A Harvad man under Mother’s spell, turns the table in India’s North East

Kerala born Vattathara Mathew Thomas became a Salesian in Guwahati, Assam to do Masters in education at Harvard and  return to India to fulfil his dream of building a centre that would help the North East of India take on the challenges of the new millennium.  

The most spectacular was the Don Bosco Institute on a hilltop  facing the mighty River Brahmaputra,  a forerunner of a host of institutions including a university, an engineering college, a management institute and numerous schools and colleges. For the uninitiated like me, the Barefoot College he set up at Boko, Kamrup district of Assam was special.  

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh laid the foundation stone for the Institute in 2004. ‘I started with a 100 sq.ft space and a bank deposit of Rs 10,000. It grew into a multi complex of 1,50,000 sq.ft that serves the need of tens of thousands of aspiring youngsters,’ Thomas told me in a chat during one of his home-comings to Kochi recently.

Thomas, 74, was born in Kongorpilly, Koonammmavu in the suburb of Kochi metro, joined the Salesians at the early age of 12. It is more than six decades since he arrived in his adopted home.  

Starting as a teacher, he rose to become a Principal and ultimately  the Chancellor of the Don Bosco University and the numero uno of all the Institutions under the Salesian Province of Guwahati.  T.K.A Nair, Prime Minister’s Advisor, was the chief guest at the first convocation of the Don Bosco University in in 2012.  

‘I could have continued in Harvard as a trainer as I had become a certified trainer in HRD of the American Society of Training and Development but I chose to return to my fold in Guwahati,’ he said. He emerged as a visiting professor of India’s prestigious Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussorie that produces India’s top administrators, diplomats and police personal.

‘In Cambridge, Massachusetts, I spent three most fruitful years (1991-93).  I was with the HGSE-Harvard Graduate School of Education- to do post graduate studies in Administration, Planning and Social Policy. We could cross- register and attend programmes in other schools as well. Thus I attended curses in the Harvard Kennedy School also. The John F Kennedy School of Government focuses on public policy and governance.

‘I was in Harvard when the great English scholar Dr. Neil Rudentstine became its President to last for ten years. Born to Harry Rudenstine, a Ukranian Jew who emigrated from Kyiv, and Mae, a Roman Catholic daughter of immigrants from Italy, he was raised as Catholic. He emerged as the greatest fundraiser of Harvard, collecting $ 2.6 billion and endowments rose to a total of $ 15 billion. 

‘I had interacted with him on the topic of East and West and he was pleased. our picture was published in the Harvard journal ‘Crimson’ in 1993.  Now on hindsight, I feel he was the forerunner of great pantheon Harvard leaders who resisted any draconian incursion into the independence of Harvard that is happening now.  Glad that they are resisting and fighting.’

Prof. Thomas also served as the President of the Conference of Religious India (CRI). The institutions he pioneered include Don Bosco Social Institute, Tezpur, Don Bosco Colleges in  Diphu and Bongaigaon, Don Bosco School and associated institutions, Amguri and Vocational Training Institutes in rural Assam and Meghalaya. His mission extended to adopting 3000 street children in Guwahati under a dedicated scheme. Currently he is Director Planning and Development, Don Bosco Tech, India, Director of Salesian Consultancy Services, Delhi and President of Functional Vocational Training and Research Society, Bangalore.  

Saint Mother Teresa was the greatest mentor and influencer for Prof. Thomas during 1977-1997. Whenever she visited  the North East, he received her from the airport and drove her to her mission centre. This continued till her very last visit on 31st July 1996. He helped her Missionaries of Charity establish their homes in Guwahati. He also attended her canonisation in Vatican on 4 September 2016 by Pope Francis and participated in the luncheon hosted by the visiting Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj in Rome.

Most memorable are the fifty days he spent at Shanti Dhan at Lankeswar, Guwahati, a home for the AIDS patients and destitutes set up by the Missionaries of Charity in 1996. It rose on a 10 acre piece of land provided free of cost by the government. Rs One crore was also donated to build up the home. He organised the planting of 200 fruit trees in the new compound.

‘Under the persistent persuasion of Sister Gale, Superior of the Lankeswar community, I manged to organise the silver jubilee jamboree of Shanti Dhan in 2021. We also created a Mothers Orchard in in its compound by planting 100 more fruit trees and a commemorative sandalwood tree around a statue of the Mother.  

He believes in miracles. Miracle saved him from a surgical procedure to remove a 13 mm calculus in the left ureter on the eve of a 30-hour flight to Sao Paulo, Brazil on 14, 2007. He is cock sure that the disappearance of the calculus was  through the miraculous intervention of Mother after he prayed at her ashram in Guwahati.  

Prof. Thomas has friends and well-wishers around the globe. Archbishop Thomas Menamparambil, the great peacenik who wrote the Foreword for his book ‘Creative Fidelity in Mission’ is one of the foremost. Bunker Roy who established the Barefoot College in Rajastan and named among the 100 social leaders in Asia by the Time magazine in 2020 is another. Padmabhushan TK Ommen, social scientist of JNU, comes next.  Among those senior administrators are Dr. V. Venu and his wife Sharada Muraleedharan who recently retired as Chief Secretary in Kerala. They attended senior officers’ 5-day retreat at DBI to return for another.  

Kerala cadre IPS officer Ranjith Sekhar Mooshahary and his wife Dr. Rema Menon are revered visitors to Thomas’ abode. Mooshahary who rose to become Director General of NSG-National Security Force and BSF-Border Security Force and finally the Governor of Meghalaya. Prof. Thomas told me Mooshahary, a Bodo tribal from Kokrajhar, started as a clerk of a government press in Shimla earning 80 a month half of which he sent to his poor parents.

I told Prof. Thomas that they were my long-lost friends. Mooshahary as a junior IPS officer in Kottayam fell in love with Dr. Rema Menon and married her in spite of initial resistance from her parents. I received a warm welcome from both when I visited the Rajbhavan in Shillong in 2009.

Notwithstanding his thick schedules, Father Thomas is busy writing his autobiography. He graciously sent me a digital copy of Chapter 5 describing exclusively how the influence of Mother Teresa shaped his life. The chapter ‘River of Compassion’ has this beautiful passage, I quote:

‘Many have paid tributes to Mother Teresa’s greatness. Few are as touching as the following poem by Amarjyoti Choudhury, an Oxford scholar and former Vice-Chancellor of Guwahati University who excelled in oratory and poetry as much as in nanotechnological research.

‘Come running in my vein!

O mother,
I pray - come running in my vein
All around, there is hunger, there is pain!
Bless, bless the world once again
Let your kindness rain.’