Charles Freer Andrews (12 February 1871 – 5 April 1940) was an English priest of the Church of England and a Christian missionary and social reformer in India.
He was an educator and participant in the campaign for Indian independence, and became a close friend and associate of Mahatma Gandhi. He was instrumental in convincing Gandhi to return to India from South Africa, where Gandhi had been a leading light in its Indian civil rights struggle. C. F. Andrews was affectionately dubbed Christ's Faithful Apostle by Gandhi, based on his initials. For Andrews's contributions to the Indian Independence Movement Gandhi and his students at St. Stephen's College, Delhi named him Deenabandhu, or "Friend of the Poor".
Charles Freer Andrews was born on 12 February 1871 at 14 Brunel Terrace, Newcastle upon Tyne, England. His father was a minister in the Catholic Apostolic Church in Birmingham, but the family had suffered from a financial misfortune because of the duplicity of a friend, and had to work hard to make ends meet. Andrews studied at King Edward's School, Birmingham, and afterwards began studying Classics at Pembroke College, Cambridge.[1] During this period he moved away from the views of his family's church and was accepted for ordination in the Church of England.
In 1896 Andrews became a deacon, and took over the Pembroke College Mission in south London. A year later he became a priest, and became Vice-Principal of Westcott House Theological College in Cambridge..
Andrews had been involved in the Christian Social Union since college, and was interested in exploring the relationship between a commitment to the Gospel and a commitment to justice, through which he was attracted to struggles for justice throughout the British Empire, especially in India.
In 1904 he joined the Cambridge Brotherhood in Delhi and arrived there to teach philosophy at St. Stephen's College, where he grew close to many of his Indian colleagues and students. Increasingly dismayed by the racist behavior and treatment of Indians by some British officials and civilians, he supported Indian political aspirations, and wrote a letter in the Civil and Military Gazette in 1906 voicing these sentiments. Andrews soon became involved in the activities of the Indian National Congress, and he helped to resolve the 1913 cotton workers' strike in Madras.
Known for his persuasiveness, intellect and moral firmness, he was asked by senior Indian political leader Gopal Krishna Gokhale to visit South Africa and help the Indian community there to resolve their political disputes with the Government. He met there a young Gujarati lawyer, Mohandas Gandhi, who was attempting to organize the Natal Indian Congress and the Indian community to protest against the racial discrimination and police legislation that infringed their civil liberties. Andrews was deeply impressed with Gandhi's knowledge of Christian values and his espousal of the concept of ahimsa, non-violence - something that Gandhi mixed with inspiration from elements of Christian anarchism. He helped Gandhi organize an Ashram in South Africa in Natal and publish his famous magazine, The Indian Opinion.
Following the advice of several Indian Congress leaders and of Principal Susil Kumar Rudra of St. Stephen's College, Andrews was instrumental in persuading Gandhi to return to India with him in 1915.In 1918 Andrews disagreed with Gandhi's attempts to recruit combatants for World War I, believing that this was inconsistent with their views on nonviolence. In Mahatma Gandhi's Ideas Andrews wrote about Gandhi's recruitment campaign: "Personally I have never been able to reconcile this with his own conduct in other respects, and it is one of the points where I have found myself in painful disagreement."
Later Andrews was elected President of the All India Trade Union in 1925 and 1927. He accompanied Gandhi to the second Round Table Conference in London, helping him negotiate with the British government on matters of Indian autonomy and devolution.
While working for Indian independence Andrews developed a dialogue between Christians and Hindus. He spent a lot of time at Santiniketan in conversation with the poet and philosopher, Rabindranath Tagore. He also supported the movement to ban the ‘untouchability of outcastes’. In 1925, he joined the famous Vaikom Satyagraha, and in 1933 assisted B.R. Ambedkar in formulating Dalit demands.
Once C.F. Andrews,along with Rabindranath Tagore, visited Sree Narayana Guru, The supreme Spiritual Leader from Kerala, South India. Then he wrote to Romain Rolland; that "I have seen our Christ walking on the shore of arabian sea in the attire of a hindu sanyasin".
About this time Gandhi reasoned with Andrews that it was probably best for sympathetic Britons like himself to leave the freedom struggle to Indians. So from 1935 onwards Andrews began to spend more time in Britain, teaching young people all over the country about Christ’s call to radical discipleship. Gandhi's affectionate nickname for Andrews was Christ’s Faithful Apostle, based on the initials of his name, "C.F.A". He was widely known as Gandhi's closest friend and was perhaps the only major figure to address Gandhi by his first name, Mohan.
Charlie Andrews died on 5 April 1940, during a visit to Calcutta, and is buried there.
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