Krishna Pal
1764-1822 18th century
Conversion paid for at the cost of family and community, the courage to be first when no one else would follow, hymns written in a mother tongue to carry a faith still foreign to everyone around him.
Who was Krishna Pal?
A carpenter in Bengal in the 1800s, badly injured and treated by a missionary doctor, he began asking questions about the faith of the man who had healed him and became the very first Bengali convert of the Serampore mission, a huge risk in a society where conversion meant total social exclusion, disowned by his own family and community overnight. He went on to write hymns in Bengali that are still sung, having paid in full for a faith no one around him had chosen with him.
In their own words
O thou, my soul, forget no more the friend who all thy misery bore.