The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : St. Mark’s Cathedral gearing up for bicentennial bash

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Sep 21, 2007
ePaper

Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

St. Mark’s Cathedral gearing up for bicentennial bash

M. Raghuram

A ‘life enablers’ group’ will be set up as part of community service activities

— Photo: G.P. Sampath Kumar

Standing tall: St. Mark’s Cathedral in Bangalore was set up in 1808 as an Anglican church mainly for garrison.

BANGALORE: The historic St. Mark’s Cathedral will soon turn 200. Its bicentennial celebrations, which will begin towards the end of September, will see a series of community service activities.

The structure did not start out looking like its present form. It went through a series of modifications due to some aberrations in the building design and this delayed its commissioning by a few years.

When the dust settled, the cathedral emerged with its striking Victorian architecture.

Started as an Anglican church in 1808 mainly for garrison, it is now a cathedral. Vincent Rajkumar, the Presbyter of the cathedral, told The Hindu that the cathedral, which started out as an Anglican church, had become part of the Church of South India in 1947 and in 1961 it became the Mother Church of Karnataka Central Diocese.

Rev. Vincent Rajkumar said that the St. Mark’s Cathedral had pioneered a labour movement under the Industrial Rural Mission which also adopted several slums in the city for social development.

The first slums to be taken up were at Tilak Nagar and Ragigudda seven years ago. As part of the bi-centennial celebrations, the cathedral committee has decided to take up some more slums at Bagalur, near Lingarajpuram, and also slums on Lazer Road.

The cathedral will also constitute a “life enablers’ group” as part of the celebrations. This group will comprise 20 young men and women who will study marginalised communities and come up with solutions for their economic and social empowerment. The committee will send these youngsters to areas including Jaffna in Sri Lanka, Jharkhand and Hardwar to begin with.

Community college

The other programmes to be held in connection with the bicentennial celebrations will include setting up a community college with a tailoring institute at Byappanahalli slum , a resource mobilisation centre in the city and a senior citizen home with day care facility.

A happy note

St. Mark’s Cathedral has become quite a draw among the city’s musicians too, thanks to its fabled pipe organ. Installed in 1920, the magnificent instrument was in a state of disrepair for several decades. The cathedral started using it again after a team of Swedish experts repaired it at a cost of Rs. 50 lakh. This has inspired St. George’s Cathedral and St. Andrew’s Church in Chennai to repair their pipe organs too.

In the run-up to the bicentennial celebrations, the Church Committee has appealed to the Government to give the cathedral the status of a national heritage site.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Karnataka