Chettiar was a high-caste Hindu. He lived in N. Parur, Travancore, S. India. That is a highly favored part of India, as there have been Christians there ever since Apostolic days. The Apostle Thomas is reported to have carried the gospel to that country and to have landed at a port not far from N. Parur.
When we first went to India in 1920 we made our home in Parur and lived there for two years, so we know the town fairly well, but we did not come into contact with Chettiar until 1939.
India's teeming millions are divided, roughly, into three groups-100 million Mohammedans, 200 million high-caste Hindus, and 100 million Untouchables. The latter are otherwise known as the depressed classes, the low caste, or the outcastes. The high caste or caste Hindus, are grouped into four classes: (1) the Brahmins, the priestly class; (2) the Kshethriyas, the soldiers; (3) the Visyas, the trades or business people; (4) the Sudras, the servants of the Brahmins and the others. These four castes are supposed to have emanated from the head, the shoulders, the loins, and the feet, respectively, of God. They are again divided into many castes. Chettiar belonged to the third class, the Visyas, many of whom are money-lenders.
When quite young Chettiar became anxious to know more about salvation, though as yet he had never heard the gospel or met a missionary. According to the belief of the Hindus, merit can be gained by making pilgrimages to the holy places of Hinduism, so he set out on a pilgrimage, taking with him a Brahmin priest, for whom he had built a house, and for whose expenses he had made himself responsible. Together they went from the Southwest across Madras, then to Bombay, Benares, and as far north as the Himalayas. At each temple where they stopped he would give feasts to the priest and take his holy bath in the holy tank! At Benares he bathed in the "sacred" Ganges; and he took home water from the river to bathe his idol, and for his mother to have a bath in. His priest and instructor assured him that only suicide and murder could be called sin! But this did not satisfy Chettiar; and he went on another pilgrimage, this time to the Southeast, to Rameswaram. This proved equally of no avail. Yet again he went, this time to the South, to Trevandrum, but found no satisfaction.
He then came into possession of a Bible; it was given him by a Roman Catholic. But as he began to read Genesis 1 he got discouraged for he felt that he wanted something more than the record of creation. Later, he discovered that the Bible was divided into two portions-the Old and the New. He started the New and almost gave up when he saw the genealogy of Matthew 1. But as he read the four Gospels, while daily going through his ablutions according to Hindu rites, and putting on his ashes, he became convinced that here was the Person, the Savior, he had been looking for.
Eventually, he concentrated on reading the Gospel by John. Daily he read and re-read it; the more he read, the more he was drawn to the Person of Christ. One day, as he read John 6:37, the words "him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out" so gripped him that he said "Lord" and then, as he realized that that was a new word for him to use in prayer, he said: "Yes., Thou shalt be my Lord, Thou didst die for my sins. The peace I've sought for in all my pilgrimages (covering nearly 10,000 miles) I've found in Thee." That day Chettiar became a Christian. He had come to Christ and had found salvation. It is this that constitutes a man a Christian. Nothing less than a personal coming to Christ; a personal, individual receiving of Christ is sufficient and, thank God, nothing else is necessary.
As I listened to the account of his conversion, and as we prayed together, one realized the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the power of the Word of God, for Chettiar was never privileged to hear the gospel from the lips of any. How truly he could say—
"I tried the broken cisterns, Lord,
But ah! the waters failed.
E'en as I stooped to drink they'd fled,
And mocked me as I wailed.
Now, none but Christ can satisfy,
None other name for me:
There's love, and life, and lasting joy,
Lord Jesus, found in Thee.