Saturday Evening Post
Making of the Encyclopaedia
From the Horse’s own Mouth
George Menachery
Twelve
At
this point I thought of taking stock of the articles received up to now. My
mother’s wooden box for garments – Mundu Petti – which every Syrian
Christian bride brings with her to her husband’s house after marriage was my
filing cabinet. If a good quantity of articles had been received it was time to
apply for leave from the college for a few months and stay in Madras to proofread
and supervise the printing. In those days there was no transfer of
composed articles to and fro by electronic mail and one had to be physically
present near the press to go through the composed pages and make corrections.
There
were two groups of articles at hand. The great majority were articles
commissioned by us, contributed by writers we had contacted, complete with end
notes and bibliographies and secondly there were some articles to be reproduced
from existing sources. For example the articles by Dr. Placid Podipara were all
from books he had permitted us to use freely. Similarly some articles were from
The Malabar Church, Symposium in honour of Rev. Placid Podipara, published from
Rome. Or the account of Marco Polo about the tomb of Apostle Thomas at
Mylapore and the miracles connected with
it from “Travels of Marco polo,”
Yule ed. by Cordier.
And I was awaiting many of the large number of research-based, systematic, objective, and comprehensive articles that I had commissioned from various well-known scholars.
And
I now began to feel the pinch. Optimistically I had told the Cardinal that I
had set aside sufficient money to see me through the work of gathering the
material and printing the work. But when I started visiting various places in
and outside Kerala to meet the scholars, to take and collect photographs, and
in search of books, and began to purchase the large number of reference volumes
needed I began to feel the pinch. The problem of funds became acute once I paid
a rather large deposit with the B. N. K. Press. True, that deposit I made at
the beginning, helped to build the total confidence of the management of the
press and they abstained from bothering me with any demands for further
payments until the printing was far advanced. But there were many other
payments to be made. I announced a pre-publication scheme which brought in a
little money, but quite meager. Then it was that somebody suggested that if I
could go to the United States and promote the book at the universities and
other libraries I could procure the price of a number of copies. It was also
suggested that a visit to some of the funding agencies and ecclesiastical
authorities there would go a long way to solve my financial problems. I did not
have any experience in such matters but because the persons who encouraged me
in this matter were knowledgeable persons I decided to give it a try. I had not
ventured out of India till then. And the Government of India was allowing
foreign exchange for Rs. one hundred only for a person travelling outside
India. It was my habit of jumping at a chance rashly and unthinkingly combined
with my natural overconfidence, optimism, and the need of the hour that
prompted me to undertake this hazardous venture.
My
father had two good pen-friends in the U.S. Those ladies were regularly sending
used books to my father which had benefitted me immensely. Once in a while they
used to send some small gifts to father and he also used to send some Indian
trinkets or small sculptures to them. Their letters, all in very good
handwriting, and sharing details of their family and life, somehow gave father
the idea that they were very rich. Hence when I decided to go to the U. S. he
gave me their addresses, and letters of introduction assuring me that they
would help me. This was one factor that emboldened me to undertake this long
journey with very little cash in hand. Later on I often remembered D'Artagnan being sent off
by his father with the yellow pony and a letter of introduction to Monsieur de Treville.
But what really gave me heart to proceed were two letters that His Eminence Joseph Cardinal Parecattil gave me, one to Msgr. Rauch the General Secretary of the United States Council of Bishops, and two, to the director of the U. S. organization for the propagation of the faith in New York. Armed with these I set out with just U. S. $ nine in my pocket. Many have said that I have something of Charles Dickens’s Wilkins Micawber of David Copperfield in me with the optimistic belief that "something will turn up." As I already had to borrow the price of my ticket from a cousin I had nothing more than the 100 rupees for the nine dollars left with me after booking the railway ticket to Bombay from where I was to take off. My sense of pride did not allow me to borrow some dollars from Church people who were having dollars with them. This attitude of pride also stood in the way of my taking money from well-wishers abroad during my journeys even when they offered some money without my asking for it because I felt that I should take help only from properly and legally established sources. Thus I refused the taking of collections at two masses at which I was invited to speak about the Kerala Church. Even during conversations with ecclesiastical dignitaries and directors of funding agencies who were impressed by me and the Encyclopaedia project and were very favorable this reluctance to “beg” prevented me from asking for help that was drastically needed. This reluctance was a characteristic I had unknowingly inherited from my proud grandparents and relatives who all gave too much importance to what is called Tharavaditham which could be roughly translated as family pride or prestige. They were ever unwilling to swallow their pride and ask for any help from anybody whatsoever. Something like the Cunninghams of To Kill a Mockingbird, though they were rather rich by local standards. Dr. P. K. Gopalakrisnan, Member-Secretary of Kerala Planning Board and Special Secretary of Planning and Economic Affairs of the Government of Kerala, once described members of my maternal family, the Alappat Palathingals of Kattur, as having not only family pride (Abhimanam) but over-pride (Durabhimanam).
