American Missionaries difficulties learning Bengali Indian Language

Memorial Church, the associated hostel for working Christian men and the Mission bungalow. Missionaries assigned to this work were fluent in the vernacular, usually Bengali, sometimes Oriya, and in the case of Mr. Howard, Kora–the dialect of a sub-caste of agricultural laborers out in the mufassil (the remote rural area).

These missionaries were Dad and Mother’s colleagues even though their work was, in a major way, culturally divergent. The family I first remember occupying the Karida bungalow was the Roadarmels. The Roadarmels were younger than Dad and Mother. They had been given Bengali language training during their first two years, as was routine with new missionaries. However, Dad at the age of thirty-seven in 1923–the year of his arrival with Mother and John (aged four) in India–was deemed by Mission authorities as too old to learn a new language, so he and Mother were assigned to English work in Khargpur immediately.

they were severely handicapped in their on-going encounter with Indian India by not having this initial period of intensive language study

My opinion now is that they were severely handicapped in their on-going encounter with Indian India by not having this initial period of intensive language study and the cultural training that goes with it. On the other hand, British India was in so many areas English speaking and Anglophilic that it was possible to live, work and form deep friendships there without mastering an Indian language. In truth, English itself had become an Indian language and remains so today.

During Dad and Mother’s third term, 1939-1946, another family was added to the Khargpur group–Mr. and Mrs. Howard and their two younger sons, Lee and Eugene. Gene, a Woodstock Class of 1942 classmate, became a special friend and partner during these Khargpur years.

The Howards moved into the Karida house, while the Roadarmels assumed charge of the Union Church during the Brushes’ 1938-39 furlough in America. When the Brushes returned, the Roadarmels moved to Bhimpur. When their own furlough fell due, because of wartime overseas travel uncertainties, they took a six-month “furlough” in India, traveling and visiting Kashmir and other places. They then moved into the second floor of the Union Church bungalow. With remodelling and the addition of an outside staircase entrance, the house served well as a two-family residence.
The Roadarmel children–Norman, Carolyn and Gordon–were a shade younger than the Brushes. At that age in boarding school being one year younger and a class lower was a huge difference. Earlier, they had attended the Mt. Hermon School at North Point, Darjeeling, while we had been attending Woodstock School in Landour, Mussoorie, in the United Provinces. Their parents now transferred them to Woodstock.

By an unexpected coincidence years later Gordon rematerialized in my personal universe as a faculty member in the Department of Near Eastern Languages at the University of California at Berkeley while I was working on my history dissertation. I was delighted to have him as a committee member and critical reader.

Photo: Laying a new cement roof on our Khargpur bungalow–Dad (in the topi) supervising a work crew of men (standing) and women (working).

Photo: The Roadarmel Family: (left to right) Mr. Charles“Roadie” Roadarmel, their daughter Carolyn, their oldest son Norman, then Gordon and Mrs.Ethel Roadarmel. (1941)

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