DIAMPER SYNOD AS MIMICRY OF THE TRENT COUNCIL

The Canon Laws were Frozen Later

The Diamper Synod of 1599,convened by the Portuguese Goa Arch Bishop Alexio de Menezes,seems to me a mimicry of the Council of Trent held during 1545-1563.Like the Council of Trent called by three Popes,the Diamper Synod is characterised by sweeping decrees,aimed at imposition of the Pope's supremacy over the Indian Church.It was vehemently challenged by the Koonan Cross Oath of 1653 and the Diamper decrees were frozen.There is a tendency in the Latin Church in Kerala to glorify the Synod as as a creative dialogue between two versions of the faith-the Eurocentric and Indian.Ultimately indianness prevailed.

Certain canons the Synod passed are termed as progressive by the Latin Church,like the clause for the share of property even to the women.But it is known to everyone the Supreme Court had to intervene finally in 1986 in the Mary Roy case to establish the right of Christian women in the Father's wealth.

Diamper is the Portuguese name for Udayamperur,near Tripunithura in Cochin.A stone's throw away from,my home.

Synod of Diamper

It was the council that formally united the ancient Thomas Christians of the Malabar Coast of Southwestern India with the Roman Catholic Church. It was convoked in 1599 by Aleixo de Meneses, archbishop of Goa. The Synod renounced Nestorianism, the heresy that believed in two persons rather than two natures in Christ, as the Indians were suspected of being heretics by the Portuguese missionaries. The local patriarch—representing the Assyrian Church of the East, to which ancient Christians in India had looked for ecclesiastical authority—was then removed from jurisdiction in India and replaced by a Portuguese bishop; the East Syrian liturgy of Addai and Mari was “purified from error”; and Latin vestments, rituals, and customs were introduced to replace the ancient traditions. The forced Latinization and disregard for local tradition were accompanied by violence and led to schism among Thomas Christians by the mid-17th century.

As the Thomas Christian community grew, its members enjoyed about a millennium of theological and ecclesiastical cohesion and unity. That state of affairs changed after the Portuguese arrival. In April 1498 two Thomas Christians piloted Vasco da Gama’s small fleet from Melinda (East Africa) to Calicut (present-day Kozhikode), an event recorded by two Thomas Christian metrans (Malayam for “bishop”). Half a century later two more Thomas Christians made it possible for the Jesuit missionary St. Francis Xavier to bring shoreline fisherfolk, the Parayars and Mukkavars, into the Roman Catholic fold. Nevertheless, harmonious relations with the Catholics did not last. After 1561, Thomas Christians were branded heretics by the Goa Inquisition, which had been established under Portuguese rule. The 1599 Synod of Diamper anathematized the catholicos of Chaldea and all Christians of India who did not submit to Rome. Ancient churches were destroyed, libraries were burned, and clerics from Mesopotamia were intercepted, imprisoned, and executed.

Yet, eventually, ancient skills of silent resistance and subversion wore out one prelate after another. In 1653 anti-Catholic kattanars met at Koonen (“Crooked”) Cross, a granite monument at Mattancheri. There they swore an oath to never again accept another farangi (European) prelate and installed their own high metran (patriarch). Archdeacon (Ramban) Parambil Thoma became their first indigenous prelate, taking the title Mar Thoma I (Mar is a Syriac term meaning “Saint”). A schism occurred, with some Thomas Christian clergy remaining Roman Catholic while others divided between East Syrian (more closely affiliated with the Assyrian Church of the East) and West Syrian (called Jacoba, after the evangelist Jacob Baradaeus) authority. The unity that Thomas Christians had enjoyed for a thousand years ended in the proliferation of ever more denominations.

Dutch ascendancy along the Malabar Coast in the 17th century helped Thomas Christian communities preserve their ecclesiastical autonomy. The Portuguese Estado da India (“State of India”) could no longer enforce its writ outside Goa. Portuguese control over Thomas Christian Catholics was challenged by Roman Catholic missionaries sent by the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith. The schism lasted until the 19th century, when the Synod of Pondicherry (present-day Puducherry), organized by Msgr. Clement Bonnand, eventually led to a Latin-rite Catholic hierarchy. Non-Catholic Syrian Thomas Christian communities survived but continued to struggle for autonomy.

Council of Trent 1545/By Nicolo Dorigati

As the English East India Company gained ascendancy in the 18th century, Thomas Christians faced new challenges. In 1806 High Metran Mar Dionysius I (Mar Thoma VI) presented an ancient (perhaps 12th-century) copy of Syriac scriptures to Claudius Buchanan, a Church of England clergyman and representative of the government of India. In return, Mar Dionysius I was promised a missionary teacher, a modern seminary for training Thomas Christian clergy, and a Malayalam translation of scriptures for every pulpit. The partnership was ended by the Synod of Mavelikkara in 1836, when Thomas Christians broke away from Anglican domination. Reform-minded Thomas Christians at Kottayam Seminary then broke away from the high metran’s authority. A splinter group became Anglican, while most reformers staunchly adhered to ancient church traditions. Among Thomas Christian Catholics, meanwhile, struggles over Syrian, Latin, and Malabar rites continued. European Catholic prelates tried to bring autonomous Thomas Christian churches under the authority of Rome.

Council of Trent

It was the 19th ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church, held in three parts from 1545 to 1563. Prompted by the Reformation, the Council of Trent was highly important for its sweeping decrees on self-reform and for its dogmatic definitions that clarified virtually every doctrine contested by the Protestants. Despite internal strife and two lengthy interruptions, the council was a key part of the Counter-Reformation and played a vital role in revitalizing the Roman Catholic Church in many parts of Europe.

Period I: 1545–47

Though Germany demanded a general council following the excommunication of the German Reformation leader Martin Luther, Pope Clement VII held back for fear of renewed attacks on his supremacy. France, too, preferred inaction, afraid of increasing German power. Clement’s successor, Paul III, however, was convinced that Christian unity and effective church reform could come only through a council. After his first attempts were frustrated, he convoked a council at Trent (northern Italy), which opened on December 13, 1545.

As the council opened, some bishops urged for immediate reform, and others sought clarification of Catholic doctrines; a compromise was reached whereby both topics were to be treated simultaneously. The council then laid the groundwork for future declarations: the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed was accepted as the basis of Catholic faith; the canon of Old and New Testament books was definitely fixed; tradition was accepted as a source of faith; the Latin Vulgate was declared adequate for doctrinal proofs; the number of sacraments was fixed at seven; and the nature and consequences of original sin were defined. After months of intense debate, the council ruled against Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone: man, the council said, was inwardly justified by cooperating with divine grace that God bestows gratuitously. By enjoining on bishops an obligation to reside in their respective sees, the church effectively abolished plurality of bishoprics. Political problems forced the council’s transfer to Bologna and finally interrupted its unfinished work altogether.

Period II: 1551–52

Before military events forced a second adjournment of the council, the delegates finished an important decree on the Eucharist that defined the Real Presence of Christ in opposition to the interpretation of Huldrych Zwingli, the Swiss Reformation leader, and the doctrine of transubstantiation as opposed to that of Luther’s consubstantiation. The sacrament of penance was extensively defined, extreme unction (later, the anointing of the sick) explained, and decrees issued on episcopal jurisdiction and clerical discipline. German Protestants, meanwhile, were demanding a reconsideration of all the council’s previous doctrinal decrees and wanted a statement asserting that a council’s authority is superior to that of the pope.

Period III: 1562–63

Pope Paul IV (1555–59) was opposed to the council, but it was reinstated by Pius IV (1559–65). The arrival of French bishops reopened the explosive question regarding the divine basis for the obligations of bishops to reside in their sees. When peace was restored, the council defined that Christ is entirely present in both the consecrated bread and the consecrated wine in the Eucharist but left to the pope the practical decision of whether or not the chalice should be granted to the laity. It defined the mass as a true sacrifice; issued doctrinal statements on holy orders, matrimony, purgatory, indulgences, and the veneration of saints, images, and relics; and enacted reform decrees on clerical morals and the establishment of seminaries.

Pius IV confirmed the council’s decrees in 1564 and published a summary of its doctrinal statements; observance of disciplinary decrees was imposed under sanctions. In short order the catechism of Trent appeared, the missal and breviary were revised, and eventually a revised version of the Bible was published. By the end of the century, many of the abuses that had motivated the Protestant Reformation had disappeared, and the Roman Catholic Church had reclaimed many of its followers in Europe. The council, however, failed to heal the schism that had sundered the Western Christian church.

The Canon Law

From the time that the Gregorian Reform introduced a more centralized ecclesiastical administration, the number of appeals to Rome and the number of papal decisions mounted. New papal laws and decisions, called decretals, first added to Gratian’s Decretum, were soon gathered into separate collections, of which the best known are the Quinque compilationes antiquae (“Five Ancient Compilations”). The first, the Breviarium extravagantium (“Compendium of Decretals Circulating Outside”; i.e., not yet collected) of Bernard of Pavia, introduced a system inspired by the codification of Justinian, a division of the material into five books, briefly summarized in the phrase judex, judicium, clerus, connubium, crimen (“judge, trial, clergy, marriage, crime”). Each book was subdivided into titles and these in turn into capitula, or canons. This system was taken over by all subsequent collections of decretals. These compilations were the foremost source of the Liber extra (“Book Outside”—i.e., of decretals not in Gratian’s Decretum), or Liber decretalium Gregorii IX (“Book of Decretals of Gregory IX”), composed by St. Raymond of Peñafort, a Spanish canonist, and promulgated on September 5, 1234, as the exclusive codex for all of canon law after Gratian. On March 3, 1298, Pope Boniface VIII promulgated Liber sextus (“Book Six”), composed of official collections of Innocent IV, Gregory X, and Nicholas III and private collections and decretals of his own, as the exclusive codex for the canon law since the Liber extra. The Constitutiones Clementinae (“Constitutions of Clement”) of Pope Clement V, most of which were enacted at the Council of Vienne (1311–12), were promulgated on October 25, 1317, by Pope John XXII, but they were not an exclusive collection. The Decretum Gratiani, the Liber extra, Liber sextus, and the Constitutiones Clementinae, with the addition of two private collections, the Extravagantes of John XXII and the Extravagantes communes (“Decretals Commonly Circulating”), were printed and published together for the first time in Paris in 1500. This entire collection soon received the name Corpus Juris Canonici (“Corpus of Canon Law”).

The science of canon law was developed by the writers of glosses, the commentators on the Decree of Gratian (decretists), and the commentators on the collections of decretals (decretalists). Their glosses were based on the system used by Gratian: next to the texts of canons parallel texts were noted, then conflicting ones, followed by a solutio (“solution”), again with text references. In connection with this the glosses of other canonists were also introduced. In this way the apparatus glossarum, continuous commentaries on the entire book, arose. The glossa ordinaria (“ordinary explanation”) on the different parts of the Corpus Juris Canonici was the apparatus that was used universally in the schools. After the classical period of the glossators (12th–14th century), terminated by the work of a lay Italian canonist, John Andreae (c. 1348), came that of the post-glossators. In the absence of new legislation in the time of the “Babylonian Captivity” (1309–77), when the papacy was situated at Avignon, France, and the Western Schism (1378–1417), when there were at least two popes reigning simultaneously, the commentaries on decretals continued but with a larger production of special tracts—e.g., regarding the laws of benefices and marriage and of consilia (advice about concrete legal questions).

Toward the end of the Middle Ages, decretal law ceased to govern. Medieval Christian society became politically and ecclesiastically divided according to the principle of cujus regio, ejus religio (“whose region, his religion”; i.e., the religion of the prince is the religion of the land). In Protestant areas the former Roman Catholic church buildings and benefices were taken over by other churches; and even in the lands that remained Roman Catholic the churches found themselves in an isolated position as secularization forced them to reorganize. With the end of feudalism, canon law dealing with benefices, chapters, and monasteries, which were closely bound to the feudal structure, changed. The territorial, material, and economic character of canon law and the decentralization allied with it disappeared. The decision of the reform councils from Pisa (1409) until the fifth Lateran Council (1512–17) affected, in particular, benefices, papal reservations, taxes, and other such ecclesiastical matters. In the same period various concordats (agreements) permitted the princes to intervene in the issue of ecclesiastical benefices and property. Canon law took on a more defensive character, with prohibitions regarding books, mixed marriages, participation of Roman Catholics in Protestant worship and vice versa, education of the clergy in seminaries, and other such areas of concern.

At the Roman Catholic reform Council of Trent (1545–63), a new foundation for the further development of canon law was expressed in the Capita de reformatione (“Articles Concerning Reform”), which were discussed and accepted in 10 of the 25 sessions. Papal primacy was not only dogmatically affirmed against conciliarism (the view that councils are more authoritative than the pope) but was also juridically strengthened in the conduct and implementation of the council. The central position of the bishops was recovered, over against the decentralization that had been brought about by the privileges and exemptions of chapters, monasteries, fraternities, and other corporate bodies that sprang from Germanic law, as well as caused by the rights granted to patrons. In practically all matters of reform the bishops received authority ad instar legati S. Sedis (“like delegates of the Holy See”). Strict demands were made for admission to ordination and offices; measures were taken against luxurious living, nepotism, and the neglect of the residence obligation; training of the clergy in seminaries was prescribed; prescriptions were given about pastoral care, schools for the young, diocesan and provincial synods, confession, and marriage; the right to benefices was purified of misuse; and the formalistic law of procedure was simplified.

The council gave the duty of execution of the reform to the Pope. On January 26, 1564, Pius IV confirmed the decisions and reserved for himself their interpretation and execution, and on August 2, 1564, he established the Congregation of the Council for that purpose. The congregations of cardinals, which proceeded from the former permanent commissions of the consistorium (the assembly of the pope with the Sacred College of Cardinals), were organized by Pope Sixtus V in 1587. Since then the administrative apparatus of the Roman Curia has consisted of congregations of cardinals together with courts and offices. This apparatus made it possible for the Latin church to acquire a uniform canon law system that was developed in detail.

First Vatican Council,1859

Expansion of the church brought with it expansion of the ordinary hierarchical episcopal structure. This was true also for the new colonies under the right of patronage of the Spanish and Portuguese kings. In the other mission areas and in the areas taken over by the Protestants, where the realization of the episcopal structure and the decretal law adopted by Trent was not possible, the organization of mission activity was taken from missionaries and religious orders and given to the Holy See. The Sacred Congregation for Propagation of the Faith (the Propaganda) was established for this purpose in 1622. Missionaries received their mandate from Rome; the administration was given over to apostolic vicars (bishops of territories having no ordinary hierarchy) and prefects (having episcopal powers, but not necessarily bishops) who were directly dependent on the Propaganda, from which they received precisely described faculties. A new, uniform mission law was created, without noteworthy native influence; this sometimes led to conflict, such as the Chinese rites controversy in the 17th and 18th centuries over the compatibility of rites honouring Confucius and ancestors with Christian rites.

The First Vatican Council (1869–70) strengthened the central position of the papacy in the constitutional law of the church by means of its dogmatic definition of papal primacy. Disciplinary canons were not enacted at the council, but the desire expressed by many bishops that canon law be codified did have influence on the emergence and content of the code of canon law.

Since the closing off of the Corpus Juris Canonici, there had been no official or noteworthy private collection of the canon law except for the constitutions of Pope Benedict XIV (reigned 1740–58). The material was spread out in the collections of the Corpus Juris Canonici and in the generally very incomplete private publications of the acta of popes, of general and local councils, and the various Roman congregations and legal organs, which made canon law into something unmanageable and uncertain. The need for codification was recognized even more because of the fact that since the end of the 18th century, secular law had undergone a period of great codification. Several private attempts to do this had met with little success.

On March 19, 1904, Pius X announced his intention to complete the codification, and he named a commission of 16 cardinals, with himself as chairman. Bishops and university faculties were asked to cooperate. The schemata of the five books that were prepared in Rome—universal norms, personal law, law of things, penal law, and procedural law—were proposed in the years 1912–14 to all those who would ordinarily be summoned to an ecumenical council, and with their observations were then reworked in the cardinals’ commission. The entire undertaking and all the drafts were under the papal seal of secrecy and were not published. Meanwhile, Pius X introduced various reforms that were to a great degree the results of the commission’s work. In July 1916 the preparations for the Codex Juris Canonici (“Code of Canon Law”) were completed. The code was promulgated on Pentecost Sunday, May 27, 1917, and became effective on Pentecost Sunday, May 19, 1918.

In contrast to all earlier official collections, this code was a complete and exclusive codification of all universal church law then binding in the Latin church. Out of fear of political difficulties, a systematic handling of public church law, especially what concerned the relations between church and state, was omitted. Its main purpose was to offer a codification of the law, and only incidentally adaptation, and so it introduced relatively little that was new legislation. The 2,414 canons were divided into five books that no longer followed the system of the collections of decretals but did follow that of the Perugian canonist Paul Lancelotti’s Institutiones juris canonici (1563; “Institutions of Canon Law”), which in turn went back to the division of the 2nd-century Roman lawyer Gaius’s Institutiones—one section on persons, two sections on things, and one section on actions—and was based on the fundamental idea of Roman law—i.e., subjective right. In some editions the sources that were used by the editors were indicated at the individual canons. With the publication of the codex these sources belonged to the history of the law. Older general and particular law, in conflict with the codex, was given up and, insofar as it was not in conflict with it, served only as a means for interpreting the code. The old law of custom in conflict with the code and expressly reprobated by it was rendered null; when not reprobated and 100 years old or immemorial, it could be allowed by ordinaries for pressing reasons. Acquired rights and concordats in force remained in force. With this change, an independent science of the history of canon law became necessary, in addition to the dogmatic canonical science of canon law on the basis of the code.

Our Lady of Life Church,Mattancherry,Venue of Coonan Cross Oath

In order to ensure the unity of the codification and the law, a commission of cardinals was established on September 15, 1917, for the authentic interpretation of the new code. At the same time it was decided that the cardinals’ congregations should no longer make new general decrees but only instructions for the carrying out of the prescriptions of the code. Should a general decree appear necessary, it was determined, the commission would formulate new canons and insert them into the code. Neither of these decisions was carried out. Only two canons were altered and congregations promulgated numerous general decrees. New papal legislation complemented and altered the law of the code.

Catholic Eastern churches (churches in union with the Roman Catholic Church) retain their own traditions in liturgy and church order, insofar as these are not considered to be in conflict with the norms taken by Rome to be divine law. In 1929 Pius XI set up a commission of cardinals for the codification of canon law valid for all Uniate churches in the East. In the following year a commission was established for the preparation of the codification and another for the collection of the sources of Eastern law, in which experts of all rites were involved. These collections were published in three series, begun respectively in 1930, 1935, and 1942.

