by Paul Shears
(FROM The Gandhi Way, U.K., no.: 160, Summer2024)
In the late 1920s, the flag of the Indian National Congress was seen flying over a small Christian ashram on the outskirts of Poona (Pune).
In a country, and at a time, when the established Anglican Church was closely linked to the British control of India, this was a radical demonstration of support for the Indian independence movement, and for Gandhi’s ideals and strategy.
Who were these ‘Unconventional Christians?’
The story begins with the Anglican priest and Cambridge graduate, Charles Freer (CF) Andrews, who first went to India in 1904, to teach at St. Stephen’s College in Delhi. He very quickly became disenchanted (perhaps alarmed) at the attitude of many of the British (both official and unofficial) to his Indian colleagues, and to Indians in general. Andrews gradually identified himself more with the aspirations for a free India rather than the continuing Raj, and became involved in, and supported, the Indian National Congress.
He was respected by nationalist Indian politicians, both because of his commitment to their cause and, because of his background and position, he was listened to, if not agreed with, by British officialdom.
In 1914, the Indian political leader Gopal Krishna Gokhale asked Andrews if he would go to South Africa to help the Indian communities in Natal in their grievances against the government.
On arrival, an event occurred that would influence the rest of his life: he met Mohandas Gandhi, then practicing law and leading the Indian struggles against the government.
Andrews returned to India via London in April 1914, and Gandhi himself returned to India, also via London, in early 1915. In the following years, he continued to work with Gandhi and the Indian National Congress, and accompanied Gandhi to the Second Round Table Conference in 1931.
While Andrews was greatly influenced by Gandhi, another young Anglican priest was influenced by CF Andrews, and his love for, and commitment to India. This was Jack Copley Winslow. Having graduated from Oxford, Winslow had paid a short visit to India in 1905, before his ordination.
In Delhi, he met CF Andrews, who was to become a life long friend and mentor, and a major influence on Winslow’s future work in India. After parish work and teaching in England, Winslow went to India with a missionary society in 1914, initially to the coastal region south of Bombay (Mumbai), and then, from 1915 to 1919, as the principal of the missionary high school in Ahmednagar.
While his life was partly that of a typical English missionary worker, unlike most other missionaries, he developed many Indian friends, particularly the distinguished Indian Christian poet Narayan Vaman Tilak, and became increasingly interested in Indian life and culture, and in aspects of Hinduism.
Winslow returned to England on furlough in 1919, and began to reflect on his time in India. He became aware of the tremendous gap between the ruling British, at every level, including the church, and Indians, whether villagers or intellectuals. He felt that if he was to return to India, it was to be in a very different, and equal, relationship. The impact of the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre in Amritsar in April 1919 had a significant affect on Winslow.
The massacre, in Winslow’s view, “gathered into one blazing point all the smouldering resentment awakened by a hundred lesser acts of cold superciliousness and cynical contempt, of callous indifference on the part of Englishmen to Indian susceptibilities”.
While he had increasing sympathy with India’s need for independence, he saw his role, at this stage of his ideas, still to be based very much on his Christianity, and looking for more appropriate ‘Indianised’ ways of implementing this.
He felt that the concept of a Christian ashram, open equally to Indian and British members, with a simple, communal life style, and incorporating Indian forms of worship, including bhajans and other Indian devotional songs would be a way of bringing Christianity into a grounded Indian context, far from what most Indians saw the church to be, a rather privileged part of the British establishment.
On his return to Ahmednagar in 1920, Winslow gathered together a small group of Indian Christians to form the nucleus of an ashram community called Christa Seva Sangha ‘The Fellowship of the Servants of Christ’.
In its early years. while in sympathy with Indian aspirations, no active political involvement with the freedom movement or the work of Gandhi has been recorded. The ashram was involved in local social and some evangelistic work, but did not really expand as Winslow had perhaps hoped.
Things took a significant change in 1926/27, and it is from then that the ashram and its members become more involved with Gandhi and the freedom struggle.
Winslow had returned to England in 1926, to raise awareness about the ashram, and to seek possible new members who would enable it to continue. He was successful in his aim, and six new members decided to join, three ‘laymen’ who brought great practical skills to the new ashram that was to be built close to Poona (with funds from a generous benefactor), and three ordained Anglican priests, Algy Robertson, Verrier Elwin and Oliver Fielding Clarke. Robertson was largely responsible for the future change of the ashram to a more traditional Franciscan model, to Winslow’s sadness, and Oliver Fielding Clarke, perhaps the most politically radical of them, remained within the church after leaving the ashram.
It was Verrier Elwin however (photo below) who had been increasingly interested in India, Hindu mysticism, and the injustices of British India, during his time at Oxford, both as a student and then an academic and theologian, who became the most committed to Gandhi and the independence movement, (and was the one responsible for later hoisting the Congress flag).
Soon after arriving in Poona, Elwin, with Winslow’s approval, went to a meeting of the International Fellowship being held at Gandhi’s ashram at Sabarmati. At Sabarmati, as Elwin stated: “The impact of Gandhi in those few days was extraordinary. From that moment I was doomed. I now became an ardent disciple”.
