SITUATION IN INDIA

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 233, 30 June 1939, Page 11

SITUATION IN INDIA

New Life For The Lower Castes

POLITICAL AWAKENING John’s Hall, Wellington, was crowded on Wednesday night, when a social reception was given the Rt. Rev. T. E. Riddle, Moderator of the Presbyterian General Assembly. The gathering was arranged by the Presbytery of Wellington in conjunction with the Wellington branch of the Presbyterian Women’s Association. In the absence of the Moderator .of Presbytery, Rev. Dr. Fraser, Levin, the Rev. J. R. Blanchard presided. He referred to Mr. Riddle’s varied career in the service of the Church. A son of the manse and an alumnus of Otago University, he had served in home mission work in New Zealand and had done able social service in Edinburgh. For eight years he had been a missionary in the New Hebrides and since 1911 had served with conspicuous distinction as a missionary in the Punjab, India. He had been a close friend of the far-famed Sadhu Sundar Singh and had translated four of the Sadhu’s books from the Urdu language into English. When the Sadhu mysteriously disappeared some years ago, Mr. Riddle, in company with a medical missionary of the Presbyterian Church of America, had made a romantic and perilous journey through the Himalayan passes right to the Tibetan border in search of his friend. Unfortunately, the search for the missing Sadhu was in vain. Mrs. R. Inglis welcomed the moderator on behalf of the women’s association, of which she is president. In an interesting address the moderator dealt with certain phases of the situation in India. There was a marked political awakening as a result of legislatures being placed in the hands of the Indians themselves, he said. Prohibition had been enacted, for example, in several places. The change wrought in the districts of Madras was so marked that deputations .from other districts had asked for the same enactment. This political awakening had changed the whole outlook of the outcasts. Formerly downtrodden and hopeless, they had been given representation in the new legislatures. It had meant new life to them. In large numbers they were leaving Hinduism and joining the Christian Church because Christianity had been helping them all along. Grave Problems. ■The educational awakening in India had brought grave problems. Youth under the new education was finding it difficult to retain faith in the religion of its fathers. The tendency had been to give up all religion, because there ■was nothing to take the place of the religion which learning had outmoded, save the materialism received from the West. That was India’s great danger. Today, however, educated young men are coming more and more into the Christian community. This religious awakening was showing itself more markedly in tremendous movements among the low castes. In thousands and hundreds of thousands they were turning to Christianity. The normal rate of increase in the Christian Church in India was 15,000 a month. That gave promise of increasing. A hundred years ago there was one church with seven members in the Punjab. In .1937 there were 500,000 Christians in that area. In four years 30,000 had been baptized in Rajputana; and 28,000 in 12 years in the State of Mysore. This had placed a tremendous burden on the Christian Church:; a burden of preparation of converts, teaching them, and organizing them into a church.

Thus there had come to pass an ecclesiastical awakening. It was showing itself in the union of different branches of the Church. That union was making for strength. In the United Church of North India, for example, there were 1060 congregations, more than 500 of which were completely self-supporting. Great numbers of children were attending the Sunday schools, and the Church would ultimately be stronger for the vast accession of these who had grown up in a Christian atmosphere from the outset of their liveS.