Two great servants of God entering glory in India - Rev.Ian Weatherall and Rev. Amose Rajamoney
Glory of His Cross Prophetic Ministries
Late Rev. Father Ian Weatherall
Late Fr. Ian Weatherall of the Brotherhood had dedicated the last 62 years of his life to God's ministry and who had celebrated his 90th birthday in 2012, despite his physical weakness, entered glory on 30th April 2013. He was the Presbyter of the English congregation. Though he was suffering from cancer, he was regular in ministering to the congregations on Sundays.
The work of the Delhi Brotherhood still goes on amongst other things, the night shelter they run for destitute boys. It's right to say that the Brotherhood is a wonderful cohesive mix of Anglican spirituality and Indian culture. Today they do things like combating female foeticide; or running a slum newspaper; or a night shelter – whose lads actually run the monastery kitchen – or AIDS programmes, or an old people’s home.
These brothers including Late Father Weatherall were originally all Cambridge dons and priests, the elite of the British church, who went out to India to teach and study Indian religion, and help generate more understanding and fellow feeling.
They were not what are often dismissed as missionary do-gooders, but men of letters committed to finding common cause with a people whose thought they profoundly admired. The good works which were not part of the original plan followed.
The last remaining British brother, Late Father Ian Weatherall, founded a leper colony in the 1950s when local lepers asked him to conduct a funeral for one of their members.
Late Fr. Ian Weatherall is described as the last link to the British Raj and following is the tribute paid by Dean Nelson, New Delhi:
"Fr Weatherall, who grew up in British India and served as an officer in the Punjab Infantry regiment in the Second World War, was described as one of the last links between the British Raj and the new independentIndia.
He knew India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and the members of his first cabinet, and witnessed many of the key events in the creation of modern India.
Britain's military advisor in India, Brigadier Brian McCall, and Sir Mark Tully, the veteran author and broadcaster, led tributes to him and described him as a "citizen of two cultures" who dedicated his life to India but remained passionately British to the end.
Fr Weatherall spent his early years in Calcutta, where his father was a British Army officer, and Scotland before returning to serve as a jungle warfare specialist on the North East Frontier, training troops to fight the Japanese in Burma. At the end of the war, he spent a few nights at a monastic seminary in Delhi on his way home to demobilisation in Britain, and was so moved he decided he would become a priest.
He studied theology in Britain and returned to India in the late 1940s to Delhi to serve as an Anglican priest. He became a prominent member of the Cambridge Brotherhood order in Delhi and the founder of its social work with leprosy victims and the poor and elderly in East Delhi. He served as a director of Delhi's St Stephen's Hospital, and vice-chairman of St Stephen's College, the most prestigious of the Delhi University colleges".
Late Fr. Rev. Amose Rajamoney
The life and work of Late Rev Father Amos Rajamoney has been mainly in and around Delhi, where he is well-known for his effective development work among the people affected by leprosy and those living in the socio-economically deprived areas in east Delhi. Originally from Tamil Nadu and brought up in Chennai and Singapore, Amos joined the Delhi Brotherhood in 1967. He was ordained in the Madras Diocese of the Church of South India (CSI) by Bishop Leslie Newbigin. Almost at once, he was given the task of pastoral care of the Tamil congregation in the Delhi Cathedral Church of the Redemption, as also responsibility for the rehabilitation work and pastoral care of the leprosy patients. The deep influence of the gospel on him since his days at Bishop's College, Kolkata, had a lasting effect on his ministry. This especially came to fore at the Anandgram Leprosy Colony when the inmates under his inspiration revolted against the exploitative methods of the agency that was distributing rations, and gained their sense of dignity by setting up their own fund-raising schemes. At the Cathedral, he initiated support for the education of the children of leprosy patients by forming the Leprosy Patient's Children Education Fund, and in 1977, opened Deenabandhu Primary School nearby to educate these children under the aegis of the Delhi Brotherhood Society, of which he became a founding member.
In 1977, he decided to share his life with the people of the deprived community and shifted from the Brotherhood House to live among them in Seemapuri. Here he found two local Christian men, A. George and Yesupatham, who offered him strong and faithful support. From here, with the participation of the people, he initiated community development programmes on a large scale, including outreach to the neglected elderly, children on the streets, and women in distress. Out of his experience of living with the people, he developed three principles for his work: first, that he did not have a solution to people's problems but was there to participate in their struggle for social development, and the agenda for development could only be set by the people themselves and not by some outside body; second, that the most effective worker and leaders must be identified from among the people themselves who know the local situation from within, that is, members of the local community rather than outsiders; and third, that the culture, religion, and customs of the people must be respected. Therefore, there should be no ulterior motives to ‘convert’ people from one religion to another, but to serve them for the sake of Christ alone.
In the year 2000, he established his own organization and named it Ashadeep Foundation (‘Ashadeep’ means the light of hope). Since 2000 he has been deeply involved in setting up a model of a rural development ministry primarily in Hastinapur and Ghaziabad villages. The work is in its initial stages and has to be carried on by the Delhi Brotherhood Society. His failing health at one point had affected his legs from which he had recovered to a large extent but not completely, but at the end his heart condition gave rise to other complications which he could not overcome. He will continue to be a source of inspiration to the communities where he worked.