Mother Theresa’s Calcutta
The Mother Theresa Conundrum (Part One) – by Patita Pavana das
Saint Means “Sant”
All this recent banter about the late Mother Theresa has got me asking a few questions. Like, why did the respected Catholic nun only find poverty, ignorance and disease in Calcutta and not elsewhere? These miserable conditions are concomitant factors of material existence. Daily I find these Three Sisters of Bad Karma loitering outside my very own door here in San Francisco. Locked into the continually revolving wheel divided into eight daily cycles, no soul here in mrityu-loka, or world of birth and death, is free from suchlike results caused by past actions committed with selfish motives, whether in goodness, passion or ignorance.
In fact, the region of the world that includes Calcutta is in possession of some of the richest culture upon the face of the Earth. Any true saint would have spent more effort dispensing the great spiritual contributions of that sacred Bangla-bhumi and Gauda Desh, rather than pandering to the bodily needs of unfortunates for the sake of enhancement of one’s own flickering reputation, name, fame, etc. For the record, or for those who don’t know, here are a few of Calcutta and its vicinity’s highlights, each of which could easily be discussed in volumes:
1. Don’t call me Hooghly! The holy Ganga on her way to meet her lord Shri Samudra Deva flows through Calcutta. And the Ganga here has given liberation to an infinite number of poor souls, tired of millions of rounds of samsara, on their way back to home back to Godhead. The real need and hunger of the real person, the atma, is spiritual liberation at Krishna’s lotus feet, and it is this region of the world wherefrom blossomed the Hare Krishna Movement, the great Liberator of Society.
2. Shrila Shri Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Maharaja, the greatest religious pioneer of the 19th Century, placed a weighty emphasis on preaching in Calcutta. Now readers, all three of you will have to listen to one story I’ll tell you about a Bengali brahmana whom I met while on pilgrimage in Gujarat. He was the manager of a fishery in Veraval, and I told him, based upon Shrila Prabhupada’s teachings in the Gita, that he was destined to become a fish any number of times in his future lives. I told him, “Just as you have overseen the fish being ‘processed’ here in the plant, so in the future you will be similarly processed millions of times.” Long story short, this brahmana became a devotee, left his job and moved into Hare Krishna Land at Juhu. Now when he meets Shrila Prabhupada, our Guru Maharaja asks him where he’s from. “From Calcutta,” this Chattopadhyaya tells the spiritual master… one whose teachings he is attempting to surrender unto. Shrila Prabhupada replied, “Of course you are from Calcutta. I meant from which part of Calcutta. All the cultured persons of Bengal come from Calcutta.” Now this is second hand and it is also translated from Bengali, but the bottom line is that to this day one can find huge cultural influence in Calcutta, side by side with a tremendous resurgence in hometown Gaudiya Vaishnavism, thanks to Shrila Prabhupada’s work of reinvigorating the sankirtan movement.
3. Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu made His Divine Advent just a few of hours north of Calcutta (by very slow train). Nabadwip has been a pillar of the world’s learning for Centuries. Here, Lord Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu first blessed Gauda-desh and the world with His the Footprints of His Divine Lotus Feet.
4. West Bengal is amply blessed by the Puranic deeds of even great demi-goddesses of heaven, as testified to by punya-bhumis at Kali Ghat and numerous shakti-pithas around Calcutta. Since Shakti, the Mother Goddess is none other than the shadow of Radharani, Bengal has certainly been blessed by one of the Lord’s supreme devotees.
5. Just South of Calcutta, the Ganga becomes Ganga Sagar, the sacred confluence with Samudra Dev, this Earth’s great salt ocean. Here were the 60,000 long-dead raja-putras delivered unto heaven by the river goddesses’ sacred flow. Here all saints find their final liberation in bhakti yoga, for the heart of the Ganga is one of pure devotion, and the liberation this Mother of All Sacred Rivers gives sits far above the false pretenses to moksha as demonstrated by mayavadi posers.
6. The great temples of Bengal are possessed of a very brilliant yet simple architecture all their own, strictly unique to the region. Not only in the field of architectural design, but Bengalis have made huge contributions to the fields of dance, theater, art, cinema, instrumental music, vocal and literature. A great majority of the world’s famous yogis are Bengalis.
