Indian MKs

A Fresh Exploration

John B. was born on the Indo-Nepal border. He grew up as an MK in Nepal and studied for 10 years at an MK boarding school in India. He and his wife have served in education in the Indian subcontinent since 1988, and they are parents of three TCKs. Having a particular interest in TCKs, John and his wife are based in India, working as education consultants.

Note: The title of this article is also the title of a book published jointly in 2005 by Interserve India and the Indian Missions Association. The book is a collection of short articles by several writers on the subject of Indian MKs.

I was born in India to Australian missionary parents, grew up in the hills of Nepal, and attended Hebron School in south India as a boarder from age 6 to 15 1/2. Like many others in the ’50s and ’60s, I was typical of MKs in India at that time, and in some respects I can call myself an Indian MK. But when we speak of Indian MKs today, we mean something very different. What is largely unknown, both in India and beyond, is that there are more than 35,000 indigenous cross-cultural missionaries in India. Thus, India has the second largest contingent of missionaries after the USA.¹ India has twice as many missionaries as Korea! Because of such a large number of missionaries in India, there are, of course, many thousands of children of these missionaries—Indian MKs.²

Historically, India has played an important role in the development of MK education, for it was here that the earliest MK schools were established. Woodstock School north of Delhi is the oldest such school that continues today. Founded in 1854 for the education of girls (initially), it set the pattern for many other famous schools. The Cheefoo School for CIM MKs was established in 1881.

India spawned many such schools in the various hill stations before the end of the nineteenth century.³ Hebron School (1899) and Kodai International School (1901), both in south India, are the only others besides Woodstock that still cater to international MKs, albeit not exclusively as was the case in the first half of the twentieth century.⁴ Similar schools were established in other fields and continents to serve the foreign missionary community; such boarding schools became the norm for the education of MKs.

In the past 15 years, we have seen the mushrooming of international schools as a by-product of globalization and of the spread of multinational corporations and their workers. Most metropolitan areas around the world have one or more international schools (Christian, secular, or both); and since many Western missionaries are now based in metropolitan areas rather than in the field, it is natural to choose the local international school over the MK boarding school, despite the higher cost. However, the pendulum is swinging back towards the MK boarding schools, and many are facing increasing demands for admission.

We must understand the contemporary context of India in order to grasp the current situation for Indian MKs. In August 2007, India celebrated its 60th year of independence as the world’s largest democracy. It is justifiably proud of its position as one of the fastest growing economies, having one of the largest middle-class populations and probably the second largest English-speaking population after the USA. In many respects, India has come of age, and this is certainly true of the indigenous missions movement in the country. Within 200 years of William Carey’s arrival in India, the government of India slowly squeezed foreign missionaries (in the Carey mould) out of India. So by the mid-1980s, there were very few who remained on missionary visas. But what is not widely known is that during the 1970s God was working in the Christian communities in the southern states of India—Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh—and from there the indigenous mission movement emerged, resulting in what is today a huge number of missions and missionaries who have moved to the northern states of the country. The total number is unknown. In addition to the India Missions Association (IMA), more than 200 mission agencies, mostly indigenous, represent more than 35,000 missionaries, and there are many more independent groups and their workers in India.

At this point we also need to understand what classifies these people as missionaries. If we go by the traditional view that a missionary is someone who is sent by a church to engage in cross-cultural Christian ministry, then these Indian Christians are missionaries in their own nation. Although India is one nation, in reality it is the world’s most diverse tapestry of disparate states stitched together at the time of the British departure from the subcontinent in 1947. Virtually each of the 30 or so states of India has its own ethnic, linguistic, and cultural identity. The pervading religious presence is Hinduism, but the secular constitution safeguards large communities of other faiths, including the world’s second largest Muslim community of 140 million and a Christian community of 25 million.

India’s diversity and complexity make it a modern-day conundrum, for alongside the realities of a booming economy on the world stage is the stark reality of vast numbers of rural and urban poor and of gross inequity of resources and basic infrastructure, especially in the northern states, which are sometimes referred to as the Hindu heartland. So when a missionary family from Tamil Nadu in the south moves to a state in the north, they do not need passports, but they will cross several cultural boundaries that ensure they are truly engaged in cross-cultural ministry. And this fact means that most Indian MKs are therefore TCKs—as much as I and other Western MKs growing up in India in an earlier era were.

Take the example of a girl from Chennai, Tamil Nadu, in south India, whose family moved to work with a mission based in Delhi when the girl was 4 years old. Before leaving Chennai, she mirrored the local community and culture. She was in every way a Tamilian.

In Delhi she found life very tough. At school she was regarded as an outsider from the south. Language and script, food, culture, and ethnicity were all different in Delhi. She even experienced colour racism at school. She needed to learn Hindi, acquire a taste for new foods, and make new friends. And for some time she felt like a foreigner.

After several years in Delhi, she made many friends, learnt the language and customs, and began to see herself more as a cosmopolitan Delhi-ite than as a Tamilian. Her roots were increasingly in Delhi, and she felt adopted and at home in the Delhi community.

After completing school, she returned to Tamil Nadu for college. The change was very tough, for although she looked Tamilian, she felt more like a Delhi-ite. She could speak Tamil, but her Hindi was better. She preferred north Indian food to idli-dosai, and her social network, her friends, and her roots were in Delhi. She found herself questioned and not accepted by the more traditional and conservative students and faculty. She had returned to her parents’ place, but she had become a hidden immigrant.⁵

Some Challenges of Indian MK Education in India

The diversity of India is reflected in its numerous education systems. Each state government has its own “exam board” that operates in the vernacular language and often in differing scripts, and each exam board has distinctives such as its own curriculum.6 There are two national examination boards that operate across the nation, but these tend to be used by English-medium schools. These schools, which have better standards of education than do other schools in India, are therefore more upmarket and less available in the remote areas of northern India where most of the indigenous mission activity takes place. The legacy of MK boarding schools in India has almost vanished as the majority of the former boarding schools established during the British Raj are now in the metropolitan areas, serving members of the upper-middleclass Indian community who desire a Britishstyle boarding school education for their children.

Indian missionary families serving in remote, rural areas have few options. The local state government education system in the local language is usually very poor. The former MK boarding schools are too expensive, and they lack the Christian ethos they once had. Homeschooling is virtually unknown in India, but in the early 1990s Premi Koshy of Interserve India introduced a homeschooling program known as Griha Shiksha, which was designed to cater to MKs up to fourth standard so that children could be with their parents for their early years before going to boarding school. The program ran successfully for small numbers of children (maximum of about 35), but the numbers dwindled, and the program is currently on hold pending a review and a feasibility study by Interserve.

Many MKs study in the local state school system where their parents are located, but that school system typically operates in a language and a script different from those of their mother tongue.

India plays an important role in the development of MK education, for it was here that the earliest MK schools were established.

This usually poor education is also steeped in the worldview of the majority religion. Some MKs return to their home state to board with grandparents or other relatives. A few Indian MKs study at Woodstock, Hebron, or Kodai International, but this solution is far from ideal because the high cost, the curriculum, and the international flavour create other concerns. But in response to the demand of the rapidly growing numbers of Indian MKs, some new boarding schools have been established in the past 30 years to cater to Indian MKs. Though these schools follow the pattern of the Western missions in the nineteenth century,7 they are entirely indigenous. They have very limited funds and resources for both establishment and development as well as for running costs. They do provide English-medium education that is affiliated with one of the two central exam boards, a feature that appeals to many families, but the demand for places far exceeds the capacity of these schools.⁸