In 1935 the preparatory commission became the Pontifical Commission for the Redaction of the Codex Juris Canonici Orientalis (“Code of Oriental Canon Law”). The cooperation of all Eastern ordinaries (bishops, patriarchs, and others having jurisdictions) was requested, and the drafts of the various documents were sent to them. Thereafter four parts were published: in 1949, on marriage law; in 1952, on the law for monks and other religious, on ecclesiastical properties, and a title De Verborum Significatione (“Concerning the Meaning of Words,” a series of definitions of legal terms used in the canons); and in 1957, on constitutional law, especially of the clergy. The still-incomplete codification followed the Latin code with the assimilation of the authentic interpretation and with textual corrections, as well as with the insertion of the general law proper to the Eastern churches, including the Orthodox churches, regarding the patriarchs and their synods, marriage law, the law of religious, and other matters. The promulgation was made only in Latin in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, the official organ of the Holy See. The Catholic Eastern churches came under the Congregation for the Eastern Churches that was established on January 6, 1862, by Pius IX as part of the Propaganda Fide; it was made independent by Benedict XV on May 1, 1917, and expanded considerably by Pius XI on March 25, 1938. Roman legislation as well as the jurisdiction of a congregation of the Roman Curia was criticized as being incompatible with the traditional autonomy of the Eastern churches in legislation and administration.

© Ramachandran 

DRAWING A PARALLEL BETWEEN BIBLE AND VEDAS

Attempts to Draw Parallels Between Hinduism and Christianity

Krishna Mohan Banerjee ( 1813-1885 ),who got converted to Christianity in 1932,was the first protestant Christian to interpret Jesus and Christianity in terms of Vedic thought.In the 1860s his thought on the relation between Hinduism and Christianity underwent considerable changes,as he began to take a positive stance on Hinduism.The puropose of his book,The Arian Witness ( 1875) was to show the striking parallels between the Old Testament and the Vedas,and then to conclude Christianity was the logical conclusion of Vedic Hinduism.He wrote that the  fundamental principles of the Gospel were recognized and acknowledged both in theory and practice by the Aryans in India.The original home of the Aryans and Abraham was the same,namely Media.There are striking parallels between Hebrew and Sanskrit.There are parallels to the Biblical creation stories in the Vedas.The legend of the Deluge is there in the Old Testament and Sathapatha Brahmana.

The original sacrifice of the Vedas refers to the self-sacrifice of Prajapathi,which foreshadowed the Cross of Jesus Christ.In the two supplementary essays,and in the booklet,The Relation Between Christianity and Hinduism ( 1881),Banerjee further expounded the similarity between Hindu and Christian thought with respect to the understanding of Sacrifice.The two theses of Banerjee were as follows:

"That the fundamental principles of Christian doctrine in relation to the salvation of the world find a remarkable counterpart in the Vedic principles of primitive Hiduism in relation to the destruction of sin,and the redemption of the sinner by the efficacy of the Sacrifice itself a figure of Prajapathi,the Lord and Saviour of the Creation,who had given himself up as an offering to that purpose.

"That the meaning of Prajapathi an appellative,variously described as a Purusha begotten in the beginning,as Viswakarma,the creator of all,singularly coincide with the meaning of the names and offices of the historical reality,Jesus Christ,and that no other person other than Jesus of Nazareth has ever appeared in the world claiming the character and position of the self-sacrificing Prajapathi,at the same time mortal and immortal..."

Banerjee's exposition of Christ as the True Prajapathi was an attempt to establish that Christianity is not a foreign religion but rather the fulfilment of the Vedas.38 years before J N Furqahar,it was Banerjee who was one of the first proponents of 'Fulfilment Theory" or incluvism in Indian Christian theology of religions,and without any of the negative criticisms of Hinduism that can be found in Furqahar's work.

John Nicol Farquhar ( 1861 – 1929) was a Scottish educational missionary to Calcutta, and an Orientalist. He is one of the pioneers who popularised the Fulfilment theology in India that Christ is the crown of Hinduism, though, Fulfilment thesis in Bengal was built on foundation originally laid in Madras by William Miller.He authored several books on Hinduism, notably, The Crown of Hindustan, A Primer of Hinduism, Gita and Gospel, and many alike.

Some 84 years before Raimundo Panikkar,Banerjee was the first person to hint at Prajapathi as the "unknown Christ of Hinduism" -again,without any negative criticisms of Vedanta as are found in Panikkar's thesis.Finally,63 years before Kraemer proposed his theory of Discontinuity between 'revelation' and 'religions',Banerjee was expounding a theory of points of contact and continuity between Christianity and Hinduism.

Raimon Panikkar Alemany, also known as Raimundo Panikkar and Raymond Panikkar ( 1918 – 2010), was a Spanish Roman Catholic priest and a proponent of Interfaith dialogue. As a scholar, he specialized in comparative religion.His father, Ramunni Panikkar, belonged to a Nair family,Karimba Menakath Allambadath,Mannarkad,Palakkad,South India. Panikkar's father was a freedom fighter during British colonial rule in India, who later escaped from Britain and married into a Catalan family.

The Dutch theologian Hendrik Kraemer (1888–1965) applied the doctrine of the theology of the Word to non-Christian religions in The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World, which had a wide impact on the overseas mission field. Since religions are cultural products and since each system of belief is organic and particular, there are, according to Kraemer, no points of contact between them and the Gospel (even Christianity as an empirical religion must be distinguished from it: its only advantage is to have been continuously under the judgment and influence of the Gospel). Kraemer’s position has come under some criticism from students of comparative religion; one of the theological problems it poses is that it seems to shut off the possibilities of dialogue between religions.

These theories from Christian theologians became an excercise in futility,because  the question remains still whether Christianity is Dvaita or Advaita.If Jesus is the son of God,and then if there is another Holy Spirit apart from the Father and Son,there comes a trinity;in Hinduism the Trinity is EKAM or indivisible.Christianity can boast of any similarity to Hinduism only if they agree that that their Trinity is EKAM.Otherwise Christianity will just be the Poorva Meemamsa,not Vedanta.Hinduism developed defeating all the Poorva Meemamdsas including Buddhism.And,Christianity came to India with colonialism,with East India Company,to conquer,after King Charles II of England recognized Christianity as its official religion.Hinduism had never been declared the official religion in India;religions with the single God,like Christianity and Marxism,have created only dictatorships the world over,whereas Hinduism stands for pluralism and democracy.

Hence there was no need for Banerjee to get converted into Christianity in the first place.

William Carey(1761-1834),known as the Father of modern missions,was the first English Baptist Missionary in India.Born into a family of weavers,at 14,his father sent him to a cobbler as apprentice.Carey,who wanted to make a different kind of shoe,gave final shape to his missionary manifesto in 1792:An Enquiry into the Obligation of Christians to use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens.He formed the Baptist Mission Society with Andrew Fuller,John Ryland and John Sutcliffe as charter members.He met Dr John Thomas a medical missionary who was in Kolkata,then in England and decided to accompany him to India.His mission didn't have the blessings of English East India Company.He had to leave the ship midway and  board a Danish ship.He reached Kolkata in 1793 november and John Thomas made him manage a Midnapore Indigo factory for six years.He then moved to the Serampore Danish colony where a second hand printing press was installed.From there he printed The Bible in 44 languages.His favorite quote in his sermons was from Isaiah,54:2-3:Expect great things from God;Attempt great things for God.

Carey's first convert was Krishna Pal ,a sudra,in 1802.Same year,Krishnapal's daughter married a Brahmin.This proved that his Church repudiated caste distinctions.With generous contribution from the  Governor General Richard Wellesley,the Serampore College was built;Carey became Bengali Professor.He had to sever his ties with the mission he founded towards the end of his life and he lived in the campus.

Krishna Mohan Banerjee (1813-1885) became a Christian two years before Carey's death.He was never under Carey's influence.He imbibed the essence of Bengal Renaissance and attempted to rethink Hindu philosophy,religion and ethics in response to the stimulus of Christian ideas.

His conversion took Bengal by storm.He lost his job and his wife for a while.

He was born in Syampur,in the house of his maternal grandfather Ramjay Vidyabhushan,who was court pundit of Santiram Singha of Jarasanko.He was the son of Jibankrishna Banerjee and Sreemoti Devi.In 1819 he joined School Society Institution of David Hare(1775-1842) which became Hare's School later.Hare was a Scottish watchmaker with no faith commitments.Banerjee attended the Hindu College (now  Presidency University) in 1831 where his English play,The Persecuted was staged.

The Persecuted or Dramatic Scenes Illustrative ofthe Present State of Hindoo Society in Calcutta was written by Krishna Mohan Banejee in the year 1831, when he was about eighteen years old. Krishna Mohan dedicated The Persecuted to “Hindoo Youths” with (in his own words) “sentiments of affection, and strong hopes oftheir appreciating those virtues and mental energies which elevate man in the estimation of a philosopher” {Preface, The Persecuted).For more than a generation, The Persecuted remained the solitary dramatic effort in English not only in Bengal, but anywhere in India.

There can be little doubt that this drama was written with a particular purpose, as Krishna Mohan himselfmade it clear both in the extended title and also in the Preface to the drama: "The author’s purpose has been to compute its excellence by measuring the effects it will produce upon the minds of the rising generation. The inconsistencies and blackness of the influential members of the Hindoo community have been depicted before their eyes. They will now clearly perceive the wiles and tricks ofthe Brahmins and thereby be able to guard themselves against them" (Preface to The Persecuted).

He became a member of Henry Louis Vivian Derozio's Young Bengal group.Derozio,poet,radical thinker and Principal of Hindu College died of cholera the year Banerjee joined the college.Banerjee attended the lectures of the Scottish missionary,Alexander Duff,who came to India in 1830.He came under Duff's sway and embraced Christianity in 1832.

At the time the play was written, Krishna Mohan was strongly under the influence of Derozio and believed in no religion at all. He had caught the atheistic and anti- religious trend ofthe day and joined the crowd ofself-styled reformers. Though he was to convert later, until this time Krishna Mohan had not yet manifested any interest in Christianity. All his efforts were directed towards bold criticism of the inconsistencies and superstitions of the Hindu religion, but he had no belief in any religion or any god whatsoever. As is recorded by Lai Behari Day in Recollections of Alexander Duff (1879), at this point of time the Christian Missionaries were as much an object, of ridicule for him and his friends as were the orthodox Hindus. In Day’s own words: “At that time I was perfectly regardless of God, and never took the trouble of thinking of Him”. 

The Persecuted is an autobiographical play, based on a real life incident in the life of Krishna Mohan, but since it was written in the “pre-Christian” phase of his life, in spite of its anti-Hindu tirades this play had no Christian agenda behind it and it should be looked in the context of the first eighteen years of Krishna Mohan’s life. Krishna Mohan Banerjee was bom in May 1813 in Calcutta. His parents were orthodox Kulin Brahmins. At the age of five, he was initiated by means of shastra rites into the life of a student. When he was eleven years old, Krishna Mohan was invested with the Brahminical sacred thread. In February 1824 he was admitted to the Hindu College and there he commenced his study of Sanskrit and English. Krishna Mohan was a diligent student and often won prizes in College competitions. He was an enthusiastic participant in college cultural functions as well. In 1828, at the age of fifteen, he lost his father, but having obtained of the Education Committee’s scholarships, he was able to continue his studies.

On the first of November 1829, he left college and was appointed assistant teacher in-David Hare’s school. He married in the same year.With conversion,Banerjee lost his job in Hare's School.His wife Bindhyobashini was forced to flee to her father's house.She joined him in later life.He converted her,his brother Kalicharan and Gnanendra Mohan Tagore,son of Prasannakumar Tagore.Gnanendra Mohan married Banerjee's daughter Kamalmani and became the first Asian to qualify as a Barrister in 1862.

The newly introduced English education had resulted in alarming and unprecedented effects on the young educated Bengali. Lai Behari Day speaks of how the young Bengali mind, released from the bondage of age-old tradition, ran wild and the Bengali intellect adopted the boldest forms of scepticism: From implicit faith in the religion of their forefathers, they rushed into blank scepticism. They became sceptical over the very existence of God. “What proof is there”, they asked, “that the national religion is not a cunningly devised fable, palmed off upon ignorant populace by an interested priesthood?” .They began to question Hindu taboos on eating forbidden food and drinking spirituous liquor, and questioned the infallibility of those who were instrumental in framing these taboos. “Why should we blindly follow the dicta of men not wiser than ourselves?”,they  asked (Day, Recollections of Alexander Duff).

The Derozians gave vent to their apathy for the so called 'decadent' Hinduism through their periodical The Parthenon, which was, however, soon discontinued by the Hindu College.authorities owing to its radical anti-Hindu propensities. The discontinuance of The Parthenon did not deter the Derozians who had come to be known as “Young Bengal”. They continued to attack orthodox Hindu society and its superstitions through the press. On 17th May 1831, The Enquirer was published under the leadership of Krishna Mohan. This journal was to serve as the mouthpiece ofthe liberals, through which they planned to carry out their anti-religious propaganda.4 In the journal, Krishna Mohan wrote violent articles on the errors of Hinduism and its leaders. The Enquirer inveighed against the corrupt tyranny of the Hindu priesthood, and the social evils of Sati, female infanticide and Kulin polygamy.

In the July 1831 issue of The Enquirer, Krishna Mohan wrote: The rage of persecution is still vehement. The bigots are up with their thunders of fulmination. The heat of the Gurum Sabha is violent.Excommunication is the cry of the fanatic. We hope perseverance will be liberal’s answer. The Gurum Sabha is high; let it ascend to the boiling point. The orthodox are in a rage; let them burst forth into a flame. Let the liberal’s voice be like that of the Roman, a Roman knows not only to act but to suffer. Blown be the trumpet of excommunication from house to house. Be some hundreds cast out of society; they will form a party, and object devoutly to be wished by us.

Krishna Mohan had become the eye-sore of the orthodox Hindus and therefore also the hero of the ultra radical anti-idolatrous section in Calcutta. His house became the resort of all the ultra radical youth. Certain less prudent and over-emotional Derozians gradually turned their self constructed liberty into license. Thus on the evening of 23rd August 1831, a Derozian group assembled in the residence of Krishna Mohan. Krishna Mohan himself was absent in this assembly. The youth took beef and wine and threw the bones in the inner courtyard of an adjoining house inhabited by an orthodox Brahmin. This act was brazen enough to provoke the Brahmin who rallied thousands of his bigoted allies to redress his humiliation at the hands of these youth. They assailed Krishna Mohan’s family to publicly disown him or face excommunication. Having no other alternative his family summoned Krishna Mohan to their presence and presented him with the alternatives of both recanting his errors by an open disavowal of his past actions, and proclaiming his beliefin the Hindu faith or to leave his ancestral home permanently and be forever deprived of all the privileges and immunities of caste. Krishna Mohan chose the latter extremity and left his home.

This odious separation from his beloved kith and kin took a heavy toll on Krishna Mohan’s health and threw him into a paroxysm of rage against those who had been instrumental in this separation. This bitterness found vehement expression in the columns of The Enquirer where he broke forth in vituperative denunciation of Hinduism: We left the home where we passed our infant days; we left our mother that nourished us in our childhood; we left our brothers with whom we associated in our earliest days; we left our sisters with whom we sympathized when we were bom.

Alexander Duff

Besides denouncing in no unmeasured terms in his journal Hindu idolatry, caste-system, Hindu mythology and its “absurdities”, together with the blazing 'immoralities pervading the ranks of Hinduism', Krishna Mohan sought to ridicule the Hindu society and religion through the play The Persecuted (1831) where Hindu orthodoxy was assailed and the hypocrisy of the Brahmin priesthood was mercilessly exposed. Krishna Mohan’s anti-caste-system sentiments found candid expression in this play.

It was about this time (1831) that Krishna Mohan’s attention was drawn to Christianity,and he became a prize catch for Alexander Duff.Missionaries were trying to catch the high caste Hindus.Duff expressed his deep sympathy for Krishna Mohan’s sufferings and asked him to examine impartially the claims of Christianity. Krishna Mohan has recorded that, "At that time I was perfectly regardless of God, and never took the trouble of thinking of Him. This ingratitude was overcome with kindness by Him, for though I never did seek after the nature and attributes of my great creator, yet, as a merciful father, He forgot me not. Though I neglected Him, yet He had compassion on me, and without my knowledge or inclination, created, so to speak, a circumstance that impelled me to seek after Him".

It was not very difficult to fill the vacuum that was created in Krishna Mohan’s life because of his excommunication. Duff ultimately influenced Krishna Mohan to embrace Christianity. Krishna Mohan was baptized on 17th October 1832. He regarded the incident as a “public recantation of all error and public embracing of the truth, the whole truth, as revealed in the Bible."

Krishna Mohan’s conversion raised a storm in Hindu society.

In 1852, Banerjee was appointed a professor of Oriental Studies at Bishop's College, Kolkata. He had studied aspects of Christianity as a student of the same college between 1836 and 1839.

Krishna Mohan’s rebel spirit continued to spur him whenever he was faced with discrimination. Thus, in the year 1847, he voiced his opinion against the domination of the church by the European missionaries, and demanded that native and European missionaries should be paid equally. When the church did not accept his demand, he refused the post at St. Paul’s Cathedral. Again, in his Arian Witness (1875), Krishna Mohan argued that the Prajapati of the Vedas is Jesus Christ.

Rev Krishna Mohan Banerjee died on 11 May 1885 in Kolkata, and was buried at Shibpur with his wife. The graveyard is currently located inside the campus of IIEST.

____________________________

Reference:

Christian Approaches to Other Faiths /edited by Paul Hedges, Alan Race

© Ramachandran 

CHRISTIANS IN GANDHI'S FOLD

Prof S K George Lost his Job for Supporting Gandhi

Gandhi was one of those Hindus who had studied the scriptures of all the important religions with open mind and without prejudice. During his prayer meetings, parts of the Bible were read out and at times Psalms were sung along with 'bhajans'. The Sermon on the Mount "went straight to his heart", he used to say. During his life-time Gandhi had developed friendship with several Christians. Some of them had become his followers like C.F. Andrews, Raj Kumari Amrit Kaur; Madeleine Slade (Mirabehn),  J.C. Kumarappa,Verrier Elwin,E Stanley Jones and Prof S K George.S K George's  serious involvement in the national struggles for Indian Independence dated from his publication in 1932 of his manifesto entitled India in Travail. George was compelled to resign his teaching position in theBishop's College,Calcutta.The French writer and philosopher Romain Rolland who wrote Gandhi's biography,used to call Gandhi a 'second Christ'. In fact Gandhi had shocked the Christian world by living like Jesus without being a Christian.

