John Fordyce (1819-1902) is a Christian missionary, evangelical minister and administrator who launched a women's education initiative in India known as the Zenana Mission. He is credited with introducing rickshaws to India.
Video John Fordyce (missionary)
Kehidupan Awal
Fordyce was born on March 7, 1819 in Forgue, the fourth son of James Fordyce and Ann (nÃÆ' Â © e Adam). After studying at the University of Edinburgh, he became a schoolteacher at Kelso and was an elder and preacher of the Scottish Free Church there, very close to Reverend Horatius Bonar, in the 1840s.
In 1851, he entered New College, Edinburgh, to study theology, and he taught at the private women's academy in the city in 1852. During or before this period, he came to the notice of Reverend Dr. Alexander Duff who fabricated the appointment, by the Women's Committee Church Free for the Promotion of Women's Education in India, as Inspector of Women's Institute of Calcutta.
Maps John Fordyce (missionary)
Zenana Work
Fordyce arrived in Calcutta at the end of 1852 with responsibility for the Women's Institution (an orphanage that clothed, fed and taught indigenous girls aged between 3 and 16) and a mandate generally to "improve the Native Women's Education".
He immediately took preparatory steps to educate the princesses of an influential Indian in the zenana (a remote woman's place) in their own home. In 1839 Dr Duff acknowledged that the advancement of women's education in India was impossible without access to the zenana but declared such access impractical. In 1840, his colleague, Dr. Thomas Smith, describes a zenana teaching scheme, but fellow missionary conferences in Bengal have twice regarded it as unrealistic. Not until the arrival of Fordyce was an integrated effort undertaken to implement the scheme.
This scheme, as perfected by Fordyce, consists of paid carers, each accompanied by an assistant or father, making regular visits to higher caste Hindu households to provide basic education for the women there, the cost of such visits being met of monthly subscriptions paid by the head of the house. Caregivers should be accommodated free of charge at an institution devoted to the cause: they will first be taken from the Fordyce orphanage and from orphaned children trained there to become teachers - eventually establishing the Normal Schools department within the Institute. He started a consultation, persuasion and negotiation program with influential Hindu families (especially Tagore's family) "to overcome their objections, learn their objections, and gain their support". He produced a series of pamphlets ("Flyleaves for Indian Homes") containing "short, strong and striking shouts for husbands and fathers", which are widely circulated in India. He also used every opportunity to write and speak in support of the zenana initiative.
In February 1855 there began a series of zenana excursions by Miss Eliza Toogood, the most eloquent Fordyce staff who were also fluent in Bengali, and this continued in three houses for the next seven months. The instructions given so well received that at the end of this period arrangements are being finalized for women from several adjacent families to meet in one house zenana. On September 7, 1855, Fordyce reported his experimental results to the Bengal Missionary Conference, which "rejoiced in the commencement of the hope of the Zenana School Scheme both as a sign of progress and new means of improving women". From that time on, the Fordyce zenana's work took on a formal mission status and "at first, and then in an increase in ratio, the gateway door is open".
Due to his poor wife's health condition, Fordyce returned to Scotland in 1856, but his plan was continued in India by a large number of missionary wives, mainly including Hana Catherine Mullens ("Apostle Zenana"). In 1876 nearly 500 zenanas were visited in Calcutta alone, and by 1890 the total across India was 40,513.
Christian Services
In 1858, Fordyce was ordained a pastor of the Free Church at Duns, where he stayed until he was called to pastor of the newly formed Presbyterian congregation in Cardiff in 1866. During this period he traveled extensively, giving lectures on church work in India, and edit> Eastern Female's Friend , quarterly magazine of the Ladies' Society (where he became President).
In 1870 he was summoned by the Free Church Mission Commission to take over the newly founded Anglo-Indian Christian Union church in Simla (also known as St. Mark's), who served seven Protestant denominations, and became a Union Commissioner in North India, where he composed capacity and oversee the division of the territory into seven ministries. Once again, Dr. Duff played a key role in Fordyce's selection. In addition to the shepherding work at Simla, Fordyce served for a cooler half year for the Europeans on the estate, railroad and military posts from Peshawar in the west to Calcutta in the east, and also did what he could in mission work at between hills. -stairs. When he retired from this job in 1884 he estimated he had covered 120,000 miles in the previous fourteen years.
Later Work and Off
On his return to England, Pdt. Fordyce became General Secretary and Treasurer of Anglo-Indian Christian Society, now renamed the Anglo-Indian Evangelization Society, and he continued until 1894.
He died on November 23, 1902 at Cambridge and was buried with his wife at St Andrew's church in Chesterton.
Legacy
In the years following Fordyce's experiment, the number of zenana who received instruction grew rapidly and unmarried women's missionaries, who previously had their churches not familiar with special needs, were actively recruited - not only for the zenana but also for teaching in public schools where attendance women increase exponentially. because zenana work helps reveal the social value of western education. In 1876 at least 104 European and American women, some with medical diplomas, taught across India, and Fordyce's long-term ambition ("to secure the many who will bring the light of knowledge to the renaissance zenana... and if successful, some famous examples will be followed by many, and the middle class will then send their daughter to a public school ") is in the process of fulfillment.
Rickshaw Promotion
According to historian Pamela Kanwar, "circa 1880 rickshaw appeared in India, was first introduced in Simla by Rev. J. Fordyce".
Fordyce's role in popularizing rickshaws is mentioned in the novel of Mulk Raj Anand Coolie (1936), which mistakenly misrepresents his discovery: "Rev. J. Fordyce, Reverend St. Mark's Church, is much disturbed by uncomfortable thoughts about the death and dignity that had arisen in the minds of his congregation in the Victorian age, and, deeply concerned that the sheep of his flock not suffer from bodily discomfort, he concentrated all efforts to secure adequate vehicles for the delivery of their people from their bungalow to the Church and from the Church to their bungalow, he found a rickshaw. "
Coolie cites several verses of the doggerel as proof that "the Simla people still remember his remarkable model":
The hood of the first rickshaw Is square and trimmed with edges,
Like dangling from a fireplace
In many tones of Berlin.
During the early eighties
The Reverend Fordyce J.
Creating the first rickshaw
For Simla during the month of May.
Personal Life
The appointment of Fordyce to Calcutta depends on his marriage. He was a favored candidate by March 1852 but it was not until September that he married Wortley Montague Stewart, daughter of a Kingston-upon-Hull wood merchant. Therefore, her choice of bride may have been taken into account in order to meet the special challenges ahead, while she may have attracted the impulse of sharing her name with fortune-telling lady Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who had penetrated the zenana of the Ottoman Empire the previous century. The "talented" Mrs. Fordyce is an important partner in her husband's work: she introduced Miss Toogood and her assistant to the women of the zenana on their initial visit, and she was then Secretary of the Anglo-Indian Women's Union.
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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