Tirumangalam, South India,
February 10th, 1919.Dear friends,
Nearly a year and a half has passed since we last saw you, but we want you to know that we have not forgotten you and hope that you have not forgotten us. Just to let you know that we think of you often, we decided to put it in writing, fearing that our mental telepathy connections might fail. Now that the war is over you ought to get our letters surely. In some ways we have not felt the war as much as you have in America, but when no mail comes for 2 months and when a little one-horse paper that runs down the Americans at every turn, is our only source of news, we realize that something is going on in the world, but feel as if we were put off in a corner by ourselves.
Perhaps some of you have not heard since we left America, in which case either we or the German submarines have been to blame, or perhaps you have changed your addresses without letting us know. I just received 3 letters back from America unopened. In case you haven't heard from us, I'll just give you a little "Who I am and why I came here" sketch such as Freshmen have to give for the benefit of the faculty when they enter college. We stepped unto "India's coral strand" for the first time a year ago last December and arrived in Madura, a big typically native city, unannounced. Mr. White, in a wild search to find a telephone, stumbled on to the wife of a Y.M.C.A. secretary and one of our Mission doctors, Dr. Parker. They informed us that there was no such thing as a telephone anywhere near Madura and then took us to the Mission. For 2 months we boarded with Rev. and Mrs. Zumbro, the principal of the American College and then were sent off to shift for ourselves and delve more deeply into the mysteries of the Tamil language at Tirumangalam. We are only 12 miles from Madura, but the only white people in the vicinity. Consequently, all our doings are watched with the greatest interest and are a matter of town gossip. If we take a walk, or play tennis, some one informs us a few days later that he heard about it! Some of the folk have never seen white people before and a great many have never seen a white "Amaal" as they call me. One day we rode in a bullock-cart to a nearby village with 4 cooly women trotting after us half of the way, that they might look their fill at this strange white "Amaal." Another day I asked some little girls what color my hair was. You can imagine that I was astonished when they answered "white!" And they could not make out what color my eyes were.
We live right in the center of the village with the little mud-thatched huts of the Mohammedans on 2 sides of our compound, a street in front of us, and an open field used as a public latrine on the other side. It is not an ideal spot for a compound, but our compound itself is ideal when compared with the surroundings. It is like an oasis in the desert, for we have quite a few trees, shrubs, etc. Besides the bungalow in which we live there is a little church built quite after the style of the old New England churches, except there are no pews inside: everyone sits on the floor. Then there is a small "Hindu Girls' School" near the front gate, the Pastor's and teachers' houses, and last but not least our girls' and boys' Boarding Schools. I know you would get sick of hearing missionaries talk about "the bright-faced children," but I wish you could see our boys and girls; then you would understand how we love them. Some of them are too cute for words! And if any of you have any spare money, after paying for Red Cross, Liberty Bonds, Y.M.C.A. donations, etc., I do not know any better way to invest it than in the support of one of these boys or girls in school. They are my special province. When I pass my first Tamil examination, I hope to have full charge of the schools. Mr. White passed his examination with "distinction" in November, but I had been in bed for two months and very weak for some time longer, so I did not try to take it. I would have gotten "ex-tinction" if I had! Now I am grinding away in hopes to pass in June. To go back to the Boarding Schools; they consist of two small buildings which are used as school rooms in the day and bed rooms at night. The children pay 12 annas a month, or about 24 cents for board and tuition. Before the war this covered their clothing, too, but now we are having a famine time. The monsoon rains failed last summer and the price of rice is now more than twice, and in some places, three times, what it was last year. The poor people are suffering a great deal. Cloth, too, has gone up, as it has at home. I am the family doctor and music teacher for these children, and I fully enjoy every minute I am with them. I will tell you more about that work another time, but now I must stop and let Mr. White [her husband] talk a little.
Sincerely yours,
Ruth Parker White.[A handwritten inscription was added to this typewritten letter at this point:]
And I am so thankful for my Physiology course!
Dear friends,
I am undertaking to tell you about the country, the people, and mission work as they appear to me. Whew! That will be "a job and a half." Then I am to be an encyclopedia, geography-book and moving-picture man combined? All right, I will try. Mission reports, pamphlets and ordinary photos usually don't give one the correct impressions one could not help getting if one were here. But I shall try to give them and may partly succeed if you use your imagination hard - just stop short of cracking it, you know!
What is South India like? Well, Take a big chunk of Utah State put some lovely blue mountains on its western border near the sea; distribute a few other smaller rocky hills toward the center; put lots of Mississippi-water-colored reservoirs, or tanks, here and there; wherever you can, put vivid green rice-fields, and plant a lot of mop-like palmyra trees in the landscape, or here and there a grove of beautiful cocoanut trees; line every road with the picturesque banyan, or date, trees; and by every reservoir put at least one little village, and you will get a fair picture of South India. Hot? Well, if you call it hot where the temperature never goes below 66F.° in the day on the plains, and may go up as high as 150 in the sun, then India is a torrid proposition. We seldom need a blanket here on the plains when we go to bed at night. There is not any rain here at all except during the months of September, October, or November, and even that has been known to fail. The rest of the year, what land that is not irrigated by tanks and canals is baked into a hard clayey cake. They easily make bricks here in the sun's heat.
When you understand the climate, you have begun to understand the people, and how they live. Little squatty mud-huts. And as for complexions, I don't [know] how much the sun had to do with making their skins black, but I do know I'd like to wear as few clothes as they do (This shows I, too, am becoming lazy already!) The percentages of complete dress suits worn run as follows: Women 40 per cent, Men 20 to 25, little boys 5, babies 0!! When you see these people, you get a vivid comprehension of a Biblical phrase like "He girt up his loins." The Lord certainly made a lot of these Tamilians, too! THere are schools in the larger villages and towns which Government aids financially, and the higher classes are tolerably well educated (at least are literate); but the mass of the people can neither read nor write, nor do many of them greatly care much about it. The privileged few earn their living by work in Municipal or Government employ, the less privileged teach, but the vast majority get a livelihood by tilling "wet" or "dry" cultivation fields, own street bazaars, weave cloth, or earn a daily pittance by carrying burdens meant for horses or Ford trucks.
Who are the "privileged" folk? The Brahmans, of course, and after them one or two of the wealthier castes, like the Nadars, Chettiyars and Reddiyars - "they hold up Adam's profession!" Caste is the curse of India and no mistake. It keeps the "toney" people with their noses in the air and the lowest people with their noses struck to grindstone of degradation. It holds the former sublimely unconscious of their narrowness and the other confirmed in their dense ignorance and superstition. What would you say a home if you saw common people who could taste the sand of the street to see if there was any salt in it? Or if you saw a man give his elephant-skinned buffalo a bath in a small muddy pond, and then wash himself and scrub his teeth in the same water? What would you feel like if your neighbour's wife was ill with the contagious deadly cholera, and every relative of the woman and every Tom-Dick-and-Harry kept trotting in and out of that house and all over the town every day? You would think it was time a little public education and hygiene, and a little common-sense, were injected, would you not? But the Brahmans, the acknowledged "highbrows" of India, are not particularly concerned about this state of things. That is why we do not want to see Home Rule coming in India yet: there is not enough education, and things would play too much into the Brahmans' hands, who are shrewd and unscrupulous enough to use advantages for their own ends and have not the remotest conception of a Social Christianity. Sin, too, is rampant here. You can find more people who can lie with a straight face than you would believe possible. I can hardly believe it yet. An Indian Christian actually made the following statement to me. Said he: "Of the Hindu people, 2 per cent of the Brahmans can perhaps be trusted, of other and lower caste people about 10 per cent, and Christians about 60 per cent." I have not time to give examples of the immorality which is so wide-spread in India. You can read about this in special books. Suffice it to say that it does exist, and is a great curse to the country. Their native literature, religious and secular, is full of it. Even the carvings on the temple gates and on images are full of it. A lot of it is too disgusting and obscene to talk about even, let alone describe it! Yes, this is the India of the Hindu Religion. A lot of it reads mighty well in the fine flowery language of books on Hindu philosophy and theosophy and all the other "Ologies"; but I tell you all that fine stuff has only elevated a very few individuals, it has not touched the great mass of the people, who are only just awakening to civilizing and Christianizing influences after their long sleep in ignorance, superstition, selfishness and self-complacency. None of the so-called high castes of India has begun to live up to the words of Him who proclaimed so grandly: "I came that they might have life, and might have it more abundantly."
In the face of all this do you ask, Is Christian Missions needed in South India? Keith-Falconer's ringing words apply to the situations here as elsewhere. "While vast continents are shrouded in almost utter darkness, and hundreds of millions suffer the horrors of heathenism * * * * the burden of proof rests on you to show that the circumstances in which God has placed you were meant by God to keep you out of the foreign field."
