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(Reprinted from unpublished manuscript.)
Procursus
Ida Vidamay Kinsey (1873-1950) was born in Portland, Indiana, the oldest sibling among a group of six girls and one boy. When she was nine years old, her aunt volunteered for missionary service in India, and became one of the first four Disciples of Christ missionaries to India.
When Ida was eighteen, her aunt went back to Indiana on furlough. When her aunt was scheduled to return to India, a new missionary was scheduled to go with her, but abruptly resigned the appointment. Ida was recruited at short notice to go with her aunt as a replacement. Thus she served as a missionary in India for five years between about 1892 and 1897.
Her work included teaching written Hindi and other subjects in a small mission school in Bina, a town northeast of Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh. Although fired with enthusiasm for the project, she knew little about India, and was entirely innocent of Hindi. As she wrote in a later memoir,
My first task when I reached India was to start in [on] the learning of the language. In this I was favored by the fact of my youth. The missionaries who arrive while quite young have a facility for language study which is not usually so pronounced among the older recruits for the work.
This modest comment probably does not do justice to her mastery, which was sufficient for her to teach a whole range of school subjects, from math and science to history, all taught entirely in Hindi.
The following lecture notes were discovered by her descendants a century later, long after her death. They appear to be the draft of a lecture to be delivered to an American church group sometime after her return from India, most likely in about 1899 or so. The penciled handwriting was difficult to read, but the following transcription by her adult son was carefully done and is probably reasonably accurate.
It is not clear whether, at the time of her lecture, she was planning to go back to India. As things worked out, she did not. Instead she met a young minister of her same denomination and married him, hoping that both of them would see mission service together in Cuba. As it happened, they took a parish in Evanston, Illinois. At some point, Ida became an ordained minister herself, although it is not clear whether this was before or after she produced the following text.
Major famines swept the Bina area in 1897, while she was still there —Ida herself lost about 30 pounds— and in 1899, the probable date of this lecture. The widespread death by starvation very much impressed Ida while she was there —she awoke one morning to find that an old man had died in the night on the mission doorstep, probably of starvation. The widely reported famine of 1899 would have weighed on the minds of her midwestern listeners as well. A brief reference to deaths by starvation occurs at the end of our text.
To us, reading her notes over a century later, the lecture provides a first-hand account of a dedicated, religious, American woman of her era, confronting late XIXth-century India as she was able to understand it, given her background. We see her selecting her experiences to craft a presentation to a parochial American audience almost certainly made up of church woman, possibly delivered with the hope of their making financial contributions to support the missionary work in India.
The text tells us more about Ida, perhaps, than about India or the audience, but to some degree it tells us about all three sides of this inter-cultural encounter more than a century ago: Ida, India, and her audience. The text is published here for the first time. The numbered divisions and subtitles are not part of the original text, but have been added to facilitate class discussion.
DKJ
It was a privilege demanding and calling forth no little praise and thanksgiving to leave a home and country and sail over foaming seas to a land darkened with the black cloud of immorality, ignorance of God’s love, superstition and idolatry to bear the glad tidings of a Redeemer.
A country once so rich in spices, gems, aromatics, silks and precious stones that it became the fairyland to the eyes of invaders. Sesostris, Semiramis, Alexander (the Macedonian), Porus, and Selucus, the Persian Mohammedans, Afghans, Tartars, and Moguls, the Portuguese, Dutch, and French, and the English through the agency of the East India Company have each in their turn satiated their rapacity on the unoffending natives of India. But of all these invaders that wrenched so much from India’s hand not one of them gave her that “one thing needful —the pearl of great price, the oil of joy", the good tidings of Him that cometh with healing in His wings.
