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INDIA AWAKENING 
 Rev. H. D. Griswo.p, D. D. 
 
 It goes without saying that in the supreme 
 matter of the soul’s turning unto God there is 
 no form of experience which may be regarded 
 as alone typical and normative. People differ 
 so in temperament, education, inherited ideas, 
 and habits of thought and life that every one 
 who finds Christ finds Him in his own way. 
 The law, then, is not the identity, but rather 
 
 “the variety of religious experience.” 
 course, there is identity in the sense that all 
 true conversion involves “repentance toward 
 God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.” But 
 in the details of the great experience every 
 man is a law unto himself, because every man 
 represents an original and unique product. 
 
 This principle of the “variety” of Christian 
 experience holds not only of individuals, but 
 also of groups. The Great Commission is to 
 preach the gospel to the whole creation; but 
 the whole creation to be evangelized consists 
 not only of individuals, but also of individuals 
 gathered into social and political groups; that 
 is, into families, clans, castes, races, nations. 
 Each group is stamped with its own peculiar 
 characteristics, and hence tends to react intel- 
 lectually, emotionally, and practically, in its 
 own characteristic way. Now we are to dis- 
 ciple the nations (Matt. xxviii:19). But each 
 nation is sure to respond to the truth, so far 
 as it responds, in its own way. Which means 
 simply that the problem of missions is psycho- 
 logical and sociological as well as religious. 
 
 To illustrate: (1) Followers of a low form 
 of religions are in general more prompt to 
 accept the religion of Jesus Christ than fol- 
 lowers of a higher form. For example, the 
 Karens of Burma, the Koreans, the South 
 Sea Islanders, and the “Untouchables” of In- 
 dia, as compared with the adherents of Hindu- 
 ism, Islam and Buddhism. Crude religions, 
 such as the various forms of Animism and 
 devil-worship, usually offer a comparatively 
 
 1 
 
short resistance to the faith of Christ; (2) 
 the instances cited above illustrate the prin- 
 ciple that “the good is the enemy of the best.” 
 The more good there is in a religion, the 
 greater in general will be its resistance to the 
 best religion. Thus Hinduism and Buddhism, 
 Judaism and Islam contain more truth and 
 consequently have more resisting power than 
 the devil-worshipping religions of fear. (3) 
 Where individual liberty prevails and indi- 
 vidual initiative is the rule, as in Europe and 
 America, and to a considerable degree also in 
 China, Japan and Korea, men come out one 
 by one and enter the Christian Church; but 
 wherever individualism has not yet come to its 
 rights, as in the caste- bound organizations of 
 India, people will move im masses, if at all. 
 Individual initiative will be the exception. Mass 
 movement will be the rule. All of which 
 means that the story of the Conversion of 
 India, as written by the future historian, will 
 differ widely in detail from the story of the 
 conversion of other nations. 
 
 The outstanding fact of the present situa- 
 tion in India is indicated by the formula— 
 India Awakening. It is neither India asleep, 
 nor India awake, but the transition from the 
 one to the other, India Awakening. It is an 
 awakening from, through, and unto. India is 
 in process of awakening from her age-long 
 sleep of ignorance, superstition, and incapacity. 
 Last summer in a remote valley of the Him- 
 alayas I had the opportunity of intimate ac- 
 quaintance with two Kashmiri Brahmans. One 
 was a man of the old school, very learned in 
 Sanskrit, but very ignorant of all else, very 
 superstitious, and in practical things very in- 
 capable. The other was a man of the new 
 type, who had been a pupil in the Mission 
 School, Srinagar, knew English fairly well, 
 cherished liberal ideas on many things, and 
 was the government official in the place. He 
 was not a Christian yet, but in his outlook 
 and efficiency he differed toto coelo from the 
 
 2 
 
other. The one represented in himself India 
 asleep; the other, India awakening. 
 
 Now a sleeper may be awakened in many 
 ways—by the call of a friend, by an alarm- 
 clock, by the light of the dawn, by any or all 
 of these. In like manner the awakening of 
 India is taking place through the multitud- 
 inous forces of enlightenment which, like a 
 river, are pouring through the length and 
 breadth of the land, e.g., the vast order and 
 system of the British administration, the many- 
 sided activity of Christian Missions, education 
 through schools and colleges, railways and tel- 
 egraphs, books and newspapers, foreign study 
 and travel. Another illustration from Kash- 
 mir: Last summer we dined with several 
 Kashmiri Brahmans, old students of ours, who 
 had studied and travelled in England. They 
 were polished men of the world, and occupied 
 important government posts. The negative 
 and destructive work of emancipation from 
 the provincialism, ignorance and superstition 
 of the past had thoroughly taken place. In 
 accent and manner and breadth of view they 
 showed the influence of foreign travel and 
 ’ study. One of them had sent his only son, a 
 boy of ten or twelve, off to England and placed 
 him in a Wesleyan school noted for its high 
 religious tone, in order that the lad might 
 escape from being contaminated and spoiled by 
 the influence of relatives. This is a straw 
 showing the direction of the wind. The father 
 and mother were not Christians, but they 
 placed their boy in an environment where his 
 becoming a Christian would be almost a matter 
 of course. Instead of the father shall be the 
 children. If the fathers must needs perish in 
 the wilderness, there is hope that the children 
 may enter the promised land. 
 
