Stories and Surveys of Missionary Enterprise in India

As the title suggests, this is an overview of missionary work in India published about 1937. It features a large number of black and white photographs. My thanks to Redcliffe College for making a copy of this public domain title available for digitisation.

William C. Irvine [1871-1946], W, Redwood, A.C. Rose, W. Wilcox, eds., Indian Realities. Stories and Surveys of Missionary Enterprise in India by Workers from Assemblies in the Homelands. Bangalore, India: The Scripture Literature Press, [1937]. Hbk. pp.210. [Click to visit the download page for this title]

Contents

• Prologue
• Introductory

1. the Godavari District
2. Pilgrim Preachers
3. Bihar abd Northern India
4. Hospital Work and Witness
5. The Belguam District
6. The Good News in Print
7. The Kanarese Field
8. No Mean Cities
9. Shall the Prey be Taken from the Mighty
10. The Lepers are Cleansed
11. Travancore and Cochin
12. Work Among Women
13. In Tinnevelly
14. Among the Children in School and Orphanage
15. Pondocherry
16. The Depressed Missions
17. Our Indian Fellow-Workers
18. Much Land to be Possessed
19. Suggestions for Prospective Workers

• Epilogue
• Appendix I
• Appendix II
• Map of India

Indian Realities; of course the half cannot be told, either the dark or the bright, but we have gathered some of them into a bundle within the covers of this book. Our object is, frankly, to share them with you, who although you have so many of your own burdens to carry, cheerfully fulfil the law of Christ by shouldering your neighbours’.

Here is a grim village specimen, dated this year of grace 1937, September. “A report of a man being sacrificed to propitiate the Rain God in Gunpur village, near Hahan Thesil, Bombay Presidency, where drought is prevailing this year, has been re-ceived here. It is alleged that the victim was decoyed from another village. In chains, with his forehead smeared with ash and vermilion and with a garland round his neck, the man was paraded through the streets to the accompaniment of the beat of drums, and shortly after he was beheaded with a sharp axe before the village temple. The head was placed reverently by the villagers before the deity. On re-ceiving the news of the human sacrifice, the Police from the adjoining Tehsil arrived on the scene and seized the body and arrested twenty-five persons, in-cluding the headman of the village, the perpetrator of the crime, and the priest who officiated at the ceremony.” 

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