Explaining a Mission: 1933-1952

literature.23 Clough, an American Baptist missionary, highlighted the practices, such as marriage between cousins, which his compatriots would have found detestable. Jacob Chamberlain, the most prolific missionary writer in this period, with at least nine books to his credit, portrayed Telugu culture as demonic. His diatribes describe Andhra as nothing better than a “tiger’s jungle” or a “cobra’s den” and Telugus as “cobras” that deserved to “squirm” or to be “quelled” by Western missionaries.24 Nevertheless, these works provide a window into the activities and attitudes of European and North American Christians in the region, either as missionaries or colonial agents. They also offer insight into the history of Telugu Christians.

EXPLAINING A MISSION: 1933-1952

In tone and texture, the 1933-1952 literature is not too different from what was produced in the previous period. Like the earlier works, they are autobiographies or biographies, often hagiographical, and institutional histories, celebrating the longevity of their mission agencies. However, there are remarkable wrinkles in the level of self-confidence that missionary writers demonstrated and the space native Christians occupied both as authors and subject matter. The missionary writers of this period explained their mission by underscoring the “civilizing” aspects of their activities and highlighting the conversion movements of the Dalits towards Christianity. The shifts in focus and tone should be located in the fluid historical context of 1933, a memorable year in the history of the modern missionary movement in general and missionary activism in India in particular. The year 1933 also radically altered the social and political balance in the subcontinent. First, William E. Hocking’s Rethinking Missions: A Laymen’s Inquiry in 1932 unsettled missionaries’ confidence and forced them to redefine their goals and reconsider their strategies.25 It also displayed the cracks in the support base of missionaries in their “home” that once unquestioningly supported their Christianizing activities. The findings of the commission recommended that missionaries widen their understanding of the Christian mission from being a mere Christianizing scheme to sharing benefits of Western civilization. Second, the findings of a survey undertaken by the National Christian Council of India in 1933 identified the social location of the Christian communities in the subcontinent. Analyzing the social basis of the Dalit conversions, the commission headed by Jarrell W. Pickett rightly characterized these conversions as group or community conversions. It concluded that the motives for these group conversions were nonreligious as well. In addition to being informed of the findings of the survey, Protestant missionaries were also aware of subsequent conversations between V. S. Azariah, J. W. Pickett, and Donald McGavran on the motives and strategies of the missionary movement. The doubts cast on the missionary enthusiasm of previous generations were brought to missionaries’ doorsteps when the International Missionary Council met at Tambaram in 1938. Third, 1933 was a starting point for the decline in mass conversions of Dalits to Christianity

in the neighboring regions. Franklin Balasundaram, studying the phenomenon of Dalit conversions in northern districts of Tamilnadu, argued that the frequency of mass conversions to Christianity slowed down after 1933.26 The series of mass conversions to Buddhism led by Bhimrao R. Ambedkar in the early 1930s on the west coast offered an alternative to the Dalits in the southern regions. Ambedkar’s move toward Buddhism may not have significantly changed the direction of Dalit conversions in Telugu regions, which once were ruled by Buddhist dynasties, but it had repercussions for the Dalit movement in the area. Fourth, Telugu Christian leaders were no longer content with inviting missionaries, organizing congregations, and handing over the bureaucratic powers to the missionaries. Although V. S. Azariah was not a Telugu, his ascendancy to the bishopric of the Dornakal diocese was an influential factor in this growth of self-assertion. We can see a resonance of Azariah’s address at Edinburgh in 1910 in the speech given by Mutyala Theophilus, a Dalit Christian leader, in 1933. “Missionaries have done much for us. Now the days have come when they should work with us. They have treated us as dear children. Now in accepting us as brothers, we would be partners for the good growth of the building.”27 The constant demands from Telugu leaders to share power turned the wheels toward devolution. For example, Theophilus’s speech resulted in the creation of a joint committee of twenty-six consisting of Telugu Baptists and Canadian missionaries to administer the local church and its institutions in 1934.28 Fifth, in the larger political context, Mohandas K. Gandhi emerged as a rallying point for many dissenting voices against British domination in the early 1930s. A series of fasts in and out of prison—September 20-25, 1932, against a separate electorate for Dalits; December 3, 1932, protesting the ill treatment of a Dalit prisoner; May 8-29, 1933, as a purification of conscience; August 16-22, 1933, seeking more freedom to participate in “Harijan” service— made Gandhi an icon of nationalist aspirations. Other decisive moments helped to make a mass leader out of this barrister: the announcement of the Communal Award on August 17, 1932, providing separate electorates for minority communities; three Round Table Conferences between 1930 and 1933; the signing of the Poona Pact on September 24, 1932; the agitation of Gandhi for the temple entry; Gandhi’s Civil Disobedience movement; the emergence of militant nationalism in the Bengal province; the founding of Harijan Sevak Sangh; the starting of the news weekly Harijan. At the height of his career, Gandhi called upon missionaries to either give up their “proselytizing” agenda or “withdraw” from the land.29 The challenges from the North Atlantic world and from native Christians set the agenda for missionaries’ writings in this period. The social and political reconfigurations forced them to justify their continued activism in the subcontinent. Subsequently, the military language gave way to more benevolent terms such as “awakening” and “healing.”30 Words such as “underprivileged” entered missionary dictionaries.31 Missionaries explained that their activities were more than mere Christianizing adventures; they claimed that they were uplifting a downtrodden section of the native population. The writers shifted their literary energies to movements of social groups toward Christianity. They conceded some amount of agency to the natives as well.

