TIKA HILLS-THE FIRST CHRISTIAN MISSION CENTER IN THE KARBI HILLS

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“…..It was the year 1836 when the first Baptist missionaries arrived in north-eastIndia. Nathan brown , O.T.Cutter and their wives reached the Brahmaputravalley with a view to spreading the gospel among the people of Burma –china frontier via the north-eastern part of Assam. In a few years other missionaries like Miles Bronsonn,E..W.Clark began to actively promote the gospel works in some tribal areas of Assam.

The Karbis came into contact with Christianity as early as 1859 when the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society (ABFMS) sent Rev. and Mrs.C.F.Tolman to a township in Assam called Nowgong in order that they might be able to reach out to the neibouring tribal dominated region.In1863 Rev.E.P.Scott and his wife came to Assam to start works in Karbi Anglong.In 1871 Rev.and Mrs.R.E.Neighbor accepted the responsibility of looking after the missionary works in the region. In 1890 the ABFMS appointed Penn E.Moore to the Assam mission field. He was married to Miss Charlotte persell.At first they were stationed at Nowgong,but finding that the Karbis were greatly in need of the gospel, they intended to set up a mission centre in Karbi Anglong itself. They chose a tiny village called Krungjeng as the first mission centre in this hilly region. They appointed Sarlok, a young Karbi evangelist for the mission field in the district. After a few years a young American (English by Birth), John Moses Carvell, sailed for India to assist the missionaries in Assam. He married Miss Amy of Nowgong , and together they joined Rev.and Mrs.Moore.Finding Krungjeng unhealthy and unsuitable, they shifted the centre to another place called TIKA HILLS in 1897.Both the couples continued to stay in the region with much hope, notwithstanding the many difficulties they had to come across. They established schools and primary health centre, and kept themselves busy with various translation and evangelistic works.In1897 they published the gospel according to St.Luke in Karbi.On august 1, 1897 Mrs. Amy Carvell died. For some time they all suffered the misfortune, but they still had courage and enthusiasm to carry on the mission works. Later on that year Rev.J.M.Carvell met an English lady, Alice Parker, who had been staying at Nowgong; on December 13, 1897 they got married. That year they baptized six people, and with the help of the new converts they constructed a temporary church building, even though the congregation consisted of not more than fourteen baptized members. They previously had conducted services and had taken Sunday school classes in the veranda of the mission house. They began to involve themselves deeply in publication works after setting up a printing press at TIKA in 1893.

Rev.Moore left India in 1919, but Carvell stayed behind.Carvell identified himself with the Karbis in body and in spirit; and sometimes he remarked that he would die in Karbi Anglong.Even after his retirement he worked alone for twenty months as an independent missionary, making the spreading of the gospel his primary duty. He built a modest house for himself near TIKA, and was getting ready to build another at a higher altitude when for two weeks he suffered from malaria and died on October29, 1925……”

             Karbi Langpi river-From Tika hills

                                    Tourist lodge at Tika Hills