Mother Teresa: How Saintly Was the ‘Saint of the Gutters’?

Author Aroup Chatterjee in his book questions Mother Teresa’s credibility as a world-famous charitable nun.

In the destitute, “disease-struck streets” of Calcutta (now Kolkata), a young Albanian nun rose from the Sisters of Loreto to Mother Teresa, the ‘Saint of the Gutters’.

Two decades after her death, the Vatican is set to canonise her on 4 September 2016, immortalising the once ‘living saint’ into a saint forever.

While there are many who found Mother Teresa’s brand of charity patronising and problematic, there is a citizen of Kolkata who staunchly disapproves the popularity the nun enjoys in the public imagination.

Aroup Chatterjee, in his book Mother Teresa – The Untold Story, argues that the nun was in fact a publicity hungry, anti-abortion lobbyist, who deliberately portrayed an unpleasant image of ‘Calcutta’ for her own advantage.

The Beginning of the Mother Teresa Myth

According to Chatterjee, the “myth” of Mother Teresa began when British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge interviewed the “Indian nun from Calcutta”, for BBC’s ‘Meeting Point’.

The huge success of the interview prompted Muggeridge to convince the channel to make a film based on Mother Teresa’s work. Chatterjee describes the scenes from the film, titled Something Beautiful for God:

Although fictitious gruesome slums were not built for his film, the city was presented in a negative light. A scene shows Calcutta as a smoking wasteland with a corridor in the middle illuminated by a shaft of light, along which Mother Teresa walks serenely. 

He later adds:

The film was well-received in Britain, but in America it created hysteria. The Teresa myth was well and truly born. The days of white Christian guilt were over.

Also Read: Sainthood of Mother Teresa: Some Rejoice, Others Raise Eyebrows

From the Eyes of the West

Chatterjee blames the West, especially the United States for exoticising the supposed plight of Calcutta. From the eyes of the West, Calcutta was a sordid wasteland, and Mother Teresa, the saviour in this sub-continental horror show. According to Chatterjee, this was a myth encouraged by her and further propagated by the western media.

He writes:

I believe that in this age of racial equality and political correctness, it is comforting for a white person to know that there is a corner of the world called Calcutta which can be portrayed as the white man’s ultimate burden with impunity and without guilt.

Chatterjee argues that when reporting on Teresa, journalists arrive in the city pre-determined to take back a certain kind of story. He found many journalists were afraid to toe the line away from the editorial brief they had received.

Mother received the best care the several times she took seriously ill. The author finds it curious that she accepted expensive treatment despite saying she wanted to die in her Kalighat home and “offer up her sufferings to God.”

“In truth, at no time in her long life did she refuse any medical intervention,” writes Chatterjee with utmost conviction.

A 1996 Reuters photo depicted “poor” children holding a portrait of Mother, praying for her recovery after her third angioplasty.

“Did it not occur to journalists that poor children do not carry expensive framed photos of old women unless paid to do so?” Chatterjee writes.

Exaggerated Claims?

Chatterjee laments that Mother’s foundation (MC) gets far more credit than is due. He alleges that Mother often exaggerated the extent to which her foundation carried out charitable work among the “poorest of the poor.”

From 1970s on, Mother Teresa used to make wildly different claims about her soup kitchens – she sometimes would be feeding ‘9000’, next minute it would be ‘4000’, then again it may change to ‘7000.’ Chronologically these numbers do not correlate, as the three figures were given around the same time.

While in her Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Mother claimed her charity had picked up 36,000 people from the streets, Chatterjee alleges there were several conditions to this.

The MC allegedly had fluctuating definitions of who were the ‘poorest of the poor.’

Of and From Mother’s Homes

Tales of Neglect: Chatterjee describes horrid tales of neglect in the various homes of the MC. In the orphanages often the same cloth was used to wipe all the babies’ bottoms.

Adding to the dreadful hygiene standards, the children were expected to defecate in open drains, which connected to the household drainage system.

Monidyne, a special powdered milk manufactured for Mother’s orphanages was in fact not suitable for babies at all, Chatterjee reveals. It contained a large amount of sucrose and didn’t have “absolute essentials like folic acid, vitamins K, B12 and C or D.”

In the Home for the Dying, needles were often re-used after simply washing in cold water, as were gloves.

Many times the nuns’ prayer time took precedence over providing care to those who needed it. Children were thrust off to untrained ‘ammas’, some of who even beat the children, Chatterjee finds.

A Former Nun in the Order, Susan Shields’ Shocking Revelation:

“In the Homes for the Dying Mother taught the sisters how to secretly baptise those who were dying. Sisters were to ask each person in danger of death if he wanted a ‘ticket to heaven’. An affirmative reply was to mean consent to baptism. The sister was then to pretend that she was just cooling the person’s forehead with a wet cloth, while she was in fact baptising him, saying quietly the necessary words. Secrecy was important so that it would not come to be known that Mother Teresa’s order was secretly baptising Hindus and Muslims.”

Also Read: Mother Teresa: Human Frailties and Godliness

Mother, the Anti-Abortionist

Mother Teresa actively cultivated the image of someone who steered clear of politics. Chatterjee however wonders if the nun ‘doth protest too much.’

She was known to be close to American President Ronald Reagan, perhaps over his efforts to outlaw abortion in the US.

While Mother did not openly condone the policies and politics of her allies, she was happy as long as they were right in terms of religion and abortion, alleges Chatterjee.

She reportedly called for thousands of Bangladeshi women who became pregnant after being raped by Pakistani soldiers during the war of 1971, to have their babies.

“Mother’s obsession was that the raped women, if pregnant, must not have abortions,” writes Chatterjee. He also contends that she didn’t question where the funds for MC came from. MC’s financial accounts were never made public in India.

The charity reportedly received lump sum funding from Charles Keating, the lawyer, banker and financier embroiled in the savings and loan scandal, who even gave Mother the free use of his private jet.

When Mother died in 1997, “not more than a hundred ordinary people arrived at Mother House”, alleges Chatterjee. None of those hundred were the “poorest of the poor”, he adds.

Chatterjee supports his claim by quoting headlines of dailies: “The World Mourns, But Calcutta Remains Indifferent” (Ananda Bazaar Patrika); “Numbed by Diana’s Death, Calcutta Fails to Mourn for Teresa” (Aajkal).

Through his 400-odd page book of exhausting details, often laboriously argued, Chatterjee does manage to raise suspicion about Mother’s credibility.

It is in fact curious that the city that led Mother to worldwide fame barely shed a tear at her death.

Argued through examples of specific instances, the book however reads like an inarticulate rant, that fails to be objective at times.

The blurb on the book describes it as a “gripping, but disconcerting read.” Just as Mother’s charity allegedly was questionable, it’s questionable if the book is gripping. It does however, make for a disconcerting read, if one makes it past the halfway mark.

(The excerpts have been curated from the book ‘Mother Teresa – The Untold Story’, published by Fingerprint.)