Learning is the Basic Right for All

No Child Left Behind education policy through Christian education, has to benefit other ethnic and religous minorities in poorer regions. It is meant to introduce national standards to an education system at the same time without a uniform standards with "hard, independent look" at the actual educational problems, and then make recommendations to the state and national educational boards. It does not affect all schools equally.

Children in every racial and demographic group in every school must improve their scores on standardized tests in math and local language each year. Failure to achieve annual progress can lead to sanctions against schools.

Deadlines are to be kept, to meet requirements on teacher qualifications that were unavailable to poorer rural regions.

"The policy is essentially a product of negotiation, of power and discretion, not law.

Human Rights Schools

The 10 th and Upper graders at the School for Human Rights should be executed in India. This innovative unusual school will enable young to grow up within their neighborhoods, with dignity, respect and rights as well as on relevant issues that affect the local region.

The School for Human Rights started inNew York City in the last three years under a national movement to raise student achievement by shrinking school sizes becomes an example for Indian schools to follow.

We then begin not teaching the kids what to think, but to think. The school will strive to produce ``socially engaged young adults committed to equity, dignity and social consciousness.''

In association with other Human rights groups this will influence the educational curricula nationwide and help in the educational policy of the nation.

Students tackle topics from colonialism to the United Nations, from tracking census data on poverty in their neighbourhoods to the injustice and inequality reigning in the neighbourhood.

They will have a strong sense of justice which will contributye to organize school curriculum and activities in collaboration between teachers and students. This will gear towards their empowerment.

Classrooms can include students with varying academic abilities, which is one way to embrace a human rights ideal. This offers an integrated academic and social skills-based curriculum to challenge its students to think critically and become compassionate, socially engaged young adults committed to the practice of equity, dignity and social consciousness. Human rights values are evident not only in classroom teaching, but in the school’s commitment to meeting the educational needs of every student and practices such as 'discipline with dignity.' The government educational ministry should support teachers and other staff with resources and professional development.

The School can look upon the teaching practices that infuse human rights and extra-curricular activities like film festivals, workshops with human rights defenders, the after-school programmes, internet surfing on human rights, field trips, and celebrations of international days such as Holocaust Memorial Day (Shoah), Justice day, Labours Day etc..

Administrators will look for ways to apply the human rights framework beyond classes, discussing with school officials about conflicts, and students who commit infractions appear before a ``fairness committee'' and undergo mediation with others involved. We need to promote such programs all over the nation establishing human rights academies.

Students at The School for Human Rights can stay for an extra, elective class on law, imprisonment, death penalty and other subject matters.

Gandhi is still relevant for Indian education

We have thrown Gandhi with his innovative Basic Education System for the Indian in the phase of the moste needed time of history. The need goes on with its absence. It's time to call his system back, adapting to the present Indian situation, with innovative indigenious method. Gandhi is still the man of the day, and would still be the one who can 'father' the nation.Are we ready to retrace back his step and tread the line he has strewn for us, Indians?

Holistic Education as Wholeness and Inner-Unity

Main thrust of Education: implementing an educational model, that builds up community, persons, movements, relationship, attitudes and communion through a holistic growth by forming, guiding, uniting and helping. Therefore, it is no more cramming informations, instead a style of ownership of knowledge, their management through guided animation through interactive learning.

Based on this above mentioned thrust that the holistic education has to be realized, not only within the school setting, because a holistic education would include all settings wherever the youth are found – family, company of friends outside of the school hours, clubs, movements, playground, neighbourhood, coaching centres, oratory and other non-formal settings. Only then can the participatory and communitarian approach to education in a pluralistic society that concerns itself with the integral development of the person, can be complete. This should have a strong spiritual and religious foundation within the multi-religious context, because education is geared towards this ‘wholeness’ through an inner-unity, interrelatedness and inter-dependence between education (in Catholic schools) and religion.

In our schools the target groups are mostly belonging to other religions, so too in the Youth at Risk setting. If so, this holistic education has to take into account this ground reality through dialogue among religions, understanding and appreciating them.

In this regard, an Educative Community, must cater to the integral growth of all the youth that it comesin contact with within a multi-religious context. Therefore, education, cultural development, catechesis and evangelization, social communication etc, have to be programmed and planned within the multi-religious and pluri-cultural context.

The emphasis needs to be on the quality content, tools and skills in the ministry of education at the provincial level, based on a sound theology of education and an inculturised Christian faith experience within the multi-religious context and in the present social reality than mere mental crammings and activities.

Commercialized Christian Education with Corruption

Christian urban schools and colleges are corporately following the line of corruption by commercializing education. With the soft coated ‘donation’ over the high capitation fees, admission fees to new section within the same schools and colleges, are only few signs to prove this point. The market economy with cut throat competition and hedonic consumerism has found headway into the Christian schools which are meant to serve the poor and the neediest. This proves the moral vacuum and value deterioration that the school management extend to the students and parents, breaking down the educative cultural ethos of the society. Money making game has crept into the Christian education system, poisoning the minds of the students and adults in the society, encouraging to create prejudices and hatred against the Churches. This is a war being waged between the rich, including the school management and the poor

dalits, adivasis, minorities and backward classes who get all the more marginalized. This serious situation calls for special interventions of the higher authority of the Church to curb immediately the public and ‘subtle’ game being played by some of the schools and colleges. This is a big injustice. In fact, these Christian educational institutions are being accused of profit seeking, thus contributing to the commercialization of education. Where will the poor go? Where has the credibility of the Christian educational institutions gone? Will the Christian Education Policy look seriously into this serious offence? Is this the ‘reign’ that we want our money-god to bring on this earth?

We need to remember what the CBCI, in its General Body Meeting on Education, 2006, has said: “To ensure that every Catholic child has a place in Christian educational institutions. No Catholic child, dalit/tribal or otherwise, should be deprived of quality education because of a lack of means. We keep in mind that a Catholic School has a special obligation to cater to Catholic children.” Education is a pastoral ministry, an evangelization process that teaches the Gospel values and promotes the culture of love and justice through counter-culture move in ushering God’s Kingdom. We need to distinguish the Church's educative mission to teach the Gospel values, giving a religious view of the person and the reality that is essential from the strictly development work. It cannot be seen in reductive terms, as something merely material. Therefore, one should not search for easy money making at best - the result will have negative consequences.
Justice that the Church wants to bring within the social, economic and political structures, has to be taught by the rational and upright self-witness, keeping in mind the entire human person.

CANONISING THE BLESSED-SAINT ?

