why in india

Somebody says that is more polite to handwrite the personal letters, some other says that typewriting will save to others the fatigue of interpreting some difficult handwriting.

Anyway since I am already in front of my typewriter I will type the answer to your letter of the 5^th of May.

As you say, my daily news you can get from the tapes that I send regularly at home. Then I thought to write to you also what I wrote to Angelo in my latest letter. He was asking me, a little surprised, why I insist in going to India since it is so difficult to get a visa and there are so many other countries waiting for missionaries. May be you too think in the same way. That is why I would like to write to you about what I think is my vocation (unless the Lord shows me otherwise).

It is true, there are many other places as worthy and in need of missionaries. If my superiors would have given an other destination, may be, I would have fallen in love with an other country. In fact my first love was for Venezuela. During my secondary school in Erba, we were receiving letter from a missionary in Venezuela. But now, after one year that I think and I dream about India, it would be too much to give up and start thinking an dreaming about some other country..

My love for India did not start with my destination by the superiors, it started earlier. In fact my superiors got convinced to send me to India when I spoke to them of my preference for India. That is why they decided to send me in a new way: not immediately as a missionary in the traditional way, but as a student.

I am strongly convinced that the real problem for the missionary movement is in Asia. I do not want to play down the necessity of missionary personnel for Africa and Latin America. The first is a virgin field open to evangelization, the second is nominally Christian but still in need of missionary help. But in Asia we have two thirds of humanity, we have the great philosophical systems and great civilizations with records more ancient than ours. It is to them that Christianity should have something to say. In fact, our institute, PIME, till the Second World War was having all its personnel in Asia. It was only after the blockade of the war and later, after the difficulty of getting visas for Asian countries, that we open mission in Africa and Latin America. But it will be a mistake to give up. If we cannot go as missionaries we can go as students or as experts in some field in which they need.

But why I prefer India? The reasons are many. But if we want to reduce them to one: it is because I consider India a key-nation. First of all for its history: it has been the cradle of the most ancient civilizations. The first civilizations known at present go back 2500 years BC. The Vedas. The sacred books of Hinduism go back thousand years BC. Buddha , the founder of Buddhism, born and lived in India 500 years before Christ. India was also able to assimilate many other schools of philosophic and religious thought and has its own version of Islam. I think that from this source of human thinking the Christina West can also learn. The first duty of a missionary is to find out and to save what beautiful and good is there. If the Word is the “true light that enlightens all men”, then our duty is to search and to discover the presence of the Word in these religions.

If Christianity will be successfully grafted on this tree of wisdom, we will reach down to the roots of humanity. I am firmly convinced that in India is the heart of the missionary problem.

Passing from history to the modern time, we must agree that the future is in the Third World, in that part of humanity which is made up of youth and is in a moment of renaissance. Europe and USA can always be a leading elite ( if they will be able to renew themselves and understand the present moment), but in Asia There are two billions of human beings who are fast growing and multiplying.

India and China account for one third of humanity. At this moment for China nothing we can do but we can influence the development of India. Let us remember that India with 450 millions (1968) of citizens represent the largest democracy in the world. The stability and development if this democracy will show the way for other nations of the Third World.

I am of the idea that development is the main and the most urgent problem of our time. Either we are able to give a chance to every human being to live as human being or all our civilization will be a failure. India is par excellence the nation in development. If India will succeed all the world can make it. If the Christian message will be the leaven of India’s development, it will be an example for al the world.

Since many years I am concerned with problems of development and this had contributed to address my preference for India. This year particularly, knowing my destination, I had chance and time to address my readings and my dreams towards my mission of tomorrow. I got identified with my mission and I grew in the conviction that India is a key-nation. This year in waiting has been very useful for updating and enlarging my research. I hope that also in the next two years I will have a chance to read and specialize in sociology and development. The work in Mani Tese[1] has increased my interest in the problems of development but left for me very little time for reading. In a world moving so fast it is a must to keep oneself updated. Also if the visa for India will not come and I will not be able to go to study in Pune, I will request my superior to give me the chance to study in some other developing country, may be Brazil, an other key-nation for the future.

I realize that this letter is getting to long. I hope it will be of some utility also to you, at least to make you too eager to read about the evolution of the modern world. At home we had never been book-worms, but I regret it. One lives without realizing in which world we live and why we live. I hope at least you will take advantage now, if you have time. I was forced to do it this year-in-waiting, but I am grateful to the Lord. [….]

Reading this letter today, more than thirty years after I sent it to my sister Enrica, when I was in England to learn English and waiting for the visa of the Indian Government, I can easily notice some expressions a little triumphant, due to the climate of superiority typical of the missionary formation of that time.

Christianity, the religion of the West, “should have something to say” to India.

The missionary should “save what beautiful and good” is in the other religions, as though it is in danger there.

And what about the dream: “If the Christian message will be the leaven of India’s development”? In the sixties, when I was writing, the citizen of India were 450 millions and the Christians 11 millions, now the citizens are 1,000 millions and the Christians 23 millions.

Numerically speaking it is a failure. But the leaven can not be counted when the bread is ready.

[1]Mani Tese: Italian Agency,ONG, for the problems of developmet.

St.Mary Moorfields

LONDON E.C.2