The Company’s position was impossible. Since the India Act of 1784 it had become increasingly a public institution, more and more under the control of the British government. This meant, of course, that it could not escape the scrutiny of the “Lords Spiritual” of the Anglican establishment. The king himself was officially the head of the Church of England. Its bishops were members of the House of Lords. The Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, a British organization, attempted to obtain religious toleration for Christians equal to that enjoyed by Hindus and Muslims, but whatever the official response, the practical result was nil. Between 1806 and 1812 the Great Evangelical Awakening stirred up a vocal element of the Anglican church. Here was a whole country, by far the most important of the Empire, given over to what Anglicans could only call heathenism, with all its deplorable practices of child marriage, demon worship, widow burning (suttee, meaning “true wife”), and temple prostitution. Something had to be done about it. The Company was not without high officials who were Christians. These combined their influence with men like William Wilberforce, the abolitionist. Evangelical chaplains began going to India and new missionary societies demanded entrance and freedom to propagate the Gospel, not merely as a special privilege but as the right of any Englishman under the Crown.
In 1813 the Church of England refused to support in Parliament the renewal of the Company’s charter unless the ecclesiastical establishment was admitted into British India. This was a powerful lever. It worked. In 1816 a Cambridge man obtained a military chaplaincy in the Company in Tinnevelly. He was James Hough, an ardent disciple of a leader of the Evangelical Revival in the Church of England named Charles Simeon. Under Hough a new phase of mission-minded Christianity began, resulting in the establishing of fifty-three congregations. Two years after his arrival came the Church of England with all its panoply, terrible as an army with banners. Groups outside the pale of the establishment became conscious of a sort of pecking order, with the Churches of England and Scotland at the top, and the earlier movements in descending order, according to the social classes from which they had come.
Hindus brought grievances to Company officials again and again as they saw their own way of life interrupted and obstructed by these meddlesome foreigners. In Calcutta, thousands signed “The Sacred Petition” of 1828 to His Majesty in London on the question of suttee. They felt that a widow’s “voluntary and devout act” was a matter which was “altogether of too high and sacred a nature to admit of interference or question even from rulers of another Faith.” The British were between Scylla and Charybdis. Only nine months later five hundred Christians from forty-seven villages in Tinnevelly District addressed a petition to Parliament expressing first of all their gratitude for “the removal of the darkness of heathenism from these parts through the providence of our Lord, and the generous assistance of the people of Europe,” then begging to put before the British public a list of deeds “being done in support of heathenism and in injustice to the poor by the Honorable Company.” The list included the subsidizing of Hindu temples and exempting them from taxation. The Company had not only contributed “not the smallest sum” to help erect churches, but taxed them besides, giving rise to the reasonable conclusion that to the Company Hindu idols were the true gods. The petition mentioned also that since only those of highest caste could hold office or even enter the courts to make complaint or obtain assistance, Christians were nearly all excluded from entering. They had to stand afar off like any others who were “unclean” and call out, “as men invoke God, saying, ‘Swami, Swami!’ (Lord, Lord!)”
From Tinnevelly, one of the most important centers of old and wealthy Brahman power and pride, had come many of India’s most orthodox and scholarly pundits. Hostilities smoldered and flames broke out. Hindu rights were being violated by some of the European officials who had appeared to be on the Hindu side, and by missionaries whom Hindus saw as their “declared and implacable enemies. Hindus were obsessed with fear since Tinnevelly had become “the emporium of missionaryism and proselytism.” A society was formed dedicated to smearing sacred ashes, Siva’s sign, on every forehead. Christians refused to be smeared. Mobs attacked villages, pulled down prayer houses, raped women, stripped and beat men. One missionary fortified his compound and posted guards. Government forces were sent in. In 1847 the use of the term “heathen” to refer to Hindus or Muslims was officially banned from all government documents.
Ten years later in North India the Great Rebellion took place, recognized by Queen Victoria and the rest of Great Britain as far more than a fanatical outburst against the greasing of cartridges with animal fat. Arguments over the meaning of the rebellion broke out and have continued ever since. Some saw it as a total rejection of British rule as represented by the East India Company. Whatever the case, the mutiny symbolized the end of Company raj and the formal taking over of rulership by the British Crown. The queen noted in her journal in November 1857 her feeling in the matter, which she believed was shared by her countrymen, “that India should belong to me.”
The transition from Company to Crown rule, while enacted by Parliament, was formalized by the Queen’s Proclamation of 1858. She rejected the first draft of this document as being too cold and unfeeling. Despite her distance from India and India’s cultures, she had great sympathy for the Indian people.
All the romance she had felt since childhood for brown skins, all the advice she had received from Indian travelers flooded her mind—the iniquity of a “fire and sword” system of government, the “immense field for improvement among the natives,” the lies about mutilation of women and exaggeration of all kinds, the superior manners of the Indian “lower orders” compared with ours, the ill-treatment and insulting references to natives as “niggers”—out it all poured and was translated by royal alchemy into the moving words of a rewritten Proclamation:
“Firmly relying ourselves on the truth of Christianity we disclaim alike the right and the desire to impose our convictions on any of our subjects . . . but all shall alike enjoy the equal and impartial protection of the law.”
As she wrote to Lord Derby, it was a female sovereign” speaking from the heart to a hundred million Eastern peoples.1
In 1858 the existence of the Company which had operated in India for two and a half centuries, and had ruled for a century, was terminated by royal decree. The destiny of India now lay in the hands of the thirty-nine-year-old queen. She became Empress of India, her representative, the viceroy.
1. Elizabeth Longford, Queen Victoria (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), p. 281.
Chapter 16
Straight Against the Dead Wall
Amy spent her twenty-ninth birthday and Christmas with the Walkers in the town of Palamcottah (another English corruption of a Tamil name: Palaiyam-kottai), which had been the center of Christian work in Tinnevelly District for many years. The Anglican church in Palamcottah, like the one at Ooty, Amy thought “painfully English—built in the days when England did India’s work, but life inside is native, and I do enjoy it. Today before the service began the singers of the place marched down in fine style, and stood before the porch making a joyful noise with voice and cymbal, violin and tambourine.”
Walker, known as the Iyer (an Indian term of respect and affection), had been the chairman of the council of the Church Missionary Society, a position requiring much office work and, in 1895 and 1896, the painful task of purging the church rolls. It was a touchy matter, the weeding out of those whose names were on the registers but who were living as Hindus. Nominal Christianity was one of the most disturbing aspects of the missionary scene in Tinnevelly, and Walker was the object of calumny and scorn from those who could not see why the differences between Christian and Hindu needed to be so obvious. Other difficulties arose, and at last he felt he “could not go on turning the wheel in the direction it was turning,” and dropped it. His resignation was accepted just at the time Amy arrived in Palamcottah.
The Iyer, a master of Tamil by t
his time, understood very well Amy’s temptation to despair. During his own early struggles he had written to his sister, “It takes such a long time to get into the ins and outs of these Indian languages, and then, though you may know how to speak and what word to use, there is the enormous difficulty of proper pronunciation. However, on we go, trying and struggling. . . . I am only a stammerer in it yet.” He read aloud to Amy from his own journals, which showed the plodding and the groaning, so that she might take comfort in seeing that she was not the first to be discouraged.
“But you were discouraged because you had set such a high standard for yourself! “she countered.
Walker quenched that nonsense by a crushing, “You know nothing whatever about it!”
An exigent coach, he insisted that Amy go through drill like any soldier before professing to fight. This included the study of Tamil classics, poetry, and proverbs, essential if one was ever to learn to “think Tamil.” Remembering Misaki San’s interpreting for her in Japan, she chafed at what seemed a wicked waste of time when she might be giving out the Gospel through interpretation, “but Walker says it’s worthwhile and I am believing him straight in the face of my feelings.” A few months later she wrote, Never had a pupil such a teacher! But it is rather like a great Beethoven wasting his time over a stupid little scale-strummer.” She wondered how she had ever had the courage to tackle the job. “It was the courage of ignorance—pure ignorance!”
