Chapter 9
Chapter 9
A Fish out of Water
Amy retraced the path of her earlier journey to Japan: east through the Mediterranean Sea, south through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea, and on into the Indian Ocean. During the voyage she often sat on deck in a slatted wooden deckchair and looked out to sea. Always she had the same thing on her mind: What would India really be like? Every English person thought he or she knew about India. After all, it had been under British control since the seventeenth century. First it had been under the control of the British East India Company, and then in 1858 it came under direct British rule, becoming the most populous colony in the British Empire. Queen Victoria was known also as the Empress of India, and the country itself was called the “jewel in the empire’s crown.” It was very fashionable for young Englishmen to spend time in India. With sixty thousand British soldiers stationed there to keep the peace, there was plenty of opportunity for a young Englishman to make a name and a fortune for himself.
Fine teas, exotic spices, and raw cotton from India were for sale everywhere in England. Book stores sold novels and collections of stories of discovery and adventure set in India. But in truth, England had influenced India far more than India had influenced England. In India, English was the language of business and government, which was a good thing because there were fifteen major languages spoken there, not to mention over eight hundred local dialects. English rule, or Raj, as it was called, also had brought roads, railways, industry, and education to India.
English people who lived in India were in a class of their own. They had the best of everything. They could afford to surround themselves with large numbers of servants, because they were cheap to hire. The men went on elephant hunts and played cricket and cribbage, while the woman held dinner parties, embroidered pillows, and conducted readings from Shakespeare. The children were sent home to attend boarding school in England. But they usually returned for summer, when whole families would retreat to hill stations in the mountains to avoid the fierce summer heat. In short, the English in India were pampered, and that was just the way they liked it.
Beyond tea, spices, cotton, and pampered lifestyles, Amy wondered what India was really going to be like. What would God have for her to do among the three hundred million people who lived there? While she didn’t know for sure what lay ahead, she knew her first step involved working with the Zenana Mission Society.
Finally the ship reached Madras on India’s southeastern coast. Madras was called the “Gateway to the South.” Crowds of people surged around the end of the gangway as Amy disembarked. Men offered to carry her bags or hail a carriage for her as she looked around for Mr. Arden, the Church Missionary Society secretary, whom Robert Wilson had arranged to meet her. Sure enough, he was there waiting. He weaved his way through the crowd to Amy, who heaved a sigh of relief to see him. They shook hands and greeted each other. Her adventure in India was certainly getting off to a better start than her Japanese experience had.
While Mr. Arden loaded her trunk into the horse-drawn carriage, Amy looked around. It was difficult to take in everything at once. She had never seen so many colors before. Every sari, the traditional dress that Indian women wore, was different, and each one seemed to be more vibrant than the last. There were peacock blue, iridescent orange, and yellow as bright as the sun. Tall, dark men with twisted white or orange turbans on their heads were everywhere, as were little girls with jangly bangles the length of their arms. Amy loved it all.
Mr. Arden took her to his home, where she was to spend her first three weeks in India before heading inland to Bangalore, where the Zenana mission hospital was located. Amy had decided to stay the three weeks in Madras because she wanted to arrive in Bangalore rested and in the best possible health. While staying with the Ardens, she asked questions about India of anyone who had time to answer them. She was particularly interested in the history of Christianity in southern India because that was where her new home was to be. She learned that according to tradition, Thomas, one of Jesus’ twelve disciples, was captured and sold as a slave to a merchant who took him to South India. There Thomas was sold again, this time to a king named Gundobar, who put Thomas to work overseeing the building of his new palace. During the building, Thomas had the opportunity to talk to the king about the gospel, and as a result, the king became a Christian and was baptized. Amy was thrilled to hear there was a group of Christians in southern India who called themselves “Thomas Christians” and traced the roots of their church right back to the time of St. Thomas and King Gundobar.
A week after Amy arrived, another missionary, Louisa Randall, came to talk to her. Louisa was an Englishwoman about Amy’s age and had brought a letter with her regarding a problem she had encountered. Several months earlier she had met a young Muslim girl who wanted to become a Christian. But unlike Buddhists in Japan, who would tolerate a Christian in the family, Muslim families became violently angry if someone in the family became a Christian. The Muslim girl knew that if she became a convert she would either be banished from her home and family forever or be killed by her brothers. Finally, the girl decided she didn’t have the courage to give up everything, including possibly her life, to become a Christian, and so she decided to stay a Muslim.
