Re: Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia
Posted: Wed Feb 12, 2020 5:01 am
Church Missionary Society in India
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 2/11/20
NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT
Church Missionary Society
Abbreviation CMS
Formation 12 April 1799
Founder Clapham Sect
Type Evangelical Anglicanism
Ecumenism
Protestant missionary
British Commonwealth
The Church Missionary Society in India was a branch organisation established by the Church Missionary Society (CMS), which was founded in Britain in 1799 under the name the Society for Missions to Africa and the East,[1] as a mission society working with the Anglican Communion, Protestant, and Orthodox Christians around the world. In 1812, the British organization was renamed the Church Missionary Society.[2]
In 1814 the CMS began sending missionaries to India and established mission stations at Chennai (Madras) and Bengal, then in 1816 at Travancore.[3] The mission stations were extended across India in the following years. The work among women was mainly left to the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society and the Zenana Bible and Medical Mission.[4]
The missions were financed by the CMS with the local organisation of a mission usually being under the oversight of the Bishop of the Anglican diocese in which the CMS mission operated. The successors of the Protestant church missions are the Church of South India and the Church of North India.[2]
The CMS in India
Henry Martyn, missionary to India and Persia
Holy Trinity Cathedral, Palayamkottai, Tirunelveli - Built by Rev. Charles Rhenius
The East India Company controlled access to India and only allowed its chaplains to work among the European communities. The Reverend Henry Martyn wanted to offer his services to the Church Missionary Society, however a financial disaster in Cornwall deprived him and his unmarried sister of the income their father had left for them. It was necessary for Martyn to earn an income that would support his sister as well as himself.[5] He accordingly obtained a chaplaincy under the East India Company and left for India on 5 July 1805.[6] William Wilberforce campaigned for the revision of the charter of the East India Company to permit missionaries to work in India. When the Charter Bill was passed in 1813 the CMS had missionaries ready for the India mission.[2] The Revd Charles Rhenius and the Revd John Christian Schnarre were the first CMS missionaries to arrive at India and were sent to work at Chennai (Madras).[7] Charles Rhenius later worked in Tirunelveli (Tinnevelly).
The CMS sent 7 missionaries to India in 1814-1816: two were placed at Chennai (Madras), two at Bengal and three at Travancore (1816).[3] The Indian missions were extended in the following years to a number of locations including Agra, Meerut district, Varanasi (Benares), Mumbai (Bombay) (1820), Tirunelveli (Tinnevelly) (1820) and Kolkata (Calcutta) (1822).
New mission stations were later established in the Telugu Country (1841) and at Lahore in the Punjab region (1852).[3][8]
While the Revolt of 1857 resulted in damage to the missions in the North West Provinces, after the revolt the CMS expanded its missions to Oudh, Allahbad, the Santhal people (1858), and to Kashmir (1865).[2][3][8]
Kolkata (Calcutta)
The CMS mission in Calcutta was started in 1822. The first CMS school was opened at Kidderpore, a suburb of Calcutta, in 1816; and the first girls’ school in 1822, by Miss M. A. Cooke, at Calcutta.[7] Reginald Heber, the Bishop of Calcutta (1823–1826) supported the work of the CMS mission.
The Revd James Long joined the mission in 1840. Edward Stuart served in India from 1850 to 1874. He was the Secretary of the Church Missionary Society at Calcutta. He also served at Agra and at Jalalpur.[9]
Agra
Valpy French arrived in India in 1851. He was sent to Agra, where he founded the St. John's College, Agra in 1853.[10]
Lahore
The CMS mission in Lahore started in 1852. The Revd H. U. Weitbrecht was sent to India in 1875 to be the Vice Principal of St. John's Divinity College, Lahore. Valpy French became the first Bishop of Lahore in 1877.[10]
Mission in Kerala
The contribution made by the society in creating and maintaining educational institutions in Kerala, the most literate state in India, is significant. Many colleges and schools in Kerala and Tamil Nadu still have CMS in their names. Among the oldest in modern India, the CMS College Kottayam is regarded a pioneer in popularising secondary education in southern India, whose famous alumni include former Indian President K. R. Narayanan, career diplomats K.P.S. Menon and K. M. Panikkar as well as scientist E. C. George Sudarshan.
The Revd Benjamin Bailey was appointed to the Kottayam mission in the Indian state of Kerala in 1816 and in 1821 he established a printing press.[3] Benjamin Bailey translated the complete Bible to Malayalam language. He also authored the first printed Malayalam-English Dictionary. He is considered as the father of Malayalam printing.[11]
CMS activities in the 20th Century
The CMS continued to send missionaries to India, including Frank Lake in 1937.
