The legacy of Mahatma Gandhi, one of the last credible advocates of the nation’s civilizational integrity, received a cruel blow on this birth anniversary when a Polish missionary in India was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize (Times of India, 3 October 2002). The Puri-based Father Marian Zelazek who works among leprosy patients told admirers, “like Mother Teresa I always counted my recognition from God and not from the people” (more on that later). The nomination has sinister implications for India because the Nobel Prize is intensely political, and despite its international stature, is the tool of the White Western world, which bestows it according to its own yardsticks.
As suggested in my previous article, the West has no respect for non-monotheistic traditions. That is why, notwithstanding its liberal pretensions, it is ideologically committed to aggressive evangelization against autochthonous traditions in other lands. Worse, it is intolerant of native resistance to its conversion activities. In India, the most sensational case of local antipathy to conversions was the 1999 murder of Graham Staines (who also worked among lepers) in Orissa. Despite initial denials that Staines was an evangelist, it was soon apparent that this was his principal vocation. After his death, his associate Subhantar Ghosh let the cat out of the bag with the proclamation: “we shall continue preaching that tribals should study God’s words to have a deeper knowledge of the Christian faith,” (Pioneer 27 January 1999).
It seems fairly obvious that the hitherto unknown Marian Zelazek has been proposed for the Nobel Prize to intimidate local resistance to conversion activities in Orissa. This would amount to a direct assault on the local religious traditions, and it is the duty of the Indian Government to ensure that Zelazek is not permitted to ride roughshod over native sentiment in this regard.
What is more, the question needs to be asked at governmental level as to how a person doing social work on a limited scale (leprosy victims) promotes “peace” and qualifies for the Nobel Prize? And given the myriad questions that have arisen around the persona of Mother Teresa – who received the Nobel for alleged social service in India – we need to oppose the award of the Nobel on persons not working in their own societies.
By a strange coincidence, the Vatican has moved to canonize Mother Teresa by recognizing a “miracle” in which a cancer victim was cured at the Missionaries of Charity Order after a picture of Mother Teresa was placed on her abdomen (Guardian, 2 October 2002). The priest reporting the event called the woman an “Indian animist,” an extremely abusive term that suggests the woman is a tribal and a target of evangelism.
It is only in the fitness of things that the so-called miracle was quickly debunked on the grounds that the woman, Monica Besra, had been receiving treatment in government hospitals (Subir Bhaumik, BBC correspondent, Calcutta). Prabir Ghosh of the Indian Rationalist and Scientific Thinking Association said several doctors had informed the West Bengal government that Ms. Besra received treatment, and demanded that the State Government take legal action against the Missionaries of Charity.
But the true story about the Order comes from the Calcutta-born author Walter Wuellenweber (The Mother of All Myths), who raises pertinent questions about the millions collected by Mother Teresa for so-called charitable works. In a tongue in cheek description of himself as “neither a leftist nor a Hindu,” Wuellenweber claims that the Teresa myth was first created by Malcolm Muggeridge in 1969, and assiduously promoted and magnified by “the world’s wealthiest and mightiest,” with active assistance from Teresa herself (http://members.lycos.co.uk/bajuu).
There must be a purpose to such monumental deception. I suggest that as Western prosperity grew in the decades after the Second World War, it injected fresh funds for evangelization as a form of colonialism by other means. Given the hostile anti-imperialism still simmering in Third World countries and the tensions of the Cold War, this required greater subtlety. The invention of Teresa as a near-divine incarnation fulfilled this need, and “the world’s wealthiest and mightiest” quickly climbed the bandwagon to maintain the illusion.
Insisting it is time to stop the “celebration of untruth,” Wuellenweber claims that the Order has little good work to show, particularly in Calcutta. Pannalal Manik, who inspired residents of the Rambagan slum to construct sixteen apartment buildings for themselves after getting the Ramakrishna Mission to fund the construction materials, was bitter that though he visited Mother thrice, “she did not even listen…” Similarly, London-based Dr. Aroup Chatterjee, who serves the slums, said Teresa claimed to run a school in Calcutta for more than five thousand children. This would make it one of the largest schools in India, yet no one has even seen it!
The funds of the Missionaries of Charity are a closely guarded secret, as Stern magazine discovered. The order had six branches in Germany, and a former book-keeper stated that at least three million was received annually. However, as Mother “never quite trusted” civilian helpers, the sisters took over the financial management themselves in 1981. The most lucrative branch is the “Holy Ghost” House in New York’s Bronx where, according to Susan Shields, former Sister Virgin, there was once nearly fifty million dollars in a New York bank account in just one year. By the most conservative estimates, the nuns collected at least one hundred million dollars annually, for several years.
Susan Shields also revealed that during a famine in Ethiopia, the organization received several cheques marked ‘for the hungry in Ethiopia.’ It issued receipts to the donors marked ‘For Ethiopia.’ But when she asked the sister in-charge of accounts if she should add up the cheques and send the total to Ethiopia, she was told “No, we don’t send money to Africa.” Other former sisters have also asserted that the organization’s finances are a one-way street.
Certainly expenditures do not match income. Establishments supported by the nuns are so inconspicuous that local people have difficulty locating them. Frequently “Mother Teresa’s Home” is merely a living accommodation for the sisters, with no charitable function. Huge donations in kind (medicines, foodgrains, powdered milk, clothing) are known to have made their way to Calcutta’s pavements under the USP “Shirts from Mother, trousers from Mother.” It goes without saying that these funds are unaccounted. Interestingly, the British authorities discovered that the nuns posted less than seven percent of their receipts in expenses.
A more horrifying scam was unearthed by Robin Fox, editor of the prestigious medical journal Lancet, in 1994, when he discovered that in Mother’s homes, TB patients were not isolated and syringes were washed in lukewarm water before being used again. Patients in unbearable pain were refused effective painkillers.
There is obviously a case for closer financial and administrative scrutiny of organizations claiming a charitable status. Recently, many Western donors have found to their dismay that a number of reputed international charities raising funds for individual child sponsorship programmes, are actually hijacking the funds to support other activities. Certainly it would appear that charities are appallingly ineffective in providing the expected benefits. There is therefore no need to privilege them to the extent of allowing them to implement an ulterior agenda without let or hindrance.
The Pioneer, 8 October 2002