One day in 1929, a man went to meet Gandhi at the Sabarmati Ashram. Could he show Gandhi his Ph. D thesis! It contained a different idea of economics. Gandhi read the thesis and was amazed. Here was a man who thought exactly like him. Humans are not merely wealth-producing animals. They were members of society with political, social, moral and spiritual responsibilities. Gandhi immediately asked this man to join him in his efforts to develop a new way of thinking and doing economics.

So Joseph Cornellius Kumarappa, who once was an accountant running his own firm in Mumbai and had just returned from the US, changed his suit for Khadi.

J. C. Kumarappa (born Joseph Chelladurai Cornelius; 1892 - 1960) was an Indian economist and a close associate of  Gandhi. A pioneer of rural economic development theories, Kumarappa is credited for developing economic theories based on Gandhism – a school of economic thought he coined "Gandhian economics".

Kumarappa

Kumarappa was born in Tanjore,  Tamil Nadu, into a Christian family. He was the sixth child of Solomon Doraisamy Cornelius, a Public Works officer, and Esther Rajanayagam. S.D. Cornelius, being one of the great old boys of William Miller, the famous Principal of Madras Christian College, sent his  sons JC Cornelius and Benjamin Cornelius to Doveton School and later on to Madras Christian College. After becoming the followers of Gandhi, both the brothers adopted their grand father's name,Kumarappa,and were hailed as Kumarappa brothers. ( The Gandhian Crusader: A Biography of Dr. J.C.Kumarappa, Gandhigram Trust, 1956).Kumarappa later on did economics and chartered accountancy in Britain in 1919. In 1928 he travelled to the United States to obtain degrees in economics and business administration at Syracuse University and Columbia University, studying under Edwin Robert Anderson Seligman.

His older sister, E. S. Appasamy, became a notable educator and social worker in Madras.

On his return to India, Kumarappa published an article on the British tax policy and its exploitation of the Indian economy. He met Gandhi in 1929. At Gandhi's request he prepared an economic survey of rural Gujarat, which he published as A Survey of Matar Taluka in the Kheda District (1931). He strongly supported Gandhi's notion of village industries and promoted Village Industries Associations.

Kumarappa worked to combine Christian and Gandhian values of "trusteeship", non-violence and a focus on human dignity and development in place of materialism as the basis of his economic theories. While rejecting socialism's emphasis on class war and force in implementation, he also rejected the emphasis on material development, competition and efficiency in free-market economics. Gandhi and Kumarappa envisioned an economy focused on satisfying human needs and challenges while rooting out socio-economic conflict, unemployment, poverty and deprivation.

He was described one of the "Christians of the inner Gandhi circle" – which included non-Indians such as C F Andrews, Verrier Elwin and R. R. Keithahn, and Indians such as Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, S. K. George, Aryanayagam and B. Kumarappa, all of whom espoused the philosophy of non-violence. J. C. Kumarappa responded positively to the Indian national renaissance, and he and George rejected the idea that British rule in India was ordained by divine providence.

Kumarappa worked as a professor of economics at the Gujarat Vidyapith in Ahmedabad, while serving as the editor of Young India during the Salt Satyagraha, between May 1930 and February 1931. He helped found and organise the All India Village Industries Association in 1935; and was imprisoned for more than a year during the Quit India movement. He wrote during his imprisonment, Economy of Permanence, The Practice and Precepts of Jesus (1945) and Christianity: Its Economy and Way of Life (1945).

Several of Gandhi's followers developed a theory of environmentalism. Kumarappa took the lead in a number of relevant books in the 1930s and 1940s. He and Mirabehn argued against large-scale dam-and-irrigation projects, saying that small projects were more efficacious, that organic manure was better and less dangerous than man-made chemicals, and that forests should be managed with the goal of water conservation rather than revenue maximisation. The British and the Nehru governments paid them little attention. Historian Ramachandra Guha calls Kumarappa, "The Green Gandhian," portraying him as the founder of modern environmentalism in India.

After India's independence in 1947, Kumarappa worked for the Planning Commission of India and the Indian National Congress to develop national policies for agriculture and rural development. He also travelled to China, eastern Europe and Japan on diplomatic assignments and to study their rural economic systems. He spent some time in Sri Lanka, where he received Ayurvedic treatment. He settled near Madurai at the Gandhi Niketan Ashram, T.Kallupatti (a school based on Gandhian education system) constructed by freedom fighter and Gandhian follower K. Venkatachalapathi, where he continued his work in economics and writing.

He died on 30 January 1960. The Kumarappa Institute of Gram Swaraj was founded in his honour. His younger brother Bharatan Kumarappa was also associated with Gandhi and the Sarvodaya movement.

Charles Freer Andrews ( 1871 – 1940) was a priest of the Church of England. A Christian missionary, educator and social reformer in India, he became a close friend of Rabindranath Tagore and  Gandhi and identified with the cause of India's independence. He was instrumental in convincing Gandhi to return to India from South Africa.

C. F. Andrews was affectionately dubbed Christ's Faithful Apostle by Gandhi, based on his initials, C.F.A. For his contributions to the Indian Independence Movement Gandhi and his students at St. Stephen's College, Delhi, named him Deenabandhu, or "Friend of the Poor".

Andrews was born on 12 February 1871 at 14 Brunel Terrace, Newcastle upon Tyne, Northumberland, United Kingdom; his father was the "Angel" (bishop) of the Catholic Apostolic Church in Birmingham. The family had suffered financial misfortune because of the duplicity of a friend, and had to work hard to make ends meet. Andrews was a pupil at King Edward's School, Birmingham, and afterwards read Classics at Pembroke College, Cambridge. During this period he moved away from his family's church and was accepted for ordination in the Church of England.

In 1896 Andrews became a deacon, and took over the Pembroke College Mission in south London. A year later he was made priest, and became Vice-Principal of Westcott House Theological College in Cambridge.

He was involved in the Christian Social Union since university, and was interested in exploring the relationship between a commitment to the Gospel and a commitment to justice, through which he was attracted to struggles for justice throughout the British Empire, especially in India.

In 1904 he joined the Cambridge Mission to Delhi and arrived there to teach philosophy at St. Stephen's College, where he grew close to many of his Indian colleagues and students. Increasingly dismayed by the racist behaviour and treatment of Indians by some British officials and civilians, he supported Indian political aspirations, and wrote a letter in the Civil and Military Gazette in 1906 voicing these sentiments. Andrews soon became involved in the activities of the Indian National Congress, and he helped to resolve the 1913 cotton workers' strike in Madras.

Known for his persuasiveness, intellect and moral rectitude, he was asked by senior Indian political leader Gopal Krishna Gokhale to visit South Africa and help the Indian community there to resolve their political disputes with the Government. Arriving in January 1914, he met the 44-year-old Gujarati lawyer, Mohandas Gandhi, who was leading the Indian community's efforts against the racial discrimination and police legislation that infringed their civil liberties. Andrews was deeply impressed with Gandhi's knowledge of Christian values and his espousal of the concept of ahimsa (nonviolence).

Andrews served as Gandhi's aide in his negotiations with General Jan Smuts and was responsible for finalizing some of the finer details of their interactions.

Following the advice of several Indian Congress leaders and of Principal Susil Kumar Rudra, of St. Stephen's College, Andrews was instrumental in persuading Gandhi to return to India with him in 1915.

In 1918 Andrews disagreed with Gandhi's attempts to recruit combatants for World War I, believing that this was inconsistent with their views on nonviolence. In Mahatma Gandhi's Ideas, Andrews wrote about Gandhi's recruitment campaign: "Personally I have never been able to reconcile this with his own conduct in other respects, and it is one of the points where I have found myself in painful disagreement."

Andrews was elected President of the All India Trade Union in 1925 and 1927.

Andrews developed a dialogue between Christians and Hindus. He spent a lot of time at Santiniketan in conversation with Tagore. He also supported the movement to ban the ‘untouchability of outcasts’. He joined the famous Vaikom Satyagraha, and in 1933 assisted B.R. Ambedkar in formulating the demands of the Dalits.

Andrews, along with Tagore, visited Sree Narayana Guru,  spiritual leader from Kerala, South India. Then he wrote to Romain Rolland:" I have seen our Christ walking on the shore of Arabian sea in the attire of a hindu sanyasin".

Andrews ( far left) with Gandhi

He and Agatha Harrison arranged for Gandhi's visit to the UK. He accompanied Gandhi to the second Round Table Conference in London, helping him to negotiate with the British government on matters of Indian autonomy and devolution.

When the news reached India, of the mistreatment of Indian indentured labourers in Fiji, the Indian Government in September 1915 sent Andrews and William W. Pearson to make inquiries. The two visited numerous plantations and interviewed indentured labourers, overseers and Government officials and on their return to India also interviewed returned labourers. In their "Report on Indentured Labour in Fiji" Andrews and Pearson highlighted the ills of the indenture system; which led to the end of further transportation of Indian labour to the British colonies. In 1917 Andrews made a second visit to Fiji, and although he reported some improvements, was still appalled at the moral degradation of indentured labourers. He called for an immediate end to indenture; and the system of Indian indentured labour was formally abolished in 1920.

