High Jacking and Proselytizing in
disguise
Some Semitic religious people and missionaries often
pretend to adopt our ‘customs and ways’. This also attracts other people to
them. After the claim of adopting, they may pretend to follow it for a while.
Then they will start claim it as theirs. This is also used for misguiding and
confusing more people. They also encourage adoption of them by their followers.
Examples are the changes they make to the Churches; depicting Jesus in a
chariot just as kRishNa BhagvAn (seen in and at the time of GeethOpadeSHam) in
and around Churches; use of traditional lamps, KoTimaram (Flag poles at
Temples); and lately the re-construction of Churches in Temple architecture. They
may at times say that it is a cultural integration. However it can be seen that
later on they will start claiming it as theirs just as they claim that TirukkuRaL
is Christian literature. (1) So is the claim that Christianity came
to the South in 52 AD and converted Brahmins, whereas there were no Brahmins in
South India until much later about 7-8th Century of what is known as Christian
era. They also claim that ShivarAhRi is their “Messiah rAthRi”
and our VijayadeSHami is their “Ezutthu KoodASHa”, which we now
claim to be ours, and we took it from them and we observe it now. (2) Some call it “Digestion”, but I call it
“High Jacking”. What they aim is not cultural integration but Proselytization. A
very clear proof has come out from Keralam recently where the Church
authorities clearly stated that their aim is not Indianising the church but
Christianizing the country known as India. The aim is to make “India a
Christian country”, declared the church authority recently through their church
publication. This was broadcasted by India Vision TV on October 12, 2014 and it
was also seen at their website on March 1, 2015. (3)
Proselytizing in disguise was and is very common with
religions and a clear example is the “The Missionaries of Charity”. Through the
choreographed and manipulated Media events, people were made to believe that
this evangelical organization is doing “a great job” in helping “the Poor, the Sick
and the Dying” of Kolkata. Is that institution really helping “the Poor, the
Sick and the Dying”? Let me quote from a book on the subject named “The
Missionary Position”. Ms Susan Shields, a member of “The Missionaries of
Charity” for almost ten years and left the movement because of the atrocious
negligence she witnessed there. As per her, “Mother Teresa taught her nuns how
to secretly baptize those who were dying. Sisters were to ask each person in
danger of death if he wanted a 'ticket to heaven'. An affirmative reply was to
mean consent to baptism.” (What a deception?) “The sister was then to pretend
she was just cooling the person's forehead with a wet cloth, while in fact she
was baptizing him, saying quietly the necessary words. Secrecy was important so
that it would not come to be known that Mother Teresa's sisters were baptizing
Hindus and Muslims.”(4) The head
of the “The Missionaries of Charity”, herself has stated this at Scripps Clinic
in California, USA, on January 14, 1992 while recovering from a heart surgery. During
the course of her talk to the staff in the hospital, she stated thus:
“Something very beautiful …….. Not one has died without receiving the special
ticket for St Peter, we call it. We call baptism ticket for St Peter. We ask
the [dying] person ‘do you want a blessing by which your sins will be forgiven
and you receive God’. They have never refused.
So 29,000 have died in that one house [in Kalighatt] from the time we began in
1952.”(5) Is this serving “the Poor, the Sick and
the Dying”? Or is it Proselytizing?
