Rev. Lyndan Syiem
Today is Thomas Jones Day, in honour of the pioneer Welsh Presbyterian missionary among the Khasi-Jaiñtia people who arrived at Sohra on 22 June, 1841. In 2018, the Government of Meghalaya had notified 22 June as Thomas Jones Day in the six districts of East Khasi, West Khasi, South-West Khasi, Ri Bhoi, West Jaiñtia and East Jaiñtia. There has been plenty of discussion and debate in this newspaper and elsewhere over Thomas Jones. … But what happened to the fledgling Welsh Mission after Jones resigned in 1847? Who succeeded him at Sohra so that the mission grew and became this church of almost eight lakh members in the Khasi-Jaiñtia Hills, and sixteen lakhs in the Presbyterian Church of India?
William Lewis was ethnically Welsh but was born in England, in the great industrial city of Manchester, in 1814. He had the privilege of school education followed by an apprenticeship in one of the city’s factories. He could have become an engineer but felt called to the ministry; so in 1839 he joined the Theological College at Bala, Wales. After ordination and marriage, the Rev. William and Mrs. Mary Lewis embarked from Liverpool and arrived at Sohra on 2nd January, 1843. They came with Rev. Dr. Owen Richards and his six year old son (his wife had passed away in 1836). Their arrival was a great relief to Thomas and Anne Jones who had been struggling on their own for eighteen months.
The subsequent division of work saw William and Mary Lewis running the schools, Dr. Owen Richards treating the sick and wounded, and Thomas Jones preaching, translating books and touring mission stations. The missionaries also shifted base from the crowded soldiers’ camp at Saitsohpen to the present extensive property at Nongsawlia, gifted to the Mission by the Syiem of Hima Sohra, Suba Syiem.
The Lewises faced many initial problems; it was difficult to confine the free-spirited boys from Sohra and the nearby Ri War villages to the classroom. Many dropped out and the three schools at Mawsmai, Mawmluh and Sohra were in danger of closing. So the Lewises had to moderate their Puritan discipline and motivate their students with small rewards and lavish praise. Girls’ education was especially difficult because many families believed that girls who handled quills and books would become barren. Mary Lewis had to alternate between sewing/knitting classes and book teaching for the girls. Their fears were allayed when some of her students managed to became mothers. Mary Lewis invested her time and resources into teaching and training girls. Unfortunately she is yet to receive credit as the pioneer of Women’s Education among the Khasis.
Baptisms were initially very slow, not due to Khasi reluctance but because the missionaries expected strict standards of faith and conduct from their converts. Some missiologists have criticized the Welsh for delaying baptisms and testing applicants for weeks and months. In the long run though, perhaps it was good that the early missionaries set such high standards for church membership. Hence the first baptism classes were held five years after Thomas Jones’ arrival in 1841.
Two Khasis who requested baptism were Jungkha and his wife. Jungkha taught at Mawsmai while his wife helped at the missionaries’ home. They had a shop which they obediently closed on Sundays and faithfully adhered to a Puritan lifestyle, yet were not accepted in the first batch. The first fruits of the mission were Amor and Rujon, who were baptized on 8 March, 1846. This event marks the formal establishment of the Nongsawlia Presbyterian Church, the ‘mother church’ of all subsequent Presbyterian churches in North East India. The honour of conducting these first baptisms belonged to the slow and steady William Lewis, rather than the brilliant but temperamental Thomas Jones.
The years 1845-47 were the hardest for William and Mary Lewis. Daniel Jones, a missionary who had just arrived, and Captain Lewin, a strong supporter of the mission, contracted malaria on a preaching tour to the Jaiñtia Hills and both passed away. Daniel Jones’ wife went into premature labour and the child died. Father and stillborn daughter were buried on the same day; Mrs. Jones returned shortly afterwards to Wales, an inconsolable, broken woman. With Dr. Owen Richards’ premature return in 1844, Thomas Jones’ wife and child’s death in 1845, and Jones’ own painful resignation from the Mission in 1847, the Lewises could have succumbed to despair and given up their work.
That the little mission survived despite such heavy losses is tribute to their commitment and tenacity. Two previous attempts by the Baptist Mission had already failed: Krishna Chandra Pal who had come to Pandua in the foothills in 1813 and Alexander B. Lish who had worked at Sohra in the 1830s. (On a side note, the first missionary to the Khasis was not a Westerner but a Bengali scholar from Serampore, Krishna Chandra Pal.) Clearly we would not be observing Thomas Jones Day today if it were not for William and Mary Lewis.
1848 was encouraging as Nabon Sawian became the first Khasi Christian woman. Her dramatic life story, as well as Mary Lewis’ character, was portrayed in the movie produced by the Jingïaseng Samla, KJP Synod Sepngi. She was also the first Khasi woman teacher and served several years at the mission school at Shella. Nabon Sawian is an honoured name in the Presbyterian Church; our Women’s Sunday falls on the third Sunday of July, coinciding with the Sunday on which Nabon was baptized: 16 July, 1848.
William Lewis conducted the first wedding in the community, that of U Luh and Ka Phuh in 1849. He established schools at Shella, Jowai, Lamin and in many War villages near Sohra; he drew up the first rules of order of the nascent Presbyterian Church and appointed Amor as the first Secretary of the Church. After Thomas Jones’s translation of the Gospel of Matthew, William Lewis, assisted by Mary, translated the gospels of Mark, Luke, John and the Acts of the Apostles.
The researcher is struck by the unity of spirit and the close working relationship between William and Mary Lewis, uncommon in that hierarchical, patriarchal age. They mentored Ma Tirasing, who became the first elder of the Nongsawlia Church and the brilliant Larsing Khongwir, who excelled as a teacher, evangelist and who accompanied them to Wales in 1860. Larsing became a sensation, speaking in chapels across Wales. Sadly he took ill and died in 1863, far away from home. He was buried at Chester.
In 1860, after eighteen years of service, the Lewises returned for what they thought was a furlough to Wales but the doctors advised them against returning to India. They spent their later years writing books in Khasi, revising the translation of the New Testament and translating ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ into Khasi. William Lewis passed away in 1891 and Mary followed him to eternity in 1896. Admittedly, Thomas Jones deserves credit as the pioneer of the Welsh Mission, but it was the Lewises who consolidated and made it the Khasi Jaiñtia Presbyterian Church.