56 THE CARAVANbearing the cross · reportagebefore Joseph, the community’s powerful religious
institutions had been reluctant to engage politi-
cally, which blunted the minority-rights movement.
These institutions were set up during colonial
times by international missionary bodies, and
were once flush with funds and resources. After
Partition, the foreign benefactors began moving
out, and locals assumed positions as clergy. Today,
these institutions seem to be in a state of decay. The
village of Montgomerywala, also on the outskirts of
Faisalabad, is an embodiment of this problem.
Compared to the tiny villages dotting Faisal-
abad’s vicinity, Montgomerywala has had a history
relatively free of conflict. Apart from a handful of
squabbles over land and several scandals involving
Christians marrying Muslims, the Christian vil-
lagers here do not recall having strained relations
with their Muslim neighbours, and insist that they
have always felt safe here.
Despite a ban on loudspeakers, the churches
here continue to use them to make announce-
ments and broadcast Sunday sermons. The sound
of azan does not reach here.
An Anglican church towers over the village like
a medieval castle, and the number of smaller, but
prominent, churches here exceeds eight. Near the
entrance to the village stand two rickety shops,
both bearing Quranic verses on the shutters.
These belong to the only two Muslim families that
reside in the village, which had a population of a
little over 25,000 as recorded in the 1997 census,
the most recent source of such data. Spread over
4,125 acres, this is the largest Christian-only vil-
lage in the country, a young priest dressed in white
robes told me. But, he added, like its crops, which
are suffering from increasing ground salinity, the
village is slowly withering away.
Many of Pakistan’s Christian-majority villages—
Martinpur, Stuntzabad, Youngsonabad, Bate-
manabad, Khushpur—took on the names of a local
missionary patriarch who had helped settle them.
Montgomerywala was named after an archdeacon
of the Church Mission Society who was based in
Gojra city, the young priest told me.
Duncan Forrester wrote that the converts
had moved into these villages in large numbers
towards the end of the nineteenth century to be-
come tenant farmers, or even labourers, but with
favourable terms of employment. The CMS priests
had followed the model they had adopted in the
urban centres—creating strong establishments to
provide healthcare and education—and stressed
the need for high-quality education for the new
settlers.
After Partition, the foreign clergy focussed on
preparing locals to take up their responsibilities,
which included church and village administra-
tion affairs. These foreign missionaries hadopened schools and hospitals, and agricultural-
ists among them had introduced the latest farm-
ing techniques. Many of them continued to live in
these villages for several years after Partition, but
security concerns kept growing and the general
condition of the villages worsened—the cultivat-
able land was shrinking, farming was becoming
unfeasible and Muslims from other places were
increasingly buying property these villages. This
meant that the foreigners would have to leave,
and with them the donations and money from
abroad.
Some institutions have survived while others
have been lost. Montgomerywala is home to a few
large educational institutes that cater to hundreds
of students, including some who travel from other
villages to attend. These include the Government
CMS High School and Primary School, as well as
the Sacred Heart schools for girls and boys.
Pastor Sarfaraz Masih of Assemblies of God
church listed a number of prominent Christian
lawmakers and government officers who have
studied at these institutes—the serving human-
rights and minorities affairs minister, Tahir Khalil
Sandhu, and the former national assembly mem-
ber Peter John Sahotra among them. However,
Sarfaraz lamented, none of these big names ever
returned to provide any leadership or vision to the
people of Montgomerywala. Today, the villagers
are poorer than they have ever been, he said.
In the 1970s, under Zulfiqar Bhutto the govern-
ment nationalised many schools to make them
accessible to the poor. It mostly targeted Urdu-
medium church-run schools that already catered
to lower-income households, and most Chris-
tians complain that, as a result, the standard of
education at these schools declined. The church
retained control of the higher-end schools—the
English-medium convents and grammar schools—
and these remained inaccessible to the poor.
Many of the rulers of Pakistan have been
groomed in these church-run schools. Those who
studied at the famed St Anthony’s High School in
Lahore include the former prime minister Nawaz
Sharif and his brother, the current chief minister
of Punjab, Shahbaz Sharif, and the assassinated
governor Salman Taseer. The late prime minister
Benazir Bhutto attended the Murree Convent, and
her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, who is the current
co-chairperson of the Pakistan Peoples Party, at-
tended Karachi Grammar School and St Patrick
High School.
In July, I met Chaudhry Nihal Dar, the lamberd-
ar, or headman, of Montgomerywala, a position
passed on to him from his father, grandfather and
great-grandfather. For many families, cultivating
the land is no longer an option, he told me. The
declining quality of soil and higher costs of ferti-opposite page:
Pakistani police
beat a protestor
taking part in a
procession carried
out after the death
of John Joseph.