Filmmaker in search of missionary's legacy

CHENNAI: Australian-American Christopher Gilbert is on a mission to Tamil Nadu with his television crew.

Inspired by the extraordinary saga of the first Protestant missionary to India, who landed in a sleepy village called Tarangampadi (Tranquebar) on the Coramandel coast more than 300 years ago, he set out to India to shoot a documentary, titled ‘Beyond Empires’.

When Gilbert first heard the story of Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg from a Luthern pastor from Tamil Nadu in the US, he was amazed. Not just by the zeal of the 23-year-old German, who landed in India as a royal missionary of the Danish monarch in 1706, but because Gilbert had not heard the story earlier despite having studied the history of Christianity while in a seminary.

Then for more than four-and-a-half years, Gilbert did research and learnt more about Ziegenbalg’s contribution to the uplift of the people in the Tamil Nadu. In the process he also realised that Europe has totally forgotten its great son, who devoted his life to make a difference in the lives of others in a country far away from his.

So Gilbert decided to turn raconteur and tell the remarkable life story of the unsung hero. That was how the project ‘Beyond Empires’ was conceived.

But then, Gilbert does not want to go in for a straight narrative that would just seek to bring the life of Ziegenbalg back on screen. His documentary will have young people reacting to the missionary’s life and also saying whether they would take up a career in which they would have to help others against all odds.

The documentary, which will have scholars, experts and historians of different faiths speaking about Ziegenbalg, will be a stepping stone for a full-length feature documentary, Gilbert says. Through visuals of rural Tamil Nadu juxtaposed with the bustling city of Chennai now, which will put the 300-year-old story in modern perspective, the documentary will bring out the spirit behind Ziegenbalg’s mission through images shot in Tarangampadi, where remnants of his times still stand testimony.

What Gilbert finds fascinating is the way in which Ziegenbalg is remembered in Tamil Nadu and the manner in which the tri-centenary of his landing was celebrated in 2006.

Though Ziegenbalg died young in 1719 after spending just 13 years in Tarangampadi where he installed the first printing press in the State and also translated several religious texts, besides writing the Tamil grammar in Latin to enable world scholars to learn Tamil in various universities abroad, he has left a mark in the place where he worked, says Gilbert.

But then, he was given a warm welcome by the local Tamil people when he arrived and it was the Danish — they had set up a settlement in Tarangampadi much before his arrival and had built Fort Dansborg — who were hostile towards him, Gilbert points out.