 Too much significance must not be ascribed 
 to the matter of inter-dining. Caste rules are 
 adjusting themselves to the necessities of mod- 
 ern life, and especially to the necessities of 
 the educated. Some of the leading Hindus 
 
 3 
 
of North India, Brahmans by caste, frequently 
 dine with their Muhammadan and Christian 
 friends—in private. It is doubtless generally 
 known, but the practice is winked at. No Hin- 
 du is necessarily nearer the Kingdom of God, 
 because he dines with one. It is possible that 
 the rules concerning inter-dining and even in- 
 ter-marriage may be greatly modified without 
 in any way destroying the force of caste as a 
 great obstacle in the way of the open confes- 
 sion of Christ. Even now, especially among 
 the educated, inter-dining is a venial sin, 
 whereas the confession of Christ through bap- 
 tism is a mortal sin. 
 
 But, thirdly, the awakening of India is not 
 only an awakening from the ignorance and 
 lethargy of the past, through the multitudinous 
 forces of enlightenment which are acting upon 
 India in the present; it is also an awakening 
 to a new consciousness, a new sense of need 
 for the future. It is an awakening to a con- 
 sciousness of many needs—intellectual, social, 
 political, industrial, moral, religious. To illus- 
 trate the intellectual awakening: In 1849 Dr. 
 C. W. Forman began the work of Christian 
 education in Lahore. The first boys who at- 
 tended school were induced to come by the gift 
 to each of a small coin daily. So slight was 
 the consciousness of intellectual need at that 
 time. The growth since then in the desire for 
 education may be measured by the fact that 
 in the same city of Lahore at the last admis- 
 sion to the Forman Christian College the pres- 
 sure of students clamoring to be admitted was 
 so great that scores and scores had to be 
 turned away for lack of room. But the chil- 
 dren of newly baptized Christians from the 
 low castes are in very much the same condi- 
 tion as the high-caste boys were in 1849, whom 
 Dr. Forman had to hire to come to school. 
 Their desire for education is weak and uncer- 
 tain. In connection with the Hiramandi 
 Church in Lahore City, a church made up en- 
 tirely of low-caste converts, there is a boys’ 
 school under the care of Mr. McKee. Not 
 
 4 
 
long since the boys of this school struck and 
 sent word to Mr. McKee that they would come 
 back if he would give them a treat of candy 
 and sweets. Such conduct is no ground for 
 discouragement. It only means that the pupils 
 of the Hiramandi School, as well as their par- 
 ents, are only slightly awake to the benefits of 
 education. But so were the high-caste boys 
 and their parents a half century ago. 
 
 The political awakening of India may be 
 summed up in the recent agitation for political 
 rights, which has resulted first in Lord Mor- 
 ley’s Councils Bill providing for Imperial and 
 Provincial Legislative Councils in India; and, 
 secondly, in the declaration of the King-Em- 
 peror at the Delhi Durbar, Dec. 12, 1911, an- 
 nulling the Partition of Bengal, the exciting 
 cause of the recent unrest, and transferring 
 the capital of India from Calcutta to Delhi. 
 
 Industrial development is sorely needed in 
 India. Its population is too exclusively agri- 
 cultural, and consequently has to import too 
 much from abroad. The consciousness of the 
 need of industrial education is increasing in 
 India day by day. In this as in all other de- 
 partments of progress Christian Missions have 
 made large contributions, and are likely to 
 make still larger contributions in the future. 
 The Allahabad Christian College, through its 
 technical and agricultural departments, may be 
 expected to play an important part in this de- 
 velopment. 
 
