Missionaries

"All I can say in my solitude is, may Heaven's rich blessing come down on every one American, English, Turk who will help to heal this open sore of the world."

"People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. Can that be called a sacrifice which is simply paid back as a small part of a great debt owing to our God, which we can never repay? Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the word in such a view and with such a thought! It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger now and then with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause and cause the spirit to waver and the soul to sink; but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice."

"Creeping with awe to the verge, I peered down into a large rent which had been made from bank to bank of the broad Zambezi, and saw that a stream of a thousand yards broad leaped down a hundred feet [30 m] and then became suddenly compressed into a space of fifteen to twenty yards."

"No one can imagine the beauty of the view from anything witnessed in England. It had never been seen before by European eyes; but scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight."

"The islands above the falls are covered with foliage as beautiful as can be seen anywhere. Viewed from the mass of rock which overhangs the fall, the scenery was the loveliest I had seen."

"July 29, 1869. — Went two and a half hours west to village of Ponda, where a head Arab, called by the natives 'Tipo Tipo' lives; bis name is Hamid bin Mohammed bin Juma Borajib. He presented a goat, a piece of white calico, and four big bunches of beads, also a bag of holens sorghum, and apologized because it was so little."

"The natives are quick to detect a peculiarity in a man, and to give him a name accordingly. The conquerors of a country try to forestall them by selecting one for themselves. Susi states that when Tipo Tipo stood over the spoil taken from Nsama, he gathered it closer together, and said: "Now I am Tipo Tipo,'that is,'the gatherer together of wealth.'""

"And if my disclosures regarding the terrible Ujijian slavery should lead to the suppression of the East Coast slave trade, I shall regard that as a greater matter by far than the discovery of all the Nile sources together."

"To overdraw its evil is a simple impossibility"

"We passed a slave woman shot or stabbed through the body and lying on the path: a group of men stood about a hundred yards off on one side, and another of the women on the other side, looking on; they said an Arab who passed early that morning had done it in anger at losing the price he had given for her, because she was unable to walk any longer. 27th June 1866 - To-day we came upon a man dead from starvation, as he was very thin. One of our men wandered and found many slaves with slave-sticks on, abandoned by their masters from want of food; they were too weak to be able to speak or say where they had come from; some were quite young."

"The strangest disease I have seen in this country seems really to be broken-heartedness, and it attacks free men who have been captured and made slaves... Twenty one were unchained, as now safe; however all ran away at once; but eight with many others still in chains, died in three days after the crossing. They described their only pain in the heart, and placed the hand correctly on the spot, though many think the organ stands high up in the breast-bone."

"Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"

"During the anti-colonial 1960s, Livingstone was debunked: he made only one certified convert, who later backslid; he explored few areas not already traveled by others; he freed few slaves; he treated his colleagues horribly; he traveled with Arab slave traders; his family life was in shambles—in short, to many he embodied the "White Man's Burden" mentality. Nonetheless, at a time when countries are being renamed and statues are being toppled, Livingstone has not fallen. Despite modern Africans' animosity toward other Europeans, such as Cecil Rhodes, Livingstone endures as a heroic legend. Rhodesia has long since purged its name, but the cities of Livingstone (Zambia) and Livingstonia (Malawi) keep the explorer's appellation with pride."

"The first missionaries in East Africa had, at most, five years to live, they knew this, and yet they went anyway."

"The white man is very clever. He came quietly with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart."

"Poor Uncle Harry Having become a missionary Found the natives' morals rather crude. He and Aunt Mary Swiftly imposed an arbitrary Ban upon them shopping in the nude. Now they all considered this silly, And they didn't take it well. They burnt his boots, and several suits, and wrecked the Mission Hotel They also burnt his mackintosh, which made a disgusting smell."

"If charity and philanthropy is not connected with any ulterior motive, they are beneficial. But charity and conversions cannot go together. Religion prospers only when charity and philanthropy are undertaken without any motive. ... The poor and illiterate may enjoy religious freedom without any fear. We have to be particularly vigilant about the Scheduled Tribes whose protection is not only guaranteed by the laws of the land but is also enshrined in the Constitution. It is our duty to preserve every aspect of their way of life along with their religion and ways of worship. No group belonging to any creed should interfere with their religion and rituals. Other organizations are also engaged in the philanthropic work... But that work can be helpful only when it is done without any ulterior motive."

"While you engage in directly separating as many precious atoms from the mass as the stubborn resistance to ordinary appliances can admit, we shall, with the blessing of God, devote our time and strength for the preparing of a mine, and the setting of a train which shall one day explode and tear up the whole from its lowest depths."

"If I had power and could legislate, I should certainly stop all proselytising. It is the cause of much avoidable conflict between classes and unnecessary heart-burning among the missionaries… In Hindu households the advent of a missionary has meant the disruption of the family, coming in the wake of change of dress, manners, language, food and drink. … The other day a missionary descended on a famine area with money in his pocket, distributed it among the famine-stricken, converted them to his fold, took charge of their temple and demolished it. This is outrageous. The temple could not belong to the converted, and it could not belong to the Christian missionary. But this friend goes and gets it demolished at the hands of the very men who only a little while ago believed that God was there."

"Conversion in the sense of self-purification, self-realization, is the crying need of the hour. That, however, is not what is meant by proselytising. To those who would convert India, might it not be said, ‘physician heal thyself’?"

"It never occurred to these knaves and fools that the Christian missionary whom they were aping and helping was viewed in the modern West as a maniac whom it was better to dump abroad with a bag of money."

"India provides a particularly soft target. The Christian missions are welcome to open their purse strings in the Islamic and Communist countries of Asia. But the missions there are barred from winning new converts. Hindu India, drowned in poverty and suffering from cultural self-forgetfulness, is the only country in Asia which provides the quid pro quo."

"The Mission in its pristine purity could always be met in the Seminaries which trained team after team of native converts and turned them into saboteurs for Western imperialism. The brainwashed fanatics fanned out to every nook and corner of the country, manning mission stations and directing the task force behind the smoke-screen of services. They exploited every weakness in Hindu society and probed every soft spot in the Hindu psyche for promoting the Mission."

"When the Missionaries arrived, the Africans had the Land and the Missionaries had the Bible. They taught us how to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened them, they had the land and we had the Bible."

"Are there no Moravians in the Moon, that not a missionary has yet visited this poor pagan planet of ours, to civilise civilisation and christianise Christendom?"

"Cambridge University established a prize named for an essay competition on the topic: 'The best means of civilizing the subjects of the British Empire in India, and of diffusing the light of the Christian religion throughout the eastern world.'"

"This heroism was also that of the first missionaries. They had a life expectancy of about 5 years in Congo, and some were given extremely anointing at the time of their journey to Africa. There were many young idealists. Their graves are still lined up in the Mpala locality, which overlooks Lake Tanganyika. The Catholic mission was a fort where people who fled slavers and brutality took refuge."

"One thing I would tell you, and I do not mean any unkind criticism. You train and educate and clothe and pay men to do what? To come over to my country to curse and abuse all my forefathers, my religion and everything. They walk near a temple and say, ‘You idolaters, you will go to hell’. But they dare not do that to the Mohammedans of India; the sword would be out. But the Hindu is too mild; he smiles and passes on, and says, ‘Let the fools talk’. That is the attitude. And then you, who train men to abuse and criticise, if I touch you with the least bit of criticism, with the kindest of purpose, you shrink and cry, ‘Don’t touch us; we are Americans. We criticise all the people in the world, curse them and abuse them, say anything; but do not touch us; we are sensitive plants’. You may do whatever you please; but at the same time I am going to tell you that we are content to live as we are; and in one thing we are better off – we never teach our children to swallow such horrible stuff: ‘Where every prospect pleases and man alone is vile’. And whenever your ministers criticise us, let them remember this: if all India stands up and takes all the mud that is at the bottom of the Indian Ocean and throws it up against the Western countries, it will not be doing an infinitesimal part of that which you are doing to us. And what for? Did we ever send one missionary to convert anybody in the world? We say to you, ‘Welcome to your religion, but allow me to have mine. You call yours religion, but allow me to have mine’."

"Richard Temple, another high officer, said in a 1883 speech to a London missionary society intended to generate donations to missions: India is a country which of all others we are bound to enlighten with eternal truth…. But what is most important to you friends of missions, is this — that there is a large population of aborigines, a people who are outside caste…. If they are attached, as they rapidly may be, to Christianity, they will form a nucleus round which British power and influence may gather. Remember, too, that Hinduism, although it is dying, yet has force … and such tribes, if not converted to Christianity, may be perverted to Hinduism…. You may be confident that the missions in India are doing a work which strengthens the imperial foundations of British power…. I say that, of all the departments I have ever administered, I never saw one more efficient than the missionary department."

"Palestine was the West Point and Annapolis for the world. In that little country God was training up a people out of whom, when the fullness of the time should come, His gospel cadets should emerge, fitted by all the training of all their national history for going out among the heathen and proclaiming the unsearchable riches of Christ."

"A man may make his way across the Atlantic in a skiff, for all I know; but if you are intending to cross the sea, take my advice, and secure passage in a first-class steamer, and you will be more likely to get there. So it is with these heathen millions. I do not know but some of them may drift, and we shall find them in the city of God. But I do know that by giving them the gospel, by building up and supporting among them a Christian church, we shall greatly multiply their chances for heaven."

