THE PERSECUTOR AND HIS END
Under the shade of a tree at one end of the village bazaar of Kutchipudy, a number of Sudras were sitting in conversation more animated than usual.
“They will become like Doras, and will refuse to listen to our orders,” said one of the Sudras.
“They now have a school as large as ours. After they learn to read, how will they do our work?” said another.
“I had a bullock,” said a third, “which was sick several weeks. It died, and I called the Madigas. They took it away outside the village, secured the hide and buried the rest. When I bargained with them for the sandals which they must give in turn, they refused to give as much as formerly. I told them I gave them the whole bullock; why did they bury the meat? ‘Such filth,’ they said, ‘shall not come into our village any more.’ What shall we do with them? They are undoing the customs of our fathers.”
The Munsiff of the village, Ballavanti Durgiah Naidu, had thus far been silent. Now he took up the turban that lay by his side, put it on, and rose up as if to go. “I will teach them,” he said. “Ten more have now gone to Ongole to be baptized. When they return I shall force them all to become as heretofore.”
Durgiah Naidu was a man of iron will, of relentless harshness, a man who carried to the bitter end what he had once begun. Several of the Sudras looked at him as he rose. They meant no ill. They and their fathers before them had considered themselves in a sense the protectors as well as the employers of the Madigas.
One said, in a drawling tone of voice: “They are not disrespectful. Even when they send word they cannot come to work on Sunday, they beg, in polite words, to be allowed to do the work the next day.”
Another, who had not noticed the hard look in Durgiah Naidu’s face, said: “But where will it end? Soon we shall have to look for some one else to do our work.”
After a few days the Munsiff, Durgiah Naidu called ten of the chief men in the Madiga hamlet who had become Christians. He said to them: “You have gone to Ongole and have been immersed into the water in the name of Jesus Christ. You are thereby unclean. Unless you here again immerse yourselves in the tank, and wash off that uncleanness, we shall not allow you to enter the village.” The tank lay between the Sudra village and the Madiga hamlet, a short distance away from each. The village Karnam had come. The Yettis were there to carry out any orders. Large numbers of Sudras had come to see what would happen, for they knew that Durgiah Naidu intended to take extreme measures. The friends and relatives of the ten Christian men came running from the Madiga hamlet, full of misgivings.
The Christians, though in fear and trembling, refused to do as the Munsiff had ordered. Their preacher stood by and encouraged them; more than this he could not do. The crowd had moved toward the tank, and Durgiah Naidu said, " Go in there and dip yourselves under water, that I may know that the Ongole uncleanness is gone." The men did not move an inch. The Munsiff then ordered the Yettis to put their long sticks on the necks of the Christians and push them under the water. They cried and remonstrated, but the Munsiff shouted: " Dip them under! The uncleanness must go." Most of the men were pushed forward with so much force that they fell into the water. Cruelty was added to the indignities heaped upon them.
This was not enough for the Munsiff. His next step was to force the Christians to resume their former worship. On the bank of the tank there was a stone idol of the goddess Poleramah. With much shouting and confusion a buffalo and a goat were brought and placed before the idol; the Yettis struck the blow, and the warm blood flowed freely over the idol, much to the delight, it was thought, of the goddess, whose thirst for blood is never quenched. The Christians were forced to bow before the idol. Some of the blood was taken from it and their foreheads marked with it.
Image: POLERAMAH AND HER BROTHER.
The horrors of the occasion lasted all night. Specially trained singers had been engaged to relate vile stories about the goddess Poleramah, accompanying themselves by their instruments. Intoxicated with sarai, people danced round the idol. The Christians too were ordered to dance, and again they submitted ; their persecutors were in a frenzy of excitement, and resistance would have meant death. A prospective terror was added to the persecutions of the hour when the Munsiff threatened to drag them before the Tahsildar and accuse them of theft. They knew how difficult and almost impossible it would be for them to prove their innocence.
The Sudras now thought that Christianity was literally wiped out of the Madiga hamlet. They reasoned that if one of themselves lost caste in any way, all transgressions could be made null and void if the priest, after performing various ceremonies, burnt the tongue with a golden wire. To apply the proceedings of the caste people to those who were outcasts was out of the question. But the measures which had been taken were certainly very rigid, and thus the subject was dismissed for a time. The Christians were in constant fear, and avoided everything that could bring their religious belief into unnecessary prominence. They had told the Ongole Missionary all about the brutal treatment which they had received. He knew how unequal would be the conflict should they try to show resistance, and, therefore, advised them to keep quiet, pray much, and to trust in God, who would yet help them.