See also
• Christianity portal
• Christianity in India
• List of Protestant missionaries in India
• History of Christian missions
Notes
1. Mounstephen, Philip (2015). "Teapots and DNA: The Foundations of CMS". Intermission. 22.
2. Keen, Rosemary. "Church Missionary Society Archive". Adam Matthew Publications. Retrieved 29 January 2017.
3. "The Church Missionary Atlas (India)". Adam Matthew Digital. 1896. pp. 95–156. Retrieved 19 October 2015.
4. The Centenaru Volume of the Church Missionary Society for Africa and the East 1799-1899 (PDF). London : Church Missionary Society, digital publication: Cornell University. 1902. p. 19.
5. Lee, Sidney, ed. (1893). "Martyn, Henry" . Dictionary of National Biography. 36. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
6. F. L. Cross, E. A. Livingstone, eds. (13 March 1997). The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd edition. USA: Oxford University Press. pp. 1046. ISBN 019211655X.
7. The Centenaru Volume of the Church Missionary Society for Africa and the East 1799-1899 (PDF). London : Church Missionary Society, digital publication: Cornell University. 1902. p. 16.
8. "The Church Missionary Atlas (Church Missionary Society)". Adam Matthew Digital. 1896. pp. xi. Retrieved 19 October 2015.
9. Stock, Eugene (1913). "The Story of the New Zealand Mission". Retrieved 4 March 2019.
10. Thomas Valpy French Britannica.com.
11. Benjamin Bailiyum Malayala Saahityavum. By Dr. Babu Cherian. Published by the Department of Printing and Publishing, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam.
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 2/11/20
NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT
YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.
By the time the Bedi family moved to Kashmir late in 1947, they had already made a name for themselves there. Freda Bedi had braved attempts by the maharaja's government to expel her from the princely state and had been dressed in Kashmiri bridal clothes in an unlikely attempt to pass incognito when meeting underground political leaders. Her son unwittingly served as a messenger between Kashmiri leaders forced into exile in Lahore and activists seeking an end to princely autocracy. B.P.L. Bedi's most abiding political achievement was as principal architect of the defining document of progressive Kashmiri nationalism -- at the time the dominant political force in the Kashmir Valley. Freda and B.P.L. became firm friends and allies of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, the commanding figure in Kashmiri politics. When they moved to Srinagar it was to work alongside him to achieve his goal of a secular, democratic and socially progressive Kashmir -- and to strengthen India's contested claim to the state.
The Bedis' involvement in Kashmiri politics was partly an accident of geography. From the late 1930s, the Kashmiri capital, Srinagar, became a summer refuge for Punjabi intellectuals. It was more than five thousand feet up in the foothills of the Himalayas, a place of legendary beauty which offered respite from the bleaching summer sun. An attractive alternative to Andretta, Kashmir offered lakes, houseboats and opportunities to camp and trek particularly in the upper Lidder valley beyond the resort town of Pahalgam. It became 'like a second home for us,' Freda remarked; 'somebody ought to make a film round Kashmir with the Kashmir Valley as Hero no. 1.'1 Among the roll call of Punjabis and north Indians who spent part of the summer in the Kashmir Valley was Faiz Ahmad Faiz, the pre-eminent progressive Urdu poet, whose nikah or marriage ceremony with an English communist, Alys George, was conducted by Sheikh Abdullah in Srinagar in 1941. Alys's sister Christabel had already married M.D. Taseer, a leftist writer and intellectual at one time a college principal in Srinagar.2 The novelist Mulk Raj Anand, the actor (and veteran of the Monday Morning venture in Lahore) Balraj Sahni and the cultural figure K.A. Abbas were also among the more renowned of the left-leaning literati who assembled in the Kashmir Valley.
Kashmiri political leaders similarly spent time in the Punjabi capital, Lahore. Sheikh Abdullah and many other young Kashmiris had been students there. Hundreds of Kashmiris settled in the city, which offered a bigger canvas and more opportunities for educated Muslims. The poet Hafeez Jullundhri in particular forged friendships with the coming generation of Kashmiri leaders, and the Bedis too got to know -- and on occasion host -- the key figures in Kashmir's national movement.