"Every impulse and stroke of missionary power on earth is from the heart of Christ. He sows, and there is a harvest. He touches nations, and there arises a brotherhood, not only civilized by His light, but sanctified by His love. The isles of the ocean wait for Him. He spreads His net and gathers of every kind, and lo! the burden of the sea is not only fishes, but fishermen, who go and gather and come again. If there are activity, free giving, ready going, a full treasury, able men who say, " Here am I, send me," it is because through all the organization Christ lives, and His personal Spirit works. There is no other possible spring for that enthusiasm."

"The movement has indeed been slow, and not such as man would have expected; but it has been analogous to the great movements of God in His providence and in His works. So, if we may credit the geologists, has this earth reached its present state. So have moved on the great empires. So retribution follows crime. So rise the tides. So grows the tree with long intervals of repose and apparent death. So comes on the spring, with battling elements and frequent reverses,77 with snowbanks and violets, and, if we had no experience, we might be doubtful what the end would be. But we know that back of all this, beyond these fluctuations, away in the serene heavens, the sun is moving steadily on; that these very agitations of the elements and seeming reverses, are not only the sign, but the result of his approach, and that the full warmth and radiance of the summer noontide are sure to come. So, O Divine Redeemer, Sun of Righteousness, come Thou! So will He come. It may be through clouds and darkness and tempest; but the heaven where He is, is serene; He is "traveling in the greatness of His strength; "and as surely as the throne of God abides, we know He shall yet reach the height and splendor of the highest noon, and that the light of millennial glory shall yet flood the earth."

"On the American Continent, what a wonderful amalgamation of races we have witnessed, how wonderfully they have been fused into that one American people! — type and earnest of a larger fusion which Christianity will yet accomplish, when, by its blessed power, all tribes and tongues and races shall become one holy family. The present popularity of beneficences promises well for the missionary cause in the future. Men's hearts are undergoing a process of enlargement. Their sympathies are taking a wider scope. The world is getting closer, smaller, quite a compact affair. The world for Christ will yet be realized."

"The soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose, I will not — I will not desert to his foes; That soul — though all hell should endeavor to shake, I'll never — no never — no never forsake."

"He [ Krishnamurti ] has received divine honors in India and in the West. I had a long interview with him, found him of average intelligence, of rather lovable disposition, of mediocre spiritual intuitions, and heard him swear in good, round English! I came away feeling that if he is all we, as a race, have to look to in order to get out of the muddle we are in, then God pity us."

"There is no section of the people of Afghanistan which has a greater influence on the life of the people than the Mullahs, yet it has been truly said that there is no priesthood in Islam. According to the tenets of Islam, there is no act of worship and no religious rite which may not, in the absence of a Mullah, be equally well performed by any pious layman; yet, on the other hand, circumstances have enabled the Mullahs of Afghanistan to wield a power over the populations which is sometimes, it appears, greater than the power of the throne itself. For one thing, knowledge has been almost limited to the priestly class, and in a village where the Mullahs are almost the only men who can lay claim to anything more than the most rudimentary learning it is only natural that they should have the people of the village entirely in their own control. Then, the Afghan is a Muhammadan to the backbone, and prides himself on his religious zeal, so that the Mullah becomes to him the embodiment of what is most national and sacred. The Mullahs are, too, the ultimate dispensers of justice, for there are only two legal appeals in Afghanistan—one to the theological law, as laid down by Muhammad and interpreted by the Mullahs; the other to the autocracy of the throne—and even the absolute Amir would hesitate to give an order at variance with Muhammadan law, as laid down by the leading Mullahs. His religion enters into the minutest detail of an Afghan's everyday life, so that there is no affair, however trivial, in which it may not become necessary to make an appeal to the Mullah.44"

"The more fanatical of these Mullahs do not hesitate to incite their pupil [talibs] to acts of religious fanaticism, or ghaza, [jihad operation] as it is called. The ghazi [jihadist] is a man who has taken an oath to kill some non-Muhammadan, preferably a European, as representing the ruling race; but, failing that, a Hindu or a Sikh is a lawful object of his fanaticism. The Mullah instills into him the idea that if in so doing he loses his own life, he goes at once to and enjoys the special delights of the houris and the gardens which are set apart for religious martyrs. When such a disciple has been worked up to the degree of religious excitement, he is usually further fortified by copious draughts of bhang, or Indian hemp, which produces a kind of intoxication in which one sees everything red, and the bullet and the bayonet have no longer any terror for him. Not a year passes on the frontier but some young officer falls a victim to one of these ghazi fanatics. Probably the ghazi has never seen him his life, and can have no grudge against him as a man; but he is a “dog and a heretic,” and his death a sure road to Paradise.45"

"The Afghan noblemen maintain the strictest parda, or seclusion, of their women, who pass their days monotonously behind the curtains and lattices of their palace prison-houses, with little to do except criticize their clothes and jewels and retail slander.…The poorer classes cannot afford to seclude their women, so they try to safeguard their virtue by the most barbarous punishments, not only for actual immorality, but for any fancied breach of decorum. A certain trans-frontier chief that I know, on coming to his house unexpectedly one day, saw his wife speaking to a neighbour over the wall of his compound. Drawing his sword in a fit of jealousy, he struck off her head and threw it over the wall, and said to the man: “There! you are so enamoured of her, you can have her.” The man concerned discreetly moved house to a neighbouring village.…The recognized punishment in such a case of undue familiarity would have been to have cut off the nose of the woman and, if possible, of the man too. This chief, in his anger, exceeded his right, and if he had been a lesser man and the woman had had powerful relations, he might have been brought to regret it. But as a rule a woman has no redress; she is the man's property, and a man can do what he likes with his own. This is the general feeling, and no one would take the trouble or run the risk of interfering in another man's domestic arrangements. A man practically buys his wife, bargaining with her father, or, if he is dead, with her brother; and so she becomes his property, and the father has little power of interfering for her protection afterwards, seeing he has received her price."

"…The two greatest social evils from which the Afghan women suffer are the purchase of wives and the facility of divorce. I might add a third—namely, plurality of wives; but though admittedly an evil where it exists, it is not universally prevalent, like the other two—in fact, only men who are well-to-do can afford to have more than one wife."

"Those Missionaries whose primary object is proselytization should be asked to withdraw. The, large influx of foreign Missionaries is undesirable and should be checked."

"The best course for the Indian Churches to follow is to establish a United Independent Christian Church in India without being dependent on foreign support."

"The use of medical or other professional services as a direct means of making conversions should be prohibited by law."

"To implement the provision in the Constitution of India prohibiting the imparting of religious education to children without the explicit consent of parents and guardians, the Department of Education should see that proper forms are prescribed and made available to all schools."

"Any attempt by force or fraud, or threats of illicit means or grants of financial or other aid, or by fraudulent means or promises, or by moral and material assistance, or by taking advantage of any person’s inexperience or confidence, or by exploiting any person’s necessity, spiritual (mental) weakness or thoughtlessness, or, in general, any attempt or effort (whether successful or not), directly or indirectly to penetrate into the religious conscience of persons (whether of age or underage) of another faith, for the purpose of consciously altering their religious conscience or faith, so as to agree with the ideas or convictions of the proselytizing party should be absolutely prohibited."

"Religious institutions should not be permitted to engage in occupations like recruitment of labour for tea gardens."

"It is the primary duty of Government to conduct orphanages, as the State is the legal guardian of all minors who have no parents or natural guardians."

"Government should issue an appeal to authoritative and representative Christian Missionary Organisations and to Christians in general to come together and to form an authoritative organization which should lay down and inform Government in clear terms the policy which the Missions and Christians in general will follow in respect of propagating their religion, the methods to he followed in conversions, the type of propaganda which will be promoted and the attempts which will be made to confine their evangelistic activities within the limits of public order, morality and health."

"An amendment of the Constitution of India may be sought, firstly to clarify that the right of propagation ha been given only to the citizens of India and secondly that it does not include conversion brought about by force, fraud or other illicit means."

"Suitable control on conversions brought about through illegal means should be imposed. If necessary Legislative measures should be enacted."

"Advisory Boards at State level, regional level and district level should be constituted of non-officials, minority communities like Tribals and Harijans being in a majority on these boards."

"Rules relating to the registration of Doctors, Nurses and other personnel employed in hospitals should be suitably amended to provide a condition against evangelistic activities during professional services."

"Circulation of literature meant for religious propaganda approval of the State Government should be prohibited."

"Institutions in receipt of grants-in-aid or recognition from Government should be compulsorily inspected every quarter by officers of Government."

"Government should lay down a policy that the responsibility of providing social services like education, health, medicine, etc., to members of scheduled tribes, castes and other backward classes will be solely of the State Government, and adequate services should be provided as early as possible, non-official organizations being permitted to run institutions only for members of their own religious faith."

"A separate department of Cultural and Religious affairs should be constituted at the State level to deal with these matters which should be in charge of a Minister belonging to a scheduled caste, tribe or other backward classes and should, have specially trained personnel at the various levels."

"No non-official agency should he permitted to secure foreign assistance except through Government channels."

"No foreigner should be allowed to function in a scheduled or a specified area either independently or as a member of a religious institution unless he has given a declaration in writing that he will not take part in politics."

"Programmes of social and economic uplift by non-official or religious bodies should receive prior approval of the State."

"[Masat Baiga of Jokari:] Christians play drama against Hindu religion. The people agreed to send a copy of the drama. Christians want to destroy Sarnas of Adivasis saying that there is ghost in it. They are prevented from sending pupils to Adivasi schools. Christians preach Jharkhand. Cows are used by them for ploughing instead of bullocks with a view to hurt our religious feelings. They are also forced to eat beef."

