p. 11 | Progress of the Work in India

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Michigan · Sep 11, 1900

Progress of the Work in India

By William Ambrose Spicer

SINCE the last preceding report from India some changes have taken place. The mission house, in Bow Bazar, Calcutta, has been given up, and our meetings are held in a hall, secured for a year, in the European quarter of the city. The hall is ample for our present needs, and by a partition at one end, supplies space for our office and depository. The company meeting here, will pay their share of the hall rent and all expenses of the meetings, leaving a small amount for the book depository to pay for office room. The amount thus saved can be put into public work in other cities in India.

Our office is now at 44a, Free School St., Calcutta. The medical branch has also changed its location. Until recently their office was in one part of the city, and the hospital for patients in another. Now the work is carried on at 51 Park St., where offices, treatment rooms, and living quarters are combined. This is far more convenient for the workers, and they expect a considerable business increase as the result of the improved facilities. All the medical workers are engaged at the Park Street institution, which the doctors have decided to call the Medical and Surgical Sanitarium. The home institution has made the name “sanitarium” known in India as an institutional name, so the word is understood.

Miss Burma and Sister Fleming are in Calcutta, doing zenana work, or visiting the women in their homes. Sister Fleming heard the message at Naini Tal, while Brother and Sister Brown were at that hill station last summer. After a few months’ canvassing, we called her to the zenana work in Calcutta, as she was already proficient in the Bengali language. The zenana work is one requiring steady, plodding effort, and doubtless we shall see more abundant fruit of it in the kingdom of God than in this world. Seeds of truth sown here and there in Hindu homes must surely bear fruit some day. The orphanage is at Karmatar, where Elders Robinson and Brown died. At present there are but fifteen children in it, but possibly we may add others during this famine. Genuine orphans are not so readily secured in India as in other lands, where the caste system does not work to keep the children within the family and tribal boundaries. The large societies working in the famine districts gather in many children, orphaned, or left, forsaken, at the poor-houses and relief camps. But, as our brethren found in the famine of 1897, unless one is stationed in the distressed districts, or is on good terms with the “orthodox” missionary circles, orphans are found with difficulty. The famine regions are a long way from Karmatar.

Brother and Sister Quantock are at Karmatar, looking after the children and the farm. We can never train the children on the cheap plan generally advertised; for the amount given would put only a rag around the body, and fill the stomach with rice and dahl twice a day. To make anything satisfactory of children in India, it takes the same care that is given to orphans in America, though on a cheaper scale, it is true; and it will take more care and training, because they live in an atmosphere of indifference, indolence, and deception. We are in no haste to add largely to our responsibilities in this direction. The orphan problem is, generally speaking, unsolved in India. Funds for their support are easily raised, but the difficulty to be met and conquered is that of making the child a useful member of Indian society. As yet the mission-trained convert is not at a premium in the business world. A missionary who has a large work, and makes brilliant reports, told me personally some time ago that his orphan children are worse than the heathen, and that he has to watch his preachers and teachers like a hawk, or they take advantage of him by false dealing. We wish to make sure work as we go, nor will we try to force the pace to make grand reports.

The farm is a much better place for the children than the house in the city, and, with the rent paid in by those who occupy the main bungalow, our expenses are lessened. With rain, our farm should produce a good quantity of rice. The land will probably never be very productive, and fruit and the finer grades of garden and farm produce do not grow well, even after the labor of irrigation, but during the next two years there will be opportunity to experiment and learn what will do best. Farming here is not what it is in America. The workmen are cheap, it is true, but will do as little as possible, and must be watched day and night. The head gardener, they tell me, stole a piece of cloth some time ago. Learning that the theft was traced to him, he called a council of villagers, and after much speaking, it was decided to burn the cloth. Why doesn’t Brother Quantock turn him off? Well, why don’t people in India turn servants off generally for petty peculations of foodstuffs, etc.? One would be changing servants all the time; for in the native servant code, the wages includes the right to take small articles belonging to their employer, and also a commission on all purchases.

Experienced medical help being required at Calcutta, the dispensary work that Brother Brown started at Karmatar has been discontinued, except as the workers may be able to do something for the natives coming with sores, bad eyes, etc. A young man, Babu Dewanjee, is teaching the children. Babu Mitter, who formerly was with the school, is engaged in Calcutta in general evangelistic work.

In one of the Calcutta suburbs, Ballaghata, we have our one native school for girls, with another Bengali worker, Babu Biswas, in charge. He and his wife have about thirty girls, of all ages from the little ones to those of ten years, at which age the girl generally leaves to get married.

Brother Ellery Robinson is in Bombay, where he has taken several hundred subscriptions to the Oriental Watchman, and sold a large number of books, besides visiting and doing Bible work. In connection with his rooms, he has a small hall-like room, which serves for a book depository and place for meetings. To draw together some who are interested, he has begun Sunday evening Bible studies for the public. Thus the leaven is working; and very possibly, by the time reinforcements come to carry on public meetings in the centers of India, it will be thought best to begin in Bombay a general effort for English-speaking peoples.

Brother I. D. Richardson, who came to sell books in India, has had good success. This summer he is working with our paper and small books in southern India. One other canvasser is in the field, Brother H. B. Meyers, who is assisted by his son. These two have recently sold a large number of books, mostly health works, in Burma and the Straits Settlements.

Our paper has now a circulation of about forty-seven hundred. We hope soon to get more literature in the vernaculars into circulation. We are but a handful, and can not say much of what has already been accomplished in this great field. It is far less than should have been done, and it seems sometimes as if America, with its increasing appeals and new enterprises, will continue to monopolize the Seventh-day Adventist energies to the end. But the Lord knows. When we see how China is seething, and know how much of unrest and trouble there is in all Asia, we are convinced that now is the most favorable time we shall ever have to work in these lands. We can only go forward and look to the Lord and the brethren for help.

The very fact that India is a dark land, morally, socially, and industrially, makes it a grand missionary field. One of the most depressing things in it is the condition of the convert communities after a century of missions. But the Third Angel’s Message will work reform, and produce something different. Some in the native community are already facing the right way; and we know that many honest but uninstructed ones are waiting for the message. Step by step we shall advance, and the Lord will bless the work, whether we are able to tabulate the results or not.

W. A. SPICER.