Catholic Church, Badi Dhamini

Vision

To grow as a participatory community of vibrant Christian families, nourishing ourselves on the Word of God and the Sacraments, and proclaiming and propagating gospel values and creation of a just society of Human person living with respect and dignity free from any type of oppression and exploitation.

Mission

To renew the Christian family, to make the parish a fully participatory community, to make the parish a self reliant community and to build up human communities based on Gospel values through various apostolate such as Education, health service, family visit and prayer and social service.

How it all started:

Badi Dhamni is a Village in Thandla Tehsil in Jhabua District of Madhya Pradesh State, India. It belongs to Indore Division. It is located 31 KM towards North from District head quarters Jhabua. 340 KM from State capital Bhopal. Badi Dhamni is surrounded by Meghnagar Tehsil towards South, Petlawad Tehsil towards East, Kushalgarh Tehsil towards North, and Jhabua Tehsil towards South. Jhabua, Dahod, Rajgarh, Banswara are the nearby Cities to Badi Dhamni. Thandla Rd Rail Way Station, Bajrangarh Rail Way Station are the very nearby railway stations to Badi Dhamni. However Ratlam Jn Railway Station is major railway station 68 KM near to Badi Dhamni. Badi Dhamni mission station was the substation of Thandla parish for a long time. In 1896, Fr. Charles OFM Cap the first Bhil Missionary in Jhabua district started Thandla mission and he made contacts with the people of Badi Dhamni. Later on Fr. Francis Assose was visiting this place. He used to come to Badi Dhamni once in a month to say Sunday Mass to the people. In 1994, Badi Dhamni was declared as a parish and Fr. Kuriakose KK was appointed as the first parish priest of St. Joseph’s Church, Badi Dhamni. The Congregation of the Missionary Sisters Servants of the Holy Spirit joined the parish in 1996.

St. Joseph’s School is a rural school of Jhabua Diocese in Madhya Pradesh, India.  It is situated 40 km. from Diocesan headquarters Jhabua.  It is an interior and remote village tribal mission and now this mission is getting new shape with some developmental works through school. The people of this area are aboriginals who are economically very poor, illiterate, ignorant and socially backward. They are mostly labourers and small farmers. Their economy solely depends upon monsoon, which has failed last two years and forces them to migrate to towns and cities to earn their livelihood.  The only way to survive was either to migrate to towns or to incur debt, the repayment of debt would take a lifetime, to serve as bonded labour to the money lender for several years.  Sometimes debt is transferred even to second generation.  They spent 20% of their income to money lenders. It is observed that people spend more money for village feasts, setting fights, drinking etc.  Even today farmers mostly depend on monsoons and traditional techniques for agriculture.  Rainfall determines not only the extent and period of employment but also the physical productivity of agriculture.  The frequent failures of monsoons, untimely rains, the recurrent droughts, increase in population and discriminatory market mechanism adversely affects the livelihood. Unscientific farming practices, over grazing and usage of chemical fertilizers are other factors lead to soil erosion, loss of tree cover and depletion of ground water.  Fifty percentages of the people are living under poverty line.  Most of them do not have the purchasing power to buy the food material because they do not have employment throughout the year.  They are derived of ordinary facilities and infrastructures, which can ensure even clean drinking water, sanitation and electricity.  Patel is the head of the village.  He with his council members takes decisions with regard to festivals, fights or any problems. 

Mostly the people are illiterate, ignorant and far away from the main stream of development.  Parents cannot afford to send their children to school because children are engaged in agricultural work, cattle rearing taking care of their siblings, household work etc.  It is disheartening to see that only 5% of their income is used for the education of their children.  In the villages adult’s literacy rate is only 10.1%.  Literacy rate among children is 40.44% which shows a marked improvement still even today very few manage to pass X^th   STD. Their literacy rate is very low. Hence they need constant guidance and encouragement in all walks of their life. There is deep gap between the people and the church. We are trying to build up the community in faith and love.

Most of the diseases are attributed to the displeasure of gods.  So generally they go the village quacks for treatment.  The main sickness in the village is Malaria. Malnutrition and Tuberculosis are the other important problems. Other common sicknesses are seasonable such as Diarrhoea, Pneumonia, sore eyes etc.  It is surprised to note that they spend very little money for treatment of the sickness.  Because of the superstition they hardly go to hospitals.  People approach the village quacks for treatments.  They also use home remedies and herbs for treatment. Due to lack of awareness, the immunization in the village is very poor, Even though there is Public Health Sub Center, health needs of the people cannot be met by it health services.

Recently, the Society of the Divine Word felt the need of building toilets to the new school for our tribal children. The place is very much rural and remote.  People of the place are very poor, illiterate, and belong to the poor section of the society. We have around 360 children in our hands. They come from different other tribal villages.  They are showing lot of interest in studies and we felt that there is lot of   improvement in them. Yes, we see there are rays of learning new things in them, such as they started reading, and still some of them can understand few lines of English. Our children also started wearing descent cloths and the discipline wise we feel that they are showing good improvement.  Yet, there are many expectations from children as well as parents. The council of the school, the teachers and staff also suggested that we need few toilets for our children. Since, school doesn’t have any facility of it. Most of them go out and do their personal business on the roadside. There is no privacy for them. When our children parents come to drop their children in our school and if they want to visit toilet we don’t have it. Many times we get some guest priests and teachers from different school for school to give talk to our children, but when it comes to toilets we have some difficulties. The village is so poor that there are no toilets at all, but by building toilets in our school we would like to create some sort of awareness and discipline in their life. By building this toilets the girls will have separate toilet session, hence there will be some privacy and order.

At present, Fr. George Bhuriya SVD is in-charge of the school and we have place to build few toilets for our children, which would bring some changes in our school. So, we   ask your helping hand, your kind support and your good heart to contribute your generosity to us. So that our children have a future coloured with joy, happiness, development and success.  Therefore, it is an urgent need to have a few toilets

21/09/2011        A Boys’ Hostel in Badi Dhamni Parish. Fr. Provincial came out with the suggestion to start a Boy’s hostel in Badi Dhamni. It could be done by renovating the present structure closed to the school building which was functioning as a hostel some time ago.

–     While the reason was asked for why the previous hostel was closed down, the members shared that due financial crisis to run the hostel it was closed down. Parents were not paying the fees for their children in the hostel.

–     Some felt that the existing building would not be suitable as it is very dark inside and that there is no natural light coming in. This may violate the norms set by government to run the hostel.

–     Provincial said that the Department of Samarthak could give some help at the initial stage of the hostel beginning.

–     Discussion on the above topic ended with the words of provincial that Fr. George Bhuriya SVD, Parish Priest of Badi Dhamini would look into the matter seriously and will address the above mentioned concerns.

Confreres who worked so far