A chapel for St Mary: A French story for Lent

Between 1801 and 1823, Abbe Dubois established a St Mary’s Chapel, the first Catholic church in Bangalore Cantonment, in an area called Blackpully (today’s Shivajinagar).

We’re in the middle of the 40-day season of Lent, when good Catholics choose to give up certain luxuries, including favourite food and drink, until Easter Sunday, the joyous commemoration of Jesus Christ’s Resurrection. Which makes it a good time to remember the very first Catholic church that came up in the city, and the French missionary who set it up, Abbe (Abbot) Jean-Antoine Dubois.

After the pathbreaking voyages of Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama had opened up the western and eastern worlds to Europe, Spain and Portugal received from the Pope the exclusive right to evangelize conquered lands, and went at it full-tilt (File photo)

Cut to 16th century Europe. Soon after the pathbreaking voyages of Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama had opened up the western and eastern worlds to Europe, Spain and Portugal received from the Pope the exclusive right to evangelize conquered lands, and went at it full-tilt (as we know from the Portuguese excesses in Goa). By the middle of the 17th century, however, with other European colonial powers like the Dutch and the English gaining ground, Rome became dissatisfied with the efficacy of the existing missionary programme, and its dependence on royal patronage. In 1657, with the creation of the MEP, or Missions Etrangeres de Paris (Society of Foreign Missions of Paris), the Pope established independent control over evangelization in America and Asia.

In 1792, with Paris in chaos following the French Revolution, an earnest 27-year-old called Jean-Antoine Dubois signed up with the MEP, and was sent straight to Pondicherry to begin his work. In 1800, with Tipu Sultan, the terror of Christian missionaries, having been eliminated a year prior, Dubois moved to Srirangapatna to resurrect and rejuvenate the town’s enfeebled Christian community. By 1801, with the support of the East India Company (EIC), he had built a chapel to St Mary (on Google Maps, look for Ganjam Church) a short distance away from the famous temple to the goddess Nimishamba, and established a primary school to boot.

Meanwhile, the world was agog with news of a brilliant medical breakthrough pioneered in 1796 by English surgeon Edward Jenner. It was called vaccination, and protected people against the dreaded scourge of smallpox. Soon after, largely due to Abbe Dubois’ advocacy, the first smallpox vaccinations had been administered in Mysore, with Krishnaraja Wadiyar III’s queens themselves being first adopters (look online for the 1805 oil painting of the queens by Thomas Hickey, where one of them is pointing to the vaccination site high up on her arm).

Eschewing European manners and customs, Abbe Dubois spoke fluent Tamil and Kannada, dressed in turban and robes, and knocked back mudde-saaru with the best of them, earning from his flock the affectionate moniker of “Dodda Swamy-avaru”. As far as his brief from the MEP was concerned, however, the good Abbe found himself frustrated at every turn. His 1823 book Letters on the state of Christianity in India comes with a telling subtitle – “In which the conversion of the Hindoos is considered impracticable”. This sentiment served as inspiration for Jnanpith Award-winning Kannada writer Masti Venkatesh Iyengar’s short story, A Letter of the Abbe Dubois.

The Abbe’s despair over the Hindus, however, did result in his magnum opus – Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies – a weighty tome that recorded his own detailed observations of 19th century Indian society. The EIC considered it such an important cultural document that Governor-General William Bentinck purchased it for 2000 gold star pagodas. The gushing preface to the updated English edition, published in 1897, was written by German orientalist F. Max Mueller.

In 1823, after 30 years of service in India, Abbe Dubois returned to Paris, where he went on to become Director of the MEP. Somewhere between 1801 and 1823, he also established a St Mary’s Chapel, the first Catholic church in Bangalore Cantonment, in an area called Blackpully (today’s Shivajinagar).

The little thatched chapel no longer exists, but on the same site, as a testament to the life’s work of Dodda Swamy-avaru, stands the magnificent St Mary’s Basilica.

(Roopa Pai is a writer who has carried on a longtime love affair with her hometown Bengaluru)