Eucharist as an Alternative Space to the Globalization of Media

By Dr Joshva Raja

A Story of a Eucharist

Manjolai is a small tea estate, owned by a group of shareholders under the name of Bombay Burma Trading Corporation. It has seven estates with more than 2000 full time workers. Majority of the labourers is from Dalit Communities. I worked in this place as a priest in 1994 and 1995. During my ministry there I experimented a project for the CSI synod named a ‘Labourer’s awareness project’. Interestingly the church became the centre of the community and the priest was seen as a labour union representative. As I ran this project I could mediate between the company managers and labourers. Very often during and after the Holy Communion service the congregation shares their problems and issues among themselves. This provided space for the members and even for the non-Christians a space to express their voices. The church invited the managers for many of our project initiatives and so had a reasonably good relationship with the executives in the company.

Many of their problems were raised by our project coordinator with the managers and thereby they attempted to address a few of them. At times managers and executives themselves were present in our post communion discussions. But when I left for studies, the following priests too had good relationship with people and also with company. But unfortunately in 1998 the CSI priest and a new political group joined together and encouraged the labourers to agitate against the company. This led to the closure of company and murder of a number of people by the political groups and by the police. My Bishop, myself and the company’s former executives attempted to mediate but the local political group known as ‘Pudhiya Tamilagam (New Tamil Nadu)’ did not allow any immediate solution to this problem. This became a well known dalit party in Tamil Nadu. After my research degree in Edinburgh I returned to the church in 2001 March. My Bishop in Tirunelveli asked me to go to Manjolai to conduct Holy Communion (Eucharist) service among seven CSI churches there as no other priest is allowed by the police and company...

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