WE recently recorded the death of Abdul Sattar Edhi, who moved from British India to Pakistan and built his country’s largest privately-run ambulance service.
His rags-to-riches philanthropy story was unique in that he chose to remain in rags himself.
He countered insensitive authorities and Islamists who sought to thwart his selfless work.
Last Sunday, the Vatican declared as “Saint Teresa of Calcutta” the Mother who had moved from her native Albania(now Macedonia) to make Calcutta, now Kolkata, her home.
The 1979 Nobel laureate worked there among the lepers and the poorest till she died in 1998.
Mother Teresa was born in Skopje, only 742km from Vatican City. But she ended up travelling 10 times that distance — 7,216 km — to Kolkata.
She too encountered cynics. Since her death, at least one serious incident of vandalism has occurred at the Missionaries of Charity that she founded.
Christian missionaries, who have over centuries set up numerous schools, colleges, orphanages and hospitals, get targeted in India, accused of using their social work as a ruse for converting the poor and the tribals.
The inescapable surmise from the two who made the world richer by working among the poor is that good work will always attract bad vibes for reasons ranging from religious, cultural or plain political. Isn’t that human?
South Asia, as a whole, has a pre-eminent place of being a cradle of ancient civilisation. But, India witnesses violence against religious minorities and the low-caste Hindus. In Pakistan, along with minorities, even Shia Muslims and Ahmediyas who are declared non-Muslims, are frequently thrashed and bombed. Buddhists have been targeting Hindus in Sri Lanka and Muslims in neighbouring Myanmar.
But let me not digress from Mother Teresa. At the other end of the spectrum of her critics are rationalists. They contradict themselves when, as non-believers of miracles, they ask why she is a saint when she has performed no miracle as per Roman Catholic traditions.
India and its Prime Minister Narendra Modi are quite naturally elated at the Mother being declared a saint. It is a signal of honour to secular India. Modi said so in his monthly national broadcast over the state-owned All India Radio. The highest in the Church have expressed their gratitude and thanks to Modi for this warm gesture. Modi sent External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj to represent him at the canonisation. Skopje-born Teresa is the fifth who worked in India to be canonised. Francis Xavier, born in Navarre, now in Spain, worked in India for long years besides Malacca, the island of Borneo, Japan and China. His body now lies interred in Goa. Three other saints — Kuriakose Elias Chavara, Euphrasia and Alphonsa — are Indians who worked in Kerala.
Christianity is India’s third largest religion that dates back to 58 AD, pioneered by Thomas the Apostle, and spread across the country from the 6th Century.
The 38th Eucharistic Congress was held in Mumbai (then Bombay) in 1964. For the first time in its history, it took place in a country that did not have a significant Catholic population. Pope Paul VI was received by the entire Indian leadership.
Saint Teresa of Calcutta was “an icon of mercy”, Pope Francis said at the ceremony in the Vatican, attended by an estimated 100,000, not all of them Christian — they came for Mother Teresa. They included 13 heads of state.
For Mother Teresa, sainthood has come after years of criticism that may heighten after her canonisation. She has been criticised for her attitude to the poor as being pawns in God’s hands and doing little to end poverty. She was also attacked as a Christian fundamentalist.
Mark Tully, eminent journalist, formerly with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), who wrote a book that was not necessarily adulatory of the Mother, rejects the charge that she was a religious fundamentalist.
“She was a devout Catholic, but at the same time, she said ‘some call him Ishwar, some call him Allah, some simply God, but we all have to acknowledge it is He who made us for greater things, to love and be loved’.” He sums up her legacy thus: “The simple white cotton sari with a blue band the Missionaries of Charity wear symbolises that they are members of an Indian order. Mother Teresa herself adopted Indian citizenship and received the highest Indian order.
“There will be Indians of all faiths who will rejoice in India’s new saint. Members of the VHP (Vishwa Hindu Parishad, an affiliate of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party) are not among them. They claim Mother Teresa was a fraud, that her motivation was not love of God and the poor, but converting them to Catholicism. The (Indian) prime minister has ignored them and in the Indian tradition of accepting there are many different names for God, Mother Teresa’s tradition too.”
She has influenced many young minds. Days before the Vatican event, Kounteya Sinha, an Indian journalist-photographer from Kolkata, celebrated both the Mother and the city of his birth at a unique photo exhibition in different cities in Italy.
My colleague from Times of India days, Kounteya’s “Sainthood Project” became a rage in Italy. People from the United States, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Scotland, Mexico, Colombia and Indonesia stood in Rome, Padova and Venice to showcase photographs of Kolkata hanging from ropes on the event of Mother Teresa’s canonisation.
It was not easy. He waited with one end of the rope, hoping someone would come along to hold the other end. Eventually, in an act of solidarity, dozens of people of all faiths, from Italy or were travelling to Rome, Venice and Padova, stood by holding Kounteya’s photographs of Kolkata.
Kounteya said he had travelled as far as Macedonia to trace her beginnings and place of birth.
“Go to Skopje in Macedonia where she was born and you will not see the madness or that much of reverence. Come to Kolkata and see how this city declared her a saint a long time ago.”
Mahendra Ved, NST's New Delhi correspondent, is the president of the Commonwealth Journalists Association 2016-2018 and a consultant with ‘Power Politics’ monthly magazine.