In 1936, while on a visit to Australia and New Zealand, Andrews was invited to and visited Fiji again. The ex-indentured labourers and their descendants wanted him to help them overcome a new type of slavery, by which they were bound to the Colonial Sugar Refining Company, which controlled all aspects of their lives. Andrews, however, was delighted with the improvements in conditions since his last visit, and asked Fiji Indians to "remember that Fiji belonged to the Fijians and they were there as guests.

About this time Gandhi reasoned with Andrews that it was probably best for sympathetic Britons like himself to leave the freedom struggle to Indians. So from 1935 onwards Andrews began to spend more time in Britain, teaching young people all over the country about Christ's call to radical discipleship. He was widely known as Gandhi's closest friend and was perhaps the only major figure to address Gandhi by his first name, Mohan.

He died on 5 April 1940, during a visit to Calcutta, and is buried in the 'Christian Burial ground' of Lower Circular Road cemetery, Calcutta.

Mirabehn

Mirabehn, byname of Madeleine Slade, (1892- 1982) , was a British-born follower of Gandhi who participated in the movement for India’s independence.

Madeleine Slade was the daughter of an English aristocratic family. Because her father, Sir Edmond Slade, was a rear admiral in the British Royal Navy and was often away, Madeleine and her siblings spent much of their childhood at their grandfather’s country home in Surrey. She developed a strong admiration for the music of Ludwig van Beethoven and eventually became a concert manager.

Her aristocratic existence took a life-changing turn after she read French novelist and essayist Romain Rolland’s 1924 biography of Gandhi. In the book the author had described Gandhi as the greatest personality of the 20th century. Slade became fascinated by the principles of nonviolence and contacted Gandhi himself, asking if she could become his disciple and live in his ashram in the western Indian region of Gujarat. Gandhi, while replying in the affirmative, forewarned her of the difficulties of such a life. Undeterred, Slade reached India in November 1925 and made India her home for the next 34 years. She chose not to return to England for personal visits, even when her father died in 1926.

Upon her arrival at the ashram, Gandhi gave her the nickname Mirabehn (“Sister Mira”), named for Mira (or Meera) Bai, the Hindu mystic and great devotee to the god Krishna. She started wearing a white sari, cut her hair short, and took a vow of celibacy. During the first two years in India, she learned Hindi and spent much time spinning and carding cotton. Subsequently, she started travelling to various parts of the country to work in villages.

Mirabehn often accompanied Gandhi on his tours and looked after his personal needs. She became one of Gandhi’s confidants and an ardent champion internationally for India’s freedom from British rule and was with Gandhi at the London Round Table Conference in 1931. In 1934 she made a brief visit to the United States for lectures and radio talks and met first lady Eleanor Roosevelt for an interview at the White House. Before returning to India, she conducted interviews with a number of British politicians in the United Kingdom—Sir Samuel Hoare, Lord Halifax, Winston Churchill, David Lloyd George, and Clement Attlee—as well as the South African leader Jan Smuts.

Mirabehn with Secretary Brahmachari Dutt

Mirabehn was active in spreading the spirit of nonviolence, and she was considered by the British to be important to India’s independence movement. She was arrested multiple times, including during a period of civil disobedience in 1932–33, when she was detained on the charge of supplying information to Europe and America regarding conditions prevailing in India; and in 1942, when she was imprisoned in the Aga Khan Palace in Pune along with Gandhi and his wife, Kasturba.

In 1946 Mirabehn was appointed as honorary special adviser to the Uttar Pradesh government to assist in a campaign to expand agricultural production. In 1947 she set up an ashram near Rishikesh. Following Gandhi’s assassination in 1948, Mirabehn decided to stay in India. For the next 11 years, she travelled to various Indian states, took on community projects including one that came to be known as the Gopal Ashram in the Bhilangana valley  and worked on environmental issues such as those preventing deforestation and implementing flood-control measures. She even experimented with the introduction of Dexter cattle from England for crossbreeding with the yak in Jammu and Kashmir.

Mirabehn returned to England in 1959 and a year later moved to a house near Vienna, where she spent the remaining years of her life. A year before her death, the Indian government conferred on her the Padma Vibhushan medal, the country’s second highest civilian honour.

Among her writings are New and Old Gleanings, published in 1960 (an updated edition of Gleanings Gathered at Bapu’s Feet, originally published in 1949), and her autobiography, The Spirit’s Pilgrimage,( 1960).Sudhir Kakar's novel,Mira and Mahatma,portrays the special relationship between nthe two,hinting at a jealousy on the part of Kasthurba.

Former prime minister Indira Gandhi and freedom fighter Rajkumari Amrit Kaur were mentioned in TIME magazine’s list of the 100 most powerful women who defined the last century in a new project that aims to feature those women who were “often overshadowed”.

Born on 2 February, 1889, to the royal family of Kapurthala, Amrit Kaur grew up in a Christian household as her father converted to Christianity before she was born, and her mother was a Bengali Christian.Kaur spent her early years in Kapurthala, Punjab, and then moved to Sherborne School in Dorset, UK. She excelled at the school, was the “head girl” and the captain of the cricket, hockey and lacrosse team. She spent her undergraduate years at Oxford.She returned to India in 1918, and began to be drawn towards the work and teachings of Gandhi.

At 20, Kaur returned to India. She was fascinated by the teachings of the Mahatma, and although she would only meet him in 1919, she wrote to him regularly. This would go on to become one of the most enduring epistolary relationships that is documented in Letters to Rajkumari Amrit Kaur. Her parents’ objection to her joining the freedom struggle is what kept Kaur away till 1930, when her father passed away.

Amrit Kaur was the first woman in independent India who joined the Cabinet as the Health Minister and remained in that position for 10 years. Before taking up the position of a Health Minister, Kaur was Mahatma Gandhi’s secretary. During these 10 years, she founded the Indian Council for Child Welfare. She also laid the foundation of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and Lady Irwin College in Delhi in the following years. 

In 1936, hoping that more women would join the freedom struggle, Gandhi wrote to her: “I am now in search of a woman who would realise her mission. Are you that woman, will you be one?”.

In the following years, as Kaur started interacting with other freedom fighters such as Gopal Krishna Gokhale and Gandhi, she gave up her princely comforts and began to discipline herself by responding to the Gandhian call. “The flames of my passionate desire to see India free from foreign domination were fanned by him,” she said. Apart from joining the nationalist freedom struggle, Kaur also began work on a number of other social and political issues such as the purdah system, child marriage and the Devadasi system. When the civil disobedience movement took off in the 1930s, Kaur dedicated her life to it. The independence activist Aruna Asaf Ali wrote about her, “Rajkumari Amrit Kaur belonged to a generation of pioneers. They belonged to well to do homes but gave up on their affluent and sheltered lives and flocked to Gandhiji’s banner when he called women to join the national liberation struggle,”. Kaur was jailed after the Quit India movement and carried to the jail a spinning wheel, the Bhagwat Gita and the Bible.

Gandhi would affectionately use the epithet ‘idiot’ or ‘rebel’ for Kaur, and would sign his letters as ‘robber’ and ‘tyrant’, respectively. They developed such a lasting friendship that they continued to write to each even during their jail terms after the Quit India Movement.

Further, while Kaur advocated for equality, she was not in favour of reservations for women and believed that universal adult franchise would open the doors for women to enter into the legislative and administrative institutions of the country. In light of this, she believed that there was no place left for reservation of seats.

She passed away in 1964, at the age of 75. While she was a practicing Roman Catholic, she was cremated as per Sikh rituals in the Yamuna.

Verrier Elwin

Verrier Elwin (1902- 1964 ) was a British-born anthropologist, ethnologist and tribal activist, who began his career in India as a Christian missionary. He first abandoned the clergy, to work with Gandhi and the Indian National Congress, then converted to Hinduism in 1935 after staying in a Gandhian ashram and split with the nationalists over what he felt was an overhasty process of transformation and assimilation for the tribals. Verrier Elwin is best known for his early work with the Baigas and Gonds of Orissa and Madhya Pradesh in central India, and he married a member of one of the communities he studied. He later also worked on the tribals of several North East Indian states especially North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA) and settled in Shillong, the hill capital of Meghalaya.

In time he became an authority on Indian tribal lifestyle and culture, particularly on the Gondi people. He served as the Deputy Director of the Anthropological Survey of India upon its formation in 1945. Post-independence,he took up Indian citizenship.. In January 1954,Elwin became the first foreigner to be accepted as an Indian citizen. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru appointed him as an adviser on tribal affairs for north-eastern India, and later he was Anthropological Adviser to the Government of NEFA (now Arunachal Pradesh. The Government of India awarded him the third highest civilian honour of the Padma Bhushan in 1961. His autobiography, The Tribal World of Verrier Elwin won him the 1965 Sahitya Akademi Award in English Language.

Harry Verrier Holman Elwin was born in Dover.He is the son of Edmund Henry Elwin, Bishop of Sierra Leone. He was educated at Dean Close School and Merton College, Oxford,where he received his degrees of BA First Class in English Language and Literature, MA, and DSc. He also remained the President of Oxford Inter-Collegiate Christian Union (OICCU) in 1925.He had a brilliant career at Oxford, where he took a Double First in English and in Theology, before being ordained a priest in the Church of England. He came to India in 1927, to join a small sect, the Christa Seva Sangh of Poona, which hoped to 'indigenise' Christianity.