 In many respects the most significant form 
 of awakening in India is the social awakening 
 on the part of the depressed classes or “Un- 
 touchables.” There are over 50,000,000 of these 
 people in India, and they are largely accessible 
 to the gospel to-day. Already hundreds of 
 thousands from the ranks of the “Untouch- 
 ables” have been received into the Christian 
 Church, and from among them powerful 
 preachers of the gospel have been raised up; 
 for example, Rev. Labhu Mall and Rev. Mallu 
 Chand of the United Presbyterian Mission in 
 the Punjab. It used to be thought that the 
 
 5 
 
Christian Church by receiving outcastes and 
 “untouchables” into its communion would con- 
 demn itself to be permanently a church only 
 for the low castes. But the real result has 
 been entirely different. If some have scoffed 
 at the Christian Church on this account and 
 have called her the church of the outcaste and 
 the “untouchable” even as the Pharisees called 
 Christ “the friend of publicans and sinners,” 
 yet others—and among them many men of 
 light and leading in the Hindu community— 
 have acknowledged this as the glory of the 
 Christian Church. Perhaps the greatest apolo- 
 getic in India to-day for the truth of Chris- 
 tianity is the zeal of the Christian Church for 
 the salvation of the very lowest. And this 
 new and revised estimate of the value of the 
 work of the Christian Church for the outcaste 
 and “untouchable” reveals at the same time a 
 new consciousness of the sacredness of human 
 life and a new power of moral and spiritual 
 evolution. It indicates that many who are 
 still within the ranks of Hinduism are not far 
 from the Kingdom of God. 
 
 The full magnitude of the task which the 
 Christian Church has undertaken in India at 
 the command of her Divine Lord may be es- 
 timated from the following facts and statis- 
 tics: 
 
 1. The population of India, Burma and 
 Ceylon, according to the census of 1911, is 
 316,019,846, of which 3,876,000 are Christians. 
 In spite of the terrible ravages of plague, the 
 numbers have increased by 20,000,000 during 
 the last decade. The increase of the total 
 population has been 6.4 per cent.; that of the 
 Christians, 11.6 per cent. India is one of the 
 three congested areas of the earth’s surface, 
 China and Europe being the other two. In- 
 dia’s population is about one-fifth of the hu- 
 man race. How great the task of the Church 
 in India, as estimated by the numbers to be 
 won! 
 
 2. Three great races constitute the basis of 
 India’s population: the Dravidian, Aryan and 
 
 6 
 
Mongolian. The Aryans have contributed 
 their civilization and religion, and have im- 
 pressed upon Hindu society its characteristic 
 organization of caste, a social system unique in 
 the history of the world for its power of re- 
 sisting disintegration and preventing the 
 growth of individualism. Nearly twenty years 
 ago I said to my language teacher: “Pandit, 
 what would take place in India if caste did not 
 exist?” He answered without hesitation, as if 
 voicing a foregone conclusion: “The people 
 would all become Christians.” How great, 
 then, is the task of the Church in India as 
 estimated by the magnitude of the obstacle of 
 caste! 
 
 3. The illiteracy of India is terrible. It 
 may be contrasted with that of America, 
 where 90 per cent. are literate and 10 per cent. 
 are illiterate. But in India the figures have to 
 be reversed. There 10 per cent. are literate 
 (a most liberal estimate), and 90 per cent. il- 
 literate. How great the task of the Church in 
 India as estimated by the illiteracy to be met 
 and overcome! The one hopeful thing in the 
 situation is that the illiteracy is slowly but 
 steadily decreasing. Mr. Gokhale’s Education 
 Bill, if it has become a law, as reported, will 
 provide for a universal scheme of popular 
 education and will inaugurate a new era for 
 India. i 
 
 4. Three great religions are contending with 
 Christianity for the prize of the Indian Em- 
 pire, namely, Hinduism, Islam, and Buddhism. 
 In other non-Christian countries either Islam 
 alone or Buddhism alone is the chief antag- 
 onist of Christianity, but in the Indian Em- 
 pire Christianity is confronted by the serried 
 ranks of the three strongest non-Christian re- 
 ligions of the world. How great, then, is the 
 task of the Church in India as estimated by 
 the number and strength of her adversaries! 
 It looks as if there would be fought out on 
 the soil of India the supreme battle of the 
 ages. 
 
 =7 
 
What has the Christian Church been able to 
 accomplish in the face of these odds? 
 
 1. It has gradually built up a Christian 
 community of 3,876,000 souls, and during the 
 last decade the percentage of the Christian in- 
 crease has been nearly twice that of the gen- 
 eral increase. The Christian growth is from 
 three sources: First, the natural increase of 
 the Christian community itself; secondly, ad- 
 missions from the “depressed classes” or “un- 
 touchables,” frequently in such large numbers 
 as to merit the name of “mass movements”; 
 and, thirdly, admissions relatively few and 
 sporadic from the ranks of Hindus, Muham- 
 madans and Buddhists. 
 
