CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VI
THE CONVERSION OF THE ABORIGINES
THE power of the Gospel of Christ among the aboriginal tribes of India and Burma has been almost as remarkable as its power among the outcastes.
According to the Government Census they number about 11,000,000.
They live apart in separate areas, mainly in the hills and forests of Central India, Assam and Burma.
Their conversion to Christianity, therefore, has not as direct an influence on the Hindu and Mahommedan peoples as that of the outcastes who are scattered throughout almost all the towns and villages of India.
But the transformation of their lives is a striking witness to the power of the living Christ, and the simplicity and independence of their characters will, under the influence of the Holy
Spirit, enable them to make a very valuable contribution to the faith and life of an Indian Church.
About 600,000 of the Aborigines in different parts of the Indian Empire have already been converted to Christianity and the number of converts is rapidly growing.
The largest Christian communities are in Chota Nagpur, 260,000 ; the Santal Pargannahs, West of Bengal, 35,000; among the Khasis and Lushais in the hills of Assam,
THE CONVERSION OF THE ABORIGINES
120,000; and among the Karens and other aboriginal tribes in Burma, 170,000.
But a considerable number of the Bhils in the western part of Central India and of the aboriginal tribes in the hills of the south-west coast have also become Christians during the last half-century.
Strong testimony is given not only by the missionaries but also by Government officials and others to the changed lives of the people through the influence of the Gospel.
A Bengali writer, not a Christian, speaking of the work of Christian missionaries in Chota Nagpur says: "The most careless observer can tell the house of a Christian convert of some years standing from that of his non-Christian fellow-tribesman by the greater cleanliness of the Christian's house and the general neatness and orderliness of everything about it." The contrast, he says, between Munda and Oraon Christian men and women, boys and girls on the one hand, and, on the other hand nonChristian Mundas and Oraons at their feasts and elsewhere is a visible sign of " the brilliant achievements of the Christian missions in their noble work of civilizing and educating the aborigines of Chota Nagpur." } An experienced missionary who has worked among the Karens of Burma for many years states that Christianity has " transformed them beyond all recognition."
Before the coming of the Gospel they were quarrelsome and violent, always fighting among themselves, split up into hostile clans,
1 The Mundas, p. 168, by Babu Sarat Chundra Roy. age
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ignorant and intemperate.
Under the influence of » Christian teaching they have become peaceable and united, sober and educated, inspired with a real missionary spirit which leads them not only to convert their own people to faith in Christ but also to set about the conversion of the Burmese
Buddhists.
The testimony of Government officials and missionaries alike to the changed lives of the tribes in the Santal Pargannahs is equally striking.
Tue LusHais The Government Census of 1921 gives the following account of the spread of Christianity among the hill tribes of Assam.
"Perhaps one of the most marked features of the decade (1911-21) is the extraordinary progress made by Christianity in Assam. Mr Lloyd writes:
'In the Khasi and Jaintia Hills a sixth and in the Lushai Hills over one-fourth of the population are now Christians.
In the Khasi Hills, where the movement is oldest, the increase has been only 31.6 per cent., possibly owing to curtailment of staff and work in war time by the Welsh Calvinistic
Methodists, the principal body working there. The spread of Christianity in the Lushai Hills is phenomenal.
There has been a sort of revivalist wave over the whole Lushai population. .
. In a district of 7000 square miles, sparsely peopled by less than 100,000 people, there are now 27,000 Christians where ten years ago there were only 2000.
THE CONVERSION OF THE ABORIGINES
present it is quite the fashion to be a Christian and even the Chiefs are joining the movement.
At first I was inclined to cast doubt on the accuracy of the figures and suggested that zealous Christian enumerators might have made entries according to their own wishes rather than the facts. The superintendent, however, thinks the case is rather the reverse.
