India's Problem, Krishna or Christ

by John P. Jones

Missions must expect that the jealousy and the antagonism of that department will increase. It is true that the great State Educational Despatch of 1854 and later enunciated government policy, declare that it is not the purpose of the government to establish schools of its own, except where private bodies fail to do so; and that it is its purpose to encourage, so far as possible, private institutions. But the general declaration of the Imperial and Provincial governments is one thing and the purpose and ambition of its Educational Department a very different thing. Departmentalists find it to their interest to strengthen and increase government schools at all points; and [pg 279] as the funds appropriated for educational purposes are inadequate for all schools they seek the lion's share for their own, and grudgingly give an ever decreasing quota to mission institutions. It will be an ill day for missions when the Educational Department and its schools will become sufficiently strong to affect the policy of the general government as against private, and in favour of government schools.

Another fact, of equal significance, is the attitude of District Boards and Municipal Commissioners towards the schools of Mission Bodies. Nearly all the members of Local Boards are native gentlemen. They see the large influence of mission schools, scattered as they are through their districts and towns, and they regard them as Christian propaganda and as evangelizing agencies; and it is but natural that, under the impulse of their new nationalism and of their interest in a Neo-Hinduism, they should be jealous of mission schools which are the rivals of their own indigenous and growing institutions. And as they have the power of the purse and make and withhold grants to different schools at their pleasure; and as all the subordinate officers of the Educational Department are natives and are not in full sympathy with mission schools; it can be easily seen how our schools are doomed to suffer through an ever decreasing government aid towards their support.

Thus, there are two problems, in this connection, which will confront us. One is the question whether it be worth while for missions to conduct their schools entirely at their own expense, i.e.—without any government aid. This problem must be faced ere long; [pg 280] and it means either the curtailing of this department of work or the expending of a very much increased sum of money upon it.

The question may also be urged upon us, more speedily than we anticipate (indeed it has been raised already), whether any schools aided by government shall be allowed to be used as religious propaganda. In other words, whether mission schools shall enjoy the privilege of teaching the Bible to all non-Christian students in attendance, even against their will. This question is exercising the mind of not a few natives and others today; and it is claimed that the present practice is contrary to the Royal Proclamation of Religious Neutrality in the land. There is some reason for this contention; and, under increasing religious rivalry and jealousy, it may, at an early date, lead to a crisis in mission schools. And the problem may confront us as to whether we are prepared to continue all our schools for non-Christians under conditions which make it impossible for us to give Bible, or even any religious, training in them.

Another serious problem, in this same connection, is whether missions should conduct, to any extent, educational work apart from other indirect aims and purposes. In other words, how far, if at all, should a mission give itself to the work of education, per se, and not as a Christian training or as an evangelizing agency.

Many at present maintain that education—general education—is in itself a good and a blessing which it is the business of a mission to impart, independent of any direct religious instruction or spiritual training which might be given through it. They maintain [pg 281] that mission funds should thus be used for the intellectual advancement of the people apart from their Christianization. The majority, however, would claim that a mission's educational work should be conducted only so far as it can be the medium of communicating religious truth, or only in so far as it can be made a direct auxiliary to the Christianizing of the land. This class would claim that no work should be undertaken by a mission which does not contribute to the Christianizing of the people as a result distinct from their progress in civilization. And it is here that these two classes of missionaries take issue with each other. It is an important difference in the conception of the Church's work in heathen lands. As I shall consider this later I only call attention to it here.

Another matter, of no little consequence in this connection, is that of the amount of educational privilege which a mission should furnish to its people. President Stanley Hall has recently maintained that, even in this country, many are educated who should not be. They should, he says, be left to the hoe and shovel. He claims that not a few are, through education, spoiled for usefulness in the lowest sphere of manual labour for which they were by nature designed; while they are also disqualified for the highest sphere of service and life. If this be true in America it is doubly true in India. Many young men and women in that land have had lavished upon them the blessings of education to an extent that was unprofitable both to them and to the cause. They have received an education and training which not only carried them away far outside the social [pg 282] realm for which they were intended by nature; it also left them incapable of doing the higher thing for which they were intended by the mission.

There is adequate excuse for this in the early stages of mission progress. The greatest need of a mission is a good, strong, native agency. And in its desire to furnish this agency the mission, as well as the individual missionary, eagerly seizes upon every boy and girl who shows any signs of promise as an applicant to be trained for missionary service. This same ambition to develop, in intellectual power and in civilizing progress, the young of an infant Christian community so that they may adorn our faith and give an honourable status to the community leads many a mission to expend upon the education of its boys and girls more than it will in its later and more mature stage of growth.

6. The Industrial and Economic Problem.

During the last two decades there has been a marked and strong tendency in Indian missions, as in the home churches which support them, to still broaden the scope of missionary effort by adding to its directly spiritual, and to its educational and medical, work, schemes for the industrial, economic and social advancement of the people. This broadening of the conception of the work of the Church in missionary lands is a most interesting study. Less than a century ago nothing that was not directly and intensely spiritual in its character was regarded as, in any sense, a part of missionary effort. To preach the Gospel to the heathen, to establish and to train Christian churches and to develop and direct a suitable [pg 283] native agency—this embraced the whole work of the mission. Anything beyond this was considered illegitimate. Subsequently the medical department was introduced,—chiefly because of the example of Christ Himself as the Great Healer. Soon the educational work was begun, as a necessity in its elementary stages, and it gradually grew until it has reached its present manifold character and large proportions. Then a few missions began to touch the industrial problem and to establish schools for the training of boys and girls in manual labour. Today that work is finding much increased emphasis, and missions are beginning to take up, in all seriousness, Peasant Settlements as a means of lifting the people economically, and of training them to habits of industry, and to found villages as separate Christian communities. Schools for the blind and for deaf mutes also have been established. In fact all forms of philanthropic effort have now practically been adopted by the missions of India as legitimate forms of their activities. Indeed, it is extensively proclaimed, what has long been strenuously denied, that missions are not founded simply to Christianize but to civilize and to elevate in all matters pertaining to soul, mind and body, the people among whom they are established.