From: [email protected]
To:
To
Mr. Jayadev Calamur,
DNA
IN DEFENCE OF MOTHER
TERESA
BY JULIO
RIBEIRO
The RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat can be hailed as the
champion of Hindu culture and religion in our country.
Mother Teresa, a Catholic Nun who left her native Albania as a young
girl of eighteen and landed up in Kolkata to teach in a Catholic school,
can
be hailed as a champion of the Christian values of charity, love and
compassion which are the fundamental doctrines of Christianity.
Both Mohan Bhagwat and Mother Teresa are people to be admired for
their respective commitments and devotion to worthy
causes.
So when Mohan Bhagwat proclaims that Mother
Teresa’s prime motive behind her service to the destitute was not unselfish
but motivated by the urge to convert poor Hindus to Christianity we need to
pause and take notice. If his charge is proved Mother’s
purported aim would devalue the virtue of a noble cause.
My own friend and ex-colleague Prakash Singh of Police Reforms fame
seconded Mohan Bhagwat’s assertion. He felt that there
were many other organizations that had done better work than Mother Teresa
but the media by highlighting only Mother Teresa’s work had wittingly or
unwittingly encouraged Christianity!
There is a grain, but only a grain, of truth in
what Mohan Bhagwat and Prakash Singh averred. Mother
Teresa joined the religious life as she believed in the teachings of Jesus
Christ. There can be no doubt that she would have liked
others to believe also. But all do-gooders are motivated
by strong desires. There are thousands of them in India
and some of them could well have done more useful work than Mother Teresa’s
religious order. Baba Amte, another saint I knew, looked
after lepers all his life. He was a Hindu.
But I do not know of any one who has given up a more traditional
existence as a teacher in a school to care for the dying and destitute
beggars on the streets. Most people would just pass by
such miserable specimens without batting an eyelid! A few
would feel sorry and a few others throw a couple of coins in their
direction
but none would want to touch them for fear of the dirt and the
disease. Mother Teresa did just that.
Further she recruited a whole army of Christian Nuns who were put on
the job of cleaning faeces and dirt that covered these human
beings. Not an easy job by any means and certainly not
one that I would like to do even if I was paid very
handsomely.
The RSS Chief and my ex-colleague are both men of
principles. They, too, want to change the world in a
manner of speaking. Mohan Bhagwat was certainly motivated
by lofty ideal of service when he joined the RSS and rose to be its
chief. The demand for a Hindu Rashtra was religious as
much as it was nationalism. The degree is only a notch
away from the religious motivation of Mother Teresa.
Their approach to fulfillment was obviously different.
Mother worked with her hands and her feet in the gutters of
Kolkata. Mohan Bhagwat works from his
office in Nagpur. Each was carrying out his or her life’s
mission.
Did Mother Teresa want to convert those she found
on the streets and took into her care? I doubt if those
poor specimens of humanity were in any position to understand her version
of
god. I doubt if Mother Teresa could find an appropriate
opportunity to preach Christianity to people who were starving, naked and
in
the throes of death. Christianity would be the last
thought in their minds and surely Mother Teresa had enough sense to know
that. If Mohan Bhagwat takes a count of the beggers and
the homeless rescued by Mother Teresa or her Sisters of Charity he may be
shocked to find that none had time or patience to convert to
Christianity. I am sure there must be records available
of the disposal of their mortal remains after death. If
they had converted they would have been buried. If they
were Hindus they would have been cremated and entries to that effect would
be found in the records of the Municipalities. He should
have this checked.
If Mother Teresa wanted to convert those she
touched and if that was her main motive she would have continued as a
teacher in a Catholic school and tried to influence impressionable
minds. That would have been a much
easier way of converting even good Hindus to Christianity.
I doubt that, that was her motive and I say so because she chose the
hard work that nobody else would want to
do.
As Ambassador to Romania I was concurrently
accredited to Albania, the country of Mother Teresa’s origin.
On one of my visits to Tirana, Albania’s capital city, my wife and I
were lunching with Reis Malile, the Foreign Minister and his wife when a
message was received that Mother Teresa was on her way to Romania from Rome
and wanted me to accompany her. The Albanian Foreign
Minister told me that they considered Mother to be their own and his
government was very keen for her to open a centre of the Missionaries of
Charity in Tirana. Their talks with her had bogged down
because of Mother’s insistence on positioning a Catholic Priest in her
proposed centre. This was not acceptable to the Albanian
government as it was officially an Atheist State and did not allow the open
practice of any religion. Reis Malile wanted me to
explain to Mother that Albania had been predominantly Muslim before all
religions were banned. If they allowed a Catholic Priest
they would also have to allow Muslim Mullas and that would open the gates
for myriad problems that they did not wish to face. When
I mentioned this to Mother she was very clear that god could be worshipped
by different people by different names and in different forms and she saw
no
merit in the Albanian government’s denial of the right to worship to
Muslims, Christians or other faiths.
After the Communists were replaced and religions
worship was permitted in Albania Mother Teresa was approached by some young
boys to cut the ribbon before their entry into a Mosque which the
government
had earlier converted into a museum but was now restored as a place of
worship. Mother Teresa willingly went and cut the ribbon. When I asked her
about it she said that god is one and if Muslims want to worship god it is
a
good thing that they were doing and they needed to be
encouraged.
I mention these two instances to clear Mohan
Bhagwat’s misconception that Mother’s sole motivation was to convert those
she touched to Christianity. I know that even the babies
she cared for were given in adoption to parents who followed the religion
of
the biological parents of those babies and no attempt was made to
convert. I have witnessed Mother nursing back to dignity
hundreds of ‘abandoned as lost’ Christian children in Romania.
Here there was no question of changing religions!
As an Indian, I felt proud that an Indian order of nuns was doing
humanitarian work in an European
country.
I have no doubt that Mother Teresa truly believed
in the god of the Christians just as Mohan Bhagwat believes in the god of
the Hindus. Personally I believe that the god they each
believe in is the same. Only the name they each give to
the one they worship is different. Both dedicated their
entire lives to upholding the divinity of their god. If
the missions and path they chose were different that is
understandable.
If some individuals got converted due to the awe
and admiration that her work and her commitment evoked I do not think that
Mohan Bhagwat or my friend Prakash Singh should or can object.
If she has used force (?) or inducement (?) that would be immoral and
truly condemnable. I have full confidence that she was
incapable of using any form of violence or
coercion.
And finally, referring to my
dear friend Prakash Singh’s peeve about the foreign press publicizing only
Mother Teresa’s work I will point out to him that Kailash Satyarthi’s work
with children was noticed and appreciated first in the western
world. They had honored him abroad repeatedly, before he
received the Nobel Prize. We in India had ignored his
achievements for reasons that Mohan Bhagwat, Prakash Singh and Julio
Ribeiro
should attempt to fathom!
JULIO
RIBEIRO
