On the Day of December 19 1903

The Sikh Who Sought Christ

Khen Lim

Image source: en.wikipedia.org

Sundar Singh’s hatred for the Christian God derived from his mother’s death. At 14 years old, he did everything he could to show his deep vengeance, viciousness and displeasure. He even tore the Bible up and threw each page into a consuming fire but none of these brought him contentment. If anything, he remained unhappy.

With his misery mounting, Sundar decided on December 19 1903 that he wanted answers and so late that night, he prayed and asked God to reveal Himself as proof that He existed. Otherwise he would fling himself into the rushing train that passed by his home.

For the next seven hours, he prayed feverishly, bearing in mind that the 5:00am train was due very soon now. And then a bright glow beckoned, filling out the room. Then a voice emerged, saying to him, “How long will you deny Me? I died for you. I have given My life for you.”

Sundar then noticed the pierced hands and in that split moment, he felt the intense shame of having burned the Bible, insulted the Christians and mocked God in times past. For the first time in his life, he realised Christ was God. The Christian God. His God too.

Born in 1889, Sandhu Sundar Singh did go on to do great things in the next many years including twenty trips to Tibet alone but not before he suffered intensely for his new faith. This shouldn’t be surprising considering how his own close-knitted Sikh community viewed such a conversion as traitorous.

Virtually everyone he came across thereafter was against his decision to convert. His father, Sher Singh, begged him to stay loyal to Sikhism. Angered by what was considered a betrayal, his brother, Rajender Singh, slandered him to everyone else. His uncle tried to bribe him off with riches beyond what he could imagine. By sheer association, other Christians bore the brunt as well. Church services were threatened and missions suffered. Even a boy who became his follower died of poisoning.

Still Sundar remained resolute in his belief but at this point, he needed to make a clean break and move on. And so in 1905, he was publicly baptised as a Christian in the parish church in Simla, at the foothills of the Himalaya.

One day, he made his decision by cutting off his traditional long Sikh locks, which stirred the ire of his own people. Such an act was considered treacherous enough for them to finally disown him. Following the last meal he had with his family, he found himself clutching at his stomach and bent over in excruciating pain only to realise that even his own family would go as far as to poison him to death. He was summarily taken to a mission hospital.

Sundar spent the remainder of his life preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ, wearing the same yellow robe as India’s holy men but unlike them, he kept himself clean and presentable. His style of ministry relied extensively on quoting from Scripture. His decision to adopt the same turbaned attire was the same as his adoption of the title Sadhu – he viewed himself as a holy man albeit one steeped in Christianity and he felt strongly that the only way to make inroads in Indian society was to do it within the permissiveness of its own local culture.

Through his travels over the many years, he faithfully converted many to Christ. His many trips to Tibet were notably the result of a divine calling, the first of which was in 1908. There he found hungry souls starving for the liberating words of Christ but he also faced a strong Buddhist dominance that was determined not to give in to Sundar’s influence because to accommodate his Christianity would be to lose grip over their income and political influence.

In the twenty trips he made to Tibet, the one he made in 1912 to the village of Rasar was particularly gruesome.¹ There he was violently beaten up and then tossed into a pit in which he found himself among decomposing bodies and with a broken arm. The stench was obviously horrifying but there was no escape since the pit was sealed and only the Grand Lama had the means to open it.

Three nights later, he heard some noise above him and realised that the lid was being opened. Backlit by moonlight, he could only discern a shadowy form lowering a rope to help him escape. The next morning Sundar was back on the streets, happily and boldly preaching the Word of God.

Furious that he had escaped his clutches, the Grand Lama ordered him seized and brought before him. Standing in front of him, the Lama shot question after question, demanding to know who had helped him to escape and who had stolen the key from him. It was at that very moment that the Lama retrieved the ring from beneath his robe and much to his shock, discovered that the key to the pit was intact. Completely beside himself, he threw Sundar out of his palace and ordered him expelled from the village.

In another episode, Sundar found himself in the forest of Nepal, bound up and left to die. And again he was rescued. Yet at another time, he was thrown from prison and hurled into the forest, bound in stocks, to die because he was caught singing in praise of Christ. And yet again, he was once more rescued.

In all of these cases, Sundar’s liberators were shadowy Christians – known to be members of the ‘Sannyasi Mission’ – who would come in the still of night to come to his rescue.² They would then spend long hours sharing their faith with him. Those who knew who he was testified that he was more Christ-like than anyone they had ever met. They remembered Sundar saying to them, “A Christian is one who has fallen in love with Christ.”

Sundar was said to have taken long tours to South India and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in 1918 and a year later, he allegedly made his way to Burma (now Myanmar), Malaya (now Malaysia) and also China and Japan.

At roughly this point in time, Sundar’s own father, a staunch and loyal Sikh up till then, remarkably came to Christ. In his guilt over what he had done to his own son in the past, he financed Sundar’s mission to the West in two stages, the first in 1920 and then later in 1922.

In 1920 he visited Australia, England and America but what he saw and experienced had greatly disappointed him. Despite all that was purportedly glorious or magnificent, Sundar felt assailed by such overt – and repugnant – Western materialism. To that, he said in a paraphrase of Christ’s words, “Come unto Me all ye that are heavily laden with gold and I will give you rest.”

Two years later, he returned to Europe where he was warmly received by Christians of various denominations. His words had impact as he reached the hearts of people who were now reeling from the after-effects following the cessation of the ruinous First World War.

The two trips he made had greatly appalled Sundar. In the materialism he saw, he related it to mere emptiness and irreligion that was a dramatic difference to the theistic preoccupation that he found in Asia.

On hearing his reputation, the famous Corrie ten Boom, then a teenager, had dreamed of meeting Sundar. When she heard he was visiting Europe, she was determined to attend his conference to the extent that she risked not having anywhere to stay. Hence she brought along a blanket in case she ended up sleeping outside.

Corrie finally did meet him and was held in awe of his testimony and how he met Christ. Crestfallen that she herself had not (met Christ herself), she asked Sundar why that was so. He replied, saying that she herself was the real miracle because unlike him, she believed even without seeing. And to that, he quoted the words of Christ: “Blessed are those who have not seen but believed.”

After his journeys to the West, Sundar was relieved to return home but by then, he was physically worn. His strength was sapped and he lacked the will that was so abundant in his youthful years. He would eventually descend into sickness and remained so for months.

Yet in 1929, he decided to revisit Tibet and despite not having fully recovered, he made his climb. He found opposition from his friends who advised him against such a trip. Hardly six years earlier, he had returned from Tibet completely drained and realised that his days of ministry were over. They felt that he wouldn’t be able to cope this time.

The last sighting was on April 18 1920 when he was in Kalka where his signature yellow robe was identified among pilgrims and holy men who were making their way to Hindu shrines. Beyond that, Sundar had plainly disappeared. He never returned and nothing was ever heard from him again.

In the early Forties, Sundar’s brother, Rajender was baptised in Punjab by Bishop Dr Augustine Peters, a local missionary from South India. Rajender himself spoke much about his brother’s miracles and summarily converted many to Christ under his ministry.

1 Parker, Mrs Arthur (1920) Sadhu Sundar Singh: Called of God (London: Fleming H. Revell Company). Pages 64-65.

2 Sharpe, Eric J. (2004) The Riddle of Sadhu Sundar Singh (New Delhi: Intercultural Publications). Page 64.