At this time, Kashmir was emerging from a long period of isolation and popular politics was taking root. The maharaja, Hari Singh, was a Hindu and, in the eyes of most Kashmiris, an outsider, while his princely state was largely Muslim and the Kashmir Valley emphatically so. He was also part of a generation of Indian princes who were much more comfortable hunting, shooting and fishing than in engaging with social and political reform. The princely states were not formally part of the British Raj, but in Srinagar -- as in many other princely capitals -- a British Resident kept a careful watching eye and on occasions intervened to seek to ensure political stability and protect British interests. Princely autocracy and the accompanying restraints on political activity and public expression were increasingly an anachronism as the temper of Indian politics began to rise. Sheikh Abdullah and a like-minded group of young, educated Kashmiris -- most of them from the state's Muslim majority -- sought to challenge the oppressive feudalism still prevalent in the villages and to mobilise public opinion.
The Bedis came to see the Kashmir Valley not simply as a picturesque location offering respite from the summer heat but as the site of a political struggle to which they could, and should, contribute. This was probably a mix of personal initiative and prompting by the Communist Party, which viewed Kashmir as a promising place to seek recruits and influence. Sheikh Abdullah had a firm personal friendship and political alliance with the Congress's Jawaharlal Nehru, himself of distant Kashmiri descent. But the communists were keen to help support Abdullah's party, the National Conference, and shape its policy and strategy. When in the summer of 1942 Bedi was released from Deoli and Freda was able to disengage from her lecturing job in Lahore, their involvement in Kashmiri politics stepped up. In August 1942, Bedi was in Srinagar as the Indian National Congress launched the Quit India movement, its biggest civil disobedience movement to date. At this time, the communists were opposed to protests which would hamper the war effort. By his own account -- and Bedi was prone to exaggerate his role in the events he recounted -- he persuaded the National Conference leadership to keep a distance from the Congress's initiative:Sheikh Abdullah, [C.M.] Sadiq and Bakshi [Chulam Mohammad], all three were lunching with me that day. So instead of arriving at 12 o'clock for lunch, they arrived at about 10.30. 'Ah,' they came laughing and joking and said, 'now good-bye Bedi Saheb, instead of lunching we will be behind bars by the time lunch comes, because this is the situation which has come about.' So, we immediately went into consultations and realised that the ruthless administration of the Maharaja was looking for an opportunity to smash the national movement in Kashmir ... We said, 'Leave alone anti-fascism and anti-imperialism, who is there if the National Conference is removed at the moment to stand between the Maharaja's ways and the people and stem the tide of destruction and suffering.' With this argument we completely assessed the situation and came to the conclusion that no 1942 movement could be launched in Kashmir.3
Bedi said he was given the job of making the opening speech at a rally that evening to argue the case for standing aloof from the Congress-launched campaign. In the tussle between the Congress and communists for influence within Kashmir's main political movement, the left had won a victory. Bedi's argument that Kashmiri nationalists could achieve more if they were out-and-about rather than behind bars was well made. The Quit India campaign placed the Congress leadership behind bars and out-of-action at a crucial stage in the advance towards independence. 'Whereas in other parts of India the national movement was smashed,' Bedi argued somewhat self-servingly, 'in Kashmir, the national movement emerged with ten times more strength by following this policy.'4
The following spring, both Freda and Bedi attended the annual session of the National Conference at Mirpur. Freda chaired a meeting of women activists; Bedi presided over a gathering of student supporters. Freda wrote in her weekly column in the Tribune about the difficult journey she made to Mirpur, the final stage of which was a 'shabby' ferry boat across the Jhelum. We got across the river being alternately pulled and pushed and rowed and towed in about two hours. For us it was easy enough since we never left the boat. But the other passengers had to get down on the islands and walk across the burning sand, the round hot stones and the spiked grasses.' Unsurprisingly, the main demand of local women at the meeting Freda convened was for a bridge.It is no joke for old women and mothers with children to face such a primitive journey every time they want to come to the Punjab or the Frontier. They were indignant about it 'and we even have to ride on donkeys' they said with a smile half mischievous and half ashamed. They formed their own committee. So many have tried and failed. Now it is for the women of Mirpur to show that they will not be refused. Alone a woman is helpless and knows it. Together with her sisters bound by common trouble and suffering she can show greater strength than she or the world dreams of, for none can refuse the weak when they band together.5
From a small incident, she drew a parable which reflected her own commitment to social justice and the agency of women in achieving that.
