AVIVAMENTOS NA INDIA

Introduction At the beginning of the twentieth century, Pentecostals continued the revivalist emphases of
the movements out of which they emerged, convinced that a world-wide revival was preceding the soon
coming of Christ. Various revivals occurred within a few years of each other in different parts of the world
with a decidedly ‘Pentecostal’ character, with gifts of the Spirit like healings, tongues, prophecy and other
‘miraculous’ signs. Among many evangelicals, these various ecstatic manifestations came to be expected as
‘evidence’ of the outpouring of the Spirit, and missionary and church connections, often facilitated by
popular periodicals and backed by biblical precedent in the book of Acts, helped spread these revival
movements across the globe. Those seen by the Azusa Street revivalists in Los Angeles as having special
significance for them were in Wales and in India. Frank Bartleman, participant in the Azusa Street revival
wrote in 1925, “The present world-wide revival was rocked in the cradle of little Wales. It was ‘brought up
in India, following; becoming full-grown in Los Angeles later.” He also referred to Wales and India as
representing the birth and adolescence of the “world-wide restoration of the power of God.”1 Pentecostal-
like revival movements with speaking in tongues and other manifestations of the Spirit’s presence had been
known in South India since 1860 in a CMS mission under the ministry of John Christian Aroolapen. Pioneer
of Pentecostalism in Europe, T.B. Barratt discovered that his Indian interpreter Joshua had received Spirit
baptism with tongues in 1897.2 The Welsh Revival spread to other parts of the world through Welsh
missionaries, and in 1905, revivals broke out in the Khasi Hills in North-East India and in Madagascar, both
areas where Welsh Presbyterian missionaries were working, although in the latter there were also
Scandinavian missionaries. According to the reports, these revivals began with the local people (rather than
with the missionaries) and were accompanied by ecstatic phenomena and miracles of healing.3 Hot on the
heels of these but unconnected was the revival at Pandita Ramabai’s Mukti Mission for young widows and
orphans in Kedgaon near Pune, commencing in 1905 and lasting two years. This revival made the Mukti
Mission a very important Pentecostal centre of international significance. In 1905 Western evangelical
periodicals reported on both the revivals in Wales and India, heightening expectations of a worldwide
revival.4 Elisabeth Sisson wrote of the Welsh revival as the beginnings of a world-wide revival on ‘all flesh’,
the ‘latter rain’ prophesied by Joel.5 Bartleman also documented the influence reports of the Indian
revivals had on their expectations for Los Angeles,6 and the Azusa Street mouthpiece was to declare only
months after their own revival, “Pentecost has come and is coming in India, and thank God in many other
places.”7

The Work of Pandita Ramabai

One revival in particular deserves special treatment because it took place in India, and because it preceded
the Azusa Street revival. Pandita Sarasvati Ramabai (1858-1922), that most famous Indian woman,
Christian, reformer, Bible translator and social activist, and in particular the revival movement in her
mission, had an important role in the emergence of Pentecostalism worldwide. Ramabai is both significant
in the origins of Pentecostalism and in the acceptance of its phenomena among some in the wider Christian
community.

Pagina 37

The importance of her revival movement is born out by the prominence given to it in reports in the
emerging Pentecostal press, both in India and especially in Britain and North America. Not enough
attention has been given to these important connections, and this paper will analyse what was said in these
reports and how this impacted the ongoing debate about global Pentecostal origins. Ramabai was a
converted Brahmin who had earlier rejected her Hindu upbringing and married out of her caste, and was
widowed with a baby daughter Manoramabai after less than two years of marriage. She became a Christian
during her almost three-year stay in England, where she studied education at the Cheltenham Ladies’
College and was baptised in the Church of England in 1883. She also spent time studying Greek and Hebrew
with Canon Cooke, to whom she in turn taught Sanskrit.8 From England she travelled to the USA, where she
spent two-and-a-half years (1886-8) studying education systems in Philadelphia and later publicising her
planned mission in India by travelling across the USA, for which she also received pledges of financial
support. She published a book in 1887 outlining the plight of Indian women titled The High-Caste Hindu
Woman, pleading for the creation of educational institutions for Indian women and setting out her own
vision to create one.9 As a result, a ‘Ramabai Association’ was founded in the USA to pledge financial
support for her school for the next ten years.10 During this time she also wrote a book in her mother
tongue, Marathi, on her observations of life in the USA, in which she contrasted the free democracy there
with the colonial oppression of Britain, gave her preference for voluntary denominations over state
churches like the Church of England, and favourably commented on women’s rights in American society,
although not without fair criticism of shortcomings there.11 She was a dedicated ecumenist before this
word was coined in the twentieth century, deploring the divisions within Christianity and pleading for a
united Indian church.12 She returned to India in 1889 and started a home for widows near Bombay
(Mumbai) that moved to Pune after a year. In 1895 she established a mission on a farm she had bought at
Kedgaon, and her work shifted from a religiously ‘neutral’ charity to an overtly evangelical Christian
organisation. As a result, she lost the support of Hindu parents and the resignation of her committee
ensued.13 This mission was given the name ‘Mukti’ (‘salvation’), and its main purpose was to provide a
refuge for destitute girls and young women, particularly those who had been the victims of child marriages
and had become widows, and those rescued from starvation in famine areas. It had 48 girls and young
women in 1896, but during that year 300 girls were rescued from famine in Madhya Pradesh and by 1900
there were almost 2,000 residents at Mukti.14 This faith mission was well known internationally by 1905,
the year the revival started.15 Ramabai believed that Hindu women could only find complete freedom by
converting to Christianity, and her Mission aimed to provide a total environment for its large community
trained in income-generating skills. By 1907 the Mission had expanded to include a rescue mission, a
hospital, an oil-press, a blacksmith forge, a printing press, a complete school that provided college
entrance, a school for the blind, and training departments in teaching, nursing, weaving, tailoring, bread
and butter making, tinning, laundering, masonry, carpentry and farming.16 In 1907 the blurb on the back of
the newsletter, Mukti Prayer-Bell (most of which was written by Ramabai herself) said that the Mission was
a ‘purely undenominational, evangelical, Christian Mission, designed to reach and help high caste Hindu
widows, deserted wives and orphans from all parts of India’, who would receive ‘a thorough training for
some years’, after which they would ‘go out as teachers or Bible women to work in different Missions’.17
Ramabai and her daughter Manoramabai made further visits to the USA and Britain,18 and she had a team
of seventy, including twenty-five volunteer workers from overseas. One of these was Minnie Abrams,
formerly a ‘deaconess missionary’ in the Methodist Church, and now an independent faith missionary who
joined Ramabai in 1898 and took care of the mission during Ramabai’s trip that year to the USA.19
Although Mukti was partially supported by various western sources, Ramabai provided food for her Mission
from its 230-acre farm and sent financial support to other missions in India, Korea and China on a regular
basis. In the wider society, she was also well known for her literary works, particularly in the Marathi
language. In 1904 she began her translation of the Bible into Marathi from Hebrew and Greek, a process
that took her eighteen years (almost to the end of her life) and a most remarkable, if somewhat
anachronistic achievement. Of course she would

Pagina 38