"[Ladhuram of Raykera:] Place of worship where they had installed Mahadeo has been ploughed down."

"The Christians destroy Sarnas, if the Uraons do not become Christians. The number of Christians has increased after the merger of States. The Pracharaks threaten that they will drive away those people who do not become Christians, as soon they are going to have Jharkhand. The Pracharaks tell them that the Hindu religion is bad. They preach Jharkhand. The Luther Mission particularly does so."

"[Pathakhji:] Laxminarayan has constructed a tapara on the spot selected for temple and therefore it is not possible to construct a temple there."

"[Bhairam Kunbi of Aolia:] I used to pray Hanuman and Shankar in front of the church, where their idols are. While I was ringing the bell after puja the father, who is a Patel, said that I should not ring the bell, because it makes noise in his bungalow. The temple is very old. The church is only about 40 to 50 years old. The church bell rings thrice a day. We have not taken any objection."

"[Shri Dongre, Secretary, Buldana District Jansangh:] We have no objection if a person is converted by mental and spiritual satisfaction, i.e., conviction. But missionaries do not stop with preaching their religion. A new tendency is created among the converts. There is peaceful work in this district. Where mass conversions have taken place, there is aggressive action. For example, in Travancore, 200 Hindu temples have been destroyed. In Chikhli taluq, there are churches, schools and other means of prachar at Yeota, Malwandi, Manubai, Eklara, Kawhala, Amdapur, Undri, Mes, Antri, Develgaonmahhi, Deulgaonraja and Dhau. The mission school in Chikhli has 300 students. Of these, 5 to 6 per cent are Hindus, 5 to 6 Muslims and the rest Christians. Every day a prayer is sung in the school according to the Christian religion. In Bombay State, Gita recitation has been stopped, as ours is a secular State. Missionaries may conduct schools but politics and religion should not be allowed to interfere with the education of our young generations. Christian schools are not closed even on gazetted holidays, particularly on Hindu festival days. Diwali holidays in mission schools are hardly for three days when other schools give ten days holidays for Diwali. Hindu teacher get holidays with some difficulty, but Hindu students do not get them at all, because they have free education at Christian hands. Poor boys are attracted to their schools because they get there freeships. They are afraid of taking leave, because if the do so, the may be removed from the school. Mission schools charge Rs. 5 as fee for IXth class. In this way monetary aid is rendered to 70 families. Only such people are rendered help, in whose case there are some chances of conversion. About 50 families of students receive help. Hindu names of students are changed to Christian names in their schools without baptism. This amounts to fraud. Concrete cases of this will be given in future. Bible period is compulsory in Chikhli mission school. The reason for this is said to he that about 80 per cent of the students are Christians. Most of the boys are indirectly completed to be present at these Bible classes."

"Another plate used by Christian missionaries for religions preaching is their hospital. In Chikhli mission hospital, non-Christian patients are told that prayers are offered to Christ for their recovery. They are given medicines and thereby they recover. Poor patients are misguided. They are made to believe chat Christ has recovered them. Those who have no faith in prayers are also subjected to such phenomenon. A book of Rev. Baba Padmanji was given under the pillow of a patient for his early recovery. Rev. Baba Padmanji wrote his novel in 1956 to show that Christian religion is better than Hindu religion. In this book he criticises Bhisma and others who are held in high esteem by Hindus. Hindu Gods are abused in the books, which are used as a means of prachar."

"An example of aggressiveness of missionaries in Kelvad, mass meeting may be given on one of the boards exhibited in the meeting it was painted that everyone should take a vow that he would convert at least one man during the year. In Manubhai village, it was preached that theirs was not Indian nationally. Missionaries speak highly of America and try to create affinity towards it. In cinema slides, they compare poverty in India and wealthy living in America, thus lowering India in the eyes of its sons. It is preached that we should live like America."

"Shri V. L. Appa, Chairman, Janpad Sabha: The world is advancing. Our secularism and political solidarity should not be disturbed. We have experience of the Muslim rule. We have to save secularism. If missionaries here have our welfare at heart, they should hand over their funds to the State in the name of Christ. They may insist on having their own personnel for execution and set up their board to see that their policy is implemented. There should therefore, be no objection to entrust Government with the funds. If this is done dissatisfaction and distress among our minds may go away. Mass conversion is a horrible thing. It should be stopped. In a family, every individual member should have full freedom to decide before conversion. In Travancore, over 350 temples were destroyed. This has appeared in news papers. There is a most pathetic crisis in the book of Laxmibai Tilak, which it is said that her husband repented and repented for having become a Christian. One Deshpande from Malkapur came to me for employment. That man was not wanted at home and was in search of a guardian. He came in contact with a missionary and got himself converted. He was married in Bodwad to a girl by Christians. He became an enthusiastic missionary. I state this to show that there is a psychological moment in the life of a man, which changes him. But this moment is temporary. There are some tricks of missionaries like “bolka dhalpa” (a speaking wooden piece). Deshpande was working as a teacher in Bodwad. His father’s name is Ramrao. His whereabouts are not known to me. I want that there should only be mental conversions. There should be a permit or a licence system for conversion. There should be no mass or family conversion. (Reads out from his application.) Conversion should be checked in all cases except where they are by conviction. Social and religious ideas go simultaneously. We may give Indian Christians full liberty, but the foreign element cannot be trusted."

"Shri Nandkishore: He explained the temple case of Shahapur. He said “The land was given to my brother-in-law. He is about 8 to 10 acres. The land on which the temple stood was not sold. I was present at the time of the transaction. It was some time in 1941. The temple was in good condition then. The well nearby was also in good condition. I was ill and had been to Surat for treatment before 1½ years. About 11 months ago I came back. My sister-in-law is in Piparia. Before I left for Surat the Shivling and the temple were intact. This may be about two years back. I had brought a ‘Kalas’ (dome) with me for putting it on the temple, because I recovered from illness. When I came I was not well. I expressed my desire to my friends at Shahapur. They informed me that the temple had been destroyed. I do not know anything, about its destruction."

"Shri Ayodhyaprasad informed that one Mr. Doma had done this in about 1951. “When I was going by that road, I saw some 10 to 20 Christians destroying the temple with some labourers. The temple was repaired some time in 1940. The ‘Sikhar’ (work of masonary on which the dome is put) was alright there. There was no daily worship because it is not necessary”. Rama Kotwar informed that when he was going by the road before 3 years, he saw the temple being destroyed. He told Mr. Doma not to destroy it, but Mr. Doma informed him that he had purchased the property and the temple was his property."

"Hindus want to construct a Hanuman temple, but the Christians say that it would be near the church. The patel is a Christian and therefore he does not give any land for the temple."

"The Raj-Mohini and Gahira Guru Hindu cults of the Adivasis and their ancient religious beliefs are being attacked with such recklessness that the sensibilities of the people of other faiths are being mortally offended."

"The whole history of the foreign missionaries in Chhota-Nagpur reveals how they tinder the pretext of taking up the cause of the tribal people misled them into the belief that they were separate from the Hindu community, the Hindu are aliens and their enemies, the Hindu landlords were their exploiters and oppressors, and turbulent rivalry with the Hindus and the embracing of Christianity were the only possible solutions for the solution of their problems. And thus ultimately led them into open feuds with the Zamindars and brought about their mass conversions to Christianity."

"The Hindu Oraon women have nut on their foreheads three tattoo marks. This custom is said to be connected with a story of their bravery and gallantry on three consecutive occasions in the mediaeval period, which is believed to be a historical fact. While the Oraons as a community were living in the Rohatasgarh on three occasions the Muslim invaders came on with a deadly attack on them. On all these three occasions the male members of the community were unfortunately dead drunk with wine which had made them completely unconscious of the calamity. But the womenfolk of the community on all these three occasions are said to have put on the garb of males and fought and defeated the invaders with bows and arrows. From this time onward the Oraon women have been keeping these three marks on their forehead in memory of the wonderful bravery of the above fact which is cherished as a sacred heritage. The Roman Catholic Missions have made to disappear two marks and have permitted only one. But the Protestant Missions have proved more ruthless in wiping out all the three marks."

"The converts not only cannot participate in dances and folk songs, of the Hindu Tribals but also they are forbidden to sing among themselves their traditional folk songs. For this purpose, the missions have brought about changes in the mode of dances and introduced their own ideas in the folk songs which converts can play and sing. While the Hindu tribals dance and sing in the villages, the converts have to do it in the Mission or Church premises only."

"In regard to the marriages it may significantly be mentioned that the converts are still following the custom of marrying within the tribal community and for this purpose they have not completely detached, themselves from their old community. An Oraon Christian boy is prepared to marry a non-Christian Oraon girl, but he will not marry even a Christian Munda girl. But in this connection the missions have succeeded in forbidding marriages of Christian girls with non-Christian boys. This has helped the missions to satisfy the traditional instinct of the converts as well as to achieve additional number of converts through the non-Christian girls who are married to Christian boys."

"The non-Christian tribals observe Sarhul Pooja when they perform pooja of the God Mahadeo and worship the trees on their Sarana. This almost coincided with the Easter of the Christians and hence no difficulty is felt by the missions as the converts are kept engaged in the observance of the Easter. The non-Christians offer their prayers on the Sarana while the converts do it in their churches. The non-Christians dance and sing in their own villages or with group of different villagers. The converts are not permitted to join with them and hence they perform these in the church or mission premises."

