Consecration of Sunhil Mankhin as the new Bishop of Kushtia - Dr Martin Heath is Vice-Chair of the Friends of the Church in India (FCI), and he and his wife attended the consecration service while on holiday. The report that follows is printed with the kind permission from Pilgrim, Issue 36, the journal of the Friends of the Church in India.
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While our fellowship in the FCI is principally with the churches of India, many of us having particular bonds with the Church of South India (CSI) and the Church of North India (CNI), we should not neglect the neighbouring churches in the region. The Church of Bangladesh (CoB), for example, owes its formation to the same ecumenical impulse that led to the creation on 1970 of the CNI, and of the Church of Pakistan in which the church in Bangladesh had a brief life as the diocese of Dhaka. Within a few years however, following the war of independence, it became the autonomous CoB and was still comprising a single diocese until the later creation of the diocese of Kushtia.
The legacy of Bangladesh's turbulent history makes for a continuing volatile politicallife (although happily now more stable following a return to civilian rule) which, compounded by the volatility of nature in recurring floods and cyclones, tends to reinforce a somewhat negative image of Bangladesh as an archetype dependency, instability and natural disaster. But that would fail to recognise many virtues and positives, for example, the beauty in the faces and lives of people and the lovely countryside. Nor would it take into account the resilience and the industry of people for whom hardship is normal and whose capacity to handle and even transcend it is truly inspirational.
Bangladesh is the second largest Islamic nation, having a population of around 160 million in a land the size of Wales and Scotland. Within this, Christians represent less than two per cent, of whom some 25,000 belong to the CoB. While there are occasional inter-religious tensions, relationships are generally good, certainly much better than in Pakistan, and the CoB, in its extensive social development programmes, not only engages at local level with its Muslim neighbours but also employs Muslims as project facilitators and managers.
Such, very briefly and over-simply, is the context in which the CoB has its life of worship, ministry and mission, and where, in November, my wife and l were on a holiday that happily coincided with the consecration of Sunil Mankhin as the new Bishop of Kushtia.
What makes this consecration extra special is that Sunil Mankhin is a member of the Garo community who, like the Santal, migrated long ago from the north and who are thus ethnically and culturally different from the majority of Bengali/Bangladeshi population. They are, for example, a matriarchal society with inheritance passing through the female line. In common with many minorities though, the Garo experience discrimination and have a low status, becoming progressively dispossessed of their ancestral lands. Many of the Garo are Christian and for the CoB to have elected a member of their community to be the new Bishop is a most wonderful affirmation. As we arrived at Haluaghat the day before the consecration, we were met by a group of men each with what looked like a white arrow-head marking on the foreheads. The same sign was made on our foreheads by means of a twig dipped in a white paste, this enrolling us as honorary Garo, after which we proceeded between two lines of children dressed in red and white feathers in their hair, for a reception at St Andrew's Church.
The service itself, which lasted over three hours, took place the next day within a celebration of the Eucharist, in a vast shamiana which was still not nearly large enough for the more than 5,000 who had travelled from all over the country, and beyond. But now my descriptive capacities fail and l have to draw instead on a rich kaleidoscope of impressions, of the colours in the long entry procession, of mitred and vested Bishops from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and England, of clergy and ministers from churches local and international, of young Garo women in their tradition al red dresses and with feathers in their hair dancing and singing so gracefully, of incense, of drumming, of fervent spirit-filled singing and readings in many languages, of the sheer joy and exuberance of it all. Most of all though, and through it all, a deep sense of the spiritual, and of history in the making.
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