The Indian missions movement admires and emulates the nineteenth-century pioneers of the modern missions movement such as Carey, Hudson Taylor, Adoniram Judson, C. T. Studd, and Amy Carmichael—so much so that Indian missionaries often name their children after such heroes. This admiration includes a strong belief in taking up the cross and denying self, the inevitability of sacrifice, and the priority of ministry over family.9 The corollary belief is that God blesses and rewards such faith and trust. I understand this admiration and commitment, for I am a product of it in my own family and experience as an MK. What I see in the Indian missions community (and also in Korean missions, but that is another topic) is a reflection of the prevailing situation in which I grew up as an MK in the ’50s and ’60s. Missionary service was “for life”; furloughs were few and far between; finances were very limited; MKs went to boarding school throughout their school years and then returned to the (foreign) home country for their higher education whilst the parents remained on the field up to retirement. Sacrifice, deprivation, and hardship were all part of the cost inherent in missionary service, as was the separation of families, and undergirding all this were faith and trust in a sovereign God who protected and blessed His servants.

Of course, this description is a sweeping generalization, but this was the general pattern. And I say this without cynicism or criticism or any sense of disparagement. I am a product of this type of missionary service, and I am deeply grateful for it. Nor am I being critical of the current trend in Western missionary service, a trend that has seemingly moved far from that approach, especially regarding families and children. (That is another topic too!) My point is that we see this former ethos and approach to missionary service reflected in the current Indian missionary scenario. It is therefore no surprise that the preferred option for many Indian mission families is MK boarding schools. Some indigenous Indian mission agencies insist on boarding school education for their MKs.

Two areas of concern arise from all this. First, the level and standard of residential care in some of the Indian MK boarding schools is disconcerting. In particular I refer to the following:

• The age at which children commence boarding is commonly 5 or 6.
• The ratio of residential staff to children is usually very high—1 to 40 or more.
• There is a lack of qualified residential staff, often because of poor pay. 10
• The duration of separation from parents and home is long. Many children at Indian boarding schools can go home only once a year, and few missions provide the funds or the opportunities for parents to visit their children during the year.
• Families and children are not prepared for the boarding school experience, nor is there much understanding of “good practice” for the parents and the staff to facilitate a positive outcome from the boarding experience.
• The isolated, or insular, nature of the boarding school means that MKs are not exposed to or prepared for the outside world when they graduate from school and go to college. We know of many who have found this transition to be very painful and traumatic (see case studies in appendix 2).

What is remarkable about this list is that most of these points were features of the Western MK boarding schools up to the ’60s and ’70s. But the past three decades have seen dramatic changes in the field of Western MK education. Widespread disaffection among Western missions regarding the traditional MK boarding schools led to other alternatives, especially homeschooling and variations of homeschooling such as tutorial groups and tutorial schools. And when we examine Western international MK boarding schools today, we find that most, if not all, of these concerns have been addressed and that there is much better and healthier practice than was the case 30 to 40 years ago—resulting in much better outcomes. The influence of the international MK conferences and the considerable volume of research and writing in this field have resulted in a huge transformation of attitudes and practice regarding the education of Western MKs, and that transformation has affected families, MK schools, mission boards, and sending churches. This transformation has only just begun to reach the Indian MK scene.

Second, I am troubled by the huge disparity I see between Western MK schools and the newly formed Indian MK schools. The former have a long history of development, access to foreign funds, and solid support from Western missions that are committed to seeing that MKs are well provided for in every way. (I know of schools having development programs that run in the millions of U.S. dollars.) The latter are in the formative stages, reliant on meagre indigenous support, and the MK schools are well down the priority list for allocation of funds. School fees are kept to a bare minimum, so these schools have virtually a hand-to-mouth existence. To illustrate these financial challenges, I have written my reflections of visiting a recently established MK boarding school in the state of Tamil Nadu, not far from the international MK school where my own 10-year-old son studies.¹¹ I conclude my reflections by observing that “classroom and dorm sizes, staff-student ratios, facilities, activities, food, and entertainment are on a different scale altogether—a world apart—reflected in the difference in fees: what we pay for our son would support 10 children at [the school for Indian MKs]. And inevitably, hard questions have to be asked: Is this disparity justified? Aren’t all these parents serving the same King? Aren’t all these MKs sons and daughters of the same King? I find it very difficult to answer these questions, but I need to grapple with them.” And I cannot escape the hard words of Jesus: “To whom much has been given, much will be required” (Luke 12:48, NRSV).