It should be noted here that she went through treatment
including a heart surgery to improve her health. But at the same time, medical
treatment was denied to the residence of her “most famous home for the dying”
which is located at Kolkata; even when some of them could have been saved by
treatment. On 3rd May of 1992, in an article in “The Observer” Mary
Loudon, who worked in Kolkata, including at that facility “Nirmal Hriday” owned
by “The Missionaries of Charity” wrote thus, about a woman with TB: “What I do know, or at least I was told, by
an American doctor working at Kalighatt, was that she might have lived if she
had received some hospital treatment. Yet Mother Teresa's policy is not one of
intervention …. . God decides who lives and who dies. People are better off in
heaven than in the operating theatre. Thus, instead of using her influence and
income to finance a properly equipped hospital, Mother Teresa and her Sisters
continue to give aspirin to patients with cancer, linctus to those with TB, and
glucose drips with old needles rinsed in cold water to those in coma. And
everyone, regardless of creed, gets a good Catholic funeral.”(6)
And the living condition in “Nirmal Hriday” at Kalighatt
in Kolkata was heartbreaking. Probably still it is! Worldwide in their houses
the normal beds used were known as ‘MC
Beds’ (‘Missionaries of Charity Beds’). “It is shorter
and narrower than the standard bed, and stands about a foot high from the
ground”. (7) This is mainly in use at most of their places. However
‘Missionaries’ of Charity Beds’ were not used at Kolkata. Instead in the two
rooms, where about 40 to 45 men and about same number of women, were sleeping
on what was called the ‘pallets’.(8)
Now
coming to what they call ‘pallets’ which is used for sleeping by “the Poor,
the Sick and the Dying” supposed to be “under care” there; “even the Missionaries of Charity
themselves could not call these beds. These are contraptions (specially
designed by the Missionaries of Charity) five and a half feet in length and
barely two feet across, and they
stand barely six
inches from the ground; very often the middle part of the mattress, laden by
the negligible weight of the person above, touches the ground, as the pallet is
sprung with the minimum possible springs. It has a
thin (about two inches thick) mattress wrapped in blue polythene; no bed-
sheets are used (although they did appear on the occasion of the Pope’s visit,
prompting the British media covering the visit to dutifully mention the
‘gleaming white beds’.) There is about a foot between one pallet and the next,
and should a person lying in one, happen to stretch their arms, they would find
themselves hitting their neighbor. To maximize the use of space, ‘pallets’ are
not placed perpendicular to the walls, but at an angle, and the two rows of
them look like fish bones growing out of the spine in the middle, which is the
aisle.”(9)
Several
more of these pallets “are crammed into the remaining space at either end of
this ward to bring the total bed capacity to fifty-one. The beds are
made of metal and are long' and narrow...The beds themselves are
only 13 centimeters above floor level and about 40 centimeters apart.” Above
each bed is a number. They are all known by the number, not by names;
like in prisons. (10)
Dr Richard Dean, a general practitioner in London,
went to Calcutta as a volunteer in 1980 (a few months after the Nobel Prize)
and stayed for a few weeks. The following is his account of the place.
“My visit was organized by a Catholic students',
organization at Cambridge University where I was studying medicine at the time. ………. There was a
chapel in our yard. I had to get up at 4 a.m. every day for religious
discourse, and then a long mass would follow. I was supposed to help out with
the Brothers in a general way. I also went with them when they went on their teaching
missions, although they did not have proper schools - the classrooms were
temporary set ups.” (11)
“A large quantity of food grain, such as rice and wheat -
I think most of it
was a gift from the US - was stored in the compound. I don’t know why the grams
were there but there was no policy on distribution. The problem was that the slum dwellers knew that the rice etc.,
were rotting in there, and every month there would be a mini riot at the home -
about a hundred slum dwellers would burst in through the gates, grab some rice
and wheat and go away. There were also drugs stored in the place -
also sent as presents to Mother Teresa from abroad. Most of the drugs were 10
to 20 years old, but the Brothers would routinely use them. They did not seem
to have any medical or nursing training but they would regularly carry out
medical treatments, which were erratic, if not dangerous. They would often use
drugs without knowing what they were for. The needles were never replaced -
they were more appropriate for catching fish than treating people. The tips had
become like fish hooks and it was a job to give an injection as you'd have to
struggle to get the needle in and another to get it out -I found it
quite painful to use those needles - I shudder to think what the patients may
have felt. The Brothers themselves had the best possible medical treatment.
