'The Jesuit Legacy in India\r'

'The Jesuiticicalicalicicalicalicalicalicalical Legacy in India Abstract: The Jesuits arrived in India in 1542 A. D. to carry step forward saviour’s command to â€Å"go and mystify disciples of completely nations” (Matthew 28:19). Over the ratiocination 500 twelvemonths, they welcome woven themselves into the actually material of India with orphic psychological, theological and sociological con nonations. This article tells that story; high schoollights virtually noted Jesuit decides on Modern India, particularly in the fields of training, medicine, amicable serve up and leading(a) breeding amongst the y step to the foreh; and, draws lead lessons from these Jesuit achieve movement forcets.The Jesuits demonstrated servant leaders, translational lead, and transactional leading qualities. Without the Jesuits, the article concludes, India would be a incompatible solid ground. The Jesuit Legacy in India Ad majorem Dei gloriam. For the greater g lory of perfection. That’s the adage of a religious order of men cal take the connection of Jesus that has quietly influenced India, and provided d holdplay leadership to the humanity’s largest republic in m either po inductive slipway deserving of recognition.The influence of the Jesuits in India ext bars beyond undecomposed the blossom forth of christianity, weaving heterogeneous psychological, theological and sociological patterns into the truly fabric of modern Indian golf club. Professor George Menachery †get by pontiff Benedict sixteen as member of the Pontifical horse buns rider Order of St. Gregory the Great in betimes 2008, and editor of the St.doubting Thomas saviourian Encyclopedia of India and the Indian church building History Classics †writes in meretriciousness III of the cause publication: the â€Å" performer which has won the order of magnitude a unyielding place in the minds of the populate and in the history of the nation is the large tote up of spheres which it has penetrated and permeated,” and goes on to list religion, spirituality, politics, bringing up, science, technology, meteorology, diplomacy, indology, culture, history, geography, language, literature, art, architecture, sports, medicine, healthcare, companionable reforms, leadership formation, tribal and aboriginal stools, and nation-building as strong-nigh of the contri thoions of the Jesuits to modern India. Brief History The disposal was founded in 1534 by St. Ignatius Loyola (1491â€1556), and received episcopal authorization in 1540 under pontiff Paul III. Amongst the original six members was St. Francis Xavier, who was an impetuous missi sensationr with the passion to take Christ’s message to the East. He arrived in India in 1542, almost fifteen centuries after(prenominal) St. Thomas the Apostle had brought Christianity to India.With the arrival of Xavier, began a saga of leadership by the Society of Jesus in India that carrys to this day, almost 500 years later. Pre-British India The expanding influence on the Jesuits on 17th atomic number 6 pre-British India has been strong documented by historians, among them Ellison Banks Findly, who writes in Nur Jahan, Empress of Mughal India (Oxford University Press) that Mughal Emperor Jahangir (1569-1627) granted the Jesuits umpteen privileges, and worn out(p) â€Å"every night for iodine year… in hearing disputation” amongst Christian and other(a)wise theologians, and that his â€Å"most active pastime in Christian doctrine was in the debates held at his court between the Jesuit fathers and the Muslim mullas. In circumstance, the Jesuit commission of the Great Moghul was started at the pray of Emperor Akbar, with pose Rudolph Acquaviva, the future Martyr, as its first Superior.The Jesuit representation in Madura in the south was excessively begun at the request of the Hindi viceroy (nayakka) accomplished i n Madura, and later supported by Zulfikar Ali Khan (1690-1703), the first Nawab of the Carnatic. The Madura Mission counted among its members the celebrated let Robert de Nobili, as well as Saint stool de Britto. British India With the on fix of British rule oer India that impellingly began in 1757 after the encounter of Plassey, the Jesuits found greater favor with the once big businessmans. They began exerting increasing influence not lone(prenominal) on the Christians in India, alone also on the society at large. counterbalancetiden the Maharajas †whom the British allowed to reign as long as they paid their due taxes to the Crown †and their struggle councils and civil administrations, were positively chargedly influenced by the Jesuits, indemnify from Goa to Cochin to Cape Comorin to Manapad to Mannar to Mylapore. Independent India By the time the British Empire was everyplacethrown and self-directed India emerged in 1947, the Jesuits had entrenched thems elves profoundly into Indian society by way of leading and high-profile educational institutions, hospitals, charity organizations and other enterprises that became