Beyond Nationalism: Azariah's Pan-Asian Global Vision
Beyond Nationalism: Azariah's Pan-Asian Global Vision
While India's attention focused increasingly on the unfolding drama of rising nationalism, Azariah's attention turned to an even broader subject: the increasingly international character of Christianity and its varied cultural expressions in Asia. The climax of this phase of Azariah's career came in 1907 when he attended both the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF) Conference in Tokyo, the first of its kind ever to be held in an Asian nation; and the Fifth National Convention of the YMCAs of China, Korea, and Hong Kong, which met in Shanghai, China (and included delegates from eighteen Chinese provinces).
Azariah relished exposure to different Asian cultures and frequently compared them to Indian culture. The Native city! Ah! What a contrast to our Indian cities!' he wrote from Shanghai in March. The city is within walls, the whole city laid out in winding circular streets, very narrow, paved with stones. They are exactly as the narrow streets of Benares.'20 He was both fascinated and disgusted by a thirty-two-course Chinese dinner given by one of the Shanghai YMCA Directors which included ducks' brains, birds' nests and sharks' fins.
Azariah was struck by the beauty ofJapan and the cleverness of its people: In printing, building, making nice articles they excel India,' he wrote home. The Japanese are certainly very tasteful in decoration. They have such a refined idea of colours. Their homes are clean, nice, well arranged, and decked with pretty pictures of beautiful scenery.' But, while visiting the port city of Nagasaki, he was appalled to learn about the history of Japan's encounter with the West and its resistance to Christianity:
Azariah was amazed by the forwardness (`freedom') of the Japanese women who managed restaurants: `the ladies in charge come out and say: "Good morning, Gentlemen, How do you do? Please come in and have some tea."' But he was quite appalled by the subservience of wives who served YMCA delegates meals in their homes:
Despite the many cultural differences and his occasional feelings of alienation, Azariah maintained a clear sense of unity with Christians from other Asian cultures throughout this trip. This unity reached its fullest expression at the WSCF Conference in Tokyo, where Azariah met with 627 delegates, over 500 of whom came from Asia and included fifteen from India. `The Conference opened with a season of prayer,' he wrote to his wife in April. `When we began to sing "Holy, Holy, Holy" in English, German, French, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, I tell you, my whole frame thrilled with emotion. People from all nations, tribes and tongues praising God is indeed a memorable experience.'25 All of Azariah's sense of alienation from other Asian cultures - or from European cultures, for that matter - seemed to have dissolved in the commonality of Christian belief and worship.
The Tokyo conference elected Azariah as their vice-president and discussed strategies for evangelization in Japan, China, and India in the face of rising Asian nationalisms and concurrent efforts to revivify the national religions of Buddhism, Confucianism, and `Higher Hinduism.' The conference report took the optimistic view that Asia's national movements were positive developments attributable to the beneficent influence of modern western civilization and to the gradual Christianization of these lands.26 But the meeting also demonstrated the effects on Asian Christian students of the broader pan-Asian awakening that had been encouraged by the Japanese military defeat of Russia in 1905.
Azariah had a natural sympathy for the Asian awakening. The year before, he had helped to spread the growing spirit of Pan-Asian self-reliance when he escorted two Japanese YMCA secretaries, S. Motoda and T. Harada, on an evangelistic tour of India and reported that `their messages are sure to do the Indians a lot of good. Great crowds flock to hear them everywhere.'27 Azariah's enthusiastic address at the next year's Japanese WSCF Conference also appealed directly to this new sense of Asian confidence:
Azariah's clarion call to convert Asia was, of course, different from a contemporary Asian nationalist's clarion call to free Asia from western domination. The rhetoric and enthusiasm of the Pan-Asian movement for Christian spiritual liberation paralleled those of early twentieth-century Asia's wider socio-political `awakening,' but were fundamentally different in their goals. Perhaps because Azariah's own childhood experience gave him a secure sense of Christianity's legitimacy as an Indian religion, he never took the negative view that Asian conversion to Christianity represented a new form of Asian subordination to the West. Azariah never viewed Christianity as a 'western religion,' nor did he want it to become known as an `eastern religion.' It was, to him, a universal religion that was truest to itself when transcending all national or regional boundaries.
The WSCF conference increased Azariah's appreciation for Christianity's supranational and extra-European identity. This early exposure to Christianity's pan-Asian and international character provided him with a broad perspective with which to counter the rising hostility of national leaders who opposed his commitment to evangelism and charged that his `western' religion was incompatible with his Indian nationality. Gripped by an idealistic vision of regenerating India through missionary activism during his YMCA years, Azariah never accepted the charge that his efforts were not intrinsically patriotic.
Near the close of Christianity's `great century' of expansion in Asia,29 Azariah therefore joined the energetic, multinational YMCA membership in advocating India's acceptance not only of the Christian God, but also of the `civilizing' effects of western culture and British rule. But he did so at the opening of a period in which many Indian nationalists were developing increasingly xenophobic attitudes towards western and, particularly, Christian missionary influences. He seemed quite unselfconscious about how his generally favorable views of British rule and of western Christian influence in India were beginning to sound more and more out of tune with the rising tenor of his age. His personal letters en route from Ceylon to China in 1907 almost guilelessly linked British power with divine power:
There was a British Man of War or War Vessel standing in the harbour. And from that ship electric flash light was thrown on the waters and it lighted up every ship on the waters. The light was thrown on the entire horizon, powerful, bright, white light. It strongly reminded me of the search light of God falling upon human life. Nothing can hide in his light.30
What might have symbolized the menacing presence of foreign domination to a more self-conscious Indian nationalist, symbolized to Azariah the welcome searchlight of a beneficent God.
A 1907 editorial in the YMCA's Journal The Young Men of India proclaimed:
The YMCA distinguished itself in India for its success in promoting Indian leadership within its ranks and for its general identification with the goals of Indian nationalism. However, these sensibilities did not extend to institutional participation in or support for secular political mobilization. When the British government issued the famous Morley-Minto constitutional reforms designed to win the allegiance of Indian liberals on the one hand, but also resorted to significant acts of repression such as the deportation of the extremist Lajpat Rai on the other, The Young Men of India did not advocate unconstitutional tactics in response. The achievement of political concessions from the British was not the purpose of the YMCA's existence nor the focus of its attention.
The YMCA expressed its broad nationalist sympathies by promoting Indians such as Azariah to positions of leadership and by establishing an atmosphere of equality and friendship between its Indian and western members. Azariah spent much of his YMCA career managing South Indian district headquarters in Madura and in his native Palamcottah, traveling frequently to YMCAs throughout India and to regional, national, and international conferences. The future bishop had far greater opportunity to exercise responsibility in the YMCA than would have been possible in his native church of Tinnevelly with its more traditional and limited channels of advancement.33 He was influenced predominantly by young American YMCA colleagues who were generally more sympathetic to Indian national self-determination than the British. However, British YMCA leaders, such as Scotsman J. N. Farquhar (with whom Azariah later edited The Heritage of India book series), were also relatively supportive of the national movement since they were somewhat removed from the British missionary establishment by virtue of their association with a suspicious ecumenical organization.34
Azariah's struggle during his pre-episcopal career to reconcile his Indian and Christian identities amid the overlapping and often conflicting imperatives of communal, national, and transnational loyalties took place entirely within the Indian branch of the International YMCA, to which we now turn our attention.