Several months had passed, when the news was spread abroad that the Missionary was coming on tour. It was well known that, wherever he camped, he asked for the village Munsiff and the Karnam. He was always polite to them, and asked them to remain and listen to what he told the crowds who came to the tent about Jesus Christ and the great salvation He had brought to men. And generally the village officials showed him every courtesy in return. But there had been occasions when the Missionary found it necessary to emphasize to village authorities that the welfare of these despised Madigas was of importance to him.
Even before the tent arrived in the grove near Kutchipudy the whole village knew what happened in a neighbouring village, where the Dora had his camp. The Brahmins had come to him en masse to demand redress, because some Christians, coming from a distance, had passed through their bazaar on their way to the camp. It was an old time custom for the Madiga to step far off to one side whenever a Brahmin passed, for even the wind that had swept over the Madiga was considered polluting to the Brahmin. The Christians were fast outgrowing this aspect of their former abject condition. When the Brahmins that day had called to them to leave the road, and had stood in their way to prevent their advance, it had happened that a Christian woman, by accident, had touched a Brahmin. Much indignation, therefore, was felt in the little Brahmin community. No satisfaction, however, was to be gained from the call on the Missionary. He told them that the bazaar was a public thoroughfare, and was for all; and that if they did not want to be touched, they must step to one side. This, indeed, meant an upheaval of the social relations of the past! It was equivalent to saying that a Brahmin should step aside to let a Madiga pass!
There was great excitement, therefore, in Kutchipudy when the Missionary arrived. He gave the morning to the Christians, and for the afternoon invited the Munsiff, Durgiah Naidu, to his tent for an interview. Few people remained in their houses that afternoon; hundreds gathered about the tent. The Missionary received Durgiah Naidu politely, offered him a chair in his tent, and talked and remonstrated with him at length. Those who were outside, looking into the wide-open tent doors, were disappointed, for there was no scene. The preacher of Kutchipudy, and others of the preachers who accompanied the Missionary on his tour, sat with him in the tent.
It seems the Missionary tried to show to the Munsiff that he was guilty of a usurpation of power, and that he was doing contrary to the spirit of the English Government. The Dora talked in this wise: “The Queen is our mother, and you are eating her pay. You ought, therefore, to treat all her subjects alike; you have no right under English law to persecute these Christians. Many letters have come to me full of the troubles you have heaped upon them. You are doing wrong, and God sees your doings. As a Christian, and as one who knows that you are doing contrary to the wishes of the rulers of this country, I ask you to stop.” It was said among those present that Durgiah Naidu, who was a large, portly man, for he was rich and lived well, went into the tent breathing somewhat excitedly, wondering what the Missionary, who had travelled so far to look after his doings, would say to him. When he saw that he was to be merely admonished, he, in the words of the spectators, “breathed comfortably like a frog.” He agreed, finally, that he would cease from persecuting the Christians and would treat them kindly.
Durgiah Naidu had been under the impression that the Missionary would leave that night, that all would be as heretofore, and since he and others thought that he had forced the Kutchipudy Christians back into heathenism, it certainly seemed as if he had thus far proved the stronger in the race. Great was his rage when he heard that in the evening, after he had left the Missionary’s tent, thirty had asked for baptism, that the Dora had put them off, telling them that they needed much faith to stand firmly in this place, but that they had insisted that they could bear whatever might come.
In the morning, long before sunrise, the Munsiff took the Yettis and a few of his own servants, and walked past the tank in the direction of the Madiga hamlet. He stood at a distance; the Yettis brought to him the leading men among those who had applied for baptism. In an angry tone he said: “The Dora was going last night. You kept him here. Now go away, or I shall kill you.” They saw the look of fierce determination in his face; they trembled before it, and went away across the fields, where his wrath could not reach them.
Durgiah Naidu determined to remain, and, by his presence, to control the situation. He stood on the high bank of the tank, covered with trees, between the Madiga hamlet and the Missionary’s tent. Ten of the prominent Sudras, with long sticks in their hands, gathered around him. The sun was just rising when the Missionary came toward the tank. He had heard that some of the Madigas had fled, and had seen how Durgiah Naidu stood and watched every one who approached his tent.
Now came the encounter which all had expected the previous day. Two men, endowed with strength far above the average, met, one strong in defending the rights of men who, at the hands of Christian teachers, were taking the first step out of a crushing serfdom; the other strong in holding them with the iron grip of conservatism where their ancestors had been held. The Christians gathered around their Dora; his two faithful servants, his lascars and bandy men, too, came. A crowd of Sudras came to see what the issue would be.
