Mother Teresa: Responses to my friends' comments on my facebook post

Recently, the RSS chief Bhagwat had this to say about Mother Teresa.


“Mother Teresa’s service would have been good. But it used to have one objective, to convert the person, who was being served, into a Christian,” he said while speaking at a function organised near Bharatpur by NGO Apna Ghar. “The question is not about conversion but if this [conversion] is done in the name of service, then that service gets devalued,” he said. “But here [at the NGO], the objective is purely service of poor and helpless people,” Mr Bhagwat added.

Source: "http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/mother-teresas-aim-was-conversion-says-bhagwat/article6926462.ece"

Many "noble-hearted" congressmen from India were full of tears immediately and asked Narendra Modi, the BJP, the RSS, the Bajrang Dal and everybody except themselves to apologize to everybody. My equally-noble fellow Indians immediately were up in arms thinking that this was the first time somebody dared to speak out against a noble soul and a "secular" government would have prevented such speeches from happening.

Here is an interesting post from the Washington Post blogs (just 3 hrs ago as of this writing).

Washington Post

and it says

"Many who support Mother Teresa dispute these accounts, of course, but they exist and are frequently debated. In fact, when compared to the criticism that already exists about Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity, Bhagwat's words look relatively meek: Multiple accounts say that Mother Teresa's nuns would baptize the dying and she had a reputation for proselytizing."

 
I posted a link Bhagwat's comments on  my facebook account (I only posted and I have a mixed opinion on what he said) and some of my friends commented on the post. 

One of them says, "service to human ,is service to God. i hope mother Teresa has not forced any body to convert. Every human being has the God given 6th sense to analyse what is right and wrong and to accept the logical and deny illogical matters. RELIGIOUS CONVERSION IS PERSONAL IT IS A MATTER OF ACCCEPTING A FAITH ON THE BASIS OF SCIENCE, LOGIC AND WISDOM. No body has the right to force any one to convert."

My friend, force can be physical or emotional. What if you had a pleasing voice and told someone that one cannot attain salvation unless one follows your religion? Is that forcing? 

Another says " Lol. There is fact and there is speculation!" and follows that up with this "Now here is a fact - hard data Indian Express
 A summary of that "hard data" can be found here

"
There were 745 Mother Teresa homes across the world and 19 in Kolkata. Over 90 per cent of all those who are treated at these homes are non-Christians,” spokesperson Sunita Kumar said.
Claiming that Bhagwat was misinformed, she added: “Among the Kolkata homes, Nirmal Hriday in Kalighat, Prem Dan near Park Circus railway station and Shanti Daan in Tangra are the prominent ones. When children are abandoned at hospitals and come to these homes, they are told about the faith they belong to. Only if abandoned children are found on the streets and their religion cannot be determined, they are raised as Christians.”

(1) How does this statement qualify as hard data? Just because they put a number (90%)to it?

(2) Assuming that I agree to this data, I ask "Yes. In India, you are supposed to find a huge percentage of Hindus from a random population (about 80%). The rest(10%), I assume is non-Hindu, non -Christian? ... Yes!. The point is not who you serve, it is what your motive is.. Obviously you need not convert the 10% non-non-Christians".

(3) What I think of Mother Teresa... I think she and her organization have done great work in alleviating the sufferings of the poor and it is not easy to do.... But, it DOES NOT change the fact that one of her/her organization's  motives was to convert. She may call it "illuminate people's lives by showing them the only way to salvation" etc etc... but .......


 I also encourage you to read this if you want to...
http://www.oshoworld.com/biography/innercontent.asp?FileName=biography7/07-67-teresa.txt

M.K.Gandhi, religious tolerance and the recent comments by a President: Part 2

(Continued from Part 1)

 

