Remembering our loved ones

 Dateline 28th November 2023

(Posted on Jacob's Blog, Seventh Heaven Blog for Cathedralites and Kooler Talk (Web Version) Blog for St. Stephen's College alumni.

Cathedral & John Connon School 59ers have lost many of our ones in the last few years. 

Here is a partial list of those from our 2969class who have passed on. 

(I do not have any information about our lady classmates except dear Farhana. I hope someone will update me on this.)

Ashok Ruia

Bala Parasursman

Dossu Pagdiwalla

Fali Dhondy

Farhana (Kably) Poonawala

Farukh Kanga

Flicky Shroff

Hasnain Chinwala

Indrajit Shah

Jacob Eapen 

Jack Haskell

 Jaswant Ghatge

Kurshed Balsata

Michael Colaco

Murali Balani

Naubir Mohindar

Pradeep Bhakar

Prem Goel

Ramesh Mirchandani

Virat Gidwani

Trevor Newnes

I have deliberately left out from this list, one of our dearest, who was tragically lost  15 years ago, Ashok Kapur.

59erGolden Reunion Directory

Our Mumbai 59ers met as a memoriam to Ashok

At our 2009 Golden  Reunion of 59ers,  Annikki and I dedicated our Reunion Directory to Ashok with these pages:

But besides Ashok, we lost many others during those fateful days, which has been brought to mind by Rajiv Bhatia on his Facebook page.

26/11

Remembering the late - Ajit & Monica Chhabria, Sunil & Reshma Parikh, Sanjay & Rita Agarwal, Rohinton Maloo, Mohit Harjani, Lavina Harjani, Anand Bhatt, Pankaj Shah, Vishnidas-Nilam-Gunjan Narang, Neeti-Uday-Samar-Kang, Rupinder Randhawa, Ashok Kamte, Hemant Karkare, Vijay Salaskar, Tukaram Omble

I also remember one of my other alumni from St. Stephen’s College with this post from our alumni Facebook page. 

None other than the heroic Ashok Kamte:

Ashish Joshi , the Moderator of our alumni Facebook   page posted this.

LEST WE FORGET

This is what my friend & college senior, Gary (Justice Anupinder Grewal), wrote in the memory of late Ashok Kamte (Gary's batchmate) a brilliant police officer who attained martyrdom on 26/11. Late Kamte was a friend & one year senior to me in the College .

ASHOK KAMTE

I have been attending the annual St. Stephen's College, Reunion very frequently ever since I passed out of college in 1987. However, this year on 14th December, it was drastically different as it turned into memorial service for Ashok Kamte and I was entrusted the painful task of paying tribute to Ashok. 

It was a tragic personal loss as besides being my classmate in college and a friend, I had the privilege of living with Ashok and his family at his mother’s Flat in Hira Mahal on the Amrita Shergill Marg for about year while studying law. 

Ashok had joined us at St. Stephen's College for his Post Graduation after he had Graduated from St. Xavier’s College, Bombay. What stood him apart from the rest of the Stephanians was the enormity of his physical stature, which alongwith his quest for academic excellence was a rather unique combination. What surprised many was why is the National Power Lifting Champion pursuing Post Graduation at St. Stephen's. There is no preference for sports persons for admission in M.A. Little did they realize then that Ashok always strove for excellence, whether in the classroom or the playing field. He had single minded commitment to succeed. He was very happy when he was selected to the I.P.S. He used to say that he was meant for action and disliked other civil services for their bureaucratic file work.

While training for the Power Lifting Championship, he would not compromise on his diet. As his mother would not allow him to have more than two eggs, due to its high cholesterol content he would buy a dozen eggs from the market, cook and eat them at his neighbour's house. He had broken three national records in Power Lifting and won half a dozen Gold and Silver Medals. He had also won the Bronze Medal in Junior World Power Lifting Championship. Power Lifting is one of the toughest sport and Ashok would train for hours in complete solitude. Despite his powerful build, he was extremely agile and could sprint quite fast. Besides his love for swimming and squash he would generate amazing pace and bounce while bowling on the rather placid College Cricket pitch at Morigate. He had played an important role in the victory of our team. 

