accepted Christ as Savior and sent her jewels for them to sell to help their work. One man lifted them in his hand, hardly believing it. He was himself an agent in the secret traffic in children in the area. Amy learned later he had sold many small boys to wealthy Muslims there and abroad.
“A woman gave her jewels to buy food for these children!” he said in admiration.
Despite their nefarious work, the men had brought Amy two little boys. The men shook their heads, refusing money Amy offered for the expense of their travel. They strode away, one saying to his companion, “God is here!”
Among the workers at Dohnavur, the folly of fashion was unknown. Such a little thing as changing from India’s white to economical blue in clothing drew comments. Neither was it the custom in India for one who preached to work with his hands. The first question an Indian Christian asked when applying to do evangelistic work anywhere was, “What pay shall I get?” Amy longed and prayed for workers who would come trusting God to supply all their needs. “God didn’t make you all mouth,” she said to some.
It was inevitable that Christians who noticed Amy’s new work would say, “It is not the custom for missionaries to mind babies.” Amy and Ponnammal were both used to speaking to crowds of twenty thousand people at a time. Now, they were busy changing diapers, filling nursing bottles with milk, baby-sitting, not at all “spiritual” work. The care of children was considered degrading.
“You are not a true missionary,” said one friend. “You are only a nursemaid.”
There were outcries and campaigns of slander against her. Amy used to dread the mail; it brought such blistering letters. All that had gone before in the way of trouble was as nothing compared to the furor when her first book on India was published, Things As They Are. In it she told the truth, reticent and careful not to exaggerate, but the Christian world did not wish to know. A committee was formed in India and meetings held to try and force her from the mission field as quickly as possible.
“God give me words! Firewords to arouse a sleeping world to the fate of India’s soiled children!” she cried in her book.
“Thou shalt have words, but at this cost; that thou must first be burnt, burnt by red embers from a secret fire, scorched by fierce heats and withering winds,” the Lord seemed to say to her.
“A book like this will gravely injure the cause of missions,” was the criticism from friends in England, but the book was reprinted twelve times.
They laid to His charge things that He knew not, Amy remembered. “Go on loving, go on praying, go on forgiving, watch for the comforts of God.”
Even with her lively imagination, could Amy possibly look ahead and see that within ten years she would have two hundred children, and by the end of her life almost one thousand?
It wasn’t at all likely.