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Since the meeting of the Parliament of Religions in Chicago two or three members of that body have devoted themselves to lecturing in various parts of the United States against the missionary work in India. One of them -Vivekananda-has been speaking in Detroit, and, as a result of his lectures, an interesting correspondence has appeared in the "Free Press' of that city. The Hindu monk has met an able and courteous antagonist in the Christian missionary Robert A. Hume. We have seldom read anything more courteous and more utterly conclusive than the letters of Mr. Hame. The Hindu monk unqualifiedly denounced the missionaries; he had not one good thing to say about them. Mr. Hume begins his letter, "My Fellow Countryman from India." He is entitled to begin it in that way because he was himself born in India and has spent the greater part of his life there. [The article goes on to summarize Hume's letter and then continues:]_x000d_
The reply of the monk is evasive, and closes with the simple assertion that it is not possible for foreigners to know the people of India, that it is not possible for Mr. Hume, even though he was born in that country. . . . The simple fact, to say the least, is that Vivekananda finds it quite as difficult to understand and appreciate the Christians as he imagines they find it difficult to understand his people.
Actually, as Swamiji said in the course of a letter, he suspected that Mr. Hume was trying to drag him into a public debate, into which he refused to enter. He had no wish to engage in a controversy with men whose outlook was narrow and superficial, for such debate could be nothing but a waste of time and energy.
He again expressed his feeling on this subject when, at a later date, he wrote to Mrs. Hale: "I do not care the least for the gambols these men play, seeing as I do through and through the insincerity, the hypocrisy and love of self and name that is the only motive power in these men."Swamiji's stand in this matter was fully justified, for later the Reverend Mr. Hume was to show himself for what he was.
Sometime in August of 1894 Swamiji wrote to Dharmapala: "A retired missionary in this country wrote me a letter addressing me as `Fellow countryman' and tried to create a sensation by quickly printing my brief reply. But you know what the people here think of these gentlemen. This very missionary went to some of my friends in secret and tried to persuade them not to help me in any way. He received only pure contempt from them. I am surprised at this man's behavior. He is a minister of religion, yet what a hypocrite he is! Nor was the Reverend Mr. Hume satisfied with his attempts to slander Swamiji in America; he later extended his activities to India.
On Sep¬tember 8, 1895, Swamiji was to write to Alasinga: "If the missionaries tell you that I have ever broken the two great vows of the Sannyasin chastity and poverty tell them that they are big liars. Please write to the missionary Hume asking him categorically to write you what misdemeanours he saw in me, or give you the names of his informants, and whether the information was first hand or not; that will settle this question and expose the whole thing. There can be little doubt that this is the same Hume with whom we are concerned and with whom Swamiji refused to engage in debate.
Even had Swamiji wanted to give a point by point reply to Hume, he could only have repeated what he had already said many times to American audiences.
Moreover Hume's points, though couched in weighty language, were without substance. His central theme (points 5, 6, and 7 of his first letter) was that Hindu religion and culture were all wrong for the Hindus and that conversion to Christianity was their only salvation. Holding this view, it was inevitable that he would express surprise and regret that Swamiji had found nothing right about Christian missionaries (point 1) and that he had disparaged Christian converts (point 2).
But Swamiji was convinced that one could not change the indigenous religion and culture of a people without destroying the people themselves. His view was that the missionaries could justify their presence in India only by being of real service to the Indian people and not by simply preaching Christianity to them. In order to render real service, an understanding of the religion and culture of the people was essential. Such understanding, however, was impossible without a sympathetic and respectful approach to Hinduism, which the Christian missionaries refused to make, and therefore Swamiji could not but condemn them.
Further, the mission¬aries alienated the loyalty of the converts to their country and their heritage, directing it toward those who financed mis¬sionary projects and also toward the religious heads of the Christian churches, all of whom were foreign. The problem of national loyalty is one of the unfortunate of shoots of Christian missionary activity and one of which Swamiji was undoubtedly aware. There is, moreover, no denying the fact that missionary activity in Oriental countries has gone hand in hand with the conquest of those countries by Western powers. Just as such conquests constitute political and economic colonialism, so Christian conversion has been looked upon as a sort of religious colonialism.
In regard to point 3, Swamiji, as quoted by the Detroit Tribune, had said, "Perhaps the atheism and scepticism at home is pushing the missionaries out all over the world." This was a matter of opinion and not one for debate. There may have been many reasons, very different from the ostensible one, why missionaries went out to foreign lands, and the motives behind missionary activity were open to various interpretations. Swamiji's could have been a very good one.
But that missionaries had spread false and vilifying stories about India (point 4) was a fact. It was one that Swamiji had vouched for many times, and one which he now could only have repeated. Hume's denial of the falsity of these stories was as absurd as his supporting contention that Swamiji did not know India.
Hume's further contention that the Christian missionaries were the only foreigners who had gone to India to "serve" the Indians (point 8) was neither here nor there. Their uniqueness did not necessarily make them either helpful or welcome.
In defense of missionary activity in India, Hume quoted from a report of the director of public instruction, who was, I dare say, an Englishman and a Christian. The director found that the students among Christian converts had a higher degree of English education than the students from Hindu communities. Swamiji was well aware that Christian missionaries provided schools and colleges in India and that, from a practical point of view, such institutions were helpful. But the value of education cannot be judged from a practical standpoint alone. A foreign system of education which is superimposed upon any country is bound to be destructive of that country's own traditions, and the superimposition of English education in particular upon India was in this respect certainly not to her best interests. It was not designed to make its students true upholders of Indian culture and religion; on the contrary it implanted alien ideas in their minds and had the effect of turning them into hybrid products belonging neither to India nor to any other country.