The Missionaries of Charity, the Catholic Association of Bengal and many more, are hands on hearts, hoping for the last required miracle to happen to make the mother canonised to the already public-passed holiness. The semi-Vatican news agency Zenit.org, dated 23 August, 2007, carried a title: St Teresa of Calcutta this year? This had the sub-title: The Catholic Association of Bengal, A Lay Group Prays for Anticipated Canonization by this year. It has organized huge programmed schedule for this year to push her to the altar of sainthood. The President of the Association has confirmed, “During her life, Mother was a living saint to many. There is no doubt that she is already a 'saint' to many more around the world.” At least that’s what the majority of the world claims. What proof then, more than this public claim, needed to make her one what she already is? What happens even if she is not publicly pronounced by her affiliated Religion to be so? She does not belong now to the minority Catholics but to the human race beyond religion.
Again, “Canonisation not at risk” was the heading of The Telegraph, 26th August, 2007. The Vatican has assured that the path to sainthood will not be affected by her crisis of faith for the four decades of her life soon after she left Loreto Convent to work for the poor. She, a time, did turn away from God. That was normal for being human. We don’t canonise God, but Catholics, facing daily difficulties of life.
Hundreds of miracles have been claimed and reported to the Vatican office to be certified for the final verdict, which the people world at large have affirmed ten years since she died and more so even before, through her actions and witness. The 35,000 pages of documents attest to her virtues and shortcomings. There are over 100 witnesses, which so far none had. The world-society does not need such regulated declaration of sainthood, more so for India to accommodate the freedom to retain the spiritual culture existing in the fibre of the Indian being. This prestigious ‘tag’ on the person who walked the roads of India and abroad, making inroad to the hearts of the millions poor, will remain just that, with no difference what so ever to the ones for whom she is a saint. If this is so, do we need to fret over proving her spiritual ‘excellence’, which was inherent in her human living? Of course no one wants to rob of her Catholic religion-based privilege.
Not that everything was ‘ok’ with her. Different pockets made different allegations from their own perspectives against Teresa of Kolkata. One thing is for sure, no one has a criminal case in the court against her. There are very few charges against her, judging by the calibre of the person, and that too, nobody seems too concerned. That issue does not grip us, when she is already a saint. To most of the Indian minds, except those Catholics who are educated with the procedure for the cause of the canonisation, the whole hoping for the last miracle to make Teresa a saint, is a tragedy or better a disgrace that we are still searching for her holiness, to be confirmed by a religious structural requirement of a minority Christians. History tells, saints are in the books of the bourgeois and the bureaucracy who follow a set pattern to be fulfilled, where money and might play their equal game. For the case of Mother, neither of them needed. Her nomination to sainthood list, by the enthused Indian Catholics, is also a play of pride that adds to the number. Are we looking for the best person among the listless Indians who have been saints in their lives and even after? We have no right to smear and tear that which is on the pedestal of charity and love, only to prove the power of institutionalisation. Probably, she is always the potential person mentioned, if not often quoted, in peaceful speeches from the Pope to the pedestrian preacher with a sense of satisfaction. Are we going to make her an instrument of manipulation in our own hands or of the institution?
Regardless of whether one believes in sainthood or not, Teresa of Kolkata has a national and international stature and has gripped the public heart and mind for her saintly ways. Why then choose to go with the miracle list of three out of thousands, after the one on ‘Monika Besra’, for the Vatican to give the verdict, and we wait for her to be a saint?
Most people will find it hard to believe that canonising is a strenuous process, with all the requirements to be fulfilled. Yet, exceptions are not rare, even in this particular case of Blessed Teresa of Kolkata. We know, soon after her death, the Congregation for Sainthood Causes (CCS) received an avalanche of requests, even from the Archbishop of Kolkata then, for initiating the process of ‘making her a saint’ and dispensing from the requirement of five years of waiting to start inquire into the life, virtues and reputation of her sanctity. Why such ‘rush’? Heaven can wait? It was already by 2001, that the Acts of the Diocese and Inquiry with 80 volumes, each with around 450 pages, was sent to Rome, just to make her ‘blessed-saint’.
We do have no criticism or charges against her, but with the way the whole prayers pouring down on her grave, interceding for mother’s own sake. She need not be the object of our needs and subjective motives to be fulfilled. True, she cared for the marginalised but did little to change the social structures. She gave witness in doing, a grass-root change and not structural transformation first. If she was satiating the thirst of Jesus for love by balancing between prayer and action, we, then, should be praying for ourselves, for our conversion and not hers; have we moved enough to rake up the dirt under those lying unattended? May be not one cheep; forget the suffering servant needing our charity in deeds as hers. Teresa of Kolkata is going to be proclaimed universally a saint soon, in all probability as in the words of the President of the Catholic Association of Bengal, “Sainthood for Mother Teresa in a real sense may not be far away as many miracles are happening by her intercession.” Indian culture on the whole does not need this fitting announcement to make her a saint with such precedence that is so racy. We don’t need to be scared if no last miracle happens, for the sacred is in her, regardless of Church affiliation. We have recognised her holiness and we need not be informed, but to reaffirm. The Church has to affirm so universally, and that’s what the Church is going to do officially.
Part of the problem is we don’t understand what making of a saint consists of, at least from the theoretical level, if not from the experiential. But why should this be so? Is there difference in seeing and sensing the person who lives as a holy, loving and committed person that we commonly understand of? Let her remind us, she was committed to life that leads to God and not to ‘levels’. It is not so much compassion through her dedicated saintly life that we honour, but the living truth that world has ever known: the innate potential for good in every human kind. It is the respect, worth and dignity for the individual, the loneliest, the most wretched, the dying destitute, the abandoned lepers, received Christ’s compassion devoid of condescension. Serving Christ in woman and man, she transcended all barriers of race, religion and nationality, welcoming everyone, poor and rich alike, without distinctions. This is a sign of harmony and unity that Mother has brought to us.
What would she have done about this ‘candidacy’ if she were to be alive? Well, that’s not our point now. But the present time should serve us for some very objective criteria for proclaiming who is a saint and who is not. For this, the world is the judge, not our inclined emotions and ‘hero’ admiration. We always need past achievers for us to emulate. Yet, that’s not what is going to make us saints too. Instead, it’s the individual person, through his/her own charism that the spiritual holiness is achieved. We have no right to qualify others as saint by our own standards. Otherwise, judging by this criteria with all the personal and group muck surrounding it, the process of ‘making’ saints in the fabric of the Church, will sink into the oblivion. Let me remind all in Teresa’s own words, “Holiness is not luxury of the few but a simple duty for me and for you.”

