Two days before he is scheduled to leave India, an educator who spent over half a century guiding underprivileged children has spoken about how the promotion of one religion is damaging the country.
“Love should be the bottom line of all relationships instead of disunity,” Brother Brendan MacCarthaigh, who is set to leave Calcutta for Ireland on Sunday, told The Telegraph on Friday.
“Promotion of one religion over others is smashing the country rather than helping it grow.… I feel bad that religious divides are happening and the leadership of the country is doing nothing to heal that divide,” Brother MacCarthaigh said over the phone.
Amid several engagements on Friday, Brother MacCarthaigh took time out to speak at length. This newspaper asked him what he felt about the India he was leaving behind.
At the moment, “religion is a big reality in India. But as teachers, we need to remember not to promote any particular religion. Youngsters should be encouraged to be good youngsters... girls and boys within the tenets of their own religion”, Brother MacCarthaigh said. “When religion spreads hatred, schools should raise their voice.”
He cited the example of Serve (Students’ Empowerment, Rights & Vision through Education), a methodology he has devised to help students explore and learn without being stifled, to illustrate the point.
The Serve system of education was born in 1996 and egging him on were past pupils Rajesh Arora and Abbas Bengali. “The fact that the three of us were from different religions was a way of telling us to keep individual religions out of our work,” Brother MacCarthaigh said.
He was inducted into The Telegraph Education Foundation Hall of Fame at The Telegraph School Awards for Excellence 2016. Brother MacCarthaigh arrived in Calcutta from Dublin in 1960, when he was 22, sent by the Christian Brothers headquarters.
Over the years, he has touched the lives of thousands of students on railway platforms, at street corners and at high school. Brother MacCarthaigh is 84.
In the 62 years he has spent in India — nearly 40 of those in Calcutta — Brother MacCarthaigh travelled to Ireland usually once in three years. When he got off the plane back in Calcutta, he said, a “voice within whispered, ‘Home at last’”.
“I love Calcutta and I never felt bored…. In Calcutta, something has always happened or is about to happen. I will miss the excitement of this city.”
About going to Dublin, he said: “I am returning to my native city where I know nobody.… I don’t know what to expect.”
Ever since the news of his plan to return to Ireland broke, Brother MacCarthaigh has been “inundated” with messages from people asking him not to go. “I feel overwhelmed by the amount of love that people are showing,” he said.
His former pupils have arranged a farewell for him at St Joseph’s College, Bowbazar, on Saturday evening.
“He is going but is leaving behind a legacy of good deeds. Since our school days, he has taught and inspired us to pay back to society,” said Imran Zaki, who was his student at St Joseph’s.
Asked if he had a message, Brother MacCarthaigh said: “Who am I to give a message? If I were to speak to the people of Calcutta, I would say. ‘Keep doing what you are doing, and you will do it even better’.”
