REMEMBERING C. F. ANDREWS

 

C. R. PATTABHIRAMAN

 

            We are celebrating the 112th birthday of Charlie Andrews, a missionary and a spiritually pure soul who came to India as a member of the Anglican Church in March 1904. He got com­pletely converted when he came in contact with the cream of Indian culture.

 

            It is worth noting at the outset that a Hindu, Sri Munshi Ram of the Arya Samaj movement, was instrumental in making Andrews seek a new way of life. He realised that true love alone will win the heart of the East. He had the courage to say “Our whole British talk about being ‘Trustees of India’, and coming over to serve her, about bearing the ‘whitemen’s burden’, about ruling India ‘for her good’ and all the rest is the biggest hypocrisy on God’s earth.” It was in line with what John Bright said that “The Christian British had conquered India by breaking all the ten commandments.”

 

            Born on the 12th February 1871, in a Clergyman’s, family of the Church of England, he had a brilliant career in the Cambridge University. He was ordained as a priest of the Cambridge Mission which was running St. Stephen’s College in Delhi: Basil Westcott, son of his Guru Bishop Westcott, served as Professor there. Andrews decided to join St. Stephen’s College. He referred to the date of his landing in India as his “Indian Birthday.”

 

            When he came to India, the political atmosphere was tense. There was a great agitation on account of Curzon’s Partition of Bengal and his officialisation of Indian universities, his contempt for Indian public opinion coupled with Lord Minto’s grant of separate electorates and excessive representation to Muslims in the Minto-Morley Constitution generating communal problems. It was at that time that Lala Lajapat Rai was deported without trial and the Press Act, curbing the liberty of the Press, came into being. It was also then that there was the humiliating treatment of Indians in South Africa and the cruelties heaped on indentured Indian labourers in Fiji and other British Colonies.

 

            The victory of Japan in the war against Russia in 1905, shattered the theory of the superiority of the White races, and roused the patriotic spirit of the Indians making them express openly their discontent. As an English intellectual born and bred in the democratic atmosphere of England valuing self-determination, he wanted England to share the same privileges with Indians. Andrews instinctively sympathized with the political aspirations of India. Simultaneously, he was increasingly alienated from the British rule, by a series of the Anti-Indian policies and the behaviour of individual Britishers, socially and in clubs in India. When an Englishman wrote in a British paper in Lahore, criticising Indians, calling them “a bunch of ill-disciplined school boys”, Andrews replied with a signed letter repudiating the allegation, calling it wholly unjust. It was very unusual and unique for an Englishman to defend Indians against insults by Englishmen in those days.

 

            A noteworthy development took place, when the British Principal of St. Stephen’s College retired. Dr S. K. Rudra, a pious Indian Christian and an ardent Indian nationalist, was the Vice-Principal. Andrews had love and admiration for him. While on a vacation in Simla, Andrews invited Rudra to stay with him. This was severely criticised by some of his British colleagues. Andrews felt utterly humiliated by the racial arrogance of the British friends, who claimed to belong to the Christian Church. Andrews insisted that Rudra, the Vice-Principal, should be appoint­ed Principal when they wanted to make him Principal over Rudra’s head. For the first time an Indian Principal was appointed break­ing an ugly racial tradition.

 

            In the Indian National Congress Session at Calcutta in 1906, under the Presidentship of Dadabhai Naoroji, Andrews heard for the first time the word “Swaraj” used as the political goal of India. He welcomed it and became a great friend of Gopalakrishna Gokhale and Rabindranath Tagore. He accepted Tagore’s invita­tion to join Shantiniketan. He however could not settle down in Bengal as he was wanted all over India.

 

            Andrews was shocked by the humiliating plight of Indians in South Africa. He admired the heroism of the passive resistance campaign, organised by Gandhiji in South Africa. The efforts of Gokhale to organise in India, support for Gandhiji, won his admiration. Andrews gave all his life’s savings to the fund started by Gokhale and volunteered to go to South Africa. On landing in Durban, Andrews touched the feet of Gandhiji as a mark of respect and admiration for him. By this act he shocked some of the Whites because even ordinary courtesies were not shown to any Indian in South Africa. Quite a few of the White leaders openly insulted him and assaulted him and on one occasion nearly murdered him.

 

            An important event in Durban is noteworthy. Andrews was staying with Gandhiji. He was invited to preach in a church there. Gandhiji and other Indians went to the church to hear his sermon. They were denied admission, because the church was only for Whites, and coloured people were not admitted. Andrews learnt about this and came back to Gandhiji beaming with joy. He told him, “Bapu, when you were turned away at the door of the church, you, you were the theme of my sermon in the Church!”