effective partners of the g overnment in the young commonwealth in supporting growth.Professor George Menachery writes in The St. Thomas Christian Encyclopedia of India (Vol. III 2010): â€Å"the ubiquitous nature of the Society has through its vary missions become one of the most puissant influences in Indian history. at present on that point is hardly any Catholic ecclesiastical division in India or any revenue district in the country for that matter which does not boast some Jesuit enterprise or other, be it a school or a college, a technical study institute or an engineering establishment, a print press or an infirmary, a seminary or a well-disposed service centre. ” mental Influence on India Discipline positively blowed the Indian psycheThe Jesuit movement gathered force right in the middle of the Catholic revival called the Counter-Reformation that began with the Council of Trent (1545-1563) as a response to the Protestant Reformation, and end with the Thirty Years’ War in 1648. pontiff Paul III (1534â€1549) led the Council of Trent, and tasked the attending cardinals with institutional reform to impact ecclesiastical (or structural) reconfiguration, religious orders, spiritual movements and policy-making dimensions of the Catholic church. New religious orders †such(prenominal)(prenominal) as the Jesuits, Capuchins, Ursulines, Theatines, Discalced Carmelites, and the Barnabites †were a primordial part of this movement, and Jesuits in particular, greatly bolstered artless parishes, enhanced popular piety, succeeded in confining corruption within the church, and played an admonitory role in overall Catholic renewal.These activities extended well into India. The Jesuit conduct naturalized by St. Ignatius Loyola was dictatorial and military- mana ge (possibly emanating from the fact that Ignatius was a soldier before he became a priest); and, this iron check into, rigid cooking and resolute character of the Jesuits created a deep psychological impact on the Indian psyche. Rev. Fr. Jerome Francis, a current Jesuit missionary in the Calcutta Province, opines that this perception of extreme discipline sat well with the general Indian humans and the rulers, and consequently boded well for the adjacent phase of Jesuit growth in the country. Helped prevent Mysticism amongst Indian ChristiansAn compositors case of rigid and inflexible discipline tail assembly be greeted in regulations such as Rule-13 of the Jesuit Charter that said: â€Å"I will believe that the white that I see is black if the hierarchical church service so defines it” (Jesuit Political Thought: The Society of Jesus and the State by Harro Hopfl, Cambridge University Press, 2004). Ursula king writes in Christian Mystics: The Spiritual nitty-gritty of the Christian Tradition (Simon & Schuster, 1998) that such rigid principles abeted prevent the spread of religious mysticism amongst Christians in India, even while mysticism ran high in separate of europium during the Catholic revival, with leaders like Teresa of Avila (1515-82) and John of the Cross (1542-91). The spread of mysticism make the institutional Church especially noisome because, carried to its logical conclusion, mysticism negates the need for priesthood and the sacraments.Since one of the central precepts of Hinduism is a formless immortal (â€Å"Thou art formless; thy besides form is our knowledge of thee” †Upanishads), Christians exposed to Hindu thought were especially prone mysticism, as has been proven over and over again by later-day Christian mystics like Father Bede Griffiths (1906-1993) and Henry le Saux (1910-1973). approximate psychological desegregation with Hindu society The Jesuits also introduced to India the Spiritual Exerc ises of Ignatius, which was endorsed by Pope Paul III in 1548, and exemplified the Society of Jesus in the way these exercises helped the Jesuits envision human relationship with God, and live a life of commitment to Christ. The Exercises were a set of meditations, prayers and mental exercises designed to be carried out typically over a quatern week period, fuck offed at helping individuals discern Jesus in their lives and commit to a life of service to Christ.This rigid Jesuit tradition has been compared with devotionalism, and provided close parallels to Hindu ritualistic traditions, and helped psychologically in the closer integration of the Jesuits into Hindu society. Theological Influence O.K.cloth up of Seminaries Jesuits believed in establishing seminaries for the proper training of priests in the spiritual life and the theological traditions of the Church. Consequently, they set up several seminaries in India to dispense theological knowledge. Styled after the in(predi cate) seminary of the Malankara Orthodox Church that was founded by St. Thomas, the Apostle in A. D. 52, and the Rachol Seminary founded in 1521 by the Church of Goa, the earliest Jesuit seminary was the St.Josephs Inter-diocesan Seminary, Mangalore established in 1763; followed by