p. 10 | Progress in India by John L. Shaw

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 28, 1911

Progress in India

By John L. Shaw

J. L. SHAW

North India

In north India work has been opened at the four following stations: Lucknow, Mussoorie, Deosa, and Najibabad. At Lucknow are located the Watchman press and the mission office and tract society depository. One sister is giving her time to zenana work in Hindustani homes, with encouraging results.

Mussoorie is the headquarters of our work during eight months of the year, while the heat of the plains is oppressive. A public effort in English is conducted each season. The sanitarium, which was operated for three years, has necessarily been reduced to treatment-rooms, owing to Dr. H. C. Menkel’s leaving the field. It, however, is enjoying good patronage, and bids fair to be self-sustaining financially, though it may be too early to say whether this hope will be realized. A free dispensary is also conducted, treating from twenty-five to forty patients a day. At Annfield, the rest-home for missionaries, a school for the children of our missionaries and other English-speaking Sabbath-keepers, has recently been started. Having a good location in a healthful climate, the prospects of the little school are encouraging. A man and his wife who could take charge of the school are very much desired.

The mission school at Deosa, Garhwal, conducted by Brother and Sister Burgess, with its one or two out-schools, is making good progress. A mission house and two small dormitories have already been built, and a school building is now in process of construction. This mission station enjoys a healthful, invigorating climate, the people in surrounding villages are very friendly, and in time we hope a church may be raised up. People strongly bound to the teachings of Hinduism do not easily find their way to Christ.

The dispensary at Najibabad has been open only one year, and during the last six months, owing to the plague, the work has been seriously injured. Our location being in the center of the native city, one of our sisters was taken down with plague, but in answer to prayer the plague was almost instantly checked, and the life of the worker spared. There is at the present time a prospect of getting land one or two miles from the city, where a mission house can be built in a healthful place.

South India

In south India work has been carried on at Nazareth, Tinnevelli, for three years. A mission bungalow and church-school building have been erected. With a church of forty members, a Sabbath-school of one hundred, a day-school of seventy-five pupils, and a dispensary, the work at this station is moving forward in an encouraging manner. An outstation, some eight miles distant, is under consideration. At Trichinopoli, a large city at some distance, Brother and Sister Lowry are just opening up work. An Indian brother has been preparing the way by teaching the truth to his fellow countrymen who are Christians.

West India

Work is fairly started in west India. A few have accepted the truth. Elder G. F. Enoch has begun work at Panvel, fifteen miles across the bay from Bombay. A few native workers are in training, and one or two out-schools have recently been opened. Our workers at Panvel are in a thickly settled district, with the great city of Bombay but a few miles away. Lonavla, a more healthful station, thirty miles away, has a few Sabbath-keepers, and it seems advisable to locate Brother and Sister Kelsey there. Two lone sisters are doing self-supporting medical work in Bombay. Such is the beginning in the great west of India.

Burma

Burma has a thriving little English-speaking church at Rangoon, with several Burmese members and one or two Burmese workers. At Meiktila, in northern Burma, an industrial school has been started. Money has been raised in Burma to buy the land and to put up the buildings, which are now being erected. A mission house for the teacher in charge of the school, will soon be built. Brother and Sister Beckner have recently taken up work at Mandalay, the largest city of northern Burma. People seem desirous of knowing the truth, and our Burmese literature finds a ready sale. 1,150 Gospels and tracts being sold by Brother Beckner in one week.

English Work

The condition of the English work in India is less prosperous. The circulation of the Oriental Watchman, having scarcely any canvassers, ran down almost to the vanishing point; there has been a small gain recently, and the subscription list is now over a thousand. At one time it had a paid-up annual subscription list of four thousand copies.

Most workers coming to India the past few years, have had a burden to enter the native work, and English evangelical work has been neglected. In all India we have not one minister free to give his full time to preaching the message in the English language, notwithstanding the fact that there are between five and seven millions of people who understand English, and who unquestionably represent the better educated and more enlightened part of the population.

In Burma the English work is doing better than in India. At Rangoon we have had ministerial work carried on uninterruptedly the past six or seven years. The tithe of the members of the church is more than sufficient to support a minister and his wife. The same was true when active evangelical work was done in the Calcutta church.

Our sanitarium in India has suffered a blow in having to be closed this year, owing to the physician’s leaving the field. The small institution conducted in Mussoorie the last three years, barring the doctor’s salary, has been about self-sustaining, though carried on in a building cramped for room and wholly unsuited to sanitarium work.

The treatment-rooms in Calcutta are doing well, having paid off considerable indebtedness incurred while carrying on sanitarium work, and are now gaining a little financially each month. Our nurses giving massage in Rangoon and Bombay are doing well. The experiment of having workers support themselves while studying the language, is being tried, and the results so far appear encouraging.