The media and Mother Teresa
Joe Palathunkal
She was what a French newspaper called "the most mediatised nun in the world". The coverage of her death in the media was so extensive that it is difficult to recall another parallel in a non-political figure in our times. Almost all the major newspapers in India had banner headlines to announce the event and on the morning of September 6, 1997, The Indian Express came out with the most catchy banner: Mother Teresa, the ‘Living Saint’, dies at 87. The Express devoted 80 percent of its front page to the nun born as Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Skopje, Macedonia, on August 27, 1910 and made India her home since her arrival in Calcutta in 1929.
Now the saint of the gutters will be again in the glare of the media on October 19 when Pope John Paul II will beatify her in Rome to elevate her to the status of the ‘Blessed’ in the Catholic Church enabling the faithful to venerate her by the altars of the churches all over the world. Beatification is the penultimate stage to canonization when a person will be officially called a ‘saint’ by the Roman Catholic Church.
Whether in the print media or in the electronic one, Mother Teresa got unusual pride of place. This Albanian Roman Catholic nun eventually grew into media’s favourite theme during her 68 years of life in her adopted land India and her adopted city Calcutta. Once the famous Spanish writer Jose Luis Gonzalez-Belado who himself has authored a book on the Mother wrote in a foreword to another book on her: "Mother Teresa - what an inspiration for a writer!" She was not only an inspiration for the writer but was an inspiration for the filmmakers as well.
Calcutta helped to turn her eventually into a great media theme. Being the cultural and intellectual capital of India this city has an innate ability to churn out the great like Raja Rammohan Roy, Subhash Chandra Bose, Rabindranath Tagore, Jagadish Chandra Bose, Satyajit Ray or Jyoti Basu. Because of certain historical factors and the very nature of Bengali psyche Calcutta has an atmosphere of enlightenment and liberal outlook which bring with it a certain amount of appreciation for people who do something substantial for humanity. If in Marshall Mcluhan’s view media is an extension of man, Calcuttan was that extension which helped to metamorphose Mother Teresa into a veritable media theme. But that was not all. The appreciation from people who matter like Jawaharlal Nehru and Siddharth Shankar Ray also helped the process.
The people who wrote the first books on Mother Teresa played a major role in making her the media theme that she is today. Among them I would say Malcolm Muggeridge played the biggest role. The most inspiring and insightful book ever written on Mother Teresa was this BBC man’s Something Beautiful for God published in 1971 by Collins and Co. Ltd., London. In the book the author writes how the reprehensible sight of filth and pain in a Calcutta civil hospital made him rush back to his comfortable flat for ‘a stiff whisky and soda’ because ‘it was too much’ for his sensibilities to bear. Then he says: "I ran away and stayed away; Mother Teresa moved in and stayed. That was the difference."
Then came Desmond Doig’s book Mother Teresa - Her People and Her Work published by Harper and Row, London, in 1976. This was another significant biography of her which further enhanced her media profile. Another noteworthy book that presented to the world the image of Mother Teresa as a visual media theme was the one by Robert Serrou Teresa of Calcutta - A Pictorial Biography published in 1980. In this an entire chapter is on Mother Teresa’s hand which holds a little baby with a firm grip.
After this followed a series of books on Mother Teresa or books by Mother Teresa in the form of compilations of her sayings and anecdotes relating to her. Some of these books include titles like My Life for the Poor - Mother Teresa of Calcutta; Stories of Mother Teresa - Her Smile and Her Words; Mother Teresa - Messenger of God’s Love; Mother Teresa of Calcutta - Spiritual Counsels; Mother Teresa - Jesus, The Word To Be Spoken; Mother Teresa - A Compilation of Mother Teresa’s Teachings on Love; Brothers of Mother Teresa; Mother and the Mahatma; and the much publicized biography by the civil servant Navin Chawla.
Among all that is written about Mother Teresa what Indian media’s grand old man wrote about her in The Indian Express of September 7, 1997, is very pertinent in the context of Mother Teresa and media. Khushwant Singh was speaking about his experience when he went to the Mother to write an article on her for an assignment by the New York Times: "Nothing in my long journalistic career has remained as sharply etched in my memory as those three days with her in Calcutta. In my little study in my villa at Kasauli I have only two pictures of the people I admire most - Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa."
A number of films were made on her. "Something Beautiful for God" by BBC is considered the best documentary ever made on this most celebrated citizen of modern Calcutta. "Mother Teresa" made by two American sisters Ann and Jeanette got even the Soviet Peace Committee Prize during the 15th international film festival. Another noteworthy film on this saint of the gutters is the one by the Japanese director Shigeki Chiba - "Mother Teresa and Her World". There are number of others like "Mother Teresa’s First Love" by Folco Terzani, "Mother Teresa: Woman of the Century" by A. K. Bhattacharya, "In the Name of God’s Poor" by Dominique Lapiere, "Mother" by Jose Antony Kurisunkal and several others including the ones by the Government of India’s information division. Besides these, there are full length feature films on Mother Teresa like the one in English by a Hollywood team and another one in Malayalam by the title "The Gift of God".