 2. This analysis of the Christian increase 
 indicates the threefold nature of Christian 
 work in India. It is. first, work for the Chris- 
 tians themselves through churches, Sunday- 
 schools, C. E. Societies, prayer meetings, 
 schools, colleges, theological seminaries, con- 
 ventions, special services, missionary societies, 
 Christian literature, etc. The organized 
 Church is the true centre of effort and the 
 real basis for India’s evangelization. Chris- 
 tian work in India is, secondly, work among 
 the accessible classes, which consists in the 
 baptism and teaching of low-caste converts. 
 It is, thirdly, preparatory work for the classes 
 not yet specially accessible, namely, Hindus, 
 Muhammadans and Buddhists, a work which 
 consists in teaching and (in some cases) in 
 baptizing and further training. 
 
 3. Inside the Indian Church movements big 
 with promise have recently taken place. Many 
 congregations, schools and conventions have 
 been visited with revival, and the result has 
 been a new sense of the holiness of God and 
 of the exceeding sinfulness of sin. The forces 
 of indigenous Protestantism in India have 
 been organized into the Indian Missionary So- 
 ciety, a movement prophetic of further unity. 
 Most of the Presbyterian churches in India 
 have united into the Indian Presbyterian 
 Church, and besides this negotiations are on 
 
 8 
 
foot for a large federation of Christian bodies. 
 The revival referred to above touched the 
 Church alone. The next great revival in India 
 may be expected to touch multitudes who have 
 received their education in Christian schools 
 and colleges, and so are more or less prepared 
 for the mighty working of God’s Spirit. The 
 aim of all work for the 3,876,000 Christians is 
 to make them a living and efficient evangelistic 
 instrument. : 
 
 4. The Christian Church in India, besides 
 caring for the members of her own household, 
 is also ministering to two large and strongly 
 contrasted communities outside the Church. 
 She is baptizing and (more slowly) teaching 
 the “untouchables,” of whom there are more 
 than 50,000,000. She is also teaching and 
 (more slowly) baptizing Hindus, Muhamma- 
 dans and Buddhists, of whom there are at 
 least 250,000,000 in the Indian Empire. It is 
 easy to baptize, but hard to teach, a low-caste 
 man. It is easy to teach, but hard to baptize, 
 a high-caste man, or, indeed, a member of 
 any of the strong non-Christian faiths. As 
 Mr. Sherwood Eddy says, “this is the day of 
 seed-sowing among the Brahmans and of reap- 
 ing among the outcastes” (India Awakening, 
 p. 123). The aim of work among the low- 
 caste people is to teach, baptize, train and as- 
 similate as rapidly as possible. Splendid work 
 of this kind has been done in the Farrakhabad, 
 Etah and Etawah Districts of the North India 
 Mission, as well as in many places in the 
 Punjab Mission. 
 
 5. What is the aim and significance of 
 Christian instruction given to non-Christians? 
 By a kind of instinct the various missions 
 working in India have through good report 
 and evil report kept at school work for non- 
 Christian boys and girls until a vast number 
 have been educated in mission schools. “One- 
 third of the education in colleges is in Chris- 
 tian hands. There are also 11,500 primary 
 schools with 361,000 scholars under mission- 
 ary control” (Sherwood Eddy, op cit., p. 115). 
 
 9 
 
Through Christian instruction the Christian 
 Church in India has made a large and vitally 
 important contribution to the awakening of 
 India. There has been, it is true, much sow- 
 ing and comparatively little reaping (as yet). 
 But the sowing is done in faith and hope, and 
 the time of reaping may be nearer than we 
 think. It may be that the various castes and 
 communities of India will become accessible 
 one by one, and that India’s conversion to the 
 religion of Christ will be by communities, even 
 as the conversion of the aborigines of India to 
 Hinduism was and is by communities. At any 
 rate, the ultimate justification of Christian ed- 
 ucation for non-Christians will be in its fruits. 
 
 Christian generalship is needed, and the cate- 
 gories of war should be applied. Sherman’s 
 March to the Sea was more enthusiastic work 
 than Grant’s Siege of Vicksburg. Neverthe- 
 less, both were necessary. The reception and 
 training of multitudes of converts from the 
 outcastes is more inspiring work, perhaps, than 
 the steady siege-work of Christian instruction 
 given to non-Christians. But, again, it may 
 be affirmed that both are necessary, in order of 
 the conquest of India for Jesus Christ. 
 
