‘Bishop Bill’ and Satish Kumar join new Cornwall graduates

The Rt. Revd. Bill Ind and former Jain monk and peace campaigner Satish Kumar were awarded honorary degrees for their services to society.

248 Students were awarded degrees in Biology, English, Geology, Geography, Mining Engineering and Renewable Energy.

University of Exeter Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Mark Overton said: “I would like to congratulate all of our new graduates; we are very proud of their success. Graduation is the most important event in the University’s calendar and is a time for celebration. Today we celebrate the achievements of our graduates, but also of all our staff and students who work so hard to make our Cornwall Campus world-class.”

Carleen Kelemen, Director of the Convergence Partnership Office for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, said: “Celebration of success is welcomed at any time but more so in the gloomy veils of uncertainty in the national and global economies. Here in Cornwall we continue to drive forward our investment in knowledge, business opportunities and people. The people we celebrate today show us how everyone, past and present, can reshape our future in doing the best that they can in ‘their present’.”

Bill Ind was born in 1942. He was educated at the Duke of York’s School in Dover, followed by the University of Leeds and the College of the Resurrection in Mirfield.

He was ordained as a deacon in 1966 and a priest one year later. After ten years as Bishop of Grantham, he took on his last role, as the 14th Bishop of Truro, in 1997. Highlights of his time in Cornwall include his radical review of the life of the Diocese of Truro in 2001 entitled People of God; his blessing of the Eden Project when it was still a clay pit and his appearances in the BBC series A seaside Parish, based on life in Boscastle, and An Island Parish which followed him during visits to his most distant and isolated parish on the Isles of Scilly.

When he was only nine years old, Satish Kumar joined the wandering brotherhood of Jain monks. At eighteen, he left the monastic order and became a campaigner for land reform, working to turn Gandhi’s vision of a peaceful world into reality. He undertook an 8,000 mile peace pilgrimage, walking from India to America without any money, through deserts, mountains, storms and snow.

In 1973, he settled in England, taking the Editorship of Resurgence magazine, which he still edits. He founded the Small School in Hartland, a pioneering secondary school, which brings ecological and spiritual values into its curriculum. He is also the Director of Programmes at Schumacher College, a residential international centre for the study of ecological and spiritual values. His autobiography, No Destination, has sold 50,000 copies. In 2008, he presented a 50-minute documentary on the BBC as part of the Natural World series. A highly-acclaimed documentary that mixed eastern philosophy with the western landscape of Dartmoor, the programme was watched by over 3.6 million people.