THE NEW RELIGIOUS ORGANISATIONS OF INDIA IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
THE INDIAN CHRISTIAN CHURCH AND THE BR[=A]HMAS
Children of one family.
[Sidenote: Two physical changes on the face of a country.]
When we consider how the face of a country has been altered during the
lapse of time, two great changes may be noticed, both of them due to the
action of man. First we may observe that the whole general character of
the country has undergone transformation. Gone are the ancient forests
of Scotland, which of old in many districts clad the whole countryside,
and with them have gone the wild animals which they sheltered. The
forests destroyed, and the rainfall in consequence less abundant, the
surface marshes and lakes have in many places vanished, taking the old
agues and fevers in their train. Instead of the strongholds of
chieftains in their fastnesses, surrounded by bands of their clansmen
and retainers, has come the sober, peaceful, life of independent
tenants, agricultural or artisan. And so on, down through the general
changes wrought on the face of a land by modern conditions of life, we
might watch the evolution of new features of the landscape. But we turn
to the other kind of change, which is more noticeable at first sight,
and is more directly due to the action of man. Great, laboriously
cultivated, fields now stretch where formerly there was only waste or
forest, or at best small sparsely scattered patches; and the very
products of the soil in these new spacious fields are in many cases new.
Where, for example, even in Britain before the close of the seventeenth
century, were the great fields of potatoes and turnips and red clover,
and even of wheat, which now meet the eye everywhere as the seasons
return? Where in India before the British period were the vast areas now
under tea and coffee, jute and cotton, although the two last have been
grown and manufactured in India from time immemorial? "It might almost
be said that, from Calcutta to Lahore, 50 per cent. of the prevalent
vegetation, cultivated and wild, has been imported into India within
historic times."[51]
[Sidenote: Two similar changes in the religious thought of India.]
All that, of course, is a parable. Likewise, in the new India we are
studying, product of new modern influences direct and indirect, two
kinds of religious changes impress us. There is, first, the gradual
change coming over the whole thought of the people, a transformation
like that wrought upon the face and climate of many lands. There is,
further, the religious change, more immediately evident, in the new
Indian religious organisations of the past century, analogous to the
new, cultivated, products of the soil.
[Sidenote: Four new religious organisations.]
As change more definite and perceptible, we look first at the new Indian
religious organisations. Within the British period, four organised
religious movements attract our notice. They are: I. The new Indian
Christian Church; II. The Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j and the kindred
Pr[=a]rthan[=a] Sam[=a]jes; III. The [=A]rya Sam[=a]j; and IV. The
Theosophical Society, which in India now stands for the revival of
Hinduism.
I. To hear the native Indian Church reckoned among the products of the
British period may be surprising to some. There are indeed Christian
communities in India older than the Christianity of many districts in
Britain, and even excluding the Syrian and Roman Christians of India we
must acknowledge that the Protestant Christian community dates farther
back than the British period. Yet in a real sense the Protestant Indian
Church, and the progressive character of the whole Indian Church, belong
to the century just closed. The Moravians and one English Missionary
Society excepted, all the great Missionary Societies now at work have
come into being since 1793. In 1901 the native _Protestant_ community in
India, outcome of these Societies' labours, numbered close upon a
million souls.
[Sidenote: The Indian Church.]
[Sidenote: The Indian Church and the national consciousness.]
The Indian Christian Church is a living organisation, or congeries of
organisations, over two and a half million souls all told, and growing
rapidly. The exact figures in 1901 were 2,664,313, showing an increase
during ten years of 30.8 per cent. The figures exclude Eurasians and
Europeans; and in Anglo-Indian speech, we may remark, all Americans and
Australians and South African whites and the like are Europeans. The
attitude of the Indian Christian Church to the new ideas introduced by
the British connection and by the modern world can readily be
understood. Cut off, cast off, by their fellow-countrymen, and brought
into closer contact than any others with Europeans in their missionaries
and teachers, their minds have been open to all the new ideas. We know
in fact that Indian Christians are often charged, by persons who do not
appreciate the situation, with being over-Europeanised. It may be so in
certain ways, but, irrespective of Christianity or Hinduism, the
adoption of European ways results from contact with Europeans, and in
certain respects is almost a condition of intercourse with Europeans.
Let those, for example, who talk glibly about Indians sticking to their
own dress, know that gentlemen in actual native dress are not allowed to
walk on that side of the bandstand promenade in Calcutta where Europeans
sit--a scandal crying for removal. With regard to the new national
consciousness, it may be repeated that the Indian Christian community is
almost as alive with the national feeling as the educated Hindu
community. As the Indian Church becomes at once more indigenous and more
thoroughly educated in Western learning, as it becomes less identified
with European denominations, and less dependent upon stimulus from
without, it will no doubt become still more national in every sense, be
more recognised as one of India's institutions, and become a powerful
educator in India. Once within the environment of the national feeling,
the seed of Christian thought and modern ideas will spring up and
spontaneously flourish. The future progress of the Indian Church may be
said to depend upon the growth of that national consciousness within it.
The sense of independence and the duty of self-support and union are,
properly, being fostered in the native churches. But one of the dangers
ahead undoubtedly is that, like one of the other religious movements of
the past century, or like the Ethiopian Church in South Africa, the
Indian Church may become infected with the political rather than the
religious aspect of the idea.
[Sidenote: The Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j.]
[Sidenote: Rammohan Roy.]
II. _The Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j_.--Next to the Christian Church in order of
birth of the issue of the new age, comes the Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j or
Theistic Association. It was founded in Calcutta in 1828 by the famous
reformer, Raja Rammohan Roy, first of modern Indians. The Br[=a]hma
Sam[=a]j is confessedly the outcome of contact with Christian ideas. By
the best known of the Br[=a]hma community, the late Keshub Chunder Sen,
it was described as "the legitimate offspring of the wedlock of
Christianity with the faith of the Hindu Aryans." "No other reformation"
[in India], says the late Sir M. Monier Williams, "has resulted in the
same way from the influence of European education and Christian ideas."
