INDIAN BISHOP VISITING CITY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18578, 28 September 1928, Page 6

INDIAN BISHOP VISITING CITY.

FEELS DOMINION COLD AFTER HIS NATIVE LAND

Roman Catholic Bishop of Kottayam, Travancore, British India, the Rt Rev Alexander Chulaparambil is a very picturesque and interesting figure. With his secretary, the Rev Thomas Tharayil, D.D., D.Ph., Bishop Chulaparambil is spending a few weeks in New Zealand on his way home from attending the Eucharistic Congress, and is at present in Christchurch.

The congress had been a great success, he said. Nearly every race in the world had been represented and the various ceremonies had been amazing spectacles. The arrangements had been perfect and the Australian people most hospitable. They had not been long in New Zealand, but while they had been here they had experienced great kindness from all with whom they came in touch.

Father Tharayil was greatly impressed with Wellington harbour, which they had first seen by night. “It was no less charming than Sydney Harbour,” he said. “With the town built on the hillside it was a wonderful sight. From the town the view was also really beautiful.”

After temperatures of 120 degrees and more in India they had felt rather cold in Australia, where the hot weather had not yet set in. In New Zealand they felt the cold even more. “In India, you see,” smiled Father Tharayil, “we have no winter; it is just less hot or more hot.”

“I do not wish to say anything about politics,” said the Bishop, when asked his opinion of the Simon Commission and other matters relating to India.

“Most of the States have their own native rulers and native parliaments, and enjoy a great measure of home rule. Indian politics are very complicated, and the difference in dialects and customs of the various States, and the caste laws, makes them even more complicated.”

As far as religion was concerned, they were making slow but steady progress. The population of India was oyer 350,000,000, and only 3,000,000 Indians were Catholics. Kottayam, a district of 35,000 people, had only native priests, who were forty-eight in number. There were in all six native bishops in India.

Industrially, India was not progressing very fast. Outside of Bombay, Calcutta, Madras and the other big cities the country was not industrialised. Agriculture was still the principal occupation of the people. The standard of living was very low. In the cities the factory workers were paid only eightpence a day. They did not need more, and lived quite as comfortably as thfe average European. Rice and urry were the staple foods, and the heat of the country made much clothing unnecessary and undesirable. The passing of the Southern Cross overhead brought up the subject of aviation. In India, Father Tharayil stated, they rarely saw aeroplanes, and certainly none so big as the Southern Cross. In Italy, however, where Father Tharayil just recently. had spent five years, aviation was a commonplace. They even celebrated feast days in the air. Processions were now always accompanied by squadrons of aeroplanes. Bishop Chulaparambil and Father Tharayil leave on Saturday for the north, en route for England and India. “That will be the end of my travelling,” said Father Tharayil, who is theological master at the Sacred Heart Mount Serrfinary, Kottayam Po. “I will then have to start my real work.”