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Up in Arms
Schisms
surface in the affluent Armenian community over the the functioning of
its core church committee. India Today's Labonita
Ghosh reports.
Two attributes characterised the band of
Armenian traders who
sought refuge in India when their country was attacked by the Ottoman
Turks in the 16th century: affluence and cohesion. While the residual
community's only 200 Armenians are left in the country, 175 of them in
Kolkata has managed to perpetuate its prosperity, there is little that
holds it together.
The schisms that have wracked the community centre on the
six-member Armenian Church Committee (ACC) in Kolkata which
is headed by an influential Iranian-Armenian, Sonia John. The panel controls
much of the Rs 500-crore corpus that is vested with 22 trusts set up by
wealthy Armenians between 1920s and 1960s including Catchick Paul Chater
and J.C. Galstaun. While
the funds are intended to help the community members, the ACC is being
accused of cutting back on monthly allowances to families, terminating
medical benefits and discontinuing school fees, among others. For Paul
Stephen, till recently the caretaker of the Armenian church, harassment
has taken another form. He alleges that the acc wants to throw his family
out of the apartment on the church premises where he has been staying
for over 15 years. Stephen, who lost his job with an icecream firm in
1995, was allowed to move into the house meant for priests in return for
his services as a caretaker. When the Stephens objected to the ouster,
the ACC stopped the children's school fees. Last month, says Stephen,
the ACC forbade them from receiving visitors. When my children had malaria,
they didn't allow a doctor, he says. When his wife suffered a heart attack,
taking her to a hospital posed a problem because the phone lines were
cut off. Last week, the acc decided to move the family to an old-age home
run by the church. The Stephens have now taken the matter to a civil court
in Kolkata, and have also approached the state human rights commission.
Discontent is also brewing over the rules that govern the election of
ACC members: only those members can elect or be elected who have been
baptised by the Holy Church of Nazreth and don't accept charity from the
church. Says Maxwell Galstaun, whose mother is an Indian: -With so few
of us left, it is hard to find a person whose both parents are Armenian.
He is now seeking reforms to allow anyone of Armenian descent—baptised
or otherwise—to vote. The church will never accept anyone who has
not been anointed, retorts John. People like Galstaun are just troublemakers.
Despite the harassment, people are tenaciously seeking reforms. Among
them
is Richard Aviet whose daughters were refused admission in the
Armenian College on the grounds that they are half-breeds. According to
a member, the ACC, which also administers the college as John heads them
both, is inviting children from Armenia for free education, while it turns
away natives. They want to bring in Armenians so they can coopt them in
the committee and secure their own positions, says the disgruntled insider,
adding, We don't even know where the money is going.
While the lion's share of Rs 500 crore came from Chater, the
millionaire known as Hong Kong's builder, another Rs 50 crore comes from
other trusts and in the form of considerable property the church owns
in Kolkata. Yet, most beneficiaries get a measly Rs 6,000 a month if they
are living in any of the church-owned homes. If we give more, they will
blow it up on drugs and alcohol, says an acc member. That doesn't stop
the church from piling largess on non-Armenian institutions. Last year,
Devi Shetty's Rabindranath Tagore Institute for Cardiac Sciences in Kolkata
received Rs 3 crore; a cancer hospital in Dum Dum was allegedly donated
Rs 2.5 crore at the behest of a CPI(M) leader. This is John's way of buying
acceptability, says an Armenian. But doesn't she know that charity begins
at home?
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