CHRISTIANIZING THE UNTOUCHABLES
1. Growth of Christianity in
India. II. Time and money spent in Missionary effort. III. Reasons for slow
growth.
How old is Christianity in
India? What progress has it made among the people of India? These are questions
which no one who is interested in the Untouchables can fail to ask. The two
questions are so intimately connected that the endeavour for the spread of
Christianity would be hopeless if there were not in India that vast body of untouchables
who, by their peculiar circumstances, are most ready to respond to the social
message of Christianity.
The following figures will give
some idea of the population of Indian Christians as compared with other
communities in India according to the Census of 1931.
INDIA AND BURMA
Population
by Religion
|
1891 Census
|
1921 Census
|
1931 Census
|
lncrease#
Decrease—
|
Hindu
|
216,734,586
|
239,195,140
|
#10.4
|
|
Muslims
|
68,735,233
|
77,677,545
|
#13
|
|
Buddhist
|
11,571,268
|
12,786,806
|
#10.5
|
|
Sikh
|
3,238,803
|
4,335,771
|
#33.9
|
|
Primitive
Religions
|
9,774,611
|
8,280,347
|
—15.3
|
|
Christian
|
4,754,064
|
6,296,763
|
#32.5
|
|
Jain
|
1,178,596
|
1,252,105
|
# 6.2
|
|
Zoroastrian
|
101,778
|
109,752
|
# 7.8
|
|
Jews
|
21,778
|
24,141
|
#10.9
|
|
Unreturned
|
18,004
|
2,860,187
|
....
|
|
Total
|
316,128,721
|
352.818,557
|
#10.6
|
It is true that during the 1921
and 1931 Christianity has shown a great increase. From the point of growth
Sikhism takes the first place. Christianity comes second and Islam another
proselytizing religion comes third. The difference between the first and the
second is so small that the second place occupied by Christianity may be taken
to be as good as first. Again the difference between the second and the third
place occupied by Islam is so enormous that Christians may well be proud of their
having greatly outdistanced so serious a rival.
With all this the fact remains
that this figure of 6,296,763 is out of a total of 352,818,557. This means that
the Christian population in India is about 1.7 p.c. of the total.
II
In how many years and after what
expenditure? As to expenditure it is not possible to give any accurate figures.
Mr. George Smith in his book on "The Conversion of India" published
in 1893 gives statistics which serve to give some idea of the resources spent
by Christian Nations for Missionary work in heathen countries. This is what he
says:
"We do not take into
account their efforts, vigorous and necessary, especially in the lands of Asia
and North Africa occupied by the Eastern Churches for whom Americans do much,
nor any labours for Christians by Christians of a purer faith and life. Leaving
out of account also the many wives of missionaries who are represented
statistically in their husbands, Rev. J. Vahl, President of the Danish
Missionary Society, gives us these results. We accept them as the most
accurately compiled, and as almost too cautiously estimated where estimate is
unavoidable. In Turkey and Egypt only work among the Musalmans is reckoned.
1890 1891
Income (English Money) £2,412,938 £2,749,340
Missionaries 4,652 5,094
Missionaries unmarried ladies 2,118 2,445
Native Ministers 3,424 3,730
Other Native helpers 36,405 40,438
Communicants 966,856 1,168,560
We abstain from estimating in
detail the results for 1892, as they are about to appear, and still less for
the year 1893, but experts can do this for themselves. This only we would say,
that the number of native communicants added in those two years has been very
large, especially in India. Allowing for that, we should place them now at
1,300,000 which gives a native Christian community of 5,200,000 gathered out of
all non-Catholic lands.
Dean Vahl's statistics are drawn
from the reports of 304 mission societies and agencies in 1891, beginning with
Cromwell's New England Company, for America, in 1649. On the following page the
details are summarised from seventeen lands of Reformed Christendom. The amount raised in 1891 by the
160 Mission Churches and Societies of the British Empire was £ 1,659,830 and by
the 57 of the United States of America £ 786,992. Together the two great
English speaking peoples spent £ 2,446,822 on the evangelisation of the non-Christian world.
