Related articles and links |  1 of 3

On January 14, 1908, readers of the Chicago Daily News stumbled on a startling tale. A few pages in—among ads for home furnishings, Clark's thread, and cotton pillowcases—was an article by noted journalist William T. Ellis detailing his recent visit to Mukti, a Christian community in western India. "Have Gift of Tongues," the headline read. "Girl Widows of Christian Church in India Develop Wonderful Phenomena."

For years, many American Protestants had supported Mukti and its legendary founder, Pandita Ramabai. Thousands more followed accounts in the religious press that detailed this Brahman woman's expanding efforts on behalf of high-caste widows, many of whom were children facing hopeless futures. Ramabai first visited the United States in 1886, and her winsome personality, profound Sanskrit learning, and devotion to Indian women immediately won American hearts.

Over the years, Ramabai's American support base shifted, becoming more evangelical as her own sympathies moved in that direction. In time, she made her educational work forthrightly Christian though culturally Hindu. She refused to be co-opted by sectarian agendas: American Protestants of many persuasions considered her one of themselves. By 1905, she had responsibility for over 2,000 people, the majority of whom lived in the settlement she called Mukti ("salvation") near the village of Kedgaon. Beginning in 1905, waves of revival swept the community. When William Ellis reported strange religious happenings at Mukti, he knew he had a story that would fascinate American readers.

Ellis found at Mukti "an extraordinary religious manifestation, as remarkable as anything in connection with the great revival in Wales." Unwilling to pass judgment, he chose simply to "narrate, soberly and consecutively, what I have seen and heard concerning this 'baptism with fire' and pouring out of 'the gift of tongues,' whereby ignorant Hindoo girls speak in Sanskrit, Hebrew, Greek, English, and other languages as yet unidentified."

Ellis puzzled over a noisy prayer meeting with 30 girls, some praying aloud, others crying "at the top of their lungs." Some sat on the floor, with heads touching the floor; others stood and swayed; a few knelt and rocked; still others twitched and jerked as if convulsing. The girls seemed unconscious of one another, and amid the clamor, their intense concentration surprised Ellis.

Oddly, he learned that occasionally one or another could not speak at all. These believed God "smote them dumb" and obliged them to write messages rather than to speak them. "Sometimes," Ellis reported, "the girls will go about their tasks for days, unable to utter a word though they understand perfectly all that is said to them and are able to pray in other tongues. And when they specially pray for the power to do so, they are able to speak in religious meetings."

When Ellis confronted Ramabai for an explanation, she told him that she did not "make a special point of the gift of tongues." She never "exhibited" the tongues speakers, and she admitted an ongoing problem of "weeding out the false from the true." "There are other spirits than the Holy Spirit," she reminded him, "and when a girl begins to try to speak in another tongue, apparently imitating her sisters without mentioning the name or blood of Jesus, I go up to her and speak to her or touch her on the shoulder, and she stops at once. On the other hand, if a girl is praying in the Spirit I cannot stop her, no matter how sharply I speak to her or shake her."

next page... |  1 of 3

September (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49