I Have Decided to Follow Jesus

Marak, Simon (1877–1975)

Simon Kara Marak was a Garo pastor, schoolteacher, and pioneering missionary who served as an influential leader in Baptist churches in Northeast India, particularly around Jorhat, Assam.

For decades, the global popularity of the hymn "I have decided to follow Jesus" was shrouded in folklore, frequently attributed either to an anonymous, martyred Garo tribesman named Nokseng or to the famous Indian ascetic Sadhu Sundar Singh. However, modern hymnological research has confidently reshaped this narrative, identifying Marak as the primary author of the foundational text.

Recent scholarship traces the song back to Marak’s circuit ministry in the mid-1930s. He originally composed the first two stanzas in the Assamese language to be used as a simple, memorable tool for evangelism and local church gatherings, instructing his children to sing it whenever the gospel was shared.

The hymn's history is heavily detailed in several primary research repositories, including the Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology, UMC Discipleship Ministries, and the Hymnology Archive. These modern accounts draw directly from a landmark research paper by Sengbat G. Momin titled “I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back, no turning back,” published in the Garo Baptist Convention Sesquicentenary Souvenir (2017) and translated by Amanda Aski Macdonald Momin. Momin’s work, relying on interviews with Marak's surviving descendants and regional archival records, firmly establishes Marak's authorship within Assamese and Garo Christian history.

The text underwent a cross-cultural evolution when American hymn editor William J. Reynolds encountered it via Baptist missionary channels. Reynolds arranged the traditional folk melody, subsequently named ASSAM and added the stanza "My cross I'll carry till I see Jesus" for the 1959 Assembly Songbook. This version was later popularized globally through Billy Graham's evangelistic crusades. Remarkably, the added American stanza was eventually translated back into Assamese by Marak himself, completing a unique cross-continental circle of hymnody.

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