Mother Teresa: the Final Verdict.

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Mother Teresa: The Final Verdict

Aroup Chatterjee

Meteor Books

170/43 Lake Gardens, Kolkata 700 045, India

ISBN 8188248002 9.90 UK pounds from Amazon.co.uk, 427 pp., ppb.

I fear to call myself a rationalist, for the reason that, by adding the "ist," I label myself, and then paint myself into a corner. Thus I have often found that even rationalists are sometimes as dogmatic as theists. So I would like to define myself as a man who tries to be as rational as possible in all thoughts and actions.

I have found many rationalists and atheists rave against Mother Theresa. Mother Teresa: The Final Verdict, by Aroup Chatterjee, is one such. While Chatterjee argues that Mother Theresa did not do as much charity as she claims, Sanal Edamaruku of the Indian Rationalist writes that by her work she projected Calcutta and India as a land of beggars and thereby did India incalculable harm. So either way Mother Theresa is condemned to be burnt at the Rationalist stake. As for Chatterjee's comment that no one in Calcutta knew or cared about MT's death, I can assert that it was almost a day of mourning here in India. We felt the tremors even here in Kerala, over 1500km down south-west of Calcutta.

Here we have to distinguish between MT the Catholic and MT the human being. I wonder if Chatterjee or any rationalist would have been as illogically acerbic about MT if she had been an ordinary woman without religious affiliations. What is wrong with anyone promoting himself/herself if the outcome is beneficial? Jesus said not to let the left hand know what the right hand does when it comes to acts of charity. To me, it is better to do charity for the entire world to see than do no charity at all. It is downright malice and cynicism to do no charity at all and to disparage others who are engaged in charitable work, whatever their motives.

Missionaries followed the colonist armies everywhere, and they came to India too. It is not for us to judge them. For every MT or Father Damien, the church has created thousands of inquisitors, conquistadores and slave traders. All organized religions are evil political entities and Catholicism leads the pack of these diabolic forces. But the work done by missionaries in India and the third world cannot be vilified simply because the missionaries are Christians or Catholics. Christianity and Catholicism are indeed pure evil. That does not mean that all believing Christians, including priests and nuns, are incarnations of Satan. Rationalists are irrational when they do not distinguish between Christians and Christianity, Islam and Muslims, Hinduism and Hindus. Christians, Hindus, Muslims and all other believers are people who have been misled by their own parents and society, and it is for us to teach them to throw off the yoke of superstition and misbelief.

Coming to the work of missionaries in India: Even after fifty-six years of independence, most of the schools, colleges and hospitals in India are run by Christian institutions. When it comes to the quality of these services, they have no peers. There are many government-run schools here in Kerala, India, where I come from. But because of the abominable standards of these institutions, many of them have been forced to close down for lack of students, though it is free. The state run hospitals too have a shameful story to tell--a story of inefficiency and corruption. Any Indian worth his salt, including Mr. Chatterjee, is sure to have studied in a Christian institution or made use of the excellent health services provided by the Christian institutions, at one time or another in his lifetime.

In our land of arranged marriages, matrimonial advertisements are the best means of finding a mate. Most ads by girls used to describe themselves as "convent educated," irrespective of what their religion was. Hindus, Muslims and others used to advertise their daughters as "convent educated," and then some of them turn around and talk bullshit.

When it comes to charitable institutions, there are none to beat the Christians or come anywhere near them. Over 95% of the orphanages and institutions for the old and mentally impaired are run well by Christian institutions. Kerala is the most advanced state in India when it comes to literacy and social services. I have seen a few government-owned orphanages. But many of them have been entrusted to priests and nuns to run. I am yet to see an orphanage or charitable institution run by Hindus, although there are a few run by cults led by god-men and god-women and charlatans. There are Muslim institutions running a few orphanages, called Yathim Khanas. But these take in only Muslim orphans, whereas Christian-run institutions do not make any discrimination when it comes to the needy.

Christians have, or rather used to have, large cash inflows from the West that enabled them to take up such charitable works, whereas Hindus and Muslims did not have such resources or the Western O & M facilities that the Christians have and had. It may also be true that some of these resources have been channeled into nefarious activities such as conversion. But conversion or no conversion, India would have been much worse off but for the great inputs by missionaries, and that goes for Chatterjee, Calcutta, and most of the Third World.

Now reverting to MT and her works: I am twice married, and have two sons by my first marriage. (I split up with my first wife, as we did not get along.) My second wife has some problems that prevent her from conceiving. It is a matter of concern here in India for the married not to have children, and we felt bad about it too. So we decided to adopt an infant. All of the orphanages here are Christian-run, and the one we went to was run by MT's Daughters of Charity. We found some sisters washing the floor, with their saris hitched up and another was rocking a baby and feeding it from a feeding bottle. There was no scope there at all in that institution for the ostentatious luxury Chattejee talks about.