5. Sadhu Sundar Singh
Chapter 5
Sadhu Sundar Singh
Now that he had recovered from being poisoned, the obvious choice to Sundar was to continue on to the boarding school at Ludhiana and try to fit in there. And that is what he did, but more problems soon developed. Despite the fact that Sundar’s father had declared him dead, when members of his family learned that he had not died from the poison, they followed him to Ludhiana and stormed the gates of the boarding school. They demanded that Sundar return to Rampur with them. The situation was dangerous, and the school principal asked Sundar if for the safety of everyone involved he would be prepared to leave the school.
Sundar agreed, and he was secreted away to the American Presbyterian mission’s leprosy hospital at Sabathu, located twenty-three miles from Simla, where Sundar’s family had sometimes vacationed when he was a small boy. It had been a tumultuous nine months for Sundar since becoming a Christian, and he was glad to have a place where he could get some rest and peace at last. During the day he helped look after the lepers staying at the hospital, and in the evenings he read the New Testament and prayed about what the future held for him. Some of the American doctors and nurses at Sabathu urged Sundar to go to seminary and train to become a missionary himself, but Sundar was not so sure about the idea. The more time he spent around Indian Christians, the more concerned he became about how they imitated American and English ways of doing things. They wore Western clothes and sang hymns put to English tunes instead of their own Indian melodies. And they seemed to think that it was somehow more Christian to eat Western food and to speak in English.
Sundar looked at Christianity differently. To him the message—the good news that Jesus Christ had come to earth in the form of man and then sacrificed Himself so that humankind could have a relationship with God—had nothing to do with the clothes people wore, the food they ate, or the tunes they sang. He longed to see Indians take Christianity and make it their own, not just an imported religion but something that resonated with their own heritage.
In thinking about this, Sundar was reminded of a scene he had witnessed on a train. At a particular station he watched as a Brahman priest was carried onto the train and placed in a seat near him. Sundar could see that the priest was suffering from heat stroke. The stationmaster must have noticed this too, because he brought the priest a cup of cold water. Sundar watched as the priest refused to drink the water because it came from the unclean cup of a stranger and not from his own brass cup. One of the men who had carried the Brahman onto the train then took the brass cup and poured into it the water that the stationmaster had brought. Then the priest had eagerly taken his brass cup and drunk all of the water.
As Sundar thought about the scene he had witnessed, he realized that Christianity was like the water inside the cup and that it had to be given to the Indian people in a way that they could accept it. Of course he had no idea how he, a fifteen-year-old boy, could make that happen, so he prayed and waited.
Over the next several weeks, Sundar found himself looking northward, toward the snow-covered Himalayas. The majestic mountains glowed pink and gold in the evening sun, and something about them attracted him. The mysterious land of Tibet lay on the other side of the mountains, and although Sundar knew very little about Tibet, he felt that his destiny somehow lay over those high mountains.
On his sixteenth birthday, the day he was legally free from his father’s authority, Sundar sought to be baptized in the nearby town of Simla. A Church of England congregation was located there, and the local minister interviewed Sundar and agreed to baptize him. The text chosen for the service was from Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” There was no going back now. To Sikhs and Hindus, baptism was the absolute point of no return.
Following his baptism, Sundar retreated to the pine forest beyond the hospital. He needed time to think and pray, and he stayed in the forest for a month. At the end of that time he emerged confident of where his future lay. Sundar would become a sadhu, a holy man, like the one his mother had taken him to see so often as a child. The Indian people respected sadhus and would stop to listen to what they had to say. However, unlike the Hindu sadhus Sundar had known, he would tell the story of Jesus and urge the Indian people to seek Him as the bearer of all truth.
This was a bold idea. Sundar did not know of any Christian sadhus. And his idea did not gain the support of many of the English missionaries he knew; the whole concept seemed strange and irrelevant to them. But Sundar was confident that this was the way God was directing him, and so he bought himself the saffron cotton robe and turban that were the hallmarks of a holy man.
On October 6, 1905, sixteen-year-old Sundar, now introducing himself as Sadhu Sundar Singh, set out on foot across the plains of North India. He had no shoes, no money, and few friends, and he was determined never to beg for anything. “I am not worthy to follow in the footsteps of my Lord. But, like Him, I want no home, no possessions. Like Him, I will belong to the road, sharing the sufferings of my people, eating with those who will give me shelter and telling all men of the love of God,” he told himself as he set out. “The Lord is my shepherd, and I shall accept whatever He gives me.”
Sundar headed toward Simla, stopping in each small village he passed through to share the gospel. Seeing that he wore the saffron robe and turban of a holy man, the people welcomed him into these villages and showed him hospitality and friendship. However, when it became known that Sundar was a Christian and not a Hindu holy man, more often than not he found himself roughly ejected from these villages. As a result he spent many cold, hungry nights sleeping out under the stars. Despite this treatment, Sundar refused to get discouraged. Each morning after a night on the hard ground, he would get up and set off in search of another village in which to share the gospel.
In one village he visited, Sundar spent the day sitting and talking to people about Jesus Christ. Some rejected outright what he said, while others were interested in the things he said. But as night fell, the local people went off to their houses, leaving Sundar alone. Sundar walked over to a tree at the edge of the village and sat down under it. It was then that he realized how hungry he was. He’d had nothing to eat since the few handfuls of rice someone had given him the day before. As he sat under the tree, Sundar began to think about the people of the village in their houses eating rice and vegetables and fruit. How he wished he could be sitting in one of those houses eating. He thought about how good the food would taste and how comfortable he would feel with nourishment in his now empty stomach.
