Bharat Ratna Mother Teresa

Contribution of Christian missionaries in India

8. Bharat Ratna Mother Teresa

A 19-year-old young European girl arrived in Kolkata in 1929 with a mission to serve the people in India and thereafter got identified with the city. This nun who is known all over the world as Mother Teresa of Kolkata, later got identified with this historic city. She drew attention of the entire world to the most neglected sections of the society, the lepers, the sick and aged destitute dying on the streets. She emphasised that these persons had right not only to live but also to live with honour and dignity.

Mother Teresa was born in a village Skopje of Yugoslavia on August 27, 1910. After the partition of Yugoslavia, now this village falls under the new country called Macedonia. Her original name was Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhius. Her father's name was Nicholas and mother's name was Dranafile Bernei. Agnes lost her father when she was seven years old. Her mother brought up three children. Agnes' elder brother's name was Lazar and elder sister's name was Agatha.

In 1928, at the age of 18, Agnes took leave of her mother and siblings, to become a nun and joined the Sister's of Loreto congregation. Agnes' mother expired at the age of 83. But Agnes never met her mother after leaving the home to become a nun. Loreto congregation used to run schools in India and thus young Agnes came to India to teach in one of the schools run by this congregation.

Agnes had now become Sister Teresa. She had chosen the name after St Teresa of the child Jesus, a Carmelite nun who is also referred to as 'Little Flower'. This nun was made a saint in 1925 and in 1927, she was declared as a patron saint of the missions.

On May 24, 1931, Sister Teresa took her first vows of poverty, chastity and obedience in Darjeeling. The three vows were to be renewed every year until the person took the final vows many years later.

Sr. Teresa worked as a primary teacher and subsequently as the principal of St. Mary's School of Loreto congregation in Entally, a suburb of Kolkata for many years. She was living with other nuns in Loreto Convent. The girls studying in St. Mary's School were from the upper strata of the society. Sr. Teresa had almost no contact with the socially and economically weaker sections of the society.

Fr. Henry, the priest of the Catholic parish Entally, used to work in slums of Kolkata. Sr. Teresa accompanied him during his visits to the slums. The visits offered her insights into the lives of the people living in these slums.

Sister Teresa never had an opportunity to know the poor people while she served in St. Mary's School. When she walked on the streets of Kolkata, she used to feel pity for the lepers begging on roads, skinny rickshaw-pullers suffering from tuberculosis and still pulling rickshaws to survive and the old sick people on the verge of death. The sights of these people made her restless, as she was unable to do anything for them. She had come to India with a mission to serve Christ. Now she felt sad that even as a nun, she was unable to improve the lives of these underprivileged people.

Every congregation of the Catholic priests and nuns selects a particular field of service for their activities. Of these, some congregations are active in the fields of education, medicine, social or religious mission. The Sisters of Loreto congregation had chosen the field of education. After 1939, Sr. Teresa felt a strong urge to establish her own congregation especially to serve the poor from slums of Kolkata.

For this purpose, she needed the sanction from the Pope, the spiritual head of the Catholic Church. She received the permission from the Vatican and in 1948, Sr. Teresa got out of the Loreto congregation to establish her own religious order and to serve the most needy sections in society.

As a nun not affiliated to any congregation, Sr. Teresa now did not have a roof over head. She was not sure of getting two meals a day. Her educational experience was also of no use to serve lepers, sick people or orphan infants lying on roads, footpaths or near dustbins. To serve and nurse these needy people, she took training in nursing. Now she was well equipped to serve the sick and the dying people lying on the streets of Kolkata.

Sr. Teresa named her congregation as Missionaries of Charity. As a member of the Loreto Congregation, she used to wear a long white robe and a black headgear. For her new congregation, she chose a uniform, which was purely Indian. The uniform was a white cotton sari with a blue border, which was worn, in Bengali style.

After leaving the Loreto convent, Sr. Teresa spent the nights at the convent of the Little Sisters of the Poor. She used to run a school for children of motijhil slum throughout the day. The Little Sisters of the Poor congregation paid for her tram fair. Sr. Teresa used to beg in Kolkata city for money to provide bathing soap for slum children, medicines for the sick and food to the hungry.