Mr Scott has tested many entries himself and he quotes an instance of the rigorous standard adopted by the new converts; the five-year-old son of Christian parents being entered as an Animist because the young scoundrel was so greedy that he failed to say grace before meals!' "
In 1921 Mr Lorrain, one of the senior missionaries of the Baptist Missionary Society in the Lushai
Hills, wrote :— "Forty years ago the whole of this forestcovered, mountainous district was still under the pall of age-long darkness.
Satan held supreme sway.
The people, believing that his emissaries lurked everywhere in order to do them harm, spent all their religious energies in seeking to appease these malignant demons. They were in'a very real sense captives and slaves of the Powers of Darkness.
For all but a few favoured folk there was not even hope of a happier life in the Great
Beyond.
'Dead Man's Village' was the soul's destination; but before reaching there the ordeal of passing the half-way house of the dreaded
'Papawla' and being pelted with pellets from his unerring bow-like catapult, must be undergone,
CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES
and the wounds inflicted by these stinging missiles must through all the future ages fester and burn without hope of remedy. Even the favoured few, who, because of their prowess in head-hunting raids or in the chase, or because of the merit acquired through giving a number of public feasts, were entitled to pass Papawla's house without molestation, and to cross the Pial River beyond
'Dead Man's Village' and to enjoy the delights of the Lushai Paradise—even these were often assailed with doubts and fears as to whether after all their passport to the Happy Land would hold good, and for them as for the rest of the people there was no light to cheer the darkness of the tomb. te "But even then God was at work in opening up the way for His salvation to be made known.
Repeated raids into British Territory had brought about the taking over of the Lushai Hills by the Government, whose officers proved to be veritable pathfinders for God's Messengers.
"Soon after this one of the chiefs had a dream, he heard a voice saying to him, 'A great Light will come from the West and shine upon Lushai: follow the Light, for the people who bring it will be the ruling race.'
"In the morning he gathered together his family and many friends and told them of his dream.
' This Light,' he said, ' may not shine in my lifetime, but when it comes, follow it.'
| "In 1900 Mr Rowlands, a missionary of the Welsh Calvinistic Mission came to visit this village and to tell the people of the Love of God revealed
THE CONVERSION OF THE ABORIGINES
in Jesus Christ. To his surprise he found attentive listeners and when he asked if there were any who would wish to give in their names as inquirers he was amazed to find that several came forward as volunteers. He warned them that to follow Christ would inevitably mean suffering and persecution and might lead to eviction from their village by the chief and possibly death; but they would not be denied, and when in due course trouble did come, it merely served to strengthen their faith.
'Did not the white man say it would be so?' they declared; 'therefore his teaching must be true; this is the light of the dream.'
"Two Baptist missionaries, Mr Savidge and Mr Lorrain, began work in North Lushai in 1893 and in four years learned the language, reduced it to writing, and translated two Gospels and the Book of Acts.
They wrote hymns, a catechism, a simple primer, a grammar, and produced a dictionary of seven thousand words.
" They left the Northern territory to the Welsh mission later on and started work in South Lushai, which is a wild, forest-covered, mountainous region with an area of 2700 square miles and a population of about 28,000 people, living in about 166 villages, all situated on the tops of the mountains.
In 1903 there were about 125 converts, to-day the Christian community numbers about 10,600, scattered over the country in 110 different villages; so that more than one-third of the people are now Christians and there are Church congregations in more than three-fourths of the villages."
CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES
In 1920 Mr Lorrain wrote: "As I look back on the last ten years I see how wonderfully God has been working to bring about the blessings which so many enjoy to-day. The Great Famine of 1912 caused by an invasion of rats, the pneumonia epidemic and remarkable revival of heathenism in 1914, and the War which drew so many of our untravelled hillmen to France and Mesopotamia were all overruled by Him for good. But by far the greatest factor in the work has been the presence of God's Spirit in the midst of His Church, manifest more especially in 1913 and 1919-20 in mighty power.
It is a fact which should be recorded that since the first out-pouring of the Holy Spirit upon the Lushai church in 1907, every six years has witnessed a similar but ever-increasing pentecostal experience, empowering believers for joyful and fruitful service, and greatly affecting the heathen as well.
