Preface to Contribution of Christian Missionaries in India

‘Contribution of Christian Missionaries in India’
Written by Camil Parkhe
Published by Gujarat Sahitya Prakash,
Post Box No 70, Anand, 388 001
Gujarat, India

Foreword byAnosh Malekar
Assistant Editor,
The Indian Express (Pune edition)


Email: booksgsp@gmail.com
First Published in 2007

ISBN 978 81 8937 36 2



PREFACE
by Author Camil parkhe

I was introduced to the missionary way of life for the first time when I was a primary school student. I was then studying in third standard in St. Teresa Boys School at Haregaon in Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra. In the 1960s, European priests were working in most of the mission centres in Ahmednagar district, as was the case in other parts of India. Most of these European priests were in their middle ages. Fr. Hubert Sixt, a strict disciplinarian, was the head of this rural primary school and Fr. Richard Wasserer was the local parish priest. Their personalities and nature differed. Children from the school and the hostel were friendly with Fr. Wasserer who was slightly elder among the two.

St. Teresa Boys School in those days was housed in rows of rooms with tiled roofs and small verandah. The local parish also owned a farm where a water tank was just constructed. Every morning, all of us staying at the school hostel would attend the holy mass in the church. The school would open at around 7.30 a m. Fr. Wasserer would take us hostelites to the water tank for a swim before the break of the dawn. Water was of course used to be warm at that time. Most of us hostelites took their first lessons in swimming there. Fr. Wasserer would help us to overcome the fear of water. Once when such swimming session was in progress, one of the walls of the tank got washed away and water gushed out, along with the children and the priest. Fortunately nobody was hurt.

The personality of Fr. Sixt was altogether different. The school students and hostelites were scared of this priest who had a German shepherd as his pet. However when any of the hostelites fell ill or got injured while playing, they would experience the care and affection of this priest. Fr. Sixt, a German who was drafted into the Nazi Medical Corps during the Second World War would personally examine the boys and give them medicines. If required, he also used to administer injections. The children dreaded the burning sensation experienced while applying iodine on fresh bleeding wounds or the injection needle. I think this fear had contributed to a great extent in creating fear about Fr. Sixt in our minds.

My two elder brothers were also in the same school and hostel. Children from nearby Ekwadi, Donwadi, Teenwadi (Wadi means hamlet in Marathi) and Undirgaon studied in the school. The lodging and boarding fee per hostelite was Rs five per month. Nonetheless, many of the parents found it difficult to pay even this small fee in time. However, Fr Sixt never admonished or expelled any hostelite for not paying the fees.

Today, Christian priests and nuns are running schools in several towns and villages of Ahmednagar district and also in the neighbouring Pune, Aurangabad, Nashik and Beed districts. But during those days, a large number of local Christian students from Shrirampur, Rahuri and neighbouring talukas in the district completed primary education in St. Teresa schools for Boys and Girls at Haregaon and shifted to Dnyanmata School and St. Mary's School at Sangamner in the same district for the secondary education.

At both places, they were accommodated in the hostels. Poverty was the major reason why people kept their children in these hostels. Besides, most of these students would have not continued their education had they remained with their families in the villages. The atmosphere in their families or villages was not education-friendly. The entire Catholic mission centres in Ahmednagar district then were founded and run by the Jesuits, the priests belonging the Society of Jesus.
Ahmednagar and Aurangabad districts are among the areas in Maharashtra where there is a sizeable number of Christians - Catholics and Protestants. The grandparents or great grandparents of these people had embraced Christianity in the 19th century.
After appearing for the matriculation examination from Dnyanmata or even before that, many students used to join St. Joseph Technical Institute in Pune, which was also run by the Jesuits. Fr Ivo Meyer who founded the St Luke's Hospital (also called as German Hospital) in Shrirampur was later director at this institute. The students who hailed from outside Pune stayed in the institute's hostel and acquired diplomas in various courses like turner, fitter, and wireman. The institute during those days provided trained skilled workmen to Pune’s reputed industrial units including the Tata Motors, Bajaj Auto and Greaves. Most of these students were interviewed at the St Joseph institute's campus itself and recruited by these companies for various posts.

These young Christians whose parents or grandparents were erstwhile dalits (belonging to the erstwhile untouchable communities) and had no social or financial capabilities to take up graduation or post graduation courses. The Haregaon-Sangamner-Pune route proved very beneficial to these youngsters and their community as it led to their social and economical upward mobility. The number of Christian youths from Ahmednagar district who took this route is enormous. This path was followed by at least two generations. The financial status of the Christian families from Ahmednagar district, which migrated to Pune in search of greener pastures in this manner, is far better than those who lived behind.