Ashok was proud of the fact that he had the blood of two Martial Races the Maratha’s and the Sikhs. While his father is a retired Colonel settled in Pune, his grand-father was in the Imperial Police. His mother Mrs. Paramjit Kamte,, who now lives in Gulmohar Park is from the well known Bawa Family of Goindwal Sahib and is grand-daughter of Late Bawa Budh Singh of the Indian Service of Engineers. Bawa Budh Singh was the 14th descendent of the Third Sikh Guru, Guru Amar Dass. When I called on Mrs. Kamte, she said that though she is proud of the fact that Ashok has become a National Hero yet at times she cannot comprehend that he is no more. He was the only male member in the family whom she could look forward in times of need. He had perhaps inherited his very fair features from his maternal grandmother Mrs.Surinder Bawa (maiden name Violet) an English Lady. His sister, Sharmila, a well known model and a ballet dancer, now runs her famous Dance Academy in Dubai. His wife, Vinita, stays at Pune alongwith his sons, Rahul and Arjun. Besides serving the U.N. Force in Bosnia, Ashok had also trained in Punjab for some time. 

Ashok was known for his high integrity and efficiency which was evident in his earlier stints in Maharashtra especially in Solapur, where he had brought an inflammable communal situation under control within a few hours. I had spoken to Ashok sometime back when as Commissioner of Police, Solapur, was in the news for bringing to book the local M.L.A who was flouting the law for noise pollution. Ashok had personally gone and arrested the M.L.A. from his residence at mid-night after the M.L.A. had earlier roughed up police officials. I had asked him whether he had really beaten up the M.L.A. He replied that if he had done so, the man would not have survived as though he no longer competed in power lifting but maintained regular exercise regime. It was his conscientiousness, patriotism and devotion to duty which made him the target of the terrorist attack at Mumbai. He was the Additional Commissioner, (East) and even though the area around the Cama Hospital(South) did not fall within his jurisdiction, he had reached there as he had undergone specialized training to handle terrorism and hostage situation. He would lead from the front and was not the kind to send subordinates to do risky jobs. He lived for others and had a proactive approach. He made the supreme sacrifice and attained martyrdom in the battle field and made his family, friends and the nation proud. "

Anupinder Grewal

Additional Advocate General, Punjab (Now Judge, Punjab High Court)

Let us each keep a moment’s silence, wherever we are, to honour of all our alumni. Founder’s Day for the school was November 14th. That for our college is 7th December. 

May all these dear ones friends 

Rest In Peace.

An important question about Indian Cities

 

Ramu Katakam (profile photo from

his Facebook page).

We live in a country, Finland, famed for its modern as well as traditional architecture. It is also in harmony with nature.

Architects, as the late Alvar Aalto, changed the face of architecture not only in Finland. I remember him when he created the all plastic house in the sixties!over the last century.

Yesterday, I read an article about how a Middle East country is planning an undersea tunnel to India with a length of 1500 km. 

But where are they heading?

Then I came across this article by an old friend from my alma mater who is an architect. Ramu Katakam was a close friend of my cousin, Mammen Mathew.

Our history goes back over 50 years,

When I stood for the President of the St. Stephen’s College residents in 1961, it was an audacious move as no 2nd year student had ever gone forward with such an ambition. 

My cousin, who was then in the first year, headed my campaign  rounding up all possible votes. He knew that I had a vision for the future and the tenacity to see it through.

However, he ran into a road block with his good friend, Ramu Katakam, who intended to vote for someone else!

Till today, the bone of contention between these two dear friends has been the vote he did not give me.

Both these characters are fantastic, each in his own way, as after finishing college, the two of them hitch-hiked ftom India to London where I was studying. 