"You cannot understand the beauty of our religion. From what you say it appears that you must be brooding over your transgressions every moment of your life, always mending them and atoning for them. How can this ceaseless cycle of action bring you redemption? You can never have peace. You admit that we are all sinners. Now look at the perfection of our belief. Our attempts at improvement and atonement are futile. And yet redemption we must have. How can we bear the burden of sin? We can but throw it on Jesus. He is the only sinless Son of God. It is His word that those who believe in Him shall have everlasting life. Therein lies God's infinite mercy. And as we believe in the atonement of Jesus,our own sins do not bind us. Sin we must. It is impossible to live in this world sinless. And therefore Jesus suffered and atoned for all the sins of mankind. Only he who accepts His great redemption can have eternal peace. Think what a life of restlessness is yours, and what a promise of peace we have" 

Gandhi is taken aback. He writes;

"

The argument utterly failed to convince me. I humbly replied:

'If this be the Christianity acknowledged by all Christians, I cannot accept it. I do not seek redemption from the consequences of my sin. I seek to be redeemed from sin itself, or rather from the very thought of sin. Until I have attained that end, I shall be content to be restless.'

To which the Plymouth Brother rejoined: 'I assure you, your attempt is fruitless. Think again over what I have said.'

And the Brother proved as good as his word. He knowingly committed transgressions, and showed me that he was undisturbed by the thought of them. 

"

And then in the chapter on "Religious Ferment", he writes,

"

I listened to his discourse on the efficacy of prayer with unbiased attention, and assured him that nothing could prevent me from embracing Christianity, should I feel the call. I had no hesitation in giving him this assurance, as I had long since taught myself to follow the inner voice. I delighted in submitting to it. To act against it would be difficult and painful to me

"

"

The Convention lasted for three days. I could understand and appreciate the devoutness of those who attended it. But I saw no reason for changing my belief--my religion. It was impossible for me to believe that I could go to heaven or attain salvation only by becoming a Christian. When I frankly said so to some good Christian friends, they were shocked. But there was no help for it.

"
And, to me, the best part is here (gives you a deeper insight of the man)
"

My difficulties lay deeper. It was more than I could believe, that Jesus was the only incarnate son of God and that only he who believed in Him would have everlasting life. If God could have sons, all of us were his sons. If Jesus was like God, or God Himself, then all men were like God and could be God Himself. My reason was not ready t

o believe literally that Jesus by his death and by his blood redeemed the sins of the world. Metaphorically there might be some truth in it. Again, according to Christianity, only human beings had souls, not other living beings, for whom death meant complete extinction; while I held a contrary belief. I could accept Jesus as a martyr, an embodiment of sacrifice, and a divine teacher, but not as the most perfect man ever born. His death on the Cross was a great example to the world , but that there was anything like a mysterious or miraculous virtue in it my heart could not accept. The pious lives of Christians did not give me anything that the lives of men of other

faiths had failed to give. I had seen in other lives just the same reformation that I had heard of among Christians. Philosophically there was nothing extraordinary in Christian principles. From the point of view of sacrifice, it seemed to me that the Hindus greatly surpassed the Christians. It was impossible for me to regard Christianity as a perfect religion or the greatest of all religions.

"

Then he writes about the Hindu religion as well...

"

Thus if I could not accept Christianity either as a perfect, or the greatest, religion, neither was I then convinced of Hinduism being such. Hindu defects were pressingly visible to me. If untouchability could be a part of Hinduism, it could but be a rotten part or an excrescence. I could not understand the raison d'etre of a multitude of sects and castes. What was the meaning of saying that the Vedas were the inspired Word of God ? If they were inspired, why not also the Bible and Koran? 

"

I want to end this with 

"

As Christian friends were endeavouring to convert me, even so were Musalman friends.

Abdulla Sheth had kept on inducing me to study Islam, and of course he had always something to say regarding its beauty. 

"

There are many instances in the book that suggest that he is very uncomfortable with the idea of religious conversion! If at all he came back alive today, he will be infinitely more shocked with the pesudo-secularists (Indian National Congress and its stooges) than he will be with religious intolerance in India.

 

 

 

M.K.Gandhi, religious tolerance and the recent comments by a President: Part 1

Interesting and amusing were the comments made by the U.S. President in India (on religious tolerance!!!!) and much more interesting was what he said when he went back to the U.S. (“acts of intolerance” in India that would have shocked the country’s peace icon, Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi).... so much so that it compelled me to write again!

I don't know how many people know that "Mahatma" was not his middle name or any part of his name for that matter... 