The balance 302,518 was contributed by
Germany and Switzerland, Netherlands, Denmark, France, Norway, Sweden, Finland
and in Asia." It is not possible to give any idea of the resources now
utilized in the cause because they are not published. But we have sufficient
data to know how many years it has taken to produce these 6 millions of
converts.
Of the first missionary to India
who came and sowed there the seed of Christianity there is no record. It is
believed that Christianity in India is of apostolic origin and it is suggested
that the apostle Thomas was the founder of it. The apostolic origin of
Christianity is only a legend notwithstanding the existence of what is called
St. Thomas's Mount near Madras which is said to be the burial place of the
Apostle. There is no credible evidence to show that the Gospel was even
preached in India during the first Century. There is some evidence to show that
in the second century the Gospel had reached the ears of the dwellers on the
Southern Indian Coast, among the pearl fishers of Ceylon and the cultivators on
the coasts of Malabar and Coromondel. This news when brought back by the
Egyptian Mariners spread among the Christians of Alexandria. Alexandria was the
First to send a Christian Missionary to India, whose name is recorded in
history. He was Pantoenus, a Greek stoic who had become a Christian and was
appointed by Demetrius, the bishop of Alexandria as the principal and sole
catechist of the school of the Catechumens, which had been established for the
instruction of the heathen in the facts and doctrines of Christianity. At some
time between the years 180 and 190 the Bishop of Alexandria received an Appeal
from the Christians in India to send them a Missionary and Pantoenus was
accordingly sent. How long he was in India, how far inland he travelled and
what work he actually did, there is no record to show. All that is known is
that he went back to Alexandria, and took charge of his school and continued to
be its principal till 211 A.D.
Little is known of the progress
of the Gospel on Indian soil through the third century. But there is this fact
worthy of notice. It is this that when the Council of Nicaca was held in 325
A.D. after the conversion of the Emperor Constantine Johannes, one of the
Assembled prelates described himself as " Metropolitan of Persian and of
the Great India". This fact seems to indicate that there was at that time
a Christian Church of some bulk and significance planted on the Indian Coast.
On the other hand this probably implied little more than an episcopal claim to
what had always, as in the Book of Esther, been considered a province of the
Persian Empire.
The scene shifts from Alexandria
to Antioch and from the beginning of the third to the end of the fifth century.
It is Antioch which took the burden of Christian enterprize upon its own
shoulder.
The sixth century was the last
peaceful year for Christian propaganda. This seems to mark the end of one
epoch. Then followed the rise of the Saracens who carried the Koran and Sword
of Mahammad all over Western Asia and Northern Africa, then threatened Europe
itself up to Vienna and from Spain into the heart of France. The result was
that all the Christian people were distracted and their Missionary effort was
held up for several centuries.
The voyage of Vasco de Gama in the year 1497
to India marks the beginning of a new epoch in the history of Christian
Missionary effort in India and the most serious and determined effort commenced
with the arrival of the great Missionary .Francis Xavier in the year 1542. The Portuguese were the first
European power in the East and the earliest efforts of modern times in the
direction of Christianizing the natives of India were made under their
auspices. The conversions effected under the auspices of the Portuguese were of
course conversions to the Roman Catholic faith and were carried out by Roman
Catholic Missions.
They were not, however, left
long without rivals. The Protestants soon came into the field. The earliest
Protestant propaganda was that of the Lutherans who established themselves in
Tranquebar in 1706 under the patronage of the King of Denmark. The able and
devoted Schwartz, who laboured in Trichinopoly and Tanjore
throughout the second half of the 18th Century was a member of this mission,
which has since, to a great extent, been taken over by the Society for the
propagation of the Gospel.
Next came the Baptist Mission
under Carey who landed in Calcutta in 1793. Last
came the Anglican Church which entered the Missionary field in 1813 and since
then the expansion of Missionary enterprize was rapid and continuous.
Thus Christian propaganda has
had therefore a long run in India. It had had four centuries before the rise of
the Saracens who caused a break in the Mission Activity. Again after subsidence
of the Saracens it has had nearly four centuries. This total of six millions is
the fruit gathered in eight centuries.