Each gracious visitation has raised the church on to a higher plane of Christian experience than the one preceding it and has resulted in a large ingathering of souls.
"These last ten years have witnessed marked progress in church organization and activity.
In 1914 a modified Presbyterian form of Church government was adopted, elders were elected, and the first Lushai superintending pastor was ordained, followed in 1915 by two others.
In the same year a Summer School was inaugurated on the Mission Station for the annual instruction of the honorary pastors of village churches.
In 1916 the New Testament in the language of the people was com-
THE CONVERSION OF THE ABORIGINES
pleted. In 1918 a class was started for the training of candidates for the ministry (evangelists and superintending travelling pastors), and in the same year a new era was ushered in by the arrival of Nurse Dicks and Miss Chapman from England for medical and educational work amongst the women
'and children.
In 1920 the first Lushai woman evangelist was appointed by the church, followed this year by a second.
Both these workers are supported by a special fund raised by their Lushai sisters for the purpose."
Among the aborigines, as among the outcastes, the history of the Church is never one of uninterrupted progress.
Floods, famines and epidemics are visitations that often bring periods of depression, and from time to time strange " tidal waves of sin" sweep over the Church.
"But whenever we are tempted to get downhearted," writes one of the missionaries in a recent report, " we have only to take a retrospective view of what God has done for the Lushais and adjoining tribes since January 1894, and straightway we find our hearts beating with renewed courage and hope.
"Tt was then that my friend Savidge and I, after three years of patient effort, succeeded in gaining an entrance to the North Lushai Hills. From the breezy height upon which we first pitched our little tent there stretched away on all sides to the horizon, range upon range of forest-covered mountains, with villages perched here and there upon the most inaccessible peaks.
We two young
CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES
missionaries of the Gospel were there to claim the whole beautiful land for God and His Christ— a land which for ages had been in the grip of demon-worship, and where tidings of the world's
Saviour had never penetrated.
Our hopes were high, but how far short they were of God's wonderful plans for these tribes!
The years of rough pioneering and wrestling with the unwritten language soon slipped away, followed by the coming of the Welsh Mission to North Lushai, and our own eventual transfer to South Lushai under the auspices of the Baptist Missionary Society. Then, when the Gospel message had gained a firm foothold in the Lushai Hills, both North and South, the gift of a copy of the Lushai Gospel of St John, by one of the Welsh Missionaries, to a visitor from a neighbouring tribe, led to a call for Christian workers in those regions beyond. The missionary spirit of some of the North Lushai converts was roused and volunteers were soon forthcoming, and thus began a movement which has developed into the North East India General Mission, which is now occupying strategic centres and outposts among several different tribes beyond the Lushai border.
The work is unique, for it is almost entirely run and staffed (though only very partially financed) by Lushai and Kuki Christians, with but a single
European in Calcutta as superintendent of its farflung field—the very missionary whose gift of a printed Lushai Gospel was instrumental in starting it seventeen years ago. In looking through a long list of the workers in that mission I count 81 super-
THE CONVERSION OF THE ABORIGINES
intending pastors and evangelists, 76 schoolmasters, 5 dispensary compounders, and 4 printers; and I rejoice to find among them quite a number of our
South Lushai converts who have, through this organization, been able to find a real opening for their missionary zeal.
Three of them are holding posts of great responsibility and privilege, and others are doing good work as schoolmasters and missionary-evangelists.
One of these latter—a splendid young fellow named Lianthawnga—has recently laid down his life for the people among whom he laboured.
The climate was bad and he suffered continually, but he would not think of relinquishing his work.
At last, when he came back to us for a holiday, his health was so shattered that he passed away, leaving a young wife and little son to mourn his loss.
So rapid has been the transformation of the Lushais from head-hunting savages to Christian missionaries, that, when Lianthawnga and his colleague first went to the Bawm tribe, the people would not receive them.
They believed that they had come to ' spy out the land' preparatory to organizing a bloodthirsty
Lushai raid such as the older folk still remembered.
