Deposition submitted by Aroup Chatterjee before the committee for beatification/canonization of Mother Teresa February 1998.
The Mother of All Myths
Being
a lay person not versed in ecclesiastical procedures, I am not
eminently suited to make a formal or technical deposition before the
Committee. However, I have had a keen interest in Mother Teresa for the
last few years and have researched her operations, perhaps more
thoroughly than anyone else in the world. And, as somebody born, brought
up and educated in Calcutta, I feel I am in a unique situation to offer
evidence to the Committee. The Committee may summon me at any time to
appear personally before it to offer evidence. I also put my audio
visual evidence at the disposal of the Committee should it want to
consult them.
Over
the years I have been dismayed at the discrepancy between Mother
Teresa’s words and her deeds, and here I present some of them. Mother
Teresa had said many thousands of times in her life that she “pick[ed]
up” people from the streets of Calcutta. She expounded on it at length
in her Nobel Prize acceptance speech. Her order did (and does) not “pick
up” destitutes from Calcutta’s streets. They do not provide an
ambulance service for the city’s poorest of the poor. If one rings the
Kalighat home for the dying destitute, one is told curtly to ring 102
(the Calcutta Corporation ambulance line) so that a Corporation vehicle
would bring the destitute to Kalighat.
I
believe that Mother Teresa had deliberately misled the world in her
assertions about “picking up” destitutes from the streets of Calcutta in
order to bolster her own image and that of her faith. Her failure to
provide vehicles (whilst continually claiming to do so) is even more
significant because she had been donated a number of ambulance vehicles.
These are used mainly (though not solely) as vans to ferry nuns, often
to and from places of prayer. I believe that this constitutes an abuse
of other people’s trust in her.
Mother
Teresa is on record in various publications (written by her friends and
followers) as having said that her order fed 4000, 5000, 7000 or 9000
people in Calcutta everyday (the figures are not chronologically
incremental). I do not know what she meant by feeding that number, but
the fact remains that her soup kitchens (numbering between two and
three) in Calcutta did (does) not feed more than 300 people daily (a
generous over- estimate). The Committee should also take into account
the “food cards” that poor people must possess to obtain ration in at
least one soup kitchen. The Committee should note that such cards are
not easy to come by for the poor, and that virtually all Christians in a
particular slum have food cards, when hardly any of the poor from the
other religions have them. This policy gives the lie to Mother Teresa’s
assertions that she treated the poor from all faiths equally. On the
issue of bias toward Catholicism, I would also like to tell the
Committee that worship inside Mother Teresa’s homes is solely Catholic,
and non-Catholic worship is not at all permitted therein. This practice
should be judged in the context of a minute proportion of the residents
in her homes in Calcutta being of the Catholic faith. I would like to
draw the Committee’s attention to Mother Teresa’s frequent
pronouncement: “I help a Hindu to become a better Hindu, a Muslim to
become a better Muslim…..” etc. The practice of denying poor people
under her care the right to worship their own god(s) can be judged as
harsh and demeaning.
Mother
Teresa once said, “If there are poor on the moon, we will go there.”
She said many times that she never refused anybody who needed help. In
reality however, her order operated strict exclusion criteria in their
selection of who to help and who not to. Mother Teresa’s order did
(does) not help anybody, no matter how poor or helpless, who had a
family member of any kind — what they term a “family case”. (That is one
practice he doesn’t like which I agree with. The family should take
care of their own first. Too bad we don’t do that here with welfare)
One
of Mother Teresa’s slogans had been ,”Bring me that unwanted child.” In
her Nobel Prize speech she said, “Let us bring the child back. …….What
have we done for the child? ………..Have we really made the children
wanted?” If the Committee examines what Mother Teresa had done for
street children (in Calcutta), it may find that she fell short of
optimal standard. Despite her assertions, she did not operate an “open
door” policy at her homes for the poor, including for poor children. A
very poor and very ill child would not be offered help unless the
parents signed (or thumb-printed) a form of renunciation signing over
the rights of the child to her organisation. I have video evidence of
such a case happening on the doorstep of Mother Teresa’s orphanage.(Is
that charity? “Sign over your child to us or we let them starve!!!”?)
The
Committee may also want to interview street children from around Mother
House who were repeatedly reported to the police by Mother Teresa’s
nuns for “pestering” foreigners who came to visit the “living saint”. I
have video interviews with such children, which the Committee may like
to consult.
