Sundar learned that Susil was the principal of Saint Stephen’s College in Delhi. This school, Susil explained, focused on giving young men from the Punjab region a Christian university education. Susil had come to Kotgarh for a vacation away from the stifling heat of Delhi. Accompanying him was Charles Andrews, a British missionary who was a teacher at the school. Sundar soon found that he liked Charles very much. Charles was not like so many other English missionaries he had met before. Charles shared Susil’s view that the Christian church in India should have a distinct Indian flavor. And he was quick to criticize those who tried to make it too English.
Over the next several days, Charles and Susil talked to Sundar about his future. “After all,” they told him, “you are just nineteen years old. If you really want to impact the Christian church in India, it would be much better if you had some credentials. You need a regular system of Bible study, too. It is all very well for you to read the New Testament for hours on end, but there are many wonderful truths to be found in the Old Testament as well.”
Sundar could see the logic in what they were saying to him, and so he agreed to allow Charles to enroll him in a two-year course at Saint John’s Divinity College at Lahore. As he made his way there, Sundar had no idea how difficult this new direction would be for him.
Chapter 8
A Caged Forest Bird
It was New Year’s Day, and Sundar stared at the mass of young men surrounding him at the dinner table. He had been at Saint John’s Divinity College for three weeks now, and he wondered whether he and the other students had anything in common besides the fact that they were all Indians. He remembered the day he arrived at the school. Everyone else had boxes and suitcases, while he walked quietly in through the gates with nothing but the clothes on his back and his Urdu New Testament. Doting mothers and stern fathers who warned their sons to work hard and get good grades had accompanied the other boys. Sundar, on the other hand, knew that his father and brothers did not even know where he was and did not care. The comparisons did not end there. Most of his fellow students came from Christian homes. Attending Saint John’s was a deliberate career choice they had made. Most of them hoped to be deacons and priests in the Anglican Church. But Sundar could not see himself fitting in to the restrictions of working for any single denomination.
In only three weeks he had become increasingly weary of the chatter at mealtimes, the games the boys played, and the lack of time for meditation and prayer. How Sundar longed for the mountains around Simla and Kotgarh where he used to pray for hours, sometimes days at a time, and read an entire Gospel in one sitting. He had to admit to himself that he felt lonelier at Saint John’s among Christian students than he did when he was out trekking alone through the foothills of the Himalayas.
Sundar realized that the other students were not comfortable with a young sadhu in their midst either. Sometimes when he walked past a group of students, he got the feeling they were talking about him, and a small group of first-year students taunted him in the dormitory most nights. This group of students was led by a student named Prem. Sundar had no idea why Prem appeared to hate him so much.
Unable to finish his meal, Sundar slipped out of the noisy cafeteria. He wandered the school grounds for a while before finally sitting down with his back propped up against the trunk of a tree. With tears in his eyes, Sundar began to pray out loud. “O Lord, sometimes I feel so alone, but I know that You are with me and You will see me through this dark period in my life. I pray for the boys here who taunt me, especially Prem. If there is anything I have done to offend him, please forgive me. I want Your love to flow between us, so show me if I am a stumbling block to my brother.”
A branch cracked behind Sundar, and as he opened his eyes and turned his head to see what it was, he looked right into the eyes of Prem. The two of them looked at each other for a long moment, and then Prem fell to his knees.
“Forgive me, Sundar, please forgive me,” Prem begged. “I am the one who needs to be forgiven, not you. I do not know why I have felt such anger toward you. It is certainly nothing you have done to me.”
He put his head on Sundar’s shoulder and wept.
“I promise I will never make fun of you again. In fact, I would very much like to be your friend. Do you think we could pray together sometimes?” Prem asked.
Sundar looked once again into Prem’s now wet, dark eyes, which shined with sincerity. He nodded. “I would like that.”
From that time on, Sundar and Prem became good friends, and their friendship helped to ease some of the loneliness Sundar had been feeling.
Although divinity school was still not easy for him, Sundar comforted himself with the fact that when he was finished, he would be an ordained Anglican priest. Then he could preach not only in the mountains and countryside but also in the churches dotting the land of India.
Eight months into his education at Saint John’s, Sundar discovered that his vision of future ministry was quite different from that of Bishop Lefroy, the Anglican bishop and principal of Saint John’s. Bishop Lefroy had invited Sundar into his office for a chat. Sundar sat in a soft, leather chair opposite the bishop.
“So how are things going for you, Sundar?” Bishop Lefroy asked.
“Very good, sir,” Sundar replied. “I must say that my time here has been more difficult than I had imagined it would be. But that is fine. It is worth the sacrifice so that I can become ordained and preach not only in the villages and marketplaces where people gather but also in the churches throughout India.”
Sundar watched as a bemused look spread across the bishop’s face.
“Sundar, let me explain,” Bishop Lefroy began delicately. “If you are ordained as an Anglican priest, you will not be able to wander all over India preaching. As an ordained priest, you will have a church, or perhaps a group of churches, that you must care for. And you will have to remain in the diocese where you are ordained. You will not be free to travel to Bombay or Delhi or Calcutta or anywhere else to preach without the permission of the bishop of that diocese. I thought you understood this when you agreed to come here.”