"He told me that it was no more available in the Government shops because Christian missionaries had bought all available copies and destroyed them. Even in libraries, it was rarely available because the same missionaries had seen to it that copies were removed, or borrowed and not returned."

"The name of this volume which combines the reprint with an introduction has been suggested by Arun Shourie, as in the case of Hindu Temples: What Happened to them."

"The Vedic tradition advises people to be busy with themselves, that is, their own moral and spiritual improvement. Several disciplines have been evolved for this purpose tapas (austerity), yoga (meditation), jñAna (reflection), bhakti (devotion), etc. A seeker can take to (adhikAra) whichever discipline suits his adhAra (stage of moral-spiritual preparation). There is no uniform prescription for everybody, no coercion or allurement into a belief system, and no regimentation for aggression against others. The Biblical tradition, on the other hand, teaches people to be busy with others. One is supposed to have become a superior human being as soon as one confesses the ‘only true faith’. Thenceforward one stands qualified to ‘save’ others."

"The fourth phase which commenced with the coming of independence proved a boon for Christianity. The Christian right to convert Hindus was incorporated in the Constitution. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru who dominated the scene for 17 long years, promoted every anti-Hindu ideology and movement behind the smokescreen of a counterfeit secularism. The regimes that followed continued to raise the spectre of ‘Hindu communalism’ as the most frightening phenomenon. Christian missionaries could now denounce as a Hindu communalist and chauvinist, even as a Hindu Nazi, any one who raised the slightest objection to their means and methods. All sorts of ‘secularists’ came forward to join the chorus. New theologies of Fulfilment, Indigenisation, Liberation, and Dialogue were evolved and put into action. The missionary apparatus multiplied fast and became pervasive. Christianity had never had it so good in the whole of its history in India. It now stood recognized as ‘an ancient Indian religion’ with every right to extend its field of operation and expand its flock. The only rift in the lute was K.M. Panikkar’s book, Asia and Western Dominance, published from London in 1953, the Niyogi Committee Report published by the Government of Madhya Pradesh in 1956, and Om Prakash Tyagi’s Bill on Freedom of Religion introduced in the Lok Sabha in December 1978."

"The Constitution of independent India adopted in January 1950 made things quite smooth for the Christian missions. They surged forward with renewed vigour. Nationalist resistance to what had been viewed as an imperialist incubus during the Struggle for Freedom from British rule, broke down when the very leaders who had frowned upon it started speaking in its favour. Voices which still remained ‘recalcitrant’ were sought to be silenced by being branded as those of ‘Hindu communalism’. Nehruvian Secularism had stolen a march under the smokescreen of Mahatma Gandhi’s sarva-dharma-samabhAva"

"It is, therefore, no exaggeration to say that the “architect of modern India” was no more than a combined embodiment of all imperialist ideologies which had flocked to this ancient land in the company of alien invaders Islam, Christianity, White Man’s Burden, and Communism."

"The Christian missionary orchestra in India after independence has continued to rise from one crescendo to another with the applause of the Nehruvian establishment manned by a brood of self-alienated Hindus spawned by missionary-macaulayite education. The only rift in the lute has been K.M. Panikkar’s Asia and Western Dominance published in 1953, the Report of the Christian Missionary Activities Committee Madhya Pradesh published in 1956, Om Prakash Tyagi’s Bill on Freedom of Religion introduced in the Lok Sabha in 1978, Arun Shourie’s Missionaries in India published in 1994 and the Maharashtra Freedom of Religion Bill introduced in the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly by Mangal Prabhat Lodha, M.L.A. on 20 December 1996."

"Secularism in the modern West had symbolized a humanist and rationalist revolt against the closed creed of Christianity and stood for pluralism such as has characterized Hinduism down the ages. But Pandit Nehru had perverted the word and turned it into a shield for protecting every closed creed prevailing in India at the dawn of independence in 1947 Islam, Christianity, Communism."

"“Colonel Murphy went immediately to Udaipur and visited 15 of the villages, his visit being without any previous intimation. He found that the statement that the movement of the people in the Udaipur State towards Christianity was entirely spontaneous and actuated by a knowledge of the benefits to be received was entirely incorrect. The people concerned had no knowledge whatever regarding such benefits and had been actuated by one idea and one idea only, that being the receipt of money from the mission on loan……… He found that the information bad been disseminated throughout this area of the State that loans were to be readily obtained at the mission station at Tapkara on a note of hand without security, all that was required of payers being that they should have their top-knot cut off …… that when one member of a family had taken a loan all the members of that family were shown as would be converts……… Christian schools had been started by catechists who had invaded the State from Jashpur and in one instance a mission teacher had stopped the boys from going to the State school. People questioned made it plain that their only purpose in going to the mission station had been to get money and all said that without this payment of money none would have sought to become Christian.”"

"“Mr. Blakesley made a thorough enquiry in Jashpur and submitted a full report to the Local Government in 1913. He found that the movement towards Christianity in the Jashpur State was in no sense a religious one, it was one actuated in lesser measure by the expectation of social benefits to be obtained, Christians being able to get their children married by the missionaries in the adjoining districts of British India without incurring heavy expenditure, but the real governing causes were political and agrarian………. He found that the missionaries had advanced loans to many of their converts and that the missionaries had a considerable hold on them by means of these loans. He found that the catechists interfered on every possible occasion in the temporal affairs of the Christian converts. ‘These catechists carried complaint to the missionaries, wrote petitions for the converts, accompanied them to the courts, worked out cases for them and generally acted as unrecognised Vakils, the State authorities having no control over them at all’.”"

"“Describing the position as it is today in Jashpur, the Superintendent gives the population of the State as 193,000, the number of Catholics 50,000 and the Lutherans 4,000. Christians are now to be found in practically all villages of the State (and continuous pressure is being exerted by the Fathers to secure conversion of the remaining part of the population.)”"

"“This officer is of opinion that in course of time the Jesuits will convert all the aborigines of all the States in this part of the Agency. If this were to occur and foreign priests were to be given full freedom of entry and residence the result might be virtually a foreign Government of the whole group.”"

"“I have shown the admissions of the Jesuit Archbishop of Calcutta and of the Anglican Bishop of Ranchi that, in so far as religion is concerned, the change of faith has practically no meaning for adult men and women amongst aboriginal people. It is to my mind clear from the methods adopted by the Roman Catholic Missionaries that they too know that the theory of freedom of conscience is a sham. They know fully well that, as the historical account of missionary enterprise which I have given abundantly proves, the aboriginal people of this part of India change their faith and accept Christianity in the expectation only of material benefits to be received. True religion has nothing whatever to do with the matter.”"

"The true history of the agrarian agitation in Chhota-Nagpur has yet to be written. The task has so far been attempted by partisans only. Munda children of the German Mission are even now sedulously taught the gospel of hate in the class-room of their schools. One of the school text-books entitled ‘Nelem Odo Senem’-Look and Walk-Which was published by the Munda Sabha of the G. E. L. Mission, Chhota-Nagpur, in 1909, tells how the ancestors of the Munda reclaimed the jungles and converted the country, by their labour, into a smiling garden. It tells the Munda boy how his forefathers successfully drove away all wild animals from the country and also how enemies who were worse than the wild enemies came in as inter-loppers and robbed them of the fruit of their toil. In further states that in spite of various laws framed by the English to restrain these foreigners, as are still being despoiled by Hindus and Mussalmans. The schools in which these doctrines are inculcated are largely subsidised by our Government.”"

"There is no doubt that the great success of the Christian missions in obtaining converts is due largely to the secular benefits which the Mundas, thus, obtained."

"The missionaries made no secret of the fact that their principal motive in stirring on behalf of the Kols was to preserve and extend the influence of their Mission with their people."

"An elaborate memorial has now been received bearing the signatures of all the German missionaries. It contains many passages or expressions which make me fear that the Kols having embraced or intending to embrace Christianity expect to have their rights (real or supposed) vindicated by their priests and pastors. It would almost be inferred from one passage in the memorial that in some instances they are dissatisfied with their change of religion because they do not and that it leads to social advancement. It so happens that the rights which the Kols claim in the land are being investigated under an enactment especially passed and by Tribunal appointed for the purpose, therefore, it is very undesirable that any extraneous agitation should arise, the benefits asked for by the memorialists’ impressively on behalf of the Kols could be conceded in full only by depriving other classes-Hindu and Mohamedan-of something which they now enjoy."

"An unquestioned fact that many of the latter (Kols) embraced Christianity merely in the hope of obtaining possession of lands to which they rightly or wrongly laid claim."

"The religious movement among the Kols in the direction of. Christianity has been at once a consequence and a cause of their disputes with their landlords."

"During our national struggle in 1857, the Tribal people of Chhota-Nagpur and adjoining areas had shed their blood as any national of other part of the country. But the history also speaks that the Christian converts who were made of the same blood and flesh of the tribal community to which they had belonged only a short time before, had taken pride in fighting for the British Government, Dr. Richter has described this: “At Chhota-Nagpur, the German. Missionaries offered 10,000 Kols as auxiliary troops…… But for any one with eyes to see, it was as clear as daylight that in the native Churches there was a class of people whose interests were coincident with those of the Government, and upon whose good faith, reliance could be kept absolutely.”"