Mammen went into journalism and today heads the Malayala Manorama newspaper and its over 40 major publications, almost all leading in their spheres. (The WEEK, Balarama for children, Vanitha for ladies in Malayalam and Hindi, Manorama Weekly in Malayalam,  Manorama Directory in English, Malayalam, Tamil, Bengali and Hindi).

Ramu went to Cambridge and specialised in architecture.

This article by Ramu, featured below, appeared in The Wire.

I, with Abraham Thomas, who was Managing Director of the building group Southern Investments,  and author of a book "The Affluent Machine" authored the concept of rural urbanisation in I976, which is still several steps ahead of the Smart City concept which is heralded as future of India.

I will blog our article "Rural Urbanisation" shortly, but I think it is important to go through the critical views of Ramu.

"Why Is Modern Indian Architecture So Banal and the Cities So Unlivable?

The present period will be seen centuries later as piles of steel and shards of glass.

By

Ramu Katakam 

Representative image. Photo: Sriharsha/Flickr CC BY SA 2.0

A recent article in The Wire titled ‘Why Conserving Modern Architecture Has Become Nearly Impossible’ raised several questions that have been worrying architects, especially after the series of demolitions and planned demolitions of post-independence buildings.

The country is emerging from a long stretch of European colonisation and is finding its feet amongst the arts and architecture of the modern age. But European influence still plays a role in this quest for what is Indian and what is mere copy. It has been difficult for Indian architects to create a style that adequately presents a rising civilisation to the rest of the world – and to its own denizens. 

 

A country that has produced so many beautiful buildings over the centuries is now having to formulate its identity and design of buildings. Take the Hall of Nations, designed by Raj Rewal and built in the 1970s to provide a space for international exhibitions in the heart of Delhi. Before it was demolished by this government, it was arguably one of the finest works of architecture in the post-Independence era. It represented a new approach and borrowed nothing from Bauhaus ideologies or from Le Corbusier’s enormous influence. The architect found a way to build a unique structure that was modern and monumental.

The Hall of Nations. Credit: The Wire

Unfortunately, our administrators felt it occupied a very valuable amount of real estate and they had no understanding of its historic value and proceeded to tear it down. By this logic, one could argue that the Purana Qila (‘Old Fort’) – built by Humayun in the 16th century, which lies next to Pragati Maidan where the exhibition grounds are located and also occupies valuable land in the city centre – should be demolished too. Luckily, the fort is under the protection of the Preservation of Ancient Monuments Act, 1958. Indian architects are now suggesting that a new act be brought in to protect architectural buildings of significance, regardless of age.

When the British decided to shift their Capital to Delhi from Kolkata, they chose a large area adjacent to Shahjanabad, the capital created by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan. They designed and built an imperial city that was to last a thousand years (something we have heard before and since). But after just 25 years, they had to abandon the capital. 

 

Their New Delhi was created as a set of imposing buildings that exhibited the might of the British Empire. The present Rashtrapati Bhavan was originally the residence of the Viceroy, who was the representative of the King of England. The North and South Blocks, while architectural masterpieces of colonial design, were intended to rule India, the ‘Jewel in their Crown’.

 

All Union governments of independent India have been hypnotised by these imperial buildings. The president of India lives in the erstwhile Viceregal Lodge and the main ministries of home, defence, finance and external affairs are ensconced in the Secretariat.

Ministers sit in their grand teak-panelled offices and members of the Indian civil services continue to enjoy their pre-Independence pomp and glory. The present regime has tried to bring about change and has built new buildings along the main vista that was once called Rajpath, later Janpath, or ‘people’s way’ and now Kartavyapath. All of these are signifiers of an India that continues to be ruled rather than governed.