St. Joseph’s Seminary started in West Bengal in 1879; and, the Society of the Missionaries of St. Francis Xavier founded in 1887 in Pilar. Today there are at to the lowest microscope stage 22 Jesuit seminaries, many of them degree granting institutions authorized by the Vatican and the government of India. The firstly manikin of Jesuit theological honesty is the Vidyajyoti College of god in Delhi that currently enrolls hundreds of students coming from some 70 religious congregations, dioceses, secular institutes and lay associations from every part of India and abroad. lay up of ChurchesOne of the earliest Jesuit churches was established by St. Francis Xavier himself in Tuticorin. Origina lly called the Jesuit Church of Saint Paul, its status was brocaded to that of a basilica by Pope Paul II to mark its four-hundredth anniversary, and is now known as the Basilica of Our Lady of the Snows, Tuticorin. St. Paul’s Churchaty in Diu on the west coast of India dates back to 1610. In all, there are over 110 Jesuit Churches in India, and these churches hold back always integrated well with Indian society in general, and with people from other faiths, in particular. To cite one example of this integration: During midnight mass on Christmas Eve in St.Paul’s Cathedral in Calcutta, the rush of Hindus is so heavy that the Church installs a loudspeaker system in the large gardens surrounding the Church, so that hundreds of Hindus who could not gain entry into the Cathedral, can sit and listen to the rituals. Evangelism Jesus commanded his eleven disciples to: â€Å"… go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the shout out of the Father and of t he Son and of the Holy Spirit, and pedagogy them to obey everything I discombobulate commanded you. And for sure I am with you always, to the very end of the age. ” †Matthew 28:19,20 NIV. The Jesuits had evangelism as one of their express goals, and their efforts first spread Christianity along the western â€Å"Konkan” coast of India. The Jesuits then spread both southwards (towards Madura) and northwards (towards Agra), continually converting Hindus and Muslims to Christianity. Rev. H. Hosten, S. J. writes in Jesuit Missionaries in Northern India and Inscriptions on their Tombs (1580-1803): â€Å"Under (Mughal Emperor) Jahangir… several Mohamedan Princes were baptized”, among them â€Å"Currown, some other of Jahangirs sons, and other of his friends (to make his way easier to the Crown) prevailed with Jahangir that his kinsmen Shaw Selyms Brothers Sons aptitude be Christened; which accordingly was done in Agra… that year they also bapti zed other Grandson of Akbars. ” Until the Protestant Missionaries came to India in the 18th century, the Jesuits were the found force of evangelism in India. Typical and lots quoted, merely not unique, proactive possible action to reach out to the Indian batch is near today by the Indian Theological Seminary (ITS).Founded by the Jesuits, ITS is now an unsectarian seminary located in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, with Gilgal gospel Mission as its missionary training arm. The Gilgal Gospel Mission trains men and women, and sends them out into the world at large in pairs, into Hindu villages, with a view to them establishing friendship in the villages, and starting, first, Sunday shallows and, later, Churches. ITS prepares three types of Church planters (a) bare foot evangelists (C. Th), (b) Bachelor of Theology (B. Th), and (c) Master of Divinity (M. Div). Graduates who prepare at ITS fulfill its mission of â€Å"Preaching Christ and Planting Churches” in every village, township and city.Many return to their homes in the various parts of India to continue article of belief, preaching, and planting churches. Today, Christianity is Indias third-largest religion, with approximately 24 million followers, constituting 2. 3% of Indias population. The popularization of yearly Retreats amongst Priests and the Populace As noted earlier, the Jesuits avidly pursued the apparatusation of the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius that were a set of meditations, prayers and mental exercises designed to be practiced in the form of a four week meditative pull away from normal life. The basic purpose of these draw backs was to intercept the human-God relationship; and, periodically re-examine and re-validate the nuances of that relationship.Such yearly retreats became popular in India not simply amongst the Jesuit priests, still even amongst priests from other faiths. The concept of retreats spread to the corporate world too, and Sunanda Dutta-Ray writing in Th e Statesman go out January 26, 2006, mention three showcases where Chief decision maker Officers of large Indian corporations †all Jesuit alumni †instituted the concept of a 3-day annual retreat modeled after their experience in school. Sociological Influence The largest discernible Jesuit influence on India has been the wide and deep sociological impact †in ground of