Later, never ever a generous rich person denied money to this nun because they were sure that she was not asking for money for herself but for the people who needed health and care the most. But such situation did not prevail in the 1950’s when Sister Teresa had just launched her work.

In those days, Sr. Teresa used to move from door to door and beg for alms. Each time, she was required to explain the reason for begging alms. Some people would refuse help while a few others offered a little help.

Some days later, Sr. Teresa got a room to stay in an old building. There, she did not have anything except a wooden box. The Missionaries of Charity congregation took its shape in this room only. The young girls who started working as novices of the Missionaries of Charity used to stay in that room. Sr. Teresa stayed there for four years, till 1953.

While Sr. Teresa was working all alone in slums, one of her former students, Subhashini Das, came to meet her one day. That 18-year-old girl wanted to work with Sr. Teresa. Subhashini was the first girl to join the Missionaries of Charity as a novice. Subhashini Das became Sister Agnes. She later became the second in-command, next only to Mother Teresa, in the Missionaries of Charity. After Mother Teresa's death, Sr. Agnes took over as the head of the congregation.

The head of a Catholic nuns' congregation is addressed as the 'Mother'. Thus, Sr. Teresa became Mother Teresa. She became the mother of the destitute, the poor and the neglected people. She and the nuns in her congregation took care of these people with love and affection.

After starting a school in Motijhil slums, Mother Teresa opened a dispensary there. Coolies from Kolkata, rickshaw pullers and other poor people visited the dispensary to receive treatment for various ailments. Among them, the number of tuberculosis patients was the highest. Mother Teresa established an alms house for giving free food to people staying on roads and to people who were reduced to skeletons due to hunger. She opened sanatorium for lepers and Shishubhavan for looking after abandoned infants found in dustbins, on the steps of dispensary and near gutters. The young girls joining the institute started working with the Mother to serve these destitute abandoned by the society.

Missionaries of Charity have many convents or centres the world over. Out of these, the most acclaimed centre is Nirmal Hriday or Home for the dying destitute. Some of these people are orphans and some are those abandoned by their relatives due to leprosy and some other dreaded or chronic diseases. Mother Teresa established Nirmal Hriday to offer affection and care to these people even when though some of these persons were almost on deathbed.

Kolkata Municipal Corporation gave a piece of land for Nirmal Hriday near the famous Kali Mata Temple on the banks of Hoogli River. Since then, for the last five decades, thousands of dying destitute have experienced the nuns' love and affection at this centre and then breathed their last.

Jesus Christ has said - 'Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, that you do unto me'. And so, Mother Teresa and her nuns saw Jesus Christ in these lepers, Dalits, orphan infants and children, the hungry and thirsty. Some people accused Mother Teresa and her congregation of exploiting the helpless destitute and converting them to Christianity. Christian missionaries have always faced this accusation. But Mother Teresa never retaliated. To retaliate to the criticism of people was not her nature. She continued to quietly serve people in distress. Due to progress in medical science, many diseases that were considered incurable earlier can now be treated and cured. But Mother Teresa used to say that being deserted and neglected by our own people was the most serious disease and that any amount of money, medicines or therapy would not cure such a disease. Serving these neglected people, giving them warmth of love and affection was the only assured cure for that disease.

The Mother would often say that the government administration would provide shelter to destitute, the sick and the aged in orphanages or other centres. But who would satisfy their hunger for love and affection?

Only a visit to one of the centres runs by the Missionaries of Charity would offer an insight into the noble and most difficult work carried out by these nuns. Some of these patients' limbs are decomposed, some have become spastic due to old age, and other inmates are a few-day-old infants abandoned on roads by their parents. Here at these centres, every person, irrespective of his or her caste, religion, language and region are served with the same affection and care. Mother Teresa asked her nuns to go to the places wherever natural or human-made calamity had struck and serve there the victims and the needy people.