Evangelization, Catechesis & Youth Ministry: A Symbiotic Relationship

Evangelization, Catechesis & Youth Ministry: A Symbiotic Relationship

By Dr. Soroj Mullick SDB

The article proves to know who is responsible for the youth catechesis at the national, diocesan and parish levels. Is there youth catechesis through the Youth Ministry, namely, AICYM? It resulted at distancing of YM from the faith education of the youth. This is so due to the lack of understanding of the goals, scope, contents and sequence of Youth Catechesis?

I have divided the article into following headings:

1. Youth Catechesis and a Comprehensive YM: Compelling and Complementary

2. Indian Catholic Church on Youth Ministry

3. Evangelization, Catechesis & Comprehensive YM: Defining Terms & Policies

4. Youth Pastoral Plan (its relation to catechesis)

5. The Context and Tasks of Catechesis

6. Alternative Theology, Context and Tasks of Youth Catechesis

• Theology of the Human Created in the Image of God
• A Context-based Catechesis
• Relevant Tasks of Youth Catechesis

7. Inculturated Youth Catechesis

8. Three Dimensional Spiritual Growth against Developmental Theories

9. Catechetical Youth Language

10. Innovative and Flexible Catechetical Input Sessions

11. Questions on Context-Related Issues for Youth Catechesis

Land, the Sacred Earth: A Study for Religious Education

The Indian psyche is in resonance with the experience of the cosmic immanence of the Divine in the natural world. As eco-sensitive people, we need to respect the land and its integrity. Our life and its success are rooted on where we live and move. Religion needs to go beyond the sacred ritualism (spiritualism) and meet to the rights and needs of the people. We are rooted in nature’s soil, air, water and food. The land and its location conditions, nourishes and shapes the culture of people, their imagination, action and relationship. This means, learning to live and share it as one community of the Trinitarian God. The land, being sacred we have to retrace back the neglected Biblical land ethics overcoming the ecological, economical and political land grabbing situation. Jesus’s coming is God’s incarnated cry for the People’s saving land with the view of the ultimate Kingdom. Debating on nature, man and God, therefore, becomes the soul-searching study for Religious Education, trying to contextualise Christian land ethics. Here we consider Jesus’ worldview of new earth and new heaven leading towards a nature and grace-filled land Theology.

Christians' befighting against injustice and equality

Entry for September 02, 2008

The slavery is that of the caste system. Against this, the Christians both preach and practice equal dignity for all. There are reasons for the growing Hindu violence. The present persecutions against the Christians have international repercussions.

We had recently the 15,000 Catholic schools in India closed for the entire day. The Catholic Church has called for a day of prayer and fasting for the first Sunday in September, with peaceful processions all over the country. The reason is the new wave of violence that has struck the Christians. Till today there is news of killing, wounding, rape, assaults against churches, convents, schools, orphanages, villages, carried out by Hindu fanatics. Hundreds of people have had to abandon their homes and flee to the forests.

The extremist Hindus used s a pretext for blaming the Christians and taking revenge on them.

The epicenter of the latest violence is the district of Kandhamal, in the state of Orissa. For several months, this has been the most bloodstained state in the country. There What is unleashing the violence is the work that Christians in Orissa are carrying out on behalf of the tribals and the Dalits, at the very bottom of the caste system:

According to the latest census, conducted in 2001, 80.5 percent of India's inhabitants are Hindu, while 13.4 percent are Muslim. The Christians are 2.3 percent. And they are even less numerous in Orissa and in the other states in the central and northern part of the country, the most densely populated areas. The highest percentages of Christians are in the easternmost part of the country, reaching 90 percent in Nagaland and Mizoram, 70 percent in Meghalaya, and 34 percent in Manipur. Christians are most heavily represented in the southern part of the country, in Goa, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala. In Kerala, Christians are 19 percent of the population, and most of them are Catholic.

