Friday, March 14, 2008

Christian Institutions : Slowly Losing their Way



Forty-eight students from Delhi’s St Columba’s School at Ashok Place — who recently failed in one or more exams in the Class XI finals — have been asked to seek admission elsewhere. Such a piece of provides an opportunity to introspect on the long journey that Christian institutions have made in India to arrive at this juncture.

The early history of the Christian institutions in India is tied up with the so called civilizing mission of both the East India Company and subsequently, the church. Eventually as the colonial regime stabilized and thinking evolved, this mission got subsumed into the church turning into the quasi official social sector arm of the state developing services – primarily education and health care to areas where the State did not or would not go. To aid this process, church related institutions were often given land on perpetual leases at nominal rates – a privilege which makes church a large owner of property even today cutting across denominations.

Although a large emphasis of Christian institutions today purports to be the poor, this was not always the case. The typical Church run institution catered to the elite of the day, an image that has persisted to this day. “Civilizing” the ruling classes was always a primary agenda of the state and the church apparatus was not the only the instrument available to pursue this goal.

The Mayo Colleges and the Lawrence Schools were set up with a similar purpose. Contrary to popular perception although exposure to Christian values and truths was a part of the church curriculum, proselytizing was not a major piece on the agenda. This was partly the result of experience – a short period in the early nineteenth century when missionaries were indeed active produced a kind of native Christian that were so alienated from their own community that most were too worthless to be even used as pawns- some from the aristocracy turned to drink and debauchery and others had to be accommodated in artificial townships called “mission compounds”

But Church run institutions were and are known for promoting excellence. Part of the “civilizing mission” was about taking “barbarians” and turning them into “gentlemen” and “ladies”. Although the italicized terms have now become archaic and now evoke nothing but revulsion and images of arrogant imperialists, there was a certain beauty in picking up some thing raw and then molding them into products of merit. It also blended well with the teaching of the church and Jesus Christ who chose people to be his disciples such people “not many of whom were wise according to worldly standards”, “God chose what is weak in the world” and “God chose what is low and despised in the world”

By doing what it has done, by turning out on to the streets, those who have failed , the very same people whom the world calls low and despised , St. Columbus School has turned the teaching of Jesus on it head. By choosing students who are already bright and intelligent to remain on the school roles and turning out the rest to the mercy of those mediocre schools which might accept them, it has gone the way of any other commercially run school which does not purport to run on the basis of any noble values. After all, again to quote Jesus Christ and the Bible , “It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick. I guess that the bright students whom St. Columbus are capable of doing pretty well on their own and the school’s assistance might make them do better. But the ones who are failing, falling behind and unable to cope are the ones who might have crossed over the line had the school chosen not just to keep them on their roles, they might have had another, better life


This piece cannot really close without referring to Anna Hazare and his school in Ralegaon Siddhi who has a school that takes only the sort of students that St. Columbus chooses to discard and who has built up the reputation of his school by enrolling almost entirely rural village youth, delinquents with police records and those who have failed repeatedly in their previous schools. By picking up those whom even the world and even the church run schools has discarded, Anna Hazare is doing what Jesus would have approved of. In today’s world, we need to applaud people like him all the more for we need them more than a church that has lost its way.

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