 6. The American Presbyterian Church has 
 three missions in India, the statistics of which 
 for 1910-1911 are as follows: 
 
 Churches... ¢-c6,):4ssis vole aa 57 
 Ordained native preachers........ 61 
 Communicants:s35. ites eee ae 8,764 
 Added during year............... 1,717 
 No. of Sunday-school scholars..... 10,535 
 No.of schools. oth cae nee 266 
 No.of colleges. “flu ee eee Oe 2 
 No. in boarding and day schools.. 10,973 
 Income on the field............... $82,284 
 
 What, then, is the Christian outlook in 
 India? 
 
 It is partly conditioned by. the fact that In- 
 dia is a birthplace of religions. She has pro- 
 - duced faiths which have affected the life of 
 
 10 
 
over one-third of mankind. Buddhism was 
 the first missionary religion in the world’s his- 
 tory. The productive period of India as a 
 mother of religions may possibly not yet be 
 over. There is still an intense desire on the 
 part of every outstanding religious personality 
 in India to found a new religion, or at least 
 to manifest religious leadership. As illustra- 
 tions may be mentioned Pandit Agnihotri, 
 founder of the atheistic Der Samaj, and Pan- 
 dit Mangal Der, founder of the Satyugi Man- 
 dali, The point of view of every newly found- 
 ed sect or religion is universalistic, 4.e., its gos- 
 pel is regarded as intended for the whole of 
 mankind. The religious teachers of India 
 have not lost their persuasiveness, their power 
 to stir the imagination, and create a follow- 
 ing. It is sufficient to cite the examples of 
 Swami Vivekananda and Swami Tirath Ram, 
 and to refer to an article in the March (1912) 
 number of the Missionary Review of the 
 World, entitled, “The Heathen Invasion of 
 America.” 
 
 There have been in the history of the world 
 two birthplaces or creative centres of religion: 
 Palestine-Arabia and India. Hebraism emerged 
 from the Arabian desert. Jehovah’s earliest 
 seat was at Sinai. St. Paul retired to Arabia 
 for meditation. But the early Church neg- 
 lected Arabia. She found the desert tribes on 
 the south a hard missionary field perhaps. By 
 and by the nemesis came. Arabia, which ages 
 before had brought forth Hebraism, teemed a 
 second time and brought forth Islam. And 
 the desert tribes of Arabia which the Eastern 
 Church found it inconvenient to evangelize 
 crushed the Eastern Church. Which things 
 are a parable and a warning. 
 
 We must not think, then, that by some in- 
 evitable tendency India will become Christian 
 as a matter of course. India’s past history has 
 been a record of brilliant prospects and of 
 blighted hopes. Some of the hymns of the 
 Rig Veda gave promise of an ethical monothe- 
 ism almost as high and pure as that of the Old 
 
 11 
 
Testament prophets. But the vision of God 
 . soon passed and the penitential note as sound- 
 ed in the hymns to Varuna was heard no 
 more. Buddhism seemed on the point of con- 
 quering the whole of India; but Buddhism 
 lost its vigor, was vanquished by the forces of 
 the Hindu Revival, and was finally expelled 
 from the land of its birth. Only on one con- 
 dition has the Christian Church a right to 
 anticipate the conversion of India as the “di- 
 vine event” toward which the whole course of 
 India’s ancient history and modern awakening 
 moves—only on this condition that she prove 
 herself a valiant worker together with God by 
 the Christlike character of her sacrifices and 
 the unfainting fervency of her prayers. 
 
 The work is still largely preparatory in In- 
 dia. There has been as yet no adequate re- 
 turn for all the men and women who have 
 laid down their lives in India and for all the 
 treasure which has been expended there. The 
 story of the “Lone Star Mission” is familiar 
 to all, how that more than once it was threat- 
 ened with abandonment because of its un- 
 fruitfulness. But the time of reaping came 
 at last, and now this same mission among the 
 Telugus numbers over 150,000 persons in its 
 Christian community. In some respects India 
 as a whole may be called the “Lone Star Mis- 
 sion” of the Christian Church. But there is 
 every reason for the belief that the compara- 
 tive unfruitfulness of the early stages of Chris- 
 tian work in India is due only to the special 
 character of the soil, requiring an unusually 
 long time for sowing and tillage. The future 
 of India is as bright as the promises of God. 
 And so to all who support the work in India 
 by their gifts and prayers as well as to all who 
 labor there for the spread of the gospel there 
 comes the apostolic word of command and 
 promise: “Let us not be weary in well-doing; 
 for in due season we shall reap, if we faint 
 not. 
 
 12 
 
The Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian 
 
 Church in the U. S. A. 
 156 Fifth Avenue, New York City 
 
 April, 1912