Mother Teresa demonstrated power of compassion: Navin Chawla
By IANSFriday, August 27, 2010
NEW DELHI - Navin Chawla, former chief election commissioner and biographer of Mother Teresa, Friday said that she will be remembered for demonstrating the “power of compassion in a complex, modern world”.
Participating in a national symposium here, Chawla said Mother Teresa became a powerful woman in the conflict-ridden world through compassion, humility and the single-minded mission to help the poor and suffering. The Albanian Teresa took Indian citizenship and made the entire world her home, he added.
Chawla recalled how Mother Teresa, who had set up her “homes to serve the poor and the abandoned” in 120 countries, kept away from politics. He said she had once told him: “If I get stuck in politics, I would become one of those politicians.”
He said Teresa was persuasive to the hilt to get things done for the poor and the inmates of her homes - destitutes, leprosy patients, elderly and the orphans. “Whenever I suggested she meet somebody, Mother used to ask me: What can he or she do for my people”.
The audience listened in rapt attention as Chawla narrated incident after incident of how the Mother Teresa took up the problems of the under-privileged in India and abroad.
“She even made Pope John Paul II permit a soup kitchen for the poor in Rome,” Chawla said. “Teresa rang up presidents of two countries when the food for the poor got blocked in Ethiopia.”
He recalled an incident in Pakistan too. “When the sisters of Missionaries of Charity (the religious order founded by Mother Teresa) approached the then prime minister Nawaz Sharif to seek exemption of stamp duty for a property, he reciprocated by offering the property free”.
Chawla said he had never found any attempt by her to convert people to Christianity.
“She used to tell me and other Hindus to ‘become better Hindus, Muslims to become better Muslims and Parsis to become better Parsis’,” he said, adding her name would be remembered till the “words of compassion and faith remain in the world.”
Former Indian ambassador to Italy K.P. Fabian said: “In an era of globalisation, Mother Teresa globalised compassion.”
Messages from University Grants Commission chief Sukhdeo Thorat and National Women’s Commission chief Girija Vyas were also read out at the symposium.
