MOTHER TERESA of Calcutta, who was born 100 years ago, became a prophetic voice of the poor. An icon of compassion to people of all religions and none, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.
Born of Albanian nationality in 1910, she trained as a Loreto sister in Dublin before going to India. By 1931 she was in Calcutta and became horrified by the poverty and suffering on its streets. She witnessed the Bengal famine of 1943-4, in which more than two million people died.
On a train journey from Calcutta to Darjeeling in September 1946 Mother Teresa received “a call”. She believed God wished her to found a new religious institute, the Missionaries of Charity, to serve the poor. She left the security of the Loreto order and went to live in the slums of Calcutta, where, she discerned, the passion of Christ was continuing in the desolation of the poor. (During the 1913 Lockout, at a time when the slums of Dublin were compared to those of Calcutta, Big Jim Larkin declared that Christ was being crucified again on the streets of the Irish capital.)
Nevertheless, Mother Teresa was a Christian mystic rather than a social revolutionary. She became a fire of divine love among the poor, the sick, the dying and the street children. Furthermore, it has emerged since her death in 1997, she endured a prolonged interior darkness vicariously. Mysteriously great saints experience the trial of abandonment: the experience of Christ on the cross. With steely will, Mother (now Blessed) Teresa presented a smiling face to the world.
Her greatest contribution to humanity was to increase awareness of the scandal of world hunger – an issue which is moving, however slowly, up the political agenda. Today her Missionaries of Charity serve the poor and marginalised in more than 750 communities throughout the world. Centres in Dublin, Blarney and Sligo help victims of drug and alcohol abuse.
This diarist spent three weeks in Calcutta recently in the house where Mother Teresa started her work as a “slum sister”. Each morning volunteers assemble in the Mother House (the nearby headquarters of her foundation) before going to assist in homes run by the Missionaries of Charity. The predominantly young people come from several countries. Despite the harrowing scenes there is, paradoxically, a vibrancy which contrasts with moribund Ireland.
Malcolm Muggeridge wrote Something Beautiful for Godafter spending "golden days" with Mother Teresa in Kaligath home for dying destitutes. When he visited the home in 1986, Pope John Paul II described it as a place where "the mystery of human suffering meets the mystery of faith and love". Mother Teresa encountered Christ in the poor and recognition of their dignity continues to be a hallmark of the care provided.
An estimated three million people exist on the pavements of Calcutta. It is shocking to see so many living in conditions unworthy of human dignity. Perhaps the most chilling reminder of the evil of poverty was being confronted by a youth, begging with one hand and holding a naked infant in his other arm. Nobel prize-winner Amartya Sen, who is known as the "Mother Teresa of economics", points the way forward in his new book, The Idea of Justice.
None the less, in spite of its grim reputation and hot stench, terrifying traffic and sense of decay, the city (renamed Kolkata in a stroke not quite managing to shake off its colonial past) is a fascinating place. The Victoria memorial remains a spectacular symbol of imperial high noon. Formerly the seat of Britain’s Indian empire, Calcutta is today the capital of the communist state of West Bengal (in the Republic of India).
No other Indian city benefited in quite the same way from British rule, yet no other city had to pay as high a price. To counter the growth of nationalist sentiment, Bengal was partitioned in 1905. This divide-and-rule measure created two Bengals: the east, which was overwhelmingly Muslim, and the predominantly Hindu west. Exacerbating sectarian differences had catastrophic consequences.
Despite transferring the administrative capital to New Delhi in 1911, Britain continued to invest in the Calcutta region until the second World War. The Bengal famine drove a further wedge between the Raj and India, however. It was caused by greed and by Britain diverting food and other resources to the war effort.
Communal violence erupted in 1946. About 100,000 people left Calcutta and a similar number was made homeless. Simon Winchester (in his book, Calcutta) estimates the dead at 7,000, with twice that number injured before Mahatma Gandhi and other leaders succeeded in restoring peace. With independence the following year came a second partition, slicing off Calcutta’s hinterland and flooding the city with poverty-stricken refugees. The creation of Muslim East Pakistan (today’s Bangladesh) resulted in some four million Hindus fleeing to Calcutta, which is only 65km from the border.
Bede Griffiths, a Benedictine mystic of deep compassion, found the other half of his soul in India. Calcutta has, moreover, significant Irish connections. Rabindranath Tagore received the Nobel Prize in 1913 following the translation of his poem, Gitanjali, into English by WB Yeats. The school (www.loretosealdah.com) pioneered by Sr Cyril Mooney – of Bray, Co Wicklow – is a sign of hope in that teeming city, and merits a separate article.