"Christian missionaries made sure to buy up and destroy all copies of the Niyogi Committee Report... Nehru did the needful to make sure it remained without political effect, but the missions were worried about being exposed in such convincing detail. In my country among others, the Jesuits collected money to 'save the mission', meaning to bribe key politicians and magistrates... and to buy up stocks of the report. Even in the library of the Theology faculty of the Catholic University in Leuven, the only available copy of the report has disappeared."

"The Niyogi Committee was a fact-finding committee in the tribal belt of eastern-central India in the 1950s which criticized the missionaries for disturbing the social life of the tribals with their proselytization."

"Despite the inferences of the Niyogi Report, the Aborigines are capable of recognizing the inner harmony between their beliefs and the Christian faith. It is their monotheistic faith, as we have noted, and their belief in reward and punishment for good and evil deeds, that have prepared them for a, natural assimilation to the Christian faith."

"A. Soares: Truth Shall Prevail, p. 267. quoted in Elst K. Ayodhya: The Case Against the Temple, 2002. chapter 9"

"735 days in North Korea was long enough. But I’m thankful."

"There is no doubt, in our mind, that the Ad-Bisheswar temple stood on this site, and was destroyed by the Mohammedans, who, as usual, transferred its stones to their own mosque."

"The entire area is called Benares; and the religious privileges of the city are extended to every portion of it. Whoever dies in any spot of this enclosure is, the natives think, sure of happiness after death; and so wide is the application of this privilege, that it embraces, they say, even Europeans and Mohammedans, even Pariahs and other outcasts, even liars, murderers, and thieves. That no soul can perish in Benares is, thus, the charitable superstition of the Hindus."

"When we endeavour to ascertain what the Mohammedans have left to the Hindus of their ancient buildings in Benares, we are startled at the result of our investigations. Although the city is bestrewn with temples in every direction, in some places ve1y thickly, yet it would be difficult, I believe, to find twenty temples, in all Benares, of the age of Aurungzeb, or from 1658 to 1707. The same unequal proportion of old temples, as compared with new, is visible throughout the whole of Northern India. Moreover, the diminutive size of nearly all the temples that exist is another powerful testimony to the stringency of the Mohammedan rule. It seems clear, that, for the most part, the emperors forbade the Hindus to build spacious temples, and suffered them to erect only small structures, of the size of cages, for their idols, and these of no pretensions to beauty.... If there is one circumstance respecting the Mohammedan period which Hindus remember better than another, it is the insulting pride of the Musulmans, the outrages which they perpetrated upon their religious convictions, and the extensive spoliation of their temples and shrines. It is right that Europeans should clearly understand, that this spirit of Mohammedanism is unchangeable, and that, if, by any mischance, India should again come into the possession of men and this creed, all the churches and colleges, and all the Mission institutions, would not be worth a week's purchase."

"When Babylon was struggling with Nineveh for supremacy, when Tyre was planting her colonies, when Athens was growing in strength, before Rome had become known, or Greece had contended with Persia, or Cyprus had added lustre to the Persian monarchy, or Nebuchadnezzar had captured Jerusalem, and the inhabitants of Judaea had been carried into captivity, she (Varanasi) had already risen to greatness, if not to glory."

"The Europeans should clearly understand that this spirit of Mohammedanism is unchangeable, and that, if by any mischance, India should again come into the possession of men ofthis creed, all the churches and colleges and all the Mission institutions, would not be worth a week's purchase. So wrote Reverend Mathew Atmore Sherring. The Muslims had done no harm to the Christians of British India. But he was so upset at the vandali sm he saw in Benares that he could not help speaking out."

"Reverend Sherring was a devout, and maybe a s lightly bigoted evangelist member of the London Missionary Society. He was dead against idol worship. As he has written idolatry is a word denoting all that is wicked in imagination and impure in practice. IdolatJy is a demon- an incarnation of all evil. And yet he said it would not be difficult, I believe, to find twenty temples in all Benares of the age of Aurangzeb, or from 1658 to 1707. The same unequal proportion of old temples, as compared with new, is visible throughout the whole of northern India. Hi s description of the desecration of temples b y the thousand, and their blatant conversion into either mosques, mausoleums, dargahs, palaces or pleasure houses has to be seen to be believed."

"In his view, if there is one circumstance respecting the Mohammedan period which Hindus remember better than another, it is the insulting pride of the Musulmans (sic), the outrages which they perpetrated upon their religious convictions, and the extensive spoilation of their temples and shrines. When we endeavour to ascertain what the Mohammedans have left to the Hindus of their ancient buildings in Benares, we are startled at the result of our investigations. Although the city is bestrewn with temples, it is unlikely that there are many which are old."

"Reverend Sherring continued, the diminutive size of nearly all the temples in India except for the south that exist is another powerful testimony to the stringency of the Mohammedan rule: It seems clear, that, for the most part, the emperors forbade the Hindus to build spacious temples, and suffered them to erect only small structures, of the size of cages,for their idols, and these of no pretensions to beauty. The consequence is, that the Hindus of the present day, blindly following the example of their predecessors of two centuries ago, commonly build their religious edifices of the same dwarfish size as formerly."

"The Mussulmans of Calcutta though adopting various Hindu practices, have never amalgamated with the Hindus. They seem to retain towards them the views of Timur who said, - 'The Hindu has nothing of humanity but the figure.' Ambitions characterized the Moslem here last century as much as avarice did the Gentoo, but the days are gone for ever when a Mussulamn like the Foujdar of Hooghly had Rs. 6000 monthly salary and when the kora or the whip was hung up in every Mofussil Court for the Mussulman officials to flagellate the Hindus."

"Tamil can readily dispense with the greater part or the whole of its Sanskrit, and by dispensing with it, rise to a purer and more refined style . . . Of the entire number of words which are contained in this formula there is only one which could not be expressed with faultless propriety . . . in equivalent of pure Dravidian origin: that word is 'graven image' or 'idol'. Both word and thing are foreign to primitive Tamil usages and habits of thought; and were introduced into Tamil country by Brahmins, [along] with the Puranic system of religion and worship of idols."

"it may be expected that the Dravidian mind will ere long be roused from its lethargy, and stimulated to enter upon a brighter career. If the national mind and heart were stirred to so great a degree a thousand years ago by the diffusion of Jainism . . . it is reasonable to expect still more important results from the propagation of the grand and soul-stirring truths of Christianity."

"“Sanskrit has not disdained to borrow from its Dravidian neighbours…Tamil, the most highly cultivated ab intra of all Dravidian idioms can dispense with its Sanskrit…and not only stand alone, but flourish, without its aid…a Tamil poetical composition is regarded as…classical, not in proportion to the amount of Sanskrit it contains…but in proportion to its freedom from Sanskrit.”"

"“You are of pure Dravidian race…I should like to see the pre-Sanskrit element amongst you asserting itself rather more...The constant putting forward of Sanskrit literature as if it were pre-eminently Indian, should stir the national pride of some of you Tamil, Telugu, Cannarese [Kannada]. You have less to do with Sanskrit than we English have. Ruffianly Europeans have sometimes been known to speak of natives of India as ‘Niggers,’ but they do not, like the proud speakers or writers of Sanskrit, speak of the people of the South as legions of monkeys. It was these Sanskrit speakers, not Europeans, who lumped up the Southern races as Rakshusas—demons. It was they who deliberately grounded all social distinctions on Varna, Colour.”"

"But the catalyst who is credited with the construction of the 'Dravidian race' was a missionary-scholar from the Anglican Church. His name was Bishop Robert Caldwell (1814–91), an evangelist for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, who combined the linguistic theory of Ellis with a strong racial narrative. He proposed the existence of the Dravidian race in his Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian Race, which enjoys extreme popularity with Dravidianists to this day. Bishop Caldwell proposed that the Dravidians were in India before the Aryans, but got cheated by the Brahmins, who were the cunning agents of the Aryan. He argued that the simple-minded Dravidians were kept in shackles by Aryans through the exploitation of religion. Thus, the Dravidians needed to be liberated by Europeans like him. He proposed the complete removal of Sanskrit words from Tamil. Once the Dravidian mind would be free of the superstitions imposed by Aryans, Christian evangelization would reap the souls of Dravidians.... His work had far-reaching consequences. It established the theological foundation for Dravidian separatism from Hinduism, backed by the Church. It was accompanied by Christian usurpation of many of the classical art-forms of South India. The concept of dissociating Tamils from mainstream Hindu spirituality provided Caldwell an ethical rationale for Christian proselytization."

"Timothy Brook and Andre Schmid, in their work on the creation of identities in Asia, explain Caldwell's importance as the founder of today's Dravidian identity: It was through his Comparative Grammar (1856) that he systematically laid the foundation of Dravidian ideology . . . It was not so much the philological findings in the work that had such a profound impact, as the way Caldwell interpreted and expressed them in the lengthy introduction and appendix. He not only managed to erect a racial, linguistic, and religio-cultural divide between the minority Brahmin and majority non-Brahmin (Dravidian) population of South India, but also provided a systematic project for reclaiming and recovering an ancient and 'pure' Dravidian language and culture."

"Dr Caldwell was a Christian missionary and although he has rendered some service to Tamil literature, still he cannot be said to be free from his Christian prejudice. 65"

"The general conviction underlying much Dravidian radicalism—that the subjection of non-Brahman Dravidian peoples and cultures was based on the Aryan conquest of the Dravidian south—was in large part an invention of Robert Caldwell. Caldwell, who labored for fifty years in the Tinnevelly Mission . . . like most other missonaries who had to justify the fact that they could only report conversions of the very lowest caste groups, was especially resentful of the Brahmans, who frustrated his effort to proselytize. . . . Caldwell's antipathy toward Brahmans . . . has secured a hallowed place in the citational structures and justificatory rhetorics of anti-Brahminism up to the present day."

