Bhubaneshwar
Another less familiar location to most outside of India. This is the newly built capital of the state of Orissa one of the resource rich but largely
undeveloped states of India. Orissa is part of the Eastern section of the country which was much more alive in the days of the British. Calcutta is the older rust belt area with its
foundries and factories drawing on the resources of the iron and coal belt as well as the port city of Calcutta. But due to intransigent labor and Communist governments it has gone
into decline to be eclipsed by the more compliant and educated Southerners or the energetic and pragmatic Western group in Bombay and Gujarat.
Nearby is the famous Konarak temple where the sun’s rays are said to first fall from the East. Then the big Puri temple shrine which has an annual chariot festival
when the god is placed on a cart with wooden wheels and pulled by devotees through the town.
Today, this area is at the centre of a industrial revolution challenge as the existing peoples of the subsistence economy are being pressured to leave making way
for industrial giants who want to bring in modern open cast mining practices to utilize and export the abundant coal, iron ore and bauxite reserves present underground. The challenge
has spawned a Maoist style revolt by the people who are threatened with no future if they lose their ancestral rights of access to the land for marginal farming and resource gathering.
There is both challenge and opportunity. Some are turning to the Christian faith as an answer to their dilemma and hope for the future.
Our contact is a long standing friend going back to Bible Society days in Delhi and Bahrain. Anup is now retired his wife Subu still teaching school, daughter
Rebecca is an architectural student – an unusual choice in an educational world dominated by the traditional arts, law and medicine or the more modern IT and management disciplines.
The original plan was to go by the midnight train getting in at 23.30 arriving at 07.00 in Bhubeneswar. But again the rail stoppage strikes are causing us to
modify plans and take a vehicle for an eight hour or so more ride up the coast. We stopped for lunch at a vegetarian restaurant eating off banana leaves.
We did make the midnight train to Calcutta taking a taxi to the airport and then on to Dimapur. Always an event in that overcrowded congested city!
Dimapur-Nagaland
Another world here physically and psychologically. Far to the North East these people have more links with the Mongol groups of Central Asia then to the
mainland of India so an uneasy relationship as some would even want to be totally independent from India. This is an idea with great emotional appeal but
little practical reality.
The mighty Brahmaputra River snakes out of the Himalaya here like the Indus in Pakistan and the Ganges in northern India providing life
and sustenance to the great plains before it.
The Christian faith has had strong appeal to these people coming out of their tribal folk religious beliefs with great desire to find
a place in this new world. Students filter into this region from surrounding areas so there are some from Myanmar, Sikkim and Nepal as well as local people.
Dimapur is the access point to Nagaland with rail and air links. Nagaland, 90% Christian, is famous in India for having produced active
vigorous believers. Whole tribes embraced the faith partly as a move into the modern world. The challenges replicate those of Corinthians and other parts
of the NT where many became believers and then needed to be sanctified and grow in grace and good works.
My host Dr. Abemo has introduced me to the Eastern Bible Seminary and to his own ministry in hostels of students in the city. It has
been encouraging to meet up with fomer students from mainland India. Bro Sebastian of Hindustan Bible Institute 2001 others more recent Vishakapatnam
COTR graduates now in meaningful ministry teaching other students.
This preliminary visit has produced a strong invitation to return in November 2012 to teach two courses Cultural Anthropology and
Asian Religions. The students are at B Th and M Div levels having moved on from High School much as in the old Prairie bible college traditions. The
Principal is an avid evangelist who encourages them to go out the unreached areas of the NE with the Gospel. There are many tribal people who are responsive
and open in this area. The region is a mountainous tribal belt which extends from here through Myanmar, Thailand and NW China producing the well known
Naga, Mixo in India, the Chin, Kachin and Karen of Myanmar the Lisu , Hmong and other groups of Nth Thailand, Laos and NW China in Yunan province.
The Hostel students are largely girls who have completed the educational opportunities of their village locations by completing High School
and are now into Junior Colleges seeking to find a place in this emerging new world beyond their village. The Hostels are private institutions which have given Dr Abemo access
to hold regular moral education on a weekly basis as well as encouraging them to come to a Youth orientated service on Sunday mornings. Which is a much needed and important ministry
to shepherd these vulnerable young people through formative years.
I spoke to them about Old India from which they are emerging and New India which lies ahead of them.
Nagpur
More contacts from the teaching over the past 12 years in various Bible schools in the region. The Principal here has links with COTR in Vishakapatnam.
Mission India has an extensive campus on 33 acres which houses a Seminary with courses to M Th level, an orphanage, a Trade School as well as a planned
hospital all built up over the past 10 years with the help and support of interested US donors.
My class consists of 4 senior mature students from many parts of India. A Kuki man from the far NE near the Myanmar border, one from the area in Orissa where
there was severe persecution some two years ago, a man from Delhi and another with Mennonite links from nearby Andhra Pradesh. They all express interest in reaching out to people
who are still outside of the Gospel. The main body of the Seminary has around 200 students in B Th and M Div. The objective of the founder is to train 100,000 men and women to go
out into India to the unreached.
I arrived by plane through Dimapur in Nagaland staying overnight at the Calcutta Evangelical Seminary which is near the airport and kindly offered overnight
accommodation. Janette arrived a day later by train an all day journey from the area where her former pupil Dr Shobha Arole is now in charge of the family Health and Development
Project.
On Sunday we were driven out an hour from the town of Nagpur to a thermal power station area to share with a new Church plant. Our fellow American guest house
partner spoke an excellent message sharing his own devotional life regimen. Ideal material for this level of person. A much bigger challenge to me to find communication at that level.
Pune