I don't know how many have actually read his works, so I am bringing in some excerpts from his oft-talked about autobiography...

In the chapter on "Glimpses of religion", he writes thus;
 all good works were useless
"
These many things combined to inculcate in me a toleration for all faiths.

Only Christianity at the time was an exception. I developed a sort of dislike for it. And for a reason. In those days Christian missionaries  used to stand in a corner near the high school and hold forth, pouring abuse on Hindus and their Gods. I could not endure this. I must have stood there to hear them once only, but that was enough to dissuade me from repeating the experiment. About the same time, I heard of a well known Hindu having been converted to Christianity.

....

I also heard that the new convert had already begun abusing the religion of his ancestors, their customs and their country. All these things created in me a dislike for Christianity.
"

Then in England, he reads Madame Blavatsky's works and writes thus;
" This book stimulated in me the desire to read books on Hinduism, and disabused me of the notion fostered by the missionaries that Hinduism was rife with superstition"

He also meets a good Christian at about the same time in Manchester. The New Testament, especially, the Sermon on the Mount, he says, "went straight to his heart" because he was able to relate it to the Gita.

The chapter "Christian Contacts" (his life in South Africa) is also worth reading.
He attends prayer meetings with a family, where at one point of time, he is told: "Come, let me break the necklace" (necklace  made of Tulasi beads, a gift from his mother). He refuses!

The host is not able to tolerate M.K.'s argument. Gandhi opines further..

"He was looking forward to delivering me from the abyss of ignorance. He wanted to convince me that, no matter whether there was some truth in other religions, salvation was impossible for me unless I accepted Christianity which represented the truth and that my sins would not be washed away except by the intercession of Jesus, and that all good works were useless".

 Then, in the same prayer meeting, he comes across another sect and one of them confronts Gandhi with this (:) )

 (continued in Part 2)



 

The MahaBarata --- R.K.Narayan and The Mahabharatha by C.Rajagopalachari

Have read the one by C.R many many times now. Fell in love with Arjuna after reading C.R's version. Every now and then I find myself turning back to the episode when the six of them had to spend a year incognito and they choose King Virata's palace. Prince Uttara prepares to face the mighty Kauravas (the likes of Bhishma, Drona, Karna, Aswattama) all by himself. Sairandhri (Draupadi in disguise) suggests Brihannala (Arjuna in disguise) as his charioteer. Prince Uttara agrees, amused at the idea of a eunuch being his charioteer.

Uttara sees the Kaurava army in full glory; he starts to panic and wants to back out. At this point, Brihannala reassures him telling him that he knows the place where the mighty Pandavas had their weapons hidden and takes him there. Once the Gandiva is out, Arjuna strings the bow and twangs it thrice. The twangs were enough for the Kaurava soldiers to tremble in fear. Duryodhana is actually happy because he thinks that he thinks that Arjuna had revealed himself before the end of the thirteenth year (which means they had to spend another 12 years in exile and 1 year incognito). 

Bhishma and Drona ask Duryodhana to get away from the battlefield with the cows seized from Virata's kingdom (which would have meant victory for him) while they stay and contain Arjuna --- Duryodhana gets away. Arjuna sees him running away with the cows and goes after him defeating everybody (including Karna) in his way (also managing to send a few arrows to touch Dronacharya to show his respect for his teacher). Then, Arjuna completely embarrasses Duryodhana in the battlefield giving him a foreboding of things to come.

R.K.N's version of this episode is a little brief. But there are other places where he manages to put in a lot more words. More on that to follow!!!

