The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1933, Page 79

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THE LUTHERAN PIONEER

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The Deaf in India.

One of the most familiar sights in India is the
wayside beggar; he or she is to be found in every
thoroughfare and outside every place of worship.
The beggar’s professional whine is one of the most
aggravating sounds ever invented. Often it will be
noticed that the usual formula in the usual whine
is replaced by uncouth and meaningless sounds;
for the suppliant is a deaf-mute.

India has many sufferers, but it is not often
realized how large a number of them are deaf-
mutes nor how hard is their lot. Silence is almost
unknown in that vast land; for if human sounds
cease, the animal world and the teeming insect life
take up the chorus. But to all this there are thou-
sands of ears forever deaf. The last census gave
the total number of deaf-mutes as 189,644, of whom
114,249 were males and 75,395 females. One who
has known India for many years points out that
this is probably an underestimate, since this repre-
sents only those known to the enumerators; it would
probably be safe to add another fifty per cent.

Tor various reasons very little has so far been
done to improve their condition. Most Europeans
in the East are fully occupied with their own deaf-
mutes, and whereas nobody can help being struck
by the appalling number of blind people in India, it
is possible to be quite unconscious to the existence
of deaf-mutes, who, it seems, are fairly evenly
distributed throughout the land. Moreover, the
Church Missionary Society and others who are alive
to the need are at present unable for lack of funds
to launch any fresh venture.

Two facts emerge from any study of the subject ;

one is that the need is tremendous; the other, that
the work is well worth doing.

Dr. Forchhammer has said that “there is noth-
ing in the brain of the deaf to prevent them from
learning to speak just as correctly as those who
hear,” and this has been abundantly proved in the
few schools for the deaf-mutes that already exist in
India. The general opinion is that not only are
they as intelligent as the average normal child, but
if anything, they are more intelligent, -what they
lose in one direction being made up to them in
another. ‘They can be trained to lip-read and to
speak, though the latter is a very long and tedious
process, sometimes taking as long as ten years.
They readily take to composing, mat-making, knit-
ting, and other manual work, and can be turned out
useful members of the community. It is probable

that, if new methods of teaching were introduced,
so that by use of apparatus class-teaching could
take the place of individual work, not only could
larger numbers be helped, but the time taken in
teaching could be greatly reduced.

There are at present fourteen institutions in
India, of which some are municipal, some private,
some mission; but these schools care for only 475
children between the ages of five and fifteen, so that
only one per cent. of the deaf-mute children is being
educated.

Work for deaf-mutes is recognized as specially
difficult and.expensive, but difficulty is not a reason
that should hinder the Christian Church when once
she has understood the need and heard the call to
help. — Gladys I. Mather, in the Record.

Broadcasting the Bible.

Nearly seven million copies of the Christian
Scriptures (mostly gospels) were bought in Asia
last year.

Except for the Calcutta agency there was a con-
siderable decline in India, but over a million vol-
umes were circulated.

In Korea the Bible continues to be the best seller
and the most read of all books; the sales increased
from 645,000 to 680,000.

In Japan the fourth special reprint of the New
Testament, issued to assist the Kingdom of God
Movement initiated by Toyohiko Kagawa, was ex-
hausted; 37,000 copies had been sold by the end
of 1931.

The largest decrease of all took place in China.
What astonishes us, however, is not that 188,000
fewer books should have been sent out in that land,
but rather that 4,500,000 books were taken by
Chinese. 2

During the past five years of unexampled polit-
ical turmoil, social disintegration, and economic
misery 122,000 complete Bibles, 202,000 Testa-
ments, and 21,000,000 single books of Scripture
(gospels for the most part) have been circulated
in China by one Bible society alone. This surely
is an indication that the China which bulks so large
in the newspapers is not the only China.

Once again we can report an increased sale of
the complete Chinese Bible; the sale in 1931 sur-
passed all previous records. This betokens a grow-
ing literacy among Chinese Christians and a rising
tide of spiritual energy in the Chinese Church.

In lands that are predominantly Moslem the