NtPAL AND THE CiOSPtL oFfiOD NtPM AND THE fiOSPtL OF(i0D by Jonathan Lindell for the United Mission To Nepal Cover and Drawings by Hem Poudyal Published by the United Mission to Nepal in collaboration with Masihi Sahitya Sanstha. 1979 This special Jubilee Edition of NEPAL AND THE GOSPEL OF GOD celebrates the 25th anniversary of the founding of the United Mission to Nepal which took place on March 4-5, 1954, in Nagpur, India. The book is owned and pub~ished by the UNITED MISSION TO NEPAL P.O. Box 126 Kathmandu, Nepal. The printing and distribution of this Jubilee Edition has been undertaken in collaboration with the MAS/HI S.tHITYA SANSTHA (Booksellers and publishers of Christian Literature) 70-Janpath New Delhi-I, India. 5000 copies printed in February 1979 by H.K. Mehta at Thomson Press (India) Limited, India ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The Board of Directors of the United Mission to Nepal decided to have this book written and asked a member of the Mission to write it. A small committee has offered guidance in its preparation. Colleagues and friends have critically read the text and offered helpful suggestions and corrections. Volunteers have typed the manuscript. These people have believed iµ this book project and have freely helped to make it possible. In this respect the book is a product of the Mission. Sincere thanks are expressed to all who have shared in its creation. The author has drawn extensively on the contents of two books by Fr. Fulgentius Vannini, A.F.M., Cap., especially in preparing Chapter 1, and is grateful for permission to quote from these books. Thankful acknowledgement is also expressed to the Christian Literature Society, Madras, for permission to quote from their book the passage about Sundar Singh in Chapter 3. The quotation in Chapter 9 from the speech of Dr. D.R. Regmi has been taken from its source by kind permission of HMG, The Institute of Education. Quotations from the New English Bible, Second Edition (c) 1970 are used by permission of Oxford and Cambridge University presses, London. The author gratefully acknowledges the use of numerous books and sources to which he has had access, as listed in the bibliography, as well as materials which he has gathered over the years, together with helpful correspondence and interviews with friends and coll­ eagues, both Nepali and foreign, all of which have been very help­ ful in planning the drawings and writing the text. The artist, Hem Poudyal, is a Nepali residentin Kathmandu. He has taken the subjects defined by the author and turned them into the cover painting and the numerous drawings which are used throughout the book to further convey its message. The author gives special thanks to this friend. CONTENTS 1. Men in Beards, Hoods and Robes, 71 2. Language, Books, Message, 39 3. People Who Seek, Find, Tell, 63 4. People Who Preach, Teach and Heal, 91 5. End of the Ranas, Revolution, New Nepal, 117 6. Bird Trips, The Dikshit Letter, A New Mission, 133 7. Riding the Tide Into Nepal, 151 8. Into the Hilly Regions, 183 9. Development Is A Many-Faceted Process, 211 10. Inside the United Mission, 243 11. Nepal And The Gospel of God, 265 Bibliography and Source Materials Appendix I-Member Bodies of The United Mission, 269 Appendix II - The General Agreement, 270 Appendix III-Profile of UM N Personnel, 271 Appendix IV-Projects of the United Mission, 273 Source Materials, 275 _____ __ s - -- N D I CHAPTER 1 MEN IN BEARDS, HOODS AND ROBES The Great Himalaya Mountain Range is the earth's most severely buckled piece of crust. The range is an incredibly rough and jumbled wall of peaks and mountains, 100 miles wide, 5 miles high and 1,500 miles long. This huge barrier curves between Afghanistan and China, across the under-belly of Asia, separating the interior of the continent from the southern Hindustan peninsula. From ancient times the people living within the mountains found ways to move around among the deep valleys and tempestu­ ous rivers, along the sides of the ravines and through the high passes between the snowy peaks. They found passages at a score of places where they could make their way from one side to the other of the 100-mile wide barrier. Their narrow paths became routes over which traders and travellers passed back and forth between central Asia and Hindustan. The mountain peoples controlled these roads and made a living from them. Our story begins on one of those ancient roads that winds through 1 the mountains at just about the middle of the long range. A small group of travellers has been moving for 35 days across the northern Gangetic plain of Hindustan (present day India), through the jungles and up over the middle Himalayas and has