The Jesus Christians. 3. A Passage to India
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Sanitizing a sewer in Chennai and doing charitable work characterized an unforgettable Indian experience for the early group members.
May 2, 2025
Since its beginnings, the group that would later be called Jesus Christians believed that their missionary and charitable outreach should not be limited to Australia. They felt called to India, and eventually a sizeable number of them moved there. It was a difficult but also a rewarding time, which generated mostly positive media coverage, both in India and abroad. Only in subsequent years, as anti-cult campaigns developed, was the experience in India reconstructed by the media as inappropriate and extreme.
In March 1983, Dave and Cherry McKay went to Bangalore with their children, Gary and Christine. The “Bangalore base” functioned until the first months of 1984, and resulted in two new members who joined there being added to the group. In July 1985, Sheri McKay returned to Bangalore with a small team. They encountered strong opposition as they were doing charitable and missionary work in villages. In July 1986, they had to flee for their life after a local girl converted to Christianity and joined their group. They settled in a large Christian orphanage called Bethel Girls Town in Cochin (now Kochi), Kerala. They also worked at a smaller orphanage in Thalavady, a Kerala village located some 80 kilometers north of Cochin. Some in the orphanages disliked the group’s presence because of their different theology. They returned to Australia in September 1987.
In 1988, a couple of the group’s members moved to India with the (eventually unsuccessful) purpose of adopting an Indian child. In December 1990, Dave McKay and a few co-workers went to Madras to start work focused on sanitization and humanitarian aid. In 1991, they started helping Royapettah Hospital and built a playground for children, which was inaugurated by a State Minister. They attracted some media coverage in 1992 by distributing critical tracts at a crusade conducted in Madras (now Chennai) by American televangelist Robert Tilton, whose theology and antics were antithetical to their own.
The unhygienic conditions of the Pondy Bazaar in Madras then caught their attention. They tried to sanitize the toilets, open a clinic, and induce the authorities to intervene. It was their most publicized campaign.
In December, they conducted a week-long demonstration at the Pondy toilets by standing in untreated sewage to emphasize the health hazards associated with open sewers. Despite one of them contracting typhoid during the protest, their efforts garnered significant media attention nationwide.
On Christmas Day, responding to widespread unrest in India, the Madras group commenced a 230‑mile padayātrā (spiritual walk) aimed at fostering peace among Hindus, Muslims, and Christians.
Following the walk, the Madras team commenced removing debris from the open Pondy sewer and excavating the area to construct a concrete culvert some thirty feet wide and seven feet tall to facilitate the sewer flow. They appeared on the cover of “Kumudam,” a Tamil magazine with a circulation of 600,000. Media generally praised their efforts, although they were not without opposition. In January 1993, their visits to the Christian missionary organization Operation Mobilization’s ship Doulos led to organizers contacting Madras police and incorrectly informing them that the group was part of the Children of God.
Finally, their campaign for sanitizing the Pondy Bazaar sewers paid off. In August 1993, the government announced plans to allocate $3 million to cover open drains in Madras, following media coverage of the group’s efforts to cover the Pondy sewer. The press was brought to observe the same sewer, one block upstream from their project, to demonstrate where the funds would be utilized.
They still felt a privately operated clinic was needed. In December, they opened it despite local government threats to demolish the structure. Their force in Madras included twenty-two people, among them four children, meaning that the majority of the small group was by then in India.
In 1994, they experienced significant visibility in India, with regular media coverage and a steady influx of visitors, including politicians, celebrities, school classes, and service clubs. Multiple television documentaries highlighting their work were produced in India, and some were broadcast across Asia. In June, the Deputy High Commissioner for Britain attended (as the chief guest) a function honoring their results, which received global media coverage. Environmentalist Ian Kiernan (1940–2018), 1994’s “Australian of the Year,” along with several West Australian politicians, visited them in August and September. Also in September, they officially organized the World Clean-Up Day for Madras.
The team successfully transformed a sixty-meter stretch of sewer into a functional area, featuring a full-size volleyball court, a clinic, and small huts for the workers under which the sewer flowed. They treated up to 150 patients daily, conducted English classes, and organized sporting events. Furthermore, they undertook the task of clearing an additional hundred meters of the silted sewage canal using buckets, shovels, and manual labor. Eventually, teaching English for free and printing subsidiary books for the lessons became another main activity of the group in India.
