Intro
The British Government worked hand-in-hand with its Christian missionaries as they spread colonialism all around the world. Robert Clark (1825–1900), and his colleague Thomas Henry Fitzpatrick, were the first English Church Mission Society (CMS) missionaries in the Punjab. Clark was the first missionary to the Afghans and was the first agent of the Church to enter the city of Leh.
In roughly 1851-1854, the British Government awarded Robert Clark with 1,900 acres (760 hectares) of land “Clarkabad“, which is in modern day Pakistan, just South-East of “Kot Radha Kishan” and just off the famous “Changa Manga” road.
In 1863 at the Punjab missionary conference, Clark advocated the formation of the Punjab Medical Missionary Society. It was subsequently formed at Lahore on 24 January 1864, to work with the Edinburgh Medical Missionary Society, especially in the valley of Kashmir (See Vander Werff).
In 1877, on initiation of the Lahore diocese, he became the first chairman of the Punjab Native Church council (See Dawson and Anderson).
In 1893, his adopted son (Dr. Henry Martyn Clark) was on the Christian side of the debate between Mirza Ghulam Ahmad and Abdullah Athim. In 1897, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad and his team sent Abdul Hamid to murder Dr. Henry Martyn Clark, MGA beat the case.
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1851–1854
As there were no dictionaries and grammars existing in Punjab when Clark arrived, everything had been made from the beginning to assist in missionary and administrative activities. Accordingly, a school was opened up for Sikhs, Hindus, and Muslims. He founded the first CMS mission station in Amritsar in 1852, and the first preaching of the Gospel was undertaken in the Amritsar bazaar on 20 October 1852.[2][3]
As an evangelist, he pioneered in Punjab and left an impressive record. His foremost principle was that the evangelism was best carried out by national workers. By 1854, he baptised almost twenty-three, who were soon utilised in the field of evangelism. Accordingly, Amritsar’s School founded in 1852, Amristar’s College founded in 1862, and Christian Girl’s Boarding School did graduate adequate number of qualified Christian workers for that purpose. He knew well, how to train the Pastor‘s and then to step back while delegating responsibilities to them.[4]
Clark founded the first Christian village in Punjab, and obtained 1,900 acres (760 hectares) of land from the Government. The village was named “Clarkabad” in his honour.[5]
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1870
Punjabi Christians – Wikipedia
By 1870, there were only a few thousand Christians in the Punjab Province of colonial India; the 1880s saw the growth of the Presbyterian Church from 660 to 10,615 baptized Christians.[12] Continued evangelism efforts by Christian missionaries, especially those from the Church of Scotland and Church Missionary Society in India led to nearly half a million Punjabi Christians by the 1930s.
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1880
Barahin-e-Ahmadiyya, Part I & II, p. 81-82
English edition
“Take the Christians, for instance, whose principles appear absurd even at a cursory glance, and yet the consistent efforts of their missionaries have resulted in the growing popularity of their faith, so much so that each year they proudly publish reports of four to eight thousand people joining their ranks. The latest estimates of Christian conversions given by Father Hacker of Calcutta are worrying, to say the least. He writes that whereas there were only 27,000 Christians in India fifty years ago, the number has now risen to 500,000 – [To Allah we belong and to Him shall we return]. Elders of Islam! Do you wait for a time of greater spread of misguidance? There was a time when Islam was the living illustration of the Qur’anic verse: [Men] entering the religion of Allah in troops [110:3]. And look at what is happening today! Do your hearts not bleed at this calamity and are you not overwhelmed by anguish?”
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1882
viewcontent.cgi (acu.edu)
In 1882, Christian missionaries from the USA began showing up en-masse.
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Census of India, 1911 .. : India. Census Commissioner : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
See page 131
In the British-India census alleged that there were 3.5 million Christians in British-India.
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1930
Punjabi Christians – Wikipedia
By 1870, there were only a few thousand Christians in the Punjab Province of colonial India; the 1880s saw the growth of the Presbyterian Church from 660 to 10,615 baptized Christians.[12] Continued evangelism efforts by Christian missionaries, especially those from the Church of Scotland and Church Missionary Society in India led to nearly half a million Punjabi Christians by the 1930s.
