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God in India. 90 He reported that the Spirit manifestations at Mukti, particularly
tongues speaking, were received only in late December 1906 after hearing the
report of the Los Angeles revival in the Apostolic Faith. Therefore, as Anderson
rightly comments, ‘Moorhead became the origin of the mistaken assumption that
the Pentecostal revival in India was a direct consequence of the Azusa Street
revival.’ 91 It is evident that there was a move to ‘focus Calcutta as the birthplace’
of Indian Pentecostalism. 92 This intention is very clear in Moorhead’s report
which stated that the Pentecostal fire spread to every part of the Empire from
Calcutta through western missionaries. 93
In a study of Kerala Pentecostalism, Paulson Pulikottil, a leading Indian
Pentecostal theologian and Biblical scholar, passionately argues against such a
Eurocentric approach to the history of Indian Pentecostalism. 94 As he suggests,
such an approach definitely underestimates the possibility of the manifestation of
the Holy Spirit and the response of the people towards it in other places. In his
study on ‘Pentecostal Beginnings in India,’ A.C. George has tried to expose the
weakness of the myth that Pentecostalism in India is directly linked to the Azusa
Street Revival. 95
The second approach argues that the revival at Pandita Ramabai Saraswati’s
Mukti Mission in Kedgaon, near Poona, India, in 1905-7 marked the beginning of
90 McGee, ‘Calcutta Revival,’ 138.
91 Anderson, Spreading Fires, 82.
92 McGee, ‘Calcutta Revival,’ 138.
93 Anderson, Spreading Fires, 89.
94 See Pulikottil, ‘East and West Met.’
95 See, A.C. George, ‘Pentecostal Beginnings in India,’ Dharma Deepika 6, no.2 (2002).
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