"India has no reason to be grateful to Mother
Teresa"
Sanal Edamaruku
President of Rationalist International
"India, especially Calcutta, is seen as the main beneficiary of
Mother Teresa's legendary 'good work' for the poor that made her the
most famous Catholic of our times, a Nobel Peace Prize Winner and a
living saint. Evaluating what she has actually done here, I think,
India has no reason to be grateful to her", said Sanal Edamaruku,
Secretary General of the Indian Rationalist Association and
President of Rationalist International in a statement on the
occasion of her beatification today. The statement continues:
Mother Teresa has given a bad name to Calcutta, painting the
beautiful, interesting, lively and culturally rich Indian metropolis
in the colors of dirt, misery, hopelessness and death. Styled into
the big gutter, it became the famous backdrop for her very special
charitable work. Her order is only one among more than 200
charitable organizations, which try to help the slum-dwellers of
Calcutta to build a better future. It is locally not very visible or
active. But tall claims like the absolutely baseless story of her
slum school for 5000 children have brought enormous international
publicity to her institutions. And enormous donations!
Mother Teresa has collected many, many
millions (some say: billions) of Dollars in the name of India's
paupers (and many, many more in the name of paupers in the other
"gutters" of the world). Where did all this money go? It is surely
not used to improve the lot of those, for whom it was meant. The
nuns would hand out some bowls of soup to them and offer shelter and
care to some of the sick and suffering. The richest order in the
world is not very generous, as it wants to teach them the charm of
poverty. "The suffering of the poor is something very beautiful and
the world is being very much helped by the nobility of this example
of misery and suffering," said Mother Teresa. Do we have to be
grateful for this lecture of an eccentric billionaire?
The legend of her Homes for the Dying has
moved the world to tears. Reality, however, is scandalous: In the
overcrowded and primitive little homes, many patients have to share
a bed with others. Though there are many suffering from
tuberculosis, AIDS and other highly infectious illnesses, hygiene is
no concern. The patients are treated with good words and
insufficient (sometimes outdated) medicines, applied with old
needles, washed in lukewarm water. One can hear the screams of
people having maggots tweezered from their open wounds without pain
relief. On principle, strong painkillers are even in hard cases not
given. According to Mother Teresa's bizarre philosophy, it is "the
most beautiful gift for a person that he can participate in the
sufferings of Christ". Once she tried to comfort a screaming
sufferer: "You are suffering, that means Jesus is kissing you!" The
man got furious and screamed back: "Then tell your Jesus to stop
kissing."
When Mother Teresa received the Nobel Peace Price, she used the opportunity of her worldwide telecast speech in Oslo to declare abortion the greatest evil in the world and to launch a fiery call against population control. Her charitable work, she admitted, was only part of her big fight against abortion and population control. This fundamentalist position is a slap in the face of India and other Third World Countries, where population control is one of the main keys for development and progress and social transformation. Do we have to be grateful to Mother Teresa for leading this worldwide propagandist fight against us with the money she collected in our name?
Mother Teresa did not serve the poor in Calcutta, she served the
rich in the West. She helped them to overcome their bad conscience
by taking billions of Dollars from them. Some of her donors were
dictators and criminals, who tried to white wash their dirty vests.
Mother Teresa revered them for a price. Most of her supporters,
however, were honest people with good intentions and a warm heart,
who fall for the illusion that the "Saint of the Gutter" was there
to wipe away all tears and end all misery and undo all injustice in
the world. Those in love with an illusion often refuse to see
reality.