This book written on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the arrival of three Jesuits from Karnataka to Northeast India is built around the theme of a dream. The Nagaland Mission began on April 22, 1970, with Frs. Stanislaus Coelho, Ligoury Castelino and Br. Raymond D’Souza as pioneers. A dream is not a readymade project frozen in time but a mandate to be invented and re-invented at every step. The book describes how the Jesuits of Karnataka were invited to start a school or college for the elite in Kohima, the capital of Nagaland. That did not materialise. Instead they were pushed to an abandoned hill in a tribal village where they had to begin a totally new scheme with very limited human and financial resources. From this apparent failure was born the policy of establishing educational institutions only in tribal villages that had no access to educational and other services. It also forced the Nagaland Mission and later Kohima Region to abandon the tradition of a standalone educational institution, and turn every centre into a combination of the educational with pastoral and social components. The Jesuits have adhered to these policies that have gone beyond Nagaland to all the seven States of the Northeast. The book is not a success story of institutions and individuals. It takes the reader beyond this limited perspective to the step-by-step growth of the dream that remains incomplete. It is a tour of the successes and failures, the challenges the pioneers faced, the type of collaboration that made the growth of the dream possible and the questions that can guide the Region in its future.
- Title: Reading the Past to Write the Future: The Kohima Jesuit Region 1970-2020
- Author: Walter Fernandes, SJ
- Publisher: Kohima Jesuit Region
- Pages: viii+162
- Price: NA