In
her famous letter written in 1978 to the then Indian Prime Minister
Morarji Desai in protest against the curbing of Christian missionary
activities, Mother Teresa mentioned that she operated “102 centres” of
natural family in Calcutta. The Committee should heed that such centres
do not exist. The Committee should also note that in her Nobel Prize
speech Mother Teresa had said that in 6 years in Calcutta there were
“61,273 babies less” born because of her organisation’s natural family
planning activities. There is no basis whatever for this statistic, and
it was disingenuous of Mother Teresa to mention it in her Nobel Prize
speech.
In
the April 1996 issue of the US magazine Ladies Home Journal, Mother
Teresa said that she wanted to die like the poor in her home for the
dying destitute in Kalighat. This is a very outrageous statement indeed.
By then she had had numerous in-patient medical treatments in some of
the most expensive clinics around the world. This includes the Scripps
Clinic in La Jolla, California and the Gemelli Hospital in Rome. She
also had numerous treatments at Calcutta’s Woodlands and Belle Vue
Clinics, which are outside the reach of 99% of India’s population. She
also received (on numerous occasions) sophisticated and expensive
cardiac treatments at Calcutta’s Birla Heart Institute.
When
Mother Teresa died, she was surrounded in her bedroom by sophisticated
and expensive cardiac equipment, which had been specially fitted for
her. Such privilege is usually granted to kings, presidents and
dictators. Whether such exclusive facilities befit a future Saint is for
the Committee to decide, but I would ask it to take note of the wide
discrepancy between Mother Teresa’s deeds and her pronouncements. In
1984 Mother Teresa (publicly) declined the offer of cataract surgery
from the St Francis Medical Centre in Pittsburgh, USA, telling the media
that she could not possibly accept the £5000 treatment; but the very
next year she had the same surgery (which cost even more) in St
Vincent’s Hospital , New York.
I
think Mother Teresa (or anybody else) should receive the best possible
medical treatment, but she utterly failed giving her residents (at least
in Calcutta) the minimum dignity and treatment — despite her vast
resources. The residents at Kalighat were denied beds — they were forced
to lie on hammocks, known by her order as “pallets”. They were not
allowed to get up from their pallets and stretch themselves. They are
denied visits from friends and relatives — indeed they would not be
admitted in the first place if they had any relatives. They are forced
to defecate and urinate communally. They are given only the simplest
possible treatments, such as simple painkillers for the intractable pain
of terminally ill residents. Gloves and more importantly, needles are
routinely re-used when deadly diseases are rife within this population.
It has to be borne in mind that the home for the dying in Calcutta is a
very small operation, catering to less than 100 people — is it not
legitimate to expect a minimum decent standard for these few people?
What does the Committee think?
Except
for adequate and simple food, the regime in the home is very harsh
indeed — some would call it dehumanising; apart from the above points
mentioned, I would like to draw attention of the Committee to the
compulsory shaving of the heads of residents, including of female ones.
The Committee should take cognisance of the particular importance Indian
women (however poor or destitute) attach to long hair.
One
could perhaps overlook the medical facilities at Kalighat (although the
Committee should not perhaps ignore such dismal standards from a woman
with such resources) but where Mother Teresa failed was in providing
minimum “Love” and dignity for her residents, despite her numerous
claims that she did so. Mother Teresa’s motto had been “You did it to
me”, implying the suffering of Jesus; she said many times how
“beautiful” suffering and pain were. However she had one standard for
herself and another one for her residents. She herself had never
declined painkillers or anaesthetics.
Mother
Teresa, although protesting to live a life of utter humility and
suffering, frequently travelled the world in the luxury class of
aeroplanes, which is outside of the reach of all but the super wealthy.
Granted she did not pay for her travels (the airlines usually did), but I
believe her travels were a waste of resources, undertaken as they were
mostly for religious purposes. The majority of her journeys — including
the last foreign travel of her life that began in May 1997 — were to
oversee the vow taking of her nuns. She would also travel frequently to
the Vatican to meet up with the pope — indeed on most of her
international travels she would break journey at the Vatican, sometimes
twice — onward and return. Can the Committee justify such frequent and
expensive travels for reasons of religion by a woman who always claimed
that she was utterly devoted to the cause of the poor? Occasionally when
on board the first class section of an aeroplane, Mother Teresa would
ask for food to be given her so that she could take them to the poor.
