09-13-2006, 05:33 AM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Nun séance </b>
The Pioneer Edit Desk
<b>Farce and tragedy in Lucknow</b>
In a city where university and college politics are defined by violence, Lucknow's better-known schools have been oases of relative peace. The term "relative peace" is used advisedly because at least one school - housed on the sprawling palace grounds of its warrior founder - was the location of a teacher's murder a decade ago. That aberration notwithstanding, the vandalism at Loreto Convent in downtown Lucknow earlier this week, by hoodlums claiming to represent the youth wing of the BJP, is fairly without precedent. Not since La Martiniere College was attacked by mutineers in 1857 has a school campus in once genteel Avadh been so savaged. Coming soon after the ABVP - the students front of the RSS - found itself implicated in the killing of a professor in Ujjain, it places yet another question mark over the credibility of organisations that owe allegiance to the Sangh Parivar. Having said that, the issue on which the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) activists were so exercised, even if their mode of protest was completely over-the-top, deserves to be rebuked. A day before the BJYM activists descended upon the convent, the Loreto nuns had hosted what amounted to a séance, wherein a charlatan from West Bengal, claiming to be possessed by the "spirit of Christ", performed his little act and scared innocent schoolgirls into fainting fits. This preposterous charade outraged parents and caused a public outcry, which the BJYM sought to exploit.
The Loreto authorities, as well as other missionary schools and the Catholic clergy in Lucknow, have attempted to justify the shocking event by arguing that religious teaching is part of the curriculum, as it were, in Church-run educational institutions. This is a decidedly specious argument. Divinity or moral science classes or even lessons from the Bible and the life of Jesus are unexceptionable and have been around in Christian schools in India for, literally, centuries. Rarely if ever have they degenerated into providing approbation for superstition or, worse, black magic and voodoo faith. The Loreto nuns clearly erred in inviting the deranged man and subjecting their pupils to his "possession"; had they kept it a cloistered affair, nobody could have taken offence to it. As the police and authority take necessary action against the BJYM activists, the education department of Uttar Pradesh Government must ask questions of the Loreto management. The Catholic church and school accreditation bodies, too, must demand that the nuns adhere to more conventional norms of religious - or secular, for that matter - teaching. <b>If the Loreto episode goes unpunished, it could open a Pandora's Box. A school run by a Hindu trust would see it within its rights, for instance, to organise demonstrations of reincarnation, and learning would be reduced to a farce. The Loreto Order has rendered service to generations of Indians. Let it not sit on false prestige and ruin its legacy. </b>
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The Pioneer Edit Desk
<b>Farce and tragedy in Lucknow</b>
In a city where university and college politics are defined by violence, Lucknow's better-known schools have been oases of relative peace. The term "relative peace" is used advisedly because at least one school - housed on the sprawling palace grounds of its warrior founder - was the location of a teacher's murder a decade ago. That aberration notwithstanding, the vandalism at Loreto Convent in downtown Lucknow earlier this week, by hoodlums claiming to represent the youth wing of the BJP, is fairly without precedent. Not since La Martiniere College was attacked by mutineers in 1857 has a school campus in once genteel Avadh been so savaged. Coming soon after the ABVP - the students front of the RSS - found itself implicated in the killing of a professor in Ujjain, it places yet another question mark over the credibility of organisations that owe allegiance to the Sangh Parivar. Having said that, the issue on which the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) activists were so exercised, even if their mode of protest was completely over-the-top, deserves to be rebuked. A day before the BJYM activists descended upon the convent, the Loreto nuns had hosted what amounted to a séance, wherein a charlatan from West Bengal, claiming to be possessed by the "spirit of Christ", performed his little act and scared innocent schoolgirls into fainting fits. This preposterous charade outraged parents and caused a public outcry, which the BJYM sought to exploit.
The Loreto authorities, as well as other missionary schools and the Catholic clergy in Lucknow, have attempted to justify the shocking event by arguing that religious teaching is part of the curriculum, as it were, in Church-run educational institutions. This is a decidedly specious argument. Divinity or moral science classes or even lessons from the Bible and the life of Jesus are unexceptionable and have been around in Christian schools in India for, literally, centuries. Rarely if ever have they degenerated into providing approbation for superstition or, worse, black magic and voodoo faith. The Loreto nuns clearly erred in inviting the deranged man and subjecting their pupils to his "possession"; had they kept it a cloistered affair, nobody could have taken offence to it. As the police and authority take necessary action against the BJYM activists, the education department of Uttar Pradesh Government must ask questions of the Loreto management. The Catholic church and school accreditation bodies, too, must demand that the nuns adhere to more conventional norms of religious - or secular, for that matter - teaching. <b>If the Loreto episode goes unpunished, it could open a Pandora's Box. A school run by a Hindu trust would see it within its rights, for instance, to organise demonstrations of reincarnation, and learning would be reduced to a farce. The Loreto Order has rendered service to generations of Indians. Let it not sit on false prestige and ruin its legacy. </b>
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