Now the Mother is going to make media history again when an International Festival of Films will take place in Calcutta from November 1 - 4 on the occasion of her beatification. This is the first time such an event taking place in the 2000 years old history of the Catholic Church. Says Salesian Father C. M. Paul, organizer of the festival and President of Signis India - Catholic Association for Radio, TV and Cinema: "No saint in the Catholic Church`s history had an International Festival of Films dedicated to her."
So what led to all the media attention she got? Jesuit Father Varghese Paul, Director of the Catholic Information Service Society, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, himself a trained journalist and author of 17 books in Gujarati and a regular weekly columnist to the leading Gujarati daily Samabhav, attributes it to her personality. "There is genuineness, nothing is put on - she is as she is. A strong personality, at the same time she is love and compassion with a smile. Her smile itself makes her a fascinating subject for media besides these other qualities." There was something special about her smile and that is why one whole book on her is titled "Stories of Mother Teresa - Her Smile and Her Words".
Besides, she was a counter sign which fascinates media. In a world indifferent to total neglect of the unwanted, the destitute and the marginalized was palpable almost everywhere, there Mother Teresa emerged as a counter sign with her dynamic humanity and compassion in action. She never needed to be propped up by the media whether print or electronic, as is sometimes the case with celebrities. She had no paid PR to go around the media establishments to advocate for her, yet she had a very simple way of showing her appreciation for the media which might have endeared her to it. One incident that comes to mind is her simple request to the chief editor of a leading Japanese daily: "You write so well. Please write about our work." Result - an extensive coverage in that daily about the Mother and her work.
Finally it must be admitted that media’s perception of her also mattered in catapulting her into its cynosure. That perception was obvious from the images and words that media projected on her death. Sample the headlines in various publications and the proportion of space they gave for her, though Diana’s death was also an attraction for the media at that time. Some of the headlines were revealing. "Mother Teresa: something beautiful for mankind", "Ideal Candidate for Sainthood," "Calcutta overwhelmed", "Nun with a heart of gold", "Sorrow engulfs the City of Joy", "The mother phenomenon", "Rich and Poor Bow to a Saint", "Controversial producer Lapierre feels orphaned", "Mother has finally gone to meet the God she served faithfully", "Nation plunged into darkness", "Like a prayer", "To Mother with Love", "Legend of our times", and "Nation bids adieu to Apostle of Peace" were some of the headlines she evoked.
When in some quarters protests were heard against according to her a state funeral, voices in the media came to her defence. As an answer to such protests Swapan Dasgupta wrote in India Today of September 22, 1997: "Mother Teresa can certainly be appreciated as the personification of compassion and caring. But our understanding of her life and mission can be a little more complete if she is viewed in the terms in which she saw herself - as a devout servant of Christ. Judging her as a religious figure does not diminish her greatness in any way, but a failure to do so says a great deal about contemporary India’s inability to understand religion." Media understood this greatness very well was quite evident from the extensive way it covered her death, funeral and the related events. From September 5th to the funeral day on 13th Mother Teresa had occupied the media all the way. Reflecting media’s appreciation for her a box item in The Times of India’s front page on September 7 said: "Although the funeral of the Mother is a full week away, international media personnel began arriving here to capture the nation’s mood."
A survey was conducted by Outlook on the greatest Indian for its Independence Day special of August 19, 2002. To many people’s surprise it announced: "In a survey on the greatest figures of independent India, the saint of the Gutters polls most votes in a gallery of eminences." It was indeed a quantum leap over Nehru, Patel, Indira Gandhi, Ambedkar and others. Commenting on this poll Khushwant Singh wrote that he thought Nehru would poll the highest votes and others like Patel, Indira Gandhi and so on coming close behind and Mother Teresa at the bottom. Then he says: "I am glad I have been proved wrong." In his view Mother was "a plain woman but goodness oozed out of her".
On her death TV channels and publications vied with each other to project this plain woman in the best possible way. The programmes that appeared on the screen and the seven hours live coverage of her funeral was TV’s extraordinary homage to this plain woman immortalized by painter M. F. Hussain through his celebrated series on her and photographer Raghurai through his famed lens.
The magazines came out in full glow on her. Frontline, Sunday, The Week and India Today were the prominent ones that made Mother their cover photograph and cover story. While India Today in its English edition shared the cover between the Mother and the Princess Diana with the caption, "Legends of our Time", its Malayalam edition dedicated the entire cover to the Mother. The Frontline gave exclusive coverage to the Mother with a special editorial, several reports and articles including an article by an eminent Jesuit educationist Father Lawrence Sundaram from Chennai. The Sunday (14 - 20 September, 1997) from Calcutta dedicated 26 pages to Mother Teresa out of a total of 68 pages.
Among these four magazines Frontline’s was the most extensive and the best coverage on the Mother incorporating reports not only from India but also from all over the world. Once Mother Teresa had said: "God writes through us, and however imperfect instruments we may be, He writes beautifully." Judging from the extraordinary attention she received in the media during her life and after her death it would not be an exaggeration to say that Mother Teresa of Calcutta was indeed media’s unusual cynosure. On October 19 during her beatification when media eyes from all over the world will focus on her, it will be another proof for media’s spontaneous affinity with her, the greatest Indian and the greatest citizen of our lifetime.
Contact: jpalathunkal@icenet.net