hinduwoman

a new book has come out, very factual.

Mother Teresa: the Final Verdict , Aroup chatterjee Meteor Books, Kolkata, 2003.
International publishers refused to publish the book and amazon is not selling it.
Brief summaries and excerpts.

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Book begins dramatically with a contrast:. the prostitutes in Calcutta collecting and donating money for the flood victims, in W. Bengal in 95 and 96, but Mother Teresa never gave anything or sent out volunteers to work.
20th August 1995, 200 people died in Ferozepur crash. Her contribution was special prayers on her birthday.
Haturia explosion killing 22 children, half an hour away from the centre where brothers learn to be good Christians --- contribution or condolences zero.



30th August 1996, a woman called Noor Jahan who had been thrown out by her husband with a 10 months old and 2 yr old sick children came to Sishu Bhavan. Night porter let her in but at 5 a.m, she was thrown out and nuns refused to allow her in. Finally due to pressure from local people a nun came and explained that the children would be taken in only if the mother relinquishes all her rights to the charity. She must sign a form to this effect. The mother refused and finally at 7 p.m went away.

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She left without much bitterness: as a poor woman in India she was used to doors slamming in her face. She knew that the rich and powerful always rejected the poor. She knew that her children's existence was borrowed. She however did not know how the world wowed every time Mother Teresa said "There is always room for another child in my home".
When Noor Jahan and the shopkeepers were shouting their loudest at the nuns through the closed doors of the orphanage, a Western woman, who looked like a volunteer, walked on the pavement and knocked on the door to be let in. I cornered her and asked if given Teresa's image and finances this sort of treatment of a poor woman with children was acceptable, and why a helpless woman should be asked to relinquish the rights to her children to be fed and helped. I also asked her to let the woman in and feed her children. At this the memsahib got irritated, and told me I was hassling her when I ought to be grateful that she was in my country helping my poor. I said I was grateful that she was in my country but was questioning Teresa's obvious cruelty and matching it with her pronouncements. Memsahib got more irritated and promptly left us. I implored her not to come back to India to help my people. Two years later I realized the woman in question was the Canadian-Croatian Anna Ganza who subsequently wrote a semiauthorised biography of Teresa called "journey of Hope". After her book was published I wrote to Ganza, reminding her of the (videoed) incident outside Sishu Bhavan and inviting her thoughts and comments on it. She never replied.
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Teresa had repeatedly said sisters pick up poor and dying. They do not. Dying people who try to get admitted are told to come at 9 a.m, not before. There are no ambulances cruising the city to pick up those in need. It is a flat lie.
There is only one single leprosy clinic, no centre for family planning though it is claimed by the Calcutta based priest Edward Le Joly to be 69.


When she became sick she checked into Woodlands or Birla Heart mandir. When the journalist Barak wrote how Mother Teresa lived like the poor and wanted to die like them,
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"I wrote to Ladies Home Journal following her astronomically expensive treatments contrasting them with her fantastic claims. I also pointed out her previous treatments at Gemelli Hospital and at Scripps clinic, California which I feel Daphne Barak was aware of, or at least should have been. I asked if under the circumstance it was honest journalism to publicize that Mother Teresa was so humble that she wanted to die like the poor in her 'terrible' home. I got a courteous reply from 'the editors' saying that they 'cannot offer a comment'.
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On 21 August 1993, she agrred to present artificial limbs to handicapped. It was to be a small affair with one or two journalists from local papers. But on that day she sent a message saying she was ill. But the next day it was found that she had gone to Delhi to receive an award from the Govt. , a large international affair with plenty of journalists. When the organizer complained to her about it, she wrote that she forgave him and would pray for him. he asks, "what did Mother Teresa forgive me for?"

1986, two Tanzanian Muslim children were killed when her plane skidded. Teresa attended the funeral of the nun who was also killed but said nothing about the children. She did not attend their funeral, or visit the relatives, nor did the family receive in compensation --- "maybe rewards for death by a saint's jet are otherworldly". Western journalists congratulated her for escaping unhurt but said nothing about the children.

1983, Boston Globe published an account by Sylvia Whitman who had worked in her home Sishu Bhava. No adequate food or space. "one day a child named Ekka pointed to a pink stuffed rabbit, a plastic duck, and a couple of other hand-me-down toys in a glass cabinet under a statue of Virgin Mary. After I took out the toys, a Sister came over and closed them back up. "no no, the children will break them, " she said, "they are there for them to look at". Apparently Teresa did not allow any singing or story telling or toys for children.