 

Forecourt of Rashtrapati Bhavan. Photo: Rashtrapati Bhavan, GODL-India

A prescient Gandhi saw the impact these imperial buildings would have on those in power and, after Independence, pleaded with the state to create another capital that would leave the British legacy behind. It would have been simple to acquire land at that time but instead, we now have the satellite towns of Noida and Gurugram which are really vast suburbs of concrete, steel and glass. A faceless set of buildings that appears in rings of roads around the capital of Delhi housing millions of residents.

 

Of course, it is not as if Indian governments were the only ones seduced by grand buildings: the new rulers of Russia used the Kremlin palaces (the old residences of the Czars) as their headquarters and the Chinese used the palaces of the Forbidden City (residences of Emperors for several centuries) as the staging post for their May Day parades.

Architecture plays a significant role in the manner cities are planned and the remains of a civilisation are largely seen through the buildings that are left behind. Architects are told not to hark back to history but how is it possible to ignore Nalanda, Sanchi and Ellora – all treasures of design created by previous civilisations? Today we are reduced to banal edifices of square and round skyscrapers that represent what a large number of people term prosperity and development. Tagore’s vision of creating a recognisably distinct Indian civilization is fast disappearing as the subcontinent’s buildings try to replicate the tiny principalities of Dubai and Singapore. However, these replicas do not match the quality or scale of the modern age ‘wonders’ seen in the global cities. Will our present civilisation be seen a few centuries from now as piles of twisted metal and shards of glass? 

 

None of India’s cities offers a solution for the modern city. They are all increasingly becoming unlivable, making the privileged few seek second homes in Goa, in hill stations or abroad. A chance to see real change was available when a capital was envisaged for the residual Andhra Pradesh state. It was to be called Amaravati, after the Buddhist capital that was the centre of the old kingdoms of this area. (Few know that people in the land that is now Andhra Pradesh followed the Buddhist faith for 800 years.) However, after several attempts, the present state government chose to make three capital regions and power was decentralised – a smart decision given the length of the state. But these different capitals just had more rings of suburbs where concrete and glass thrive.

All this sounds very bleak and indeed it is. The future of Indian architecture and its habitat is represented by a few grand villas in Goa and some oversized air-conditioned flats in Mumbai and Delhi. It is therefore important for architects to attempt to bring cityscapes together and create new designs that are community-driven. Colaba, a suburb of Mumbai, is a classic example of a settlement where the rich and poor mingle and live complete lives. It is a microcosm of the mighty ‘maximum city’ and is a place where everything is available and some protection is offered to heritage buildings. Re-use of buildings is being done and an excellent example is the cafe built inside a former godown which was gutted and the exterior kept intact. Another well-known renovation is an ice factory in Ballard Estate that has been converted into a modern gallery and exhibition space for events.

 

Amongst the other major cities of India, Mylapore within the city of Chennai is a good example that has coexisted since the inception of the city. Many British residents made this area into their homes and while it is in good condition can be well restored for the reuse of a cityscape.

 

The old city of Hyderabad with the Charminar as its focus is also an independent settlement within the megapolis of the modern capital and is quite independent of the chaos of modern Hyderabad. Due to its antiquity, the inhabitants live and work on an ‘island’ with their own economy. Many other cities in India have these qualities – with Jodhpur, Lucknow and Kolkata among the largest.

 

Charminar. Photo: Vandana And Vaibhav/ Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY-SA 4.0.

This may not be perfectly pleasing for aspiring architects who want to design magnificent edifices but they may have to start making buildings that are more on a human scale. If new cities are to be made (and several are needed to cope with increasing numbers), then the planning will have to be on a gigantic scale. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has embarked on building a 170-km-long linear city called ‘The Line’. It is a revolutionary city that doesn’t look to the past, attempts to cater to the future, and has big names and big money undergirding it. There are several aspects to the project that raise questions but the attempt to think anew is to be recognised. 

