16. Violence And Death
16.
VIOLENCE AND DEATH
“Asia for Asians!” cried many Indians.
Some Indians were so bitter they joined Japanese armies in Burma. Japan sensed that 1944 was the right time to conquer India. In March they bombed airfields in the Naga Hills six hundred miles northeast of Calcutta. That same month, they surged across the Chindwin River into India. Most Indians realized that the Japanese were no liberators. Between the monsoons and the savage resistance of Indian troops, the Japanese invaders were battered. By summer they were out of India, leaving behind thirty thousand dead. The war that had looked so hopeless early in 1944 had completely reversed. The Japanese were being pummeled everywhere in the Pacific, just as Hitler’s forces were being driven back in Europe. The defeat of both evils was imminent.
Gandhi was also finally out of prison.
“Britain is going to quit India,” some told Amy.
The turnabouts defied belief. Was this yet another example of how good must spring from great suffering and pain? It seemed the war had drained Britain. In September 1944, newspapers carried reports that Gandhi and the leader of the Muslims were negotiating the nature of the independent state or states that would result from British withdrawal. The negotiations, as miraculous as they sounded, were not simple. Gandhi wanted a united India. But the Muslims wanted their own state, because they were afraid they would be overwhelmed by the more-numerous Hindus.
In May 1945, the terrible war ended. During the war years, Amy had raised her total number of books on India to thirty. The end of the war era signaled a great debt owed by Amy to Neela, one of her faithful nurses. In October 1945, she wrote Neela a loving letter:
For nine happy years of nights you had care of your Amma, and I shall never forget. So often when there was pain, and you got very little sleep, your love helped me. You read to me and sang to me so sweetly, that sometimes sleep came while you were singing. I wonder how many times you sang, “The sands of time are sinking”? Well, darling, the sands of time have not yet run out. I have not yet reached the last clause of John 17:4. So ask for help for me still, strength and courage, and peace and joy, so that this room may be a Room of Peace to all.…”1
The clause to which Amy referred was “I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.” But her work was not yet finished. Nor was India’s. Before 1945 ended, Britain announced it would give independence to India. But was India ready? Month after month, Hindu leaders and Muslim leaders bickered. Speculation began. Some began to hoard food. Some began to starve. Riots broke out. Muslims killed Hindus. Hindus killed Muslims. Amy was amazed at the insanity of it all.
“And now the British say they will leave India in 1948 whether the Indians ever agree among themselves or not! Isn’t that withdrawal inviting a bloodbath?”
Her own situation at times seemed insane, too. At one point in 1946, she realized she had not seen the sky in ten years! And yet the turmoil in India overshadowed all individual complaints. Hindus and Muslims squabbled and fought, but no one was prepared for what happened in Calcutta on August 16, 1946. Muslims had gathered for a rally in the great park called the “Maiden.” Hindus agitated the Muslims. Scuffles broke out. Fighting spread like wildfire. Blood poured out of lives all over the streets of Calcutta. The killing was not by guns, but by the butchery of lathis and knives and hatchets. Deaths were silent, except for screams of pain. Thousands died.
THE TURMOIL IN INDIA OVERSHADOWED ALL INDIVIDUAL COMPLAINTS.
“Can these wounds ever be healed?” wondered those at Dohnavur.
Indian leaders finally said no. In August 1947, two countries were born: India for the Hindus and Pakistan for the Muslims. Satan continued his work. Hindus began to coerce Muslims remaining in India to convert to their faith. Likewise, Muslims began to force Hindus left in Pakistan to convert to their faith. Again, killing erupted. Hindus overpowered the Muslims left in India and slaughtered them. Muslims slaughtered the Hindus left in Pakistan. Refugees by the millions fled to safety.
In February 1947, Amy was stunned to learn that Murray’s wife, Oda, insisted on an English education for the boys but refused to dump them in a boarding school. Amy remembered the pain of her own experience. Murray would either have to go to England or endure separation from his family. He decided to go to England. Amy did not take it well. Death would hardly have disappointed her more.
“No one is irreplaceable, some say,” she wrote. “That is a shallow lie. Twenty years of knowledge of the East, all that is meant by fatherhood, cannot be passed on, as one might pass on a book or a garment…the sky is cloudy over India now.…”2
She still had enough strength at the age of eighty to get fired up. Upon reading that she wrote popular books she stormed, “Popular? Lord, is that what these books written out of the heat of battle are? Popular? O Lord, burn the paper to ashes if that is true.”3 Sometimes she was so tired that she fell into self-pity. “For years, patiently the prayer meeting went on praying for me,” she recorded. “It does not seem to do so now. I was feeling the need of prayer very much, but to ask for it would be selfish.…”4
Many years before, in an Indian village, Amy had an experience eerily similar to one she had had in Japan. “We have heard much preaching from you about your Good News,” said an open-minded elder. “But can you show us you live in Christ? And what is the power that comes with it?”
Well, look at the peace in our compound, she now reflected, and look at what happens throughout India. For India still smoldered, with murderous fights breaking out. Prime Minister Nehru lacked the moral power of Gandhi. In fact, Nehru, a British-educated Indian of the Brahmin caste, seemed at times more British than the British. Only Gandhi was able to stop the violence periodically through hunger strikes. Then in January 1948, Gandhi was murdered by one of his own Hindus. Gandhi was seventy-eight. How long would the bloodshed last?
At times now, Amy’s strength failed her. On one morning in 1948, she wrote that she “woke feeling like ashes—as dull, as gray, in spirit—and all one ache in body.”5
AMY “WOKE FEELING LIKE ASHES—AS DULL, AS GRAY, IN SPIRIT—AND ALL ONE ACHE IN BODY.”
Would she have the strength to cooperate with Bishop Frank Houghton? Houghton was an old “China hand” from the China Inland Mission. He had been commissioned to write her biography. Amy felt just as George Macdonald had; the denial of self required that her personality be brought forth only so far as needed to advance good works. Anything more was intolerable. Still, if she had to trust someone to do her life, Frank Houghton was a good choice. She had corresponded with him many years. He and his wife had visited Dohnavur three times from 1943 to 1947. He had his hands full to be sure. He was awash in material. He arranged with Amy to send his product to her chapter by chapter for her critique. With God’s help—and the assistance of Mary Mills and Neela—she would oblige him.
But on the evening of June 23, she slipped and fell in her room.