Chapter 6 describes interviews with the poor living around the homes. They all agree that the Sisters never helped any of them or picked them up when they were dying. One said before they would get leftover food, but now even that is taken away by an ambulance. They said that the Sisters turn people away from their doors. Clothes and Food rations donated, are sold to local traders. On Christmas day plenty of goodies would arrive, but they are mostly taken away by nuns' relatives. The only help the destitute would get is free scrap paper and what they could scavenge from garbage. Apparently Mother Teresa gave instructions not to give beggars anything. According to some foreigners who come to visit Mother Teresa are prevented by the Sisters from giving them money. Children who hang around the Mother House (mentioned in Hello magazine as an example of Mother's help in feeding and educating them) said that the Sisters chase them away. The Sisters call the police to pick the children up on charges of pestering their [white] guests, and the police threaten them. But Catholic families would get employment and food rations, even though they are not so poor as others. On the other hand Indian residents in the homes (non-Christians) would have breakfast only if they attended mass. One poor woman, Baby Khatun said that when important white men would come the Sisters would make a show of charity and was very frustrated that she did not know English so that she could tell the them about such things.
All such rules were laid down by the Mother herself, and the Sisters are only following her.

As for the other poor living outside immediate neighbourhoods, they have not ever heard of her or her organization, because Mother Teresa does nothing in Calcutta.


Nirmal Hriday has only two rooms. 45 places in each. Volunteer after volunteer (all interviewed in the book) tell the same story of neglect. There are no proper beds. Only pallets wrapped in polythene. No bedsheets, though they were put on when the Pope visited the home. The occupants are not allowed to stand up unless ordered to. The individuals are not assigned names but numbers. The windows of the centre are boarded up. Teresa had often said that she detested the large buildings in Calcutta and wanted them for her homes; however she refuses to relocate her centre to the Archbishop's palace in Calcutta which is valued at $8 millions. Of course the nuns have proper soft beds and bedsheets.
The rooms are very dirty. The staff have little medical training. Needles are simply washed in cold water and reused. Infectious patients are not isolated. Tracy Leonard says, that he has seen nuns give Prednisolone instead of Paracetemol because both start with P; any complaint was met with smiles that it is all in His hands. Food is inadequate. Patients were not sent to hospitals inspite of requests by volunteers, because Teresa believed that people were better off in heaven than on the operating theatre. Instead of using her money to equip her home, the Sisters would give aspirin to cancer patients, linctus to TB patients; however, everyone irrespective of their religion, would get a good Catholic funeral. Patients had nothing to do except sit and stare. Handicapped children are not given massages or proper treatments and there are no basic therapy machines, because it is believed that if God wanted He would take care of their infirmities.

In Sishu Bhavan there are five to eight children in a cot. Children are fed from the same spoon; their bottoms are all wiped with the same piece of cloth. They are made to defecate over a wooden plank with holes and the waste drops straight into the drain; their clothes are washed besides this same drain. Nuns however have proper clean toilets. Peter Taylor's documentary: "Mother Teresa: Time for Change" shows pictures of a boy shackled to his crib because he refused to wear the clothes provided. In one picture he is bound hand and foot. Sisters often left the children alone in charge of illeterate ayahs who would beat the children as they went to pray --- sometimes when the time for prayer came they would even stop feeding the babies. When there are complaints about how nurses absue the children, the answer is everything is in God's hands. Microcephalic children and children with cerebral palsy are made to lie flat on their backs and have food dropped in their mouths. When any volunteer tried to message them they were stopped. Others who offered to train the nuns in how to take care of the handicapped children were refused. Mother Teresa told that nothing equals the power of love, and if God wanted things another way they would change.

If absolutely necessary, she would send patients to State hospitals or other charities; she even took money from other charities in Calcutta! But she herself never gave any money to them.

Madras centre is equally bad without even running water. Children with disabilities that could be corrected are not treated. Sally Warner says that the children are fed inadequately; but the nuns enjoyed good food. However the Indian workers are given inferior food. Warner was told by the nuns not to eat with the Indians, but as a white woman to eat with the nuns.
In Delhi, Berger paints donated paint, but the children's rooms were not painted. Instead the chapel and convent were redecorated.

Through all her 'care' centres runs the theme that prayers are all that is required to cure someone; if he or she suffers from permanent disability because treatment has not been provided thereby, it is God's will; if the person dies then they are with God. Painkillers are not given so that their sufferings can bring them closer to Jesus.

However, she took painkillers while refusing them to her dying. As Dr. Jack Preger points out , "WHEN IT CAME TO HER OWN AILING HEALTH, MOTHER TERESA WAS A LITTLE LESS COMPLACENT AND MORE RLUCTANT TO RELY ON THE POWER OF THE SPIRIT ALONE. SHE PREFERRED TO HAVE THE BEST DOCTORS FLOWN IN FROM OVERSEAS, TO HAVE A PACEMAKER FITTED BY HIGHLY SKILLED HEART-SURGEONS, AND RECUPERATE IN THE POST-CARDIAC CARE UNIT AT WOODLANDS NURSING HOME, THE MOST EXCLUSIVE PRIVATE CLINIC IN CALCUTTA, AND CERTAINLY NO KALIGHAT".