In 1960, Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru inaugurated the Home for the dying destitute in Delhi. It was the first branch of the Missionaries of Charity outside Kolkata. In 1965, the congregation opened its centre in Venezuela to serve the needy at global level.

The money required for food, medicines and shelter of these needy people, orphans and sick people would not last long. But while running these centres for nearly 50 years, Mother Teresa never ever felt frustrated due to financial difficulties. She never shirked from her mission to serve people on the grounds of paucity of funds. The Mother was an incorrigible optimist. She was gifted with inexhaustible optimism that, some miracle would take place and her financial problems would be solved. Her work went on all over the world, notwithstanding numerous problems and its scope widened on a large scale.

There were many veteran personalities from India and abroad who brought help for Mother Teresa's mission. The important personalities who personally met the Mother and gave a helping hand in her mission included former prime ministers Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, Pope Paul VI, Pope John Paul II, Princess Diana, former US President Ronald Regan, Queen Elizabeth II, former Chief Minister of West Bengal Jyoti Basu and so on. Many of them visited the Mother's house and Nirmal Hriday and witnessed her work.

People the world over became familiar with Mother Teresa, walking with a bend due to her old age, soft spoken and always having a cheerful smile on the face.

This nun remained humble and polite even after winning several accolades at national and international levels. In one of the functions of the United Nations Organisations (UNO), the world body's former Secretary General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar introduced Mother Teresa as 'the most powerful woman in the world'. He was obviously referring to her moral strength gained due to noble mission. Mahatma Gandhi too with his simple living style and moral strength had become powerful enough to ask the British to quit India and thus shake up the mighty British Empire. Mother Teresa would remain in the limelight with various State heads and famous people from different fields for a while and then would return to her work.

Mother Teresa was showered with numerous laurels. The millions of rupees she received in the form of these awards enabled her to help more and more needy people. The centres of the Missionaries of Charity spread all over the world needed thousands of kilos of rice, wheat and vegetables everyday and this funds helped to meet this need.

The Missionaries of Charity opened their house at Amravati in Maharashtra in 1962. The congregation had taken a giant step from Kolkata. The nuns there had to converse not in Hindi or Bengali but in Marathi language.

Mother Teresa traveled extensively in different parts of India and abroad. The train journey would however take long time and the air travel of course was too expensive. So she approached the government of India to give some free tickets to travel by Indian Airlines and Air India. After the initial hesitation, the government administration conceded her request. The ministry of Railways also had made such a facility available to her for her railway journey.

In 1962, the government of India honoured Mother Teresa with the title Padma Shree. She was perhaps the first Catholic nun to receive this national civil honour. Later, in the same year, she received Raman Magsaysay award. The Nobel award for peace received by her in 1979 was the most prestigious award offered to her. In 1980, the then President of India Neelam Sanjiva Reddy honoured Mother Teresa with the country's highest civil award, the Bharat Ratna.

Mother Teresa was opposed to legalisation of abortions. She treated foeticide or abortion due to any reason as a sin. She never changed her views even after India and many other countries had legalised abortions. Although, many people did not agree with her views on abortion, she voiced them forcefully at various platforms. She would say that if a person or a family did not want their new born infant, they should send the baby to the Missionaries of Charity soon after its birth and the congregation would take up the responsibility to look after the child. Many unwanted infants have survived due to the humanitarian stance taken by Mother Teresa's congregation.

Mother Teresa passed away on 5 September 1997 in Kolkata, the city that she had come to be associated with. At international level, she is also referred to as Mother Teresa of Kolkata. Many world leaders attended her last rites and paid tributes to this humble nun. Soon after her death, the then Pope John Paul II initiated the process to canonise her. Of course, the Mother during her lifetime itself was called a living saint.

References :

1) 'Mother Teresa' (Marathi)- Asha Kardaley, Rajhans Prakashan, 1025, Sadashiv Peth, Pune 411 030 (1994)

2) 'Mother Teresa - Missionary of Charity' - Sam Wellman, Om Books, P O Box 2014, Secunderabad, Andhra Pradesh, 500 003 (First Indian edition 2003, reprint 2005)