Obviously this is a very depressing result. It depressed Francis Xavier. It
even depressed Abbe Dubois who, writing in 1823 some three hundred years after
Xavier, declared that to convert Hindus to, Christianity was a forlorn hope. He
was then criticized by the more optimistic of Christian Missionaries. But the
fact remains that at the end of this period there are only about 6 million
Christians out of a total population of about 358 millions. This is a very slow
growth indeed and the question is, what are the causes of this slow growth.
CHRISTIANIZING THE UNTOUCHABLES
1. Growth of Christianity in
India. II. Time and money spent in Missionary effort. III. Reasons for slow
growth.
How old is Christianity in
India? What progress has it made among the people of India? These are questions
which no one who is interested in the Untouchables can fail to ask. The two
questions are so intimately connected that the endeavour for the spread of
Christianity would be hopeless if there were not in India that vast body of untouchables
who, by their peculiar circumstances, are most ready to respond to the social
message of Christianity.
The following figures will give
some idea of the population of Indian Christians as compared with other
communities in India according to the Census of 1931.
INDIA AND BURMA
Population
by Religion
|
1891 Census
|
1921 Census
|
1931 Census
|
lncrease#
Decrease—
|
Hindu
|
216,734,586
|
239,195,140
|
#10.4
|
|
Muslims
|
68,735,233
|
77,677,545
|
#13
|
|
Buddhist
|
11,571,268
|
12,786,806
|
#10.5
|
|
Sikh
|
3,238,803
|
4,335,771
|
#33.9
|
|
Primitive
Religions
|
9,774,611
|
8,280,347
|
—15.3
|
|
Christian
|
4,754,064
|
6,296,763
|
#32.5
|
|
Jain
|
1,178,596
|
1,252,105
|
# 6.2
|
|
Zoroastrian
|
101,778
|
109,752
|
# 7.8
|
|
Jews
|
21,778
|
24,141
|
#10.9
|
|
Unreturned
|
18,004
|
2,860,187
|
....
|
|
Total
|
316,128,721
|
352.818,557
|
#10.6
|
It is true that during the 1921
and 1931 Christianity has shown a great increase. From the point of growth
Sikhism takes the first place. Christianity comes second and Islam another
proselytizing religion comes third. The difference between the first and the
second is so small that the second place occupied by Christianity may be taken
to be as good as first. Again the difference between the second and the third
place occupied by Islam is so enormous that Christians may well be proud of their
having greatly outdistanced so serious a rival.
With all this the fact remains
that this figure of 6,296,763 is out of a total of 352,818,557. This means that
the Christian population in India is about 1.7 p.c. of the total.
II
In how many years and after what
expenditure? As to expenditure it is not possible to give any accurate figures.
Mr. George Smith in his book on "The Conversion of India" published
in 1893 gives statistics which serve to give some idea of the resources spent
by Christian Nations for Missionary work in heathen countries. This is what he
says:
"We do not take into
account their efforts, vigorous and necessary, especially in the lands of Asia
and North Africa occupied by the Eastern Churches for whom Americans do much,
nor any labours for Christians by Christians of a purer faith and life. Leaving
out of account also the many wives of missionaries who are represented
statistically in their husbands, Rev. J. Vahl, President of the Danish
Missionary Society, gives us these results. We accept them as the most
accurately compiled, and as almost too cautiously estimated where estimate is
unavoidable. In Turkey and Egypt only work among the Musalmans is reckoned.
1890 1891
Income (English Money) £2,412,938 £2,749,340
Missionaries 4,652 5,094
Missionaries unmarried ladies 2,118 2,445
Native Ministers 3,424 3,730
Other Native helpers 36,405 40,438
Communicants 966,856 1,168,560
We abstain from estimating in
detail the results for 1892, as they are about to appear, and still less for
the year 1893, but experts can do this for themselves. This only we would say,
that the number of native communicants added in those two years has been very
large, especially in India. Allowing for that, we should place them now at
1,300,000 which gives a native Christian community of 5,200,000 gathered out of
all non-Catholic lands.
