Twitter
Advertisement

Mother Teresa sainthood: Why those trending #FraudTeresa are beyond pathetic

Why can't we spare Mother Teresa from our pathetic modern-day politics?

Latest News
article-main
Mother Teresa gets canonized
FacebookTwitterWhatsappLinkedin

On the day that Mother Teresa was canonised by Pope Francis and became Saint Teresa of Calcutta, there was revival of criticism that followed her throughout life. As the Angel of Mercy was being canonized, a portion of Indian Twitter started demonising her with the hash tag #FraudTeresa. It wasn’t any surprise that they were what can be at best described as the self-anointed ‘Hindu brigade’ who are ‘proud nationalists’ to boot. Here are the least offensive of the tweets:

PS - One knows for a fact that this is false. A colleague's family adopted a child from Missionaries of Charity and he has been raised Hindu.

While some defended her:

 

Not that their demonization of Mother Teresa is original by any stretch of imagination. Mother Teresa's work has evoked strong reactions in the past too. Even before she was famous, she was criticised by Left cadre in West Bengal who felt her caring for the poor was ‘anti-revolutionary’, while her former Sisters of Loreto felt she focused too much on the worldly evils. Journalist Jug Suraiya wrote in JS and Times of My Life: 

"For years the local Loreto order that Mother Teresa left to undertake her own mission construed her leaving them as a sort of holier-than-thou slap in the face of their own cloistered status quo. An ex-student of Loreto House school recalls that Loreto nuns often made disparging references to Mother Teresa and her work.  ...while Mother Teresa said "I have no time for politics', there was a time when Leftist cadres considered her work in the slums to be an anti-revolutionary and subversive sop for the exploited."

Famous polemic and iconoclast Christopher Hitchens called her ‘a fanatic, fundamentalist and a fraud’, famously writing, “Mother was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction." Australian feminist Germaine Greer called her a ‘religious imperialist’ who preyed on the most vulnerable in the name of harvesting souls for Jesus.

As she grew more famous, Mother came under greater fire from the Hindu right who felt her work was a cover for proselytization. Even after her death, she continued to be attacked with RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat quipping last year: “It's good to work for a cause with selfless intentions. But Mother Teresa's work had ulterior motive, which was to convert the person who was being served to Christianity. In the name of service, religious conversions were made.” 

During her lifetime, Mother Teresa was also criticised for her support of Indira Gandhi’s Emergency, hobnobbing with Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier and the quality of medical care she provided. For the Hindu right, her act of baptising people on their deathbed was an unpardonable sin. She was also seen as a manifestation of the ‘White Saviour’ complex and her statement, ‘Let’s do something beautiful for her God’ was taken to mean one particular god.

The truth is that the government of the day, no matter what its so-called fans might think of on Twitter, is actually mighty pleased with the canonisation. Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj led a delegation to the Vatican, as did Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal who has worked with her in the past and West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee. Those trending the hash tag #FraudTeresa, just has to see what PM Modi said: "It is natural for every Indian to take pride in Mother Teresa's canonisation.” Sadly, a lot of his self-professed online fans don’t seem to agree with their leader.

To be fair it is kind of embarrassing that the Vatican needs make-believe ‘miracles’, to recognise her worth but those are the pitfalls of organised religion. For the people of Kolkata and a lot of Indians who don't view politics through a narrow, bigoted prism,  Mother Teresa was already a saint. She might have been Catholic, but she never denied treatment to anyone based on their religions. 

Mother Teresa never denied her attachment to the Church, she was a loyal footsoldier, but one who became synonymous with the religion. She had said: "We are misunderstood, we are misrepresented, we are misreported. We are not nurses, we are not doctors, we are not teachers, we are not social workers. We are religious, we are religious, we are religious."

One presumes, being a member of an organised religion also meant toeing some unscientific lines on issues like abortion or contraception.  It's also bizarre to criticise her for 'converting people' when she was taking in those who had no one, the wretched of the earth so to speak. There's actually no logical way to lampoon her work, no scientific viewpoint that can explain why an Albanian nun cared that greatly and the 'poverty porn' narrative actually seems like a lazy work to explain a phenomenon which would even warm the heart of a cynic. 

 As for those who are appalled at the conditions she provided for their lost brethren, they should ask themselves why they weren’t helping them. And perhaps they’d be better off questioning why individuals are looking to convert, instead of attacking those who are the in the evangelisation business. Is it the quagmire of the Hindu caste system where a lower-caste individual feels that they need to leave it to have a modicum of respect? The truth is that most of those criticising her on Twitter probably haven’t lifted a finger to help others in need. 

In the cult classic Rang De Basanti, Madhavan’s character had a famous dialogue lamenting the state of the nation, in which he lambasts his friends for criticising the country but not doing their bit to make it a better place. 

The dialogue, in Hindi went, Door se commentary dena bahut aasaan hota hai. Doosron ko gaali dena aur bhi aasaan. Agar tumhein itni problem hai to tum badlo na deshko. Yeh tumhara bhi desh hai. Politics join karo, police ya IAS mein bharti hojao, badlo cheezon ko. Lekin tum nahin karoge. Main bataaon kyon? Kyon ki gharki safai mein haath gande kyun karein? Agar itni himmat hai, toh aage badho. Badlo is desh ka future.

(It’s easy to criticise from afar. Abusing others is even easier. If you’ve so many problems, then why don’t you work for the betterment of the country. This is your country as well. Join politics, join the police or IAS. But you won’t do it. Because who the hell wants to clean their own house. If you’ve so much guts, then go ahead. Change the country.)

Even though he was speaking about patriotism, there’s no denying that the criticism of Mother Teresa’s charity is a manifestation of the same pettiness.  Because it’s a lot easier to sit on your computer and trend idiotic hashtags with crazy insinuations without actually doing something. 

Find your daily dose of news & explainers in your WhatsApp. Stay updated, Stay informed-  Follow DNA on WhatsApp.
Advertisement

Live tv

Advertisement
Advertisement