In December of 1928, Winslow returned to England for furlough, and Elwin was elected by the ashram community to be the acting acharya (leader) in Winslow’s absence. Elwin’s support of, and activity with the nationalist movement soon began to grow.
He was asked by Vallabhbhai Patel to visit Gujarat to investigate police repression of the no tax campaign that had been started there. The government had taken strong measures to counter the campaign, and large numbers of villagers had migrated into neighbouring Baroda state. Elwin visited over sixty villages and wrote a report: ‘In the deserted villages of Gujarat’, much to the government’s disapproval. Gradually more of the brothers were prepared to be active supporters of Gandhi. One particularly was Shamrao Hivale, who later was to become Elwin’s close friend and colleague in his future work. Some took part in marches to protest against Gandhi’s imprisonment and many wore khadi. In the evenings at meetings, they spoke publicly of their support for Congress.
Each week the ashram became a centre for more Christian ‘rebels’ and missionaries in sympathy with Gandhi. It was at this time that Elwin hoisted the red, white, and green flag of the nationalist movement above the ashram buildings.
Winslow returned to India in late 1930. In March 1931, Winslow and Elwin completed the writing of their book The Dawn of Indian Freedom, after which no one could deny their support for Gandhi and the independence movement.
Elwin had long periods at Sabarmati ashram, spending time with Gandhi, and he increasingly felt that he could no longer give full commitment to the Sangha. He wanted to work more closely and directly with disadvantaged Indian communities, which led to his later departure from the ashram.
Initially he thought of working with the poor in Bombay, but while travelling with Vallabhbhai Patel and Seth Jamnalal Bajaj, another key figure in the independence movement, they suggested, and Gandhi agreed, he should go to live and work with adivasi (tribal) communities in the forests of Central Provinces (now Madhya Pradesh), which was put into practice later that year.
In December 1931 Gandhi returned to India from the Second Round Table Conference in London. The Viceroy had refused Gandhi’s proposal for peace, and national leaders were being arrested. Elwin was with Gandhi in his residence in Bombay when Gandhi was arrested and wrote in detail about Gandhi’s calmness and concern for others when he was being taken to prison.
Among his instructions for future work, Gandhi asked Elwin to go to the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), to Peshawar, to report on government repression of the freedom movement. The leader of the national movement there was Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan, who despite his Pathan origins, was following the nonviolent methods of Gandhi, and was known as ‘the Frontier Gandhi’. He started an army of nonviolent warriors known as the Red Shirts because of the brick dust on their tunics. As the movement extended over large parts of the NWFP, the government and the military began a severe crackdown, and Gaffar Khan and most of the other leaders were arrested.
While there, Elwin was arrested and deported from the province, but not before he had completed the investigation that Gandhi had requested. Soon after this, Elwin, who by now had left the ashram, left for Central Provinces to begin his work with adivasis. He initially worked with the Gonds, developing a ‘Gandhian-Franciscan’ ashram with Shamrao Hivale, and later worked with other adivasi groups. He became an eminent and respected anthropologist and in 1954 (now an Indian citizen), Nehru sent him to north eastern India as adviser on tribal affairs.
After Elwin’s departure from the Sangha (though that was not a cause of his departure), the ashram members began to have differing views on the direction the Sangha should take. A few (but the more dominant) led by Algy Robertson, felt it should be more truly Franciscan and to some degree monastic, with only unmarried, ordained, men being members of the First Order. When Robertson returned to England a few years later, this in fact became the model for the Anglican Society of Saint Francis. Winslow, who never wished for such a ‘restricted’ community, left and returned to England in 1933. Winslow, it must be said, was always in a difficult position. His heart was with Gandhi and the nationalist movement (indeed, he visited Gandhi in Yeravda Jail in Poona after he was arrested in 1932), but as the leader of the ashram and still subject to the authority of the Anglican Church, he could not go too far in conflict with the authorities.
And what did Christa Seva Sangha achieve? Perhaps we can say that while it didn’t last, it didn’t fail. It did not achieve Winslow’s vision of a lasting, truly Indian, Christian community, though he himself admitted at the beginning, it was an ‘experiment’. But, at a crucial period in India’s history, there was a small collection of ‘sahibs’, mostly from privileged and therefore establishment backgrounds, who, with Indian colleagues, were prepared to put their beliefs in justice and humanity to the test, and throw in their lot with Gandhi and the Indian movement for independence.
[Unfortunately, no definitely identified portrait of Winslow has been found. Ed.]
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Paul Shears worked (many years ago) with the Gandhian movement in rural areas of Bihar and Orissa, and with Catholic priests in tribal areas of Chota Nagpur, where he first became aware of the work of Verrier Elwin. He has maintained an ongoing interest in the ashram movement.
The article republished here by kind permission of the author and by kind courtesy of George Paxton, the Editor of The Gandhi Way (U.K.), where the article was originally published.
The Gandhi Way is issued by the Gandhi Foundation (U.K.) and is accessible in its Archives section at https://gandhifoundation.org/.
