Europe was getting into the throes of World War I in 1914 when two French nuns associated with the Salesian Missionaries of Mary Immaculate (SMMI) made their way to what is today Chamarajpet in south Bangalore on a mission of peace.
Sr. Anastasie and Sr. Felix were “sent on mission for women and poor” to start a convent, a school, and a dispensary. St Mary’s Convent, which they set up, is celebrating its centenary year now, with a public programme scheduled on Friday.
The institutions they set up have thrived over the years, including St. Teresa’s, which began as a school with eight students, today has over 5,000 girls studying from primary school to college.
The choice of location for the convent — not in the Cantonment area where missionary activity was concentrated, but in the old pete area — was unusual. “It was the initiative of a missionary, Fr. Briand, to start the convent here because he felt there was a special need to empower the poor women in this area,” says Sr. Jessy Merlin of the convent.
Sr. Annie George, who has been with the Order since 1967, says that Fr. Briand used his share of the property back in France to buy the land on which the convent and the school stand today.
“The early years were not easy for the two sisters since they did not speak the local language. They learnt Kannada by night and slowly gained acceptance in the community and eventually could even teach the language,” says Sr. Annie George. The French and local nuns lived separately in early years, but this practice was later shunned.
The library in the convent at Chamarajpet does not have many documents dating back to the turn of the 20th century that describe the activity of the area since the archives are at the headquarters in France.
But the nearly 1,500 old photographs put together by Sr. Regina Lilly say much about those times. One of the striking black-and-whites shows French nuns in the company of local students, with the blackboard in the background declaring “bahala upakara” (Kannada translation of the French phrase “merci beaucoup”).