Author of book on Mokama nuns wins Christopher Award

By Matters India Reporter

New York, April 8, 2023: An Indian American who wrote about pioneering American and Indian women in a Bihar town has won a 74-year-old award that salutes media that “affirm the highest values of the human spirit.”

Jyoti Thottam, daughter of an Indian nurse settled in the United States, has won the Christopher Award for her book, “Sisters of Mokama: The Pioneering Women Who Brought Hope and Healing to India.”

Thottam, a senior New York Times Opinion editor, wrote about Americans and Indians -like her mother–who cared for all who came to their hospital in Mokama, a town some 100 km southeast of Patna, the Bihar capital, during the tumultuous period after WWII and the Partition of India.

Her mother, born in 1946 in the southern Indian state of Kerala, left home at the age of 15 and traveled to Bihar, which was among the bloodiest regions of Partition, to study nursing at Mokama’s Nazareth Hospital.

Fascinated by her mother’s story, Thottam set out to discover the full story of Nazareth Hospital, which had been established in 1947 by the six Sisters of Charity of Nazareth nuns.

With no knowledge of Hindi, and the awareness that they would likely never see their families again, the sisters had traveled to Mokama. They opened the hospital a year later and soon began recruiting young Indian women as nursing students.

The award committee says the book exemplifies the Christopher motto: “It’s better to light one candle than to curse the darkness,” patch.com/new-york reported April 6.

Thottam’s is one of 12 books for adults and young people as the Christopher Awards program marks its 74th year.

The book tells about the brave and radical women who ignored societal constraints. The hospital “was run almost entirely by women, who insisted on giving the highest possible standard of care to everyone who walked through its doors, regardless of caste or religion,” according to the book’s website.

“Thottam draws upon twenty years’ worth of research to tell the women’s inspiring story. She brings to life the hopes, struggles, and accomplishments of these ordinary women—both American and Indian—who succeeded against the odds during those tumult and trauma years.

Pain and loss were everywhere for the women of that time, but the collapse of the old orders provided the women of Nazareth Hospital with an opening—a chance to create for themselves lives that would never have been possible otherwise, the website adds.

Thottam started her career as a reporter, editor and foreign correspondent in New York Times. From 2008 to 2012, she was Time’s South Asia Bureau Chief in New Delhi, where she wrote numerous cover stories, including award-winning articles about the Ganges River and the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

Born in India, she grew up in Texas and graduated from Yale and Columbia. She now lives with her family in Brooklyn.

The Christopher Awards celebrate authors, and illustrators as well as writers, producers and directors whose work “affirms the highest values of the human spirit” and reflects the Christopher motto, “It’s better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.” Christopher Awards were also given to the creators of 10 TV/Cable shows and feature films.

Tony Rossi, The Christophers’ Director of Communications, said, “The stories we’re honoring acknowledge that the struggles we endure in life coexist with beauty and hope when we work together, despite our differences, to add love and healing to our world.”

The Christophers, a nonprofit founded in 1945 by Maryknoll Father James Keller, is rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition of service to God and humanity. The ancient Chinese proverb—“It’s better to light one candle than to curse the darkness”— guides its publishing, radio, and awards programs.