Preserving the Soul, Soil, and Story of Vasai

The Colonia Cousins

Vasai, historically known as Bassein, Baçaim, or Bajipur is a historic coastal city located in the Palghar district of Maharashtra, India, approximately 50 kilometers north of downtown Mumbai. Situated along the north bank of the Vasai Creek and the Arabian Sea coast, it forms a major part of the broader Vasai-Virar municipal region. The Diocese of Vasai is one of the youngest dioceses in India, but it sits on some of the oldest Christian ground in the country. Church tradition holds that the apostle Bartholomew preached in the neighbourhood of Kalyan, that the Christian community of Kalyan was already known at the time of the Council of Nicaea in 325, and that by the sixth century Kalyan had a bishop sent from Persia. A church dedicated to St Thomas is said to have stood at Sopara, a few kilometres from present-day Vasai, in the same early period. Whatever weight one gives to these traditions, they place the coast between Vasai and Kalyan among the first places in western India where the faith took root. The diocese itself was created on 22 May 1998 out of the Archdiocese of Bombay, and it remains part of Bombay’s province. Its ground is the whole of Palghar district together with the Bhiwandi and Shahapur talukas of Thane: from Naigaon on the Vasai Creek north to Talasari on the Gujarat border. South of the creek lies Bombay — Mumbai, Thane and Raigad — and beyond it the Diocese of Sindhudurg, seated at Sawantwadi, and then Goa. To the east is Nashik; across the border to the north is Baroda, with Daman under Goa. Within the diocese, the south is the old East Indian parishes of Vasai, founded in Portuguese times; the north, through Dahanu and Talasari, is mission country among the Warli. Go Waris begins in the parishes of Vasai and works north.