Their fears were not really set at rest until two men got their wives and families to come and join them in their work. The accompanying table will show at a glance the wonderful work God has done amongst the Lushais and neighbouring tribes, where thirty-three years ago the Saviour's name had never been heard."
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Christian Full Sunday ComChurch School munity. Members. Scholars.
North Lushai (Welsh Mission) 35,577 15,660 21,222 South Lushai (B.M.S.) .
9,935 3,484 4,811 Outside Lushai (N.E.I.G.M.) 9,959 3,734 $,533 ToTaLs .
§5,471 22,898 31,371 Tue Butts The following account of a movement among the Bhils, an aboriginal tribe in Central and West
India, illustrates the strange ways in which God works and the still stranger instruments that He uses.
"In 1886 Dr Shepherd began those cold-weather tours in the Bhil country which he continued without break to the end of his service in 1920.
The camp moved through the rugged, roadless hills under the triple aegis of a Bhil safe-conduct, a survey map and a pioneer axe.
In these days there was no presumption of safety for the life and property of the wayfarer. The famine of 1868 had revived the marauding habits of the Bhils, while it had also so reduced the population that there was little or no co-operation amongst the isolated remnants of the people. So the ' padri sahib.' was passed from hand to hand, from glen to glen, by chiefs somewhat anxious over meeting neighbour and enemy at the boundary.
The young men of the glen slept round his tent at night, and the aged 9°
THE CONVERSION OF THE ABORIGINES
chief watched alert, hunched grimly in the shadow beyond the camp-fire light. Dr Shepherd's camp was never raided, partly because of that unceasing watch and ward, partly because the healing influence which his tours were to exert began to have effect at once.
Bitter enemies met at the borders to demit and assume responsibility for the padri.
There was Huarji of Sera; Amri, the woman chief of Paduna; Kawa of Lori Madri; Lakhma of Pai, whose grandson was married in 1927 under Christian rite in the Bhil country; and Dewa Damar of Saldari, the father of Poona.
These, and many another, wild hill folk, fearful of one another and of all mankind, gave their confidence to Dr Shepherd.
" On his advice, they sent their boys into Udaipur for education.
Amongst these boys was Poona, second son of Dewa Damar.
He stayed in the Bhil Home till 1891, when, a grown man of eighteen or so, he returned to his country.
He was not baptized.
Others came and went up till 1904.
Some were baptized.
One of them is now pastor of the Udaipur congregation.
Another, Manji, has been a wanderer since 1904, never coming near the Church, although sometimes in and out of Udaipur hawking firewood.
A wizened figure of a man, unmarried, he spent his spare cash on drink and his sober times, when money was not, on poring over his Bible.
One evening some ten years ago, I met him where the Udaipur road ends and the Bhil track begins.
Wearily putting his eight-foot bundle of wood off his head end-up on the ground, this haggard wisp of humanity told me
CHRIST IN THE INDIAN VILLAGES
that the prophecies of Daniel were shortly to be fulfilled and that the beginning would be in the Bhil hills.
"All unknown at the time, 1891 was a great date for Udaipur.
For Poona, unbaptized, unpersuaded, left the Bhil Home. For thirty-one years he was to remain so. The Bible he took with him disappeared; his memories of Christianity became vague, but his education he used and retained.
He saw the dreadful famine of 1900 and the lesser one of 1906. He saw the Bhil risings of 1917 and 1921. What was his part in either of these no one will ever know.
But, son of the shrewdest Bhil of night or day, his dreams were of better days for his people. In 1922 he began teaching the doctrines of one God and one True Teacher (' Sat Guru').
His recollections of Christianity seem to have been limited to that, for he neither taught, nor seems to have remembered the name of Christ. He quickly gathered disciples.
Their greeting to one another was, and is, "Jai! Sat Guru!' (Hail, the True Teacher).
Every disciple on joining the brotherhood paid twenty pence to Poona. It was a' gift in God's name.' In Hinduism the food offered to the god is called ' parshad.'