Elwin married a 13 year old Raj Gond tribal girl called Kosi who was a student at his school at Raythwar (Raithwar) in Dindori district in Madhya Pradesh on 4 April 1940. They had one son, Jawaharlal (Kumar), born in 1941. Elwin had an ex-parte divorce in 1949, at the Calcutta High Court, writing in his autobiography, "I cannot even now look back on this period of my life without a deep sense of pain and failure". In 2006 Kosi was still living in a hut in Raythwar, their son Kumar having died. The couple's second son, Vijay, also died young. Elwin remarried a woman called Lila, belonging to the Pardhan Gond tribe in nearby Patangarh, moving with her to Shillong in the early 1950s. They had three sons, Wasant, Nakul and Ashok. Elwin died in Delhi on 22 February 1964 after a heart attack. His widow Lila died in Mumbai in 2013, aged about 80, shortly after the demise of their eldest son, Wasant. His marriage to Lila connected Verrier to Jangarh Singh Shyam, the Gond artist.

The Church has argued that the tribal people are not Hindus, and the missionaries have every right to convert them. However, the research of Verrier Elwin becomes very important, who, after years of meticulous study among the tribal population, concluded: “When I first arrived in aboriginal company thirteen years ago, I was under the impression that the Hillmen were not Hindus. Eight years of hard study and research have convinced me that I was wrong.”

E. Stanley Jones, the world renowned American evangelist, had been a great sympathiser of the Gandhian movement. His admiration for Gandhi arose from the intimate similarity that he saw between his master Jesus and the man Gandhi. He wrote: “…he (Gandhi) marched into the soul of humanity in the most triumphal march that any man ever made since the death and resurrection of the Son of God”83. Jones admitted that Gandhi taught him more about the spirit of Christ than perhaps any other man in East, or West, and on the occasion of Gandhi’s martyrdom Jones said: “Never did a death more fittingly crown a life, save only onethat of the Son of God”.

The first meeting between Stanley Jones and Gandhi took place in 1919 when Jones was at St. Stephen's College, Delhi to address the students. Susil Rudra, the Principal, introduced him to Gandhi. It was followed by a conversation about how Christianity could be naturalised in India86. Jones was impressed by Gandhi’s faithfulness to the moral ideal of Christ and remarked: Gandhi went by manifesting a Christian spirit far beyond most of the Christians. 

Jones’s next meeting with Gandhi was in Poona in 1924. That was when Gandhi was temporarily released from the jail for an operation. Jones asked for a message he could take back with him to the west as to how we should live this Christian life? Gandhi replied: “Such a message cannot be given by word of mouth; it can only be lived”88. Though this reply impressed Jones, the evangelist in Jones persuaded Gandhi that he ought to make Christ the centre of his nonviolent movement for it could then readily appreciated by the west. “If you will give a clear-cut witness to Jesus, then a world kingdom is awaiting you”89. Also Jones wanted Gandhi to declare a personal allegiance to Christ, though he added that he did not mean coming out and being a baptised Christian. He left that for Gandhi to decide. But to the disappointment of Jones, Gandhi did neither.

Stanley Jones

Jones admiration of Gandhi was not uncritical. He viewed every word and every deed of Gandhi from a strictly Christianevangelical point of view and critiqued them. Jones was provoked by Gandhi’s speech in the missionaries’ meet in Calcutta YWCA where he said: “Hinduism, as I know, entirely satisfies my soul, fills my whole being, and I find solace in the Bhagavadgita and the Upanishads that I miss even in the Sermon on the Mount”90. In the above words Jones sensed a serious weakness in Gandhi’s understanding of Christ and was disappointed about it He wrote:

“I think you have grasped certain principles of the Christian faith which have moulded you and have helped make you greatyou have grasped the principles, but you have missed the person. You said in Calcutta to the missionaries that you did not turn to the Sermon on the Mount for consolation, but to the Bhagavadgita. Nor do I turn to the Sermon on the Mount for consolation, but to this person who embodies and illustrates the Sermon on the Mount, but he is much more. Here is where I think you are weakest in your grasp. May I suggest that you penetrate through the principles to the person and then come back and tell us what you have found. I don’t say this as a mere Christian propagandist. I say this because we need you and need the illustration you could give us if you really grasp the centre the person”. 

The point raised by Jones regarding the precedence to be accorded to the person of Jesus was not new to Gandhi. But he stuck to his position that Jesus was one among the great teachers of the world and his life inspired him as an embodiment of sacrifice. 

C. F. Andrews, S. K. George and Stanley Jones who were Gandhi’s close Christian friends were in full agreement that Gandhi had manifested in his life a true Christliness. They said that they themselves and the Christian world as a whole were enriched by Gandhi’s practical application of the Christian principles. They emphasised that living like Christ-in other words imitation of Christwas more important than preaching or teaching of any Christian dogmas or traditions. Coming under Gandhi’s influence they modified their traditional views and challenged Christians to give more importance to practical aspects of religion rather than mere dogmas or creed. They firmly believed that Gandhi posed an un-mistakable challenge before the Christian world as he was more Christianised than many who claimed to be Christians and his precepts were really valid for Christianity for its healthy conduct in a pluralistic context. 

 

S K George,a Keralite from Thrissur in Gandhi's fold,wrote,Gandhi's Challenge to Christianity,which made the anti Gandhi Church,furious.

S K George,who lived in Sabarmathi and Santiniketan after resigning as lecturer in Bishop's College,Calcutta in 1932,published the book in London in 1939 with a foreword by S Radhakrishnan;its second edition was published in 1947 by Navjivan Trust with an added preface by Horace Alexander.

When the young theologian stepped out of the portals of the Bishop’s College Calcutta in 1932, little did he realize that the teachings of Christ would be religiously followed by an ‘unbeliever’. Much to the shock of his relatives and friends w ho expected him to be conventional parson of the Anglican Church,Srampickal Kuruvilla George by the message and teachings of Gandhi.

For George,the practice of redemptive suffering love manifested in the cross of Christ was the central principle of Christianity.Gandhi's satyagraha movement was for him the cross in action and he joined it wholeheartedly in 1932,resigning his job.Even prior to this,as a Bachelor of Divinity student of Bishop's College ( 1924-27),he had his doubts about the exclusive divinity of Christ.As early as George helped in organizing the All Kerala Inter-Religious Students Fellowship,which tried to bring together students of various of various religions for mutual understanding and co-operation.The first conference of the Fellowship was held at Alwaye in May 1937.

George saw in Gandhi, a person who dared to live the Christian life and even called others to do so.Never had he seen anyone who treated the Gita and the Sermon on the Mount as Gospels. His conviction to follow the Gandhian way also gave him enough audacity to express theological doubts pertaining to the exclusive Divinity of Christ. Theologians, who were taken by surprise at George’s affirmations,postponed his ordination as a priest of the Church, hoping that he would come back to the real faith of the Church.

Since the irrevocable had happened, George became a social leper in theological circles. Unmindful of the hostility, George went a step further. In the 1930s, when the Church in India did not show any sympathy towards the national movement, George urged the Christians to join the Civil Disobedience Movement for he firmly believed that the ‘satyagraha’ ‘was the Cross in action’. He published an appeal to all Indian Christians and the Church to join in and act as custodians of non-violence as a community which claimed to believe in the supreme instance of the triumphant satyagraha the world has seen, viz, the Cross of Jesus of Nazareth. The Bengal Government took objection to this statement and two Calcutta papers were penalized. George himself escaped Government prosecution. But this sympathy with Indian nationalism was regarded as disloyalty to the Church and the Government.

The then head of the Anglican Church in India, Metropolitan Foss Westcott, had condemned the Disobedience Movement as unchristian and even justified the British law comparing it to the law of Nature. However, George confronted his stand by drawing a parallel between the revolt of Israelites mentioned in the Bible to the Disobedience Movement what followed was a theological battle.

George said: " One striking biblical parallel suggests itself to me whenever I think of Gandhiji, namelythat of Moses leading the revolt of the Israelites, creating disaffection among them against constituted authority and leading them to independence. Moses would stand condemned by your Lordship’s argument from the analogy of the laws of Nature."

In his reply the Metropolitan stated: I always understood that Moses went with the full permission of Pharaoh… but his pursuit was arrested not by the violence of Moses but by what is recorded as an act of God". And in his reply to this, George said: "You say our Lord kept out of politics, but we are not to bring Him into our politics if He is to be the Lord of all life?… And I challenge anyone to say that in principle the war of non-violent disobedience to an unjust law is against the teaching of Christ."

In the preface to his book on Gandhi,,George wrote:

 "I do not claim to be great anything; but I do claim to be a Gandhiite and a Christian. That combination is to me vital and significant for the world today and especially so for India. The conviction came to me as a young man in the beginnings of the Gandhian era in Indian politics, a conviction that has only been deepened by the passage of years and a greater understanding of the message both of Jesus Christ and Mahatma Gandhi, that a true Christian in India today must necessarily be a Gandhian. The corollary to that, that a Gandhiite must also be a Christian, need not necessarily follow, unless the term Christian is understood in its widest, perhaps its truest sense, in the sense in which Gandhi, with his life-long devotion to Hinduism, is himself a Christian. 

