Freedom at Last

A Novel about the Birth of a New India through Her Struggle for Independence

Robert Paul Roth

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN:
  9781556350931
  9781498249102
• eBook ISBN:
  9781498276160
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

The time is the late 1940s. The place is India on the eve of independence. A history professor and his wife -- Ivar and Maren Lagerstrom -- arrive at a mission college in the southeastern town of Chinnapur. We follow Ivar and Maren as they learn to negotiate Indian society and as they endure trials of weather and disease. But graver crises are coming. Chinnapur is quickly becoming a haven for refugees. When the communist town chairman foments a riot of Koya tribesmen against the influx, a slaughter begins and throws the town into chaos. Robert Paul Roth has created a human-interest tale in which characters under duress become vehicles for significant social and political comment. Offering more than political commentary or local color, however, Freedom at Last reveals the irony of small-town life in uncertain times. Brimming with compelling characters, this novel brings readers close to ambiguities in both missionary activity and political empire.

1

The Arrival

The trip up the narrow Orissa valley was exhausting. It was morning now, and the train was winding through the wooded hills which skirted the southern rim of the deep gorge. On the other side of the roaring river the little town of Chinnapur slept in sequestered silence. For centuries there had been silence here, but since the narrow gauge railroad had been put in from the seacoast, new sounds were beginning to be heard, strange sounds that came not from the crunching of wooden wheels on loose gravel, but from the fulminating roar of a devil-monster that had been sent from the other side of the world. It was a stubby little 2-4-0 engine with an unconventional form of motive power—a multi-cylinder steam locomotive with direct drive. The large inclined cylinders were much like the Climax locomotives used in the logging operations of the high Sierras. This one came from the British Southern Railway “Leader” class of 1938. There was an ominous contrast between the noisily excited train with its belching black smoke and screaming sirens and the lethargic bullock bandies which ambled across the plateau in sight of the charging dragon from the West. As if to mollify its rage the Indians draped garlands of bougainvillea over its boiler and steam chest and around its nose.

The train was a series of rickety boxes, each almost as high as it was long and completely shut off from the next one. The window casings had no less than three windows, one glass, one screen, and a third with wooden Venetians. They provided protection from the bands of monkeys that would clamber on the sides of the coaches and ride the train free from Nidvol to Chinnapur. None of the windows, however, kept out any of the grimy soot from the engine, and the fan on the ceiling only stirred up the dust. There were six bunks in the compartment with no curtains for privacy and no mattresses or sheets. Twelve people had crowded into this second-class compartment with all their suitcases and bedding. Maren Lagerstrom, the only woman among three Americans and nine Indians, paced mentally back and forth like Daniel in the lions’ den. She was brought safely through the night, however, and with fatigued restlessness, she and her husband, Dr. Ivar Lagerstrom, stretched their necks awkwardly through the window to get a glimpse of the little town where they had been called to live and work.

Padre Bengl had come to Madras to meet their ship and escort them up to Chinnapur. He was a dumpy little fellow with a paunch like a laughing Buddha, and he was never seen in public, or in private either for that matter, if we can believe the testimony of his wife, without a large brass Crusader’s cross over his tattered cassock vest. For a Lutheran he was extremely “high Church” in his habits both inside and outside the chancel; but in spite of his ecclesiastical fussiness, he was an amiable fellow whose intolerance was based on principle rather than prejudice.

The Lagerstroms were glad to have him accompany them on this last leg of their arduous journey. They had come to Madras from San Francisco on the Marine Adder, a converted United States Marine troop transport which took civilian passengers to the Orient after the war. Ivar had gotten terribly seasick on the way to Hawaii and Maren had had her turn on the Bay of Bengal. Most of the passengers were Chinese, returning to the land of their birth either to spend the fortune they had made in America during the war or to die in their homeland. There were a few Indians on board and a young Jewish woman with a German passport who was going to India to marry an Indian in Calcutta. The Indians were eager to engage Ivar in conversation, invariably to badger him about American imperialism and the alliance of the United States with Britain. Dr. Subramanian taunted him: “What right did Roosevelt have to make the Atlantic Charter and never put it into effect? Where are the four freedoms in India? Why did he let Churchill exempt the British Empire?” Ivar enjoyed the banter but he suspected many of the young Indian men talked to him only to get closer to his exquisitely lovely wife.

Now travel in India for poor missionaries was a last ditch struggle for life ever since the British had announced their intention to grant India complete independence. The date had not yet been fixed, but everyone knew it would come sooner than anyone had formerly anticipated. Already the clerks and peons in government service were beginning to show an unusual hauteur never before dared. Customs inspection had been a most trying ordeal, and without Bengl’s artful diplomacy with the austere little official in the godown, the Lagerstroms would have had to pay several thousand rupees duty on household effects which by law should have been exempt. The godown was stinking. Hundreds of people were crammed with their luggage into a building forty feet wide and fifty feet long. Although it was January the temperature was above ninety degrees; and the smell of human sweat, mixed with the sweet butter fat with which the natives greased their hair, created such a miasmic stench that if Bengl had not rescued the newcomers as promptly as he did, both Ivar and Maren would have collapsed. A little bakhshish, slipped from his hand to the inspector’s, produced smiles on all sides.

As the pokey little train came into full view of Chinnapur, before it crossed a narrow bullock bandy trail, it blew its whistle—two long, one short, and another long blast. It was more of a scream than a whistle, a portentous shriek to warn the sleepy people of Chinnapur that something is a-borning.

Bengl began to explain to the Lagerstroms the lay of the land. “Do you see that narrow spit of land jutting out into the river?” He was pointing beyond the high bridge which they were beginning to cross. It spanned the gorge 150 feet above the raging Orissa with an escarpment that rose 1300 feet on the south side and a much lower plateau that stretched narrowly to the north where the ancient city of Chinnapur lay. Here 50,000 people dwelled in a quaint and classic ambiance unspoiled by Western architecture. Even the buildings of the two Missions were designed in the style of the ancient Indian Rajahs. “There are two bluffs just this side of that point,” continued Bengl. “On one you can see a large solitary tamal tree and on the other are two white bungalows. The more distant one is where you will live. It is called the Zenana bungalow because it was long occupied by single women.”

“Do you see it, Maren?” exclaimed Ivar. “That’s going to be our home for a long while.” He was excited but Maren was so exhausted from the trip she hardly had the strength to answer. She simply sighed a low, “uhuh,” and continued gazing blankly at the spread of mud buildings with thatched roofs.

“On the other side of your compound is Dr. and Mrs. Schulz’s bungalow. He will be close enough to keep an eye on you so that you don’t get into any mischief.” Dr. Schulz was the principal of Chinnapur College where Ivar was scheduled to teach.

“And I suppose the big structure beyond our bungalow is one of the College buildings? It looks like the biggest building in the whole town.”

“Yaas, my boy, yaas. That is the administration building, Heyer Hall. You will do most of your teaching there. You see the College compound stretches along the river for quite some distance, all the way to that big Tamal tree. The entire compound is enclosed by a red sandstone wall ten feet high and two feet thick. Of course, the Mission did not build this parapet. It belonged to an ancient palace which was occupied centuries ago by the Rajahs of the Palnad. It was their northernmost outpost. The hill on which your bungalow is located was called the Garden of the Moon, and it was most lavishly ornamented with a series of shallow pools inlaid with precious rubies, emeralds, lapis lazuli, and sparkling sapphires. This is all gone now, but the entrance to the great tunnel which was used as a place of refuge is still there with all its magnificent carving and symbolism. Ah, yes, a great heritage from a lost culture, yaas, yaas.”

“So we are going to live in the Garden of the Moon,” said Ivar. “Did you hear that, honey? Sounds romantic, doesn’t it?”

Maren returned a tired smile, but said nothing. She was a beautiful young woman, tall and slender, with hair the color of new honey and eyes transparent blue like the cerulean sky at sunset. She was a Minnesota Swede, quiet and unassuming in her manner, devoted to the simple things in life, and completely charmed by her husband. She was deeply religious too, but in her own way. She worshipped in silence and spent her energies making other people comfortable and happy. She disliked prayer meetings and testimonials; she would rather serve God by washing the neck of a hospital patient than by washing away the sins of her youth in the frenzied cathartic of a Wednesday night confessional. Some would have called her worldly, but it was merely a preoccupation with things of immediate necessity which kept her from thinking beyond the realm of the practical. If a bleeding nose had to be dressed, she was on hand with quiet efficiency, and there just was not time for preaching about sin and salvation.

Her husband was much like her in this respect. Although he had come from a long line of ministerial antecedents dating back to 1700, Dr. Lagerstrom was not himself a clergyman. He had received his doctorate in history from the University of Chicago after serving as a war correspondent in the United States Army for four years. He probably would never have become a missionary if it had not been for his experiences in the war. Ever since he was a child he had been rebellious and original in his thinking. He was the type that always gets caught day-dreaming in school. His ideals were lofty, and yet his inclination was toward the pragmatic, the effectual, the fruitful. While he was at the University preparing to write his dissertation the war broke out. He and Maren were hastily married somewhat against the wishes of both their parents, although they had known each other since childhood. Then Ivar was sent to the Pacific to follow up the operations of the American forces all the way from Guadalcanal to the Philippines. He was one of the first to make contact with the American prisoners in the brutal concentration camp at Santo Thomas University in Manila. Taking a foolhardy risk, he and two other correspondents rode a Jeep behind the Japanese lines and came up to the University hill from the rear. They were captured, of course, by the surprised guards and taken into the fortified camp. They had no fear, however, because of their implicit confidence in the rapid advance of the American forces through the battered city. It was only two days later that the occupying army moved in and released them with the starved and beaten prisoners.

It was this experience in Manila, more than anything else, which set Ivar’s mind to thinking seriously about the Mission program of the Church. He had seen Manila after the ruthless shelling and bombing had been done in the American effort to occupy the city. There was nothing left but rubble and ashes in the center city, but underneath the heap of wreckage one could detect with only a slight stretch of imagination that the city of Manila must have presented at one time a most beautiful display of parks, public buildings, tropical gardens, and—most striking of all—a host of towered churches. As a student of history Ivar constantly sought the meaning of the various symbols of culture, and the Church was one of these ever-present, ever-forceful factors in human life which any historian must take into consideration if one is to give an adequate interpretation of the course of human events. He used to argue incessantly with his friends at Chicago over the contribution of religion to society. The standard correct judgment was a disdainful dismissal of religion because it produces wars and bigotry and a brake on the wheels of progress. He would counter with Alfred North Whitehead’s thesis that religion is the force that thrusts history in its passage forward toward the realization of universal and concrete values. This argument would carry some weight with his colleagues and professors, but he was always mystified when he came home and talked with his father who was the pastor of a Lutheran church in Red Wing, Minnesota. Ivar’s father would say yes, but Whitehead’s apologetic for God is not only minimal but perverse because it identifies God with nature and so confuses the Creator with the creature, leaving out the revelation of the Cross. Whitehead’s God was not only the initiator of the process of reality; God was also the consequence of the passage of actual occasions in the process. In such a scheme there could not be a story with beginning, ending, and a climax such as the Christian Gospel reveals. There could be no place for the Cross as the surprising event in the drama which provides meaning and direction. This story of the Cross had always bothered Ivar because he could see no practical value in a crucifixion which seemed such a foolish miscarriage of justice.

But when Ivar saw these ruined monuments of Philippine culture, he saw the Church and the churches no longer as an academic observer. Now he saw what energy they bring to the life of the people, because it was the Church that first not only inspired the people to rebuild but actually undertook the cross-bearing task. Now Ivar saw that he had to get into the stream of life and fight with his bare hands. There could be no cheering from the grandstands, nor even coaching from the sidelines. He had to get into the fracas and do something to right the wrongs which had been committed by a generation perverted by greed, power, and, worst of all, by the idolatrous prostitution of ideas and loyalties.

Ivar’s high school English teacher had introduced him to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Among the pilgrims on their way to the cathedral was a scholar about whom it was said, “And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche.” Learning and teaching became Ivar’s dream and goal for his life, and now he had found the place to pursue it.

Ivar’s father gave him full support. Maren loved Ivar enough to follow him to the ends of the earth, but she was also drawn and challenged by service as a nurse in a strange and exotic land. His mother had mixed emotions, as did Maren’s parents. They devoutly believed in the mission of the Church, but they never expected it to take their own children from the family hearth. Ivar’s greatest opposition, however, came from his professors and student friends at the University. The climate of opinion was liberal and pluralist. Why should an American convert East Indians to our ways of thinking and doing things? One culture cannot be judged superior to another, only different. Let the Indians not only govern themselves but also choose their own religion and life style.

Ivar’s study of history led him to reject this pluralism as too simplistic. Surely technological differences registered superiority in winning the war, and now people all over the world were clamoring for American Jeeps and refrigerators. Perhaps art forms...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Chapter 1: The Arrival
• Chapter 2: The Welcome
• Chapter 3: Schulz and Bengl
• Chapter 4: The Zenana Bungalow
• Chapter 5: Pentayya
• Chapter 6: The Club
• Chapter 7: Maren
• Chapter 8: Jeremiah
• Chapter 9: Little Flower
• Chapter 10: The Mad Vision
• Chapter 11: Father Peet
• Chapter 12: The Munshi
• Chapter 13: Swaraj
• Chapter 14: Old Stripes
• Chapter 15: Rampa
• Chapter 16: Typhoon
• Chapter 17: Rukmini’s Residence
• Chapter 18: Diwali
• Chapter 19: Rani
• Chapter 20: Cholera
• Chapter 21: The Birth
• Chapter 22: The Baptism
• Chapter 23: Kumari
• Chapter 24: Refugees
• Chapter 25: The Koyas
• Chapter 26: Martyrs
• Chapter 27: Mukkerji
• Chapter 28: Lakshmi
• Chapter 29: Ivar