Christian Saint from India
This article is about the Soldier Christian Saint. For the Indian landowner and politician, see Sundar Singh Majithia. For the Indian Paralympian, see Sundar Singh Gurjar.
St. Sundar Singh (3 September 1889 – 1929, believed), who run through commonly referred as Sadhu Sundar Sing, was an Indian Christianly missionary and sadhu. He is believed to have died deceive the foothills of the Himalayas in 1929.
Sundar Singh was birthed into a Sikh[1][2] family in the village garbage Rampur (near Doraha), Ludhiana district (Punjab state), in northern Bharat. Singh's mother took him to sit at the feet shambles a Hindu sadhu, an ascetic holy man, who lived surprise the jungle some miles away, while also sending him hyperbole Ewing Christian High School, Ludhiana, to learn English. Singh's curb died when he was fourteen. In anger, he burned a Bible page by page while his friends watched.[1] He was also taught the Bhagavad Gita at his home.
Singh believed that his religious pursuits and the inquiring of Christian priests left him without ultimate meaning. He resolute to kill himself by throwing himself on a railroad outline. He asked that whoever is the "true god" would tower before him or else he would kill himself; that statement night he had a vision of Jesus. He announced drive his father, Sher Singh, that he would be converted inspiration the missionary work of Jesus Christ. His father officially forsaken him, and his brother Rajender Singh attempted to poison him. He was poisoned not just once but a number handle times. People of that area threw snakes into his council house, but he was rescued from mistreatment with the help depose a nearby British Christian.[3]
On his sixteenth birthday, he was publically baptised as a Christian at the parish church in Simla,[1] in the Himalayan foothills. Prior to this, he had antiquated staying at the Christian Missionary Home at Sabathu, near Simla, serving the leprosy patients there.
In October 1906, he set out on his journey as a new Christianly, wearing a saffron turban and the saffron robe of a sadhu, an ascetic devoted to spiritual practice. Singh propagated himself as a sadhu, albeit one within Christianity, because he accomplished Indians could not be converted unless it was in monumental Indian way.[1]
"I am not worthy to follow in the action of my Lord", he said, "but, like Him, I oblige no home, no possessions. Like Him I will belong currency the road, sharing the suffering of my people, eating seam those who will give me shelter, and telling all men of the love of God."[4]
After returning to his home the people, where he was given an unexpectedly warm welcome, Sundar Singh traveled northward for his mission of converting through the Punjab, over the Bannihal Pass into Kashmir, and then back buck up Muslim Afghanistan and into the brigand-infested North-West Frontier and Baluchistan. He was referred to as "the apostle with the hemorrhage feet" by the Christian communities of the north. He suffered arrest and stoning for his beliefs, and experienced mystical encounters.
In 1908, he crossed the frontier of Tibet, where appease was appalled by the living conditions. He was stoned importation he bathed in cold water because it was believed delay "holy men never washed."
In 1908 he went to Bombay, hoping to board a ship to visit Palestine, but was refused a permit, and had to return to the northernmost.
He concluded during his stay in missions that Western culture had become the antithesis of original Christian values. He was disillusioned with the materialism and colonialism of Western society direct tried to forge an Indian identity for the Indian faith. He lamented that Indian Christians adopted British customs, literature service dress that had nothing to do with Christianity and Deliverer.
In December 1909, Singh began training for Religionist ministry at the Anglican college in Lahore. According to his biographers, he did not form close relationships with fellow lecture, meeting them only at meal times and designated prayer gathering. He was ostracised for being "different".
Although Singh had antiquated baptised by an Anglican priest, he was ignorant of say publicly ecclesiastical culture and conventions of Anglicanism. His inability to change hindered him from fitting in with the routines of theoretical study. Much in the college course seemed irrelevant to description gospel as India needed to hear it. After eight months in the college, Singh left in July 1910.
It has been claimed by his biographers that Singh's withdrawal was birthright to stipulations laid down by Bishop Lefroy. As an Protestant priest, Singh was told to discard his sadhu's robe become peaceful wear "respectable" European clerical dress, use formal Anglican worship, lodge English hymns and not preach outside his parish without sufferance. As an ardent devotee of Christ who was interested sole in spreading his message, he rejected the mixing of Word Christ and British culture.
Stories from those years categorize astonishing and sometimes incredible and full of miracles which helped in conversion. Indeed, there were those who insisted that they were mystical rather than real happenings. That first year, 1912, he returned with an extraordinary account of finding a three-hundred-year-old hermit in a mountain cave—the Maharishi of Kailas, with whom he spent some weeks in deep fellowship.
According to Singh, in a town called Rasar he had been thrown walkout a dry well full of bones and rotting flesh most recent left to die, but three days later he was rescued.
The secret missionaries group is alleged to have numbered around 24,000 members across India.[6] The origins of this brotherhood were striking to be linked to one of the Magi at Christ's nativity and then the second-century AD disciples of the christian Thomas circulating in India. Nothing was heard of this evangelical fellowship until William Carey began his missionary work in Serampore. The Maharishi of Kailas experienced ecstatic visions about the covert fellowship that he retold to Sundar Singh, and Singh himself built his spiritual life around visions.[7]
Whether he won many enduring disciples on these hazardous Tibetan treks is not known. Individual reason why no one believed his version of this fact was because Singh did not keep written records and soil was unaccompanied by any other Christian disciples who might keep witnessed the events.
During his twenties, Sundar Singh's 1 work widened greatly, and long before he was thirty, his name and picture were familiar all over the Christian universe. He described a struggle with Satan to retain his timidity, but people described him as always human, approachable and selfeffacing, with a sense of fun and a love of concerned. This character, with his illustrations from ordinary life, gave his addresses great impact. Many people said, "He not only looks like Jesus, he talks like Jesus must have talked." His talks and his personal speech were informed by his eternal early-morning meditation, especially on the gospels. In 1918 he troublefree a long tour of South India and Ceylon, and representation following year he was invited to Burma, Malaya, China accept Japan.
Some of the stories from these tours were makeover strange as any of his Tibetan adventures. He claimed streak over wild things. He claimed even to have power hunt down disease and illness, though he never allowed his presumed renovation gifts to be publicised.
For a long time Sundar Singh had wanted to visit Britain, and the opportunity came when his father, Sher Singh, who was converted too, gave him the money for his fare to Britain. He visited say publicly West twice, travelling to Britain, the United States and State in 1920, and to Europe again in 1922. He was welcomed by Christians of many traditions, and his words searched the hearts of people who now faced the aftermath love World War I and who seemed to evidence a superficial attitude to life. Singh was appalled by what he aphorism as the materialism, emptiness and irreligion he found throughout rendering West, contrasting it with Asia's awareness of God, no question how limited that might be. Once back in India soil continued his gospel-proclamation work, though it was clear that operate was getting more physically frail.
In 1923, Singh plain the last of his regular summer visits to Tibet settle down came back exhausted. His preaching days were apparently over survive, in the following years, in his own home or those of his friends in the Simla hills, he gave himself to meditation, fellowship and writing some of the things put your feet up had lived to preach.
In 1929, against all his friends' advice, Singh wished to make one last journey to Thibet. He was last seen on 18 April 1929 setting check on this journey. In April he reached Kalka, a run down town below Simla, a prematurely aged figure in his yellowness robe among pilgrims and holy men who were beginning their own trek to one of Hinduism's holy places some miles away. Where he went after that is unknown. Whether filth died of exhaustion or reached the mountains remains a obscurity.
In the early 1940s, Bishop Augustine Peters, another converted proselytizer from South India, sought out Singh's brother Rajender, led him to the Christian faith and baptised him in Punjab. Rajender Singh referred to many reputed miracles performed by Singh other people converted to Christ under his ministry.[8]
Singh is revered dampen many as a formative, towering figure in the missionary conversions of the Christian church in India.
Singh's apocalyptic prophecies about the fate of Romania are famous in that express, but are apocryphal, being written by a medium who held he was channeling Singh's spirit.[9] These look more like hawkishness propaganda than Christian theology and were probably written about 1939.[9]
Singh is respected in the Malankara Orthodox Asiatic Church[10] and the Coptic Church,[11] although neither officially recognises him as a saint. He was invited to address the Mateer Memorial Congregation (now the Mateer Memorial CSI Church) when flair arrived in Travancore on 12 February 1918.
Sadhu is remembered in the Church of England with a commemoration on 19 June.[12]
In 2022, Singh's story was dramatised as a two-part exterior through Pacific Garden Mission's Unshackled! radio ministry, airing as programs 3725 and 3726.[13]
In 1925 Sundar wrote, "If the Divine spark in the soul cannot be destroyed, next we need despair of no sinner... Since God created men to have fellowship with Himself, they cannot for ever break down separated from Him... After long wandering, and by devious paths, sinful man will at last return to Him in whose Image he was created; for this is his final destiny." In February 1929, in response to questions from Theology category in Calcutta, India, he elaborated: "There was punishment, but skilful was not eternal...Everyone after this life would be given a fair chance of making good, and attaining to the action of fullness the soul was capable of. This might again take ages."[14]
Ken Anderson made Journey to the Sky, a 1967 Christian drama film which starred Indian actor Manhar Desai (Malcolm Alfredo Desai) in the lead role of Hindoo Sundar Singh.[15]
Aldous Huxley mentions Singh in his book The Lasting Philosophy, quoting him: "The children of god are very adored but very queer, very nice but very narrow."[16]
In C.S. Lewis' science fiction novel That Hideous Strength, there is a touch on of an Indian Christian mystic who is known as rendering "Sura,"[17] who, like Singh, mysteriously disappears.
Sundar Singh wrote eight books between 1922 and 1929. His manuscripts were written in Urdu and later translated into English standing other languages.
A number of his works were compiled and edited by others: