INDIA: On Eve of Beatification,Mother Teresa Blurs Religious Lines

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Rahul Bedi

KOLKATA, India, Oct 18 2003 (IPS) - Six years after her death and as she is beatified in Rome on Sunday, Mother Teresa’s spirit remains vibrant in Kolkata, the east Indian city where, for decades, she gave dignity to the dying, compassion to the poor and a home to abandoned and handicapped children.
      Over half a century after founding her Missionaries of Charity order, Mother Teresa’s legacy continues to blur religious lines in this mainly Hindu nation, where communal tensions often explode into brutal bloodshed.

Six years after her death and as she is beatified in Rome on Sunday, Mother Teresa’s spirit remains vibrant in Kolkata, the east Indian city where, for decades, she gave dignity to the dying, compassion to the poor and a home to abandoned and handicapped children.

Over half a century after founding her Missionaries of Charity order, Mother Teresa’s legacy continues to blur religious lines in this mainly Hindu nation, where communal tensions often explode into brutal bloodshed.

Known as the ‘Saint of the Gutters’, her planned beatification by Pope John Paul II – a prelude to her being declared a saint – is a source of pride to many in Kolkata, from the ruling Marxist Party in West Bengal state to Muslims and Hindus.

She remains ‘Mother’ to most Kolkatans, rich or poor, and ‘Ma’ to the wretched and dispossessed in this predominantly poor city.

They developed a special link to the tiny woman who came to the city in 1929 at the age of 19 from her birthplace of Skopje, Albania, and taught in a local girl’s school before starting the Missionaries of Charity in 1950 with just 12 nuns.

Today, the order has 4,500 nuns spread across 133 countries. Its sisters, in their distinctive, blue-bordered white rough cotton saris, are a familiar sight in Mother Teresa’s adopted city of 15 million people.

At the Nirmal Hridaya (‘Clean ‘Heart’) hospice for the dying, the first home Mother Teresa established in the face of stiff opposition next to the Kalighat Temple in a poor orthodox Hindu area, the diminutive nun is revered as a ‘devi’ or goddess.

In a large room at Nirmal Hridaya where terminally ill men are lying on beds side by side, the atmosphere is grim and depressing. Some, nearing their end, hardly move, but are pleased to be in a place where they can die with respect.

”The inmates here have been brought in off the streets. We provide them a clean bed and medication in an attempt to give them a dignified end, ” Shayak, a volunteer from Kolkata’s well-known St Xavier’s college, said. ”Like Mother Teresa, the religion of the inmates is of no consequence to us.”

”I was on the street and thought I was going to die like an animal. Now I know that I’ll die like a human being in the care of Mother Teresa, ” an inmate told Sister Teresina.

The sisters, in keeping with Mother’s instructions, try and give all those who die here the last rites in their own religion. Mother Teresa’s critics accused her of converting people on their deathbeds in order to ‘garner souls for Christianity’, a claim that Mother Teresa thought below her dignity to challenge or even acknowledge.

Meanwhile, hundreds of locals – irrespective of their religion – visit daily Mother Teresa’s simple white marble-topped tomb in the forecourt of Mother House, the headquarters of the Missionaries of Charity, in order to invoke her blessings.

”It does not matter that she was Christian and I am Hindu,” said Rajan Kumar Gupta, a cigarette seller who is a devout Hindu and daily prays to Shiva, the god of destruction and regeneration, and sports a red mark on his forehead as an open display of his piety.

”I will have no trouble praying to her if she one day becomes a saint,” he said of world’s most famous Catholic nun.

Parents place their newborn babies on her tomb, asking Mother to give their offspring a long and trouble-free life.

On Friday, the unadorned box placed on top of her tomb was crammed full of requests to Mother, majority of them from youngsters and many of whom were infants when she died at the age of 87 in September 1997.

Several who thus appeal to Mother Teresa are convinced that she still has the power to reach out and alleviate their suffering, or grant their wishes.

”Mother Teresa is truly the mother of the poor and this city,” said Sohinder Grewal, a Sikh who has worked closely with the Missionaries of Charity for over two decades.

”Her maxim of giving till it hurt still seems very much alive not only in the city but in all the various charitable institutions she initiated across India and the world. Mother Teresa was truly a saint whose appeal transcends all religious boundaries,” Grewal added.

After her beatification, Mother Teresa will be canonised at a future date and will be known thereafter as Saint Teresa.

Even the communists, who for 26 years have ruled West Bengal state, of which Kolkata is the capital, and maintained a certain distance from Mother Teresa, have a soft spot for her.

They bent the rules so she could be buried at her order’s headquarters instead of at a cemetery.

”She was a great representative for humanity,” State Minorities Development and Welfare Minister Mohammad Salim said. ”She worked with the poor and marginalised. As communists, we empathise with that and respect her for it,” he added.

Kolkata is a city that rouses strong passions. Rudyard Kipling called it the ”the city of dreadful night” while a former prime minister called it a ”dying” metropolis.

But Mother Teresa never felt negatively about it. ”Unlike many others, she never judged Kolkata despite seeing its worst side,” said Dr Shila Verma, a dedicated Hindu who prays daily to several deities.

”All she did was help the downtrodden and give them dignity,” he added. ”Kolkata will be happy when she formally becomes a saint as most of us think she (already) is one.”

”She won our hearts by giving love to those who needed it when we Kolkatans did so little. When they call her Mother, the people of Kolkata mean it,” veteran Hindu Bengali writer Mani Sankar Mukherji said.

Kolkatans, he declared, already elevated her to sainthood when she was alive – but her beatification by the Vatican will be welcome.