Part II
Don Bosco’s dream realized…
Don Bosco accomplished great things following his dreams . In fact, dreaming was his methodology for ‘seeing the invisible’ and making them come true.
But,’when we are dreaming alone it is only a dream. When we are dreaming with others, it is the beginning of reality.’- Dom Helder Camara
DB’s dreams did become real- a reality already within his life time and more so after, when generous hearts and firm minds carried his dreams forward following his spiritual legacy and methodology.
The group of youngsters organized and named as Salesians by St. John Bosco, was ready to branch out and take flight to far of corners of the world from 1875 onwards, not withstanding its teething troubles and starting problems. The young Salesians of Don Bosco, then, counted only in their tens, left for missions of far away South America to work among the indigenous population of the Pampas, the Tierra del Fuego, and the Amazons, bringing education, faith, health and opening up opportunities.
Within 20 years of Don Bosco’s death, in the year 1906, India had its first group of Salesians working among the downtrodden of Tanjore in South India, teaching their young employment oriented trades like printing, metal work, carpentry and other vocational courses, long before the Wardha vocational education scheme envisaged by Mahatma Gandhi.
The second group of Salesians of Don Bosco, who reached the North East of India in the year 1922 and were led by the dynamic Louis Mathias, who later become the Bishop of Shillong and then, the Arch bishop of Madras-Mylapore(Chennai), could not have reached in a more inopportune time and situation. The catholic population in the hills and plains of North East at that time, was too few and far scattered. The then united Assam Province was conveniently parceled out among various non-Catholic denominations by the ruling British for administrative convenience. For example Nagland and Garo Hills were given to the American Baptists to evangelize, while Khasi Hills and Lushai Hills were the territories earmarked for the Presbyterian church. The new Catholic missionaries, initially at least, were considered mere interlopers, who were tolerated in the ‘divide and rule’ policy of a Colonial regime, rather than granted permission. But they had a concrete plan based on a vision and more than that, they came with a dream in their eyes. They planted the name of ‘Don Bosco’ as a never ending adventure and literally ran around with their footballs, songs and stories capturing the hearts and minds of the young of these blue hills and red river valleys for the service of a very humane Jesus.
Leaders like Msgr. Louis Mathias dared and hoped. He knew the art of dreaming big and the value of hoping resolutely. He knew too that “If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all.” Msgr. Mathias could say what Martin Luther King famously said: “And so today I still have a dream. The Trumpet of Conscience.”
When dream becomes the ‘trumpet of conscience”, it is no mere day dreaming. It is turning the dreams into a vision statement. ‘Much energy is lost in fanciful dreams that never bear fruit. But visions are messages from the Great Spirit, each, for a different purpose in life.’ Dreamers have only inner urges, but leaders turn the urges into reality. They have the inner vision that knows their followers’ heart and find those willing spirits and hands in whom trust could be placed, institutions could be built and a new vista opened. Don Bosco could translate his dreams because he could find these committed souls among his boys and they, in turn found other fired up young persons to carry their dream torches on to new continents, communities and cultures.
Soon, Colleges, Formal Technical and Vocational Training centres, informal craft teaching institutes, Parishes, Schools, Youth centres, grew up in the new Salesian Missions, according to needs of the place and times. Homes for street children were the newest inspiration answering the needs of a fast urbanizing India. All these were established pretty quickly through the length and breadth of the seven sister and one brother states of North East. So far more than 500 valiant men and women coming from different parts of the globe, have enriched the soil of North East with their mortal remains. Their dream still lives on in the students, past pupils, and the eminent men and women who follow in their foot steps.
Yes, ‘Future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of t heir dreams’. The Salesians knew that they don’t have to be rich, famous or distinguished to make their dream come true- they only have to believe in the beauty of the dreams bequeathed to them by that dreamer-visionary, Don Bosco and his battle cry “Da Mihi Animas….give me souls” Souls that are not afraid to dream.
The success of the Salesian Action could be attributed to this ability to pass dreams into the reality of action and again generate other dreams from those actions. This interdependence of dreams and action and back again to dreams has the possibility of producing the highest form of living.
It is this ability of the Salesians, to translate dreams into action and action into dreams, learned from their Father and Founder,Don Bosco, that reminded the famous American Tele evangelist Fulton Sheen, of the miracle of multiplication of loaves and the miracle of water turned into wine, when talking about the spread of Don Bosco’s dream around the world.
As Anais Nin says, ‘Dreams are necessary to life’ and Salesian leaders like Arch Bishops Mathias, Ferrando, Hubert, and others have proved it with their life. They faced the near destruction of the Catholic Missions during the 2nd World War, which were mostly manned by missionaries from Axis powers and so branded as ‘enemy aliens’ and sent en masse to concentration camps, while the nascent missions wilted for want of leaders. They successfully fought the marginalization of Tea garden Christians who originally came from Chota Nagpur to work as indentured labourers in the Tea industry. The leaders fought their social isolation compounded by their language isolation through a slew of empowering solutions. The bright young men and women from this community soon joined the dream of Don Bosco and became leaders in their own right and today the 40 plus lakh Advivasi community is a force to reckon with in the Assam plains.
The dream of Don Bosco marched on even when all the Foreign Missionaries were served with Quit order from Assam in the early 1960s, in the wake of insurgency problem. They just shifted residence to non controversial areas while the rich fields that they prepared now saw new leaders arising out of the soil to reap the bountiful harvest.
And the dream still goes on. It is not fully realized. In a way it is a dream yet unfulfilled, for it is a dream for equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed… “a dream of a nation where all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves alone, but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of a country where every man will respect the dignity and worth of the human personality.” - Martin Luther King, Jr.
We look forward confidently to that dream day, which will fuel other dreams. So it goes on ….and the show is on. Don Bosco the dreamer comes to invite you…to add your own dreams.