Freda also wrote lyrically about a journey in Kashmir, by donkey and on foot, retracing the old Mughal route into the valley. Sheikh Abdullah accompanied the group for at least part of the journey, and was welcomed as if a saviour.The Kashmiri women had found out that their leader had come. They huddled together in a shy group on the roof of one of the huts, as though undecided what to do. Then they started a song of welcome: 'To-day our Rajah has honoured the house with his presence,' they sang. I looked again at their faces lined with poverty, the dirty and ragged clothes on their backs. Had they been as dirty and as poor when the great ones of history ruled the earth? Probably so, for the poor have always been poor .... The lively, happy faces of the women were sharp before the dark arches: beggars at the door of history, they were singing for the only ray of light they knew. For one who fought for the poor, and would see them ruling in the land of their poverty.6
In another 'From a Woman's Window' column, Freda wrote about attending a martyrs' day ceremony with Sheikh Abdullah in Srinagar, a tribute to those killed by the maharaja's forces in 1931 at the inception of what became a mass movement demanding civil and political rights. Again, her attention focused on the women, about 150 of them, who gathered outside the walls of the cemetery while the men laid flowers on the graves.To outward seeming they were like any other crowd of Kashmiri women. Most were in the burqua, with its crown-like head-piece, making it particularly ungainly and ugly. The others were working women, in their loose-fitting tunics, the white thick veil on the back of their heads, heavy earrings, carved circles of silver, hanging in bunches on their distended ears ....
They were the silent background of the animated meeting. And it occurred to me looking at them that they had been the silent background of all the history of Kashmir and the struggles of its people. ...
It was women such as these who ran out into the streets and became the heroines of those early fiery days. It was such women who rattled stones and frightened the horses of their soldiery. Some village woman, like that plump aging woman over there, took a club on her shoulder and strode at the head of one of the village 'armies' of the people that marched into Srinagar.7
She foresaw Kashmiri women coming on to the streets again, 'throwing that power-house of energy which they hoard as a bee hoards its honey into another great movement of the people.' On this, she was right.
Freda Bedi's empathy with Kashmiri women, and her emphasis on their role in political and social change, is striking. Women were also conspicuous in the iconography of Kashmiri nationalism. When the 'New Kashmir' manifesto was published, it featured a drawing of a woman on its front cover, wearing a Kashmiri pheran or smock and with her head covered-not quiescent but politically assertive, wielding the National Conference flag of a hand-plough in white on a red background. It bears more than a faint echo of Delacroix's famous depiction of Marianne, emblem of the French republic, mounting a barricade flag in hand. The Kashmiri woman depicted appears to have been Zooni Gujjari, a local activist from a disadvantaged background who featured in other National Conference publications.
The content of the manifesto was also notably progressive on gender issues, extending to equal wages, paid leave during pregnancy, the right to enter trades and professions, to own and inherit property and to consent to marriage. But this was simply one aspect of a remarkably far-reaching political programme, which has been described as 'the most important political document in modern Kashmir's history'.8 It was written in response to an initiative by the maharaja to consult about political and constitutional reform. This was the National Conference's submission -- a hugely ambitious, forty-four page document which was a draft constitution, an economic programme and party manifesto combined. It proposed a constitutional monarchy with universal suffrage for those aged eighteen and over; equal rights irrespective of race, religion or nationality; freedom of speech, press and assembly; free and compulsory primary education in the mother tongue; state ownership and management of all key industries; and the abolition of feudalism through an agrarian programme of which the key points were 'abolition of landlordism' and 'land to the tiller'. Sheikh Abdullah noted with justification that his party had come up with a much more detailed prescription for the future than the Indian National Congress, or indeed any other movement in the region.
The authorship of the 'New Kashmir' manifesto was, at the time, opaque. Sheikh Abdullah recounted many years later that to 'compile the manifesto we requisitioned the services of a famous progressive friend from Panjab [sic], B.P.L. Bedi. ... Bedi's sharp-minded, elegant wife Freda typed the manuscript.'9 Bedi worked with a small group of leftists, mainly from outside Kashmir. Although he took credit for the manifesto, which he described as a '100% Communist document', he never claimed authorship.10 'There was not much drafting to be done except to write the introduction,' a veteran Kashmiri communist P.N. Jalali recalled, as it was 'almost a carbon copy' of a Soviet document.11 For the key opening section, the draft constitution, Bedi turned to an item he had published in Contemporary India a few years earlier -- Stalin's 1936 constitution for the Soviet Union. It was a resourceful rummage through his personal archive. Although this was adapted to meet Kashmir's circumstances, many of the points were simply copied out. The longer economic programme, including charters for workers, peasants and women, was more loosely based on kisan sabha (peasants' movement) documents, which Bedi would also have known well. The only considerable piece of writing to be done was Sheikh Abdullah's foreword. This was even more explicitly communist in tone. 'The inspiring picture of the regeneration of all the different nationalities and peoples of the U.S.S.R., and their welding together into the united mighty Soviet State that is throwing back its barbarous invaders with deathless heroism,' Sheikh Abdullah was made to declare, 'is an unanswerable argument for the building of democracy on the cornerstone of economic equality.'