The genre of biography dominated this era as well. More than half of the books and essays written during this period are biographical. The visible difference is in the space that the native occupied in the literature. At least fifteen of the forty-three biographies relate the life stories of Telugu Christians. The very openness to treat Telugu Christians as a subject matter is a significant shift. However, we must identify the motives for this shift while interpreting the missionaries’ portraits of the native heroes.32 The pattern of these biographies is not difficult to predict. The stories begin with the protagonist’s “vain” worship of “idols” and the sincere search for “truth.” The seeker then discovers the light in Christianity and convinces the community to convert. The zenith of the religious life available to this hero is collaborating with the missionary.33 These biographies no doubt bring the native Christian to the foreground. Nevertheless, the native Christian is displayed as a “shield” in the missionaries’ showcase and armory. Unlike their predecessors who described their natives’ biographies as “trophies,”34 missionaries were aware that these shields were capable of breaking open the display case and, at the same time, could serve as a defense from their critics. Women missionaries have described women converts as “jewels.”35 The writings about religious conversion as a social movement gradually eclipsed the genre of institutional histories. We can easily decipher the footprints of Jarrell W. Pickett in this trend. Like Pickett, many writers construed religious conversions as a social phenomenon. Pickett, whose Christian Mass Movements in India earlier addressed Western readers, translated his findings into Telugu for Telugu readers in 1936, illustrating how missionaries had broadened their readership. John R. Mott, in his foreword to the English edition, recognizes that the book would be of “vital interest” to Western readers.36 It addressed the donors and mission bureaucrats in Europe, North America, and Australasia. Pickett’s translation demonstrates the missionaries’ willingness to engage Telugu Christians in conversation. The changed context with its increased space for the natives resulted in numerous Telugu books. The Telugu has become at least a consumer of missionaries’ writings during this period. Nearly thirty of the eighty books and essays published during this period were written in Telugu. Most of these titles are from the Christian Literature Society (CLS) of India, a wing of the United Society of Christian Literature, which published a series of biographies in Telugu. These booklets, mostly less than twenty pages each, were part of the CLS series of “Telugu Church Founders.” E. Prakasam, a Telugu Christian, was appointed general editor for the series. We are not sure if his job description included translation or facilitating the project. However, it was missionaries who wrote a significant portion of the series. Telugus wrote only seven of the twenty-seven biographies. And only nine Telugu Christians found a place in the elite club of twenty-seven “founders of the Telugu church.” The biographies portray Western missionaries as heroes and Telugu Christians as exemplars for Telugu readers. The number of contributions from Telugus significantly increased between 1933 and 1952. While there were only three native writers in the first phase, there were nine Telugu writers in this period. However, the number is marginal compared to the fifty-five Western authors who either referred to the presence of Christianity in the Telugu regions or analyzed the history of

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