Of the later invaders, many of her first officers in India did not even show by their conduct that they were men of a Christian nation. The English government in India takes a neutral position with regard to religions. Consequently she protects and upholds Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Mohammedanism, Zoroastrianism, and the Sikh religion as much as the Christian religion. The Bible is not taught in the Government schools, in the army, or in any other Government institution. Had the Bible been made a daily study in the Government schools would not her youth today be Christians? Did not England lose a great opportunity? But we must credit her with the fact that she acted conscientiously and perhaps by the guidance of the Spirit.
Her standing army in India makes it possible for Christian missionaries to enter and, unmolested, do their work. Think you not this an equal division of labour? What opportunities are ours to bear and send the glad message to a country whose people number over 300,000,000. It is easy to get the heathen children into Christian schools and it is not an uncommon occurrence for the heathen parents to desire the missionaries to organize schools for their children.
When I entered India a little short of midnight on a bright moonlight November night and first beheld the flat roofed, whitewashed houses, with open doors and saw the passion flower, the honeysuckle, and the rose vine climbing those whitewashed walls and heard the light rustle of the leaves of the luxuriant trees, flowers and vines in the soft night breeze and beheld the white-robed figures lying asleep on the housetops, verandahs, and sidewalks, and when, with the bright glowing sun, awoke entire Bombay, and I beheld the Parsi women, dressed in their dainty silks, the men in their flowing spotless robes and artistic headgear, and beheld the carelessness, indifference and happiness of the people, and when I saw the gay marriage procession pass by in the evening, I wondered why India should arouse so much sympathy and pity.
It is true the wretched beggars on the street corners cast a gloom on the gay day, and the hired mourners, wailing and beating their breasts in front of the house wherein lay a corpse added to the gloom. The beautifully lighted streets during the ensuing Dewali festival bespoke for those people a zeal and a desire to do honor to a Higher Power. Yet not until I had become sufficiently acquainted with the Hindi language and the people, to visit them in their homes, did I perceive the abject misery of a heathen home.
When I entered a little low, thatch-roofed house and a coffee sack was spread upon the mud floor, on which I should sit, and I looked around me and beheld the low, dark, barren mud wall, without windows. No need of curtain, draperies, [???] to let in the light. The house [is] void of furniture, books, toys, musical instruments, or anything pleasing to the senses or comforting to the [???]. The scanty clothing hanging across a bamboo in the corner of the room. When I learned to know the lack of love, joy, and congeniality in the lives of those husbands and wives whose marriages were arranged for by their parents, such debts being incurred at that time that can probably not be paid during the lifetime of these individuals. When I saw how uncompanionable and unmotherlike are those ignorant, superstitious women and how void are those men of nobleness, manliness, and gallantry, those qualities we admire so much in our own fathers and brothers.
When I discovered how much they lacked stamina and how easy it was for them to lie, deceive, and steal; how much they worshipped their gods, not because they loved them, but because they feared them, then it was that I began to realize what a debt I owed to Him for birth by a Christian mother, and childhood days in a Christian land. When I learned that those little children concerning whom Christ said, “Suffer little children to come unto me and forbid them not for of such is the kingdom of heaven” had learned their first lessons in immorality while they were yet a few months old; that the first words those lips were taught to lisp were abusive language to mother, which somehow they never forgot as long as mother lived. When I knew the dangers and temptations surrounding girlhood and young womanhood and the distressed condition of widows in India then it was I realized the responsibility resting on Christian women.
’Tis awful to be a widow in India. A widow —perhaps ere she has lost the prattle of baby talk, perhaps she has never even seen her husband, but she may never marry again. Worse than this, her position in the household is degraded and humiliating to the last degree. The calamity which has befallen her is believed to be a just retribution for serious misdeeds in a previous birth. She is shunned even by her own relatives as morally plague-smitten; before her glimmers not a ray of hope, but a life of unmitigated misery. Her head is shaved, her jewellery taken off, her bright garments replaced by those of a muddy white color. The darkest and most uncomfortable corner of the comfortless house is her retreat and the most servile service her employment.
[I once saw a man helping the women of his household to alight from a railway train. When he helped the widow he gave her such an angry push that she lost her balance regaining it only after coming in contact with the baggage on the platform, and when the party took up their baggage the two largest and heaviest bundles were given to the widow to carry. So heavy were they it was almost impossible for her to keep pace with the rest. More than these physical burdens the rasping voice that addresses her is a constant prick to her heart forever keeping fresh in her mind the fact that her very presence is loathsome to those for whom she is slaving.
And thus she must drag on her days —until death comes unless, —what is worse— she plunges into a living perdition, for beneath the dungeon of enforced widowhood smoke the tires of a relentless Gehenna, and many a poor woman, branded an outcast by this dreadful custom becomes a prey to the crafty priest or designing Brahman. Is it any wonder that the Hindu widow rushed from such a fate to the Sati fire, when that fire promised not only quick deliverance from the woes of widowhood but certain admission for her husband and herself into heaven and it was her only hope of heaven?
The word “sati” means a chaste or faithful woman and was the term applied to those wives who immolated themselves on the pyre of their deceased husbands, the burning pyre being called the sati pile. The British Government has put a stop to the Sati fires, but enforced widowhood with all its woes and dangers still exists. The people of India believe in the transmigration of souls, how a woman, down the scale as she is, lower than a cow, may hope to ascend if in this life she has been able to please her lord and husband in every respect. During the six years I was there I failed to find a woman with this hope.
The righting of this wrong, my Christian sisters, has been left to us, and let us do it ere the hands that implore our help be locked in the Ghastly grip of moral and eternal death. A Hindoo household consists of the entire family: the parents , their sons [and] their families. When a son is born in India there is great rejoicing for he will seek a wife to bear her share of life’s burdens. When a daughter is born there is lamentation for in a few short years she will be married, taken to her husband’s home, becomes a part of his household, thus being of no value to her parents, only an expense. (Mother, widow —contrast to Christ’s ideas.)
When making a visit to a heathen home it is customary to send a servant a few paces ahead to apprise the people of your coming. This the school children usually did for me. When inside and after the common salutation, “salaam,” you are told you are getting thin though you may be in the best of health and weigh more than you have for years. It is polite to tell you this. Whatever you do, don’t tell the anxious mother that her baby looks well or is pretty; it will be considered an evil omen by the mother. You will notice its little eyelids are painted black. This is done to ward off the evil eye.. After visiting a few minutes you are invited to take a pen, which consists of a pen leaf enclosing some bits of beetle nut, lime, and folded and fastened with a clove. When ready to leave you ask permission, and are escorted ten steps from the door. (Customs different in different parts of India.)
You will notice too in this barren little room a square place marked off on the floor enclosed in which is an oval shaped mud fireplace from nine to twelve inches high, open at the top and at one end. Here the daily food is prepared and cooked. Many natives of India have two meals a day, but a large per cent of them can afford only one. The food consists chiefly of bread and pulse or rice and spiced vegetables or pulse. The unground grain is purchased —wheat, barley or some other grain— and coarsely ground by the women in the little hand mill in the home. And when mixed with some water and a little salt is made in cakes by the hands (just so) and then baked in the dry [Hindi letter] or iron pan on top of the fire and browned among the coals. The rice is cooked dry, the grains when done being preserved whole. A daily portion of food is laid aside.
The people eat with their fingers and seated upon the floor. The men of the household eat first then the women, the wife having the right to the food her husband leaves on his brass platter A drink of water always finishes a native’s meal.
Hours are consumed in the cooking of the meal, little fuel being used. This necessary economy being laid upon the people by the physical conditions of the country. Cook books and china closets are terms beyond conception to the Hindoo woman’s mind. Few and simple by repeated usage are her recipes. Her vessels number six or eight. The eating, drinking vessels are of brass and cooking vessels of brass or iron according to the wealth of her people. They are a part of her dowry. The cooking, the cleaning of these vessels —and they are always beautifully polished. Should you by accident or otherwise step into that square space while the food is in process of preparation or after it is prepared it would become so defiled that it would have to be thrown away. This is due to caste.