As far as the communists were concerned, Bedi had carried out a brilliant political manoeuvre. An important regional party with close links to the Congress had adopted a manifesto drafted by communists, staunchly pro-Soviet in content and reflecting the CPI's political line. 'New Kashmir' was for decades the watchword by which Sheikh Abdullah's ambition for a social transformation of Kashmir was known. Sheikh Abdullah himself described it as 'a revolutionary document'.12 While much of the manifesto remained simply an aspiration, the far-reaching pledges on land reform were acted upon once the National Conference came to power and remain one of the most radical and egalitarian measures introduced in independent India.
P.N. Jalali's recollection is that Bedi had been 'deputed' by the Communist Party in Punjab to 'look after' the communists in Jammu and Kashmir. Kashmiri communists operated not as a separate party but inside Sheikh Abdullah's National Conference, and were particularly influential among students and the trade unions. 'They did not raise their hand [and say] that: here we are, communists. Except that everybody knew they were communists. Even Sheikh sahib knew.... But we were conscious not to rub Sheikh sahib on the wrong side because he was very sensitive about any parallel political activity.' While B.P.L. Bedi had the greater political influence in Kashmir, Jalali also had keen memories of Freda and her 'very striking' appearance:She was a wonderful lady, very modest, and she was very well known throughout the valley in Kashmir. Every summer they would come, early visitors if you call them visitors. And Mrs Bedi used to deliver lectures on the USSR, they used to be very well attended ... weekly lectures. These were very popular lectures ... Strangely enough, they were held in a hall which belonged to the Church Mission Society.
-- The Lives of Freda: The Political, Spiritual and Personal Journeys of Freda Bedi, by Andrew Whitehead
Very Rev Dr Alexander Duff (26 April 1806 – 12 February 1878 in Sidmouth), was a Christian missionary in India; where he played a large part in the development of higher education. He was a Moderator and Convenor of the Church of Scotland and an unashamed scientific liberal reformer of anglicized evangelism across the Empire. He was the first overseas missionary of the Church of Scotland to India. On 13 July 1830 he founded the General Assembly's Institution in Calcutta, now known as the Scottish Church College. He also played a part in establishing the University of Calcutta. He was twice Moderator of the Free Church of Scotland in 1851 and 1873, the only person to serve the role twice.
Alexander Duff was born in the heart of Scotland, at Auchnahyle, in the parish of Moulin, Perthshire. His parents were James Duff, gardener and farmer at Auchnahagh, and Jean Rattray. After receiving his initial schooling at a local country school, he studied arts and theology at the University of St. Andrews.
He then accepted an offer made by the foreign mission committee of the Church of Scotland's general assembly to become their first missionary to India, and was ordained in August 1829.
After an adventurous voyage during which he was twice shipwrecked, Duff arrived in Calcutta on 27 May 1830. After inspecting the Bengali schools, he concluded that students were not receiving an adequate education in a broad range of subjects and secondly, that he would instruct his students using English instead of the local dialects. He at once identified himself with a policy which had far-reaching effects. Christian missions in India had been successful only in converting a few low-caste groups from a poor socio-economic background by giving them monetary benefits. The upper caste Hindu and Muslim communities had been practically untouched. Duff shrewdly assessed that these affluent communities could not be accessed by traditional evangelical methods. He recognised that holding out the prospect of upward mobility, by offering a western education, would bring the children of the affluent classes into his range of influence, which could then be extended to encompass religion. Duff devised the policy of an using western system of education to slowly convert Hindus and Muslims to Christianity...
By teaching Biblical courses as well as courses in the physical sciences, Duff hoped that students would logically come to realize the contradictions and impracticality of Hinduism and embrace wholeheartedly the truth of Christianity. While a few students converted, Duff seems to have widely miscalculated the resilience of Hinduism as well as its ability to adapt itself to western knowledge. Whereas Duff and many of his fellow evangelists saw Christianity and Hinduism as diametrically opposed, Hindus did not generally consider the knowledge either tradition provided as mutually exclusive with the other.
Duff opened a school in which all kinds of secular subjects were taught, from the rudiments upwards to a university standard, alongside the Bible. The English language was used as the medium of instruction on the grounds that it was the key to Western knowledge. Alexander Duff proposed a theory which he called the "downward filter theory" in which he believed that by catering to the middle and upper social classes, the knowledge of Christianity would eventually filter down the social ladder. Although he promoted the teaching of English in schools, he still viewed the vernacular as an important language for spreading Christianity among "the masses" but deemed it inferior to the English language because it was not progressive. Duff wrote a pamphlet on the question, entitled A New Era of the English Language and Literature in India. A government minute was adopted on 7 March 1835, to the effect that in higher education, the object of the British government in India should be the promotion of European science and literature among the natives of India, and that all funds appropriated for purposes of education would be best employed on English education alone. His views influenced Peter Percival, a pioneering educator, linguist and missionary who worked in Sri Lankan Tamil dominant Jaffna peninsula in Sri Lanka...