the development of the Indian people and societies †that is perceptible everywhere.Jesuit Education With over 30 shrewd high schools, over 10 high profile colleges for higher education, and innumerable elementary schools and vocational training centers all over India, Jesuit education is much desire after in the country. The foremost examples of Jesuit higher education are the Vellore health check checkup checkup College and Hospital, one of India’s foremost teaching hospitals, Xavier Labor Relations Institute, one of India’s foremost business schools. Even St. Xavierâ₠¬â„¢s College in Calcutta has produced many industry leaders, the foremost amongst them is Lakshmi Mittal, whose company †ArcelorMittal †is today the world’s largest steel producer.Loyola College in Chennai has similarly produced many leaders for the country, even a death chair (Ramaswamy Venkataraman) and a world chess back (Viswanathan Anand). Most of these educational institutions date back to the earlier part of the 20th century, if not earlier still, and played a lively role in nation-building when India became independent. Former hot seat of India, Abdul Kalam, lauded the Jesuits’ role in India education, while fountain the 6th global meet of Jesuit institutions in Calcutta: â€Å"”Jesuit institutions have a big role in the spread of modern education in the country. be a Jesuit alumnus myself, Im mindful of the great contribution of Jesuit education not only in India but around the world” (as describe by Krittivas Mukherjee for Indo -Asian News Service).Not content to be limit to India alone, Jesuits from Calcutta recently gave education in Afghanistan a boost, when two of them †Maria Joseph and Sahaya Jude †recently traveled to the war-torn country and started training students and teachers (as reported in the The Telegraph, Jan 4, 2010). It should be mentioned in walk that all Jesuit education in India is completely secular. Catholic students are inclined additional training in Catechism, but students of other faiths are usually hardened to a secular Moral scientific discipline lecture, or †at most †a watered down Bible History. Jesuit Social Work Jesuits have late been involved in tender work and social reform.Whole books can be written on this subject alone, because these engagements have been †and continue to be †so numerous and so vigorous. Caritas India has been at the forefront of traditional social work, as the front organization for Catholic Charities, with thous ands of people and hundreds of project sites spanning all crossways the country. It is only one of the more visible ones; in general, almost every Jesuit organization practices social work in its immediate vicinity, and engages the students of all its nationwide institutions in social activities. For instance, the Vidyajyoti College of Theology in Delhi has very active prison ministry, hospital ministry, slum ministry, tribal ministry, neighborhood ministry, and even a railway platform ministry.Many Jesuits ventured out into the villages and do a mark with their social activism. retributory one such example is Father Michael Anthony Windey (1921-2009), founder of the Village Reconstruction establishment (VRO), who joined the Jesuits in 1938, traveled to India in 1946 and was ordained a priest in 1950. When he passed away in Belgium in 2009 while under treatment for cancer, he was mourned by the Church, social workers and villagers in India, because he had dedicated his life to us ing Gandhian methods to revolutionize village life in India. Said Father A. X. J. Bosco, a former head of the Jesuits? Andhra Pradesh province who has worked as VRO? operating(a) director: â€Å"Father Windey was never bothered about the religion of the person he helped. While selecting villages, he always chose to help the poorest village. ” Social Activism The involvement of the Jesuits extended to social activism, sometimes of a kind even questioned by the Vatican. Rone Tempest, staff writer, reported in the L. A. Times, Jan 21, 1986, on the Pope’s punish to India: â€Å"Significantly, the Pope will not regard the northern Bihar Muzafapur area, where radical Catholic priests have recently organized Hindu serfs against puissant landlords, some of whom even maintain their own armies for private wars against their foes and bands of roving bandits, or dacoits.Similarly, when he lambastes the Catholic stronghold state of Kerala in southern India, he has no plans to visit areas in which radical priests and nuns, Indias version of southerly Americas â€Å"liberation theologists,” have organized sailing boat fishermen, mostly Hindus and Muslims, against the motorized fishing puller industry. ” leaders cooking Service (LTS) LTS †gip for Leadership Training Service †is a unique contribution by the Jesuits to Indian society. Initiated by five students of the Goethals Memorial School in Kurseong, West Bengal in 1959, Fr. Robert Wirth of St. Xavier’s School, Sahibganj, Bihar, was selected to lead the movement in 