[Crossed out]: The last word I had from India, wheat sold for 42 pound for the dollar [probably wrongly written or copied —editor], while the present price here, you know, is 64 cents per bushel. But this is wheat at famine prices, for you know at present there is a famine in India even worse, some think, than the famine of [18]97. In prosperous times more than three times this amount of wheat can be purchased for the same money.
In the tears of these women I see a wide open door of opportunity for the scientifically trained nurse These mothers know absolutely nothing with regard to the care of the body, either their own or their children. In time of sickness their treatment is barbarous. It may truthfully be said the mercies of the heathen are cruel. At the time when the mother steps close to death’s door to bring into the world a new born child she is put apart, uncared for and unfed for some days. The most helpless I ever felt when visiting these women was when they would, weeping, beg me to tell them how to appease the anger of their husbands, for there was only one son in their home, and in India a man’s dignity and respectability depends upon the number of sons he has.
They were these awful truths that confronted me that made me rejoice when at last after a year’s study I was ready to begin work, open school through which I hoped bear the message of the Saviour’s life and love to those sitting in darkness might enter many homes. [Sic.] The memory of my pupils aged from four to nineteen, who for different lengths of time sat upon the floor before me and listened to the story that seemed good to them all, is like a beckoning hand calling me back.
Those dark, yet expectant faces, those young hearts that yearned for love, the cheerlessness and superstition of those lives wherein was such a lack of purity, all increased the opportunities for usefulness. My first desire was to teach those people to love me, knowing that then they would the more readily believe what I told them, for have not we all learned our first lessons of Christ at mother’s knee? And we knew it was true because she whom we loved had told us.
You all remember the story of the Prodigal Son, how the father’s younger son gathered all together and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living, and when he had spent all, there arose a famine in that land; and he began to be in want, and sought employment, but found it not. And when he came to himself, he arose and came to his father, and his father ran and fell on his neck and kissed him and said to the servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet.
The children, after thoughtfully considering this story insisted that the good father had ordered a pugri (head garment) also to be brought, for in India, though a man may not have a garment sufficient for his body he will have some sort of a cloth for his head, for it is a disgrace for a man to have his head uncovered, but his duty to remove his shoes on entering any private house, temple, or school.
For three years there existed an opposing Mohammedan school. But opposition is sometimes healthy especially when the opposing school breaks up and the pupils re-enter to find their former classmates farther advanced than themselves. At the beginning of the opposition we had the lesson about Nicodemus. You remember Nicodemus came to Jesus by night and said unto him, “Rabbi, we know thou art a teacher come from God,” etc. The children after hearing the story once, some related it this way: Nicodemus started [out] to see Jesus in the daytime, but as he was going through the bazaar (market place) the bazaar people made him go back, so, taking a lantern he went to see Him at night. Others said he intended going that day but when he told the mulvi about it the mulvi wouldn’t let him go, so he went at night. Mulvi is the term for a Mohammedan priest.
I often said to the children, “Now don’t forget to tell those at home what you have learned at school today.” “I tell [Hindi characters] (little sister) about it every day,” said the silversmith’s boy. Ah! Well I knew that if little sister heard the story every day, father and mother heard it also. I awarded prizes for good conduct, attendance and lessons. and at the close of the school year [I] permitted 97 of the children to choose their prizes, and nearly all chose, without any hesitation, the New Testament. That these Testaments have been read in the homes I am sure, for they show usage though care.
In telling these children of the bread of life I kept before me the fact that these children were the ones whom He expected me to induce to taste this bread, and when I made it plain to them that that was my aim and object, I think it increased their interest, nor was it uncommon to discover the seed was falling on good ground. Often in their daily lives have they given me just cause to be proud. Many of them I feel are true Christians at heart, and it was real joy to witness the confession and baptism of some.