Her second exam was to take place in early February. She dreaded it. She marked the year, 1897, next to the portion of Daily Light for January 23, in which she found strong encouragement: “Hope maketh not ashamed. I am the Lord . . . they shall not be ashamed that wait for me. Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord.” Particularly comforting was the thought that God had once given words to a donkey.1 Perhaps it was not too much to hope that the God who opened an ass’s mouth would open hers and enable her to spout forth Tamil.
Walker, free now from administrative responsibilities, wanted to begin itinerant work in the villages. He saw in the new young missionary not only diverse and unusual gifts, but a deep and uncompromising spirit of discipleship. He asked her to pray about the possibility of joining them in village work and perhaps beginning a work for women. The invitation came as God’s seal on what she had longed to be doing. She prayed. The answer was yes, and in February they traveled by bullock bandy, a springless two-wheeled cart, the Walkers in one, Amy and Saral in another, to Pannaivilai, a day’s journey from Palamcottah. Of this method of travel Amy wrote, “It is, except for the Chinese wheelbarrow, the most tiring way of going about I ever came across. The Japanese kuruma is bliss in comparison.” Crash, bang, smash went the wheels on the rutted roads, jerking, pitching, lunging, and jolting the hapless passengers.
It was a clear moonlight night (we travel at night to escape the heat and to save time) and at first I couldn’t think of going to sleep, and walked ahead of the bandies, disturbing various flocks of parrots who passed uncomplimentary remarks in consequence. When at last I settled down to slumber sweet, Saral rolled over on top of me, bumping me black and blue. The bandy threw her at me, she said. Then we stuck in the mud and Mr. Walker had to help to push us out. I wish you could have seen us.
She was delighted with the big airy bungalow at Pannaivilai.
No superfluous furniture, curtains, or antimacassars2—just three big rooms, like three big barns with a hayloft overhead! In the bedroom barns, bed, chair, and table. In the center barn, table, chairs, plate press. A real barracks, truly! It is very cool to add to its charms, being so big and empty, and a wide shady verandah runs all round the house. We brought my baby organ, dear old Jappy texts, and what they irreverently call “my remarks” (Faith is the Victory, Christ is Conqueror) and we put them up and felt furnished. It is simply delicious being here, surrounded by brown faces only.
Amy gathered those brown faces around her whenever she could. A group of “heathen boys” who attended the mission school listened to the story of Solomon, illustrated by a picture roll. Amy was alone, without Saral to interpret, and felt “like a bird in a cage too small for it. But oh, it was worth it all to be able to do, or to try to do, even so little as this. It’s simply blissful to see that they understand.” She told them how King Solomon had prayed not only in public (this did not seem strange to them—school always opened with prayer) but also alone. Did any of them do that? No. They could not possibly do it at home, one of them said. “So I told them they could in the jungle. They could easily go away there and be quite alone with God.” One boy said promptly, “I will!”
One day three boys came asking for Bibles. Amy was astonished, for they were from “Christian” homes. Hadn’t they got Bibles? No, they hadn’t. Hadn’t their parents? No. There wasn’t one in the house. Had there ever been? They weren’t sure. Amy, thinking she must have misunderstood their Tamil, went to Mrs. Walker who confirmed it all. Off they went to visit the Bible-less house. One scrap of an ancient bit of the Psalms was found. After prayer and talk the father agreed to buy a Bible.