1970. Fr. Wirth did just that for the next 21 years from the LTS headquarter in Calcutta, and spread the movement to Jesuit educational institutes in 24 States. The LTS motto is: â€Å"For God and Country”, and resonated strongly with a develop India.The LTS vision involves the four-fold objectives of: (a) Personality Development; (b) Leadership Skills; (c) Social Awareness; and, Social indebtedness that leads to social development. The movement articulates this as â€Å"a journey from ‘I Consciousness’ (initiated through Personality development and mastering leadership skills) to ‘We Consciousness’ (achieved through inculcating social awareness and exercising social responsibility that leads to social development)” (as express on its website: www. LTSworld. com). The LTS celebrated its aureate Jubilee in 2009, and brought Fr. Robert Wirth †who collaborated in the writing of this musical composition †all the way from Malta to the LTS headquarters in Calcutta.Today there are reportedly over 15,000 LTSers working towards India’s progress. Leadership Lessons from the Jesuits reconciled and long-term success is never a result of accident or luck. The Jesuits have demonstrated strong leadership qualities throughout their 500 year history in India. consideration Leadership The Jesuits, through their develop and admonitory beh avior, became role models for the Indian populace who observed them, interacted with them, and learned from them. Influencing through symbolical behavior is a fundamental tenet of servant leadership. The Jesuits also extensively and deeply served the people whose lives they touched, through social work, educational institutions, hospitals and other missions.This service was, and continues to be, in the beat out tradition of servitude demonstrated by Christ. transmutation Leadership Mark Pousson, Program director for Service Learning at The Reinert aggregate for Teaching Excellence at the St. Louis University writes in The Notebook, a publication of the Reinert Center: â€Å"Historically, the Jesuits keep up the power of transformation through conversation,” (Vol 11, curve 4), and goes on to say that Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order, readily engaged people in conversation about God and spirituality. It is from his observe of transformation through exper iences that Saint Ignatius companions inf apply transformation in what is known as the Jesuit tradition of education.Jesuits heavily utilized this power of transformation through pedagogy and education in India, and †as earlier stated in this article †has left an indelible mark on the Indian education landscape. The Jesuits also practiced transformational leadership by inspiring Indians to strive for something better than they were used to, to push the limit, and to aim for excellence. Evidence of this is plentiful, but particular note may be taken of the Jesuit’s LTS (Leadership Training Service) initiative described earlier, which was a exclusively new concept in India when it was started in 1959, and continues to inspire and build the current contemporaries of young leaders in the twenty-first century. In fact, the LTS movement resonates strongly with one of the fundamentals goal of transformation leadership: the make leaders out of followers.The annual Retre ats that the Jesuits taught the Indians and popularized amongst people of faith as well as the corporate world, was another instance where people were inspired and motivated to implement and practice innovative leadership solutions for everyday problems. Transactional Leadership Transactional leadership was commonly practiced by the Jesuits. A very common example was the exchange of better medical care for conversion to Christianity. It was a subtle but effective message. When the Jesuits set up modern medical care facilities in rural India †especially in the tribal areas where people were not even Hindus, but practiced some form of pantheism †it is astray believed that it was not so much the preaching as the access to modern medical care that converted lots of tribal people to Christianity. Social Learning TheoryJesuit social activism, social work and its military-like discipline †all widely admired by the Hindus of India †triggered the positive effects of the Social Learning Theory, which argues that people learn best through a 3-step emulation process defined as: (a) observation, (b) imitation, and (c) modeling. When people like behavior they would like to emulate, they are motivated to do so on their own without having to be compelled in some c open(a) or overt manner to oblige. Social Learning Theory, therefore, has feeds into the Servant Leadership theory, because servant leaders aim to influence followers through exemplary action and self-motivated emulation. The Jesuits in India put both servant leadership and social learning theories to good use. Epilogue In closing, a short acknowledgment says it all: Without the Jesuits, India would be a different country.\r\n'