An unseemly spat

It was both distressing and amusing to see my old college in the national news last week. Under normal circumstances, a dispute involving a principal and the chairman of the governing body is routine stuff, worthy, at best, of some local flutter. Fortunately, St. Stephen's College is not your average 'degree' factory. Of course it produces graduates - some academically brilliant and others who get by cramming someone else's notes. Yet, academic excellence was never its signature tune.

What distinguished St Stephen's was its unspoken commitment to producing enlightened, self-confident 'gentlemen' and, since 1975, 'ladies' - people who glibly talked their way through life without, naturally, trying too hard. St. Stephen's was always about shared assumptions, good-natured but passionate debate, calibrated non-conformism, decency and, of course, good table manners.

Such goals, predictably, do not correspond to prevailing national priorities - the reason why St. Stephen's is justifiably called elitist. It is not that the students are handpicked on the strength of their parents' ability to pay, but that the prevailing ethos, at least for the 'gentlemen in residence', is what Americans would call preppy. With a quaint and archaic code of fraternity, Stephanians were made to feel from day one that they were both distinctive and a cut above the rest. Throughout their adult life most Stephanians I know have been unabashedly partial to fellow Stephanians. Few institutions have been able to generate such a profound bonding spanning across generations.

On the face of it, the turf war between Principal Anil Wilson and Bishop Karam Masih did not involve the self-definition of St. Stephen's. It was all about the principal asserting that he wouldn't oblige every jeweller from Chandni Chowk who came armed with a letter of recommendation from the Bishop. Initially, the Church thought that it would show Wilson his place. However, following the principal's defiance, it gauged that reconciliation was preferable to a damaging public spat. In a well-publicised photo-op in the college, the Principal and the Bishop hugged and made up, much to everyone's relief.

Although the controversy at St Stephen's has ended, it is worth mulling over a point the Bishop made in his reconciliation speech. There are two features of the College, Bishop Masih said, that the principal must uphold: its Christian character and its status as a minority institution.

As someone who has received his entire education in institutions run by Anglicans - nominally attached to the Church of North India but, historically, an extension of the Church of England - I am slightly mystified by the Bishop's intervention. What is 'Christian character'?

In my school, there was nominally a place for religion. At the morning assembly, the principal would lead the congregation in prayer. There would be one robust hymn, the Lord's Prayer and a very truncated service from the Book of Common Prayer. A prefect would read the Lesson, usually a short passage from the New Testament, and we would disperse. On Friday's, the Vicar of St. Paul's Cathedral or a visiting clergyman would deliver a sermon. I can't remember too much of what they said. The religious service was, frankly, inconsequential. For the school authorities what mattered was whether our shoes were polished, our tie was properly knotted and our hair didn't exceed regulation length.

The C of E's Christianity was, like most things English, terribly understated. We sang the hymns lustily. However, there was never any suggestion that our Hindu faith or agnosticism was being threatened. The Anglicanism I encountered was non-intrusive and completely non-offensive. I can't recall any Bible-thumping missionary threatening the non-believer with eternal damnation.

My experiences of Christian institutions in Calcutta, at St. Stephen's and subsequently in England, corresponded to what Jeremy Paxman wrote about the C of E: "The most characteristic English statement about belief is 'Well, I'm not particularly religious'… It sometimes seems the Church of England thinks God is just the ultimate 'good chap'."

Religion is partly about identity and essentially about values. The values we absorbed at St Stephen's were, maybe, Christian. Maybe they were universal. If so, does it make them less Christian? Let's not try and locate the answers in theology and ruin a good institution.

Email: swapan55@gmail.com