Don Bosco University gets 500 acre campus
Posted on June 15, 2012, 8:56 AM

Provincial Fr VM Thomas will signal the ground breaking and Fr Joseph Almeida will bless the Stone Tepee.

Guwahati: The ground-breaking ceremony of the 500-acre campus of the Assam Don Bosco University will be held today at Tapesia Gardens near Dispur.

It will also mark the graduation of the first batch of engineering students of the first Catholic University in India, established in 2008.

Besides the facilities for regular students, the new campus is expected to house some 6,000 staff and students . Vice Chancellor Fr Stephen Mavely describes the site as "500 acres of a myriad shades of green, undulating hills and babbling streams, playful elephants and shady jungle trails … .. unmatchable home for a University."

He adds, "among the surprises in store for guests could be a herd of wild elephants who frequent the site…"

Provincial Fr VM Thomas will signal the ground breaking and Fr Joseph Almeida will bless the Stone Tepee.

The 90-minute program will also witness a talk by Fr. Joseph Almeida, immediate past povincial superior, on the topic "There is a time and a place... for everything under the sun!"

The provincial will sound the clarion call "Get on board... new horizons beckon!"

The worldwide Salesian Congregation started off its first university college -- St Anthony’s College Shillong in 1934 under the leadership of then cleric Giuseppe Bachierello, said Fr Mavely.

He added, "venturing upon starting a University, 78 years later, is no less a daunting task… however, in view of the encouragement from the government, civil and ecclesial leaders, and especially the Salesians and youth of the region, this venture holds promise of blossoming into one of the most significant works of the Church and Don Bosco Society in India."

Source: e-pao.net
Don Bosco University , Tapesia Gardens ,Dispur ,Catholic University ,Engineering Colleg

Seminar - Caste Matters
Articles presented at Seminar listed on http://www.india-seminar.com/2012/633.htm

Despite the unequivocal findings of Justice Ranganath Misra’s Commission on the subject, which concluded that ‘the caste system should be recognized as a general social characteristic of the Indian society as a whole, without questioning whether the philosophy and teachings of any particular religion recognize it or not,’3 The idea of caste as Hindu underlies the continued and wholly unjustified exclusion of Christian and Muslim converts from the Indian state’s statutory concessions and protections as ‘Scheduled Castes’. Add to this the fact that in several parts of India Christians are so predominantly Dalit that the segregation of and discrimination against Christians and Dalits is one and the same.

Excerpt from on paper entitled- Caste & Christianity
By :DAVID MOSSE
Posted on GoaNet by Jason Keith Fernandes

THE theme of caste and Christianity raises the broader issue of the relationship between caste and religion, each in itself a difficult term. But perhaps we can start with a sociological observation that has been rather obscured by various theoretical and ideological elaborations of caste. The observation is that a person’s caste is determined by lineage, to a lesser degree by occupation, perhaps by residence, but it is usually unthinkable that which god or gods a person worships or believes in, the faith that they have, is determinant of caste identity.

Nonetheless, the idea that caste is a matter Caste of religion, that it is a Hindu institution if not actually part of Hinduism, has had extraordinary influence. This idea which may have its roots in the exigencies of 19th century Protestant missionaries2 was, during the 20th century, solidified into administration and social theory as a dominant view. It was held in contrasting variants by Mohandas K. Gandhi and his political opponent, Bhimrao R. Ambedkar. Despite the unequivocal findings of Justice Ranganath Misra’s Commission on the subject, which concluded that ‘the caste system should be recognized as a general social characteristic of the Indian society as a whole, without questioning whether the philosophy and teachings of any particular religion recognize it or not,’3 the idea of caste as Hindu underlies the continued and wholly unjustified exclusion of Christian and Muslim converts from the Indian state’s statutory concessions and protections as ‘Scheduled Castes’. Add to this the fact that in several parts of India Christians are so predominantly Dalit that the segregation of and discrimination against Christians and Dalits is one and the same.

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