"…With the permission of Father General I left Rome in 1603 and after two years spent travelling I arrived in Goa. Soon after I came to Cochin, and thence to Madura. There I remarked that all the efforts made to bring the heathens to Christ had all been in vain. I left no stone unturned to find a way to bring them from their superstition and the worship of idols to the faith of Christ. But my efforts were fruitless, because with a sort of barbarous stolidity they turned away from the manners and customs of the Portuguese and refused to put aside the badges of their ancient nobility. When I noticed that certain Brahmins were highly praised because they led lives of great hardship and austerity and were looked upon as if they had dropped from the sky, I thought that, if to win popularity among the pagans, and raise themselves in their esteem, they contrived to keep perpetual chastity and weaken their bodies by watching, fasting and meditation, I could, to win them to Christ, conform myself to their mode of life in all such things which were not repugnant to the holiness of the Christian doctrine, for it seemed to me that with divine help I could do for God’s sake, what they did with wicked cunning to win vain applause and worldly honours. Therefore I professed to be an Italian Brahmin who had renounced the world, had studied wisdom at Rome (for a Brahmin means a wise man) and rejected all the pleasures and comforts of the world. I had already learned Tamil and Sanskrit, which among them holds the same place as the Latin among us…"

"This manuscript undoubtedly belongs to the time when the ancient religion of the gymnosophists had begun to be corrupted; except for our own sacred books, it is the most respectable monument of belief in a single God. It is called Ezour Veidam: as if one were to say the true Veidam, the Veidam explained, the pure Veidam."

"One ought to guard oneself against including among the canonical books of the Indians the Ezour Vedam , of which there is a socalled translation in the Royal Library, and which has been published in 1778. It is definitely not one of four Vedams, not withstanding its name. It is a book of controversy, written by a missionary at Masulipatam. It contains a refutation of a number of Pouranons devoted to Vichenou, which are several centuries later than the Vedams. One sees that the author tries to reduce everything to the Christian religion; he did introduce a few errors, though, so that one would not be able to recognize the missionary under the disguise of the Brahmin. Anyhow, Mr Voltaire and a few others were wrong when they gave this book an importance which it does not deserve, and when they regard it as canonical. 62"

"The very idea that he came, as he said, to preach a new or a fifth Veda, which had been lost, shows how well he knew the strong and weak points of the theological system he came to conquer."

"We are quite warranted in imaging Tiruvalluvar, the thoughtful poet, the eclectic . . . pacing along the seashore with the Christian teachers, and imbibing Christian ideas, tinged with the peculiarities of the Alexandrian school, and day by day working them into his own wonderful Kurral . . . the one Oriental book much of whose teaching is an echo of 'the Sermon on the Mount'."

"Christian influences were at the time at work in the neighbourhood, and that many passages are strikingly Christian in their spirit. I cannot feel any hesitation in saying that the Christian Scriptures were among the sources from which the poet derived his inspiration."

"For example, Christian historian Stephen Neill rejects Pope’s fraudulent claim with a tone of empathy: ‘The brilliant imagination of Dr Pope has produced a beautiful romance. The sober verdict of historical judgment must be that any such Christian influence on Tamil literature is unlikely. . . Any extensive infiltration of Hindu thought by Christian influences must be ruled out as no more than remote possibility. Here, as elsewhere, what we seem to see is devout minds in different places working on similar problems and arriving independently at comparable results.’"

"[They] lead a very quiet, honest and virtuous life infinitely outdoing our false Christians and superficial pretenders to a better sort of religion."

"Yet he considered it his duty to destroy idol worship, and wrote how he had destroyed idols in a prominent goddess temple. The Hindus were described as ‘being deeply affected with the sight so foppish a set of Gods’, and he proudly ‘threw some down to the ground, and striking off the heads of others’. He wanted to demonstrate to the ‘deluded’ Hindus that ‘their images were nothing but impotent and still idols, unable to protect themselves and much less their worshippers’. The most remarkable part of this incident was that the Hindus who gathered at the scene of destruction were agitated, but did not allow their agitation to turn violent. One man he described as a ‘pagan school teacher (upadhyayan )’ calmly entered into a theological debate and proceeded to show the missionary the folly of his actions. He concluded the debate by pointing out to the missionary that from the point of view of absolute being, all forms of matter are constructions of Maya, and that the pottery images the missionary broke were merely symbols."

"For the last category of religions, Ziegenbalg used the word ‘heathen’ as equivalent to ‘pagan’ or ‘gentile’. It denoted non-monotheistic people and connoted ‘ignorant’ and ‘uncivilized’. All heathens, Ziegenbalg said, are under the rule of the devil, whom they worship as a god. He leads them into idolatry and superstitious rites. The devil is the father of them all, but they have divided into many sects and in Africa, America, and East India, they differ in their gods and teachings. 7"

"It was neither the powerful English nor the Dutch, but the Danes who sent the first Protestant mission to India, — to Tranquebar, an insignificant locality which they possessed in India. Zeigenbalg, the first missionary who reached India in 1706, candidly confessed that his mission had little success. He pointed out that the Christians in India were “so much debauched in their manners”, and “so given to gluttony, drunkenness, lewdness, cursing, swearing, cheating and cozening” and “proud and insulting in their conduct”, that many Indians, judging the religion by its effect upon its followers, “could not be induced to embrace Christianity”. Only a few poor or destitute persons were converted, and they had to be fed and maintained by the mission. When Ziegenbalg wanted to convert the upper classes by argument, he failed miserably. “In a notable debate held under the auspices of the Dutch in Negapatam, Ziegenbalg disputed with a Brahmin for five hours, and far from converting the Brahmin, the missionary came away with an excessive admiration for the intellectual gifts of his adversary”.(150)"

"Zeigenbalg’s missionary effort was typical of Christian missionary enterprise in India during the eighteenth century. No doubt the number of converts steadily increased and churches were founded in different parts of India. But it was the remittance from Europe that supplied the cost of building churches and feeding the congregation. Abbe Dubois (1,765-1848) published, at the end of the eighteenth or beginning of the nineteenth century, his Letters on the State of Christianity in India . In these he “asserted his opinion that under existing circumstances there was no human possibility of so overcoming the invincible barrier of Brahminical prejudice as to convert the Hindus as a nation to any sect of Christianity. He acknowledged that low castes and outcastes might be converted in large numbers, but of the higher castes he wrote: ‘Should the intercourse between individuals of both nations, by becoming more intimate and more friendly, produce a change in the religion and usages of the country, it will not be to turn Christians that they will forsake their own religion, but rather to become mere atheists.” (150-1)"

"Of the Mahomedans, who mix in considerable numbers with the former inhabitants of all the countries subdued by their arms in Hindostan, it is necessary also to say a few words. Originally of the Tartar race, proud, fierce, and lawless ; attached also to their superstition,... they were rendered ... yet more proud, sanguinary, sensual, and bigotted."

"The Persians and Tartars, who have poured into it from early ages, have generally been soldiers of fortune, who brought little with them but their swords. With these they have not unfrequently carved their way to dignity and empire. Power has been, and is their darling object ; nothing was scrupled by them to obtain it; the history of Mahomedan rule in Hindostan is full of treasons, affaffinations, fratricides, even parricide is not unknown to it."

"Upon the whole, then, we cannot avoid recognizing in the people of Hindostan, a race of men lamentably degenerate and base, retaining but a feeble sense of moral obligation, yet obstinate in their disregard of what they know to be right, governed by malevolent and licentious passions, strongly exemplifying the effects produced on society by great and general corruption of manners, and sunk in misery by their vices, in a country peculiarly calculated by its natural advantages to promote the happiness of its inhabitants."

"In contrast to the Orientalists, Grant ([1790] 1970) stressed the absolute difference, in all respects, between the British and the despicable natives of the subcontinent: "In the worst parts of Europe, there are no doubt great numbers of men who are sincere, upright, and conscientious. In Bengal, a man of real veracity and integrity is a great phenomenon" (21). Most significantly, he made absolutely no reference to the kinship of Sanskrit and the European languages except, possibly, to note that "the discoveries of science invalidate none of the truths of revelation" (71). Nor did Grant have any regard for enthusiastic depictions of India. Grant was quick to criticize scholars who had never even visited India, thereby undermining the relevance of their scholarship to the real world: "Europeans who, not having resided in Asia, are acquainted only with a few detached features of the Indian character" (24)."

"It has suited the views of some philosophers to represent that people as amiable and respectable; and a few late travellers have chosen rather to place some softer traits of their characters in an engaging light, than to give a just delineation of the whole. The generality, however, of those who have written concerning Hindostán, appear to have concurred in affirming what foreign residents there have as generally thought, nay, what the natives themselves freely acknowledge of each other, that they are a people exceedingly depraved. (1796:20)"

"They have had among themselves a complete despotism from the remotest antiquity; a despotism, the most remarkable for its power and duration that the world has ever seen. It has pervaded their government, their religions, and their laws. It has formed by its various ramifications the essentials of the character which they have always had, as far as the light of history goes, and which they still posess; that character, which has made them a prey to every invader, indifferent to all their rulers, and easy in the change of them; as a people, void of public spirit, honour, attachment; and in society, base, dishonest, and faithless. (1796:32)"

"We proceed then to observe, that it is perfectly in the power of this country, by degrees, to impart to the Hindoos our language; afterwards, through that medium, to make them acquainted .... with the simple elements of our arts, our philosophy and religion. These acquisitions would silently undermine, and at length subvert, the fabric of error..."

