It took Amy several weeks to recover. As she lay in her hospital bed, waves of homesickness often swept over her. She would be homesick for her mother and Robert Wilson in England, homesick for Barclay Buxton, Misaki San, and the Christians in Hirose, Japan. Sometimes she was even homesick for the missionary work she never got to do in China! It seemed to Amy she would be better off almost anywhere than in the hospital, taking up the valuable time of missionaries whom she’d come to work alongside.
Slowly, as she started to feel stronger, Amy began to get involved in the daily routine of the Zenana Mission Society. One of the first things she did was attend a monthly staff social evening. It was at this gathering that the differences between Amy and many of the other missionaries began to show. The scene was innocent enough. The missionary women sat in a circle under the lamplight, quietly embroidering handkerchiefs with French knots and satin stitch. One of the men from the mission read an article on the partnership of missionaries and local Christians. The other men sat and listened and nodded occasionally. When the man had finished reading, a discussion was started. Mainly the men spoke, but occasionally a woman would look up from her embroidery and offer an opinion. As the discussion progressed, the question was raised as to who could name a single Indian Christian who would do Christian work without being paid by a missionary or the church to do it. The women continued poking their needles in and out of their fabric, while the men frowned and thought about the question. A minute past, then two and three. It seemed no one knew of anyone. “Oh, well,” said one of the men with a nervous laugh. “One can’t really blame them.” At that moment, a servant brought in hot tea and cucumber sandwiches, and everyone’s attention was soon diverted to the refreshments.
Amy laid down her embroidery. She sat in shock while the others drank tea and ate sandwiches. She wondered whether what she’d just heard could be true. In southern India, where tradition says St. Thomas brought the gospel message all the way from Israel, where Syrian Christians had a thriving community by the fourth century, and where hundreds of missionaries from many denominations had labored for centuries, could it be that not one Christian understood the joy of volunteering time to serve God? Surely it couldn’t be? Amy thought of the shawlies in Belfast who had gone without sleep and had willingly given up their two precious days off a month to help with the work of The Welcome. Whenever she had needed someone to fill in at a service or to sweep the hall, the shawlies had been there, cheerfully, freely, gladly, willingly offering their time to do their part in reaching others with the gospel message. Of course, Amy didn’t think it was always wrong to pay a person for his or her labor, but the thought that there was not one person who would work purely out of love for God left her speechless.
Amy looked at the other missionaries sitting and sipping tea from china cups. Shouldn’t they all be on their knees begging God to forgive them for failing to inspire any devotion in the local population? Instead, they passed around another plate of sandwiches, this time with watercress and tomato on them. Amy couldn’t believe it.
This was not the only shock Amy had in her first few days with the mission. The more she saw of the missionary station, the more things bothered her. When she asked to visit the new-converts class, she was told there wasn’t one; it wasn’t needed. There hadn’t been a new-converts class in years. Again, Amy could hardly believe what she was hearing. When she asked why there was no new-converts class, as part of the answer, one of the missionaries who’d served with the mission in Bangalore for many years explained the Hindu caste system to Amy.
All Hindus are divided into four castes, or groups. Every Hindu person is born into the same caste as his or her parents. Those in the top caste are called Brahmans, and they are religious and political leaders. Then there are the Kshatriyas, who are warriors; the Vaisyas, who are farmers and tradesmen; and the Sudras, who are laborers and servants. Below them are the lowest of the low, those who do not belong to a caste. They are called untouchables. When the caste system was first established, it was done as a way to organize society. It was much like the kings, lords, noblemen, and serfs of medieval England. But as the centuries passed, more and more rules were made about how different castes could relate to one another, and new castes within the main caste groups were formed. By the time Amy arrived in Bangalore there were several thousand castes and many rules, some harsh, that were very strictly enforced. For example, a person could not eat food prepared by a member of a lower caste or marry out of his or her caste. Untouchables were left to do the work no one else would do. They had to clean up after cremation ceremonies, prepare animal hides, and rinse out chamber pots. Other Hindus would have nothing to do with them. Their caste forbade such contact. Untouchables could not drink water from the same well or even attend the same churches as people from higher castes for fear their shadow might touch someone of another caste and make them unclean. Amy nodded. She had seen the untouchables in Madras dressed in rags, their eyes staring at the ground.
The longtime missionary with the Zenana Mission Society went on to tell Amy about the hold Hinduism had over people. Loyalty was everything to a Hindu. The loyalty of a wife to her husband led to the practice of suttee, which the English were trying to wipe out. Suttee meant that when a man died it was the duty of his widow to commit suicide by throwing herself into the cremation fire with him. Sometimes the widow needed “a little help” to do this, but it was considered the right and loyal thing to do. The same was true of religion. A Hindu who converted to Christianity was labeled an infidel. To other Hindus, Christian converts had become disloyal to their religion, their society, and their family. As a result, they often were killed by members of their own family to prevent them from bringing any more disgrace to the family.