Dr. Richard Dean said that his experiences in Howrah centre near Calcutta were horrific. Food would be stored in the compound and allowed to rot. Ten, twenty year old drugs would be given. But every month the Brothers would go to the American Assembly of God Church hospital and have x-rays costing more than they spend on their charitable actives. When he took a patient to the Brothers they refused to treat him; he took him to the Assembly of God Church hospital and was also turned away. The refusal was because "If we do it for one, we have to do it for thousands". (This is a sentiment echoed by many Sisters in other homes as well when they explained why they refused to take in poor or treat the dying). The experience so disgusted Dr. Dean that it was partially responsible for his losing faith and leaving Catholicism.

This is not a surprising attitude. About priests engaged in community service, she said, "I say to all priests: You have not become priests to be social workers"

She was against women priests. She said that even Mary was only a handmaiden to the Lord.

Also her homes in Europe are cleaner, better equipped and well run. If everyone is truly equal before God, then why are the Indian centres so neglected? But then Paul Chetcuti, a Jesuit priest who worked for her explains that "the Indian poor are hardly better than beasts".

Overall, no schools, no hospitals, no centres for charity as are painted by media and described by herself.

Liar, racist, sexist, hypocrite, religious bigot, publicity hound --- I am not calling her Mother Teresa any more.
Even Angel from Hell is too mild.

yguy

Perhaps not.

http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp...e=Booksa&sid=1

From the review by Khushwant Singh:

When I get a book on a subject I have myself written on, the first thing I do is to look up the index to see if the author has referred to it. I was not disappointed when I looked through Aroup Chatterjee’s book: "However she could be all over Indians who were important in her publicity. Khushwant Singh, the maverick Indian journalist, raconteur, socialite and political animal (later MP) was asked by The New York Times (shortly after she received her Nobel) to do a feature about her.

Singh wrote to Mother and promptly got a reply—she agreed to cooperate with him leaving aside her ‘I hate publicity’ posturing. Singh spent three days with her when she personally took him around her homes and also regaled him with stories from her life. She said she frequently relied on miracles ‘for funds and provisions.’"

I quote Chatterjee’s lines because he constantly harps on the trouble he has taken to get his facts right. It so happens that I met Mother Teresa not after she got the Nobel prize in 1979 but almost 20 years earlier and published the article I had done for NYT in the Illustrated Weekly and put her picture on the cover.

lpetrich

"Bitch" would be too nice. Let's see what else we might call her.

"Fraud"?

Pyrrho

You might be interested in looking at another book:

The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice by Christopher Hitchens, which came out a couple of years before that "bitch" died. The fact that the popular press prefers not to bother with debunking religious icons should come as no surprise, given their concern with ratings and selling papers.

Monkeybot

Bitch.

winstonjen

How about "cunt-hating (to represent her anti-women's rights stance) hypocritical wolf in sheep's clothing"?

njhartsh

Are you presenting that review as a refutation of the book?

So far as I can tell, reviewer Khushwant Singh is panning the work because (1) author Aroup Chatterjee makes an inconsequential mistake involving the date of Singh's own interview with Mother Teresa and (2) the book attacks a person Singh has long since decided is beyond reproach.

Here's a nice example of Singh's idea of literary criticism:
Don't you just love that thought process? "What a damned lie that Teresa was 'trying to wangle the Nobel.' The Nobel is a lousy prize anyway. She honored it, not vice versa. Q.E.D." This is ludicrous.

I imagine that authors with axes to grind (e.g., both Chatterjee and Singh) indeed do sometimes fudge facts to support their point, but it'll take more than a "He got my date wrong!" tantrum from a boot-licking sycophant to convince me that the profuse sorry record of Mother Teresa's self-serving career is mere fabrication.

Singh's review is little more than a childish whine that Chatterjee (like Christopher Hitchens before him) is attacking a personage Singh holds dear. Seems to me that adults decide questions of reputation and guilt by facts, rather than baldly emotional appeals to ignorant presupposition.

- Nathan

Sabine Grant

It is amazing to me how we can be influenced by what we read or various mass media to evaluate an individual we have never met in person or have a relationship with. And to go to the extreme of using insulting terms , believing so firmly that we have the right to judge anyone as if we know so well the intent of their mind.
Why do human beings thrive on demeaning one another? what does it accomplish? I hear it is a way to feel better about oneself by focusing on others'failures.

christ-on-a-stick

With all due respect, Sabine, I don't think expressing anger towards someone who arguably spent many years contributing to the suffering of many (under the guise of humanitarianism no less), is "thriving on demeaning" someone.

It could be asked, why did *this* particular human being seem to "thrive" on encouraging others to suffer???

my dog earl

If its true, she is indeed a bitch............