Gwalia in Khasia

Gwalia in Khasia tells the story of the Welsh Calvinistic Methodists' Mission to the Khasi Hills in north-east India between 1841 and 1969. Three different narrative strands interweave throughout the book: the first being the life and work of Thomas Jones (1810–1849) of Montgomeryshire: the first Calvinist Methodist missionary to reach the hills in April 1841.^[2][3] Jones became a Calvinistic Methodist minister in 1840, and shortly afterwards set out for India with his wife Anne. His practical skills were valued by the Khasi community, and he learned their language by living among them.^[4] Jones recorded the Khasi language in Roman script, and the inscription on his gravestone in the Scottish Cemetery in Kolkata calls him "the founding father of the Khasi alphabet and literature". He was expelled from the church in 1847 for, amongst other things, involving himself in the commercial venture of farming. As a result of his criticisms of a local industrialist, Harry Inglis, Jones was later forced to leave the Khasi hills. During his escape through the jungle he contracted malaria, and died on 16 September 1849.

The second narrative strand in Gwalia in Khasia is the tale of the mission in the time after Thomas Jones, including the impact of the 1897 Assam earthquake, which destroyed most of the mission buildings but also drove hundreds of Khasis into the arms of the Church.^[5] This narrative strand wraps up in 1969, when the remaining missionaries left India.

The third strand is the account of Jenkins' own travels in the Khasi hills during the early 1990s.^[2]

In 1996, Gwalia in Khasia won the Wales Book of the Year award. In 2002, the book was republished in India by Penguin under the title Through The Green Door: Travels Among the Khasis.^[6]

In the obituary for Jenkins published in The Independent in 2014, Meic Stephens noted that Gwalia in Khasia "was compared by competent critics to the work of such travel-writers as Jan Morris and Paul Theroux."^[1]