In a letter to her supporters, Louisa had written about the Muslim girl’s struggle. As a result, one of her supporters had written back and complained that the story was too depressing and suggested that Louisa might brighten it up with a “happy ending.” The response had upset Louisa, and she now wondered whether she’d done the right thing by telling the girl’s story in the first place. She came to ask Amy her thoughts on the matter. Should she rewrite the girl’s story, perhaps making the ending a little more vague and less depressing for her supporters? Amy was appalled. How could any Christian try to bully a missionary into inventing a happy ending when there was none? The truth is the truth, Amy told Louisa, and nothing, not even pressure from supporters, should cause a missionary to swerve from telling it.
Strangely enough, it wouldn’t be long before Amy herself would be tested on this. She would find out that telling the truth was not always popular, even among Christians.
Finally, Amy’s three weeks with the Ardens was up, and she began the two-hundred-thirty-mile trip from Madras to Bangalore. The trip had seemed so easy when she studied it on the globe in Robert Wilson’s library. But that was back in England, and now as Amy sat on the train headed west toward Bangalore, she felt as though the trip would take forever. Villages and temples rolled past the train window where she sat, but she was having a hard time focusing on them. A servant brought her a cup of tea, but she didn’t have enough strength to lift it to her lips. Amy realized she was sick again and getting sicker by the minute. This time she had dengue fever, or “breakbone fever,” as it is also known. Indeed, Amy felt as though every bone in her body was broken. She could barely lift herself out of her seat when the conductor announced that the train was pulling into the station at Bangalore. She dragged herself off the train and into the arms of a waiting Zenana missionary. It was the exact opposite of the way she’d planned to make her entrance, but she was too ill to care. She was whisked off and admitted to the very hospital she’d come to serve in.
It took Amy several weeks to recover. As she lay in her hospital bed, waves of homesickness often swept over her. She would be homesick for her mother and Robert Wilson in England, homesick for Barclay Buxton, Misaki San, and the Christians in Hirose, Japan. Sometimes she was even homesick for the missionary work she never got to do in China! It seemed to Amy she would be better off almost anywhere than in the hospital, taking up the valuable time of missionaries whom she’d come to work alongside.
Slowly, as she started to feel stronger, Amy began to get involved in the daily routine of the Zenana Mission Society. One of the first things she did was attend a monthly staff social evening. It was at this gathering that the differences between Amy and many of the other missionaries began to show. The scene was innocent enough. The missionary women sat in a circle under the lamplight, quietly embroidering handkerchiefs with French knots and satin stitch. One of the men from the mission read an article on the partnership of missionaries and local Christians. The other men sat and listened and nodded occasionally. When the man had finished reading, a discussion was started. Mainly the men spoke, but occasionally a woman would look up from her embroidery and offer an opinion. As the discussion progressed, the question was raised as to who could name a single Indian Christian who would do Christian work without being paid by a missionary or the church to do it. The women continued poking their needles in and out of their fabric, while the men frowned and thought about the question. A minute past, then two and three. It seemed no one knew of anyone. “Oh, well,” said one of the men with a nervous laugh. “One can’t really blame them.” At that moment, a servant brought in hot tea and cucumber sandwiches, and everyone’s attention was soon diverted to the refreshments.
Amy laid down her embroidery. She sat in shock while the others drank tea and ate sandwiches. She wondered whether what she’d just heard could be true. In southern India, where tradition says St. Thomas brought the gospel message all the way from Israel, where Syrian Christians had a thriving community by the fourth century, and where hundreds of missionaries from many denominations had labored for centuries, could it be that not one Christian understood the joy of volunteering time to serve God? Surely it couldn’t be? Amy thought of the shawlies in Belfast who had gone without sleep and had willingly given up their two precious days off a month to help with the work of The Welcome. Whenever she had needed someone to fill in at a service or to sweep the hall, the shawlies had been there, cheerfully, freely, gladly, willingly offering their time to do their part in reaching others with the gospel message. Of course, Amy didn’t think it was always wrong to pay a person for his or her labor, but the thought that there was not one person who would work purely out of love for God left her speechless.