In 1844, governor-general Viscount Hardinge opened government appointments to all who had studied in institutions similar to Duff's institution. In the same year, Duff co-founded the Calcutta Review, of which he served as editor from 1845 to 1849...
In 1870 he was the principal force in founding the Anglo-Indian Christian Union (an alliance of Protestant churches to minister to scattered British communities in India), of which he became the first President, and sent Rev. John Fordyce to India as the Union's Commissioner there...
By the age of thirty he was already a remarkable preacher. Joining the Church Missionary Society in 1836 he was and his friend Rev Dr James Lewis were shapers of the new Church of Scotland Mission...
[H]e could influence serious political figures in the Indian civil Service through the media of Calcutta Review. In one article he made an advancement in liberal theology exposing the cruelty of Female Infanticide in Central and Western India (1844). And in the same year his power in the Free Church was rehearsed in a lecture to The Free Churchmen of Calcutta in the Masonic Hall. Its title "The Sole and Supreme Headship of the Lord Jesus Christ over His Own Church, or a voice from the Ganges relative to the courses which led to the recent disruption..." symbolised his conviction in the supremacy of Christianity to bring enlightened education to Indians. Two Bengali intellectuals travelled to Edinburgh to be baptised at Duff's request. Mahendra Lal Bazak and Khailai Chandra Mukherjya were closely watched by Dr Thomas Chalmers, a renowned writer and church leader...
Duff's methods were widely imitated and his cumulative twenty-five years in the subcontinent were largely characterized by the establishment of western-style educational institutions warmly received by Ram Mohan Roy. Duff can be credited with creating a framework that influenced educational policy and practice during the nineteenth century and beyond. Since his schools catered mostly to the Hindu middle class, he was able to receive attention from the government which helped to spread his methods and ideas. Several other English schools were established because the General Assemblies Institution was so successful. The success and influence of Duff's college led to the founding of the Calcutta Medical College.
-- Alexander Duff (missionary), by Wikipedia
James Long (1814–1887) was an Anglo-Irish priest of the Anglican Church. A humanist, educator, evangelist, translator, essayist, philanthropist and a missionary to India, he resided in the city of Calcutta, India, from 1840 to 1872 as a member of the Church Missionary Society, leading the mission at Thakurpukur.
Long was closely associated with the Calcutta School-Book Society, the Bethune Society, the Bengal Social Science Association and The Asiatic Society. He also published the English translation of the play Nil Darpan by Dinabandhu Mitra, an act for which he was subsequently prosecuted for libel, fined, and briefly jailed...
In 1861, at the height of the Indigo revolt by the ryots in Bengal, Long received a copy of the Bengali play Nil Darpan (also transcribed as Neel Darpan or Nil Durpan) from its author Dinabandhu Mitra, who had been one of Long's students at the CMS school on Amherst Street. The play, published anonymously the previous year in Dacca, was sympathetic to the abject condition of the ryots or labourers on indigo plantations and critical of the British land-holding class who kept the ryots in slave-like conditions.[7] Long brought it to the notice of Walter Scott Seton-Karr, Secretary to the Governor of Bengal and ex-President of the Indigo Commission. Seton-Karr, sensing its importance, mentioned Nil Durpan in conversation with the Lieutenant Governor, John Peter Grant. Grant then expressed a wish to see a translation of it and print a few copies to be circulated privately amongst friends. Long had it anonymously translated into English "By A Native" (Long refused to divulge the name of the translator to the trial court; Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay later attributed the translation to Michael Madhusudan Dutt, although this attribution remains contentious[8]) and printed in either April or May 1861.[9] In his introduction to the play, he wrote that "[ i]t is the earnest wish of the writer of these lines that harmony may be speedily established between the Planter and the Ryot..."[10] Long sent the translated manuscript to Clement Henry Manuel, the proprietor of the Calcutta Printing and Publishing Press, to print five hundred copies at the cost of some three hundred rupees. Unknown to the Lieutenant Governor, Long began sending out copies in official Government envelopes to prominent Europeans both in India and abroad that had the heading: "on her Majesty’s Service."[11]
The circulation of the play "generated hostility from indigo planters, who brought a lawsuit against Long on the charges that the preface of the play slandered the editors of the two pro-plantation newspapers, the Englishman and the Bengal Hurkaru, and that the text of the drama brought the planters a bad name."[12] As soon as the planters noticed the circulation of the play, W. F. Fergusson, the Secretary of the Landholders' and Commercial Association, wrote to the Governor of Bengal. He inquired as to which parties had sanctioned the play and whether the authority of the Bengal Government had given permission to publish it. He also threatened those who had circulated "foul and malicious libel on indigo planting, evoking sedition and breaches of the peace".[13] He wrote that they must be prosecuted "with an utmost rigour of the law".[14] The Lieutenant Governor replied that some officials had caused the offence; the planters, unsatisfied with the answer, decided to institute legal proceedings with a view to ascertain the authors and publishers of the Nil Durpan. The words mentioned in Long’s Introduction to the play stated that what was presented in it was "plain but true"; this was subsequently used by the planters in their prosecution of Long for publishing defamatory statements. C. H. Manuel, whose name was mentioned as printer of Nil Durpan, was indicted in the Calcutta Supreme Court on 11 June 1861. He pleaded guilty, and his counsel (acting on Long’s advice) named Long as his employer in the matter of publishing.
Long's trial lasted from 19 to 24 July 1861, at the Calcutta Supreme Court. Mr. Peterson and Mr. Cowie prosecuted, Mr. Eglinton and Mr. Newmarch appeared on behalf of the defendant, and Sir M.L. Wells presided as judge. Wells found Long guilty of libel,[15] fined him one thousand rupees and sentenced him to one month’s imprisonment, which he served in the period of July–August 1861.[16] Kaliprasanna Singha paid the fine of Long's behalf...
As Long continued his educational work, he developed a keen interest in Russia, which he visited for the first time in 1863, and twice after his retirement in 1872. In his paper entitled Russia, Central Asia, and British India published in London in 1865, he wrote of his optimism about the prospects of serf emancipation, and against the current attitude of paranoia towards Russia about the valuable role of the Russian government and of the Orthodox Church in propagating Christianity in central Asia to serve as a bulwark against Islam.
-- James Long (Anglican priest), by Wikipedia
1855: Keshub Chunder Sen founds "The British India Society" later associated with Christian missionaries James Long and Charles Dall.
-- Brahmoism, by Wikipedia
Keshub Chandra Sen was born on 19 November 1838 into an affluent Kayastha family of Calcutta (now Kolkata). His family originally belonged to Gariffa village on the banks of the river Hooghly. His grandfather was Ramkamal Sen (1783–1844), a well known pro-sati Hindu activist and lifelong opponent of Ram Mohan Roy...
In 1855 he founded an evening school for the children of working men, which continued through 1858. In 1855, he became Secretary to the Goodwill Fraternity, a Masonic lodge associated with the Unitarian Rev. Charles Dall and a Christian missionary Rev. James Long who also helped Sen establish a "British Indian Association" in the same year. Around this time he began to be attracted to the ideas of the Brahmo Samaj.
Keshub Sen was also briefly appointed as Secretary of the Asiatic Society in 1854.
-- Keshub Chandra Sen, by Wikipedia
Church Missionary Society
Abbreviation CMS
Formation 12 April 1799
Founder Clapham Sect
Type Evangelical Anglicanism
Ecumenism
Protestant missionary
British Commonwealth
The Church Missionary Society in India was a branch organisation established by the Church Missionary Society (CMS), which was founded in Britain in 1799 under the name the Society for Missions to Africa and the East,[1] as a mission society working with the Anglican Communion, Protestant, and Orthodox Christians around the world. In 1812, the British organization was renamed the Church Missionary Society.[2]
In 1814 the CMS began sending missionaries to India and established mission stations at Chennai (Madras) and Bengal, then in 1816 at Travancore.[3] The mission stations were extended across India in the following years. The work among women was mainly left to the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society and the Zenana Bible and Medical Mission.[4]
The missions were financed by the CMS with the local organisation of a mission usually being under the oversight of the Bishop of the Anglican diocese in which the CMS mission operated. The successors of the Protestant church missions are the Church of South India and the Church of North India.[2]
The CMS in India
Henry Martyn, missionary to India and Persia
Holy Trinity Cathedral, Palayamkottai, Tirunelveli - Built by Rev. Charles Rhenius
The East India Company controlled access to India and only allowed its chaplains to work among the European communities. The Reverend Henry Martyn wanted to offer his services to the Church Missionary Society, however a financial disaster in Cornwall deprived him and his unmarried sister of the income their father had left for them. It was necessary for Martyn to earn an income that would support his sister as well as himself.[5] He accordingly obtained a chaplaincy under the East India Company and left for India on 5 July 1805.[6] William Wilberforce campaigned for the revision of the charter of the East India Company to permit missionaries to work in India. When the Charter Bill was passed in 1813 the CMS had missionaries ready for the India mission.[2] The Revd Charles Rhenius and the Revd John Christian Schnarre were the first CMS missionaries to arrive at India and were sent to work at Chennai (Madras).[7] Charles Rhenius later worked in Tirunelveli (Tinnevelly).
