North-East Mission: Nagaland

 NAGALAND MISSION (1970)

Nagaland is a picturesque country of the North-East Frontier of India, bordering on Burma and inhabited by sturdy tribals called the Nagas. They are mostly non-Catholic Christians i.e., Baptists and revivalists, numbering about four lakhs.

Besides there are about 20,000 Catholics and 80,000 animists. The Nagaland mission was taken over 1970. all came about this way. There was request for Jesuits for Nagaland to open educational institutions. The Provincials conference shifted the request the Vice provincial of Karnataka, with promise to stand by to help. Fr Cyril Pereira, Vice provincial acceded to the request. Soon afterwards, along with Claude D'Souza he went to the place explore the possibilities. When the exploration was over, Fr Stany Coelho who had long experience the educational field, left for Nagaland do the pioneering work was April 1970.

The work began with the establishment of Loyola School, Jakhama Parish the Kohima district. Subsequently, 1974 the Bishop Kohima-Imphal (covering the state Nagaland and Manipur) entrusted also the Phek district the Jesuits and the Chakesang Catholic Mission was opened Ligouri Castelino with headquarters Chizami. For better administration, coordination work and obviate the difficulties communication, the institutions the Nagaland territory have been constituted into District with Ligoury Castelino the District Superior. Today there are ten Jesuits working the area. Loyola School well-established high school. There are four primary schools which are parti ally feeder schools, and Teacher Training Institute dedicated Paul. The number students these exceeds one thousand which fair indication the eagerness the people learn this primitive land. Jakhama parish has over half dozen stations. Chizami, centre the Chakesang area, has nine stations.

Meluri mission parish has two substations and Tenyizumi, the latest mission parish to be started, has two stations too.

It has been hard pioneering work in a different climate, under totally new circumstances and all credit must go to the pioneers for laying the foundations and establishing right traditions. Tributer should be paid here to the late Fr Edwin Goveas, the first Jesuit missionary and first Catholic priest to lay down his life in Nagaland in the service of the flock. He belonged to the first batch of Jesuits who went to Nagaland. He worked at Tuensang for a couple of years, and on 3 February 1973, passed to his eternal re ward. The pioneers Fr Stany Coelho, Fr Ligoury Castelino and Br Raymond D'Souza have spent nearly 10 years in the place.

Educational work is going on hand in hand with evangelization, education itself being the big instrument of evangelization, slow but sure. Teachers from India find it difficult to stick on, on account of severity of climate, lack of social life and primitive conditions of living. To secure local personnel to staff the schools a training school for teachers has been opened at Phesama, not far from Loyola School.

As mostly the people of the place are attached to their land and have to live by it, an agricultural and land productive slant has been given to education.

Loyola School with its boarding house deserves special mention. The first pioneering effort of the Jesuits in Nagaland, it has already made its mark for all round efficiency. A unique feature of the Loyola School chapel is that Naga motifs adorn both the tabernacle and the main door. The construction of school buildings, boardings, chapels in Jakhama and Chizami and the supply of drinking water to them has been aided to a very great extent by Missio, Misereor and the IGSSS. The school has already 553 students on its rolls. The smart and well-trained students of the school will turn out to be the leaven to their homes and the land in years to come. The seed has been sown.

Eden: While the construction of buildings for the St Paul's Teacher Training Institute at Phesama is going on, plans are being finalized for a home for the parentless at Kuzhama. It will be called Eden. The aim is 1) to help them to become independent self-employed earners in their villages, 2) to prepare with Vocational and general training gifted but under-privileged and neglected children to take up responsible positions in Naga society. As at Jakhama, Viswema and Phesama, Fr Stany Coelho is the pioneer in this work. With at least a couple of priests, Sisters and lay missionaries it should be the core of a big programme of social help and development. As the diversity of languages makes it impossible for the missionary to reach all, a school for training catechists is a sine qua non in that region. At the Catechists' Training Centre at Imphal, of which Fr Frigidian Shenoy was the Director for five years, young men from Manipur and the neighbouring Nagaland are being trained to carry the torch of faith among their own people and liberate them from ignorance and superstition. Set on a firm basis, this school has been handed over to the diocesan management.

Attached to Loyola School is the parish of Jakhama with substations: Viswema, Mima, Khuzama, Phesama. Each village is situated on the top of a hill, at a distance of 50 to 80 Km. from any other. A multitude of languages and difficulties of transport make missionary life in Nagaland really hard. Trudging day and night between the villages of Nagaland, facing landslides, bearing hunger and thirst and loneliness and braving risk to life and limb, is the stalwart Fr Ligoury Castelino, the soul and animator of the Chakhesang Mission.

The success of the missionaries in Nagaland is to a large measure due to the hearty cooperation of devoted bands of Sisters who are missionary-minded to the core: the Apostolic Carmel Sisters at Jakhama, the Ursulines at Chizami and at Meluri, and the Bethany Sisters at Viswema, in the order of their arrival in Nagaland.

The truth is never static. By quiet work and example, the truth about the Catholic Church is spreading, and slowly but surely the Christians are seeking to be one-fold and one shepherd. Every year a good number seek admission into the Catholic Church.

The harvest is really ripe but the labourers are few. It is a place for zealous hearts and loyal minds and robust bodies. We hope that before a quarter-century of the second hundred years of the Karnataka Vice province is over, we will have a Catholic Nagaland.

- Taken from the Karnataka Jesuit Centenary, Souvenir, 1878-1978