By Fr Tom Mangattuthazhe –
Fr Prasant Palackappillil (56), from the Order of Carmelites of Mary Immaculate, known as CMI fathers of the Syro Malabar Church, has a couple of unique passions. One, he loves to travel all over India on his favourite motorcycle and the other, more importantly, is to make people aware of nature and the need to preserve the environment.
A social worker by training from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, and a Ph. D in Social Work from Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, Kerala, Fr Prasant began his career as an assistant professor in 1998 at Kalamassery Rajagiri College with the Social Science Department. Later, he became the head of the department and continued in the position till 2010. His next stint was at SH College as its principal from 2010 to 2021. Under his leadership, Sacred Heart College, Thevara in Kerala made many achievements at the national level.
Throughout his career as Principal of Sacred Heart College, he has been known to use a bicycle to travel short distances, trying to inculcate a sense of ecological responsibility among his students and the general public. He has also been part of green activities, promoting organic agriculture, gardening and creating concern for the nature in young generation.
Interestingly, the name his parents gave him was John Thomas but never liked that name and hence changed it to Prasant Palakkappillil when he got ordained as a priest.
Fr Prasant has covered over 27 States and 3 Union Territories. During his journey he has met with all like-minded people and has spread the message of peace and a sense of concern for the environment. He also highlights the need for environmental education and green campaigns.
Last month, he touched arrived at Guwahati in Assam in the North-Eastern part of India. I caught up with Fr Prasant and got to know more about his passion and enthusiasm for nature through his travels. Excerpts:
As a passionate biker, please share your travel experience with regard to people and culture across India?
Passionate?? Rather dispassionate! But enthused definitely. I use to bike more out of considerations of efficiency and convenience combined with efforts to limit/reduce carbon footprint.
With regard to people and culture across India, I feel good about being an Indian – free to be around the country. No questions asked! People are happy to meet a stranger – especially when they are ‘not imprisoned by institutional walls’ as they have nothing much to lose. Welcoming, trusting, trustable on the whole.
But culture – it’s agri – culture all through. India is not shining, but is struggling – basically in its villages, in the fields, in the farms, on the roads… farms and roads are very much linked. You are riding the highway – but you are cutting across the vast fields…
You see the thousands in toil, in the struggle for a daily living, to produce, to harvest, to sell, to save their harvest… This struggling India is set aside, sidelined, forgotten, deprived and NOBODY wants his (her) son/daughter to be in the fields – they send them to school so that they would escape from the fields.
You’ve been an educationist, what are your views on the National Digital University proposed in the recent Union Budget with regard to National Education Policy?
For six months I travelled, I was almost cut off from this world and its noises. Hence I didn’t attend to the budget details.
But, as such, it is a natural next step of the digital revolution – it can indeed make the best teaching resources available to the millions. (However, the promises are suspect – since 2014, all financial support to education, especially Higher Education and research has been drastically cut, in spite of the rosy promises in the NEP. So will teachers become redundant? Or will the teaching career in Higher Education have to be recast drastically so that those other vital dimensions thoroughly missing in today’s education in the set ideal of ‘well-rounded formation’ (NEP) are made part of the teachers’ tasks? the social, the psychological, the experiential, the environmental, the spiritual, the reflective aspects?
I feel it is a wake-up call for the teaching community to wake up to reshape and make individual teacher presence meaningful and relevant.
With your travel experience all over the country, what are your views on India’s environmental challenges?
India is beautiful and diverse…. but growing uglier thanks to rapid ‘urbanisation’ and resultant waste culture. It has now grown into consumerism in spite of the rural backwardness and struggle, with goods of all sorts and highly packaged materials being available everywhere. This is a relatively newer but increasingly threatening aspect of Indian culture – waste generation and littering and use & throw culture.
Beautiful landscapes are becoming eyesores, and there are health hazards.
This is still very much controllable by mere local administrative efficiency as demonstrated by Indore Municipal Corporation. But climate action requires larger policy frameworks!
What do you think should India’s position with regard to global climate change?
The development right and ‘you-have-done-your-so-too-we-have-the-right (need)-to pollute’ is suicidal in today’s global context, as any adverse step in mitigating climate change is affecting all. However, the global consensus today cannot be exploitative and another form of colonialism.
India and similar nations have every right to argue for compensation from the erstwhile exploiters to compensate for their exploitation, so as to maintain the globally accepted standards meant to mitigate climate change.
How does the church in India view Climate change? How do you think churches in India should contribute to reducing their carbon footprint?
Holy Father Pope Francis has indeed made a very articulate and fervent appeal. But it has stopped at that, and at the best intellectually stimulating discussions and some re-reading of the scripture. But far away from climate-linked or planet-friendly lifestyle as part of Christian spirituality. Indian Church is a far cry from any such steps.
The strength of the Indian Church is its vast educational-social-pastoral This calls for a new spirituality based on consumption sans consumerism, consumption tinged with sacrifice, consumption of minimum harm to the planet. This is the new evangelisation of the world, of the country, which incidentally comes under the United Nation’s Sustainable Goals.