This would impress those around her and would imply that she never did
anything that would detract from the cause of the poor — thereby she
would manage to camouflage the real purpose of her luxurious travels
which were unnecessary, at least for the interests of the poor. I would
urge the Committee to take into account Mother Teresa’s affectations
which were adopted (perhaps unwittingly) to cause deception and bolster
image.
Although
always protesting that she knew nothing about politics, Mother Teresa
voted in elections in India, as acknowledged by the Catholic author
Eileen Egan in one of Mother Teresa’s official biographies Such A Vision
of the Street. She also made sure that her nuns all voted. Here again,
we are getting a discord between words and deeds.
In
the matter of politics, the most serious issue that can raised about
Mother Teresa’s actions was over her support of the State of Emergency
in India (1975 – 77). This was a time when democratic rights were
suspended in India and thousands of activists (both social and
political) were detained without trial. Other crimes, much more heinous,
were committed by the erstwhile government. The Committee should take
particular note of the forced sterilisation programmes (of poor men)
that were undertaken during this period. And yet, Mother Teresa issued
the State of Emergency a certificate of approval (acknowledged in the
above official biography) to help her friend the then Prime Minister
Indira Gandhi. The Committee should decide if such action befits a
potential Saint. The Committee should particularly consider the way
Mother Teresa intervened in politics in this instance and compare it
with her (political) intervention during the passage of the Freedom of
Religion Bill in the Indian parliament in 1978. In the first instance
when human rights were threatened, she aided and abetted the powers that
were threatening them; in the second instance when Catholic rights were
threatened she made a strident protest. One could not have criticised
her if she had remained silent on both occasions.
The
Committee should also take into account Mother Teresa’s wooing of the
media, which was often selective. There are a lot of media persons
(primarily in India) who may testify to that effect. I have interviews
with such people which the Committee may like to consult. I am aware
that the help of the media is essential in the running of an
international organisation such as the Missionaries of Charity and I
certainly do not think it was unreasonable of Mother Teresa to enlist
such help, but she always publicly maintained that she detested
publicity.
The
word “saint” in the broad sense implies a person who is uniquely kind
and charitable; somebody above meanness and pettiness, somebody who does
not publicise their own deeds and achievements, at least does not
exaggerate them. Mother Teresa was a kind and charitable person, but
whether she was an exceptional in this regard is a matter for the
Committee to decide. I strongly urge the Committee to not simply be
guided by what she said, but look beyond that. She was an exceptional
Catholic — indeed much (if not most) of the resources of her
organisation was spent on religious activities, such as in the training
of nuns, novices, Brothers and priests, and in the upkeep of
establishments which are exclusively nunneries and Brothers’ houses.
When Mother Teresa told journalists (as she did very often during her
life) how many establishments she ran around the world, she never made
it clear that a large number of these housed nuns and Brothers and were
not homes for the poor.
In
this context, Mother Teresa’s fund raising from people of dubious
reputation needs to be mentioned. To give an example, in 1991 she
received a very large sum of money from Charles Keating, who had stolen
most or all of it from the American public, many of them people of
modest means. After Keating’s arrest, Mother Teresa steadfastly refused
to even acknowledge requests from the authorities to return the money.
Did she think that she was above earthly laws? If the money had been
returned, some of Keating’s poor investors who had been deceived could
have been repaid. Mother Teresa’s logic was that she was using rich
people’s ill-gotten money to help the poor. Such logic is perverse, not
only because she was knowingly handling stolen money, but also because
much of that money was being spent not on the poor but for the nurturing
of her faith.
If
the Committee wants to confer sainthood on Mother Teresa for being an
exceptional Catholic, then no doubt such honour is deserved. If on the
other hand, sainthood is something the Committee would confer on
somebody who is also more than ordinarily honest, “humble”, dedicated to
the poor, free of falsehoods and above all a person of unique
integrity, then in my opinion Mother Teresa falls short of a being a
shining example.
Finally
I would ask the Committee whether it would do justice to the memory and
spirit of Mother Teresa — who had such visceral opposition to abortion
in any circumstance — to be called “Saint Teresa of Calcutta”, for
Calcutta is one of the world’s most pro abortion cities, where hundreds
of institutions (one of them not that many yards from Mother House)
offer abortion (virtually) on demand
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