Not in living memory has Calcutta or Kolkata, as it now called, given itself up to such mass celebration as when Mother Teresa, the Roman Catholic nun who lived, worked and died in the city, was canonized by Pope Francis at a solemn ceremony at the Vatican. Mother Teresa arrived in Calcutta in 1929 from far-away Macedonia, to teach at a well known educational institution but came to understand that this was not her true calling. With the approval of superior authority she devoted her life to the service of the city’s poor.
In 1950, she set up her order, The Missionaries of Charity, together with a home for the city’s swelling destitute. An explanation of context may help. Bengal had been partitioned in August 1947. East Bengal, with its Muslim majority opted for Pakistan. Political and social conditions, thereafter, for the 35 per cent Hindu population began to deteriorate alarmingly. The exodus that followed over next decades was biblical; and a city built for a population of two million began to explode with streams of new arrivals at the Sealdah railway station, with little money, few possessions, nowhere to go except the platform and the pavements outside.
The dire situation was made worse when 10 million refugees, desperate to escape from East Pakistan in the summer of 1971, in the wake of the Pakistani military’s genocidal massacres in its Eastern province, walked across the border and sought sanctuary in West Bengal.
Calcutta, once the capital of the raj collapsed into a black hole like no other city in the world. Tourists came to experience hell. It was in the midst of this holocaust that Mother Teresa and her ministering angels of mercy picked up the dying and wretched from the gutters, when passersby simply crossed the street to avoid the awful sight and stench of disease and death. Mother Teresa was a simple woman, her message of charity and care was equally simple, but profoundly deep. She may not have understood the complexities of theoretical physics or of evolution and much else, and never claimed that she did. But volunteers to her hospice, Nirmal Hriday, included doctors, health workers, engineers, scientists, accountants, all giving a little of their time, and feeling enriched by the experience. The Communist Chief Minister of West Bengal, Jyoti Basu, said that Mother Teresa had taught him the virtue of godliness. When she died in 1997 well over a million people - some from distant parts of India – came to pay homage to a woman who had rescued them and helped broken lives whole again. Recently, a grown man living in the UK and enjoying a successful business career, came to the city to pay homage to her memory, for she had found him as a two-year-old babe lying on the pavement. He was looked after, schooled and put on his feet before being adopted and living a life beyond imagining as a forsaken child.
It is easy to scoff and deride this remarkable and saintly woman. But those who do so often feel fulfilled writing eloquent tracts on poverty, especially Indian poverty, and are content by their self-righteousness and the fat fees they have earned.
The risen Kolkata today is enjoying a rebirth. Poverty there still is, but the widespread destitution with which it was once association has largely disappeared. It is fast becoming a normal city, with a metro, an improved transport system, bustling markets and a burgeoning middle class. Amid this renewal the citizens of this once impoverished city gave thanks and counted their blessings in having Mother Teresa once among them. The vast majority of Kolkata’s population is Hindu. Remarkably, they embraced Mother Teresa as one of their ennobling own, for love, such as hers, transcends all barriers.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi issued a moving statement about Mother Teresa’s life and work. An Indian delegation, led by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj attended her canonization. Another delegation from West Bengal, headed by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, were seated in the front row of the ceremony. In a world riven by violence and suffering and bighted by religious discord and ethnic hatreds, the spontaneity of Kolkata’s celebrations cast a luminous, redeeming light.
Keeping Russian ties in focus
With all the media hoopla on Obama and the Indo-US relationship, one can be forgiven for thinking that nothing else matter as much in Indian foreign policy. Recall V.P. Menon’s (Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s principal aide) words apropos of the Pakistani-sponsored invasion of vale of Kashmir in October 1947: ‘Srinagar today, Delhi tomorrow. A nation that forgets its history and geography does so at its peril.’ Likewise, not to be forgotten is America’s steadfast support for Pakistan for half a century and the role it played as the surrogate in the US-China containment of India from 1972 to around 2000. (See Donald L. Berlin,’ India in the Indian Ocean,’ (US) Naval War College Review, Spring 2006; also, ‘The Kissinger Transcripts. Whre he encourages China to attack India in 1971’; and Gary Bass’s, ‘The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger the Forgotten Genocide in Bangladesh’)
Nations, like individuals, have to move on. It is right that India and the United States are dong precisely that – and pretty successfully, too. But it doesn’t mean that the past can be brushed aside. The Soviet Union enjoyed four decades of an unique, uninterrupted relationship based on trust, goodwill, and the convergence of their national interests. Without Soviet support the fledging Indian Republic would have had a more precarious existence that it did in those uncertain times (See Ashok Parthasathi,’ To Russia with love – As Always,’ Pioneer January 26, 20100). The writer, a Cambridge-educated astrophysicist was Scientific Adviser to the Government for several years and privy to its closest secrets) This ‘time-tested relationship’ has deepened with the arrival of the Russian Federation, thanks largely to President Vladimir Putin, who placed India in pole position in his foreign policy. The annual Indo-Russian summits and the formation of BRICS owed most to his efforts to adjust Russian policy to the post-Soviet global order.
The success in India’s inter-continental Agni V missile was the result of critical Russian inputs, so was the miniaturized nuclear reactor in Arihant, India’s first nuclear submarine, plus the supersonic BrahMos missile, to quote three instances of Indo- Russian military-technological cooperation.
Delhi has reassured Russia that its relationship with India is rock solid and will remain so, whatever the dynamics of Indo-US ties. Defence Ministry sources in Delhi have confirmed the mega defence deals with Russia are works in progress and should be ready for signing when President Putin arrives in the Indian capital for the next Indo-Russian summit in December.
What are they? Agreement on the final stage of the joint development of the Fifth Generation stealth aircraft; India’s acquisition of five S-400 Triumf air defence missile systems; the lease by India of a second Akula II nuclear submarine; and India’s positive response to construct a nuclear aircraft carrier on the lines of the one it is building for itself. These and other top projects were discussed intensively at meetings of the India-Russia Military Technical Cooperation Working Group earlier this month. The India-Russia Indra exercises by their respective armies will take place near Vladivostok from October 2.
India’s space technology scores GSLV launch
The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) reached another milestone with the launch of the Geosynchronous Launch Vehicle Satellite, based on cryogenic technology, which can carry the heavier four-tonne load into a stationary 36,000 km orbit. Cryogenic technology is complex and time-consuming to master. Russia had agreed to pass on the technology to India, but the late President Boris Yeltsin yielded to extreme pressure from the Clinton administration to abort the deal, despite the fact that cryogenic technology had no military applications. President Putin swore that this would never happen again.
ISRO was forced to design its own cryogenic engines through the inevitable process of trial and error. Ultimately success has been achieved with GSLV-F05 putting INSAT DR, an advanced weather satellite with four payloads, into a precise Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO). GSLV-II can lift payloads of 2,500kg, but GSLV-III can lift 4000kg and could make ISRO a major player on the international market at prices more affordable than those offered by the US.