Amy thought back to Louisa’s letter and its lack of a “happy ending.” She was beginning to see the hold Hinduism had over every part of life in India. “But isn’t the power of God greater than the power of Hinduism?”
“Yes, it should be,” sighed the longtime missionary. “But in reality it does not seem to be so.” And then he gave Amy a challenge: Would she pray and ask God why they were not seeing any Hindu converts? Of course she would. She started to pray about it right away. She had come to India to see God work in the lives of Indian people, and she, as much as anyone, wanted to know why it wasn’t happening.
One of the things that Amy felt to be a barrier was that even though the mission society ran a school, most of the teachers were Hindus or Muslims. Again Amy spoke to the older missionary. She asked him what was the point of employing people from other religions to teach in the school. Wasn’t the point of a Christian school to influence students toward Christianity? How could this happen if only a few of the teachers were Christians? The missionary told her it wasn’t as easy as she might think to find Christians who would teach. Besides, weren’t Hindu or Muslim teachers better than no teachers at all? Not to Amy they weren’t! At least not in a Christian school. Amy told the missionary about the time she’d been short of workers at The Welcome and that many people had offered to help out of a sense of social concern. She had turned them all down, however, and waited for God to provide her with committed Christians who would serve others out of love for Him. Why couldn’t the mission school apply the same principle? She knew it worked; she’d seen it work firsthand.
There were no easy answers, and although many of the missionaries liked Amy, her questions began to make some of them uncomfortable.
In her diary, Amy wrote, “I am beginning to feel like a fish out of water.” Of course, fish do not last long out of water. Although Amy was trying hard to get along, trying hard to learn the Tamil language, and trying hard to fit into the British Empire missionary mold, it wasn’t working. Something had to happen to get her back “in the water,” and it had to happen soon.
Chapter 10
Going Native
Amy dug her heels into the side of Laddie, the horse she was riding. Her long, dark brown hair streamed behind her as Laddie galloped along the pine-tree-lined trail. At first she hadn’t wanted to leave Bangalore, but now that she was out of the city it felt good to be free. She was almost looking forward to the change of climate at Kotagiri, a hillstation retreat three thousand feet up in the Nilgiri Hills, where English people liked to go to relax and get away from the monsoon rains that fell during April and May.
As she galloped ahead, Amy looked back at the rest of the party she was traveling with. The group had just rounded a corner and come into sight. And what a sight they were! Her three fellow missionaries were being carried in sedan chairs—chairs with long poles on either side that were carried on the shoulders of eight servants. Behind the sedan chairs came Saral, carrying a light load of clothing, and then twelve other servants, all big, strong men, and all laboring under the burden of a box or a trunk, the missionaries’ luggage. The servants were transporting everything from badminton rackets and nets to a matching set of folding chairs. Already, on the trip up to Kotagiri, Amy had passed one family with a piano being carried on a bullock cart, and another family with an iron bathtub among its vacation equipment.
Amy turned her attention back to the trail ahead. The procession behind her represented everything she didn’t like about India. It took thirty-six servants to transport four English people and all of their “necessary” belongings from Bangalore up to the hill station of Kotagiri so the missionaries could have some rest. Don’t the servants need rest a hundred times more than we do? Amy quizzed herself as she rode on. She longed to live life simply, free from morning and afternoon teas, handiwork circles, and cricket matches. She wanted to be free to reach out to Indian people. She wanted to get to know them as individuals and not just as servants. But how could she do this? She was an Englishwoman surrounded by Indian servants. The English weren’t supposed to treat Indians as anything other than servants.
As she rode along smelling the wonderful oils from the pine trees and listening with delight to the sounds of a thousand birds, she came up with an idea. Why not move in with an Indian family? After all, she could learn the Tamil language far more easily and get to know Indians much better if she lived among them. As she turned the idea over and over in her mind she could see only one problem, but it was a big problem. “Going native,” as identifying too closely with the local people was known in the missionary community, was greatly frowned upon. A person who went native was considered to be letting down the whole mission by giving up “civilized” English traditions. Such action was seen as nothing less than shunning Queen Victoria and the empire. Still Amy couldn’t get the idea out of her mind. But how could she make it work? What she needed was someone who was well respected in the English missionary community who would support her in her plan. The trouble was, Amy didn’t know anyone who thought living like a native was anything less than crazy.
Finally she arrived at Kotagiri, and straightaway she was in the middle of another problem. Problems seemed to follow Amy wherever she went. She just couldn’t get used to being an empire lady. Her problem this time was that Kotagiri was a favored destination for the English, including missionaries, precisely because there were so few Indians there. The Indians who were there were mostly servants who knew their place and kept well out of sight whenever possible. Amy had brought Saral with her, but she treated her not as a servant but as a friend and assistant, just like she’d treated Misaki San in Japan. Amy expected to share her room with Saral during her stay in Kotagiri, but the very idea was outrageous to the other English folk. Gossip quickly spread around Kotagiri that there was a small Irish upstart in town. People wanted to know who she thought she was, upsetting the whole social order of Kotagiri so she could have an Indian friend stay with her.