 

            Andrews was of great help to Gandhiji when negotiations were going on for the Gandhi-Smuts Agreement of 1914. He went to South Africa again for the Round Table Conference of 1926-’27. He was a valuable link between the local Indian leaders and the Indian delegation from India. He openly campaigned that the Rt. Hon. V. S. Srinivasa Sastri should be appointed the first Agent ­General of the Government of India in South Africa to watch over the implementation of the agreement. He stayed in South Africa to receive Mr. Sastri and helped him in his new assignment. Soon thereafter Andrews wrote books on Mahatma Gandhi’s ideas and philosophy.

 

            It is interesting to note that Andrews was loved and respected both by Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore though they were different personalities. It must be recorded that Andrews’ mission was to improve the condition of the depressed classes in India. He proclaimed that while Swaraj for India was important, Swaraj for the untouchables was equally so. He was also campaign­ing for the curbing of the opium traffic and for prohibition.

 

            Another outstanding humanitarian work of Andrews was his campaign for the abolition of indentured labourers of Indian origin in the British Colonies, like Fiji, British Guiana and other places. This vicious system was adopted by the British in order to improve the economy of their Colonies. The Indian labourer was as efficient as he was cheap. The labourer was tied down by a contract to serve a term and it meant almost an indefinite period. He drew the attention of the Rt. Hon. E. G. Montague, Secretary of State for India, to the report of the Medical Officer of the Fiji Govern­ment. He pointed out that one indentured Indian woman had to serve three indentured Indian labourers, as well as several others and that in consequence, the incidence of venereal disease had risen to alarming proportions. Montague was shocked by the disclosures and said to Andrews “That settles it. Ask what you want?” The result was that Indian indentured labour was abolished on 1st January 1920. The grateful Indians in Fiji acclaimed him as Deenabandhu Andrews. That is a name that stuck to him in India also, adopted by Gandhiji and the Indian National Congress.

 

            He was not particular or meticulous about his dress with the result that when the Governor of British Guiana asked him to lunch in the Army and Navy Club in London, which was a very posh club, the hall porter, who was in resplendent uniform, hesita­ted to admit him, as he was dressed in shabby clothes with canvas shoes. Sir Michael Gordon heard about this, rushed out and took him and exclaimed, “I feel I am honoured to give a lunch to my Lord.” After the Jallianwala Bagh tragedy in 1919, Andrews wished to visit the Punjab to make enquiries, but was arrested and turned back by the British authorities.

 

            Though Andrews was a member of the Anglican Church, he did not subscribe to their dogmas and their creed. He refused to believe that non-believers would be condemned to eternal damna­tion. He exclaimed that Christ who preached love and forgiveness, could never approve of this belief. His contact with Gokhale, Gandhi and Tagore made him proclaim “what I am sure of is, that Christ and Buddha are not separate, but are closely united as one factor in the religious history of the world and that the stream of Hindu, Buddhist and early Christian life is one stream and not two.” He found that Mahatma Gandhi was a truer Christian than most other formal Christians he met. He was critical of Gandhiji when the Mahatma kept quiet when Moham­med Ali took a fanatical communal stand stating “however pure Gandhi’s character may be, to me he is inferior to a Mussalman.” Finally it must not be forgotten that it was Andrews, who, for the first time in 1921, adumbrated “independence of India” from the British yoke. He proclaimed “Having witnessed with my own eyes the humiliation of Indians, I can see no possible recovery of their self-respect except by claiming independence from British domination.”

 

            A year later, on January 19, 1921, in his address to the students in Calcutta, he said: “Independence, complete and perfect inde­pendence, for India, is a religious principle with me, because I am a Christian.” He belonged to the galaxy of foreign friends of India – like Hume, Bradlaugh, Annie Besant, Sunderland, Max Mueller, Arundale, Horniman, Montague and Clement Atlee. They strove to secure for India, her freedom and for her culture and tradition to be understood by people all over the world.

 

            He died in 1940. In his last illness in the Calcutta General Hospital he was deeply moved when Gandhiji visited him. With deep affection and love he whispered to him “Mohan, Swaraj is coming.” There was no greater or more sincere advocate of Inde­pendence of India than this rare Englishman. He was affectionately called “Charlie” by Sastri, Gandhiji and Tagore. He was, like Annie Besant, a truly adopted child of India. By remembering him we are honouring ourselves. People born after the Gandhian era will do well to read about these great people who contributed much to our position today in the comity of nations.

 

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