About Us

The Department of Inter-Religious Studies (DIRS) at St. Xavier's College, Mumbai was started about two decades ago to respond to the growing need for communal harmony and inter-religious sensitivity.  

Head of Department: Fr. Prashant Olalekar, S.J.
HOD’s MESSAGE: EXPLORING NEW FRONTIERS

At a time of increasing intolerance of the “Other” from the local to the global and even beyond, we believe that one of the best ways to respond is by getting people of all faiths together to work for a common cause that transcends boundaries of religion, nation, gender etc. Hence, like last year, we have continued to explore new frontiers of collaboration and networking.

We collaborated with the Marathi Vangmay Mandal (MVM) and United Religions Initiative (URI) for the Triple C programme on 16 Sept. The Medical camp was held on 20 Sept in collaboration with the Xavier Institute of Social Research (XISR). For the Digital Climate Change  Morcha on 29th Nov. we networked with Fatsmeagol and are grateful for some help from the SSL, IMG, and AICUF.
  
We set a new tradition by organising a creative Interfaith Prayer Service for the whole college on 3 Dec., the feast of St. Francis Xavier.
Like last year there was an Honours course "Awaken to Cosmic Compassion" for a select group of students from the FYBA SPC Environment class.
For Christmas we prepared a novel “Cosmic Crib” shifting the narrow focus from the Jesus of history who was born about 2000 years ago to the Cosmic Christ of the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago.
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These creative ventures have been launched for the first time thanks to the formation of several Students committees with Susanne Rodrigues as Coordinator. These committees with the help of volunteers have brought a breath of fresh air to the department and the college too.                 

We hope to foster a sense of our interconnection and interdependence by collaborating with people of all faiths, as well as those who do not publicly profess any faith, in all such new initiatives.

- Prashant Olalekar, S.J.

Vision DIRS
The DIRS is an attempt to establish an interfaith forum that facilitates the co-creation of cosmic compassion.

Mission DIRS
What We Do
We collaborate with other like-minded groups in St. Xavier’s college and beyond to foster an integrated approach to spiritual transformation, social justice and ecological sustainability.