President's address: A resume of Indian work

An Accidental Biographer? On Encountering, Yet Again, the Ideas and Actions of J.W. Burton

“…24 His own experience of converting others was not encouraging; few Fiji Indians became Christian from his teaching even though, by his own account, he preached on street corners and in the marketplace rather than just in church. 25 Occasionally, his words resonated: in a 1909 Missionary Review article entitled 'Nicodemus' he describes Gobind Das, guru to the plantation workers, who conducts an evening prayer gathering during which he follows recitations from the Ramayana with readings of the Beatitudes and the parable of the Prodigal Son from an old Hindi New Testament. On this occasion the guru visits the missionary by night and converts to Christianity, taking the name Nicodemus.…”