missionaries

"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."

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

"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"

"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 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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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’."

"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."

"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.'"

"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?"

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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’?"

"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."

"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 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."

"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."

"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."

"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 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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"

"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."

"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."

"To overdraw its evil is a simple impossibility"

"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."

"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.'""

"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 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."

"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."

"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."

"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."