A Welshman comes back

NIGEL JENKINS' travels among the Khasi and neighbouring tribals is a neutral but nostalgic Welshman's look at the contribution Welsh Protestant missionaries made to the life and culture of the hill people of what is today Meghalaya. The Mission functioned from 1840 to 1969 and unlike Catholics, who became Indian citizens and continued their work, the Welsh went back to the land of their fathers. Amongst the Mission's lasting achievements was the creation of the Khasi alphabet (in Roman script).

Jenkins only spends a month in Meghalaya in 1992 and his visit coincides with the outbreak of violent agitation by the hill tribals against the commercial inroads of outsiders from the plains. Jenkins' interest had been sparked off by Alexander Frater's bestseller Chasing the Monsoon. Like Bruce Chatwin's travelogue In Patagonia that revealed a Welsh settlement in South America, Frater's book presents the improbable scene of Khasi bards lustily singing "Land of my Fathers" in a native rendering. Uncannily, the Welsh in their wild green valleys had poetic and musical traits akin to those of the Khasis. Geographically their situations were somewhat similar, hillmen accustomed to look after themselves by recourse to raids on their less savage neighbours.

Thomas Jones, the first Welsh preacher, was more of a handyman than a cleric and was concerned for the physical welfare of the Khasis as well as saving their souls from the trinity of evils, "The pope, the Mahomet and the Brahma". When Jones' wife died in 1847 and he married a woman half his age, he was sacked by the Mission. The driving force of Calvinist Methodism was a killjoy puritanism that would have warmed the hearts of Aurangzeb and Morarji Bhai. It gave the Welsh Mission a reputation for despotic and intolerant attitudes to the indigenous culture of the matrilinear and caste-free Khasis. Strict teetotalism may explain why 50 per cent of the population escaped the missionary net. Will similar ground realities elsewhere in the North East blunt the proselytising zeal of the caste Hindus who filled the void created by the departing foreign missions?

It is assumed the Protestants forced their Welsh names on the populace but Khasi "Edwards" and "Pughs" were sometimes borrowed from Missionary tombstones for their euphonic value. As were other echoes of the pomp of the Raj, like "Seminar" and "Parliament" which yielded splendid sounding surnames. For Christian names original adaptations like "Edify" and "Modify" (for a pair of sisters) were chosen for their poetic ring. But the church drew the line at christening a boy with the luridly resonant "Vagina"!

The Welsh Mission in fact had to draw a lot of lines to prevent its easy-going parishioners and their famously beautiful wives from lapsing into traditional animistic ritual. If the Mission had been more imaginative and allowed the "lamb of God" to become a sacrificial rooster, the alienness of the preachers might have been softened. By refusing to indigenise their Church, the Welsh were viewed by many as arrogant colonialists. Jenkins puts up at Prakash Hotel in Shilling and meets a cross-section of Meghalaya opinion. Most are agreed that in spite of its blinkered paternalism the Welsh Mission opened the eyes of the Khasis to the world around them. Thomas Jones' alphabet enabled their poetic instinct to flourish and a good Khasi novel these days will sell 2,000 copies in a few months.

The author's narrative is interspersed with comic asides. Thanks to Cherrapunji's place on the map of cosmic inundations a UFO sighting has been made there. The Flying saucer had apparently come down to test the waters. Its crew were brassy female Chinese descendants of the prophet Elijah! It is fortunate that Nigel Jenkins is an unbeliever. This enables him to assess objectively the rise and fall of the Mission. He notes the cruel irony of religious cycles that allow the Khasi branch to raise the chapel rafters with their hymns while the home church in Wales has been reduced to a whimper. Methodism bloomed as the religion of the industrially deprived and withered just as dramatically with the onset of the welfare state.

The Khasi Church still sends two theological students to Aberystwyth and, to return the compliment, Jenkins is invited to preach. He has to confess to vague Buddhist leanings and a Dylan Thomas-like history of hangovers. It is in the druid stones of the North East that the author senses the deeper commonality between the Khasis and the Welsh. He complains: "What are all those Shillong poets doing writing theses about Wordsworth and Larkin when they should be here learning all they can for their culture's sake from the distinguished shamanistic elder" who sits in a trance and recites a magical litancy couched in a cascade of inspired utterance.

BILL AITKEN

Through the Green Door: Travels Among the Khasis, Nigel Jenkins, Penguin India, p. 320, Rs. 250.

Bill Aitken's latest book is Branchline to Eternity. He is a well-known writer of travelogues in India.

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