entered the Nepal Valley. Excitement is mounting among the people in Kath­ mandu as the news spreads about the approaching caravan. There is added curiosity because it has been reported that there are strange European people among the travellers. Toward dusk the caravan straggles from the east across the valley, crosses the Bagmati River, past fields and scattered farm houses, and passes into a gate and down the street of the city. Some stop at travellers' open resting shelters, and others go on to enter the low tunnel-like doors into the inner courts of the houses of the city. Among them, watched by curious eyes from doorways and upper windows, strode two extra-foreign men. They wore full-length dark-brown robes, gathered at the waist by a rope-belt and topped with a pointed hood over their heads. Their beards were black and full. They carried staves and walked in sandals and their porters followed them with loads of baggage. They were obviously attached to some mer­ chant because they followed him into a tunnel-doorway of a house and were lost to sight. This caravan travelled in the late winter, when weather condi­ tions were favorable. According to the old Hindu calendar of the local people they had arrived in Kathmandu in the eleventh month, Fagun, in the year 1764. The Europeans wrote in their journals that they arrived according to their Gregorian calendar on 21st of February, A.D. 1707. This cool and dry season of the year was the best time for trade and travellers to move over the Himalayas. The route which passed through Kathmandu was one of the major roads. This city had a remarkable location. It was situated in a wide oval valley, shaped somewhat like a bowl, sunk deep and back in the central Himalayas. Like an oasis is to travellers in the desert, so this town and valley were to travellers coming over weeks of the most arduous kind of travel from either side of the mighty Himalayan barrier. Approxi­ mately mid-way on the route was this blessed valley of cultivation, civilization, protection. Here the weary traveller could rest and find renewal; here were facilities for living; here he could re-pack, re-stock, re-organize and strike out again on the on-going laps of his journey, whether to the north or the south. The city-kingdom of Kathmandu controlled that stretch of the road which passed 2 through its territory and taxed travellers and goods. People of the tiny kingdom worked as porters for the travellers. Merchants in the town were go-between bankers and traders with shops and warehouses stocked with merchandise. In these times the inhabitants of Kathmandu saw strangers from China, Turkistan, Tibet, on the north side, and a variety of peoples from the kingdoms of the Moghul Empire and Hindustan on the south side. Muslims from Kashmir and the Punjab had been invited from earlier times to trade and establish residence in the city, so their kinds of people were familiar. These Muslims did much of the trade-caravan travelling. Though traders and pilgrims made up the majority of the travellers, there occasionally were officials and emissaries of kings who travelled through. And some folks even told of the one or two strangers from the far-away and little-known lands of Europe who had passed through in times past. These were unsettled and rough times. The Moghul Empire, of Muslim rulers, over·a basically Hindu population, was beginning to disintegrate. The last great Emperor, Aurangzeb, died in this year that our story begins. Subject kings and governors across north India were growing more independent and stirring around to serve their own interests. Talk in the houses of Kathmandu was about the growing presence of Portuguese, French, Dutch and English people who were coming to the coastal towns of Hindustan and moving more and more into the interior. The foreigners were setting up compounds for their dwellings, warehouses and offices and making deals with the Emperor and governors. They brought along their own guards and soldiers. The people of Kathmandu gleaned from the caravan travellers all the news they could about the goings-on across the vast plains of Hindustan. For our two men of the beards, hoods and robes there followed many busy days of negotiating with officials over tax and permits to proceed on their way, ofre-packingluggage, exchanging money, talking over news and views, and getting acquainted with the Valley and people. They made their appearance often in the streets and out in the country-side. Everybody had an opportunity to see them. Little by little their story was pieced together by the inhabitants. They were Capuchin missionary Priests of the Christian religion, the religion of the far-away lands of the West.