The CMS sent 7 missionaries to India in 1814-1816: two were placed at Chennai (Madras), two at Bengal and three at Travancore (1816).[3] The Indian missions were extended in the following years to a number of locations including Agra, Meerut district, Varanasi (Benares), Mumbai (Bombay) (1820), Tirunelveli (Tinnevelly) (1820) and Kolkata (Calcutta) (1822).
New mission stations were later established in the Telugu Country (1841) and at Lahore in the Punjab region (1852).[3][8]
While the Revolt of 1857 resulted in damage to the missions in the North West Provinces, after the revolt the CMS expanded its missions to Oudh, Allahbad, the Santhal people (1858), and to Kashmir (1865).[2][3][8]
Kolkata (Calcutta)
The CMS mission in Calcutta was started in 1822. The first CMS school was opened at Kidderpore, a suburb of Calcutta, in 1816; and the first girls’ school in 1822, by Miss M. A. Cooke, at Calcutta.[7] Reginald Heber, the Bishop of Calcutta (1823–1826) supported the work of the CMS mission.
The Revd James Long joined the mission in 1840. Edward Stuart served in India from 1850 to 1874. He was the Secretary of the Church Missionary Society at Calcutta. He also served at Agra and at Jalalpur.[9]
Agra
Valpy French arrived in India in 1851. He was sent to Agra, where he founded the St. John's College, Agra in 1853.[10]
Lahore
The CMS mission in Lahore started in 1852. The Revd H. U. Weitbrecht was sent to India in 1875 to be the Vice Principal of St. John's Divinity College, Lahore. Valpy French became the first Bishop of Lahore in 1877.[10]
Mission in Kerala
The contribution made by the society in creating and maintaining educational institutions in Kerala, the most literate state in India, is significant. Many colleges and schools in Kerala and Tamil Nadu still have CMS in their names. Among the oldest in modern India, the CMS College Kottayam is regarded a pioneer in popularising secondary education in southern India, whose famous alumni include former Indian President K. R. Narayanan, career diplomats K.P.S. Menon and K. M. Panikkar as well as scientist E. C. George Sudarshan.
The Revd Benjamin Bailey was appointed to the Kottayam mission in the Indian state of Kerala in 1816 and in 1821 he established a printing press.[3] Benjamin Bailey translated the complete Bible to Malayalam language. He also authored the first printed Malayalam-English Dictionary. He is considered as the father of Malayalam printing.[11]
CMS activities in the 20th Century
The CMS continued to send missionaries to India, including Frank Lake in 1937.
See also
• Christianity portal
• Christianity in India
• List of Protestant missionaries in India
• History of Christian missions
Notes
1. Mounstephen, Philip (2015). "Teapots and DNA: The Foundations of CMS". Intermission. 22.
2. Keen, Rosemary. "Church Missionary Society Archive". Adam Matthew Publications. Retrieved 29 January 2017.
3. "The Church Missionary Atlas (India)". Adam Matthew Digital. 1896. pp. 95–156. Retrieved 19 October 2015.
4. The Centenaru Volume of the Church Missionary Society for Africa and the East 1799-1899 (PDF). London : Church Missionary Society, digital publication: Cornell University. 1902. p. 19.
5. Lee, Sidney, ed. (1893). "Martyn, Henry" . Dictionary of National Biography. 36. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
6. F. L. Cross, E. A. Livingstone, eds. (13 March 1997). The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd edition. USA: Oxford University Press. pp. 1046. ISBN 019211655X.
7. The Centenaru Volume of the Church Missionary Society for Africa and the East 1799-1899 (PDF). London : Church Missionary Society, digital publication: Cornell University. 1902. p. 16.
8. "The Church Missionary Atlas (Church Missionary Society)". Adam Matthew Digital. 1896. pp. xi. Retrieved 19 October 2015.
9. Stock, Eugene (1913). "The Story of the New Zealand Mission". Retrieved 4 March 2019.
10. Thomas Valpy French Britannica.com.
11. Benjamin Bailiyum Malayala Saahityavum. By Dr. Babu Cherian. Published by the Department of Printing and Publishing, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam.