Fr. Ludwig F. Stiller, S.J.
The Man Who Always Keeps Something Moving
Fr. Ludwig Stiller, S.J.
The person is not quite the same as his name would suggest. If you watch him from a distance – we don’t see him outside very often – you may think that everything is “still” and calm around him. Sure, he is calm, quiet, and usually away from the maddening crowd. But, when you get closer to him, you realize that he always has a project going on in his mind, and very often a big one! It could be a new book, it could be a project plan for the development of one of the remote villages in Nepal, it could be a video tape on the history of Nepal, or it could be anything else; all the same, he is always at work.
Fr. Ludwig F. Stiller was born on 24 August, 1928, in Salem, Ohio, U.S.A. He was the sixth among nine children in his family. After his school studies, he entered the Society of Jesus on August 18, 1949. He completed his usual studies of novitiate and juniorate in America, along with getting degrees from Xavier University, Cincinnati, and Loyola University, Chicago. He was assigned to Patna, India, on May 5 1953, but his departure to India was delayed until after philosophy at West Baden College Owing to visa problems. On January 1, 1956, he was informed that he was assigned to Nepal, and he arrived in Nepal in August the same year.
His “Welcome to Nepal experiences” – as he calls them – are quite remarkable. Tribhuvan International Airport had no airport building when he first landed there. Open fields served as the custom offices. Their taxi was pushed rather than driven to St. Xavier’s School, due to bad roads. Lack of beds in the school residence led him to use one of his student’s bed, with his knees touching his chin. The height of all these was the birthday celebration shortly after his arrival. The cake was as hard as a piece of concrete and lasted a week. Moreover, it had a “foot print” on it, which had been quite professionally covered with sugar powder by the cook. Such were his first unforgettable experiences, indeed!
The first few years, he says, were physically very tiring years. Lack of knowledge about the people and their language led to enormous difficulties. He gradually mastered the language of the people and began to collect materials on the history of Nepal, as part of his hobby, typing out a few passages every day. Later on, the same materials served as a foundation stone on which he could build a great castle, making a priceless contribution to the country and her people.
He published a number of books and wrote many articles that are the best valuable source of information on history of Nepal and are being used by universities. Some of his outstanding books are: Prithwinarayan Shah in the Light of Upadesh (1967); The Rise of the House of Gorkha (1973); An Introduction to Hanuman Dhoka (1975); The Silent Cry (1976); Planning for People (1979); Letters from Kathmandu: The Kor Massacre (1981); Nepal: Growth of a Nation (1993). He has also completed a documentary video series on the history of Nepal.
When he arrived at Godavari, he realized that he found something he had been looking for all his life. He had been in Catholic Schools, public schools, a short while in the army and in Jesuit houses of study. What he found totally new was the Godavari family spirit. Life at Godavari in those days was not easy. After a few months of language study mixed with a little prefecting, he soon had a workload that seemed impossible. But every Jesuit on the staff had a workload just as heavy, and no one complained. Life was like that, and everything centered on the boys in school and their study. The hours of prayer called for by the Jesuit rule had to be fitted in during early morning hours or after the boys went to bed.
He says, “No, it was not an easy life, but it was a happy life. The Jesuit family made it so. Who can forget the lightning visits of Fr. Watrin, the gentleness of Fr. Saubolle, the professionalism of Fr. Murphy, and the totally unpredictable Fr. Blanchard? Fathers Scharf and Schock, like myself, were newcomers, new family members.”
In 1959, he went off to complete his theology at St. Mary’s Kurseong. He was ordained on March 19, 1962, in Patna. He completed his tertianship from Hazaribag and returned to Godavari in May, 1964, picked up where he had left off by teaching geography and became Fr. Watrin’s assistant at the Bungalow. He was delighted to find the same familiar family spirit. There were new faces among the Jesuits, and of course most of the boys were new to him. But somehow the spirit he had known in earlier years had survived all the changes in staff and student body. If anything, it had deepened, recharged, we might say, by a series of successes in the Cambridge exams and the growing conviction that our Nepali students measured up.
Fr. Stiller, historian, at work.
His brief stint as a prefect in the Bungalow ended in July of that year when he was appointed minister. He held that post for about two years, and it was a real challenge for him. There were sugar shortages, kerosene shortages, and regular tussles with their suppliers, trying to keep a decent table within the limits of their budget. There were days, and not a few of them, when he didn’t have twenty rupees in the cash box.
Of course, he had a lighter teaching load, but he still taught geography. He also, at Fr. Niesen’s suggestion, began to spend some time each week at Xavier House, trying to be of help to the former students who had made the jump from Godavari to college In Kathmandu.
In May of 1966 Fr. Moran, who had become Rector, asked him to move to Jawalakhel and to take up the study of Nepalese history at Tribhuvan University. He registered as a casual student so that he could spend more time at Xavier House. Initially, juggling both jobs was easy, but as time went on, it became more and more difficult to do justice to Xavier House. Although Fr. Watrin had joined him at the small residence he had in Thamel, there still wasn’t time to do all that had to be done. After he had completed his M.A. in history, he immediately began Ph.D. studies and accepted a post as lecturer in the History Department of T.U. To write his dissertation he needed privacy and quiet, and no one would ever have described Xavier House as either quiet or private. Fr. Gafney came to his rescue by
sending Fr. Dressman to take up the work he had been doing with the G.A.A. in the new, partially completed G.A.A. building. He moved to Jawalakhel once again and finished his dissertation.
