Detailed study of women who won the Nobel Peace Prize
Journalist Supriya Vani has brought out a book based on her reflections on women winners of the Nobel Peace Prize. Presented below is an excerpt from this book’s chapter on Mother Teresa.
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Mother Teresa enhanced the prestige of the Nobel Peace Prize. A true saint, she tore apart dualities of all kind: fame and shame, good and bad, life and death, happiness and sorrow. She has rightly been hailed by the world as the ‘Saint of the Gutters’.
Mother Teresa was born on 26 August 1910, in Skopje town of Albania, to Nikollë Bojaxhiu and Dranafile Bojaxhiu. She, however, considered 27 August as her birthday because it was on this day that she had been baptized. She received her first Communion when she was five- and- a-half years old. The youngest of three children, she had a sister, Aga, and a brother, Lazar.
Her father passed away when she was only eight years old. He died under dubious circumstances, and it was rumoured that he had been poisoned by Serbian agents. His death brought the family to the brink of penury. Dranafile, Teresa’s mother, battling depression at the time, struggled to raise her children. Nonetheless
she started a small business selling embroidery, and faced the financial crisis with fortitude.
Dranafile was a devout Christian and never turned away anyone who came to her for help. About her mother, Teresa said, ‘She taught us to love God and to love our neighbour.’ Teresa and her mother spent most of their time at their parish. Teresa was so deeply imbued with Christian values that she thought of becoming a nun when she was only twelve years old. Teresa was fascinated by stories of the lives of missionaries and their service
to the poor in Bengal. However, her mother did not approve of the idea, as she was too young.
Teresa was a good student, and was articulate and had a calm demeanour. She loved to teach and, so, gave religious instruction to children at her parish. However, she loved spending time at church, praying, the most. As time passed, the desire to be a nun acquired more and more urgency in her, and after six years she received her call to be a missionary. Her religious instructor, Father Jambrenkovic, told her that a call of God would be accompanied by a feeling of deep elation and joy. Teresa now had no doubts, and this time, her mother did not object to Teresa’s decision to become a nun. She told Teresa, ‘Put your hand in His and walk all the way with Him.’ So, Teresa applied to the Loreto order in Bengal, an order of nuns that worked for spreading literacy in India.
Teresa left home in September 1928. Bidding a tearful farewell to her friends and relatives at Skopje railway station, she left for Zagreb, where she spent a few days with her mother and sister.
Then, she bade farewell to her mother at Zagreb railway station – the last she saw of her mother. However, before leaving for Bengal, Teresa went to the Loreto Abbey in Rathfarnham, Ireland, to learn English, the language the Sisters of Loreto used to instruct schoolchildren in Bengal.
On 6 January1929, she reached Calcutta (now Kolkata). After spending a few days there, she travelled to Darjeeling, about 650 kilometres north of Calcutta, where she learnt Bengali and taught at St Teresa’s school close to her convent. On 24 May 1931, she took her religious vows as a nun – vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.
Af ter completing her novitiate there, Sister Teresa, as she was then addressed, was asked to teach at St Mary’s School, supervised by Loreto Convent in Entally, eastern Calcutta. She spent seventeen years in the school, both as a teacher and as a principal. In the school, Sister Teresa taught geography, history and catechism. Teaching was
Teresa’s passion, her only love other than her love of Jesus. She was a dedicated teacher who sacrificed all her comforts for the care of her schoolchildren. While teaching, she was humorous and witty and often narrated many anecdotes from her life.
In 1943, the Bengal famine tore apart her heart, as she could not stand to see the death and starvation all around her. She was also deeply disturbed by the communal violence that broke out in 1946, owing to the demands of the Muslim League under the leadership of Muhammad Ali Jinnah. On 16 August 1946, violent riots erupted in Calcutta lasting four days. Food became scarce, and Sister Teresa had around 200 starving children with her.
Sister Teresa was inspired by Father Henry, a Belgian priest who worked for the poor. Father Henry believed that prayer without action is worthless. Sister Teresa was deeply touched by Father Henry’s teachings, and developed a similar faith in the importance of action. On 10 September 1946, while she was travelling from Calcutta to Darjeeling, she felt an ecstatic sensation. She felt that Jesus had called on her to nurse the poor and the sick. She felt that God did not want her to remain confined to Loreto and had earmarked her for a higher purpose. Mother Teresa says, ‘The message was quite clear. It was an order. I was to leave the convent.
I felt God wanted something more from me. He wanted me to be poor and to love Him in the poorest of the poor.’ There were many hurdles in her choice. The first was that it required her to leave Loreto, which was no less painful than her severing relations with her own mother and siblings when she had decided to become a nun. The second hurdle was that she needed the Church’s permission to leave Loreto.
She had two options for seeking permission. She could either seek permission from the Vatican directly, which would be final and binding, or she could seek permission from the Archbishop of Calcutta. She opted for the latter, because she thought it would be convenient. But it turned out otherwise. The idea did not go down well with the Archbishop of Calcutta, as he could not permit a lone European woman to move on the streets of Calcutta when political and communal strife was rampant. To err on the side of caution, she was sent to Asansol, a city about 280 kilometres from Calcutta.
But here, again, God intervened when Father Henry declared, ‘His Grace had confided in him that a mother was coming for the poor. She would work not in a convent, in big schools, in colleges or in hospitals but in the slums and in the streets.
Teresa was a good student, and was articulate and had a calm demeanour. She loved to teach and, so, gave religious instruction to children at her parish.
Extracted with permission from Battling Injustice: 16 Women Nobel Peace Laureates, by Supriya Vani, published by Harper Collins India