The British, however, did not find them romantic in any way. They introduced class in a classless society, money in a barter economy -- and Christianity in place of animism. It is said that the Garos held out for the first hundred years of missionary attempts at proselytization. "The first Christian missionary to the Garos may have been Krishna Pal," surmises Angela Robinson (p19). "He was the first convert of William Carey, the English Baptist missionary, after he had been 8 years in (West) Bengal." It is interesting how missionary activity went hand-in-hand with government assistance. "The government had promised a grant of 3 rupees a month for a new school -- and there were 32 pupils waiting. So Kali Charan began a school. In 1885, when he chose a Garo bride, there was the first Christian Garo wedding here." But the task of mass conversion still lay ahead, and one charismatic character mentioned by Ms. Robinson was Father Chakravarty.
One feels sorrier for the father of Father Chakravarty than admiration for his son. The gentleman was a high-caste Brahmin Bengali and a professional who naturally wanted his son to learn English. At 17, he was sent off to Calcutta where he stayed at the hostel of the Oxford Mission Fathers. Apparently, the boy was much impressed by the life of St. Francis of Assisi and the 'plain living and high thinking' of the priests. He was baptized in 1901, and his family disowned and disinherited him. They did not even let him visit his father when the latter lay dying.
Mohendra Chandra Chakravarty (to give him his full name) became a priest in 1911 and in 1917 he came to Haluaghat. "In 1920, the Bishop of Bengal, Rev Dr Phos Westcott visited and baptized 22 adults and confirmed 27 others. When he visited again, in 1928, over 100 were baptized (p31)."
Apparently, Father Chakravarty was busiest in the period 1935 -- 48. "He helped the Garo to see the truth of Christianity".A woman who headed one household decided that what he said about Christianity showed that it was better than her own, animist, religion, and she was converted -- and others followed." Sister Charu Sangma (the oldest nun in the sisterhood of Saint Mary at the time Ms. Robinson wrote the book) was a daughter of an animist chief. Father Chakravarty converted her, and every member of the family! Her father, on account of his status, held out to see how many villagers relinquished the native faith. The number must have been significant for he, too, was finally baptized: a chief who did not share the religion of his people would, presumably, be de trop.
"The onset of British influence in India differed both in manner and in kind from that of other historical invasions. The British came neither as migrating hordes seeking new homes nor as armies seeking plunder or empire. They had no missionary zeal. Yet eventually they did more to transform India than did any previous ruling power." Thus pondered Percival Spear in his article in the Britannica. They had no missionary zeal? As we have seen, their missionary zeal was not just confined to missionaries. Every element of the British intelligentsia seems to have been hell-bent on transforming India in one way or another. The missionaries stand out because what they did was conspicuous.
Take the Garos, again. After holding out for a hundred years, they finally succumbed to the charms of Christianity. In 1962, according to Angela Robinson, half the Garos were Christians; by 2002, 95% were. "One of the major reasons why Garos have adopted christianity (sic) is their immediate economic gain in the form of direct financial assistance offered to the newly baptised Christians." This is the candid observation of the Banglapedia. In April 2009, I made the acquaintance of a Santal leader, Noresh Sarkar; when I asked him why so many Santals were converting to Christianity, I received the same explanation as that offered by the Banglapedia for the Garos: material gain.
It is commonplace today for people to mourn the death of languages; few, however, mourn the death of ancient ways of life. Diversity is disappearing from the world. The Muslims had left the animists of the Garo hills and the Chittagong Hill Tracts alone. The seventeenth-century Muslim historian of Bengal, Mirza Nathan, observed that the Garos would eat anything except iron (Muslims, like Jews, have strict dietary prohibitions). They survived Muslim rule with their religion (and diet) intact, but the British proved too much for them. European civilization was dedicated to ethnocide. Percival Spear's observation above applied only to the British East India Company, not to the British. (In fact, the three pre-occupations of the Portuguese also had been "trade, anti-Islamism, and religion". Their missionary zeal was only matched by their intolerance.)
Eventually, the religions that the British were able to inculcate were those of nationalism and democracy. Both these secular credos share the seven dimensions of any religion adumbrated by Ninian Smart. However, their introduction into India was inextricably and inevitably connected with religion, or, this time, syncretistic mysticism. It may surprise readers to learn that one of the major personalities in the founding of the Indian National Congress was -- yes! - an Englishman and former bureaucrat Allan Octavian Hume (1829 -- 1912). He was also a member of the Theosophical Society, a collection of mystics who found inspiration in the teaching of Helena Blavatsky (1831 -- 1891), who, in turn, in 1879, sought inspiration from Swami Dayananda Sarasvati (1824 -- 83). His 'back to the Vedas' theology emphasized the disunity following the post-Vedic period which, he claimed, had sapped Hindu ability to resist foreign aggression. Annie Besant (1847 -- 1933) succeeded Blavatsky, and was the first (and only) British woman to serve as president of the Indian National Congress (1917). India escaped culture death, but not without a few cuts and bruises.
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