 

India’s wealth – and, more importantly, its population and its needs – will rise dramatically in the next decades and hence will have to consider something as spectacular and monumental as The Line City envisaged in the desert. The country has to decide whether it is going to pursue the limits of wealth which will sooner or later implode as the planet does not have the resources for this growth or follow a path that will allow the planet to survive the upheavals and lifestyles of the modern age.

Ramu Katakam is an architect."

One hopes that visionary architects will arrive on the Indian scene to make it possible that India is a liveable country. We are not so confident as was expressed in our last book "The Titanic Called India",

 

First time (also published my KOOLER TALK blog)

Stephanian S. Y. Qurashi

In my almost 70 years and over 48 years as an adult with deep interest in politics, this was the first time I actually spent a few hours, in Finland, watching an election process in India.

In the 70s I was close with many politicians of all parties and knew exactly how corrupt all of them were. So I kept my distance.

Votes appear to have been cast this time in 5 States over a period of time and today was the counting and declaration of the results. Results were announced from Goa (1.5 million), Manipur (2.7 million), Punjab (28 million), Uttar Pradesh (200 million) and Uttarakhand (10 million).

Over 240 million people were choosing their local politicians to serve them for the next few years. It was a mixed bag of results with the National Parties less successful than the regional parties.

Watching on an Indian internet TV Channel, NDTV 24x7, I was quite intrigued by the mixture of languages being used by the participants. Since I know English, Hindi, Punjabi (a bit), I wondered whether this channel was watched by the majority of Indians who are only familiar with their regional language.

Obviously not.

Quite a few of my juniors from my alma mater, St. Stephen's College in Delhi, were on the box, either as politicians in different parties, as tv anchor men or women, or as "experts". It was quite easy to recognise them as they had a different air about the way they handled the subjects.

I thought to myself whether I was the same! I hope not, as I consider myself as individualistic rather than moulded by my alma mater characteristics, especially with regard to politics!

On the whole, following the election was an interesting experience, especially as I could view it from a distance and not be involved with it in any other way.

The main thing that struck me was that several corrupt politicians fell by the wayside.

The independent Chief Election Commissioner, Dr. S. Y. Qurashi, is also a product of my alma mater, about 10 years my junior. His interview on NDTV was very interesting as he has to keep his head above the murky waters of Indian Politics.

This experience was also followed by an interesting news item I noted in an Indian internet newspaper which said that the top two jobs in the Indian Administrative Service and in the Indian Police Service were also filled by Stephanians.

These are IAS officers Pulok Chatterjee, the Prime Minister's Principal Secretary, and Ajit Seth, the Cabinet Secretary, and IPS officers, Nehchal Sandhu, Intelligence Bureau Chief and A. B. Singh, Central Bureau of Investigation Chief.

Many of my classmates and those who were in College during my years there, have served in very senior Government positions (62ers Mani Shankar Aiyar, Rathikant Basu, Ashok (Tony) Jaitly) and also as Ambassadors (62er Niranjan Desai, 63ers Siddarth Singh and Aftab Seth, etc.) in different parts of the world.

They have also served in the United Nations, 74er Sashi Tharoor, the Commonwealth Secretariat, 62er Kamlesh Sharma, the World Bank, 63er Montek Singh Alhuwalia and 62er Sarwar Lateef,  the Asian Development Bank, 63er Karthik Sandilya, and many many more such world bodies.

It would be interesting to compile a Who's Who of Stephanians!

Visit to my Alma Mater 3

I went to my alma mater, St. Stephen’s College, this morning.



Much had changed and much had not changed. The most important was that it was a no smoking zone! Amazing but simply wonderful. Many buildings had been added, mostly of the same style.

As soon as I arrived I met with four staff members at the gate, all after my time. Then to the Principal’s office. He was not there, but I spoke to him on the phone to get permission to do some unobtrusive photography.

First shot - The Blacksmith, which was now a modern water cooler. However, the significance of the Blacksmith has vanished as water coolers have been installed in all the blocks, making those evening and night visits to it now unnecessary.