The events of recent days confirm that coexistence between Christians and Hindus in India is no longer as peaceful and harmonious as the tradition – and myth – of this country would have one believe. Hindu intolerance and fanaticism are growing, and acts of violence against Christians are on the rise. To the silence and disinterest of the world.

Contradictions and fanaticism are undoing Gandhi's legacy

The largest democracy in the world. This is the definition that is usually associated with India. It would be ungenerous and mistaken to forget this now, or to question it at its core. But it does seem necessary to question the quality of this democracy, and the direction that it is taking.

The Indian Union has the separation of powers, an independent judiciary, a genuine multiparty system, and a free press. But at the same time, widespread corruption and the crony-client political system in the individual states, together with the substantial impunity granted to the violent actions of extremist groups, risk emptying of meaning the concrete significance of India's democracy. The alarm is being raised in a particular way by the growth of sectarian violence, which is especially targeting the Christians – responsible for helping the Dalits, the outcastes, the slave foundation of the pyramidal system according to which Hindu society was traditionally organized – but also Muslims and Buddhists.

What is happening in India with worrying frequency and intensity shows the dark side of the independence achieved under the inspiration of Mahatma Gandhi's nonviolent action. The story of his life itself, with its tragic conclusion, contains in symbolic form all of the contradictions of this extraordinary country: from the rediscovery of traditional culture and the village economy, to the decision to live as the least of the least, to the attempt to preserve the unity and religious pluralism of the old British Raj, to his violent death at the hand of a Hindu extremist.

More than 60 years after the country's independence, it is precisely the position that India should be solely and exclusively Hindu that is continually making new proselytes. Movements like Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh are the expression of a Nazi-like culture, which preaches through violence the false idea that being Indian means being Hindu, in spite of the fact that there are more Muslims living in in India than in many Muslim countries. Of course, there has always been Hindu hegemony in the political system, but it was mitigated to a certain extent by the fact that the early leaders of the republic, from Nehru to Indira Gandhi, all members of the Congress Party, acted on the basis of an essentially secular view of politics, blocking the most devastating consequences of such a contradiction.

It is likely that the sneering modern "spirit of the times" in which fundamentalism and the political abuse of religion seem to be re-emerging, on top of the radical tendencies of neighboring Pakistan, have contributed to the success of movements like Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, and of the Bharatiya Janata party. In Hinduism there is a growing push toward intolerance and fanaticism, which too often denied.

Beside the political contradiction is the economic contradiction. India is the "office" of the world, at least to the same extent that China is its "factory." It is a society that produces tens of thousands of English-speaking engineers each year, but still lives in the Gandhian myth of the village economy, that ossified structure which deprives the "least" of any hope, for this and any other life, and fosters the caste system with its aftermath of commonplace violence. It is the Christians who are held responsible for offering hope to the "least," for this and any other life. And they have accepted the burden of this responsibility, to the point of martyrdom, as has taken place in Orissa.

Unique CHRISTO MANDIR in Krishnagar

On 29^th November 2009 following the Eucharistic Procession and after the inaugural cutting of the ribbon by the District Magistrate of Nadia, the band from Don Bosco School and a song by the Cathedral Choir, Bishop Joseph Gomes of Krishnagar, welcomed all to Christo Mandir, to the Risen Savior, in whose name and glory this monument of skill and devotion has been built. He wished that all their intentions be fulfilled. Pope Benedict XVI too has his blessing of joy and peace on the Bishops, priests, religious, lay faithful and civil authorities gathered for the dedication of the Christo Mandir - a religious and catechetical building in the Diocese of Krishnagar, nearly 100 kms north of Kolkata.