Many a time since then has the preacher of Kutchipudy been asked to tell what the Dora said to Durgiah Naidu on that morning. There were many who could prompt him should he forget. These are the words of the Missionary as they to-day live in the memory of the people: “If you thought that I was sleeping last night you were mistaken. After I had slept a few minutes, I jumped in my sleep, and woke up thinking about you. I talked with you yesterday kindly; you this morning violate your promise. Don’t you know that the English Government punishes such evil deeds as yours? You are like the frog that wanted to be as large as the ox, and breathed so full of air that it burst. You may yet lose your position.”
With a careless insolence the Munsiff said, “If I lose it, what is that to me?”
Then the Dora’s wrath knew no bounds. His eyes flashed with fire. “But you will care when you find yourself in prison, and, as a convict, work on the roads, carrying baskets of gravel on your head. Even if the English Government do not make you as if you had never been, God will wipe you out unless you cease from evil-doing. As the hawk darts upon the chicks, so you destroy these Christians. I am a Padre, and have only one tongue, not a double tongue like the snakes, and I tell you the truth, that God is not dead, and that He will reckon with you before many months unless you now stop.”
Fear entered the hearts of the Sudras. They moved away from Durgiah Naidu and said: “What use is it to worry these Christians? Why don’t you let them alone?” They followed at a distance when the Missionary went to the well in the Madiga village, into which, he had heard, the Munsiff had ordered thuma trees to be thrown—trees that have so strong an odour that they make water almost undrinkable. He requested Durgiah Naidu to let his Yettis remove them, and stood by until the logs of ill-smelling wood had been taken out and thrown at a distance. Then he went to the tank, to the idol Poleramah, and had the whole story of that disgraceful scene repeated to him. He was very sad. He told the Christians to endure for a season, and let all that region witness the faith that was in them. In due time, he assured them, God would either make Durgiah Naidu a changed man, or that He would in some way overrule events, so that deliverance and freedom would be theirs. That day he stayed; but toward evening he mounted his horse and rode to his next camp at Kodalur. His tent followed, and next day the grove where the Missionary had camped was deserted.
The Madigas are not without courage. They will dare and do, showing that long generations past valiant blood flowed in their veins. Those candidates for baptism who had fled before Durgiah Naidu one day determined the next to walk the fifteen miles to Kodalur and receive the ordiance there. There were eighteen of them. When the Missionary saw them he hesitated; but he could not refuse them, for they said they were prepared to stand firmly whatever might befall them.
Durgiah Naidu had seen it clearly demonstrated that the Christian religion cannot be washed off with tank water, and that the worship of Poleramah cannot be forced upon unwilling men with the reeking blood of buffaloes and goats. He did not try this experiment again. Instead, he determined that, since the Christians had loosened the old relation that existed between Sudra and Madiga, they should be shown that under the new regime the Sudras had no use for them. In consequence they were shut off from contact with the Sudra part of the village. If they tried to walk the usual roads there were Yettis there to prevent them; if they tried to enter the bazaar of the village they were ordered away; some who resisted were cruelly beaten. No one employed them; they had nothing to eat.
Some of the Sudras remonstrated with Durgiah Naidu, but he declared with an oath, “Though it cost me a cartload of rupees I shall not rest until there is not a Christian left in Kutchipudy.”
After an absence of just two months the Missionary reached his home at Ongole. He had made one of the long tours that characterized those early times. Territory now occupied by ten mission stations he in those days regarded as his field. He had visited ninety-eight villages where there were Christians. In twenty-seven different places he had pitched his camp. He had baptized 1,067 believers. The item of interest most discussed by the hundreds who came and went in the mission compound, he found, was the latest development of the Kutchipudy persecution.
At the monthly meeting held soon after there was a general expression of desire to hear particulars of the persecution. On Sunday morning the chapel was crowded with its audience of nearly one thousand people. Before them all the preacher and ten of the leading Christians of Kutchipudy stood to tell their story. It was told with tears, for their hearts were very heavy. It seemed as if they could not endure more. Their children were crying for want of food, and many among them had begun to eat leaves, and were dreading the starvation that stared them in the face.
Several of the older preachers, who knew by experience that the hand of God moves with mighty power, and that the prayer of faith does not pass unheeded, prayed with an earnestness that seemed to look for something unforeseen. All felt that they had a part in this, for if the Munsiff of Kutchipudy could thus drive a village of Christians to the verge of starvation, would not the Sudras everywhere harden their hearts against the Christians, and plunge them into similar distress? The collection was taken; twenty-seven rupees was the amount sent to the sufferers, one rupee for each family. But what could they do with money when the bazaars were closed to them?