The general atmosphere was the same except to see girls trooping around everywhere.

The greatest disappointment was the condition of the JCR.

In 1961-62 the JCR Committee had worked so hard to make the JCR a wonderful place where we could not only enjoy ourselves but feel comfortable in clean and neat surroundings. The place was now in shambles. The small rooms at the back were store houses for all sorts of paraphernalia and one was a carom room. Two TT tables now stood in the main hall. Nothing much else. It just did not feel a comfortable place to relax in during the long evenings.

But the boys there seemed quite contented - so who am I to say what it should be.

I bought a College tie from Balan in the Sports Department. Cost was just Rs. 160, but he could not sell me a college T-Shirt! Meant for students only, I guess!



The cafe had been expanded and modernised. The cane chair s were still there and the fare was a slightly more modern.

I am going back on Monday to attend the Founders’s Day Service. Hopefully I can spend a bit more time looking around.

I rushed back and with perfect timing arrived back just as K. P. Fabian, former Ambassador to Finland arrived at the Guest House. He was looking as sprightly as ever and he is active with an NGO. He also has a great blog where he writes about socio-political issues.

I still remember his wonderful speech at the Oulu University about North - South dialogue, something I should reproduce here on the blog. In today’s context, it has even more significance.

It is 4:30am. Rushing off to Rajasthan now to see the Check Dams Project. So will complete this entry on my return. (more photographs tomorrow.)

My other alma mater is Cathedral and John Connon School, Bombay and here are list of few of those are Alumni of both of these institutions.

Rahul Bajaj, Ashok (Tony) Jaitly, Peter Philip, Sujit Bhatacharya and myself, Javob Matthan. If you belong tonthesectwo Alumni, Please send mecdn email to jmatthan@ gmail.com

Ignore or reply?

Posted on my Jacob's Blog, the Mumbai Cathedral School Seventh Heaven Blog and the Delhi Stephanian Kooler Talk Blog.

Although the bulk of this posting relates to my alma mater, St. Stephen's College, Delhi, the moral and rationale that I talk about here applies to all my alma maters and also to my many readers on my primary blog.

It has been quite a while since the exchange of views on the Kooler Talk Blog about the appointment of Rev. Valson Thambu as Acting Principal of St. Stephen's College and then his radical new Dalit Christian oriented admission policy to the College.

I was greatly honoured when John Dayal, Member of the National Integration Council, Secretary General of the All India Christian Council and President of the All India
Catholic Union, asked me to contribute to a book which would consider the aspect of admission of Dalit Christians to minority educational institutions.

Then came those couple of Anonymous postings in the Comments section of the Kooler Talk Blog which accused me of being a fundamentalist Christian.

That made me sit back for more than a moment and search through my 11 years of writing on the internet to see whether I had ever given cause to be considered as a fundamentalist Christian.

There was a time when I took part in a fundamentalist Hindu web discussion site where I came out strongly against Hindu Fundamentalism and Muslim extremism in the wake of the Gujarat massacre. It left a very bad taste in me to get into a discussion with a set of rabid and illiterate Hindu fundamentalists located all over the world who were foaming at the mouth when challenged about their fundamentalism.

Then there was a time when, thanks to Stephanian Prof. Sreenath Sreenivasan, Professor of Journalism at Columbia university, New York,I was looking in on the South Asian Journalists (SAJA) Discussion Forum where, again, a few well-educated Hindu Fundamentalist "journalists" were putting forward all sorts of arguments to prove "their" theories of the Indus Valley Civilisation to demonise other religious groups in India.

There was no limit to the twisting of the truth, very much as George Bush continues to use his "Christian Fundamentalist" values to kill innocent Afghanis and Iraqis to achieve his ends.

As a result I had decided not to be drawn again into such arguments as they only leave me with wanting to use a new mouthwash!

When I decided to wish Rev. Thambu well on his appointment as the Officiating Principal of St. Stephen's College, I had no idea that I was being drawn into a major controversy which is raging there.