According to the Hindu religion, man is a mere machine, without self-agency or accountability. His motives, thoughts, affections, impulses, actions, are not his own. The learned priest will seriously argue that there is no such thing as merit or demerit, right or wrong. Hence the Hindus are fatalists. Caste is also a predominating feature among the Hindus. Caste naturally and eternally divides men into different orders —erects barriers, which no circumstances, education, or progress can break down.
The origin of the different orders is different, and no effort of man can change them. According to the Hindu religion and belief one class proceeded from the head of Brahma and inherit the wisdom, excellence and sanctity of the divine original. These are the priests, or Brahmans. The second class originated in the arms and breast of Brahma, and therefore possess in an eminent degree the strength of the Supreme. These are the protectors of the race: the kings and soldiers. The third class originated in the loins of the great Brahma, indicating they are to supply the world with the means of subsistence. These are the merchants, shopkeepers and the like. The fourth class proceeded from the feet of the creator and comprise the large class of laborers, servants and working men of all descriptions. These classes are again subdivided into various castes according to the work done by them, and no man can eat with any other except one of his own caste, or take a drink of water from the hand of any except a caste fellow or one of a higher caste, and the touch of a low caste man is contaminating to a high caste man.
To sit in a chair previously occupied by a man of the sweeper caste, was at one time contaminating, but since the introduction of railway trains and street cars this caste rule has of given way. Caste was one of the things to be confronted in the schoolwork. All castes were admitted into the school.
You know Jesus was of the Jews “… and the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.” But when Jesus sat in Jacob’s well, resting his weary body that day, and asked of the Samaritan woman for a drink of water, did he not then show His disapproval of caste? But I would not knowingly do anything to offend the feeling of those pupils.
The girls came to school with the boys. It is true [that] coeducation is not customary in India, but I deemed it one way to help lift up degraded womanhood. As you know woman’s position in India is inferior to that of a cow. She is her husband’s slave and is treated as such by him.
My Christian sisters, have we not cause for gratitude to Him who has brought us where we are? Two years ago this coming Feb. [there] fell asleep a Christian native girl whose life and death will be well remembered by those who knew her. ’Twas Cuyler’s eldest daughter, Ennabray. She had bound to her the hearts of the children in the school and the women in the home. And when she lay a corpse, the heathen prepared flowers for her grave, and when we conveyed her body to the graveyard, some of the heathen walked in silence with us, and halting in front of the cemetery gate, high caste Hindoos, Mohammedans, and Christians with like promptness stept forward to convey the coffin from the bier to the grave. Her life expiring in Jesus was so unlike the deaths we had been witnessing for months, so unlike the death of the woman found under the danger after a night when the rain had poured in torrents, or the poor old man that died outside the front gate because too weak from starvation to hold his own and was crushed beneath the crowd, or hundreds of others who died a like death.
An early gift is better than a later one. It will not only give the poor people food before they are too weak to work or walk, but it will give confidence in the missionary.
The text appears to end here. The following material was copied from the back of the notebook, possibly intended for inclusion earlier in the text. —Editor
And by reason of caste rules, the women of India are deprived of the pleasure of doing their own laundry work. This work is done by the Dhobi, or laundry, who must have the work for the sake of subsistence. The clothes are taken to the river, beaten on the rocks, steamed over night.
There are religious rites to be observed. When the woman takes her Tulsi plant, goes down to the bathing ghats, there bathes and washes her robe, yard by yard, it being one straight piece eight yards in length. Little sewing is done, as the styles that prevailed centuries ago still prevail. Much of clothing consists of yards of straight cloth draped artistically about the body. The jackets and coats that require sewing are made by the tailor caste, who, of course, must subsist and support their families by their caste trade.
The Hindoo woman’s life is dreary and empty. Ignorant, she has little to occupy her mind.
End of notes