India has boasted certain eminent women whom America knows well. Ramabai
with her work for widows is a household word in American homes and
colleges; President Harrison's sentences of appreciation emphasized the
distinction that already belonged to Lilavati Singh; Chandra Lela's
search for God has passed into literature. The Sorabji sisters are known
in the worlds of law, education, and medicine.
But these names are not the only ones that India has to offer. In the
streets of her great cities where two civilizations clash; in sleepy,
old-world towns where men and women, born under the shade of temple
towers and decaying palaces, are awakening to think new thoughts; in
isolated villages where life still harks back to pre-historic
days--against all these backgrounds you may find the Christian educated
woman of New India measuring her untried strength against the powers of
age-old tradition.
In this chapter I would tell you of a few such women whom I have met.
They are not the only ones; they may not be even pre-eminent. Many who
knew India well would match them with lists from other localities and
in other lines of service.
These five are all college women. One had but two years in a Mission
College whose course of study went no further; one carries an American
degree; three are graduates of a Government College for men. All go back
to the pioneer days before Madras Women's Christian College and Vellore
Medical School saw the light, and when Isabella Thoburn's college
department was small; all five bear proudly the name of Christian;
through five different professions they are giving to the world of India
their own expression of what Christianity has meant to them.
[Illustration: MRS. PAUL APPASAMY]
Home Making and Church Work.
Throughout India there exists a group of women workers, widely
scattered, largely unknown to one another, in the public eye unhonored
and unsung, yet performing tasks of great significance. Wherever an
Indian Church raises its tower to the sky, there working beside the
pastor you will find the pastor's wife.
Sometimes she lives in the heart of the Hindu town; sometimes in a
village, in the primitive surroundings of a mass-movement community.
Eminent among such is Mrs. Azariah, wife of the first Indian bishop, and
with him at the head of the Tinnevelly Missionary Society at Dornakal.
There, in the heart of the Deccan, among primitive Telugu outcastes, is
this remarkable group of Indian missionaries, supported by Indian
funds, winning these lowly people through the gospel of future salvation
and of present betterment.
It was on a Sunday morning that I slipped into the communion service at
Dornakal. The little church, built from Indian gifts with no aid from
the West, is simplicity itself. The roof thatched with millet stalks,
the low-hanging palmyra rafters hung with purple everlastings, the
earth-floor covered with bamboo matting, all proclaimed that here was a
church built and adorned by the hands of its worshippers. The Bishop in
his vestments dispensed the sacrament from the simple altar. Even the
Episcopal service had been so adapted to Indian conditions that instead
of the sound of the expected chants one heard the Te Deum and the Venite
set to the strains of Telugu lyrics. The audience, largely of teachers,
theological students, and schoolboys and girls, sat on the clean floor
space. One saw and listened with appreciation and reverence, finding
here a beginning and prophecy of what the Christianized fraction of
India will do for its motherland.
It was against this background that I came to know Mrs. Azariah. In the
bungalow, as the Bishop's wife, she presides with dignity over a
household where rules of plain living and high thinking prevail. She
dispenses hospitality to the many European guests who come to see the
activities of this experimental mission station, and packs the Bishop
off well provided with food and traveling comforts for his long and
numerous journeys. The one little son left at home is his mother's
constant companion and shows that his training has not been neglected
for the multitude of outside duties. One longs to see the house when the
five older children turn homeward from school and college, and fill the
bungalow with the fun of their shared experiences. Mercy, the eldest
daughter, is one of the first Indian women students to venture on the
new commercial course offered by the Young Women's Christian Association
with the purpose of fitting herself to be her father's secretary. In a
few months she will be bringing the traditions of the Women's Christian
College of Madras, where she spent two previous years, to share with the
Dornakal community.
But, though wife and mother and home maker, Mrs. Azariah's interests
extend far beyond the confines of her family. She is president of the
Madras Mothers' Union, and editor of the little magazine that travels to
the homes of Tamil and Telugu Christian women, their only substitute
for the "Ladies' Home Journal" and "Modern Priscilla." She is also the
teacher of the women's class, made up of the wives of the theological
students. A Tamil woman in a Telugu country, she, too, must have known a
little of the linguistic woes of the foreign missionary. Those days,
however, are long past, and she now teaches her daily classes in fluent
and easy Telugu. There are also weekly trips to nearby hamlets, where
the women-students are guided by her into the ways of adapting the
Christian's good news to the comprehension of the plain village woman,
whose interests are bounded by her house, her children, her goats, and
her patch of millet.
Such a village we visited that same Sunday, when toward evening the
Bishop, Mrs. Azariah, and I set out to walk around the Dornakal domain.
We saw the gardens and farm from which the boys supply the whole school
family with grain and fresh vegetables; we looked up to the grazing
grounds and saw the herd of draught bullocks coming into the home sheds
from their Sunday rest in pasture. I was told about the other activities
which I should see on the working day to follow--spinning and weaving
and sewing, cooking and carpentry and writing and reading--a simple
Christian communism in which the boys farm and weave for the girls, and
the girls cook and sew for the boys, and all live together a life that
is leading up to homes of the future.
It was after all that that we saw the village. On the edge of the
Mission property we came to the small group of huts, wattled from tree
branches and clay, inhabited by Indian gypsy folk, just settling from
nomadism into agricultural life. So primitive are they still, that lamp
light is _taboo_ among them, and the introduction of a kerosene lantern
would force them to tear down those attempts at house architecture and
move on to a fresh site, safe from the perils of civilization. It is
among such primitive folk that Mrs. Azariah and her students carry their
message. Herself a college woman, what experiment in sociology could be
more thrilling than her contact with such a remnant of the primitive
folk of the early world?
Mother, home-maker, editor, teacher, evangelist, with quiet
unconsciousness and utter simplicity she is building her corner of
Christian India.
Public Service.
"To-morrow is the day of the Annual Fair and I am so busy with
arrangements that I had no time even to answer the note you sent me
yesterday." No, this was not said in New York or Boston, but in Madras;
and the speaker was not an American woman, but Mrs. Paul Appasamy, the
All-India Women's Secretary of the National Missionary Society.
[Illustration: MRS. PAUL APPASAMY]
It was at luncheon time that I found Mrs. Appasamy at home, and
persuaded her by shortening her meal a bit to find time to sit down with
me a few minutes and tell me of some of the opportunities that Madras
offers to an Indian Christian woman with a desire for service.
For such service Mrs. Appasamy has unusual qualifications. The fifth
woman to enter the Presidency College of Madras, she was one of those
early pioneers of woman's education, of whom we have spoken with
admiring appreciation. Two years of association with Pandita Ramabai in
her great work at Poona added practical experience and a familiarity
with organization. Some years after her marriage to Mr. Appasamy, a
barrister-at-law in Madras, came the opportunity for a year of foreign
travel, divided between England and America. Such experiences could not
fail to give a widened outlook, and, when Mrs. Appasamy returned to make
her home in Madras, she soon found that not even with four children to
look after, could her interests be confined to the walls of her own
home.
American girls might be interested to know how wide a range of
activities Indian life affords--how far the Western genius for
organization and committee-life has invaded the East. Here is a partial
list of Mrs. Appasamy's affiliations:
Member of Council and Executive for the Women's Christian College.
Vice President of the Madras Y.W.C.A.
Member of the Hostel Committee of the Y.W.C.A.
Member of the Vernacular Council of the Y.W.C.A.
Women's Secretary for All India of the National Missionary Society.
Supervisor of a Social Service Committee for Madras.
President of the Christian Service Union.
Of all her activities, Mrs. Appasamy's connection with the National
Missionary Society is perhaps the most interesting. The "N.M.S.," as it
is familiarly called, is a cause very near to the hearts of most Indian
Christians. The work in Dornakal represents the effort of Tinnevelly
Tamil Christians for the evangelization of one section of the Telugu
country. The N.M.S. is a co-ordinated enterprise, taking in the
contributions of all parts of Christian India and applying them to seven
fields in seven different sections of India's great expanse. The first
is denominational and intensive; the second interdenominational and
extensive. India has room for both and for many more of each. Both are
built upon the principle of Indian initiative and employ Indian workers
paid by Indian money.
In the early days of the N.M.S., its missionaries were all men, assisted
perhaps by their wives, who with household cares could give only limited
service. Later came the idea that here was a field for Indian women. At
the last convention, the question of women's contribution and women's
work was definitely raised, and Mrs. Appasamy took upon herself the
burden of travel and appeal. Already she has organized contributing
branches among the women of India's principal cities and is now
anticipating a trip to distant Burmah for the same purpose. Rupees
8,000--about $2,300.00--lie in the treasury as the first year's
response, much of it given in contributions of a few cents each from
women in deep poverty, to whom such gifts are literally the "widow's
mite."
The spending of the money is already planned. In the far north in a
Punjabi village a house is now a building and its occupant is chosen.
Miss Sirkar, a graduate now teaching in Kinnaird College, Lahore, has
determined to leave her life within college walls, to move into the
little house in the isolated village, and there on one third of her
present salary to devote her trained abilities to the solution of rural
problems. It is a new venture for an unmarried woman. It requires not
only the gift of a dedicated life, but also the courage of an
adventurous spirit. Elementary school teaching, social service,
elementary medical help--these are some of the "jobs" that face this new
missionary to her own people.
But, to return to Mrs. Appasamy, she not only organizes other people for
work, but in the depressed communities of Madras herself carries on the
tasks of social uplift. As supervisor of a Social Service organization,
she has the charge of the work carried on in fifteen outcaste villages.
With the aid of several co-workers frequent visits are made. Night
schools are held for adults who must work during the hours of daylight,
but who gather at night around the light of a smoky kerosene lantern to
struggle with the intricacies of the Tamil alphabet. Ignorant women,
naturally fearful of ulterior motives, are befriended, until trust
takes the place of suspicion. The sick are induced to go to hospitals;
learners are prepared for baptism; during epidemics the dead are buried.
During the great strike in the cotton mills, financial aid was given.
Hull House, Chicago, or a Madras Pariah Cheri--the stage setting shifts,
but the fundamental problems of ignorance and poverty and disease are
the same the world around. The same also is the spirit for service,
whether it shines through the life of Jane Addams or of Mrs. Appasamy.