Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 341

ITS
RETARDED PROGRESS
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missionaries scattered about the other provinces of the
Peninsula also laboured hard, and with the greatest success,
The French
to extend Christianity amongst the Hindus.
Mission at Pondicherry numbered 60,000 native Christians
in the province of Arcot, and was daily making further
progress when the conquest of the country by Europeans
took place a disastrous event as far as the advance of
Having witnessed the immoral
Christianity was concerned.
and disorderly conduct of the Europeans who then overran
the whole country, the Hindus would hear no more of
a religion which appeared to have so little influence over the
behaviour of those professing it, and who had been brought
up in its tenets and their prejudice against Christianity
has gone on increasing steadily day by day, as the people
became more familiar with Europeans, until it finally
For it is certainly a fact that
received its death-blow.
for the last sixty years very few converts have been made
in India.
Those still remaining (and their number is daily
diminished by apostasy) are mostly the descendants of
the original converts made by the Jesuit missionaries.
About eighty years ago there must have been at least
1,200,000 native Christians in the Peninsula, while now, at
the very utmost, they amount to but one-half of that number.
This holy religion, which, when it was first introduced
into India about 300 years ago, had only such obstacles
as indifference or deep-rooted superstition to contend with,
is now looked upon with unconquerable aversion.
A re-
spectable Hindu who was asked to embrace the Christian
religion, would look upon the suggestion either as a joke,
or else as an insult of the deepest dye.
To such an extreme
is this hatred now carried in some parts, that were a Hindu
of good repute to be on intimate terms with Christians, he
would not dare own it in public.
—
;
A Hindu who embraces Christianity nowadays must
make up his mind to lose everything that makes life
henceforth an outcast from society. He
patrimony, his right to inherit, his
father, mother, wife, children, and friends l
He is aban-
doned and shunned by every one.
1
The law now recognizes a convert's right to his share of the family
pleasant.
He
is
must renounce
his
.
property.
—
Ei>.