“I will lay my bones by the Ganges that India might know there is one who cares.”- Alexander Duff (British missionary)
In the early 1970’s I was made the Librarian of the humble yet well-stocked library of the Jaffna YMCA, which held a treasure trove of books, authored by some very learned and erudite scholars. Since I had, only a few short months earlier, become a somewhat committed Christian, from being a rabble-rousing youngster, I was very interested in Missions, so I spent hours on end, reading a copious collection of biographies of Missionaries, like William Carey, Hudson Taylor, James O. Frazier and such like. Of them all, I found the life and Mission of Alexander Duff as the one that caught my attention and interest the most. I would like to, as best I could, recall and share with you my impressions of this exceptional and revolutionary man who has left an indelible and lasting impression on India; the land that Mark twain once called “The land of a thousand religions and two million Gods”!
Alexander Duff was a young man when he set sail for India in 1830. He survived two shipwrecks before finally reaching Calcutta. The India of his day was a far cry from what it is today. Today the enigma and charm of India has caught the imagination of endless numbers of poets, thinkers, and philosophers, and draws visitors from the four corners of this globe. But in his day and age, India was a country to be shunned and kept away from. Duff loved India but he entertained no romantic illusions. When he arrived he was aghast at what he saw, but he was undeterred. Dead bodies floated down the Ganges; Devotees sacrificed thousands in honour of their goddess, Kali, and when a king in India died his scores of wives and concubines were cremated alongside him on the funeral pyre, so that they could accompany him to the after-life. This and many other ghastly sights, instead of dissuading and discouraging him, only spurred him on to become more resolute and steadfast – to remain among the poor of India, and serve them as God had called him to. As I can recall, he remained there for over thirty years as God’s faithful servant!
During his years of ministry in India, Alexander Duff was instrumental in enlightening the locals about the inhuman practices of human sacrifice, and tirelessly campaigned for the eradication of the practice of ‘Sathi’ – a widely prevalent custom and tradition at the time, of immolating or burning widows, along with their deceased husbands on the funeral pyres. He also succeeeded in introducing western medicine to an India that was averse to and closed to everything that was of western origin, and he also made vast strides in the field of education, introducing English as a medium of instruction, and painstakingly trained local converts to preach the Gospel in their vernacular tongues. When Duff died in 1878, the Times contained a long obituary, Prime Minister Gladstone eulogised him, and Scotland mourned as a nation saying that it had lost its noblest son!
Today, Alexander Duff and the likes of him are largely forgotten missionaries; their memories eclipsed by the half-baked missionaries of our dispensation. Fly-by-night missionaries, with their ‘petite’ and short-term objectives, breeze in and breeze out of countries like India, Sri Lanka and other countries of the third-world; such have been over-subscribed for projects that hardly benefit anybody. Their glitzy projects have taken centre stage, and used-up the financial and other resources of the Christian-donor-communities! All the while there are those like duff, unheard-of, and unseen, labour where humanities needs are the most acute.
Today how many, from among the many thousands of the ‘World-Wide Diaspora’ of Sri Lankans would want to follow in the foot-steps of Alexander Duff? How many would want to return to their motherland, and live and serve among a people who face a grim and uncertain future?
When on one of his visits to England, Alexander Duff called for volunteers to accompany him back to India, and none came forward, with utter dejection, he declared to those gathered around him “I will return, if need be alone”, and “I will lay my bones by the Ganges that India might know there is one who cares.”
Do you care enough about your country? Care enough about your people? Care enough about your God who gave His life for you? If you do, what have you done about it? What will you do for the one who died for you??
God bless you,
Pastor Dayalan Sanders.