The preachers of that region asked that some one be appointed to come to the villages where there were Christians and collect contributions of grain. The choice fell upon one of their number, who soon arrived at Kutchipudy with two cartloads of grain which had been given him, a measure here and a measure there. A new principle was this, the application of which was displayed before the wondering eyes of thousands. The despised Madigas were standing by each other in brotherly love!
It was on the 30th of April that the Yettis of Kutchipudy raised the funeral-pyre for the Munsiff, Ballavanti Durgiah Naidu, applied the torch, and stood at a distance while the fire consumed his mortal remains. The persecutor was dead. A letter was sent to Ongole. The Missionary felt as if in the presence of Almighty God, for had he not told Durgiah Naidu that if he did not cease God would cut him off? The message was passed from village to village. Wherever Yettis went with loads to deliver they told of the death of Durgiah Naidu.
Many now recalled the interview between the Missionary and Durgiah Naidu at sunrise, January 30th. Did he not say, " Within three months God will kill you unless you cease from persecuting these Christians?’ On the very day, three months later, he died. Others said they saw the Missionary in his fierce wrath lay his hand on Durgiah Naidu’s shoulder, as he warned him of the judgment of the Almighty. In that very place, it was said, the carbuncle or cancer, which defied the skill of native physicians, had appeared, had caused excruciating pain, silently borne, for none should know that the power that had vowed destruction to the Christians was being laid low. And thus death had brought the end. Fear fell upon all; and those who had hatred in their hearts found that their hands trembled when they strove to do harm to the Christians. But thousands who bore the name of Christ, though hushed in awe, took courage, for they saw that their God is not one who hath ears and hears not, eyes, yet seeth not, but that He is a God who fights for those who trust in Him.
There was peace now in the Madiga hamlet of Kutchipudy. The Sudras had drawn away from Durgiah Naidu toward the end, and had said: “You deserve it all. Why did you raise your hand against the Christians?” They now called the Christians to work, and treated them with consideration. But gloom settled over the house of Durgiah Naidu. It was commonly said that the curse of the Missionary rested upon it. The widow went to Kottapakonda to worship Kottapaswami, in the hope that the curse would be removed from her household. She came home and fell sick with cholera. She insisted that the preacher should be called to give her medicine, hoping that thus the power of the curse might be lessened. She died. The two sons grew up, and became heads of families. But there were deaths in the family, and deaths among the cattle, and people said, “It is the curse of the Padre Dora.”
Fifteen years had passed, when one day the Missionary again camped in the grove opposite the Christian hamlet, in sight of the tank. The sons of Durgiah Naidu feared to go near. They remembered their father’s guilt and his end. The preacher told them not to fear, for were they not kind to the Christians? But they said, “We, too, may die.”
Their dead mother’s elder brother said: “Shall this go on year after year? The Missionary must remove the curse.” He went to one of the preachers, who had come with the camp, and asked him to request the Padre to come to the house of Durgiah Naidu and pray there, for then the curse would no longer hover over the family. The preacher went into the tent with his message. The Missionary asked, “Are they now kind to the Christians?” The preacher assured him that they were. “Give order to have my horse saddled.”
The uncle of Durgiah Naidu’s sons hastened home and gathered the whole family into the house. They placed a chair for the Missionary, and on the table they put a large plate of sugar and fruit to offer to him. He came with two of his preachers. They were led into the house by the men of the family with every mark of courtesy and respect. The women stood on one side holding their children.
He asked, “Is evil-doing gone out from here?” They said, “All is gone.” “Then why do you not believe in the true God?” Several answered him that they would believe.
But now the uncle, who was in one sense head of the family, spoke. “We desire,” he said, using very courteous language, “to enjoy the blessing of your God upon our household. Your God hears your prayer, and we believe that if you, here in this spot, ask Him to look upon us with favour that we shall once more be a happy family.”
This family group knew nothing of Old Testament dispensation, yet trembled before that law of Jehovah that visits the sins of fathers upon their children. The Missionary and his two preachers, who had come to ask for blessings where he, who had died in iniquity, had cursed the believers of Jehovah, represented the New Testament with its injunctions to “bless them that persecute you.” The Missionary asked for peace upon this household. The gloom that had hung over it like a threatening cloud was dispelled. He motioned to his preachers to accept the gift of sugar and fruit, and amid the grateful salaams of all mounted his horse and rode back to his camp.
The idol of Poleramah no longer stands on the bank of the tank at Kutchipudy. It was packed upon one of the Missionary’s carts, among the tents, rolled up in huge bundles, and was taken to Ongole, where it stands in the mission compound as a relic of the past. It now lies in the Missionary’s compound, a relic of as a relic of the past.