Dean Vahl's statistics are drawn
from the reports of 304 mission societies and agencies in 1891, beginning with
Cromwell's New England Company, for America, in 1649. On the following page the
details are summarised from seventeen lands of Reformed Christendom. The amount raised in 1891 by the
160 Mission Churches and Societies of the British Empire was £ 1,659,830 and by
the 57 of the United States of America £ 786,992. Together the two great
English speaking peoples spent £ 2,446,822 on the evangelisation of the non-Christian world.
The balance 302,518 was contributed by
Germany and Switzerland, Netherlands, Denmark, France, Norway, Sweden, Finland
and in Asia." It is not possible to give any idea of the resources now
utilized in the cause because they are not published. But we have sufficient
data to know how many years it has taken to produce these 6 millions of
converts.
Of the first missionary to India
who came and sowed there the seed of Christianity there is no record. It is
believed that Christianity in India is of apostolic origin and it is suggested
that the apostle Thomas was the founder of it. The apostolic origin of
Christianity is only a legend notwithstanding the existence of what is called
St. Thomas's Mount near Madras which is said to be the burial place of the
Apostle. There is no credible evidence to show that the Gospel was even
preached in India during the first Century. There is some evidence to show that
in the second century the Gospel had reached the ears of the dwellers on the
Southern Indian Coast, among the pearl fishers of Ceylon and the cultivators on
the coasts of Malabar and Coromondel. This news when brought back by the
Egyptian Mariners spread among the Christians of Alexandria. Alexandria was the
First to send a Christian Missionary to India, whose name is recorded in
history. He was Pantoenus, a Greek stoic who had become a Christian and was
appointed by Demetrius, the bishop of Alexandria as the principal and sole
catechist of the school of the Catechumens, which had been established for the
instruction of the heathen in the facts and doctrines of Christianity. At some
time between the years 180 and 190 the Bishop of Alexandria received an Appeal
from the Christians in India to send them a Missionary and Pantoenus was
accordingly sent. How long he was in India, how far inland he travelled and
what work he actually did, there is no record to show. All that is known is
that he went back to Alexandria, and took charge of his school and continued to
be its principal till 211 A.D.
Little is known of the progress
of the Gospel on Indian soil through the third century. But there is this fact
worthy of notice. It is this that when the Council of Nicaca was held in 325
A.D. after the conversion of the Emperor Constantine Johannes, one of the
Assembled prelates described himself as " Metropolitan of Persian and of
the Great India". This fact seems to indicate that there was at that time
a Christian Church of some bulk and significance planted on the Indian Coast.
On the other hand this probably implied little more than an episcopal claim to
what had always, as in the Book of Esther, been considered a province of the
Persian Empire.
The scene shifts from Alexandria
to Antioch and from the beginning of the third to the end of the fifth century.
It is Antioch which took the burden of Christian enterprize upon its own
shoulder.
The sixth century was the last
peaceful year for Christian propaganda. This seems to mark the end of one
epoch. Then followed the rise of the Saracens who carried the Koran and Sword
of Mahammad all over Western Asia and Northern Africa, then threatened Europe
itself up to Vienna and from Spain into the heart of France. The result was
that all the Christian people were distracted and their Missionary effort was
held up for several centuries.
The voyage of Vasco de Gama in the year 1497
to India marks the beginning of a new epoch in the history of Christian
Missionary effort in India and the most serious and determined effort commenced
with the arrival of the great Missionary .Francis Xavier in the year 1542. The Portuguese were the first
European power in the East and the earliest efforts of modern times in the
direction of Christianizing the natives of India were made under their
auspices. The conversions effected under the auspices of the Portuguese were of
course conversions to the Roman Catholic faith and were carried out by Roman
Catholic Missions.
They were not, however, left
long without rivals. The Protestants soon came into the field. The earliest
Protestant propaganda was that of the Lutherans who established themselves in
Tranquebar in 1706 under the patronage of the King of Denmark. The able and
devoted Schwartz, who laboured in Trichinopoly and Tanjore
throughout the second half of the 18th Century was a member of this mission,
which has since, to a great extent, been taken over by the Society for the
propagation of the Gospel.
Next came the Baptist Mission
under Carey who landed in Calcutta in 1793. Last
came the Anglican Church which entered the Missionary field in 1813 and since
then the expansion of Missionary enterprize was rapid and continuous.
Ill
It seems to me that there are three reasons which have
impeded the growth of Christianity.
The first of these reasons is
the bad morals of the early European settlers in India particularly Englishmen
who were sent to India by the East India Company. Of the character of the men
who were sent out to India Mr. Kaye, an Appologist of the Company and also of
its servants speaks in the following terms in his "Christianity in
India": " Doubtless there were some honest, decent men from the
middle classes amongst them..... But
many, it appears from contemporary writers, were Society's hard
bargains—youngsters, perhaps, of good family, to which they were a disgrace,
and from the bosom of which therefore they were to be cast out, in the hope
that there would be no prodigals return from the ' Great Indies '. It was not
to be expected that men who had disgraced themselves at home would lead more respectable
lives abroad.
* * *
" There were, in truth, no
outward motives to preserve morality of conduct, or even decency of demeanour;
so from the moment of their landing upon the shore of India, the first settlers
cast off all these bonds which had restrained them in their native villages;
they regarded themselves as privileged beings—privileged to violate all the
obligations of religion and morality and to outrage all the decencies of life.
They who went thither were often desperate adventurers, whom England, in the
emphatic language of the Scripture, had spud out; men who sought those golden
sands of the East to repair their broken fortunes; to bury in oblivion a
sullied name; or to bring, with lawless hand from the weak and unsuspecting,
wealth which they had not the character or capacity to obtain by industry at
home. They cheated; they gambled; they drank; they revelled in all kinds of
debauchery. Associates in vice, linked together by a common bond of rapacity,
they still often pursued one another with desperate malice, and, few though
they were in numbers, among them there was no fellowship, except a fellowship
of crime."
" All this was against the new comer; and so, whilst the depraved met with
no inducement to reform, the pure but rarely escaped corruption. Whether they
were there initiated, or perpetrated in destructive error, equally may they be
regarded as the victims of circumstance.....
How bad were the morals and
behaviour of the early Christians can be gathered from the following instances
quoted by Mr. Kaye. "The Deputy-Governor of
Bombay was in 1669 charged as under:
That he hath
on the Sabbath day hindered the performance of
public duty to God Almighty at the accustomary hour, continuing in drinking of
health; detaining others with him against their wills; and whilst he drank, in
false devotions upon his knees, a health devoted to the Union, in the time
appointed for the service belonging to the Lord's day, the unhappy sequel
showed it to be but the projection of a further disunion.
" That to the great scandal
of the inhabitants of the island, of all the neighbours round about, both
popists and others that are idolaters, in dishonour of the sobriety of the
Protestant religion, he hath made frequent and heavy drinking meetings,
continuing some times till two or three of the clock in the morning, to the
neglecting of the service of God in the morning prayers, and the service of the
Company in the meantime had stood still while he slept, thus perverting and
converting to an ill private use, those refreshment intended for the factory in
general." On these charges he was found guilty.
In the factories of the East
India Company there was enough of internecine strife and the factors of the
Company committed scandalous outrages in general defiance both of the laws of
God and the decencies of man. They fought grievously among themselves; blows
following words; and the highest persons in the settlement settling an example
of pugnacity with their inferiors under the potent influence of drink.
The report of the following
incident is extracted from the records of the Company's factory at Surat [f.1][f.16] :
"We send your honours our
consultation books from the 21st of August 1695 to 31st December 1696, in which
does appear a conspiracy against the President's life, and a design to murder
the guards, because he would have opposed it. How far Messrs. Vauxe and Upphill
were concerned, we leave to your honours to judge by this and depositions
before mentioned. There is strong presumption that it was intended first that
the President should be stabbed and it was prevented much through the vigilence
of Ephraim Bendall; when
hopes of that failed by the guards being doubled, it seems poison was agreed
on, as by the deposition of Edmund clerk and all bound to secrecy upon an
horrid imprecation of damnation to the discoverer,
whom the rest were to fall upon and cut off." In the same document is
recorded the complaint of Mr. Charles Peachey
against the President of the Council at Surat—
"I have received from you
(i.e. the President) two cuts on my head, the one very long and deep, the other
a slight thing in comparison to that. Then a great blow on my left arm, which
has enflamed the shoulder, and deprived me (at
present), of the use of that limb; on my right side a blow on my ribs just
beneath the pap, which is a stoppage to my breath, and makes me incapable of
helping myself; on my left hip another, nothing inferior to the first; but
above all a cut on the brow of my eye." Such was the state of morality
among the early English Settlers who came down to India. It is enough to observe
that these settlers managed to work through the first eighty years of the
seventeenth century without building a Church. Things did not improve in the
18th Century. Of the state of morality among Englishmen in India during the
18th Century this is what Mr. Kaye has to say—
"Of the state of Anglo
Indian Society during the protracted Administration of Warren Hastings, nothing
indeed can be said in praise. . . .. those who ought to have set good example,
did grievous wrong to Christianity by the lawlessness of their lives. .. ..
