Finding our place in the missio Dei in Chota Nagpur
ON THE 12th September 2018 an historic event took place in the life of the Dublin University Mission to Chota Nagpur. Ten officials, led by Bishop Basil Baskey, arrived in Dublin for their first official visit in our one hundred and thirty-five year relationship. For many of a certain age within the Church of Ireland the DU Mission to Chota Nagpur is very familiar, St Columba’s Hospital in Hazaribagh being a well-known name; yet for a new generation this historic mission, rooted in Trinity College and the Church of Ireland, seems to be long forgotten. It is surely time to shine light on its amazing past, consider what is happening now, and provide a platform for its future mission initiatives. The Past “Once upon a time in the year 1890, two wishes were shot into the air, one in India and the other in Ireland. They came down at about the same time by extraordinary coincidence at S.P.G Headquarters in London. One was found to be the answer to the other and so the Dublin University Mission to Chota Nagpur began.” So wrote Canon Brian Harvey, DUMCN head of mission in the 1960s. Based at Trinity college five clergymen and one female nurse, Miss Hassard, they formed the original DUMCN. The six missionaries landed in India in January 1892, their two stipulations to USPG being that they would live in community and keep a strong connection with Trinity College Dublin. This was gladly granted and they started their work in the remote town of Hazaribagh. The main thrust of the mission then, as it is now, was education and healing. The Revd Kenneth Kennedy was a medical doctor as well as a priest and was highly influential in St Columba’s hospital in Hazaribagh. Reading the missionaries’ first report back to Dublin in 1893 we can quickly ascertain the huge task that was before them, especially as all of them were learning Hindi as well as local dialects to communicate with the local people.
* Full article available in printed copies.
Steve Brunn
is Dean of Residence and Church of Ireland chaplain at Trinity College Dublin.