This twenty pence was 'parshad,' therefore; but Poona called it 'the Lord's Supper (Prabhu Bhoj).', This went on till 1925.
"Tn 1925 Manji heard of this Brotherhood of the True teacher.
He walked twelve miles over the hills with his Bible, met Poona and the disciples, tead Genesis i and ii to them and asked them
THE CONVERSION OF THE ABORIGINES
whether any other book had such knowledge of the very beginning of life.
They acknowledged the claim. Then Manji said, ' This same book tells you who the Sat Guru is. His name is Jesu Messiah.'
He further told them that they must get the ' guru chhap" (seal) on their forehead, and that the padri in Udaipur was the one to do that. So Poona and his disciples came to Udaipur in 1925 for the seal on their foreheads.
They were not in any way, except desire, ready for baptism, and such temporary arrangement as was possible was made for instruction.
Memories became clearer in Poona's mind.
He began studying and teaching the Bible, for he was a lettered man.
They ploughed through the books of Moses, trying to live the life of the Book.
They gave up eating hare and pig when they came to that law. They had all become teetotalers at the beginning and are still.
Manji did not delay long to direct their attention to Daniel.
"Early in 1926 the first thirteen were baptized, Poona and twelve disciples, having more than satisfied the Udaipur Session as to their readiness.
Before the end of February 1926, 73 adults and 37 children in all had been baptized.
Maqbul Masih, who had had twelve years experience of the Bhil country in another district was sent out as Mission agent.
For him the Bhils of Pai built a house.
His parish is 26 miles long with a very rough range of hills, 9 miles wide, intersecting it.
It takes him five days' tour merely to visit his flock.
Only to give the necessary religious instruction to these people is more than one man
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can do; and there are young lads who wish to learn to read and write as well. Maqbul has 16 such scholars in ones and twos throughout the glens.
But those who have learned a little become teachers of those who know less. At Pipalwas, I found a youth of fifteen, handicapped by a painful stutter, who had taught his chum to read with a complete
Hindi Bible as their only textbook.
Some of the double letters they had never been able to guess, and my visit was a chance to clear up such mysteries.
So Magbul, with Poona's zeal plus the willingness of the Bhils to be taught, has achieved a further addition to the number of Christians.
In 1927, 38 adults and Go children (some of them 16, 17, 18 years of age) have been baptized.
The large number of children is due to the baptism of the families of parents admitted in 1926.
Altogether there are now 204—42 men, 54 women, 57 sons, 51 daughters.
Four men have been admitted to full membership of the Church.
Only four, but what understanding they have of the Cross!
"And here a strange thing emerges.
Poona, himself, has not become a full member and is, I think, avoiding it. When Magbul went out and when the converts began to understand their new faith more fully, the giving of twenty pence ' parshad' ceased. The first 73, however, had paid and © Poona maintains that he and they have ' partaken of the Lord's Supper.'
Poona is probably a little jealous over the trend of the movement. If it is not that, it is, perhaps, that the son of Dewa Damar is a Bhil of the Bhils, absolutely intolerant of any
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dictation, hostile at once to any suggestion of authority.
Manji, alas, has lost all his reputation, partly through his drinking habits, partly because the Bhil Christians would have none of his interpretation of Daniel.
He is not counted as one of them; otherwise he might again plead the authority of the Book.
"A most interesting thing happened in connection with Manji's reading of Daniel. Somehow, in certain wanderings of his, far afield from Rajputana, he had picked up the views regarding the prophecies which belong to the ultra-apocalyptic school.
He pressed these views on the Bhil Christians.
They gave him a hearing and unanimously condemned his views as ' not in accord with the teaching of the rest of the Bible.' I heard this long after.
Manji has now (1929) completely abandoned his drinking habits."
What the movement will grow to it is impossible to forecast, but when we consider the difficulties that this small body of Christians had to encounter and their determination in overcoming them, coupled with their simple faith and reverence for the Scriptures, we feel that a Bhil church will have an important contribution to make to Indian Christianity.