Well, I finally
set out on my first ever journey outside the country and that too to the
farthest country possible, Thrissur and New York being 8,400 miles or 13600 km. apart. At Bombay I stayed
with my sister Rosamma and her husband Francis who was a Guard in the Western
Railway. Together with my brother in law I went to pay a visit to His Eminence
Valerian Cardinal Gracias who remembered me well from the National Seminar and
who promptly gave me a written appreciation of my new project.
The chief architects of the
National Seminar Church in India Today were His Eminence Cardinal Gracias and
Fr. Balaguer s.j. as they were also earlier the chief organizers of the very
successful 38th Eucharistic Congress at Bombay in 1964 attended by
Pope Paul VI which was the occasion of the first ever Pope visiting India.
Three events which gave direction to the post-Vatican II Christianity in India
were all of them engineered by Fr. Balaegur s.j. under the enlightening patronage
of the great Cardinal Valerian Gracias of Bombay. A word about that bye and
bye.
At the National Seminar I was
in the Group for Communications Media. After the first two days or so of
deliberations in the individual groups four groups each were pooled together
for collective discussions on the topics of the four groups. My group was
combined with the Family Life Group and two other groups. These combined groups
had around one hundred and fifty participants each. The leaders of the Family
Life Group had a resolution soliciting the Holy Father to grant permission to
the Indian laity to use artificial birth control methods including the use of
contraceptives considering the population problem of the country and the
“anguish of the couples”. This resolution had the full support of Cardinal
Gracias, I was told, and he was eager to see the move succeed. As perhaps an
immature young conservative Catholic intellectual I was strongly against the
move and fought the resolution tooth and nail. And a good portion of the
participants were leaning towards my own views. I as usual was sitting on a
back bench and whenever I got up to speak His Eminence with his great height
and towering personality was standing beside me, some thought to discourage me
and make me desist from attacking the resolution. But the young fool that I was
I continued unabated my criticism of the move. The resolution was finally
passed in a much amended version, now couched in somewhat ambiguous words.
During one of the intervals Fr. Jose Muricken s.j. principal of the Trivandrum
Loyola college of Social Sciences approached me to make me change my stand. He
said that people with more than two children should never oppose such a
resolution. I said that, true, I have already two children in the three years
of our marriage and we were expecting a third child soon, but I said that using
contraceptives was going against the divine plan, as taught me by my theologian
friends and teachers. Fr. Muricken was very angry indeed.
Then in the plenary session
where all the six hundred odd participants were present the same resolution was
brought forward by the Family Life Group. Many opposed it and I was one of the
most vociferous speakers against the resolution. The resolution was passed with
the movers assuring the house that the controversial parts of the resolution
would be deleted. During the last session I had gone up the first floor of the
hall where a large number of scribes were taking down every word mentioned
below. There were also machines which recorded the speeches which were being
sent up from the ground floor. This was something novel at the time. While I
was watching these machines I heard the secretary of the Family Life Group
presenting the modified resolution. After recapping the discussion he went on
to say in the resolution, ”Therefore we the faithful of India request the Holy
Father to grant India dispensation to use contraceptives…”etc. I ran down the
steps of the Dharmaram auditorium and using the first available mike I said
that the secretary was going against his own word to remove all controversial
matters and was in a way cheating the participants by presenting the resolution
more or less in the rejected words. Many eminent doctors and famous reformers
in the Family Life Group criticized my
behavior. Then Fr. Patrick De Souza the General Secretary of the Organizing
Committee of the Seminar who was chairing the plenary session got up on the
stage where he was sitting and said that the secretary of the Family Life Group
was going against the sense of the house which had earlier rejected the appeal
to the Holy Father to permit contraceptives. Some Family Life groupers shouted
that it was improper on the part of Fr. De Souza to participate in the
discussion from the stage. Straight away he got down from the podium and
grabbing one of the mikes repeated his objection to the altering of the
previous decision of the assembly in this underhanded way. Finally all
references to artificial family planning and contraceptives had to be removed
from the Group’s resolution.
I was immensely grateful for
this unlooked for support from an unexpected quarter. I later learned that Fr.
De Souza in conversation with some office-bearers spoke in appreciation of my courageous stand . Soon
after the Seminar he was elevated to the post of Bishop of Varanasi. For almost
half a century after the seminar he used to send me Christmas cards every year
regularly. I had an opportunity to renew our acquaintance in the course of the
Varanasi CBCI Conference decades later.
Well, I was narrating that on
the eve of my departure for New York, Cardinal Gracias most graciously gave me
a written appreciation of the Encyclopaedia project. He was still true to his
vision which had prompted him to pioneer the Bombay International Eucharistic
Congress and Papal Visit of 1964 and the National Seminar, 1968-69.
No comments:
Post a Comment