“Do you see what this sort of thing means?” wrote Amy. “How can the Heathen know that He is the Lord when God is not sanctified in these people called by His name? For sanctified they cannot be when the Word is held in such small account Will you pray for these Christians of India? All round them there is the awful darkness of heathendom, and the darkness conquers the light unless that light is truly Divine.” She learned of one congregation in which hardly a soul was converted, and whole villages of professing Christians with hardly one who understood what the name meant. There was a great palaver over what “giving up sin” might mean—surely not the breaking of caste or the burning of idols? Killing an insect or stealing a little rice while husking—such things might be sinful, of course. Toward these “heathen Christians and those who made no pretense of being Christians Amy felt pitiful, purposeful love.”
No wonder that when the hottest weather came in April, requiring the customary trip to Ooty (“so one s brains won’t liquefy ), Amy wished she could be allowed not to go. The Walkers believed it was best, so up to the hills they went. There were the usual pleasant sociabilities, some “of a most Christian character, such as “picnics finishing up with prayer,” but it seemed “cruelty and wickedness to waste a moment when natives are waiting in the dark.”
Amy gave readers of her Scrap letter a “deep look down” into that darkness in the form of the story of a girl named Pappamal. She was of high caste and wanted to become a Christian. “This is very rare, and means no end of difficulty to the Mission, as it is invariably followed by the closing of houses, emptying of schools, and endless law troubles, for the Hindus leave no stone unturned to wreck the work and injure the workers, and, if they can get at her, secretly poison the convert.” Seen against the background of Tinnevelly’s conflicts in the past, such violent reaction is not surprising. So long as Christians were limited to certain castes and posed no threat to the ancient and powerful cultural structure that is Hinduism, they could be tolerated. But for a girl to declare independence from caste and family in this fashion was an outrage. Pappamal was over sixteen, hence legally free to choose her own religion. She begged a missionary for help in escaping by night from her parents’ house. Help was given. The parents found her, pleaded with her to return, but she stood fast. The Mission felt bound to protect her from “certain death” and decided to send her to Ooty. It was just at the time Amy was leaving for the hills, so she saw Pappamal safely into the hands of a Bible woman there.
Trouble erupted at once in Palamcottah. People who had been friendly glared at the missionaries. Doors of houses once open were slammed shut. In Ooty a man was seen prowling the mission compound, and soon the truth came out. The whole thing was a plot. He and Pappamal wanted to marry. As Hindus they were forbidden to because they were of different castes. She was to profess faith, escape from home, find asylum; he was to follow, profess faith also, then they would marry as Christians. That was not th
e end of the story. It came out bit by bit that the girl’s parents were a part of the web, having connived to bring shame on the Mission, charging it with the crime of seducing a minor (she was not yet sixteen, they said). The Bible woman immediately wired Pappamal’s father to come and take her. He refused, so the Bible woman personally escorted her to Palamcottah and publicly returned her to her family. She was shut up in solitary confinement. Word went round (and was confirmed by lawyers) that she would be killed, but in such a way as to evade proof. “Oh the dark dark deeds of this dark land!” wrote Amy. “It seemed like throwing the lamb to the wolves, only alas, the lamb herself was a wolf in disguise.” Pappamal claimed that the missionaries had bribed her to leave home.
Only a few days later word came that the parents had, in fact, nothing to do with the plot; Pappamal had poisoned her mother so that she was unconscious when Pappamal escaped, and the father had been degraded by his caste, who refused him fire and wood. It was all the work of the suitor. The girl’s horoscope had disappeared so no one could prove her age. Then the mission lawyer asked the mission to bribe the father’s side of the case, as he feared it was going against them.
India was a land where “the veriest child can baffle the keenest. The Eastern mind and soul seems to me like a cabinet of secret drawers—you never know when you get to the last one.”
Amy was staggered by the “terrible taking it for granted” that Pappamal would die. “I don’t know about North India, but everywhere in South India there is only one answer when you ask why high caste converts have to be sheltered away from their homes, and why it is impossible for either a Mohammedan or Hindu woman to confess Christ in baptism while she lives at home. And that one answer is: It would mean death—or worse . . . As one of the lawyers said, ‘She will be found down a well, and they will say she found her pain too much to bear and so put an end to it. Often it is so.’ ”
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