Rev.Ezamo Murry
Model Village,5th mile Dimapur
Forty years ago on the 8th September 1983 I was invited by the Asom Sahitya Sabha along with Late Dr OM Rao and Late Dr M Kipgen to attend their weeklong celebration of the Late Rev.Miles Bronson’s 100th years death anniversary in Sibsagor Town. We three were professors at the Eastern Theological College and at one time or the other were Principals of that College (ETC Jorhat) in our turns. The Eastern Theological College being a Premier Seminary in Assam established by the American Baptist Missionaries in 1905 its library has the important documents of the early missionaries activities including the showpiece of the first Assamese Megazine Orunodoi (Sun Rise), first published in January 1846 from Sibsagor. It was a time when the British India kept Assam area under the Bengal Presidency and Bengali became the official language of Assam (1836-1876) .It the foresight of Rev Miles Bronson to preserve the Assamese language through Christian Literature.
Miles Bronson not only started the Journal Orunodoi but prepared also a huge 609 pages Dictionary in Assamese and English in 1867, published in Sibsagor by the American Baptist Press, Sibsagor. According to Dr John Ross Carter, President of the American Historical Society at one time this Dictionary was reprinted by The Asian Educational Service, New Delhi reprinted this Dictionary in 1991. In both the Orunodoi and this Dictionary the purpose of Miles Bronson was to educate the Assamese people in their own vernacular, particularly spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ. John Carter observed, “Steadily and persistently Miles held his position for customary English spelling and phonetic representation and the full utilization of Assamese characters to represent the Assamese vernacular. To this day he is celebrated among Assamese for his role in preserving the Assamese vernacular language” Bronson further illustrated his reason for sticking to Assamese rather than the colonial language, Bengali, thus, “I once got up two Bengali native assistant Preachers from Calcutta but when they reached the Assamese Villages their preaching was not understood. I was obliged to teach them Assamese first”.
This was Rev Miles Bronson who is adored and revered by the well meaning Assamese to this day. On that memorable day, the 8th of September 1983 in Sibsagor we three were accorded an honorable welcome as Christian missionaries. On arrival at the spot of celebration we saw a large portrait of Miles Bronson at the entrance. Every Assamese, passing through that image of Bronson prostrated as if to say ‘O Lord, or, O king’. Some of those had come from Delhi (MPs) some had come from Guwahati (Ministers) and some from far and near throughout Assam. That 100th anniversary of Bronson’s death was celebrated seven days with spectacular cultural spots, music, seminars and fellowship in honor of the one who saved their vernacular language spoken today with pride by smallest to the biggest Assamese today (i.e. From the Chief Minister to the sweeper on the street of Assam today)!
This was experienced 40 years ago in Sibsagor Assam but the experience is vivid in my inward eye, especially the way we were introduced to the gathering and accorded with divinely obeisance. This, I thought was because they considered us as servants of Christ, the Lord of Miles Bronson.
Christian Literature everywhere has been the salvage of the language and the literature of many human groups of the world.
Christian literature, especially through the Bible in vernacular creates and recreates languages. One of the four approaches Bronson followed in his ministry was the Bible translation in which work he insisted in native Assamese, not the colonial language. Dr Babu K Varghese has titled his 208 pages book as, “Let There Be India” (Word Of Christ, Mumbay, 2014) sub-titled it as, “Impact of the Bible On Nation building”. He said he published that book urgently to disprove what an Indian politician scolded him one day saying, “Christian missionaries destroyed the culture of India”(p.xxii). As everyone knows the case is the opposite. Christian literature blesses the Nations.
If Rev Miles Bronson did not preserve the Assamesese literature and promote its use in daily learning and conversation at that critical moment what language will the Assamese of today be speaking today!
1. A copy of This first Edition is preserved in Colgatr University Library,Hamilton, Upstate New York.The present writer saw and touched it when it was showed to him in 2009.
2. John Ross Carter,American Baptist Quarterly,Vol.vI Summer 2007 No.2 p 192
3. Bronson wrote in 1870, ref. as in fn 2 above