From Swamiji's point of view, the schools and colleges of the missionaries only made more complete the process of denationalization begun by Christian conversion.
He could hardly, therefore, find them objects of his categorical praise. Indeed, shortly before his death, he expressed the opinion that the introduction of English education in India had set back her progress by at least fifty years.
In addition, Hume quoted from the Hindu, whose Hindu editor, a Mr. G. S. Iyer, had written appreciatively of the mis¬sionaries and their work. It should be mentioned, however, that while Mr. Iyer may have been a good editor, it does not follow that he was a good Hindu imbued with and loyal to the ideas and ideals that had sustained his country for millenniums. He and many other Hindus of his time (and of the present time also) were infatuated by Western culture to the neglect and disparagement of their own. The fact is that despite the name of his journal, Mr. Iyer was an opponent of orthodox Hinduism.
In an article published in the Vedanta Kesari of January and February 1923, which tells of Swamiji's visit to Madras in 1897, Professor K. Sundararama Iyer writes: "Mr. G. Subrahmanya Aiyer [Iyer] had once been a very orthodox Hindu. . . . He changed to the opposite extreme of a social revolutionary."
To justify the work of the Christian missionaries, Hume also quoted, of all people, the chauvinistic Kipling. Indeed Mr. Hume's authorities were in themselves enough to disqualify his letter as worthy of serious consideration and reply.
As for his second letter, Hume's statement that few Hindus knew Sanskrit was absurd. India abounded in Sanskrit scholars. Moreover, the large majority of those Hindus who did not know Sanskrit were nonetheless imbued with the age old philosophy and religion of their country. It was not necessary for the Hindus to be Sanskrit scholars in order to comprehend their own religion, whereas it was essential for the Christian missionaries if they were to understand India and Hinduism and were to be of service to the country. Hume's admission that very few of his colleagues knew Sanskrit was tantamount to an admission that very few understood Hinduism. Nor did Hume say what attitude those few held toward India. Possibly such a disclosure would have been inconvenient.
As regards the missionaries' knowing the vernaculars, how many were able to read the religious literature embodied in those languages? And of those who were able, how many read to discover the excellences of the Hindu religion rather than its weaknesses? Perhaps none. The result was, of course, an almost total misconception of Hindu religion and philosophy.
Except through a thorough reading knowledge of both Sanskrit and the vernaculars there was no way in which the missionaries could learn the inner meaning of Hinduism, for in those days no one in India would have taught the religion of the Vedas to avowed enemies of that religion. While India has always disclosed her spiritual treasures to those who have come in earnestness and with respect, she has always and traditionally hidden them from those who have sought to pry into her religion in order to destroy it. Swamiji was being literal when he said that Hindu society and culture were closed to Hume.
It should be mentioned here parenthetically that in its criticism of Swamiji the Outlook was not just in equating his relation to Christians with the missionaries' relation to the Hindus. Swamiji had a full knowledge of Christianity, he had a deep reverence for Christ and his teachings, and, as he again and again stated, he had not come to America to convert the people to Hinduism. Comparable observations could not be made of the Christian missionaries in India.
As for Hume's contention that the Hindus of the lower classes were benefited by becoming Christians, the fact was that on the whole the benefit was so superficial as to be harmful. Certainly no one could have longed more for the economic betterment of the Indian masses than Swamiji, but not at the cost of their integrity. Cultural suicide should never, in his estimation, be committed for material gain. That had never been and never should be India's way.
But Mr. Hume and others like him were incapable of understanding this. Swamiji did not work on the plane where Hume lived and thought, and it would have been laughable had he engaged in a point by point controversy with him. Nor was there need for Swamiji to reply in any detail to letters such as Hume's, for the controversy was carried on by others.
The Hume-Vivekananda letters set off a bitter debate which lasted into the early part of 1895 and which was published in various ' widely read periodicals such as the Forum, the Arena, the Monist, and so on. The principal antagonists were, on the missionary side: the Right Reverend Mr. J. M. Thoburn, Missionary Bishop to India and Malaysia, Mr. Fred Powers, Rev. J. M. Mueller, and Rev. E. M. Wherry; and on the Hindu side: Mr. Virchand R. Gandhi and Mr. Purushottam Rao Telang. Every conceivable facet of the subject was anatomized, dissected, thrashed out, and rethrashed until by the end if the American public knew nothing else they at least knew that there were two sides to the matter and that, as Mr. Telan said, "to preach Christianity to the Hindu who had a religion and was civilized before the dawn of history seems . . . The most ridiculous thing on earth-indeed, audacious."
It is not hard to see, when we survey Swamiji's lecture tour through the Midwest, that his visit to Detroit marked its climactic finish. He had by this time spoken to every type of midwestern American, his ideas had spread throughout the "Bible Belt," and there was perhaps not an orthodox minister who was not shaken by them, nor a person ready to benefit from them who was not uplifted. On both the intellectual and spiritual levels, he had poured out enough energy to revitalize a whole nation. He had done a major part of his work, and whether or not he consciously thought of it in this way, we can see from his letters that he knew it was time to move to the East Coast. The fact was that he had said all that was necessary for him to say in his battle with the missionaries, and he could well write to India: "The conflagration that has set in through the grace of the Guru will not be put out."