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
I think this one illustration explains more than many words would the
difference between work among the Classes and the Masses, and why it is
that one form of work is so much more fruitful than the other.
The Masses must not be understood as a vast casteless Mass, out-casted
by the Classes, for the Caste system runs down to the very lowest
stratum, but their Caste rules allow of freer intercourse with others.
We may visit in their houses more freely, enter more freely into their
thoughts, share more freely in the interests of their lives. We are less
outside, as it were. But the main difference between the one set of
people and the other lies deeper; it is a difference underground. It
works out, however, into something all can see. Among the Masses, "mass
movements" are of common occurrence; among the Classes, with rare
exceptions, each one must come out alone.
[Illustration: A village woman of the Shanar Caste. The photo shows the
baby's ears being prepared for the jewels her mother hopes will fill
them by and by. Holes are made first and filled with cotton wool,
graduated leaden weights are added till the lobes are long enough.]
This is often forgotten by observers of the Indian Field from the home
side. There are parts of that field where the labourers seem to be
always binding up sheaves and singing harvest songs; and from other
parts come fewer songs, for the sheaves are fewer there, or it may be
there are none at all, only a few poor ears of corn, and they had to be
gathered one by one, and they do not show in the field.
CHAPTER X
The Creed Chasm
"I have had to deal in the same afternoon's work,
on the one hand with men of keen powers of
intellect, whose subtle reasoning made one look to
the foundations of one's own faith; and on the
other hand with ignorant crowds, whose conception
of sin was that of a cubit measure, and to whom
the terms 'faith' and 'love' were as absolutely
unknown as though they had been born and bred in
some undeveloped race of Anthropoids."
_Rev. T. Walker, India._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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