What has been achieved in the Christo Mandir ? The wish of all who projected and built this Holy Temple along with Fr. Colussi Luciano SDB, the Vicar General of the diocese, is that all who visit this Mandir should be “inspired to live more meaning­fully their daily assignments by having a model before their eyes and their hearts.” Rightly, Jesus’ life and teachings laid bare through statues, murals and paintings, are set to be the model. The engineers, constructors and the artists have effectively skilled out such devotion to the Saviour of humankind in this present piece of art. The same sentiment has been expressed by the Italian donors' message: "We are very happy that our dream has come true. May this Mandir give love, truth and joy to every brother and sister, who through it will come in touch and intimacy with the person of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour".

Art works on Biblical personalities, stories, symbols have found their public manifestations of harmony between the faith journey and the aesthetic sense of the artists. Many masterpieces have been inspired by great biblical narratives, themes, images and parables. This present creation is one such. At the entry into the Mandir one sees straight on the mural, Jesus’ human reality – from birth till death and resurrection - shared with all through the immanent power of the Holy Spirit. The same Power continues working in all with wonderful means and sac­raments as depicted inside just above the main door. Like millions of holy men and women all are invited to be inspired by what is proposed by this sacred Christo Mandir.

The erection of the Christo Mandir is meant to renew the local Church's (Krishnagar Diocese) closeness with the world of art. Christianity has always recognized the value of arts and made wise use of it to express the Good News. The art form does not reduce one’s existence to mere material realities; it is an invitation to relationship, dialogue and cooperation among people of varied faith and cultures, people who "are passionately dedicated to the search for new 'epiphanies' of beauty" (JP II). It is a search for perfect harmony between faith and art. In this present art-expression efforts have been made progressively to arrive at an authentic "renaissance" of art in the context of a new humanism. “Human history is movement and ascent, a continuing tension towards fullness, towards human happiness, towards a horizon that always transcends the present moment even as the two coincide” (Benedict XVI, 2009). Any art depiction is a strong prophetic cry against evil, against every form of injustice.

The Church needs art in order to communicate the message of Jesus. Art has always made the invisible, the ineffable and the world of the spirit, more attractive. The message of transcendent values translated into colours, shapes and sounds nourish the intuition of those who see and listen with a sense of mystery. For believers, the Risen Christ on the cupola with the cross and the flag of victory is the Way, the Truth and the Life. The main Door is the symbol of entrance through which we are brought to that "face-to-face" vision of God – the Drawer of definitive happiness for what one sees inside. Thus the whole artistic setting, bit over crowded though, presents to our gaze the Alpha and the Omega, within which lies life’s trodden path of joy, courage and hope.

In the era of relativism and the decoupling of art from religion, an urgent need is felt to re-establish a strong supernatural bond between Beauty and Truth. The establishment of the Kristo Mandir, more aptly ‘Kristyo Kala Bhavan’, seems to be the unique architectural figure in India, imperfect though, easily associated with the plural-God (Trinity) in a multireligous nation with significant presence of Christian socio-charitable witness. It would therefore be useful to reinvent the contemporary Church-art with pluralistic "Trinitarian purposes" of harmony, unity, dialogue and peace. The sacred character of such truth and beauty would be preserved in its proper ratio, through its strict connection to the "Logos", truly turning it into "trinoliturgical" art, and a visual catechesis to render to the Truth the most appropriate divine Beauty.

The art beauty is a means to rediscover a source of fresh and well-founded inspiration in religious experience and in Christian revelation (Tradition and Scriptures). The artists engaged in this mega creation under the director-artist Mr. Dilip Michael Biswas of Krishnagar, acting as mediators, speak to the heart of humanity; they touch individual and collective sensibilities, and broaden the horizons of knowledge and of human engagement. It becomes their responsibility to communicate the Truth through beauty and be “heralds and witnesses of hope for humanity!” The artists within their rich cultural heritage are inspired to create works of beauty, thus enriching the culture they live in, and render an “exceptional social service in favour of the common good” (JP II, 1999).

Dignitaries and special invitees to this mega occasion were: Sri Onkar Singh Meena IAS (DM, Nadia), Md. Meghlal Sheikh (Sabhadipati), Rev. Pedro Lopez Quintana (Nuncio to India), Archbishop Lucas Sirkar SDB (Kolkata), Sri Ashim Saha (Chairman of Krishnanagar Municipality), Rev. Thomas Ellicherail SDB, (Provincial, Kolkata), and many others. The inauguration was joyfully celebrated with songs, dances, band, speeches etc.