Hastings took another man's wife with his consent; Francis did the same without
it..... It was scarcely to be expected that, with such examples before them,
the less prominent members of society would be conspicuous for morality and
decorum. In truth, it must be acknowledged that the Christianity of the English
in India was, at this time, in a sadly depressed state. Men drank hard and
gamed high, concubinage with the women of the country was the rule rather than
the exception.
It was no uncommon thing for
English gentlemen to keep populous zenanas. There was no dearth of exciting
amusement in those days. Balls, masquerades, races and theatrical
entertainments, enlivened the settlements, especially in the cold weather; and
the mild excitement of duelling varied the pleasures of the season. Men lived,
for the most part, short lives and were resolute that they should be merry
ones."
* * *
The drunkenness, indeed, was
general and obstrusive. It was one of the besetting infirmities—the fashionable
vices—of the period. .. .. At
the large Presidency towns—especially at Calcutta—public entertainments were
not frequent. Ball suppers, in those days, were little less than orgies.
Dancing was impossible after them, and fighting commonly took its place. If a
public party went offwithout a duel or two, it was a circumstance as rare as it
was happy. There was a famous club in those days, called Selby's Club, at which
the gentlemen of Calcutta were wont to drink as high as they gamed, and which
some times saw drunken bets of 1,000 gold mohurs laid about the merest trifles.
Card parties often sat all through the night, and if the night chanced to be a
Saturday, all through the next day.
* * *
Honourable marriage was the
exceptional state. . .. ..
The Court of Directors of the East India Company. .
. ... were engaged in the good work of reforming
the morals of their settlements; and thinking that the means of forming
respectable marriages would be an important auxiliary, they sent out not only a
supply of the raw material of soldiers' wives, but some better articles also,
in the shape of what they called gentle women, for the use of such of their
merchants and factors as might be matrimonially inclined. The venture, however,
was not a successful one. The few who married made out indifferent wives,
whilst they who did not marry,—and the demand was by no means brisk,—were, to
say the least of it, in an equivocal position. For a time they were supported
at the public expense, but they received only sufficient to keep them from
starving, and so it happened naturally enough that the poor creatures betook
themselves to vicious courses, and sold such charms as they had, if only to
purchase strong drink, to which they became immoderately addicted, with the
wages of their prostitution.
The scandal soon became open and
notorious; and the President and Council at Surat wrote to the Deputy Governor
and Council at Bombay, saying: " Whereas you give us notice that some of
the women are grown scandalous to our native religion and Government, we
require you in the Honourable Company's name to give them all fair warning that
they do apply themselves to a more sober and Christian conversation: otherwise
the sentence is that they shall be deprived totally of their liberty to go
abroad, and fed with bread and water, till they are embarked on board ship for
England. [f.2][f.17]
How bad were the morals and
behaviour of the early Christians can be gathered from the three following
instances which are taken from contemporary records.
Captain Williamson in his
'Indian Vade Mecum' published about the year 1809
says—
"I have known various
instances of two ladies being conjointly domesticated,
and one of an elderly military character who solaced himself with no less than sixteen of all sorts and sizes. Being
interrogated by a friend as to what he did with such a member, " Oh
", replied he, ' I give them little rice, and
let them run about '. This same gentleman when
paying his addresses to an elegant young woman lately arrived from Europe, but
who was informed by the lady at whose house she was residing, of the state of
affairs, the description closed with 'Pray, my dear, how should you like to
share a sixteenth of Major?"