Every month they went to a gleaming new American run hospital in the Centre of
Calcutta [Assembly of God Church hospital] and had a chest x-ray which cost £10
each, coming to £300 for the lot - which is more than what they’d probably use
for their charitable activities for the month. I did tell the Brothers that
they should stop having their own check - ups (or at least such expensive check
- ups) and divert the money to the poor - I found it difficult to reconcile all
this to Mother Teresa’s image. Mother Teresa herself has said many times that
her nuns and Brothers live exactly at one with the poor. My final crunch came
when I found this man – I think he was a rag picker -with the biggest hydrocele I had ever seen - it
reached down from the groin to his knees. I took him on as it were, and asked
the Brothers if they would finance his treatment. The Brothers plainly said no
– ‘If we do it for one, we have to do it for thousands’, they said. I have
heard this particular sentence repeated umpteen times by the Missionaries of
Charity in Calcutta. One day I took the man to the swanky hospital that the
Brothers went to, and was told by the doctor there that he was not welcome. So
I spent a whole day queuing at a government hospital and came away with some
Frusemide [diuretic].” (12)
“On the whole I’d describe my experience with the
Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta as ‘horrific’. I suppose I was particularly
shocked because it was so much short of what I had been expecting. I had
assumed it would be an open door set up where everybody was welcome – what I
found was so utterly different. ………. I actually left the Brothers towards the
end of my stay. I found some Hindu organizations that were doing excellent work
with far less resources.” (13)
“I could say that my experience with Mother Teresa's organization
was at least partly responsible for me eventually leaving Catholicism. I have
been back to Calcutta a few times since 1980 -no, I haven’t been back to see
anybody from the Missionaries of Charity.” (14)
People, who do not know these deceits and fabricated
propaganda, believe that “The Missionaries
of Charity” is caring for “the Poor, the Sick and the Dying”. Some
people go there to help “the Poor, the Sick and the Dying”. Some go to save
their own soul. Some go to work to save more of the souls of others; what a
pity? Most of them return very disappointed as the place is not what they
publish it to be. Few of them end up starting their own service for “the Poor,
the Sick and the Dying”.
Under the light of this and a lot of other reports still
coming out from the independent researchers, was the Nobel Prize to her
justified? Was sainthood justified? However when we compare to the sainthood
given to Francis Xavier who did a lot of damage to the people during the
Inquisition in Goa has been declared a saint, this could be justified.
Bibliography
1. Article named “Rags to riches after 2000 Gujarat
riots: Teesta swallowed riot victims’ money?” http://en.newsbharati.com/Encyc/2013/7/1/Rags-to-riches-after-2000-Gujarat-riots-Teesta-swallowed-riot-victims-money-.aspx
2.
KnAnAya ViSEshangaL dated October 17, 2012 published by News of the KnAnAya
Christians of KEraLam).
3.
The Missionary
Position, By Hitchens, Page 48.
4.
Mother Teresa The
Final Verdict, by Aroup Chatterjee, Page 190, 191
6.
Mother Teresa,
The Final Verdict, by Aroup Chatterjee, Page 198
7.
Mother Teresa,
The Final Verdict, by Aroup Chatterjee, Page 183
8.
Mother Teresa,
The Final Verdict, by Aroup Chatterjee, Page 183
9.
Mother Teresa,
The Final Verdict, by Aroup Chatterjee, Page 183
10. ‘Mother Teresa, The Final Verdict’, by Aroup
Chatterjee, Page 183, 184.
11. ‘Mother Teresa, The Final Verdict’, by Aroup Chatterjee,
Page 195.
12. ‘Mother Teresa, The Final Verdict’, by Aroup Chatterjee,
Page 196-197.
13. ‘Mother Teresa The Final Verdict’, by Aroup Chatterjee,
Page 197.
14. ‘Mother Teresa, The Final Verdict’, by Aroup Chatterjee,
Page 197.
For more firsthand
information on how she and her institution “helped” the “poor & sick and
the dying”, read the book “Mother Teresa The Final Verdict” by Aroup Chatterjee
at http://www.meteorbooks.com/introduction.html Part of the book may be
available free. Also visit Facebook page “STOP The Missionaries of Charity” set
up by a Roman Catholic Christian volunteer from U.S.A., who went to help the
“poor, sick and the dying” and the sick and got the surprise of his life. https://www.facebook.com/missionariesofcharity
(Will continue;
Copyright © Udayabhanu Panickar)