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1947
Punjabi Christians – Wikipedia
In June 1947, the total population of Punjabi Christians in the Punjab Province of colonial India was recorded at 511,299. Of these, 450,344 were based in West Punjab and 60,955 were in East Punjab.[8] After the partition of British India, most Punjabi Christians remained in place, with the majority finding themselves within the borders of Pakistan and the rest in independent India.[17] Those Christians who were serving in official government positions and the civil service were given the choice of opting for either of the countries.[18] The many British-era churches and cathedrals dotting the various cities of Punjab were overtaken by Punjabi Christians, and they also continued the legacy of maintaining Christian educational institutions and healthcare facilities which had remained nationally renowned.[19]
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1981
history-of-missions-in-india_richter.pdf (missiology.org.uk)
As of 1981, Lahore was the city with the largest Christian population in Pakistan, numbering over 200,000. The cities of Faisalabad, Sialkot and Sheikhupura are home to sizable communities.[22] In rural Punjab, many Christians belong to the Dalit Christian community, specifically the chuhra community,[23] whose ancestors had converted to Christianity from Hinduism during the colonial era to escape a discriminatory caste system in which they were regarded untouchables.[22][9][5][24][8] According to Dawn, compared to the more affluent Pakistani Christian communities of Anglo-Indians and Goan Catholics, who at the time of independence lived in the major cities, were proficient in English, and maintained upper-class British cultural mannerisms, the chuhras reflected the lower socioeconomic end of Pakistan; they were predominately labourers and peasants who were unskilled, did not own land, were neither highly educated or wealthy, and lived in the villages of central Punjab.[8] Despite having embraced Christianity, they still faced discrimination at some level due to their caste, skin colour, and economic status.[8] Peter C. Phan states that these chuhras form the vast majority of Pakistani Christians.[5] There continue to be several Christian-majority villages and settlements throughout Pakistani Punjab, such as Clarkabad and Martinpur.[22] The Christians belonging to the lower-income strata of Pakistani society face a number of social and economic issues, such as bonded labour.[8][9] Because of their impoverishment, many of them are forced to work in menial labour jobs, such as cleaners and sweepers; in Punjab alone, an estimated 80 percent of all sanitation workers belong to the Christian community.[9] As a result of urbanisation, employment-driven migration into larger cities and greater educational opportunities, an increasing number of Punjabi Christians have been able to gain a college education and acquire socially respectable positions in recent times.[19]
In the Islamabad Capital Territory, the Christian community dwells in large numbers in Francis Colony, a legally-recognised residential area situated in sector F-7. Others live in slums (katchi abadis) located on government-owned land, to where they have shifted from Narowal, Shakargarh, Sheikhupura, Kasur, Faisalabad, Sahiwal and Sialkot in Punjab.[8] In Azad Kashmir, there are close to 5,000 Punjabi Christians who live in the Bhimber, Mirpur, Muzaffarabad, Kotli, Poonch and Bagh districts. Their roots lie mostly in Rawalpindi and Sialkot.[25] Most of the 50,000 or so Christians in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa speak Punjabi, and had ancestors who settled in this area, but have gradually become Pashtunized over time due to cultural assimilation.[26][22][8] The largest Christian population is in Peshawar,[22] and there are a few hundred Christians in Swat.[8] The districts forming the erstwhile tribal areas along the Afghan frontier have been home to thousands of Christians since the early 20th century; according to the 1998 census, there were 1,500 Christians in South Waziristan, 2,000 in North Waziristan, 500 in Bajaur, 700 in Mohmand and 1,500 in Khyber District, all of whose ancestors migrated from Punjab.[8] They primarily work in nursing, teaching, cleaning or in clerical jobs.[8]
In Sindh, there have been Punjabi Christians settled for several decades; they include farmers, landowners, agricultural workers and other labourers engaged in blue collar work in the rural countryside, with Catholic villages existing in Hyderabad, Nawabshah, Sanghar and Mirpur Khas.[27][8] The metropolis of Karachi is home to the largest population, with over 20,000 Punjabi Christians living in the neighbourhood of Essa Nagri alone.[8] In Balochistan, the majority of the province’s 80,000 to 100,000 Christians are Punjabis.[8]
In Gilgit-Baltistan, Christians from Punjab are present across all of the ten districts, and are involved in janitorial work in both the public and private sectors.[24]
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2011
Punjabi Christians – Wikipedia
Today, the Punjabi Christians reside in the Punjab region, which includes the countries of Pakistan and India; they are almost equally divided between Catholicism and Protestantism.[1][6] With an estimated three million living in the Pakistani province of Punjab, they account for 75 percent of the country’s total Christian population.[1][7][8] They are the second-largest religious community in the province behind Muslims, comprising approximately 1.5 to 2.8 percent of its population.[9][10] In India, a significant Punjabi Christian community is also found in the Indian state of Punjab. With a population of roughly 350,000, they comprise 1.26 percent of the state’s population according to official Indian government figures.[2]
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2020
Rubab, Aqsa; Shafique, Muhammad; Javed, Faqeeha; Saleem, Samia; Zahra, Fatima Tuz; McNevin, Dennis; Shahid, Ahmad Ali (3 November 2020). “Population genetic portrait of Pakistani Lahore-Christians based on 32 STR loci”. Scientific Reports. 10 (1). doi:10.1038/s41598-020-76016-2. hdl:10453/145358
A study published in Nature analyzed the DNA of Punjabi Christians residing in the city of Lahore and found that they “appeared genetically more associated to south Asian, particularly Indian populations like Tamil, Karnataka, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh than rest of global populations.”
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Links and Related Essay’s
history-of-missions-in-india_richter.pdf (missiology.org.uk)
Robert Clark (missionary) – Wikipedia
Vander Werff, Lyle L. (1977). Christian Mission to Muslims. William Carey Library. pp. 52–73. ISBN 9780878083206.
- Dawson, E.C. (March 2005). “Mrs Robert Clark : A missionary pioneer of the Punjab”. Heroines Of Missionary Adventure. Kessinger Publishing. pp. 26–40. ISBN 9781417958979.
- ^ Jump up to:a b c d e f g h i Anderson, Gerald H. (September 1999). Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. p. 136. ISBN 9780802846808.
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