This progress was possible only due to financial and psychological support offered by the missionaries to this otherwise neglected community. Although before their conversion, these Christians belonged to the erstwhile untouchable Mahar and other castes, they have been deprived of their right to reservations for education and jobs due to their conversion to Christianity. Ironically, reservations and other benefits are extended to their dalit family members and other relatives who embrace either Buddhism or Sikhism and others who have continued to be Hindus.

With their limited resources, missionaries have enabled this community to be self-reliant and succeeded in granting them social status. Jesus Christ has said that ‘Man does not live by bread alone’ but these missionaries made efforts to ensure that this poor community secured their bread as well. A majority of Christians in India belong to the erstwhile Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. I have referred to the example of the missionary work in Ahmednagar district only to illustrate the contribution of Christian missionaries to the progress of the underprivileged sections of society. The missionaries have given a similar helping hand to economically and socially backward Christians and also others in different parts of India.

There are thousands of schools, colleges, hospitals, dispensaries, orphanages and other institutions run by Christian missionaries in India. A large number of persons belonging to the so-called cream of the society and working in various fields are the alumni of these Christian institutions. A majority of the beneficiaries of all these institutions are, of course, non-Christians. The reason being, these institutions are open to persons of all religions and castes. The Christians studying in a majority of these institutions may be hardly one or two per cent. The alumni of these institutions include the present President of India, Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam and several veterans from different walks of life.

The contribution made by Christian missionaries especially in the educational and social fields is noteworthy. It is often alleged that Christian missionaries make use of these institutions to lure or compel the students and others to convert to Christianity. The millions of non-Christians who have been educated in the missionary educational institutions and others who have availed of services in other Christian institutions only can vouch whether the allegation holds good. If the allegation were true, the number of Christians in the country would have increased manifold during the past century.
Missionaries offered free education and medical services in remote parts of the country both before and after Independence. They have never taken into consideration the caste or religion of the beneficiaries. The term ‘missionary spirit’ now has become synonymous to selfless and dedicated service even in Indian languages.

While carrying out their routine work, the Christian missionaries in the past five centuries have contributed a great deal simultaneously in the fields of literature, social awakening, education and medical services in various States. This book however refers to the life and work of only a few missionaries. There are also many missionaries who have now gone into oblivion despite rendering great service to society. A majority of these European who toiled in the drought-prone Ahmednagar district for several years have found the final resting place at the cemetery in Sangamner town. A souvenir released by the Nashik diocese to commemorate the 150 years of evangelisation by German Jesuits in western India contained the list of Catholic priests and nuns who worked at these mission centres. Fr Joe Ubelmesser from Germany who said that he was adding the list to the German Jesuits archives in his message had rightly said that 'sometimes the cemeteries are containing more history than many books.'

While doing research on this project, I have learnt about the commendable service given by several Catholic and Protestant missionaries. My only regret is that it was not possible to write about all of them in this small book.

Camil Parkhe
April 2007

Book on Contribution of Christian Missionaries in India

‘Contribution of Christian Missionaries in India’
Written by Camil Parkhe
Published by Gujarat Sahitya Prakash,
Post Box No 70, Anand, 388 001
Gujarat, India

Email: booksgsp@gmail.com

First Published in 2007

ISBN 978 81 8937 36 2

Price Rs 95.00 US$ 10.00

Foreword by Anosh Malekar
Assistant Editor,
The Indian Express (Pune edition)
’’In 1998, I moved to the western Indian State of Gujarat to work as a correspondent of  The Week magazine. I was thrown into the thick of things almost immediately. Members of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council) and the Bajrang Dal (Hanuman’s Army), the storm troopers of the Hindu nationalists, were on the rampage; exhuming the dead body of a Christian from a graveyard at Kapadvanj town in north Gujarat followed by the burning of a Bible at Rajkot city in Saurashtra region.
Later that year, the trishul (trident)-wielding members of the saffron brigade attacked churches on Christmas day in the southern tribal district of The Dangs. This was followed by the rape of nuns in tribal Jhabua, a remote district in neighbouring Madhya Pradesh, and the naked parading of a Catholic priest in the central Indian state. The burning alive of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two little children in the eastern Indian state of Orissa caused outrage among ordinary Indians and shook the world.
Gujarat was ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian People’s Party)- and continues to this date- and so was India till the rejection of its ‘India shining’ campaign by the voters in the Parliamentary polls of 2004. The years of saffron rule witnessed arson, loot, assault and brutalisation of Christian religious personnel all over the country. And it is expected to continue in some form or the other as globalisation breeds a new generation of Indians who are eager to settle in the West but yearn to maintain their cultural branches in the ancestral land. This axis between globalisation and fundamentalism has been sufficiently exposed ever since the Gujarat riots.
The consistent demonizing of Christians, especially the religious personnel commonly and freely referred to as missionaries, may seem to some as unwarranted-Christians in India are a tiny and scattered minority- but it is indispensable to the project of a Hindu nation. Hindu nationalists have always sought to redefine Hindu identity as opposed to a supposedly threatening ‘other’. Their effort has been to unite Hindu society by constantly invoking real and imagined threats posed by the evangelical Christians and militant Muslims. Though Christianity in India traces its origins to 2000 years on the southern coast, the missionaries referred to in this book came to India mostly from Europe and America during the past couple of centuries. A majority of today’s Christian population, just over 2 per cent of the total population, is a result of the conversions administered by these missionaries. Some Hindus refer to the missionaries as peddlers of Christian salvation and denigrators of their religion. Religious conversions exposed the porous borders of Hinduism and raised questions over its deeply held beliefs and metaphysical `certainties`.
Camil Parkhe’s book is important because it is not about missionaries and the Hindu right, nor is it about salvation and metaphysics. The legacy of the missionaries is not a handful of Indians calling themselves Catholics or Protestants. It is their disproportionate undertaking: between themselves and some other denominations the Christians run 25 per cent of India’s voluntary service sector. The beneficiaries belong to all castes, creeds and cults.
According to figures provided by the late Archbishop Alan de Lastic of the Catholic Bishops Conference of India in late 1990s, Christians take care of 5 per cent primary education, 10 per cent of all literacy and holistic health care, 25 per cent of existing care of orphans and widows and 30 per cent of all existing care of mentally and physically handicapped, leprosy and AIDS victims. About four million children graduate from Christian educational institutions every year.
Camil’s book is in a way about the humble origins of what many in the voluntary sector and the media now perceive as mammoth voluntary conglomerates. It is about the women and men who went beyond their moral and spiritual calling with their insistence upon the sacredness of every human being as a living temple of God. They were to have the profoundest effect upon all the subsequent social and political life in India.
Camil’s missionaries are not all men, nor are they essentially white-skinned. The list includes Pandita Ramabai, Laxmibai Tilak, Baba Padmanji, and Rev Narayan Vaman Tilak, who contributed a great deal to the social transformation in Maharashtra during the pre-Independence era. Satyavan Namdev Suryavanshi, a successful journalist and exponent of the popular Marathi kirtan finds a place of honour in the book. Though, some readers may find the list heavily tilted in favour of missionaries who worked in Maharashtra or were Maharastrians.
Camil is a Marathi-speaking journalist who writes in English for newspapers and switches back to his mother tongue when writing books. I do not know if this is true or false but knowing him for over a decade and a half I have concluded that journalism has been his profession and writing a vocation. I learnt the basics of journalism from Camil and we have worked together long enough for me to know that writing in Marathi or English, working on a news story or a book happens almost simultaneously. It now seems effortless but there is a lot of hard work behind it.
And perhaps a need too! In the current social and political milieu the fact that Christians are no longer catalysts of change that they had been in the initial stage cannot escape a probing mind. Christians today are increasingly becoming responders to and even victims of changes initiated by others. This book should help them realise that their history, while often a painful story, is nonetheless one in which they can take legitimate pride. They can affirm their heritage and build upon it; they do not have to deny or renounce it in order to live fuller lives in the present.
The book, essentially pens portraits of individuals and their efforts, also comes at a time when there is a certain excitement; there is a growing feeling that India, with its 9 per cent plus growth rate, is ready to take on the world and make a mark on the global map. But still there are over 300 million Indians yet to see or feel it. This is the ‘other India’, the India that suffers silently even as the other half prospers. Most experts are convinced that the future of India depends on her ability to better their lives. Not just for economic reasons but also political ones. But can India muster up its missionary zeal in the times of globalisation. Sometimes it helps to reflect on the past. ‘’

Anosh Malekar.
Assistant Editor,
The Indian Express (Pune edition)

Ghogargaon's Christ the king Church in Vaijapur taluka of Aurangabad district in Maharashtra (India), was built by Fr Gurien Jacquier, A French Fransalian missionary, in 1927. This is the cart which was used by him and is presently preserved at his memorial in ghogargaon. Fr Jacquier is revered by local people as a saint although the Catholic Church has not yet initiated the canonisation process.