Bangladesh: A brief glance at the history of the Luteran Santal Mission
Banglanews188
Taken from "Silent forests" of Tone Bleie
The establishment of the Santal Mission in 1860 and the rapid growth testify to the intellectual vitality, colossal energy and organizational abilities of its founders, Lars Olson Skrefsrud (1840-1910) and Hans Peter Borresen (1825-1901). The coincidences which led first Skrefsrud and later his heir Paul Olav Bodding (1865-1938) to use their unusual intellectual gifts in a lifelong service to the Mission at a particular historical juncture in both the colonial history of India and the history of the Santals resulted in these two Norwegian missionaries coming to exert a unique and enduring impact on all succeeding Santali generations cultural media (especially language), collective memory and ultimately survival as an indigenous minority.
Skrefsrud contributed substantially to the development of a Santali phonetic alphabet (with diacritical signs), a work Bodding advanced. Skrefsrud produced the first really comprehensive grammar, which is still in use. He compiled the first comprehensive Santali-English lexicon and he stalled the laborious translation of parts of the Old and New Testaments. Bodding in his early days (in the 1890s) assisted Skrefsrud in his translation work. Later, Bodding took it over and completed it, fraught as it was with interpretative and linguistic difficulties. Bodding also prepared the exhaustive Santali Dictionary, still the standard reference work. He collected throughout most of his life detailed and systematic ethnographic descriptive accounts of Santali knowledge traditions covering nearly every religious, medical, social and practical domain. Bodding was able to build up a huge collection of Santali material culture; most of the collection is currently in the Ethnographic Museum at the University of Oslo. Some of it is owned by other European Museums.
Skrefsrud also managed in his younger years to collect and publish the rich collection The Traditions and Institutions of the Santals. This brief listing in no way completes Skrefsrud and Bodding's scholarly output, which is truly extraordinary in scope, volume and scientific quality.
The pioneers were completely dependent on Santali helpers as storytellers, healers and fluent language speakers. Some of these Santals seem to have played a longstanding role as key informants and as assistants in a fuller sense. Bodding, for example, writes this about his most central collaborators on the extremely trying and complicated translation of the bible into Santali:
The best Man we have had in this work was Biram, and besides him Sido, who had gifts at least at the level of the other, yet lacked his 20 years of experience. Biram could not be moved, if he was convinced about something, one would hear of it. It happened so that Skrefsrud and it happened with me, that he would say: You are a Saheb, and I cannot hinder your writing what you like, but we never say like that. Such independent helpers are invaluable. They have respect for themselves and they are anxious that
somebody could blame them for having endorsed something which was incorrect.
We would welcome future research by Santal scholars and others who could bring into proper light the role and significance of Santals like Biram and Sido.
Skrofsrud and Borresen first entered India as missionaries for the German Gossner Mission in the early 1860s. They broke with their home mission in 1865 and started to collaborate with an English Baptist missionary, E.C. Johnson. Johnson had recently started to work among the nearly "unreached" Santals in Birbhum District. Skrefsrud and Borresen did not become missionaries of the Baptist Missionary Society (BMS) but were supported in their early work, which was rapidly gaining momentum. In 1869 they started an, independent Indian Home Mission to the Santals (IHM). The missionary society had at its inception already 7000 members. In the early years, committees in England and Scotland collected much of the new Mission's funds. Only after the final break with the BMS in 1877 did Skrefsrud and Borresen put every effort into securing future support from a Scandinavian support base.
The Indian Home Mission was thus a Baptist mission and it took decades before the Lutheran confession, church regulations, and, liturgies became a living reality.
Over the least 3 decades of the 19th century the Mission came to take up new missionary fields. This was partly the result of the Missionaries own efforts, such as Skrefsrud's effort to secure a large area of land in Assam for Santali immigrants (the so-called Assam Colony), and partly a result of another massive migration movement of Santals and other displaced adibasi (notably Mundas and Oraons) into the flat, marshy country on the eastern side of the Ganges. While this land was not unknown to the Santals, most Santals had preferred, as long as outside intruders, to settle in the cooler, forest covered areas of north Orissa and Bihar (Chota Nagpur and Raj Mahal).
