Things as they are : $b Mission work in Southern IndiaCarmichael, Amy
Religion
Things as they are : $b Mission work in Southern India
Carmichael, Amy
India -- Social life and customs; Missions -- India
We had gone to her village to take photographs, and had just got the
street scene in the morning light. The crowd followed us, eager to see
more of the doings of the picture-catching box; and she, fearing the
defiling touch of the mixed Castes represented there, had climbed up on
a granite slab by the side of the road, and stood waiting till we
passed.
There we saw her, and there we took her,--for, to our surprise, she did
not object,--and now here she is, to show with all the force of truth
how far from ideal the real may be. We looked at her as I look at her
now, stripped of all God meant her to have when He made her, deep in the
mire of the lowest form of idolatry, a devotee of Siva. She had been to
Benares and bathed in the sacred Ganges, and therefore she is holy
beyond the reach of doubt. She has no room for any sense of the need of
Christ. She pities our ignorance when we talk to her. Is she not a
devotee? Has she not been to Benares?
Often and often we meet her in the high-caste houses of the place, where
she is always an honoured guest because of her wonderful sanctity. She
watches keenly then lest any of the younger members of the household
should incline to listen to us.
One of her relatives is an English-educated lawyer, a bitter though
covert foe, who not long ago stirred up such opposition that we were
warned not to go near the place. Men had been hired "to fall upon us and
beat us." This because a girl, a connection of his, read her Bible
openly, instead of in secret as she had done before. He connected this
action on her part with a visit we had paid to the house, and so induced
certain of the baser sort to do this thing. We went, however, just the
same, as we had work we had promised to do, and saw the old gentleman
sitting on the verandah reading his English newspaper in the most
pacific fashion. He seemed surprised to see us as we passed with a
salaam; we saw nothing of the beaters, and returned with whole bones, to
the relief of the community at large. Only I remember one of our Band
was woefully disappointed: "I thought, perhaps, we were going to be
martyrs," she said.
[Illustration: Street in the Red Lake Village. An ordinary typical
village scene, except that just then there were more people than usual
before the picture-catching box. The only way to keep them from crowding
round it was to show them something else: this explains the group on the
stones at the side.]
And so we realise, as so often in India, the power of both extremes; the
one with all the force of his education, and the other with all the
force of her superstition, each uniting with the other in repelling the
coming of the Saviour both equally need.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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