Another area of disparity needs to be mentioned because it has a significant impact on the education of Indian MKs. Ruby Mangaldoss, MK coordinator for Interserve India, has identified five levels or categories of Indian missionaries: from the CEOs and leaders of missions who tend to reside in the metropolitan areas of India where the range and availability of good schools is plentiful—to the village evangelists, or assistant missionaries, who live in the remote corners of India and who have limited infrastructure and resources as well as very poor local educational options. Such missionaries typically survive on two to three U.S. dollars per day, and if they own a bicycle, it is a bonus.¹² Indian missionary families serving in remote, rural areas have few options. Between these two extremes there are three other categories with varying educational options available. In the middle are those who choose to send their children to one of the MK boarding schools mentioned above; these missionaries see doing so as a God-sent provision that enables them to continue their ministry. What is common to all, of course, is the universal desire that their own children have a better education than they themselves had.

To conclude, this has been a superficial overview of the situation regarding Indian MKs and their education. The general lack of awareness about the enormity of the needs, both in and beyond India, needs to change. The international community must consider ways whereby the Indian MK situation can change. The areas that are weak must grow stronger, but the changes must not compromise the uniqueness of the Indian MK situation. And in India there needs to be greater awareness of better practice in terms of residential care for MKs in boarding schools—a greater awareness by parents and families, MK schools, and mission administrators. An important component of this overall improvement in MK education would be to revive and establish a viable homeschooling program—Griha Shiksha—to enable MKs to remain with their parents at least until the age of 9 or 10 before going to boarding school.

Indian missionary families serving in remote, rural areas have few options.

It is my fervent prayer that the lessons that Western missions took 150 years to learn regarding the education and “flow of care”¹³ for MKs, be learnt much sooner in the Indian context.

Notes

1. In the latest data about foreign missionaries, there is no reference to the anomaly found in India: the India Missions Association represents more than 200 mission agencies and 35,000 personnel—most of whom are working as cross-cultural missionaries in India (Barrett, Johnson, and Crossing 2007).
2. It is very difficult to obtain accurate statistics of the number of Indian MKs; no reliable, comprehensive data are available, although efforts are underway to obtain this information.
3. Apart from Woodstock, Hebron, and Kodai International, other schools such as Wynberg Allen in Mussoorie (1888), Mt Hermon in Darjeeling (1895), and Kimmins in Panchgani (1898), among many others, were established to serve the missions communities. Postindependence (1947), these schools retained their Christian heritage, but they have become schools predominately for upper-middle-class Indian students. Sadly, these schools have made little or no provision for Indian MKs.
4. The percentage of MKs—or Christian workers’ children, the preferred term in India—in these three schools used to be above 80 percent until the early 1980s when there was a sharp decline in the number of foreign missionaries in India. Currently, Woodstock and Kodai International have around 20 percent MKs enrolled; Hebron School has 65 percent MKs. The number is increasing, mainly because of demand from beyond the Indian subcontinent.
5. This example illustrates the model by Pollock and Van Reken (2001, 246) of mirror/ foreigner/adopted/hidden immigrant.
6. India has 22 official languages and 840 minor languages and dialects.
7. I know of schools in south India: Santhosha Vidyalaya, Dhonavur (of Amy Carmichael fame); Kings and Queens School, near Chennai; and Anantha Kendra Mission School in Orissa. I also know of some in north India: Grace Academy in Dehra Dun and GEMS English School in Bihar.
8. GEMS English School has a hostel enrollment of around 200 (mostly MKs) and a waiting list of 700!
9. Passages such as Luke 14:26–28, Matthew 10:37–39, and Matthew 19:29–30 are taken and applied very seriously.
10. The common designation for residential staff in India is warden, a term I vigorously oppose because of the negative association with penal institutions. (When I was a boy, our nickname for Hebron was Borstal, which was a type of reform school in England.) I strongly advocate the use of healthier terms such as dorm parent.
11. See appendix 1.
12. Recently I was privileged to meet such a missionary who lives in a remote jungle area that is controlled by Naxalites (Maoist insurgents). Basic facilities such as running water, electricity, and phones are unavailable; nor is there medical help. These conditions proved fatal for his wife, who died from the lethal combination of malaria and hepatitis. She left behind their 3 young children aged 5, 4, and 2. The eldest is now in GEMS boarding school, a day’s journey from where their father continues to serve, and the 2 younger children are in south India with their grandparents. This sort of sacrifice is not uncommon among today’s Indian missionaries.
13. Flow of care is a term developed and used by David Pollock of Interaction International.

References

Barrett, David B., Todd M. Johnson, and Peter F. Crossing. 2007. International Bulletin of Missionary Research 31, no. 1 (January). worldchristiandatabase.org.

Pollock, David C., and Ruth E. Van Reken. 2001. Third culture kids: The experience of growing up among worlds. Boston, MA: Nicholas Brealey; Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press.

Appendix 1

Kings and Queens! It was one of the more memorable introductions I’ve heard: “Hello brother, I’m King Solomon!” I wasn’t sure how to respond: “Pleased to meet you, your majesty”? And if I was his brother, was I also royalty?

Ruby Mangaldoss and I were in Arakkonam, 60 kilometers from Chennai, for a fleeting visit to Kings and Queens Residential School, which is a school for Indian MKs that is run by King Solomon and his wife, Mercy. In 1997, they started the school in a rented building in the town, having 3 MK students enrolled at that time. Last year, they moved to a fiveacre site outside the town, and the school’s buildings are still under construction to cater to the 250 or so students, of whom 65 percent are Indian and Nepali MKs whose parents are serving in 14 states of India and Nepal.

We were there for only a few hours, but I was able to meet with the 15 or so Nepali children for a chat in Nepali. I was keen to find out about their backgrounds and how they were coping with boarding school in south India. Most of their parents were pastors in eastern Nepal, but two families were serving as missionaries in Mizoram! These children went home only once a year, for the summer holiday, and their parents rarely came to visit them for the shorter holidays, which the children spent at school. I asked them all how they were doing, and apart from the youngest, a shy 6-year-old girl who seemed subdued, the children were enthusiastic and happy and enjoying school life.

We also had an informal session with students in classes 6 through 10. We met in the newly built hall/dining hall—a large makeshift shed that had asbestos sheeting on the roof and three side walls and had a mud floor. The school had opened the hall just the day before. The students were excited and happy to see some strange faces. I surprised them by saying that although I looked very different, we had much in common: I too was an MK who had been born in Bihar, had grown up in Nepal, had attended boarding school in Tamil Nadu from the age of 6, and had gone home once a year for the Christmas holidays. I could relate to much of what they were experiencing.

It was night, and we had a train to catch at midnight, so after a meal (in the library because that was where the only tables in the school were, apart from the desks in the classrooms), we received a quick tour of the dorms. The dorms were in a long, white building, and the first floor was under construction still. The school had just completed and dedicated three rooms the day before. Each large room on the ground floor accommodated 25 to 35 children. There were no beds, and the children slept on mats that were rolled up during the day because until the hall had been built they ate on the floor in their dorms.

Each dorm had a small adjoining room where the “warden” stayed, and in each of the dorms for younger children there was a “dorm aunty”—a young single woman who slept in the dorm with the children. The only person to supervise the 60 or so older boys was King Solomon, so he and his wife lived in a small room adjacent to the senior boys’ dorm. They have no children of their own; the Kings and Queens students are their family.

And that family atmosphere formed the impression we came away with as we rattled our way to the station in the ramshackle school van, driven by none other than King Solomon, as the regular driver was on leave. Here was a school that was severely underresourced, yet the atmosphere was happy and relaxed. There was an obvious rapport between King Solomon and the children in his care, a fact that was quietly reassuring.

But the other impression I had was deeply disturbing. My days at boarding school in Tamil Nadu back in the 1960s were spartan. We took baths twice a week, slept in bunk beds that had hard coconut fibre mattresses, ate bread without butter or jam—but that was all luxury compared with the conditions at Kings and Queens. King Solomon and Mercy serve without respite because of their love and commitment to the cause of missions in India. I asked Mercy about their time off, and her reply was, “We take a few weeks in the summer holidays.” When I asked about a weekly day off, what she said surprised me: “There’s no one else to supervise the big boys, so we have to be here.” Throughout the year, 24-7 literally! Later when I asked King Solomon about this fact, he simply said, “We have no issues with this. Sometimes if we really need a few days off [as when his father died last December], some of the parents from Chennai come to help.”

What is more disturbing is the unavoidable comparison with an MK boarding school not so far away where our 10-yearold son now studies and where I sit on the board. Classroom and dorm sizes, staff-student ratios, facilities, activities, food, and entertainment are on a different scale altogether—a world apart—reflected in the difference in fees: what we pay for our son would support 10 children at Kings and Queens. And inevitably, hard questions have to be asked: Is this disparity justified? Aren’t all these parents serving the same King? Aren’t all these MKs sons and daughters of the same King? I find it very difficult to answer these questions, but I need to grapple with them, and I would ask you to join me in remembering to pray for King Solomon and his school for Indian MKs.

Appendix 2

The following are two case studies reported to me by an Indian MK who is himself a second generation missionary.

Case 1

J. is the son of a leader of a well-known Indian mission organization in India. J.’s father traveled extensively, and the father’s stay at home was very minimal. Even during the short stays at home, the father would close his room doors and spend time in prayer. His wife made sure his children did not disturb him. There was very little interaction with his children. The children were not bothered about whether their father stayed at home. The gap between them widened as the children grew up and entered collegiate education.

Though J. had a born-again experience and knew the Word well, he was very upset with the care he received at home. During college days, he got involved with friends and started staying away from home for a day or two. As his father was most of the time away, J. was able to do so. This situation slowly introduced J. to bad company, leading to drugs and addiction. He struggled to get out of this lifestyle for a long time but found it very difficult. He was very committed to social issues, so he joined an organization involved in social work, after appropriately qualifying himself. He was posted in a region infested with malaria. Each time he came home during vacation, he found it difficult to stay at home and hence went to meet old friends who took him back to his old habits. He died of cerebral malaria at age 28. All along, he missed family life. He was very talented in many ways. If only he had been guided with love during his tender years, his contribution to the kingdom would have been much more.

Note: Because I stayed in the house of J.’s family for 1 1/2 years, the details are firsthand information. We have been associated with one another for more than 15 years.

Case 2

Two missionary brothers studied at Santhosha Vidyalaya. Their father died on the mission field when they were young. Both sons later got into drugs, and they were mentally affected. One of them died in an accident, and the other died without a known reason.

There are many such cases. One of the important issues that MKs face is the balance between kingdom values and values of the world. Parents force kingdom values on MKs. These parents force them to adopt austere measures. But what MKs see outside their homes is different. After a point, children feel that they are deprived of a decent living because of the choices their parents have made. This feeling leads them to hate both the mission organization their parents represent and the God in whom their parents trust. This conflict ruins their lives. This hatred is one of the most important factors, apart from the lack of their parents’ love, that affect Indian MKs.

I hope that what is written here is some help to you. It is my prayer that the concept of missions will encompass missionary families.

 Indian MKs  Q3 2008