Naraikadu Collections

Naraikadu (or Grey Forest) was so named by the founder of TDF, Amy Carmichael (1867-1951). The retreat has a few cottages built using local materials with no modern infrastructure or amenities such as road access, electricity, indoor plumbing or furniture, and tropical rainforest at the doorstep. TDF refers to each cottage as a house, such as Forest House, Jungle House and so on. Since inception TDF’s staff, volunteers, teachers, caregivers, administrators, students, children (henceforth TDF family as they are referred by the institution) has maintained log books in these houses. These log books contain notes on daily life, prayer, forest expeditions and nature observations. Additionally, various members of the TDF family continue to regularly observe and record nature (flora and fauna) and weather at this retreat in the logbooks, their personal journals, diaries, along with sketches and songs. The textual and visual material however were created not just by today’s members but also by those in the colonial period including Amy Carmichael, Godfrey Webb-Peploe and others, who were among the first naturalists to record the region’s flora and fauna.

The Dohnavur Fellowship (TDF) is a non-denominational Christian charity not affiliated with any institutional Christian administrative and/or theological bodies. It was founded in 1901 by Amy Carmichael (1867-1951), an Irish woman missionary who lived and worked in India for most of her life. The charity runs a clinic, hospital, kindergarten, residential and day school, vocational training center, home for senior citizens, and a home for children and young women at their institutional campus in Dohnavur, Tirunelveli district, Tamil Nadu, near the foothills of the Western Ghats. Carmichael was explicit that members of the TDF family should not exclusively be preachers or theologicians. Each of them had to be skilled in at least one branch of knowledge or trade, whether doctors, engineers, naturalists and additionally they should be skilled educators capable of transferring their knowledge to children of diverse age groups successfully.