Mark Twain & Soul Harvesting

Ramesh Kumar

Honestly, I never read Mark Twain, though am familiar with this name since school days. Remember Adventures of  Huckleberry Finn ?

It so happened that while googling on some transport related topic, Life On The Mississippi by him popped up. Like a curious cat, I Amazoned to explore buying this supposed to be a classic book. Again Google directed me to a free online edition of the same  via Project Gutenberg.

Decided to read the same not in one go but  chapter wise.  Slow  of  course. It is not a pulp fiction, remember. In the first sitting, read the  first two chapters.

In the light of heated debate on the religious divide and the social turmoil gripping in the Indian context, Twain's observations in this book made an interesting read.

This is what he writes in Chapter 2:

"In that day, all explorers traveled with an outfit of priests. De Soto had twenty-four with him. La Salle had several, also. The expeditions were often out of meat, and scant of clothes, but they always had the furniture and other requisites for the mass; they were always prepared, as one of the quaint chroniclers of the time phrased it, to 'explain hell to the savages.'

The period, Twain talks about is the 17th century when the French and Spanish were "discovering" America.

When the expedition party arrived at the mouth of Arkansas, "First, they were greeted by the natives of this locality as Marquette had before been greeted by them--with the booming of the war drum and the flourish of arms. The Virgin composed the difficulty in Marquette's case; the pipe of peace did the same office for La Salle. The white man and the red man struck hands and entertained each other during three days. 

"Then, to the admiration of the savages, La Salle set up a cross with the arms of France on it, and took possession of the whole country for the king--the cool fashion of the time--while the priest piously consecrated the robbery with a hymn. The priest explained the mysteries of the faith 'by signs,' for the saving of the savages; thus compensating them with possible possessions in Heaven for the certain ones on earth which they had just been robbed of. And also, by signs, La Salle drew from these simple children of the forest acknowledgments of fealty to Louis the Putrid, over the water. Nobody smiled at these colossal ironies."

Is Twain not in devastating form?

Soul harvesting is an old and full time job.

Forty years ago, a friend gave up his white collar career to don the priestly attire "to service the God". A decade ago, another colleague of mine gave up his equally lucrative career in the Persian Gulf to pursue  his desire to serve his Maker in the remotest tribal-infested eastern Indian state. What drew these two to this new "vocation" is no mystery to me!

Money is no short supply to buy out people. Converts opt for this route not out of love of their new found Messiah but for economic and social considerations.

This search for God(!) is a fascinating issue. Mark Twain's observations on conversion came as a big surprise. As I plod through this 60 chapter tome, waiting to be surprised again.