Such was the disorderliness and
immorality among Englishmen in India. No wonder that the Indians marvelled
whether the British acknowledged any God and believed in any system of
morality. When asked what he thought of Christianity and Christians an Indian
is reported to have said in his broken English—" Christian religion, devil
religion; Christian much drunk; Christian much do wrong; much beat, much abuse
others"—and who can say that this judgment was contrary to facts?
It is true that England herself
was not at the relevant time over burdened with
morality. The English people at home were but little distinguished for the
purity of their lives and there was a small chance of British virtue dwarfed
and dwindled at home, expending on foreign soil. As observed by Mr. Kaye [f.3][f.18]"The courtly licentiousness of the
Restoration had polluted the whole land. The stamp of Whitehall was upon the
currency of our daily lives; and it went out upon our adventurers in the
Company's ships, and was not, we may be sure, to be easily effaced in a heathen
land ". Whatever be the excuse for this
immorality of Englishmen in the 17th and 18th Century the fact remains that it
was enough to bring Christianity into disrepute, and make its spread extremely
difficult.
The second impediment in the
progress of Christianity in India was the struggle between the Catholic and
Non-catholic Missions for supremacy in the field of proselytization.
The entry of the Catholic Church
in the field of the spread of Christianity in India began in the year 1541 with
the arrival of Francis Xavier. He was the first Missionary of the new Society
of Jesus formed to support the authority of the Pope. Before the Catholic Church
entered this field there existed in India particularly in the South a large
Christian population which belonged to the Syrian Church. These Syrian
Christians, long seated on the coast of Malabar, traced their paternity to the
Apostle Thomas, who it is said "went through Syria and Cilicia conforming
the Churches ". They looked to Syria as their spiritual home. They
aknowledged the supremacy of the Patriarch of Babylon. Of Rome and the Pope
they knew nothing. During the rise of the Papacy, the Mahomedan power, which
had overrun the intervening countries, had closed the gates of India against
the nations of the West. This had saved the Syrian Churches in India from the
Roman Catholic Church. As to the question whether the Christianity of the
Catholic Church was the true form of Christianity or whether the Christianity
of the Syrian Church was the true form I am not concerned here. But the facts
remain that the Portuguese who represented the Catholic Church in India were
scandalized at the appearance of the Syrian Churches which they declared to be
heathen temples scarcely disguised. The Syrian Christians shrank with dismay
from the defiling touch of the Roman Catholics of Portugal and proclaimed
themselves Christians and not idolators. The other is that the Malabar
Christians had never been subject to Roman supremacy and never subscribed to
the Roman doctrine.
The elements of a conflict
between the two Churches were thus present and the inquisition only gave an
occasion for the conflagration.
The inquisitors of Goa
discovered that they were heretics and like a wolf on the fold, down came the
delegates of the Pope upon the Syrian Churches. How great was the conflict is
told by Mr. Kaye in his volume already referred to.
The first Syrian prelate who was
brought into antagonism with Rome, expiated his want of courage and sincerity
in the dungeons of the Inquisition. The second shared the same fate. A third,
whose sufferings are more worth of commiseration, died after much trial and
tribulation in his diocese, denying the Pope's supremacy to the last. The
churches were now without a Bishop, at a time when they more than ever needed
prelatical countenance and support; for Rome was about to put forth a mighty
hand and a stretched-out arm. Don Alexis de Menezes
was appointed Archbishop of Goa. It was his mission
less to make new converts than to reduce old ones to subjection; and he flung
himself into the work of persecution with an amount of zeal and heroism that
must have greatly endeared him to Rome. Impatient of the slow success of his
agents, he determined to take the staff into his own hand. Moving down to the
South, with an imposing military force, he summoned the Syrian Churhes to submit themselves to his authority. The
Churhes were under an Archdeacon, who, sensible of the danger that impended
over them, determined to temporize, but at the same time to show that he was
prepared to resist. He waited on the Archbishop. An escort of three thousand
resolute men who accompanied him on his visit to Menezes, were with difficulty
restrained, on the first slight and delusive sign of violence, from rushing on
their opponents and proving their burning zeal in defence of their religion. It
was not a time for Menezes to push the claims of the Romish Church. But no fear
of resistance could divert him from his purpose; and he openly denounced the
Patriarch of Babylon as a pestilent schismatic, and declared it a heresy to
acknowledge his supremacy. He then issued a decree forbidding all persons to
acknowledge any other supremacy than that of the Roman Pontiff, or to make any
mention of the Syrian Patriarch in the services of their Church; and, this done, he publicly excommunicated
the acknowledged head of the Syrian Churches, and called upon the startled Archdeacon to sign the writ of
excommunication. Frightened and
confused, the wretched man put his name to the apostate document; and it was
publicly affixed to the gates of the church.
