Chapter 9 Missionaries from Switzerland: The Basel Mission in South India

1 A Minister Honoured

A special tribute was paid to the missionary Ferdinand Kittel (1832–1903) in 2001: a life-size bronze statue of him was unveiled on the Road, the main street of the city of Bengaluru (). He is portrayed in full regalia, dressed in European minister’s robes, with his hand on the Bible on the table next to him. But he was not being honoured as a preacher of the bibli- cal message. The text on the pedestal draws primary attention to his services in the area of linguistics: he published classic literature, wrote an epic on Jesus Christ in that language and compiled a comprehensive Kannada-­ English dictionary that was considered to be “a perennial contribution to Kan- nada literature.” It is remarkable that a statue was erected for a European in a period in which Indians were more inclined to remove monuments of the colonial period. Fer- dinand Kittel, however, did not play any role in British colonial policy, and, moreover, he was and is honoured not because of his activities as a missionary but because of his major contribution to the Indian cultural heritage. Thus, his statue played a role in the reinforcement of the sense of identity of the Karna- taka state. Its own language, Kannada, is what binds the state together. It is remarkable that shortly before the statue was unveiled, Kittel’s name became associated with one of the suburbs of the city: Austin Town, named after a Brit- ish colonial administrator, became F. Kittel Nagar.

2 On the Road in a Mission Field

Georg Ferdinand Kittel was born in the parsonage of the small East Frisian vil- lage of Resterhafe on 7 April 1848.1 Not only was his father a minister, but two of his brothers would also choose that profession while Ferdinand and two other brothers became missionaries. Ferdinand was admitted to the educa- tional institute of the Basel Mission at the age of 18. Many south German young

1 See accounts of his life in Wendt 2006; Wendt 2008.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/9789004420076_011

148 Chapter 9

Figure 14 The statue of Ferdinand Kittel in Bengaluru, decorated for State Formation Day 2017 men from Württemburg continued their studies in the Swiss city of Basel, and the transition from the isolated coastal village in the extreme north of Germa- ny to Basel was certainly a major one. The Basel Mission was founded in 1815 within the circles of the pietistic revival movements that arose in that time.2

2 For the history of the Basel Mission, see Christ-von Wedel and Kuhn 2015; Binder 2006a.