Shah Jahan, the Mughal Emperor, brought Persian architects to build the Taj Mahal in Agra, on the bank of the river Yamuna. A century later (1837-1838), the monsoon failed and a severe famine devastated the Agra region. Over 800,000 people starved to death.
The Mughals still ruled on the bank of the Yamuna, 150 miles north in Delhi. The Yamuna continued to flow down another 300 miles before merging with the Ganga in Allahabad, now renamed Prayagraj.
Both the Yamuna and the Ganga come gushing down from the snow-clad Himalayas. So should ‘Doab,’ the land between the two rivers, lack water? Proby Thomas Cautley (1802-1871), a British military engineer, said, “NO.” He decided to change the future.
Between 1842 and 1854, Cautley built the Ganga Canal System which now irrigates about 9,000 square miles of agricultural land. The mission to build the world’s largest canal system of that day came with many challenges: religious, political, financial, technical and educational.
The Hindu priests objected to his “Christian” conspiracy to “imprison” the spirit of goddess Ganga by building a barrage that would re-direct its flow. They worshipped the life-giving river and built temples and ashrams along its banks. There, our people learned the rites of river worship. They were also taught meditation and tantric (sexual) techniques to empty their minds in order to experience inner bliss.
India had plenty of leaders as capable as Cautley, but they used their abilities to organize festivals on the banks of “holy” rivers. No one ever built an institution to train engineers to establish human dominion over them. Our wealthy men financed grand temples; a vision of the Ganga Canal did not interest them.
Cautley was an employee of the British East India Company which was created to trade and make money for its directors and shareholders. Investing in canals was not its mission. Therefore, Cautley had to turn to the British Parliament.
Thankfully, in 1833, Parliament had already accepted Lord Macaulay’s case that Britain must rule over India to bless and prepare her for freedom. Macaulay’s childhood friend, Sir Charles Grant Jr., was the Company’s head and a Member of Parliament. His father, Charles Grant (Senior), had witnessed the horrors of the Bengal famine of 1770 and called to reform East India Company’s rule. In 1790, Grant Sr. teamed up with William Wilberforce and Lord Macaulay’s father, Zachary Macaulay, to change colonialism.
In Divine Providence, 1837 marked the beginning of the Victorian Era—an age in which the moral fervor of the Evangelical movement influenced public policy as much as Capitalism’s economic interests. The Parliament’s support made it possible to finance the Ganga Canal.
Cautley’s personal credibility undergirded his optimism. As the son of an Evangelical priest, Rev. Thomas Cautley, Proby was nurtured in the Bible. He was unashamed of his belief that human beings were created to rule over creation, not to worship rivers or idols. He rejected India’s pessimistic “Noble Truth” that “Life is suffering,” which implied that the only way to escape suffering was to escape life itself.
To Cautley, the famine confirmed that the land and all of humanity were under a curse, brought on by sin. He believed the Gospel that God desires to forgive our sins and make us His sons. Forgiveness delivers us from the curse. He believed that God sent the Savior to bear our sin and its curse on Calvary’s cross. Salvation makes a tangible difference.
Biblical optimism was already revolutionizing India. However, he did not impose his faith upon the people he wanted to serve. He appeased his religious opponents by building bathing ghats on the Ganga. This enabled Hindu priests to continue their profession of giving ritual baths to devotees even during the monsoon.
Cautley needed not just money but also engineers to build the Ganga Canal. No Indian had ever built an institution to train engineers. Cautley’s dream to build an engineering college was supported by Lieutenant Governor James Thomason (1804-1853). After Independence, the governments of India upgraded James Thomason Engineering College to the status of an Engineering University and finally to the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Roorkee.
The college taught more than science and practical skills. It also imparted an optimistic worldview, ethical values, work ethic and a cooperative spirit that are necessary for building lasting projects and flourishing nations.
Where would they find students qualified to enroll in an engineering college that fights hunger and famines? That challenge inspired James Thomason to do what no Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim or Sikh ruler had done in North India. He established 857 schools throughout that region. During the last few years, the militant Hindu government has closed down more than 20,000 public schools in UP.
This educational movement was the fruit of a new worldview that the Bible brought to India. It believed that the true wealth of a nation lies buried in the hearts and minds of its people and that education brings out that inner wealth. Hunters/gatherers toil day and night, but whether their labor will produce wealth depends on many factors. The key question is: how much mind, skill, planning, as well as the community’s trust and cooperation, is invested in that work. Economic flourishing depends on the Intellectual and moral development of the people. Education enables them to harness God-given resources such as water, land, sunlight and petroleum.
Colonialism had no need to invest in educating Indian masses. James Thomason, the governor, promoted education because he had studied the Bible under his father, Rev. Thomas Truebody Thomason (1774-1829). Rev. Thomason came to Bengal in 1808, set up the first Church Missionary Society schools in Bengal, founded a Schoolbook Society and a Female Orphan Society for the illegitimate children of Europeans. He helped establish Calcutta’s Bible Society and translated the Old Testament into Hindustani.
Before coming to Bengal and serving as a Chaplain to the East India Company, Rev. Thomason had served as a “curate” or assistant, to Rev. Charles Simeon in Cambridge. Simeon is considered the Father of the Christian movement known as Evangelicalism. He was the one who trained leaders such as Claudius Buchanan and Henry Martyn, who were sent to help reform the East India Company and spark India’s Renaissance.
The most famous early Indian reformers were Raja Ram Mohan Roy (1772-1833), Keshab Chandra Sen (1838-1884), Dayananda Saraswati (1824-1883), Mahatma Jotiba Phule (1827-1890), and Bhimrao Ambedkar (1891-1956).
They disagreed on many things but shared one conviction in common: Idolatry is a root of India’s problems. A people who worship nature cannot establish dominion over it. Economic flourishing, including cultivation of the land, requires cultivation of the human mind. Nature has to be studied if we are to establish human rule over it.
VISHAL MANGALWADI is the author of “The Bible and the Making of Modern India”
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