This intolerable insult on the
one hand—this wretched compromise on the other—roused the fury of the people
against the Archbishop, and against their own ecclesiastical chief. Hard was
the task before him, when the latter went forth to appease the excited
multitude. They would have made one desperate effort to sweep the Portuguese
intruders from their polluted shores; but the Archdeacon pleaded with them for
forbearance; apologised for his own weakness; urged that dissimulation would be
more serviceable than revenge; promised, in spite of what he had done, to
defend their religion; and exhorted them to be firm in their resistance of
Papal aggression. With a shout of assent, they swore that they would never bow
their necks to the yoke, and prepared themselves for the continuance of the
struggle.
But Menezes was a man of too
many resources to be worsted in such a conflict. His energy and perseverance
were irresistible; his craft was too deep to fathom. When one weapon of attack
failed, he tried another. Fraud took the place of violence; money took the
place of arms. He bribed those whom he could not bully, and appealed to the
imaginations of men when he could not work upon their fears. And, little by
little, he succeeded. First one Church fell, and then another.' Dangers and
difficulties beset them. Often had he to encounter violent resistence, and
often did he beat it down. When the strength of the Syrian Christians was too
great for him, he called in the aid of the native princes. The unhappy
Archdeacon, weary of resistance and threatened with excommunication, at last
made submission to the Roman Prelate. Menezes issued a decree for a synod; and,
on the 20th June 1599, the Churches assembled at Diamper. The first session
passed quietly over, but not without much secret murmuring. The second, at
which the decrees were read, was interrupted at that trying point of the
ceremony where, having enunciated the Confession of Faith, the Archbishop
renounced and anathematized the Patriarch of Babylon. The discontent of the
Syrians here broke out openly; they protested against the necessity of a
confession of Faith, and urged that such a confession would imply that they
were not Christians before the assembling of the Synod. But Menezes allayed
their apprehensions and removed their doubts, by publicly making the confession
in the name of himself and the Eastern Churches. One of the Syrian priests, who
acted as interpreter, then read the confession in the Malabar language, and the
assembled multitude repeated it after him, word for word, on their knees. And
so the Syrian Christians bowed their necks to the yoke of Rome.
Resolute to improve the
advantages he had gained, Menezes did not suffer himself to subside into
inactivity, and to bask in the sunshine of his past triumphs. Whether it was
religious zeal or temporal ambition that moved him, he did not relax from his
labours; but feeling that it was not enough to place the yoke upon the neck of
the Syrian Christians, he endeavoured, by all means, to keep it there. The
Churches yielded sullen submission; but there were quick-witted, keen-sighted
men among them, who, as the seventeenth century began to dawn upon the world,
looked hopefully into the future, feeling assured that they could discern even
then unmistakable evidences of the waning glories of the Portuguese in the
East. There was hope then for the Syrian churches. The persecutions of Menezes
were very grievous—for he separated priests from their wives; excommunicated on
trifling grounds, members of the churches; and destroyed all the old Syriac
records which contained proofs of the early purity of their faith.
The irreparable barbarism of
this last act was not to be forgotten or forgiven; but, in the midst of all
other sufferings, there was consolation in the thought, that this tyranny was
but for a time. "Sixty years of servitude and hypocrisy," writes
Gibbon, "were patiently endured, but as soon as the Portuguese empire was
shaken by the courage and industry of the Dutch, the Nestorians asserted with
vigour and effect the religion of their fathers. The Jesuits were incapable of
defending the power they had abused
No comments:
Post a Comment