Conclusion of the Centenary Celebrations in India

Message of the Rector Major

Thanjavur, 5 February 2006

My Dear and Esteemed Civil and Religious Authorities,

Dear Confreres, Members of the Salesian Family, Friends of Don Bosco, Young people,

Here I am at the conclusion of this beautiful and fruitful centenary and of its celebrations. A year ago when we opened it at New Delhi, I told you my dream for Salesian India. Today I cannot fail but repeat it since above all it has not changed – great dreams are far-sighted and long-lasting – but also because now knowing the situation of India and the Salesians better I am more than ever convinced of the accuracy of that dream of Don Bosco’ successor. I shall tell you why!

When the first group of Salesians arrived one hundred years ago with Fr Giorgio Tomatis as the head of that “pusillus grex”, one would never have imagined that a hundred years later they would have multiplied and become 10 Provinces, with more than 2200 Salesians, 8 of whom are Bishops, and more than 370 works which cover almost the whole country. Certainly, the India they found was also very different from the one we all know today. From a state of political, economic, social and cultural dependence as a colony of the British Empire, in 1947 it passed to a political independence that became a powerful driving force that reawakened the spirit of India to recover its ancient wealth of historical, cultural and religious traditions which have given rise to an extraordinary development so that India with China is now one of the two great giants on the world stage called to play a role of first importance. In fact it is said that by the year 2020 India will have become the fourth economic power in the world.

So as to capitalise on the country’s immense natural and human resources, and also the possibilities available today (a rapid rise in levels of education, high rates of technological innovation and application, ever faster and cheaper communication that dissolves physical and social barriers both within countries and internationally, greater availability and easier access to information, and the further opening up of global markets) and to successfully deal with the great challenges, the Government has also produced its “dream”, its Vision statement with the title “India 2020”. You can see I am not the only one to dream! Indeed you can see how important dreaming is!

And it seems to me to be a splendid opportunity for our Salesian future in India to notice how immediately after the first great decision which is that of creating 200 million jobs in 20 years, the second is education at all levels, from basic education to that in high technology and science, seeking to abolish illiteracy, to create a highly qualified society. The great challenge is, in fact, education and culture, and this is our field of work. I would almost go so far as to say that Vision India 2020 relies on us for its implementation.

Naturally, their document later refers to other important issues: the question of the growth of the population, food production, improved health provision, the vulnerable sections of the population, communication, transport, self-sufficiency in energy.

My dream would bring together, on the one hand all the expectations and the needs of those for whom we work, and on the other all the potential within individual confreres, the communities, the works, our Institutions and the whole of the Salesian Family and the Friends of Don Bosco.

I was very pleased to find in Vision India 2020, that its future cannot be limited to economic development and to scientific and technological progress, but should serve to reawaken in all the citizens an awareness of their strength and their cultural and spiritual wealth which has been the bedrock of successes in the past and ought to constitute the foundation for those of the future¹. In the homily a year ago in Delhi, I said precisely that out wealth is to be found in our identity and the originality of our charism, which made Don Bosco and the Salesians great, which was planted here a hundred years ago.

No less enlightening for me was to discover that while they were looking for inspiration in someone who had a clear, practical vision and possessed the gift of being able to articulate it in a way that enlightens the mind and enflames the heart, those who drew up India 2020 found it in the vision of Rabindranath Tagore:

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high,

Where knowledge is free,

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments

by narrow domestic wall,

Where words come out from the depth of truth,

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection,

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way

into the dreary desert sand of dead habit,

Where the mind is led forward by Thee

into ever-widening thought and action.

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

For us Salesians, today as one hundred years ago, the vision of Don Bosco is ours. We can find no other source from which to draw inspiration and strength than that of our origins. It is there that our originality and identity are to be found. In the origin of the Gospel, of the charism, of the presence, that is to say, at Bethlehem, at the Becchi, at Valdocco, at Thanjavur. Today more than ever we are needed in India, precisely because the great majority of the population is made up of children, adolescents and young people, because the great challenge is education, because there is the need to bring a leaven to this culture not only on the basis of technology but of Gospel values. Allow me therefore to repeat my dream:

“Today I want to dream the future with you, just like that great dreamer, our beloved Don Bosco would do. And I am telling you how I see the Salesian India of the future.

I dream of a Salesian India which offers the Congregation the richness of Don Bosco's charism faithfully inculturated, with a strong identity, marked by the passion of the da mihi animas which is a passion for God and a passion for the young.

I dream of a Salesian India which collaborates in the transformation of the nation starting, like Don Bosco, from the poorest of young people, and re-enacting the spiritual and apostolic experience of Valdocco through the loving-kindness of the Preventive System.

I dream of a Salesian India which is decisively missionary, within the country and in the Mission ad gentes, in the same way that other countries have done in the past when they experienced strong vocational growth.

I dream of a Salesian India with educational and pastoral presences of quality, with communities of the right quality and number who, being a pledge of hope for the poorest young people and those in a situation of risk, at the same time become a stimulus for integration in this nation in the diversity of regions which make it up.

I dream of a Salesian India with a span of works answering the multiple needs of those to whom our mission is directed, works which show inasmuch as they can all dimensions of the Salesian vocation and mission, at the service of evangelisation and with a capacity for fostering inter-religious dialogue, having the Madonna as their Mother and Teacher.”²

So far we have written golden pages in the century that has passed. Yet nonetheless the best pages about the Salesian presence in India are still to be written. This then is your opportunity. Lift up your hearts and fill them with the zeal of the “Da mihi animas” of Don Bosco, and renew your commitment to devote your whole life even to your last breath, to the young people of India so that they may have life to the full and be happy now and for ever. In this way you will continue to fulfill his dream, which is also mine and yours.

Rector Major of the Salesians

Thanjavur – February 5^th 2006

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