Towards the Sunrise II

L.Keivom

THE HARBINGER: ARTHINGTON ABORIGINES MISSION Wherever the British rule was established in India, the missionaries followed their heels to spread the gospel. They were normally sponsored by established churches, whether Catholic or Protestant. In order to avoid conflict and overlapping, the British administration would invariably map out the FIELD where a mission had to work. Other missions were to desist from entering the area already assigned to a particular mission without the expressed permission of that mission. In this fashion, large areas were mapped out to be the mission field of different Christian organisations, whether they had sheep to tend or not. But there were fringe areas inhabited by aborigines that were not covered by any mission. These included pockets inhabited by different tribal communities of Mongoloid stock extending from Arunachal Pradesh to the Arakan coast. Most of them spoke dialects of Tibeto-Burman language. The people were backward, savage and untouched by any other civilisation from outside. Their existence came to be known to the outside world mainly for their sporadic head hunting raids to the British-held territories in the plains. They were irritating sores to the big British trampling feet. God worked mysteriously in ways beyond human perception. God had a man in the person of Robert Arthington. He was a millionaire from Leeds near London, a man who would like to see the Gospel preached to all nations before the end came. And he believed that the end would unfold soon. He was burdened with the fate of the aborigines who were left out in the calculations of the pioneering missions. So he set up Arthington Aborigines Mission Society, a mobile missionary movement funded and directed by him. It was an unconventional concept to reach the unreached and to tame the untamed. The timing was right; and the spirit was willing. On September 15, 1885 Arthington wrote to the Assam Baptist Mission stating his desire to open a work among any unevangelised tribes in and around Assam or elsewhere in India. With the help of St. John Dalmas, a missionary in Bengal, Arthington commissioned 13 missionaries in 1890 for India. It was a crucial time. The British forces were invading Mizoram and Manipur. As a result, Mizoram was annexed to the British rule in 1890. The British rule was established in Manipur in July 1891 but the State was never annexed. Of the 13 missionaries commissioned by Arthington, three were assigned to works in Manipur and Mizoram. Because of the unsettling political situation, the three missionaries could not immediately enter these fields and had to wait eagerly at Silchar. As soon as the law and order situation was considered satisfactory, William Pettigrew proceeded to Manipur and J.H.Lorrain (Pu Buanga) and F.W.Savidge (Sap Upa) to the then Lushai Hills and now Mizoram in 1894. Manipur Front Pettigrew landed up at Imphal, the capital of Manipur and started work on February 6, 1894. He now thought that his calling was to work among the Hinduised Meiteis who were as orthodox and fanatic as any proselyte community in any given society. Maxwell, the British Political Agent in Manipur was convinced that the stationing of a missionary in Imphal would be resented to by the Meiteis and construed as an attempt by the British to impose ‘the government’s religion’. He therefore served Peetigrew an ultimatum to leave Imphal or stop his missionary work among the Meiteis. The door was closed. But not quite yet. Maxwel told Pettigrew that the only way for him to remain in Manipur was to work in the hills. He suggested that he might go to Ukhrul area and work among the Tangkhul Nagas. Pettigrew agreed and went to Ukhrul not only as a pioneer missionary but also as an official in charge of day to day administration of the hill areas. It was a lethal combination that he misused it occasionally to prevent other missions from entering Manipur. The policy of Arthington was to keep his missionaries at one place for three years only and then had to move on and on to new places or to return home. Before Pettigrew could hardly do any substantive work, his term was over and he was asked to leave Manipur. Since he would like to continue his works, he left Arthington Mission, joined the American Baptist Missionary Union (ABMU) in Assam and placed the entire hill areas of Manipur under his adopted Mission. Unfortunately, he later became the greatest stumbling block for the spread of the Gospel in Churachandpur area by Watkin Roberts and his men. Mizoram Front The two great Arthington missionaries, Savidge (Sap Upa) and Lorrain (Pu Buanga) arrived in Aizawl on January 11, 1894 and set up a tent at the Tea Hill later known as Macdonald Hill. Unlike other white men, they carried no guns and no authorities but the Bible. So people derisively called them ‘Sap Vakvai’or Vagabond Whitemen. They did not pay much attention to them. Realising their precarious standing, they hatched a very clever plan. During these days, the hill people were economically very independent and one of the few things they were depending on outside supply was salt, a very precious commodity. So the two missionaries approached the Superintendent to give them permission to issue salt in their name only which he gladly agreed. When the Mizos realised that they could buy salt only with the signature of the missionaries, they changed their opinion of them and said. “We thought they were powerless. We were wrong. We cannot buy even a pint of salt without their permission!”.It was a twilight hour in our history and dawn had yet to come. Savidge and Lorrain spent most of their time building a foundation to start evangelical work. They learnt Lushai language that had no alphabets and reduced it to writing. They adopted Roman script with few modifications and not Bengali as was originally introduced by the British administration as they did in the neihhbouring States like Tripura, Manipur and elsewhere. However, because of Arthington’s policy, they had to leave Mizoram after three years and before they could convert even one native. The seed they had shown sprout strongly and beautifully soon after they were replaced by two Welsh missionaries- David Evans Jones and Edwin Rowlands. The first two converts, Khuma and Khara were baptised on June 25, 1899 six months after they had left. From then on the Gospel exploded and took Mizoram by storm. (September 3, 1999, Delhi)