As his mind began to drift off into thoughts of food, Sundar stopped himself. No. These were fruitless thoughts, he told himself. He had chosen to follow God and trust Him to provide for his needs. If He had provided no food for Sundar to eat today, that was fine. Sundar would go to sleep hungry and would not grumble or complain or let his mind run after fanciful thoughts about sitting and eating. Instead he began to sing and praise God. And as he did so, waves of happiness and contentment swept over him.
Sundar had been singing for nearly two hours, when two men from the village walked over to where he was seated. The men looked at him closely, and then one of them looked at the other and said, “He is not drunk; he is happy.”
Seeing an opportunity to share the gospel, Sundar explained to the two men why he was singing and that he was happy because he trusted God. The two men listened attentively, and when Sundar had finished speaking, one of the men said, “Please forgive us. It did not occur to us to offer you food. Wait here and we will bring you something to eat.”
Several minutes later the two men were back, carrying a basket of food which they offered to Sundar. Sundar took the basket and thanked the men for their generosity, and in no time at all his hunger was satisfied.
As he made his way amid the villages of the Punjab plain, Sundar found himself at a village less than an hour’s walk from Rampur. When he had finished in the village, he set out for his hometown. Sundar did not know what kind of reception to expect, and he was pleasantly surprised at the way people welcomed him. Instead of hurling abuse, stones, and rotten fruit and vegetables at him, as they had done in the past, the people invited him into their homes and businesses to talk. They seemed to be genuinely interested when he talked to them about Jesus Christ.
While in Rampur, Sundar sent a message to his father, asking if he could see him. His father’s response was swift. He sent a message back saying he did not want to see his son. As far as he was concerned, Sundar was dead.
But Sundar felt he should try again, and so the following day he sent another message to his father, asking to meet him. This time his father relented and invited Sundar to the house for dinner.
Sundar made his way to the Singh family compound and greeted his father. But it was soon obvious to him that his family was not glad to see him and merely tolerated his presence. This was particularly obvious when it came time for dinner. Instead of inviting his son to sit with him and his brothers around the meal, Sher Singh indicated that Sundar should sit separate from the family, explaining that he did not want his son to pollute the food they would eat.
For Sundar it was a bitter blow. He had come, hoping that somehow they could put their differences behind them, but he now realized that was not going to happen. After the family had served themselves, they served Sundar a plate of food, which he ate in silence, sitting cross-legged in the corner of the room.
As Sundar ate, Sher Singh stood and picked up a pitcher of water and walked over to his son. He held the pitcher high and poured the water into Sundar’s hands. No matter how he tried, Sundar could not hold back his emotions. Tears welled in his eyes. What his father had just done was a great insult. It was the way Hindus of high caste served the untouchables, the lowest caste members of Indian society. Sher Singh was indicating to his son that he considered him the lowest of the low.
Sundar began to wonder what he had been thinking in hoping for a new start with his family. It was not going to happen. He was as good as dead in their eyes, and he began to wish he could be anywhere but in that room with them. To his relief the meal was soon over, and Sundar stood to leave.
Before he left, Sundar stopped at the door, turned, and said to his father, “It doesn’t matter if you have forsaken me. My life now belongs to Christ, and He will not forsake me. His love is unchangeable and greater than your love. Before I became a Christian, I dishonored Jesus Christ, but He did not forsake me. I cannot forsake Him now, and I will not forsake you as you have forsaken me. I thank you for your love to me in the past, and I thank you for allowing me to spend these hours with you under your roof. Good-bye, Father.”
With that Sundar turned and walked out of the house. He made his way to the edge of town, where he slept the night under his thin blanket on the hard ground.
The following day Sundar left Rampur, wondering whether he would ever return to the place again. He set out in the direction of the village of Doliwala and arrived there at sunset, just as the storm clouds that had been gathering throughout the day broke and rain began to pour down. Despite the rain, as Sundar walked down the main thoroughfare of the village, people clustered around him, eager for some words from a holy man. But their curiosity soon turned to anger when they realized that Sundar was a Christian sadhu. They picked up rocks and drove him out of their village.
It was dark by now, and Sundar was soaked to the skin. He walked until he came across an abandoned hut by the side of the road. The door was missing, but Sundar was glad for somewhere dry to stay. He was tired from walking all day. He wrapped himself in his thin blanket, found a dry corner, and was soon sound asleep.
As the first shafts of sunlight cut their way through the cracks in the wall of the abandoned hut, Sundar awoke. He reached over to pull up his blanket when something caught his eye. What was it? Was it just a shadow, or was it something else? Sundar peered harder into the early-morning gloom. It was definitely not just a shadow. Rather, it was something long and thick. In an instant Sundar was wide awake. A deadly black cobra was coiled up next to him for warmth! Sundar held his breath as he slid out from under the blanket and edged toward the door. The cobra did not move from its position on the edge of the blanket.
As Sundar reached the doorway of the hut, he thought of the cold winter nights ahead for him. Without his blanket he could freeze to death, but if he woke the sleeping cobra, he could die right there in the hut from one of the snake’s poisonous bites. After a brief prayer Sundar decided he needed his blanket and determined to retrieve it. He crept back to where he had been sleeping and gently tugged on the edge of the blanket, never taking his eyes off the snake for a moment. The cobra did not stir as Sundar eased it off his blanket and onto the mud floor. When he finally had the blanket, Sundar headed for the door as silently and as fast as he could. Safely outside the hut, Sundar knelt and thanked God for keeping him safe from the cobra.
Not long after his encounter with the snake, Sundar passed another perilous night. This time he had been in a Muslim village, where he had spent the day preaching in the marketplace without any success. In the evening, as the last rays of the sun disappeared from view, a man cautiously approached Sundar.
“You must leave at once,” the man whispered. “There is a plot to kill you. The people think you are a spy.”
Sundar nodded and picked up his blanket. He had nowhere to go except out into the barren land outside the village that was infested with dangerous wild animals.