A Quaker who joined freedom struggle by Randeep Wadehra

An American in Khadi by Asha Sharma. Penguin, New Delhi. Pages xii + 426. Rs 395.

HERE is a riddle for you: who was the only non-Indian to sign the Congress manifesto in 1921 calling upon Indians to quit government service? Stumped? OK, here is a clue. That man was a Quaker and the only American to be jailed for actively participating in India’s freedom struggle. He had earned the ire of the British colonial rulers for his articles in The Tribune, which were deemed to "spread sedition". Pass?

Another clue: he almost single-handedly turned Himachal Pradesh into the apple state of India. Yes!!! You are right. He is Samuel Evans Stokes, Indianised as Satyanand Stokes.

Not many people outside Himachal Pradesh know about this American who contributed so much to the Indian nation. He was an idealist, rebel, visionary, social reformer, ascetic and political worker — a heady mix indeed. At a time when the golden jubilee of our Constitution is being celebrated and the names of many great Indians are being recollected, Satyanand Stokes has been ignored. He was the only American and one among the few westerners to serve the Indian cause with a great sense of dedication.

Samuel Evans Stokes set out for India from Philadelphia on January 9, 1904, much against his parents’ wishes. He had not completed his education, nor acquired any professional skill. He also let go of the opportunity to run the Stokes and Parish Machine Company set up by his father and a reputed manufacturer of elevators.

The 21-year-old lad had no idea about the duration of his stay in India but his aim was clear: to serve in the leprosy home run by Dr Marcus Carleton at Subathu. Little did he realise then that his life was about to be transformed beyond his wildest imagination.

At Subathu he showed that serving the sick was his forte. He put in much time and effort learning the local language. Though he had visited the leprosy homes run by Christian missionaries at Taran Tarn and Kotgarh, he felt happy leading a simple life amongst the villagers at Subathu. He was much enchanted by the "wondrous splendour" of the Himalayas.

Soon he decided to stay permanently in India. Despite his Christian upbringing and the good work that the missionaries were doing, Samuel developed an aversion for organised work. He wanted to serve the humanity by staying out of the organisational structure of the Church.

Refusing to be enticed by the trappings of a white man’s sojourn in the colonised India, Stokes consciously tried to befriend the locals who, while greeting him warmly, preferred to keep a deferential distance.

He decided to lead a spartan life as exemplified by St Francis of Assisi. In his quest for relationship on equal terms with the Indians, he changed his food habits as well as his "bada sahib" habiliment. The 1905 earthquake in Kangra saw Stokes at his best as a genuine servant of humanity.

Though appointed by the government to distribute money and other assistance among the quake affected, Stokes refused to use the government funds. Instead he used his own savings for the purpose. Though he learnt what a thankless job it was, he did not regret completing it. The rigours of his work took their toll. He became severely ill.

After recovering, ignoring his well wishers’ advice, he stayed on in India. A small village near Kotgarh became his "karma bhoomi". He gave away all his belongings to lead as ascetic life. this astonished the locals. Soon the story of a saib becoming a sadhu spread far and wide attracting visitrs who paid homage to his courage and fortitude. A wealthy orthodox Brahmin remarked, "Now, you are one of us." However he had to flee when a local Rajput lad, Dhan Singh, declared his intention to become a Christian. Stokes took him away to the plains.

Though his attempts to convert Brahmins and Rajputs in Punjab earned Stokes the ire of the Arya Samajists, he had the advantage of being a sadhu — a status that overshadowed the fact of he being a Christian. He was able to befriend them as well as the villagers by his selfless service and love.

When plague hit the region in 1907 Stokes worked among the affected and earned their respect. Soon he overcame his prejudices against Indians and discovered many virtues in the way of life of the locals. His interaction with the Arya Samaj gave him first hand experience of the running of gurukuls at Hardwar. This inspired him to establish a Christian school at Kotgarh. This should be an eye-opener to those who never tire of running down traditional Indian institutions.

Apart from serving the poor, the lepers and victims of epidemics, Stokes made immense contribution in the field of education by fusing the Indian and western systems. It was not easy for him, as, on the one hand, he had to deal with local prejudices and, on the other, with a not-so-cooperative government machinery.

True to his rebel genes, he decided to leave the "Brotherhood of Imitation of Jesus" and settled down as an ordinary householder after marrying a local "pahari" girl. Another reason was his unease with the Indian attitude towards the code of living. They believed that a normal householder cannot live up to the exacting standards set for a sadhu, even when such standards of conduct are deemed as most desirable. He wanted to cut through the double standards practised by the locals by setting a personal example. He was also disappointed with the racist practices of missionaries.

Thus he declared: " I shall as far as in me lies become an Indian, marry an Indian girl and, if God gives me sons and daughters, bring them up absolutely as Indians in the matter of life, language, dress and education. I shall try to make my home life, in all aspects, a gospel of what Indian home life should be..." He married a first generation Rajput Christian girl named Agnes.

In 1920 he clashed with the government over the despicable begar practised by it. Though the British were only continuing what was being practised by the various chiefs in the hills, Stokes found it unjust, exploitative and inhuman. Gandhi gave unstinted support to the Stokes struggle. In a message to the people of Simla hill states he said, "You should continue under the guidance of Stokes and suspend all kar and begar to the government and to the state... In your efforts I am with you with all my heart and soul."

Soon Stokes got involved in India’s freedom struggle — as he was inspired by the Gandhi-led freedom movement. Stokes was convinced that India would not only become a free nation but also a world power in due course. After the Congress special session in 1920 at Calcutta, Stokes wrote a series of articles in the Bombay Chronicle entittled "A Study in Non-cooperation". He declared, " (our) Ultimate goal must be absolute swaraj..." Stokes became a full-fledged delegate from Kotgarh to the All India Congress Committee which met at Nagpur in 1920.

He identified totally with the Indian aspirations. On July 31, 1921, when foreigners were warned to keep away from the public burning of imported clothes, Stokes along with an English nurse attended a bonfire. Two whites in an ocean of brown humanity must have been a scene to watch! But one must admire their courage of conviction for standing up against the unjust regime that was culturally supposed to be their own. Stokes started wearing khadi after that event.

Stokes opposed the attempts of the moderate Indian leaders — who had split from the Congress — to accord a welcome to the Prince of Wales on his visit in November, 1921. He considered it foolish and unmanly for Indians to treat the Prince as their own. The British government was particularly wary of the Punjab city of Lahore where the Congress committee, the Khilafat committee and various Sikh organisations had united in holding anti-government demonstrations to protest against the Prince’s visit there in February. Stokes was the first PPCC member to be detained on December 3 under Section 108 of the CrPC.

Stokes’ trial was covered in great detail by The Tribune. He was eventually sentenced to six months in jail. The Tribune denounced the sentence on Stokes as a "grievous failure of justice".

This is what Gandhi had to say in an article in Young India on Stokes’ arrest, "This is a unique move on the part of the government. Mr Stokes is an American who has naturalised himself as a British subject who has made India his home in a manner in which perhaps no other American or Englishman has... But that he should feel with and like an Indian, share his sorrows and throw himself into the struggle, has proved too much for the government. To leave him free to criticise the government was intolerable, so his white skin has proved no protection for him..."

Elsewhere, Gandhi remarks: "As long as we have an Andrews, a Stokes, a Pearson in our midst, so long it will be ungentlemanly on our part to wish every Englishman out of India. Non-cooperators worship Andrews, honour Stokes."

In this excellent biography by Asha Sharma I have personally liked the chapter, "Debates with Gandhi: Test of friendship". This chapter shows how Stokes respected Gandhi and yet did not hesitate to air his views even if they were contrary to those of the Mahatma. For example, Stokes did not accept the idea of compulsory spinning as the sine qua non of participation in the Congress. Well, the two karma yogis might have had their differences yet they remained friends.

Another chapter that I would like to commend to the reader’s attention is, "Came to teach and stayed to learn". It portrays the evolution of Stokes as a thinker. Over a period of time he became increasingly interested in Hindu philosophy.

Inspired by the Arya Samajist assertion that "the soul attains mukti through karma and not by grace", he studied Swami Dayanand Saraswati’s Satyarth Prakash. He considered this philosophy valid. Disillusioned by Christianity as taught and practised in India, he wanted the Church to be imbued with the Indian ethos, independent of the western worldview. Since this volume does not mention whether Stokes was aware of the fact that Christianity had gained roots in the South, especially Kerala, centuries before the West was Christianised, one can say that the wholly Indian Church was already in existence even before the first European set foot on our soil.

There were many Christian precepts and practices with which Stokes did not agree. In Hinduism he found the validation of his rejection of the Christian idea of eternal punishment. His belief in universal salvation, transmigration of the soul and the non-existence of sin as a power in opposition to holiness show him closer to the Vedantic philosophy. In the Hindu scriptures he found "not so much in the actual solutions arrived at, as in the general tendency of thought and method of approach, the key to much that the Christian religion, as evolved in the West, has never attempted to explain, or about which its teachings have been frankly agnostic."

Though Stokes remained true to the Christian canon, he showed courage of conviction when he freely admitted, "The light from the Hindu scriptures had come to fill the gaps in Christianity."

Here it will not be impertinent to mention that Stokes and The Tribune had developed a sort of symbiotic relationship. Several of his anti-British articles like "Oppression in the Simla Hills" (November 24, 1921) were published in the paper. His political as well as social activities were duly covered too. Asha Sharma, the author of the biography under review, has used the paper’s files to write this meticulously documented volume on one of the undeservingly ignored leaders of India’s freedom struggle.

Since the book under review is about an American who came as a missionary, one expects something non-scholarly. But mercifully one does not encounter another Dr Aziz or Chandrapore with its heaps of rubbish as in EM Forster’s novel "A Passage to India", nor is it a wide-eyed autobiograhical account of the sensations experienced by Nirad C. Chaudhuri during his first visit to England and recounted in his "A Passage to England". It certainly does not remanticise the exotic as the two former works do in their respective genres.

Often when one writes about one’s kin or ancestor objectivity suffers. Asha Sharma, who is Samuel Evans Stokes’ granddaughter, has avoided this pitfall. It is indeed a tribute to her erudition and integrity that she has presented the facts as they were. Its detached manner reminds one of S. Gopal’s biography of his father S. Radhakrishnan.

However, one wonders why other historians or research scholars did not take up this subject for publication. Have we already reached a stage where a great personality languishes in the shadows if he or she has no descendant with intellectual propensities?

If you are wondering how, when and why Samuel Evans Stokes came to be known as Satyanand Stokes. Well, for the answer, you will have to read this meticulously chronicled biography of our freedom struggle’s unsung hero, which puts into perspective persons, places and events related to a crucial phase of India’s emergence as a nation.

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2000/20000220/spectrum/books.htm