I am not going to quote you a lot of statistics. For that I refer you to Annual Reports of Mission work, which any mission board can send or give you. But I will say here that, in this part of India, the American Madura Mission is "on the job." Village, boarding, normal and high schools and an A No. 1 college or two, are steadily leavening the masses, even though these influences are filtering, as it were, from the top strata of society downwards and proceeding only very gradually. Yet - oh! the thousand[s] of small villages and the tens of thousands people as yet unreached! Surely good business, as well as Christian zeal, urges the Mission to try to take those problems. But what to do? and how to do it? It is a problem which both the Indian Church and the Christians of other lands must solve by working together.
Mrs. White and I have just returned from a few days inspection of this outreaching work, as carried on under the supervision of Dr. and Mrs. Jeffery, two of our veterans in district mission work. I have not time or space to accurately describe the workings of the present system of carrying on the task of evangelization. I wish I could, but will reserve that for a later letter.
It is a system by which the native Church, under the guidance and partial supervision of the missionary, appropriates, to meet the expense of such evangelical work, the money which itself raises, together with money coming in the shape of foreign donations. The big thing is to open up new centers of work, in village after village, and that is where it costs money. There are rich Hindus, but they have to become Christians before you can collect much ready cash from them. Of course, there are a few scattering exceptions, but such is the state of things in that respect. The majority of Christians, however, are very very poor. The ordinary man earns from 6 to 10 annas a day (i.e., from 12 to 15 cents), most of which has to go to buy rice to feed himself and his hungry family. You can therefore easily imagine how large a sum their total monthly contributions, as a congregation, would amount to. I listened to some catechists' reports the other day, and the monthly congregation-contribution in each case varied from 10 cents to half a dollar (approximately)! You cannot support many pastors or catechists, for new congregations, at that rate! And it is here that the great need comes in: we want to establish a new school or church, in a new village, and, somehow or other, we cannot place the right men because there is not money to pay them with. We want to get together a band of evangelists, with the kind of screechy fife-and-kettle-drum combination of music so dear to the Indian soul, and we either have to dig down into our own pockets to pay them, or go without the scheme. If any of you folks would like to know a mighty good way to help, you could send a sum of money (of any size except the microscopic!) to me by way of the Board Secretaries in Boston, and it could be used to tremendous advantage in just this work of opening up new fields. I would like to handle it myself[.]
Well, I nearly forgot to tell you about Dr. Jeffery's work at Aruppukottai! Besides the fine regular work of that district, he is trying to build up a work among a criminal class of Hindus, known as Kuravars. These folk, in the past, have been robbers by avocation, rather than by real vocation: they enjoyed stealing as a kind of sport, as well as a source of income! Now as a result of the efforts of the catechist who was teaching them about Christianity, as well as educating them, the British Government has had its attention brought to bear on them, and plans are being made to buy some land, locate the robber-folk on it in well laid-out houses, and to dig wells to furnish them with water for drinking and for cultivation of fields and gardens. These people are to furnish most of the labor and pay back by installments such money as the Government may consent to advance them for these purposes. Dr. Jeffery visited that village, with me, the other day, and the people promised to live up to their end of the plan. I certainly hope the plan matures. Already the Kuravars are sending some of their children to the Christian boarding school at Aruppukottai.
Of course, when these and other Indian people become Christians, it does not mean that they are well on toward to the condition of being perfect - far from it!! For that matter, look at the Germans, a supposedly christianized people. No one would call such a brutal nation a Christian nation. Yet, surely, even though a little learning be sometimes a dangerous thing, a little learning is better than no learning at all; it is better to know something about Christ than to know nothing at all; it is better to be a little Christian in one's living than not be a Christian at all. And so, I believe, there is more joy in heaven over one man, or one caste, that is, started in the right way, than over the millions of people who are left alone to die because their religion is "good enough for them!"
This is the work we have found in India, and this is the work we long to do well in India, and this is the work for the sake of which we have left home and native land and for which we would, if necessary, come here all over again. Do not think of us as unhappy here ever. I should love to live in the land of the Green and Adirondack Mts., but only for the land's sake, not the WORK. But don't forget to write us, for we want to know you more and more.
Yours in His service,
Emmons E. White.