THROUGH THE ARCHIVES: Indian missionary who used to hold the flag for Ghandi visits province

From the Belfast News Letter, September 24, 1937
Gandhi statue outside Manchester Cathedral. Picture: David Dixon/GeographAE Britain and IrelandGandhi statue outside Manchester Cathedral. Picture: David Dixon/GeographAE Britain and Ireland
Gandhi statue outside Manchester Cathedral. Picture: David Dixon/GeographAE Britain and Ireland

A young Hindu, Mr J M Gnaniah from Travancore, who used to lead processions in the streets of Indian cities, crying “Gandhi ki jai” (“victory to Gandhi”) and holding the flag for the Indian nationalist leader, was visiting Belfast on this day in 1937 reported the News Letter.

The News Letter noted: “Small, spare, but bursting with vitality, he gives those with whom he comes into contact a strong sense of the urgency of the times.”

Mr Gnaniah had been conducting meetings in Belfast - 5OO people were turned away from one of meeting - and he was eager to tell of the tremendous difference Christianity has made in his life and the life of the masses of India.

The change in his life he told a Belfast News Letter reporter had been electrical and sudden. An ardent Indian nationalist, he had had love of country instilled into him by his teachers. He agitated for Home Rule for 16 months, touring southern India when intense nationalist feeling swept through the country.

He said he preached to his fellow countrymen that England was exploiting them, and that Gandhi’s policy was the only way to prosperous Home Rule.

He said that at that time he had an intense dislike for “whites”.

“Then one day,” he said, “in Travancore, while on my way to address a Nationalist demonstration, I saw two white missionaries starting a meeting on the roadside. Gradually I began to be interested in the Gospel they were preaching. I was a Hindu (having left the Christian faith of my father for the sake of the Nationalist movement) and I was dressed in Hindu clothes. For the next few days I went to those missionaries, and abandoned my work as an agitator.”

He immediately toured Southern India as a missionary for Christ instead of a missionary for Gandhi.

He had seen, he said, the work done by the missionary societies in India and that, in his opinion, was the most fruitful work Britain had ever done there.

“If Christianity had been passed on as faithfully Europe today as it was in the first century, there would be a vastly different story in Spain and other countries,” he declared with conviction.

“India looks to the west for guidance and light. Unless there is a spiritual awakening, a great revival, the light that is starting to bum in the East will die because there comes no leadership.”

Drink, debt, and dirt, he said, completely chained the poor classes in India.

He said that he had seen a practical demonstration the Gospel among those people.

The depressed classes had been elevated from their degradation and poverty, and had a new vision of life that made them better citizens.

The changed life among the low-caste people had so astonished those of high caste that the latter were being converted too.

He said: “They were not Indians first, but Christians first. They became Christian Indians.”

He had come from Ceylon to Wales to get higher education as missionary to work among the educated classes of India.

He was to return to Madras shortly, where strangely enough, under the new Constitution, the Indian National Congress is in power.

“We need more and more missionaries,” said Mr Gnaniah in his robust, enthusiastic way, “and evangelical work.”

Related topics: