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Interesting times in India: A short decade at St.
Stephen’s College
What is it that makes St Stephen’s, founded in 1881 by the leader of the Cambridge Mission to Delhi, Samuel Scott Allnutt, with five students, four Hindus and one "Muhammadan" stand out? Is it its verdant idyllic campus, the "old-world" buildings and the camaraderie all this begets? Or, the eclectic, non-denominational values and education it imparts? It is a brilliant combination of both that allowed a stray dog to luxuriate at the door of the Principal’s office as students appeared for an interview. During the five years that my wards studied there, I saw this bitch and its brood all over the place, in the canteen and in the classrooms. Compassion is inculcated, rather than taught, at St Stephen’s, named after the first Christian martyr, I was told. Where else do you find so many blind students for whom students take turns to read out texts? It is the only college where marks are not the sole determinant for admission, as every student has to face an "interview", which as Gopal Gandhi explains in his Afterword, "an interview is no different from a conversation, a concurrent versation". But for all the advice he got to "be relaxed", the interview went badly for him. Yet, he was given admission because he came from a "Stephanian family" as two of his brothers studied there. The book is all about this family of which Daniel O’ Connor became a member when he arrived at St. Stephen’s as chaplain and lecturer in English in 1963. Since he had done very little reading on India other than Nehru’s Discovery of India and K.M. Panikkar’s Hinduism at Crossroads and Common Sense About India, he had a mind as fresh as snow. Therefore, he had no shibboleths to shed as he negotiated his two tasks, teaching English to the "midnight’s children" and witnessing Christ. It was a turbulent period, within and without India. The Nehruvian era had come to an end, the last vestiges of the Raj were being renamed or removed – "it took a full week of hard and expert work by some twenty men" to remove the bronze equestrian statue of King Edward VII – and realisation had dawned that Indian campuses were not immune to "Spring Thunder". O’Connor and his wife Juliet went about their job keenly observing the developments around them, not as detached observers but as earnest participants. The inborn researcher that he is, he would cut any news-item that caught his fancy and put it in a large box, which became full when he returned to England a "short decade" after. These clippings and the letters he exchanged with friends helped him to lend authenticity to his anecdotal narration. The college provided him opportunities to "minister" to young dilettantes, idealistic youths who, inspired by Naxalbari abandoned studies to usher in a revolution, and to Jesuits, who marvelled at his blessed marital status. The chapter on how students like the late Arvind N. Das were inspired by the Great March and went to the countryside only to encounter pests and pestilence is the most gripping of all. It was a period of anxieties and difficulties but O’Connor maintained close relations with them throughout. They can be rubbished as "dreamers" but they dreamt of a better future for their countrymen than a job for themselves in the Silicon Valley. O’Conner visited places like Kulu Manali, the Baring College at Batala, Chandigarh, and the newly established Punjabi University at Patiala whose most attractive building was (and is) the Department of Religious Studies and provides the reader vignettes of the period. As a priest, he had to go to churches as far apart as Hisar and Jaipur. His was an onerous task, negotiating a formal post-colonial religious role in a richly pluralistic context. In doing so, he followed in the footsteps of C.F. Andrews and Percival Spear, who were associated with this college — "dreamed of as a new Alexandria on the banks of the Yamuna"— and made lasting contributions to India. The book tells the reader why, as an alumnus told the author, "Like a peacock, I flutter at the mention of St Stephen’s." |
FEW colleges have made as deep and abiding an impact
on Indian society as St Stephen’s College in Delhi. The long queue of
admission seekers every year is a reflection of its continuing
popularity. It has spewed alumni associations all over the world and has
a very effective, informal, networking system. Its alumni are in high
positions in the government, journalism, academics and the private
sector.
