Adventures in International Unitarianism

ADVENTURES IN INTERNATIONAL UNITARIANISM: The Khasi Hills of India

The Rev. Ken Sawyer at the First Parish in Wayland, Mass. on February 24, 2002

For the last fifteen years or so, much of the part of my ministry here that is focused on the larger movement of liberal religion has been devoted to courses and workshops on preaching. I’ve co-taught a course at Harvard Divinity School for thirteen falls, which is over now, as the course exists as a book that all our ministerial candidates are now required to read. I’ve worked with colleagues at professional workshops here and there, but this month, for the first time, I worked with preachers who weren’t even preaching in English. And I loved it! There were six of us Americans who made our way up into the Khasi Hills of northeast India on Feb. 2nd, two to teach computer skills to school children and their teachers, and four of us to serve as the faculty of a week’s workshop on preaching. Participants in the preaching workshop included thirteen men and women, ranging in age from early twenties to late sixties, who regularly preach in Khasi Unitarian churches, of which there are thirty-three. But they were not the first to greet us as our two-car caravan pulled onto the grounds of the church in the city of Shillong where the workshop would take place. No, a crowd had gathered there for a welcoming service in the church, and as soon as we stepped out of the cars which had driven us the frightening four hours from the airport in Assam, the children came up to greet us. One after another, they introduced themselves and shook our hands. Then the grown-ups greeted us all warmly, too. And then the service began, all to celebrate our being there, beginning with a newly-cast version of the welcome song the choir sings on those uncommon occasions when visitors arrive. “Welcome, welcome, dearest guests,” they sang. “You have come from far away land/ To give us your helping hand./ And to strengthen our faith dearer,/ By the seed of love and hope…./ A brief while you will be with us,/ This period is so precious./ You’ll always be in our memory,/ For your generosity.” But it was their own generosity that was abundantly on display, in the warmth of their greeting in that far away land -- and far away it is. It takes a flight to Europe, and even longer flight to Delhi, a third flight to Guwahati, the capital of Assam, and then the ride up the curving two-lane road that rises six thousand feet to Shillong, with the driver constantly passing the innumerable slow-moving trucks, beeping all the way, with dramatic drop-offs where road shoulders might be. And there we were at the end of it, suddenly surrounded by friendly faces of all ages, and a service, with the choir, and a flag-raising to kick off the workshop, and gifts, like this wonderful shawl, one I wore most of the week, as you may see in a few of the photographs downstairs. A few nights later we were given a reception at the other 2

Unitarian church in Shillong, featuring more words of welcome, another choir, and for each of us, another shawl. Shillong is the capital of the small, very hilly state of Meghalaya, where a shawl can come in handy in February. Actually, it’s less cold than here, and less variable. It goes up to about 50 in the afternoon, sunny enough that I got a bit of a tan from the twice-a-day tea breaks outside. One morning we moved the class onto the lawn, the day was so mild. Nights, it can go down to 40 or lower, but not so low that they ever have snow. So it’s relatively mild, but then again, there is almost no heating, so the shawl proved a gift I could use. (By the way, it never rained when I was there, which isn’t unusual for February, although the rainfall from June until August is so severe that Meghalaya ends up with the highest annual precipitation on earth.) Mention of the choir reminds me of the remarkable role that teenagers play in Khasi Unitarian churches. Like the younger children, they attend the worship services, which happen in the early afternoon, and they make up the choirs. They also teach the Sunday school classes, which happen in the morning. In at least one church, they also raise the money to fund the Sunday school. The week we all spent at the church in Shillong, the participants and faculty dined together three meals a day in the church hall, the food prepared in a little open-air kitchen by four adult church volunteers and served by a bevy of unfailingly cheery and hard-working teens. Khasis are not vegetarians, and we ate meat in brown gravy and a local fish, along with dal, potatoes, soups, and delicious oranges grown locally. Surprisingly for such a high, hilly area, much of the economy is agricultural, with every river valley and terraceable hillside given over to the production of pineapples, oranges, tea, rubber, potatoes, and mostly rice. The only industrial plants we saw burned down limestone for paint and whitewash. The Khasis are unlike other Indians in almost every way. Indeed, they are not Indian by heritage, ethnicity, language, diet, or religion. They are much more akin to southeast Asia, and may be descended from migrating Cambodians of old. People accustomed to India invariably say how un-Indian the area is, being struck in particular by the apparent absence of poverty, homelessness, extreme overcrowding, and disease. Instead there appears to be, not wealth, but a kind of simple sufficiency. Meghalaya became Indian by the politics of British colonial rule, as it was part of Assam. It was the part that the British liked to escape to when the low-lying, tea-growing area of Assam was too hot. They called it the Scotland of the East. Tourist brochures still do. But not many tourists go there, and the British left long ago. To be as white as I am (even with my tan) caused kids in the street to gaze. Along with colonial rule came the missionaries. For the Khasis, that meant Welch Presbyterians, who came in the early nineteenth century. They introduced a school system, a written form of the Khasi language (using our English alphabet), and the Christian religion. Traditionally, the Khasis had never been Hindu, Buddhist, or Muslim. They had their own religion, similar to that of the other tribes of that remote area. They believed in the one great and loving creator god, mother and father of all that is, and they believed in the duty of people to respond to God’s love by loving others and doing right. Welch Christianity argued that God was male, three-part, and harshly judgmental. One person who went through the new Welch school system rebelled against this view. 3

His name was Hajom Kissor Singh, and he proposed a new religion that reclaimed the traditional Khasi monotheism in a progressive new form, one that eliminated any previous penchant for animal sacrifice. Having started to found congregations based upon his outlook, he was put in touch with British and American Unitarianism and recognized the common beliefs. His churches became known as Unitarian, as they are still. Their number has grown steadily in recent decades, thanks no doubt to the strength of their preaching, well before our team arrived. Indeed, while I think our workshop was a blessing for them -- for it got them to gather and talk for the first time together about this task that they all find important, and it gave them a chance to hear each other and to receive kind suggestions for improving -- for myself, I was most impressed at how very good they all were already. Listening to a really good preacher is a pleasure I relish, and I have never known that joy more abundantly than there, even though I could not know what they were saying. But what engagement, what sincerity, what passion, what strength of faith! At the end, there was a graduation ceremony, awards and certificates and kind words in every direction. By then, the UUA president and his daughter was there, and other western dignitaries, all greatly valued by our kind Khasi hosts. Afterwards, there was a demonstration of traditional plate dancing; and the spirited singing of a national anthem, one that affirms their fellow feeling though their tribes be many; and dinner. Afterwards, each of us gathered up our backpacks, our cameras, and our presents, and began to brace ourselves for the long, long journeys home. But the Khasis continued to seek us out, to offer small, precious presents, to say again how much the training had meant to them, and how much they valued their connection with us – and with you. It often comes as a wonder and blessing that you are not the only person who feels as you do about matters of faith. There is even a name for people like us: Unitarian Universalist. Overseas, it may just be Unitarian. They live in unfamiliar places and they may be different from us in some ways (as we are different from each other). In Transylvania, the Unitarians are Christians; in the Khasi Hills, they’re not. In both places, they’re theist, though we’re not always here. But I have been in a simple, dank, dark home in Pipe, Romania; I have greeted the members of our church in Edinburgh, Scotland, month after month; and I have been hugged with abandon only days ago in the fading sunlight of the chilly, hilly church grounds of an unlikely corner of India. And every time, I have shared in a strong, happy feeling of being part of the religious fellowship of Unitarianism that stretches around the world.