By this time Fr. Locke had began his studies in Sanskrit and the religions of Nepal. He noticed that he was so handy at fixing things about the school that his work was often interrupted by calls for help. Fr. Stiller talked to Fr. Gafney about this, and he approved a move that saw Fr. Stiller and Fr. Locke rent a flat in Naxal. And so began the Research Center.
As one thing led to another, Fr. Stiller became interested in development work. He had seen and experienced for himself the plight of the people, the inhuman condition in which the majority of the people of Nepal lived. The poverty in some remote areas was so great that they had hardly anything to eat. They had to fight for their existence every day. Fr. Stiller had a deep conviction that Nepal did not consist of just I handful of city dwellers. The majority of the poor people, out of the villages, were the real Nepal and must be the top priority of any development project. He soon became the strong advocate of the theory of “decentralization.” His Dhading Project had “empowerment of the people” as the primary aim.
He says, “We should not spoonfeed the people. They must learn to use their own strength and resources, and build themselves. My own experience is that whenever people’s hopes and strength are mobilized, things get done.”
He spent eleven years at the University, six in the History Department and five in the Centre For Nepal and Asian Studies. He left T.U. in 1981, worked for a few months with Debendra Rai Pandey at IDS, and then joined a GTZ-funded project that was planned for Dhading District.
He spent a lot of time in Dhading, going there regularly for weeks at a time. He says the the lessons he learned there are not found in any books. He had no assigned work at that time other than to talk to villagers and discuss with them their needs. He had time to ponder over their comments as he walked along, and that was the beginning of the most important change in his life. He cannot describe what it meant to him to realize that he could do something to help them. He could do more for them with the ideas that their team was developing (and of Course GTZ’s money) than the whole district staff could do with all their training arid their skills.
Fr. Stiller and Fr. Tom Gafney at a moment of relaxation.
In 1987, he had to leave the Dhading Project and take up the duties as director of the Jesuit Research Center and superior of the three-man community. He consoled himself by inviting to the Centre several of the most creative development thinkers he knew. And while they pondered and proposed new ways of reaching the villagers of Nepal, he traveled to different parts of Nepal, helping to evaluate projects designed and funded by, other agencies.
He says, “What I learned in all that experience I can summarize in the words of a hard working woman in Solu Khumbu. She was preparing food in a small village hotel. I was sitting in a corner with a glass of tea in my hands. She was quiet, but I interrupted her work to ask what should be done for the women of her village. She was trying to answer this very difficult question when a senior member of the Panchayat came in, sat down, and ordered tea. Although he knew I was there, he could not see me, sitting as I was in a quiet, dark corner. But he took it upon himself to scoff at the woman and to belittle the ability of the village women to do anything. Her answer haunts me to this day. Pleading for understanding, she looked in my direction and said, ‘We can learn, can’t we?’
“I have carried that message in my heart wherever I have gone in Nepal. It was in my mind when I almost fell into the Karnali River, and it was in my mind when I did fall off the trail in Gorkha. And it has has been in my mind in every evaluation, in every workshop, and in every development project in Nepal. It is in my mind when I take the bus to Gorkha. It is in my mind when I climb the hill to Bandipur. And It is in my mind while I meditate in my room at the Research Center. I have no patience with development plans that deal with things and not with people. I’m afraid I no longer appreciate the good things that Kathmandu offers me. I know the answer to the question posed years ago in Solu Khumbu, but I am now too old to do much about it, I console myself somewhat by the memory that I have tried to share this basic knowledge with others who have both the gift to understand and the means and strength to do something about it. But the Nepal that I have come to know and love is the Nepal where simple people ask the same question, not in despair, but in hope and eagerness.”
Sharing his expectations of the younger Jesuits he said, “How much institutionally we grow or how big individuals we might become. we should not forget the villages. We cannot really say whether they
are living or existing, but what is important to us is that they are human beings. We can help them through organizations of ours to make them a little better. We can educate our students and motivate them; we can make them realize that their county is not just Kathmandu Valley. It is much more than that. Today there is ample material on Nepal and her people. So many books have come out, unlike in our time, which provide valuable information about the life in Nepal. You have better facilities to reach our to people than we did in our time. So you must find your own way of reaching them. We need to rediscover the value of each individual, which has gotten lost in the hustle of development. We are many in number, but by putting our ideas together we can contribute something and thus make a difference.”
Fr. Stiller, “a man for his people,” is still busy working out plans and projects for the poor villagers through the Human Resources Research Development Centre. He has spent more that half of his life out in the remote areas of Nepal and is still devoting all his time and energy to make his dream come true, that is the development of the poor people in rural Nepal. He is a model figure for young Jesuits and an irreplaceable character in his own area of operation.
(Text and photos from the 50 Anniversary Book of the Nepal Jesuit Society, 2001.)