Rev. Dr. M. A. Thomas was born in
1913 in a village in Kerala. He
graduated from the Maharajas
College ,
Thiriuvanandapuram. Even as a student, he came under the influence of national
leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Jayaprakash Narain and
identified himself fully with the National Movement. Soon after graduation he entered
public as the secretary of the Inter – Religious Student Fellowship of which
the late Dr. Sarvepalle Radhakrishnan was the All India President. In 1935 he
joined Westcott House, Cambridge ,
England for his
theological Studies. He had extensively traveled throughout the world giving
leadership at numerous Indian and International conferences.
He was radical in his thinking
and had the courage to have his wedding without the usual wedding ring. For the
wedding saree he gave a khadi saree with a black boarder.
In 1950 he was ordained as a
priest of the Mar
Thoma Church .
He was also the President of Amnesty International (Indian Section) and the
Association of Christian Institutes for Social Concern in Asia .
In 1963 he founded in Bangalore the Ecumenical
Christian Centre and developed it into a meeting place of all people of all
religions and political views. The story of the now Internationally known
Ecumenical Christian Centre is the story of the founder’s quest to reconcile
all people as children of one God.
The Vigil India Movement was
founded by him in 1977. It was the emergency of 1975 which galvanized him into
action. The denial of democratic rights caused him much anguish. Day after day
he sat with his students at ECC and sang the lines of Rabindranath Tagore “Where the mind is without fear
And the head is held high…”
“Our concern is the nation and
the people,” he said and after much deliberation founded the Vigil India
Movement.
The objective of the Vigil India
Movement is two fold:
to
strive for a truly democratic, secular, egalitarian and just society in India ;
to
promote human values.
It is not a political party. Its
main concern is the common people and their development. To this end, it co –
operates with all those forces which strive for human rights.
Rev. Dr. M. Thomas is also the
author of many books in English and Malayalam and some of his books are
translated into the German and Welsh language.
Rev. Dr. M. A. Thomas passed away
on June 25, 1993 after an eventful life fully dedicated to fighting social
injustices, promoting human values, and serving his motherland India
with utmost humility, courage and love.