Amy looked at the other missionaries sitting and sipping tea from china cups. Shouldn’t they all be on their knees begging God to forgive them for failing to inspire any devotion in the local population? Instead, they passed around another plate of sandwiches, this time with watercress and tomato on them. Amy couldn’t believe it.
This was not the only shock Amy had in her first few days with the mission. The more she saw of the missionary station, the more things bothered her. When she asked to visit the new-converts class, she was told there wasn’t one; it wasn’t needed. There hadn’t been a new-converts class in years. Again, Amy could hardly believe what she was hearing. When she asked why there was no new-converts class, as part of the answer, one of the missionaries who’d served with the mission in Bangalore for many years explained the Hindu caste system to Amy.
All Hindus are divided into four castes, or groups. Every Hindu person is born into the same caste as his or her parents. Those in the top caste are called Brahmans, and they are religious and political leaders. Then there are the Kshatriyas, who are warriors; the Vaisyas, who are farmers and tradesmen; and the Sudras, who are laborers and servants. Below them are the lowest of the low, those who do not belong to a caste. They are called untouchables. When the caste system was first established, it was done as a way to organize society. It was much like the kings, lords, noblemen, and serfs of medieval England. But as the centuries passed, more and more rules were made about how different castes could relate to one another, and new castes within the main caste groups were formed. By the time Amy arrived in Bangalore there were several thousand castes and many rules, some harsh, that were very strictly enforced. For example, a person could not eat food prepared by a member of a lower caste or marry out of his or her caste. Untouchables were left to do the work no one else would do. They had to clean up after cremation ceremonies, prepare animal hides, and rinse out chamber pots. Other Hindus would have nothing to do with them. Their caste forbade such contact. Untouchables could not drink water from the same well or even attend the same churches as people from higher castes for fear their shadow might touch someone of another caste and make them unclean. Amy nodded. She had seen the untouchables in Madras dressed in rags, their eyes staring at the ground.
The longtime missionary with the Zenana Mission Society went on to tell Amy about the hold Hinduism had over people. Loyalty was everything to a Hindu. The loyalty of a wife to her husband led to the practice of suttee, which the English were trying to wipe out. Suttee meant that when a man died it was the duty of his widow to commit suicide by throwing herself into the cremation fire with him. Sometimes the widow needed “a little help” to do this, but it was considered the right and loyal thing to do. The same was true of religion. A Hindu who converted to Christianity was labeled an infidel. To other Hindus, Christian converts had become disloyal to their religion, their society, and their family. As a result, they often were killed by members of their own family to prevent them from bringing any more disgrace to the family.
Amy thought back to Louisa’s letter and its lack of a “happy ending.” She was beginning to see the hold Hinduism had over every part of life in India. “But isn’t the power of God greater than the power of Hinduism?”
“Yes, it should be,” sighed the longtime missionary. “But in reality it does not seem to be so.” And then he gave Amy a challenge: Would she pray and ask God why they were not seeing any Hindu converts? Of course she would. She started to pray about it right away. She had come to India to see God work in the lives of Indian people, and she, as much as anyone, wanted to know why it wasn’t happening.
One of the things that Amy felt to be a barrier was that even though the mission society ran a school, most of the teachers were Hindus or Muslims. Again Amy spoke to the older missionary. She asked him what was the point of employing people from other religions to teach in the school. Wasn’t the point of a Christian school to influence students toward Christianity? How could this happen if only a few of the teachers were Christians? The missionary told her it wasn’t as easy as she might think to find Christians who would teach. Besides, weren’t Hindu or Muslim teachers better than no teachers at all? Not to Amy they weren’t! At least not in a Christian school. Amy told the missionary about the time she’d been short of workers at The Welcome and that many people had offered to help out of a sense of social concern. She had turned them all down, however, and waited for God to provide her with committed Christians who would serve others out of love for Him. Why couldn’t the mission school apply the same principle? She knew it worked; she’d seen it work firsthand.
There were no easy answers, and although many of the missionaries liked Amy, her questions began to make some of them uncomfortable.
In her diary, Amy wrote, “I am beginning to feel like a fish out of water.” Of course, fish do not last long out of water. Although Amy was trying hard to get along, trying hard to learn the Tamil language, and trying hard to fit into the British Empire missionary mold, it wasn’t working. Something had to happen to get her back “in the water,” and it had to happen soon.