Last night, I saw her again. she has begun to walk into my life again. I gasp at her grace - the seductress she is, squeezes the life out of the beholder even while looking askance at him. I am one of the very many (hard to count how many) that fell in love with her.
It all began on a clear day - night I should say!
I remember that night vividly. The day, as usual went without too much fuss ----- the last exam for that semester. With me it was always that way during the exams -slogging through the nights to get at least one glimpse of what was included in the syllabus and they usually ended up with solemn oaths of being regular with studies from that time forward.
The evenings usually belonged to akka (elder sister) who was our neighbor. Her house's verandah was usually filled with school children of all ages carrying all sizes of bags and books. Akka was their "teacher". Her mode of imparting education was simple ----she referred to the questions at the end of each chapter, marked a few paragraphs (which she thought were the best answers to the questions) and asked them to memorize those by reading them aloud. The din that followed may sound chaotic to the casual observer but if you were neighbors you will begin to fall in love with that raaga --- I am proud to say that I was a product of this orthodox school.
Okay, I have digressed considerably. At about 8 P.M., these children packed their bags and went home. My supper being over by the same time, I dragged a chair to our balcony, rested my chin on the balcony railings and began to make grand plans for the next semester.
It was then that she appeared without a warning.

---- To be continued

The Apple and the Earth

I started reading S.Chandrasekhar's "Newton's Principia for the Common Reader" --- barely read the first five pages when I found this..

"
W.Stukeley (in his Memoirs of Sir Issac Newton's Life)

After dinner, [on 15th April 1726], the weather being warm, we went into the garden and drank thea, under the shade of some appletrees, only he and myself. Amidst other discourse, he told me, he was just in the same situation, as when formerly, the notion of gravitation came into his mind. It was occasion'd by the fall of an apple, as he sat in a comtemplative mood. Why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground, thought he to himself. Why should it not go sideways or upwards, but constantly to the earths centre? Assuredly, the reason is, that the earth draws it. There must be a drawing power in the matter: and the sum of the drawing power in the matter of the earth must be in the earths center, not in any side of the earth. Therefore dos this apple fall perpendicularly, or towards the center. If matter thus draws matter, it must be in proportion of its quantity. Therefore the apple draws the earth, as well as the earth draws the apple. That there is a power, like that we here call gravity, which extends its self thro' the universe.
"

Srilakshmi and Fluid Mechanics

When I had just finished my undergraduate education - if someone had asked me "what is a fluid?", I would have answered immediately. After my Master's, I could still have answered the question albeit with considerable doubt and skepticism. After my PhD, I admit, I cannot answer that question properly.
Apparently, Srilakshmi has an idea. The other day, we were at the table eating lunch and my wife whispered "We have only a small quantity of curd left. I have added some water and made buttermilk out of it. Please tell Srilakshmi that it is curd and not buttermilk".
The time for curd rice came and Srilakshmi asked us "I want curd". We pointed to the buttermilk and said "here it is". She looked at it with some suspicion , took a spoon and stirred it.
Then she said, "appa... see, this is not curd. I am able to stir it easily. It has got to be buttermilk."
I laughed!!

முரசு

"நிகரென்று கொட்டு முரசே - இந்த
நீணிலம் வாழ்பவ ரெல்லாம்;
தகரென்று கொட்டு முரசே!-பொய்மைச்
சாதி வகுப்பினை யெல்லாம்

.......

அன்பென்று கொட்டு முரசே!-அதில்
ஆக்கமுண் டாமென்று கொட்டு;
துன்பங்கள் யாவுமே போகும்-வெறுஞ்
சூதுப் பிரிவுகள் போனால்


அன்பென்று கொட்டு முரசே! மக்கள்
அத்தனை பேரும் நிகராம்
இன்பங்கள் யாவும் பெறுகும் - இங்கு
யாவரும் ஒன்றென்று கொண்டால்
-----------------------------------------------


அன்பென்று கொட்டு முரசே!-அதில்
யார்க்கும் விடுதலை உண்டு;
பின்பு மனிதர்க ளெல்லாம் கல்வி
பெற்றுப் பதம்பெற்று வாழ்வார்

------------------------------------------------------
ஒன்றென்று கொட்டு முரசே!-அன்பில்
ஓங்கென்று கொட்டு முரசே!
நன்றென்று கொட்டு முரசே!-இந்த
நானில மாந்தருக் கெல்லாம்

---------------------------------------------------------
"
மகாகவி பாரதியார்

அப்பப்போ கண்ணுல தண்ணி வர வெச்சிருவாறு நம்ம ஆளு மகாகவி. எப்போவாவது இப்படி வாழ முடியுமான்னு யோசிப்பேன்.