Sundar realized that he should have known this, but he did not. He felt a heaviness creep into his heart as he shook his head. “No, I did not know that,” he said. And then he asked, “What about Tibet? Would you allow me to go there, since it is not under the direction of any diocese?”
After an uneasy moment of silence, Bishop Lefroy spoke. “Tibet belongs to no one, I will grant you that. But again, Sundar, you cannot just leave your diocese for four or five months at a time each summer to lose yourself in Tibet. As noble an aim as wanting to share the gospel with the people of Tibet may be, you will have a church full of people who look to you for spiritual guidance and leadership. You cannot just leave them when it suits you.”
Sundar sat staring at the leather-bound books neatly arranged in rows on the mahogany bookshelves behind Bishop Lefroy and pondered what he had just heard. The life of an Anglican priest was not the ministry he felt called to. He was called to be a Christian sadhu, a missionary to the people of India and Tibet. He had hoped that being ordained might expand his ministry. He never imagined for a moment that it would have the opposite effect. Deep down Sundar knew that a theological education from Saint John’s was not right for him, not if it hampered his ability to do what God had called him to.
“Bishop Lefroy,” Sundar began as politely as possible. “I thank you for all you have done for me these past eight months, but I am afraid I must withdraw from Saint John’s. It is clear to me now that my ministry is not compatible with the direction the Anglican Church would have me go in. I trust that in the future, when we meet again, we can enjoy wonderful Christian fellowship together.”
“That we will, Sundar,” the bishop said gently. “I am sorry that we have different views of the future of your ministry. I had high hopes that you would settle into a diocese and become a great pastor and positive influence on other ministers around you. But if that is not to be, then I pray God will bless your ministry. I wish you every success in the future.”
With that Sundar stood and left Bishop Lefroy’s office.
As Sundar walked out the gates of Saint John’s Divinity College for the last time, he felt as though a weight had been lifted from his back. Once again he was free to go wherever he felt God had called him to and to speak to whomever he wanted along the way. One of the first places Sundar visited was Saint Stephen’s College in Delhi. Susil Rudra and Charles Andrews, the two men he had met at Kotgarh, gave him a warm welcome. Charles, who had visited Sundar at Saint John’s, told him how glad he was that Sundar had decided to leave. He explained that when he saw how unhappy Sundar had been at the divinity college, he realized the mistake he had made in recommending the place. He told Sundar that he had seemed to him like a caged forest bird that was used to flying wherever he willed.
Now that Sundar was a guest and not a student, he was free to talk to the Christian boys attending Saint Stephen’s College and encourage them to follow Jesus’ example of service. Susil and Charles were delighted with the effect he was having on the student body and invited him back to stay at the college anytime he was in the area.
A month after his visit to Saint Stephen’s College, Sundar received a letter from Susil. In the letter Susil reported that the most extraordinary things had happened following Sundar’s visit. Many of the boys took his words to heart, and the school had been transformed. One boy, Samuel, had decided to give up his hope of landing a good government job and to enter into full-time ministry in the church instead. Another young man, Theofilus, spent three nights nursing one of the school’s sweepers, who had contracted cholera. Before Sundar had come to Saint Stephen’s, Theofilus would not have even looked directly at the man because of his menial job. And Amrit Singh had returned from vacation carrying a lower-caste man on his back. The man was suffering from the plague, and Amrit had found him dying in a forest and decided to bring him back to the college to be taken care of properly.
Sundar was delighted and wrote back to say that he would visit again as soon as he could. Then he continued with his travels. Sometimes he was able to speak and preach the gospel openly to the people of the villages that he visited. At other times he was run out of villages where he sought to speak. Undeterred by the response of people to him, Sundar plodded on. He headed in a southeasterly direction and traveled as far as Benares, located on the banks of the Ganges River.
Benares was a city to which many thousands of Hindu pilgrims came to seek forgiveness by bathing in the water of the sacred river, known to Hindus as the Mother Ganges. There, at the Hindu shrines dotting the banks of the Ganges, Sundar found a ready audience of people to talk with. As happened in the villages, sometimes the people listened quietly to what he had to say, and at other times the crowds became agitated and abusive when they realized he was talking about the Christian God.
One day Sundar was speaking to a group of Hindus who listened respectfully to what he was saying. When he had finished speaking, several men in the group urged Sundar to speak to their holy man, who was sitting farther along the riverbank. They explained that although they did not have the knowledge to argue with Sundar, their holy man would soon prove him wrong. A young man ran off to get the holy man and soon returned with him in tow. The Hindu sadhu, an old man with a dark, weathered face, walked up to Sundar and stared him in the eye. Then he did something Sundar had not expected. Instead of refuting what Sundar had said to the group, the man stretched out two of his fingers and placed them first in Sundar’s mouth and then in his own. The crowd gasped. This was not what they had expected. By his gesture the Hindu holy man was indicating that he and Sundar’s words were the same. The holy man then turned to the confused crowd and declared that all Sundar had said to them about Jesus Christ was indeed true.
