LIFE IN INDIA.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 37, 14 February 1939, Page 9

LIFE IN INDIA.

PRIMITIVE PEOPLE.

MISSIONARY WORK.

SALVATION ARMY OFFICERS.

There are two distinguished visiting Salvation Army officers in Auckland at the moment, Adjutant M. Booth-Tucker, a granddaughter of the late General W. Booth, who founded the Salvation Army, and Major B. Anton. They are missionaries from India on a visti to New Zealand. Both of them wear the striking Indian native garb.

In an interview this morning Adjutant Booth-Tucker recalled that her father was the founder of the Salvation Army work in India nearly sixty years ago. He was an Indian civil servant. An appeal was made for a Salvation Army Christmas fund, and when he subscribed to it, somebody sent him a War Cry. That started him on a life's work. He gave up his position in the Indian Civil Service, went to London and then returned to India. With three helpers he started the Salvation Army work in a new country. Mr. Tucker rose to the rank of commissioner in the Salvation Army. He died ten years ago.

To-day the Salvation Army in India has 4000 officers and 90 per cent of them are Indians. There are 5000 centres of work, which include hospitals, schools and a medical service. The Army's following has not been estimated.

Adjutant Booth-Tucker has spent 16 years of missionary work in India, and Las travelled all over the country. She has seen the Himalayas on the borders of Tibet. She has visited Burma, also Ceylon. Jungle People. And then she went on to speak of the people she knew best, the Bhil people, who live in a jungle inland and about 350 miles from Bombay. The way there is by jungle roads, transport is by bullock cart, or occasionally an old and long-suffering light car. 'Often one has to walk.

"They call them the bow and arrow people," said Adjutant Booth-Tucker.

"They are primitive and lovable. To them I am known as 'Dutini,' which means messenger, and Major Auton is known as 'Mithri,' which means 'the friendly one.'

In the village schools the Salvation Army is trying to educate the young natives of India through the elementary stages, but it is only recently that Indian girls have begun to come to the schools."

Into the conversation came the name of Gandhi, and Adjutant Booth-Tucker, who knows him well, described him as being exactly like he looked in his pictures. He was a learned

man, who was very approachable, spoke perfect English, and had an enormous following. She said that India was awakening. India now had its own native doctors, its teachers, its barristers, and even its own film stare. Native-made pictures were playing an important part in Indian national life. The people liked them. They could not understand English or American emotional or humorous films.

Mention of films led the adjutant to recall that her father, in 1906, brought the first moving picture to India. It depicted the life of Christ, and at Simla was shown before 7COO people sitting on the ground. That moving picture made an enormous impression.

Some of the difficulties in India, where they have nine distinct languages and 900 dialects, were mentioned by the visitor. She said that India only understood sacrifice, and described it in the words "not what you are, or what you gain, but what you give up." She has seen yogis sitting on a cushion of spikes from sunrise to sunset to obtain merit by penance. She hss found the Indian people gentle and gracious, people who will wait quietly until they are spoken to.

Adjutant Booth-Tucker described the garb, which both she and her companion wear. The sari, or dress, is of saffron, the sacred colour of India. The cape is red. It symbolises the Salvation Army. One may walk freely through the jungle in the saffron sari. It is regarded as holy. Aspects of Life. Adjutant Booth-Tucker spoke of many aspects of life in India; the passing of the purdah, or veil, formerly worn by the Mohammedan women; the difficult lot of the great populace of untouchables; famine, floods and pestilence; and an Indian people who know practically nothing of an outside world. She mentioned good work being done in India by Dr. Bramwell Cook, formerly of Hastings, New Zealand.

The two Salvation Army officers will speak to-morrow evening in Auckland. Then they will go on to Sydney to take up work there.