"‘Hindooism’, the word that came to fill the gap, had originally been coined back in the 1780s. The first man known to have used it was an Evangelical. Charles Grant, a Scot who had served the Company both as a soldier and on its board of trade, had initially felt little sense of Christian mission. He had travelled to India with the goal of getting rich. Accordingly, he had seen no reason to disagree with the settled policy of the Company: that its only business was business. Any attempt to convert Hindus to Christianity would risk the precarious foundations of its rule. Its purpose was the making of money, not the winning of souls. But then had come the great crisis in Grant’s life. Gambling debts had threatened his finances. Two of his children had died of smallpox within ten days of each other. Grant, in the depths of his agony, had found himself redeemed by grace. From that moment on, the great object of his life had been to win the Hindus for Christ. Convinced that they were lost in ignorance, he had pledged himself to saving them from all their idolatries and superstitions. These were what he had meant by ‘Hindooism’."

"British Indomania did not die of natural causes; it was killed off. The Indophobia that became the norm in early-nineteenth-century Britain was constructed by Evangelicalism and Utilitarianism, and its chief architects were Charles Grant and James Mill."

"This uncompromising judgment falls especially upon those Indians who are under British rule, the Bengalis, and among them especially the Hindus, and the content of their moral depravity (which Grant descants upon at length) is that they are lacking in truth, honesty, and good faith to a degree not found in European society. Grant is blunt in the interest not of condemning the Indians but of determining "their true place in the moral scale," ... What he insists upon is the universality of this great depravity in Hindu society, giving it a general moral hue, "between which and the European moral complexion there is a difference analogous to the difference of the natural colour of the two races" (1796:25). But the purpose is neither condemnation for its own sake nor to assert the permanent inferiority of another race."

"The argument from silence was once regarded as a weak argument, to be used sparingly and with care, but for some time now authors have become responsible for the infinity of what they do not say, and they are liable to be charged with erasures, elisions, suppressions, guilty silences, and significant omissions. The argument from silence is made more easily today, but even by the higher standard of the past, the complete silence of Grant and Mill on the core argument of Jones is surely significant of a tendency to stress the difference "every way" of the Indians and the British."

"It is worth saying again: Indophobia did not spring up naturally from the soil of Britain, it was deliberately built. India was very different from Britain, to be sure, but Britons did not believe they were "every way different" from the Indians until Grant taught them to think so."

"If you educate a man, you educate an individual but if you educate a woman you educate a nation."

"I don't care what you know; show me what you can do. Many of my people who get educated don't work, but take to drink. They see white people drink, so they think they must drink too. They imitate the weakness of the white people, but not their greatness. They won't imitate a white man working hard ... If you play only the white notes on a piano you get only sharps; if only the black keys you get flats; but if you play the two together you get harmony and beautiful music."

"Nothing but the best is good enough for Africa."

"Nothing but the best is good enough for the African."

"The Hadd, a punishment based on a Zahir, or obvious sentence of the Quran requires that a Muslim who apostatizes shall be put to death. In the case of an apostate woman Imam Abu Hanifa ruled that she should be imprisoned and beaten every day. The other three Imams, Malik, Shafai and Hanbal said that she should be put to death in accordance with the Tradition which says: He who changes his religion, kill.""

"The truth is, that the British Empire with its Indian appendage, is also a monstrosity. If the present unnatural relation between England and India continues, it can only lead, as it has done to such a rapid pace already to a continually increasing bitterness on both sides. But if the bond of subjection is finally and ultimately unloosed, then mutual respect may succeed to mutual hate."

"…. I conveyed to Mahatma Gandhi certain ideas which were burning in my mind for some time to know his opinion. I asked Mahatma ji as to what help I should extend to stop the communal splits and differences that happened in Malabar and restore peace and tranquility there. This question brightened his face very much. He said that he was worried and constantly thinking about his failiure in duty by not visiting Malabar and expressing his regrets, even under threat of arrest and imprisonment, in view of the ban put by the government against his entering Malabar. He also said that he will have a lot peace of mind and greatly relieved if I visited the place forthwith, personally. It was then that I could realize the limitless affection he had for the Moplahs of Malabar. Though the Moplahs had committed very heinous crimes, he instilled in me a feeling of love eradicating the hatred caused by the atrocities. Every word he spoke displayed the deep love he kept in his mind. Had the government permitted him to travel to the rebellion affected areas in the early stages itself, he would have entered those spots completely unarmed and helpless. If the Moplahs by their ignorance and unaware of the qualities of this great soul, made any attempt on his life, he would have accepted such death valiantly and with a smiling face, quite confident of the fact that his blood would have served to instill peace and tolerance in the minds of the Moplahs. On the other hand if they did understand him correctly, he would have been successful in making them lay down their arms and embrace the Hindus as their brothers as well as removing the hatred in the minds of Hindus and accepting the Muslim s as their own brothers."

"When I reached Malabar what I saw were all terrible scenes. I was convinced that forced conversions were not a concoted story and there were evidences of the terrible things the insurgents did for that. I saw with my eyes the clear evidences of a forced conversion of a Hindu youth. All his virility was lost and remained and appeared like a living corpse. Many things more were witnessed by me. I am not detailing them all here. Among all that I also saw four Muslim women and children who had become insane due to fear. I also saw a woman injured with a bayonet charge and a child with mutilated limbs. The love kindled by Mahatma Gandhi in my heart attracted me towards them. With the help of two Congress workers I could understand the extent of their sorrows. I went back to appraise Mahatma Gandhi of the facts I collected from Malabar. I met him while he was at Bardoli and conveyed him all the facts. I will never forget the expressions of love and sadness that reflected on his face when he heard the news.( Might be that after hearing this only Gandhiji wrote in Young India condemning Moplah rebellion) Since it was a Monday and Gandhiji used to observe a vow of silence on that day, He couldn’t say anything to me. But his facial expressions conveyed clearly what was in his mind. I went back to Malabar again. Later on due to other preoccupations I could not return to Malabar again. Some prominent Muslim s had written me a few days back that the witch hunting by Malabar Police continues unabated even now and the Muslim youth consider death better option than continuing living in the present situation.”"

"Often enough it seemed as though, like the river Sarasvatī, the lost stream of the old Sapta-sindhavas, the river of Indian thought had disappeared beneath the surface or had become lost in shallow marshes and morasses . . . But, sooner or later, we see the stream reappear, and then old ideas resume their way."

"Beyond the depths of that awful cry which sprang from the elder girl's lips, I heard the tender, strong command of the Son of God, 'Take these children, and train them for Me.' 'I will, Lord,' was my trembling reply"

"These birds and animals and fish cannot speak, but they can suffer, and our God who created them, knows their sufferings, and will hold him who causes them to suffer unnecessarily to answer for it. It is a sin against their Creator."

"Owing to the efforts of Bishop Durieu, the spiritual conditions of the Indians of the mainland of that province have ever been exceptionally bright."

"An old chief had killed a female, and the body was thrown into the sea. Crowds of people were seen to run where the corpse was thrown, when presently two bands of furious wretches appeared and gave vent to the most unearthly sounds. When they came where the body lay, they rushed at it like so many angry wolves. Finally they seized it, dragged it out of the water, laid it on the beach and a couple of the fiends commenced to tear it in pieces with their teeth. The two bands of men surrounded them and hid their frightful work. In a few minutes the crowd dispersed, when each of the naked cannibals appeared with half of the body in his hands. Separating a few steps from each other, the two men finished amid horrid yells their still more horrid feast."

"I wasn’t God’s first choice for what I’ve done for China. ... I don’t know who it was... . It must have been a man... a well-educated man. I don’t know what happened. Perhaps he died. Perhaps he wasn’t willing . .. And God looked down... and saw Gladys Aylward ... And God said— “Well, she’s willing!”"

"As far as it concerns me personally, would that it might be to-morrow, so that I might retire between the four walls of a cell to weep over the time I wasted in behalf of these unfortunates."

"He was a very pious and energetic missionary, but dreaded the office of superior."

"The lives of the missionaries who are devoting themselves exclusively to the native population are lives of intense isolation, but their personal sufferings and inconveniences count for little when there are souls to be saved."

"His reports and mission entries are distinguished by their exactness and beauty of penmanship. Though a very zealous missionary, Señan loved a retired life. He disliked to hold office or give orders; for this reason he was sometimes nicknamed Padre Calma."

"Haidar’s palace is a fine building in the Indian style. Opposite to it is an open place. On both sides are ranges of open buildings where the military and civil servants have their offices and constantly attend and Haidar Naik can overlook them from his balcony . . . Although Haidar sometimes rewards his servants the principal motive is fear. Two hundred people with whips stand always ready to use them. Not a day passes on which numbers are not flogged. Haidar applies the same cat to all transgressors alike, gentlemen and horse- keepers, tax-gatherers and his own sons and when he has inflicted such a public scourging upon the greatest gentlemen, he does not dismiss them. No! they remain in the same office and bear the marks of stripes on their backs as public warnings. For he seems to think that almost all people who seek to enrich themselves are devoid of all principles of honour . . . the most dreadful punishments were daily inflicted. Many who read it may think the account exaggerated, but the poor man was tied up, two men came with their whips and cut him dreadfully and with sharp nails was his flesh torn asunder and then scourged afresh, his shrieks rending the air. Although the punishments are so dreadful, yet there are people enough who seek employments and outbid each other and the Brahmins are by far the worst in this traffic."

