Dr P. Tepekrovi Kiso
Kidima Village, Kohima District, Nagaland
The Jesuits mission its origin in the request of Mr John Bosco Jasokie, then Minister for Education and later Chief Minister of Nagaland, to Bishop Hubert D’Rozario SDB of Dibrugarh Diocese (to which Nagaland belonged then) to get some Jesuits to run a school or college in Nagaland.
Fr Arrupe followed up on this request. As a result, in 1967 Fr Vestraeten well known educationist of St Xavier’s College, Kolkata (then Calcutta), was sent to Nagaland to study the possibilities of opening a Jesuit Mission in that State. He reported that the prospects were immense, people’s needs were genuine and the possibility of cooperation was good.
All the Jesuit provincials of India meeting at Jamshedpur in October 1969. At that meeting the Jesuit Provincial of Karnataka was asked to explore the possibility of taking up the Mission since Karnataka had a relatively large number of Jesuits.
On the response Fr. Ligouri Catselino SJ and Fr Raymond D’Souza SJ (then Brother) arrived in Kohima on 21st April and on 22nd April, 1970 offered their Mass feast of Mary Queen of the Society of Jesus. Fr Stany Coelho SJ followed them and landed Kohima on 11th May of the same year. The pioneers mission team still propagating the devotion of the Rosary.
The first Parish at Jakhama was inaugurated on 8th December, 1970, the Region has grown to ten in five states namely Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya and Nagaland with each of them having five or more sub-centres.
Ethos of Pioneers Mission
Fr Stany Coelho, to fulfil the dream envisaged schools that were employment oriented, built around the Naga culture and worked for national integration while respecting Naga inspirations. He envisaged a garland of schools, primary in each village, a middle school for a few villages and a high school at the centre.
Fr Ligoury Castelino, on the other side, was a grassroots level worker. He wanted direct pastoral work. He did not disregarded institutions but wanted them built around the pastoral needs.
One can call it unity of hearts but not of minds.
The Jesuits had to get used to a new system of bringing the pastoral, educational and social components under the same roof. That process began in the very first year.
The Nagaland Mission and later the Kohima Region have combined the social pastoral with the educational sector. Over and above them a few institutions have been founded for specific purposes such as social research, legal support or field action.
The Society of Jesus has from its days accorded priority to work among the poor. The founding Fathers of the Society of Jesus viewed direct involvement in social issues as intrinsic to their religious life, and combined intellectual life with social commitment. The founding Fathers spent the day in the university and night in the hospital serving the sick.
Educational Institutes
Loyola School, Jakhama, being the first Jesuit institution in the North East India can be called the ‘Mother House’ historically significant to the Region’s identity. St Paul Institute, Phesama and Nazareth School with Pastoral Centre, Pfusero, were institutions having a multiplier effect trained as they did teachers and catechists. They would remain with the Jesuits.
Also, high schools Dima Hasao in Assam, West Kameng and Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya has come up in response to the needs of otherwise neglected tribal communities. In Arunachal Pradesh and Dima Hasao the schools were established without a parish in the proper sense of the term.
Jesuits opting St Joseph’s College in Jakahama for the benefit of tribal students (established 1985 and run for 15 years and hand it over to the Diocese of Kohima). The College has grown into an autonomous college with Science stream. At present the total strength to post- graduate is around 4,000 students.
Similarly, the origin of St Xavier’s College, Balipara in Assam. Access to a big number of students was deciding factor in the choice of its location. Balipara is at the junction of Lower Assam, Upper Assam and Western Arunachal Pradesh. So a college at Balipara would have been useful to the Adivasi who have had very little access to high access to high school education and much less to higher education. Simultaneously, it would have served also the Bodo, the Aka and other communities in the neighbourhood.
The two colleges in Meghalaya. Loyola College, William Nagar, has come up in the educationally neglected East Garo Hills. St Xavier’s College being developed in the Umoid village in the Khasi Hills.
St Paul Institute of Education (SPIE), Phesama was established in 1977. St Paul National Institute of Schooling (NIOS) Centre reached out to those who dropped out or found it hard to complete their studies. The open school programme is meant to put the poorest of the poor on an equal footing with those who can afford regular schools. It is meant for the neglected, the marginalised and those struggling to stand on their own feet.
North Eastern Social Research Centre (NESRC) was founded in Guwahati on 1st March, 2000 as a millennium gift of the Region to the North East. The nomenclature ‘Social Research’ is basic to its mission. NESRC is neither a purely activist nor an exclusively academic research organisation. Its mandate is to follow the spirit of magis and not treat these components as exclusive. It is to combine good quality serious field work-based professional research with researchers, legal and field activist and government officials, in order to work together for advocacy with the State to change policies in favour of the powerless sections particularly tribal communities.
North East reiterated the policy of not insisting on non-essential times like shoes and ties in order to keep the cost of education down.
Children do not have to be sent any more to Shillong or Guwahati or outside North East India for good quality education. It is made available in the village.
Even to this day there is not a single educational institution run by the Kohima Jesuits in urban areas and towns.
Pastoral Ministry Launches
A thorough training was given in English, prayer, music, catechism and public speaking. Those who persevered and were found fit for the Society of Jesus was asked to do their two year higher secondary course.
It has become an integral part of the apostolate of the Region and has been at the heart of the task of turning the Jesuit-run institutions into an integrated whole of educational, pastoral, social and medical service.
Eden Garden and Children’s Home
It is a training centre, and it is for those who at present are destitute, who will according to Naga law have a right to their parents’ property if they are able to look after it. Eden Gardens is to prepare them to claim and enjoy their own rights thereby becoming responsible, self-respecting, independent individuals in their own villages.
Briefly, “Eden Gardens” is a Rural Agro- Industrial Training Centre. It is residential partly because the students admitted are very poor children, the ones who is every society are left out, and have no one to provide for their education, in a word, homeless. More importantly it is residential because it is necessary to have the freedom to adjust the daily routine to suit the climate, the weather, the facilities from time to time.
The residential trainees are always on the premises to be able to take keen interest in what happens in their particular field of activity, be it poultry- keeping, piggery, cattle farm, vegetables patch or fruit garden./ A carpentry also provides an outlet for certain creative talents which the Nagas are endowed with.
An Ideology for Development in Sacred Spirit
It requires new discernment about re-inventing simplicity of life without sacrificing quality in order to improve the access of the poor to the school and retain them once they enter it.
While lauding the response to the nationalist struggle, one can ask whether the schools as well as the remaining units of the Region have done enough in the arena of ethnic conflict. The efforts in this field has to nurture a better understanding of each other and help people to move away from the stereotypes about each other to an appreciation of the other. Inputs for mutual understanding, appreciation of each other and reconciliation leading to celebration of diversity can be imparted not merely in schools but also in the pastoral work.
Mission with Compliment
Fr Raymond D’Souza SJ, Director of Eden Garden and Children’s Home, Khuzama is the only person survived amongst three pioneers recalled in their early days mission visit to Kidima village was full of thatch house. When asked about the changes with the present days smiling and said improved hundred times like cleanliness after the education.
(Inputs: Fernandes SJ, Walter (2020), Reading the Past to Write the Future (The Kohima Jesuit Region 1920- 2020); Coelho SJ, Stany (1984), Even to the North- East and note and conversation with Fr Raymond D’Souza SJ, Director of Eden Garden and Children’s Home, Khuzama, Nagaland, India).