The Mission came partly to use its own designations for its expanded missionary domain. Santal Parganas, was referred to as the "Old country". Assam, which was also an administrative designation, was a massive immigration of impoverished and displaced Santals from the older core areas of Chota Nagpur and elsewhere. Only after the Santal Rebellion in 1855-57 the British declared the area a Non-Regulation District, named it Santal Parganas and appointed Santal chiefs as the only intermediary authority, allowing them also judicial powers. Slavery, which had been the bitter experience of many adibasis, was also banned
in the new domain. "The Middle Country" (Mellomlandet) referred to the Bengali delta country east of Santal Parganas and of the Ganges and south of Assam.
The early mission in Dinajpur, Rajshahi and Malda
We have in earlier chapters described how political subjugation, ruthless exploitation of the adibasis and erosion of the social structure led to the massive displacement and rapid immigration of Santals into Dinaipur, Malda. and Rajshahi. Many of the immigrated adibasi were converted Christians. It was the Baptist William Carey who started missionary work in Bengal from the first mission station in Mudnaputi (previously under Dinajpur, later under Malda). Mission headquarters were later moved to Serampore north of Calcutta. It was a Santal, Jalpa Soren, who took up missionary work among the Santals with support from the Indian Home Mission. The work of Soren however not welcomed by the Baptist Missionary Society, which saw these districts as their exclusive missionary domain. In the following years, considerable energy was expended by both missions on this conflict; only in 1921 did BMS "concede" Malda to SMNC. Despite these conflicts, the evangelical work and institution-building efforts led by Soren were successful. Around Naryanpur, west of Hilli in West Dinajpur, an active congregation grew up. The circle had 8 primary schools and 14 teachers. In 1920 the school at Naryanpur was upgraded to a Middle English School. Khorbari, in Malda, became another centre of several congregations. The priest engaged 13 evangelists and 3 female workers, and 4 schools were established. Pipra was a 3rd centre for northern Rajhshai and south eastern Malda. There, I priest and 9 evangelists were engaged. The circle built and ran 5 primary schools. In this first period it was the local Ebenezer Missionary Society which was the main supporter of this new mission field; only in the 1930s did the Mission take over this responsibility.
The establishment of a separate mission in East Pakistan
Independence in 1947, which resulted in the partition of Bengal, also split "Mellornlandet" into two. About half of the 49 congregations were situated within the new East Pakistan. The responsible missionaries met severe new problems in coordinating and running Serampore was a Danish Colony from 1755 to 1845. The colony had two Norwegian Governors, first Ole Bie (1733-1805) and later Jacob Krefting (17571805). Their work from the Indian side was difficult due to visa and currency regulations. The Home Board was requested to formally approve the placing of a missionary in East Pakistan. The Home Board, however, for various reasons, postponed a decision until the 1954 Conference.
In 1956, the regulations for a new Nordic East Pakistan Mission was endorsed by representatives from the 3 member countries. A Missionary Conference should be responsible for all operations in East Pakistan and directly responsible to the Home Boards. It was first decided that the Norwegian Mission should sent the first missionary as Norwegians could travel to Pakistan without a visa. As it later turned out, the first missionary to enter East Pakistani soil was the Norwegian-American John Ottesen and his wife. About 4 years later, the Norwegian Santal Mission send another missionary couple, the Ivelands, who got Dinajpur as a mission field. The Ivelands built Auliapur Mission Station on the outskirts of Dinajpur District Town. Church, missionary bungalows, a girl's school and a boarding were built in the early 1960s. Some years later, another missionary couple, the Overbyes, built a second major centre at Amnura in Rajshahi. A hostel for bible students and a health clinic were built in addition to residential quarters and a church. In the 1960s Danish missionaries also arrived. Especially in the late 1960s, the number of missionaries tripled from 5 to 15. Two new mission stations were built in Uzirpur and Chapai Nawabganj.
Until 1968 the mission formally shared its supreme leader with its Indian mother church, NELC. At a church meeting in Auliapur it was decided to establish a fully independent church, the Pakistan Evangelical Lutheran Church. At that moment the new church had 44 congregations with a total of 1490 members.
Until 1980 there was a joint Bangladesh Lutheran Mission (BLM) which consisted of the Norwegian, Danish, American and Finish Santal Missions. This joint mission was dissolved in 1980 due to strong and longstanding disagreements about strategies and priorities.
In 1993 the Norwegian Santal Mission had 27 missionaries in Bangladesh. The number was reduced to 16 by the beginning of 97.
Source: http://xoomer.virgilio.it/bguizzi/bangladesh/engmissbd/lutmiss.htm
Johar! I'm John Ottesen's granddaughter and daughter of Bob and Margaret Lee. I grew up in Bangladesh from 1987-1997 with the Santals. Thank you for all of this information!
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