"The Christian Church in spite of all its adoration of Jesus, its exaltation of him to the very throne of Deity, has all along relegated his teachings as impracticable idealism. His great enunciation of the law of love, as the only rule of life for man as a child of God, though repeated ad nauseam by professing Christians, has continually been given the go-by in Christian practice, corporate and even individual...The sceptic Bernard Shaw has shown greater spiritual insight than all the ecclesiastics of the West when he says that Jesus' teachings are "a force like electricity needing only the discovery of a suitable machinery, to be applied to the affairs of mankind with revolutionary effect." It is the main contention of this book that Gandhi in his satyagraha has discovered that machinery, that technique, by which the law of love has been applied with revolutionary effect in Indian politics. Not to recognize that application in Gandhi's mighty experiments with truth, not to see in him the stirrings of the spirit of God, is to be lacking in spiritual discernment, is to come under the condemnation of Jesus himself for not discerning the signs of the times and the ways of God. I still cherish the hope that my fellow-believers, in India at least, will face up to the challenge of Gandhi's witness to essential Christianity. 

" A true Gandhiite is essentially a Christian. If what is vital in Christianity is the message of the Master and its application to life then Gandhi is a true follower of Jesus. The story is told how the disciples of Jesus once came across a person doing good works in his name, who yet would not follow them; and they "forbade him because he followed not us". When the incident was reported to Jesus, the Master said: "Forbid him not; for he that is not against you is for you." Gandhi certainly is not only not against Jesus, but is definitely for him.

"For redemptive, suffering love is the central principle in Christianity and the manifestation of it in practice, and not the preaching of any dogma, is what is needed, is what will convince India of the truth and the power of Christianity. It ought to be a matter of supreme thankfulness to the Indian Christian that this principle is not unwelcome or alien to India; that it is the guiding light of India's leading statesman and has received at his hands a practical application on a scale unprecedented in world history. For it is one of the main theses of this book that Gandhi's satyagraha is Christianity in action and that the Christian Church lost one of its greatest opportunities in recent years in failing to fall behind Gandhi in his great movement for national emancipation on non-violent lines. This failure was largely due to the foreign leadership to which it is still so subservient."

George’s radical stand not only ostracized him further in the Christian circles, but he also lost his job.

His personal life was also in turmoil as his wife had to stay with her parents with their two small children while George went to Gandhi’s Ashram at Sabarmathi. That was the time when Gandhi was in prison. In one of his letters to George, Gandhi wrote… "Only do not give me up in despair…" 

This appeal not to give him up in despair touched George and humiliated him. He wrote later: "Not only have I not givenhim (Gandhi) up, but I continue to draw inspiration from that fountainhead of light to humanity, groping and floundering along the path of violence in this age of atomic powers…"

George had to return to Kerala shortly afterwards following the death of his daughter to look after his wife who suffered from a sudden shock following the tragedy. It was the time when Gandhi had come to Trivandrum to preside over the celebrations of the Travancore Temple Entry. He made it a point to visit the ailing Mary George after the function inspiring her with his mere presence.

For George the going was not easy. He spent much of his time struggling to maintain his intellectual integrity and his right to exist even as an independent and unattached Christian. Many of the church-controlled institutions refused to provide him a job because of his freethinking religious ideas.

In 1942 George produced a small book Life and Teachings of Jesus Christ. Reviewing this book Sir C P Ramaswami Aiyar wrote: "It is impossible to improve on Mr. George’s account that the modern mind sees the evidence of Jesus Christ’s divinity not in his miracles in the fragrance of his sacrificial living…I have learnt more about the real character of Jesus from this book than from any other." Sir C P was the then Dewan of Travancore.

Gandhi appointed Mrs. George as his representative in the Kasturba Trust for Kerala, which started functioning in 1946, with a training centre at Trichur in the house and land belonging to the George family. Mrs. George worked as a representative for about 8 years.

From 1947-1950, George was in Viswa Bharati, Shantiniketan, as editor of Sino-Indian Journal and professor of English in their college and then as President, C F Andrews Memorial Hall for Christian and Western Studies.

In 1950,George accepted an invitation from Sriman Narayan to take up the job as Professor of English,G S College, Wardha, the centre of Gandhian activities. In 1951 he wrote the book The Story of the Bible, with a foreword by Rajkumari Amrit Kaur.

The Fellowship of the Friends of Truth,which started in 1951 and whose Secretary for the first seven years was George,functioned as an inter religious movement.According to George,the place of Jesus in the Hindu heritage of India is as one of the Ishta Devathas or chosen or favourite deities.Hinduism readily grants such a place to Jesus.

In 1954, the then Madhya Pradesh Government appointed the Christian Missionaries Activities Enquiry Committee with Justice N B Niyogi as its chairman with five members. Prof S K George was one of them, the only Christian on the committee. A storm of protest was raised by a certain section of people against the very appointment of the enquiry committee, and specially directed against George.

The force of opposition to George’s appointment can be well gauged by the necessity felt by the
Government of issuing a press note to justify the appointment of the Committee. With reference to George, the press note stated: " As regards Shri S K George, he is a devout Christian and a nationalist, belonging to the oldest Church in India- the Syrian Christian Church-and has been an educationist and a public worker of more than twenty five years’ standing. He has pursued Theological studies both in India and Oxford, and was also working in Shantiniketan. He has published several books on Christianity."

He launched Gandhi Marg , a magazine  in 1957.The work of the Enquiry Committee proved too much for George. The nervous strain of serving on such a commission could be imagined. " A very tired man", as he said to himself. He was suffering from Parkinson’s disease. There was no definite treatment for this progressive disease in those days. His health deteriorated. Meanwhile his wife died on 19th December 1959.George followed his wife a few months later on 4th May, 1960. He was sixty years old then.

To those who knew the man personally, it was a great loss. As Rev. R. R. Keithahn said: "George was ahead of most of us. He had rid himself of that which binds the spirit. He could look at another man, another religion, another thought as few men ever do. As a result, he could at once make the truth his own fettered by no dogma or ritual or prejudice…surely he was a man of God."

S K George was gentle as a saint but firm as a rock on all matters of principle, that was what had made his life’s pilgrimage such a difficult one. With his scholarship and flawless English he could so easily have led a peaceful and happy life in the pleasant backwaters of Christian colleges, had he been prepared to turn a deaf ear to what he called, in the title of his first book, Gandhi’s Challenge to Christianity and to hold aloof from national struggle.

Another Christian,Barrister George Joseph ( 1887 - 1938)  from Kerala was just opposite to S K George-George Joseph,who was with Gandhi, distanced himself from him when he was asked to stay away from the Vaikam Sathyagraha by Gandhi. He was the editor of Motilal Nehru's The Independent and Gandhi's Young India.Instead of becoming a gandhian,he turned a Christian.

An anecdote from S K George:

In 1936, Gandhi went to Trivandrum to preside over a meeting to welcome the epoch-making proclamation accepting the right of so-called 'untouchables' to worship at Hindu temples. I (S. K. George)  went to call on Gandhi at his residence, but could not see him. I met Mahadev Desai and told him about his wife who was ill at the time. I spoke about it also to  G. Ramachandran, another colleague of Gandhi's hailing from Trivandrum, regretting our inability to meet Bapu. Ramachandran, knowing the mind of the master, said that then it would be a case of the Mountain going to Muhammad. I quoted scripture against that, and said that it was unworthy that he should enter under our roof. 

But what the disciple had predicted happened. After the great meeting that evening Gandhiji returned to his residence, not joining in the procession that followed. During his evening meal he asked about my wife and enquired where we were staying. It so happened that the State Guest House where he (Gandhi) was staying was close to our house, and one of the sisters in attendance on him was a teacher in our school. She offered to guide him to our place; and so immediately after food, staff in hand, the old man set out to visit his humble sister who, he had heard, was lying ill. It was past nine, and we had retired early. Only a single kerosene oil lamp was burning in the house. We had not slept, and I could distinguish the voice of Mahadevbhai who was one of the company visiting us. I told my wife about this and heard Mahadevbhai remarking: "He thinks it is only Mahadev." Looking out I saw Gandhiji and party at our gate. I immediately rushed to open the gate which was locked. Gandhiji observed with a chuckle: "So you are afraid of thieves." I mentioned to Gandhiji what Ramachandran had said, and referred to the Biblical parallel of the Roman centurion telling Jesus that he was not worthy that the Master should enter under his roof. "Aha!" retorted Gandhiji. 

Coming into the house, I sought to detain him in the drawing room. But he had come to give a courtesy call and put me immediately in my place saying. "I have come to see not you but your wife." And he walked straight to her room. Sitting beside her cot he enquired about her illness and the treatment she was having. I woke up our little son and brought him to Bapu for his blessing. It was a very patient and unhurried few minutes that he spent with us, but we were a little too flurried to use it to the fullest advantage in seeking his paternal advice on our problems.

 (Source: "A Sick Visitation" by S.K. George)

Two other Christians associated with Gandhi were,K T Paul and S K Datta.After a long period as National Secretary of YMCA,Paul resigned that position so that he could be more active in politics.Paul alongwith Datta,represented the Indian community at the London Round Table conferences ( 1930-32) and there tried to bring reconciliation among the opposing leaders who took part.Paul knew Gandhi intimately and was associated with the prominent leaders between 1920 and till his death in 1931.

In 1937,the American Christian Rev Dr R R Keithahn asked  Gandhi to explain the differences between religions. Gandhi answered:"The differences of race and skin and of mind and body ... are transitory.In the same way essentially all religions are equal."

© Ramachandran