Businessmen at Pondy Bazaar secretly offered materials to extend the sewer canal’s concrete tunnel, as long as the state government remained unaware of their support. The reason was the hostility to the group by a powerful local politician, Kanilur A. Krishnaswamy (1932–2010), the Minister for Law in the government of Tamil Nadu. The Jesus Christians attribute his opposition to the fact that he was a “slum lord,” controlling the votes in a large area of Madras and was disturbed by any interference. However, the incident should also be read in the context of the long reign as Tamil Nadu’s Chief Minister of Krishnaswamy’s political patron, Jayaram Jayalalithaa (1948–2016), who served in this position, with interruptions, for fifteen years between 1991 and 2016. Jayalalithaa, a former actress, represented the local party All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), which put together a defense of Tamil identity against non-Tamils and a secularism influenced by Marxism.
Although the party is not Communist, the present leader of its splinter group Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu is called Muthuvel Karunanidhi Stalin. His father, the senior Muthuvel Karunanidhi (1924–2018), also a Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, managed to change his son’s last (rather than first) name to “Stalin,” in honor of the Soviet leader Josef Stalin (1878–1953), so that his children could inherit the patronymic. M.K. Stalin’s son is thus called Udhayanidhi Stalin. He is serving as Deputy Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu and is widely believed to be groomed to succeed his father as Chief Minister. The opposition encountered by the Christian group from Australia was thus also part of a broader and ideologically motivated anti-Western and anti-religious politics prevailing in Tamil Nadu.
Yet, the group continued its efforts at Pondy Bazaar. They started working at a new section of the sewer in October 1994, although this angered Krishnaswamy even more. On October 9, he appeared at the compound with several followers, insulting and threatening the group. On October 26, Krishnaswamy sent to the compound the Deputy Mayor of Madras, who issued death threats against the Christian volunteers. They managed to record the threats and sent transcripts to the media and their consulates.
They also pretended to give in to the threats and stopped working. However, on November 6—a Sunday, when government offices were closed—they rushed to complete a large section of the canal. They continued in the following days, ignoring orders and threats, by building a large playground, a library, and a small orphanage. The success of the Pondy Bazaar project led them to be asked to start an educational hygiene project in a slum in another part of Madras. They built a hut for their teachers there, but Krishnaswamy appeared again and had it quickly demolished.
However, through 1994 and 1995, the group managed to resist. The majority of its members were still in India. The clinic received assistance from volunteer nursing and medical students, exchange students, and tourists. Volunteers not only supported clinic operations but also contributed to dredging efforts and supervised the 500 children who utilized the playground daily.
In 1995, the group decided to transfer control of their grounds to local charities by year’s end. They allocated half of the compound to a Hindu volunteer group assisting AIDS patients and the playground side to a Catholic orphanage aiding street children. The team began moving back to Australia in February 1995.
Political opposition calmed down as the Jayalalithaa government started being investigated for corruption. In 1996, Jayalalithaa was voted out of office, although she eventually returned to office as Chief Minister in the 21st century.
The U.S. Consul visited the compound in May 1995. In June, thirty-five British sailors from HMS Sheffield volunteered to assist for a day, contributing to the removal of thirty tons of silt from the sewer.
Later in the year, university volunteers participated, and the compound on the sewer, named Vision 2000, became active again. Incidentally, the name “Vision 2000” came from a slogan used by Jayalalithaa, and a large photo of the Chief Minister was put on display, giving opponents the impression that she had approved the project, although this was not the case.
In 1996, despite moving to a flat on Madras’ outskirts, four group members continued commuting to the clinic, where they assisted the AIDS group in training nurses. In September, the team in India warned a Madras newspaper that low-hanging pipes under the bridge (between the Vision 2000 complex) would cause flooding by blocking water flow and trapping debris. In October, two men drowned when the monsoons hit and rubbish accumulated. Local officials used this incident to break the concrete slab, claiming this was needed to access the bodies, despite having manholes every fifteen meters for this purpose. The slab was later repaired, but the group took the incident as an omen that their work at Vision 2000 should come to an end.
Source: bitterwinter.org
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