"When I came to Haidar, he desired me to sit down alongside of him. The floor was covered with the most exquisite tapestry. He received me very politely, listened in a friendly manner and seeming pleasure to all what I had to say. He spoke very openly and without reserve and said that the Europeans had broken their solemn engagements and promises but nevertheless he was willing to live in peace with them . . ."

"When I sat near Haidar Naik, I particularly observed in what a regular succession and with what rapid dispatch his affairs proceeded one after the other. Whenever he made a pause in speaking, an account was read to him of the districts and letters received. He heard them and ordered the answers immediately. The writers ran, wrote the letters, read them and Haidar affixed his seal. Thus, one evening a great many letters were expedited. Haidar can neither read nor write but his memory is excellent. He orders one man to write a letter and read it to him. Then he calls another to read it again. If the writer has in the least deviated from his orders, his head pays for it. What religion people profess or whether they profess any at all, that is perfectly indifferent to him. He has none himself and leaves everyone to his choice. His army is under the care of four chief officers called Bakshis. One might call them paymasters. But they have to do not only with the pay but also with the recruiting services and other things which belong to an army. There are also judges that settle differences. With these men I had frequent discourses. Some spoke Persian, others only Hindustani, but all were Mahomedans. They asked what the right prayer was and to whom we ought to pray. I declared to them how we being sinful men and therefore deserving God’s curse and eternal death could not come before God but in the name of our mediator Jesus Christ. I explained to them also the Lord’s prayer. To persons who understood Tamil, I explained the doctrines in Tamil, to the others in Hindustani language. As the ministers of Haidar’s court are mainly Brahmins, I had many conversations with them. Some answered with modesty and others did not choose to talk on so great a subject and only hinted that their noble pagodas [temples] were not built in vain. I said the edifices may indeed serve for some use but not the idols which they adored. Without the fort were some hundred Europeans commanded by a Frenchman and a squadron of Hussars under the command of Captain Budene, a German. Part of these troops were German, others Frenchmen. I found also some Malabar Christians. Every Sunday I performed Divine Service in German and in Malayalam without asking anybody’s leave . . . we sang, preached and prayed and nobody presumed to hinder us . . . In Haidar Naik’s palace the high and low come to me and asked what our doctrine was, so that I could speak as long as I had strength. Haidar’s youngest son saw and saluted me in the Durbar or hall of audience. He sent to request me to come into his apartment. I sent him word that I would gladly come if his father permitted it; without his father’s leave I might hurt both him and myself. Of this, he was perfectly sensible. The most intimate friends dare not speak their sentiments freely. Haidar has his spies everywhere. But I knew that I might speak of religion night and day without giving him the least offence. I sat often with Haidar in a hall that is open on the garden side. In the garden, trees were grafted and bore two sorts of fruit. He had also fine cypress trees, fountains, etc. I observed a number of young boys bringing some earth into the garden. On enquiry I was informed that Haidar had raised a battalion of orphans who have nobody else to provide for them and whom he educates at his expense, for he allowed no orphan to be neglected in all his dominions. He feeds and clothes them and gives little wooden firelocks with which they exercise . . ."

"On the last evening when I took my leave from Haidar, he requested me to speak Persian as I had done with his people. I did so and explained the motive of my journey to him: ‘You may perhaps wonder,’ said I, ‘what could have induced me, a priest, who has nothing to do with political concerns to come to you and that on an errand which does not belong to my sacerdotal functions. But as I was plainly told that the sole object of my journey was the preservation and confirmation of peace, and having witnessed more than once, the misery and horrors attending on war, I thought within my own mind, how happy I should deem myself if I could be of service in cementing a durable friendship between the two Governments and thus securing the blessings of peace to this devoted country and its inhabitants . . .’ He said with great cordiality: ‘Very well, very well. I am of the same opinion with you and wish that the English may be as studious of peace as you are. If they offer me the hand of peace and concord, I shall not withdraw mine.’ I then took my leave of him. On reaching my palanquin, I found that Haidar had sent three hundred rupees for my travelling expenses . . ."

"Impartial observers of Indian affairs admit that the greatest good accomplished for the Indian has been through the agency of religious schools, and particularly of Catholic schools, and it is in this cause the Bureau has done its best work."

"It is certain that these heathen put many of our Christians to shame by their good behavior."

"Salvatierra's memory needs no panegyric. His deeds speak for themselves; and in the light of these, the bitterest enemies of his religion or of his order cannot deny the beauty of his character and the disinterestedness of his devotion to California."

"Hinderer was not only a man of science, but also a missionary who for forty years laboured as an apostle and by his zeal and efficiency achieved substantial results."

"He was a truly evangelical man, and was held in the highest esteem by the missionaries for his learning and piety."

"Well meant though it undoubtedly was, and perhaps necessary under the circumstances, the French leader's intervention in the inter-tribal politics of the natives likewise resulted in their paying more heed to the war songs and the satisfaction of their passions than to the question of their spiritual advancement."

"His life was one alternation of triumphs and defeats. At times he had to prevent the Indians from adoring him as a god; at others they were about to sacrifice him to their deities."

"Indians have excellent eyes and ears; and our band, if weak in numbers, was certainly strong in lungs; for such as had wind instruments spared neither contortions of the face, nor exertions of their organs of respiration to give volume to the music."

"I could have had that pleasure, but then the sacrifice would not have been complete."

"Fifty years a Jesuit and forty years a missionary, one of the noblest men that ever laboured in the ranks of the Church in Montana, his fame stands very high in Montana."

"At the last day God will not ask me whether my church was a wigwam or a log church. He asks not for churches but for souls, and the soul of the poorest Indian living in the most miserable wigwam is as dear to him as the soul of the greatest sovereign."

"He was both priest and physician to the Indians."

"It is indeed a blessing that the future is veiled to us: had it been revealed to me, there would have been no merit in my perseverance. But the Lord kept me in suspense and gave me only enough strength to keep me from abandoning the idea and to complete the work once it was started."

"The way has been prepared: the Navajos are well-disposed toward the Catholic missionaries and give founded hopes for an abundant harvest of souls."

"In none of his writings to which I have had access, does there appear a disposition to judge too favourably of Chinese notions, but the reverse."

"He was almost the last survivor of the Fernandinos, and for virtue, learning, and missionary zeal ranks with the most brilliant of his predecessors."

"As the conversion of these poor folk is not the work of man, but the effect of the mercy of our Divine Master, let us endeavour to obtain it by prayers and holy deeds. A day never passes, without my remembering these unfortunate people before the altar. May it please the Mercy of the Lord to grant the prayers that I offer for their conversion!"

"Though the Californians seem to possess nothing, they have, nevertheless, all that they want, for they covet nothing beyond the productions of their poor, ill-favored country, and these are always within their reach. It is no wonder, then, that they always exhibit a joyful temper, and constantly indulge in merriment and laughter, showing thus their contentment, which, after all, is the real source of happiness."

"After these things Paul departed from Athens and went to Corinth. And he found a certain Jew named Aquila, born in Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla (because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to depart from Rome); and he came to them. So, because he was of the same trade, he stayed with them and worked; for by occupation they were tentmakers."

"So Paul still remained a good while. Then he took leave of the brethren and sailed for Syria, and Priscilla and Aquila were with him. He had his hair cut off at Cenchrea, for he had taken a vow. 19 And he came to Ephesus, and left them there; but he himself entered the synagogue and reasoned with the Jews."

"(About Apollos) So he began to speak boldly in the synagogue. When Aquila and Priscilla heard him, they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately."

"Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus, who risked their own necks for my life, to whom not only I give thanks, but also all the churches of the Gentiles."

"The churches of Asia greet you. Aquila and Priscilla greet you heartily in the Lord, with the church that is in their house."

"Greet Prisca and Aquila, and the household of Onesiphorus."

"Do not imagine each moment that all the Chinese are at my heels and think only of destroying me. These are the men whom I love much more than I fear."

"In Europe and even in India, there are still some who remember his name, and in Ceylon, the theatre of his Apostolic labours, his name is still mentioned by the older generation; but the rising generation hardly know what they owe to him. And yet, his is a name that ought to endure for ever."

"Let no man thinke (speaking of the Indians,) that they are men of nothing; but if they thinke so, let them go and make triall."

"Apart from his sophistical defence of Spanish colonial policy, Acosta deserves high praise as an acute and diligent observer whose numerous new and valuable data are set forth in a vivid style."

"Much of what he says is of necessity erroneous, because it is influenced by the standard of knowledge of his time; but his criticisms are remarkable, while always dignified. He reflects the scientific errors of the period in which he lived, but with hints of a more advanced understanding."

"Though his services were peculiarly valuable n his early fields of labour as he had mastered both the Montagnais and the English languages, yet an able man being needed to organize parish and mission work among the French Canadians at Lowell, Father Garin was ordered thither and in a short time his remarkable good sense, courteous manner, and kindly disposition won for him a wonderful influence over his people."

"I know that the Chief will kill me, and I am delighted to receive such a happy end from the hand of God."

"While his superiors regarded him as one of the best and most zealous of friars, the people looked upon him as a saint."

"Ribas wrote under the most favourable circumstances and made good use of his opportunities."

"His reputation as an historian rests secure upon his history of the Jesuit missions of Mexico."