Kolkata: The Jesuits of South Asia held a visioning exercise on the 6th and 7th Oct 2019. Heads of Jesuits run higher education institutions gathered under one roof in Kolkata for the Annual Conference of Jesuit Higher Education Association of South Asia (JHESA).
It was a gathering of 83 participants from all across South Asia particularly from India, Nepal, Srilanka, and Afghanistan.
The event was inaugurated by George Pattery, SJ, President, Jesuit Conference of South Asia. Alumni’s of St. Xavier’s Kolkata organized a warm welcome ceremony in honor of the participants. At the conference, Jesuits and collaborators deliberated on the alignment and implementation of Universal Apostolic Preferences (UAPs) promulgated by the global Jesuit network, with a focus on youth and marginalized. Sunny Jacob, SJ (Coordinator and Secretary of Jesuit Educational Association, JEA), Denzil Fernandez, SJ (Director-Indian Social Institute, Delhi) were two main resource persons. Joye James, SJ (Secretary, JHESA) was the main organizer.
The Jesuits have a rich history of establishing institutions for the educational betterment of communities; XLRI Jamshedpur, Loyola College Chennai, Xavier University Bhubaneshwar and St. Joseph’s Bangalore are a few premier Indian Institutes run by Jesuits.
Jesuits and Education
Today, the Jesuits run an extensive worldwide network of Jesuit schools educating one and a half million students. There are 90 Jesuit colleges in 27 countries. There are also 430 Jesuit high schools in 55 countries. In these schools, the Ignatian system of values has attracted exceptionally competent faculty as well as highly qualified students. They form a Jesuit network, not that they are administered in the same way, but that they pursue the same goals and their success is evident in their graduates, men, and women of vast and varied talent.
Jesuit Conference of South Asia (JCSA)
The ‘Jesuit Educational Association of India’ [JEA] was constituted in 1961 by the Conference of Major Superiors in October 1961 at Bombay and registered it as a society. However, when the Conference of Major Superiors itself became a registered society, [Jesuit Conference of India] the JEA merged into the JCI as its ‘Education Section’. The JEA had the responsibility to promote Jesuit education in Jesuit Educational Institutions. Naturally, this covered primary, secondary and tertiary education. In order to do justice to these components, a full-time Secretary was appointed to look after education in Jesuit schools, and a part-time Joint Secretary for Higher Education was designated to take care of tertiary institutions.
With the advent of changes in the educational sectors vis-à-vis a globalizing world, a spurt in new higher educational institutions was seen in the current decade. With this, the need to establish an autonomous association for Higher Education was expressed, and hence Jesuit Higher Education Association South Asia (JHEASA) was mooted and the JCSA approved the setting up of a New Secretariat for Higher Education in their meeting in October 2008 at Patna.
Jesuit Conference of South Asia (JCSA) represents the conference and the governing body of the conference. It is one of six conferences of the Society of Jesus worldwide; one of the two conferences in Asia, the other being the Asia Pacific Conference (JCAP).
The Jesuits in Asia
The presence of the Jesuits in Asia began with the coming of St Francis Xavier, and two young companions, in the year 1542 to Goa. The missionary enterprise of the Jesuits in Asia is comprehensible only against the background of three foundational principles. The first two are from the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the order: Following Jesus as a Jesuit entails missionary outreach, and being a missionary implies cultural adaptation because Jesus adapted himself to the human condition. The third theological principle is that missionary activity should reflect the shared life of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) as documented in the Formula of the Institute and Constitutions.
The nascent Society of Jesus was yet to receive full papal approbation (September 27, 1540) when a request arrived from João III the Pious, king of Portugal, for Jesuits to work in the Portuguese domains of Asia. Ignatius of Loyola chose two of his first companions, Simão Rodrigues and Nicolas Bobadilla, for the mission. However, before they could leave for Portugal, Bobadilla fell ill. Providentially, Francis Xavier was then in Rome and Ignatius decided to send him instead. The king of Portugal, impressed by the two Jesuits, decided to keep Rodrigues in Lisbon. Xavier, accompanied by Micer Paul, a secular priest recently admitted into the Society of Jesus, and Francisco Mansilhas, a Jesuit aspirant, set sail for India.
They finally reached Goa in India on May 6, 1542. Xavier would labor in Asia for 10 years as a missionary, baptizing and catechizing the inhabitants of the Fishery Coast of southern India; Malacca on the western coast of the Malay Peninsula; the Moluccas, also known as the “Spice Islands”; and Japan. While in Japan, Xavier heard about China and resolved to preach the Christian message there. While awaiting Chinese government permission to land, he died on the island of Sancian in 1552, unable to fulfill his dream of converting the Chinese to Christ. That dream would be partially realized not much later as thousands of Jesuits of various nationalities followed Xavier in the Asian missionary enterprise.
Missions were conducted in West Asia, for example, with the appointment of Jesuits as papal legates in establishing relations with the Maronites and in negotiating church unity with Orthodox, Nestorian, and Monophysite Churches. But the majority of Jesuit missionaries worked farther afield, chiefly in South Asia and in East Asia. After India, Jesuits would find themselves laboring in places in peninsular (Malacca, Indochina) and insular (Indonesia, the Philippines) Southeast Asia, and in Japan and China.
The chief architect of the Asian missionary enterprise was an Italian Jesuit named Alessandro Valignano. He called for cultural adaptation to Asian ways where this was legitimate and did not compromise the Christian message. Perhaps the most significant cultural adaptation was the use of Asian languages in the preaching of Christ and the teaching of doctrine. They also extended this cultural adaptation to the manner of dress, civil customs, and ordinary life of their target audience. His principles were put to good use by such as Matteo Ricci and Michele Ruggieri. Aside from exploiting European sciences and arts of their day to gain entrance into the educated elite of China, Ricci and his companions decided to study the Confucian classics esteemed by the Mandarin ruling class.
In a similar way, the Jesuits working in the south of India decided on a cultural adaptation strategy that enabled them to reach out to both the higher and lower social castes, tailoring their manner of living to gain acceptance from their respective audiences. In other Asian places not as highly developed in civilization and culture, the Jesuits were animated by the same principles of cultural adaptation. In the Philippines, they creatively replicated strategies that were used elsewhere. Because local populations were dispersed far and wide, the Jesuits encouraged people to set up permanent communities in planned settlements (a method they used in Latin America called reduction), thus laying the foundation of many towns and cities that exist today. They also set up schools wherever these were needed and constructed churches and other buildings that transformed European architectural designs to suit Asian artistic sensibilities. They learned the various local languages and dialects and produced grammars, vocabularies, and dictionaries, thus systematizing the study not just of the languages themselves but of the cultures of the peoples that they were seeking to work with. They wrote books that mapped the ethnography of Asia and were keen observers of Asian ways and traditions, including their interaction with the natural environment.
The Jesuit missionary enterprise in Asia met with obstacles along the way. Some of these obstacles arose from European ethnocentric fears and prejudices that burdened the church of their times. The distance between Rome and Asia proved to be not only a geographical problem but also a psychological barrier that prevented church authorities from being more sympathetic to the needs of the missionary enterprise in Asia and it stuttered in the 17th Century until it was revived in the 19th Century to society’s great benefit.
Inputs: https://jcsaweb.org/ministries/higher-education/