I am 7000 km away from India. I have not visited India since the year 2000. I am not an expert on anything Indian. I have only my nostalgia of a time long gone by and that does not make me competent to even write a line in support or defense of policies of education, religious fundamentalism or any other matter related to what is taking place in India.

After much deliberation with my friends and my main confidante, I felt that I would only be adding fuel to the fire if I wrote about the controversies. After 8 weeks of much thought and prayer, my wife and I decided that we should not be embroiled in a battle of which we knew nothing about.

We have a reputation, which has been stated by many of our regular readers, that we have never done anything or written anything which violated the trust of all the different religious and ethnic groups that read our many blog pages.

When I went through the Indian Press Reports that I get daily, yesterday there was this one in the Times of India "Exclusive quota for backward Christians and Muslims in Tamil Nadu". This is for the second time that DMK Chief Minister M Karunanidhi has sought to provide exclusive reservation for specific castes in the backward classes catagory. In 1989, he had carved out 20 per cent of the 50 per cent reservation for Backward Classes for the Most Backward classes.

This has been Karunanidhi's vote gathering politics.

Rev. Valson Thambu's strategy was to divert the attention from his controversial appointment to a more amenable to improve his public ratings. In that he succeeded admirably by focusing on the concept of social justice.

To continue to stay away from the personal glare, yet another step was undertaken to undo anything controversial that previous Collge Principal had done. Rev. Thambu took steps to end the open ended permission that Principal Anil Wilson had given to the Centre for Mathematical Sciences (CMS), run by the Mathematical Sciences Foundation (MSF), by asking them to move out of the Stephania campus, causing a section of senior teachers at the college to protest.

What is happening in Stephania today is not based on the ideals that I imbibed in the educational institutions that I attended in India.

Principal Anil Wilson was obviously wrong to have made such an agreement with the MSF. The Bishop of North India was wrong to appoint his son onto the Supreme Council of the College. Principal Wilson was wrong to have continued to hold his position as Principal when he went forward as Vice Chancellor of another University. The Supreme Council was wrong to appoint Rev. Thambu as Officiating Principal when they had not resolved the issue with Principal Wilson. Principal Wilson was wrong to publicise his dissent. Rev. Thambu was wrong to start his tenure with moves meant to divert attention away from his appointment. Principal Thambu was wrong to cause the still waters of campus life to be stirred so violently.

And, all this is being done in the name of "education" and "Christ".

To me none of this stands up as promoting "Christian values".

I know there are many senior and outstandingly intellectual and honest alumni, before and of my era, in and around Delhi like B. G. Verghese, Rahul Bajaj, Ashok Jaitly, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Mani Shankar Ayar, Shanker Menon, John Dayal, etc., who have the depth of vision to tackle these issues rather than someone as uneducated as me who is so far away from home base to contribute anything worthwhile to resolving them.

All I can do is to tell my audience of all alma maters that what is happening in St. Stephen's College will happen in all minority institutions when internal and personal politics supersedes the values which we should adhere to.

I do not appreciate anonymous input. One should have the courage of convictions to put a name and identity to what one believes. Have the courage to call a spade a spade. As otherwise the spade is being called a bucket to hold the nightsoil!

Do I approve of the actions of the Bishop of North India, his son, former Principal Anil Wilson, or present Acting Principal Rav. Valson Thambu in what is happening in the college?

The answer, from this distance is - NO.

That is because it is not in keeping with the values which were imbibed by me from all my Indian alma maters - Good Shepherd Convent, Mysore, Bishop Cotton School, Bangalore, Cathedral and John Connon School, Mumbai and St. Stephen's College, Delhi.

These values have nothing to do with any religion. It has to do with Fair Play.

I request the alumni in all these institutions who are nearer to the home bases to get actively involved in the institutions that they love to ensure that what is happening in St. Stephen's College is not repeated elsewhere.