C.M. Paul
Jorhat – Deputy Commissioner of Jorhat District, Assam, Shree Virendra Mittal, IAS, honoured the director of Institution for Culture And Rural Development (I-CARD), Fr. K. A. Thomas at the Republic day event held on 26 January.
Salesian Fr. Thomas was given a prize and a citation, “for promoting ethnic cultures, and for promoting culture among the younger generation.”
The district authorities honoured him, on behalf of the Department of Culture, “for his sacrifices and for his great contribution to the larger Assamese society.”
The felicitation was accorded to Fr. Thomas on the occasion of the 68th Republic Day Celebrations in the Court Field of Jorhat.
The Cultural Officer of Jorhat Mr. Angshuman Dutta, who had visited Life Plus Campus of I-CARD twice, together with the Senior Additional Deputy Commissioner, Mr. Anil Chandra Das, to witness for themselves the annual Ethnique, “Jorhat’s Own Annual Tourism Festival” organized by I-CARD initiated the award process.
Fr. Thomas has been promoting the ethnic culture especially of the Mising Tribe, as a model for others, among school dropouts and unemployed youth.
These young people have become the cultural ambassadors for the tribe across India, invited by Government departments like Sangeet Natak Akademy, and Ministry of Culture. They have already performed in Gujarat, Delhi, Benares, Mumbai and several cities of Northeast India.
Fr. Thomas is working to reverse the sequence of neglect, decay, and rebellion that has stymied the peace and prosperity of Northeast India’s minorities. He is helping the Mising–who number one million and live in eight districts of the plains of Upper Assam–to resist the social pressures of their region and to find positive, peaceful solutions to the many problems they face.
Working with young people, intellectuals, traditional leaders, village women, and school dropouts, Fr. Thomas helps Misings develop a stake in public life through community-building exercises.
“The goal is to root the Misings in their rich traditions and cultural ethos so that they are not threatened by other cultures in the region,” says Fr Thomas an Ashoka Fellow.
By stepping beyond the confines of a religious mission concerned chiefly with formal schooling, Fr. Thomas is building ways to support and develop the Mising people, one of Northeast India’s remaining minorities that has yet to succumb to armed struggle and the politics of ethnic nationalism.
Twenty years ago he started the Institution for Culture and Rural Development, an idea he had been nurturing since 1994.
Back then, Fr. Thomas started a leadership-training center – ‘Rising Star’ which offered a year-long training to 20 young Misings at a time, mostly school dropouts drawn from villages throughout Assam.
The trainees are given exposure and inputs on various issues and their community work skills are honed with experts and volunteers from various fields to handle the different modules of the year-long training that emphasizes the development of the trainees as human beings, as Misings, and as servant leaders of society.
Fr. Thomas vision was that these ‘stars’ would be agents for change in their community–able to support themselves with the skills they have received and also able to carry out various community-organizing activities to provide constructive and nonviolent leadership to their people. END