The founder himself, Raja Rammohan Roy, was indeed more a Christian than
anything else, although he wore his brahman thread to the day of his
death in order to retain the succession to his property for his son. In
London and in Bristol, where he died in 1833, he associated himself with
Dr. Carpenter and the more orthodox section of the Unitarians,
explicitly avowing his belief in the miracles of Christ generally, and
particularly in the resurrection. In Calcutta, indeed, the origin of the
Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j was acknowledged at its commencement. After attending
the Scotch and other Churches in Calcutta, and then the Unitarian
Church, Rammohan Roy and his native friends set up a Church of their
own, and one name for it among educated natives was simply the Hindu
Unitarian Church. It is a secondary matter that, to begin with, the
reformer believed that he had found his monotheism in the Hindu
Scriptures, now known to all students as the special Scriptures of
pantheism.
Raja Rammohan Roy, the brave man who made a voyage to Britain in
defiance of caste, the champion of the widow who had often been
virtually obliged to lay herself on her dead husband's pyre, the
strenuous advocate of English education for Indians, the supporter of
the claim of Indians to a larger employment in the public service, has
not yet received from New India the recognition and honour which he
deserves. To every girl, at least in Bengal, the province of
widow-burning, he ought to be a hero as the first great Indian knight
who rode out to deliver the widows from the torturing fire of Suttee.
[Sidenote: Service of the Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j to India.]
As its theistic name implies, the Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j professedly
represents a movement towards theism, _i.e._ a rise from the polytheism
and idolatry of the masses and a rejection of the pantheism of Hindu
philosophy. Of course, noteworthy though it be, the foundation of the
Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j in 1828 was not the introduction of monotheism to
India. In the Indian Christian Church and in Mahomedanism, the doctrine
of one, personal, God had been set forth to India, and in one of the
ancient Hindu philosophical systems, the Yoga Philosophy, the same
doctrine is implied. But in India, Christianity and Mahomedanism were
associated with hostile camps; the Yoga Philosophy was known only to a
few Sanscrit scholars. In Br[=a]hmaism, the doctrine of one personal God
became again natural naturalised in India. That has been its special
service to India, to naturalise monotheism and many social and religious
movements. For in India, things new and foreign lie under a peculiar
suspicion. In the social sphere, the Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j repudiates caste
and gives to women a position in society. As Indian _theists_ also, when
their first church was opened in 1830, they gave the Indian sanction to
congregational worship and prayer, "before unknown to Hindus." For, the
brahman interposing between God and the ignorant multitude, the Hindu
multitude do not assemble themselves for united prayer, as Christians
and Mahomedans do; and at the other end of the Hindu scale, the
professed pantheist as such cannot pray. In proof of the latter
statement, we recall the words of Swami Vivekananda, representative of
Hinduism in the Parliament of Religions at Chicago in 1893, in a lecture
"The Real and the Apparent Man," published in 1896. "It is the greatest
of all lies," he writes somewhat baldly, although one is often grateful
for a bald, definite statement, "that we are mere men; we are the God of
the Universe.... The worst lie that you ever told yourself is that you
were born a sinner.... The wicked see this universe as a hell, and the
partially good see it as heaven, and the perfect beings realise it as
God Himself.... By mistake we think that we are impure, that we are
limited, that we are separate. The real man is the One Unit Existence."
Prayer is therefore irrational for a pantheist, for no man is separate
from God.
[Sidenote: Its limited membership.]
The influence of the Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j has been far greater than its
numerical success. Reckoned by its small company of 4050 members,[52]
some of them certainly men of the highest culture and of sincere
devoutness, the Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j is a limited and local movement,
limited largely to the province of Bengal, and even to a few of the
larger towns in the province. But if the taint of the intellectual
origin of the Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j be still visible in the eclecticism
that it professes, in its rejection of the supernatural, and in its poor
numerical progress, it has nevertheless done great things for India.
[Sidenote: The Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j and the national feeling.]
As yet the Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j has remained unaffected by the political
aspect of the new national feeling. Early in its history there was,
indeed, a section of the Sam[=a]j resolved to limit the selection of
scriptures to the scriptures of the Hindus, but the late Keshub Chunder
Sen successfully asserted the freedom of the Sam[=a]j, and probably
saved it from the narrow patriotic groove and from the political
character of the third of the new religious organisations, the [=A]rya
Sam[=a]j.
[Sidenote: Pr[=a]rthan[=a] Sam[=a]jes or Prayer Associations of S.W.
India.]
_The Pr[=a]rthan[=a] Sam[=a]jes_ or Prayer Associations of South-Western
India.--The history of India is pre-eminently the history of Northern
India, that is of the great plains of the Ganges and the Punjab. One may
test it by the simple academical test of reckoning what percentage of
marks in an examination on Indian history is assigned to the events of
the great northern plains. It is the same in the more recent religious
history of India. The southern provinces of Bombay and Madras have
contributed very little in respect of new religious life, organised or
unorganised, compared with the northern provinces of Bengal, the United
Provinces, and the Punjab. The Pr[=a]rthan[=a] Sam[=a]jes or Prayer
Associations of Bombay and South-western India are monotheistic like the
Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j, and have their halls for their own worship. But
socially they have not severed themselves from their Hindu brethren, and
do not figure in the Census as separate. Even compared with the
Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j, they are few in number. The first Pr[=a]rthan[=a]
Sam[=a]j was founded in Bombay in 1867. In Madras there is a small
representation of the Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j.