Dear friends;
Warm greetings to each one of you .Having been students of Bishop Moore
College you are heirs to a great legacy.Your alma-mater is named after
a great and saintly man .It was Bishop Dr.M.M.John who proposed that this
college be named in the name of Bishop Moore. The Rt.Rev.E.A.L.Moore was
the fourth Bishop in the erstwhile Travancore-Cochin Diocese of the Anglican
Church popularly known as the Church Missionary Society. Seldom you might
have thought while you were here who this man was.Eire Dalton, his biographer
immortalises him with the words 'selfless in the extreme'. Not that he
was just selfless but he was 'selfless in the extreme'.He shepherded in
Kerala during the early decades of the century.In those days he started
a school in Ranny;then a remote area.It was a school with differences.It
offered in a contemporary terminology , a number of job oriented courses.
It successfully combined the learning of the art of letters and the training
in the skill of a profession.In the sense,certain schools'in Canada are
called community schools not in the sense it evokes in Kerala;the school
in Ranny was a community school.It was an institution that genuninely understood
the basic needs of the rural people and effectivity responded to it. Another
bold and amazing initiative of his was in the launching of the floating
dispensaries for the hapless people of low-lying water logged areas of
Kuttnad. It was decades before we heard of 'bare - foot doctors';'Raddle
Fitted doctors' in water drenched paddy fields! Yes it is to this extreme
selflessness,concern for the poor and bold,daring,far-sighted initiatives,
you , as Alumni of Bishop Moore College ,are heirs.It is,no doubt, a matter
of pride. We,who are now associated with the daily functioning of the Bishop
Moore College realise how much commitment is demanded of us to carry on
the ennobling mission and rise to the exacting standards set by that simple
and devout man Bishop Moore.In an attempt to recapture the original purpose
and to envision the future of Bishop Moore College,we organized a consultation
on the mission and Development of the college on 24th August '96 There
was mainly three sessions-the first on re-defining the tasks of the college
, the second on the new academic programmes that the college should launch
and the third on meeting the service and educational needs of the neighbourhood.The
papers were presented by three eminent persons, perhaps the best we can
get at the moment.Prof.Ninan Koshy's presentation was on 'Looking towards
the Future'and Mr.Michael Tharakan's ,on 'College and Community',Prof.R.V.G.Menon's
paper was entitled 'I Have A Dream' It is indeed a dream worth realising.
Dr.Rajasekharan Pillai,the Vice Chancellor asifd of Mahatma Gandhi University
inaugurated and The Rt.Rev.Dr.Sam Mathew, the manager presided over the
consultation .
I must now close this letter.As I say goodbye I would like to call upon
you to be filled with fire to be true to the legacy of that saintly man
Bishop Moore, and to partake unreservedly in the new initiatives of the
college. Hope, you wouldn't miss any oppurtunity to visit your alma-mater
and us.
My best wishes to you .
Yours Sincerely,
Prof.Mammen Varkey