7. Those who knew Shrila Prabhupada really well… of course, that is really impossible for his motives were only the purest of the pure, unlike our lowly selves… relate many stories that Shrila Prabhupada told about Calcutta. The next time I talk to Hansadutta, I’ll ask him for a “Prabhupada+Calcutta” episode). Here are a few ideas, which I have either investigated or have heard from reliable sources. Each could be described in volumes:
8. The Bhattacharyas around Grey Street are some of the greatest brahmana scholars in all of India. I followed Shrila Prabhupada’s hint on this score and found many great surprises amongst the pandits living in that Vedic enclave.
9. Calcutta is the birthplace of the ganiti-shastri Nirmal Chandra (“spotless moon”) Lahiri. It was Lahiri who precisely defined the most widely-acclaimed ayanamsha (mathematical correction) for the reduction of mistaken Western astrological methods into the system that best suits the father of our parampara’s previous acharya Vyasadeva (son of “father of jyotish” Shri Parashara Muni). It was here that I was honored to try to introduce Krishna Consciousness to Shri N.C. Lahiri in his home sometime around 1972. The vast contributions made by this humble shastri to the Vedic cause of astrological rectification has been immense.
10. Calcutta was the home of the great scientist Kartik Chandra Bose, who used then-newly emerging scientific methods and technology (especially recorded music and photography) to prove the virtue and truth of the Vedic conclusions, such as plants being inhabited with living spirit souls, etc.
11. Calcutta was deemed important enough for the British Raj to build its greatest monument to its own once-great empire, the gorgeously designed memorial to Queen Victoria, one of the greatest monuments to a single monarch in the world.
12. And then, Prabhus, what about the other Bose Calcutta-wallas. Bose, the inventor of the greatest sound system in the world today. Or the other Bose, the “Netaji” (“Eyes”) Subhash Chandra Bose, father of a violent Indian revolution against an unjust and foreign breed of nosey and greedy white men. Many objective third-party historians are beginning to agree that the eyes called Netaji had a great deal more to do with the ferrenghis paddling back to tea and crumpets on their damp island than early history allowed. Initial research looking into the unrestful era that pitted men like Gandhi, Jinnah, Patel, Nehru on one side, and the leader of the Indian Free Army on the other in the afternmath of the partition’s scar upon the once-worshipped landscape downplayed Subhash Chandra’s immense influence upon the outcome of the “Quit India” movement. To this day there are millions of Netaji faithfuls who assert that it was Bose more than any other political leader who check-mated an empire. This brilliant Calcutta-walla and leader of the Indian Free Army, is remembered for outfoxing and helping to dismantle the greatest empire in history.
13. And I could go on and on about the glories of Calcutta and its surrounding region. I haven’t even mentioned the great Gaudiya saints headed by Jagannath das Babaji and Shrila Bhaktivinode Thakur who verily created the tirthas of Nabadwip Dham and Shridham Mayapur through the re-discovery and authentication of the birthplace and other holy places connected with the Divine Lila of our Lord Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. By Mahaprabhu’s grace, none other than our dearmost Shrila Prabhupada is today’s founder of the movement to inundate the entire world from the West with bliss through sankirtan, the constant singing of the holy names of God:
Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare.
So, to summarize this very small list of stray thoughts concerning the great history of Calcutta, any misguided sentimentalist who spreads the lie that Kali Ghat, Kali Kutta, Calcutta or Kolkatta is a center of only poor, diseased illiterates has done the world a grand and grave injustice. I have listened to tirades from Bengali friends on many occasions concerning Ma Theresa’s misrepresentation of a city they were proud to call their own. Especially since Calcutta is the great home of the De (pron. Day) family whose exalted and noble line brought us Shri Abhaya Charan De, aka Shrila Prabhupada. Once Prabhupada said to a disciple, “From the Sanskrit santa has come your English word ‘saint.’ You may call me Santa Bhaktivedanta.” So the real saint of Calcutta—and the world—was Shrila Prabhupada. So the next time someone brings up the “saint of Calcutta” teach them to chant Hare Krishna.
Sure modern Kolkatta has its downside. Hey, it’s Kali Yuga out there! London is perfect? Still, Calcutta’s many gifts to the world should not be ignored. I would like to see a different, more accurate picture of this land called Vanga than the blurred and dodgy image do-gooder religionists present. Pavan’s Press will welcome the time when a different picture of this great Eastern metropolis will emerge through the work of my fellow devotees of ISKCON. Written -19 Sept. 2007
